Carolyn McCulley

The Silenced Truth

Religion EN ↓ 3 episodes

What does it mean that 93% of convicted sex offenders identify as religious? And what does it take for faith communities built on truth-telling to finally hear and respond to this fact? The Silenced Truth documents what happens when institutions built on truth-telling decide some truths are too costly to hear — and what it costs the people they were supposed to protect. It names the betrayal. It names the looking away. And it makes both harder to continue. The series began inside the Southern Baptist Convention, where survivors exposed decades of institutional cover-ups and forced a public rec...

Author

Carolyn McCulley

Episodes

The Predator in Plain Sight 09.05.2026 56:12

On his first Sunday as a new pastor, Aaron encountered something nearly every pastor is unprepared to evaluate or handle — a repeat child sexual abuse offender attending his new congregation. Fortunately, his wife Amy had spent 20 years as a child welfare social worker. She knew exactly what the threat was. What followed tested everything they thought they understood about how churches should resp...

The Survivor Who Didn't (Jennifer's Story) 03.03.2026 1:23:23

Jennifer Lyell is dead. But the battle over her story is not. In this second episode of The Silenced Truth , host Carolyn McCulley traces the devastating arc of Jennifer’s life—from a vulnerable childhood in southern Illinois to rising as one of the highest-ranking female executives in the Southern Baptist Convention—and the price she paid for telling the truth about sexual abuse inside the denom...

"You Always Knew!" (Tiffany's Story) 15.01.2026 1:30:31

For decades, Tiffany Thigpen carried the weight of what happened to her as a teenage girl in a Jacksonville church. A charismatic preacher. A trusted pastor. And a pattern of abuse that powerful leaders chose to ignore. This podcast episode is hosted by Carolyn McCulley and features an interview with journalist Robert Downen about the historical context of the Southern Baptist Convention. At the...