Christa Brown, a former Texas appellate attorney, is revered as perhaps the best-known of the brave women (and men) who blew the whistle on abusive clergy and coverups at churches in the powerful Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). She began her quest at age 51, by bravely sharing her own story of being repeatedly sexually abused as a teen by her youth pastor, Tommy Gilmore, the man she’d gone to for counseling at her church in Farmers Branch. She first came forward as a whistleblower in 2009.
“I think I was ahead of things. That was before #MeToo and #ChurchToo and all of that,” she says. While still running a busy Austin law practice, Brown for years collected and shared stories of others who sought help through the blog and website she set up, StopBaptistPredators.org, which compiled reports on hundreds of abusive clergy and created the first public database of convicted, admitted, and credibly accused Southern Baptist clergy sex abusers.
Brown, now retired and living in Colorado, has continued to lift up other survivors and press for reforms. Her first book, This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang (Foremost Press, 2009), shares her journey from a frightened teen to an outspoken whistleblower. Her new memoir, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal and Transformation, out May 7, goes deeper. It is the confessional and sometimes excruciatingly intimate story of Brown’s life trapped in Baptistland, and her harrowing escape.
