Jennifer’s Birthday Gift: The Safe to Speak Initiative

Five years ago today, I sent Jennifer Lyell a happy birthday message. She called me back and instead of talking about her birthday, she insisted I turn on the news because history was being made as Americans besieged their own Capitol.

Every year thereafter, her birthday was overshadowed by the memory of this national trauma.

But not this year. Jennifer didn’t make it to her 48^th birthday. She died on June 7, 2025, after suffering a series of massive strokes. She was found alone in her home days after she fell unconscious.

The official cause of death was stroke. But those of us who were Jennifer’s friends know the fuller truth: the abuse after the abuse is what broke her.

Jennifer Lyell made her disclosure of sexual abuse by a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor a year before the Houston Chronicle published its Abuse of Faith series that detailed the decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse by certain leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). She was a vice president at LifeWay Christian Resources, one of the highest-ranking women in the SBC. Initially, Jennifer thought the SBC handled her disclosure properly. But eventually her abuse was reframed by certain SBC leaders as a consensual affair. She fought to correct the record, but then was sued by her alleged abuser.

Jennifer always wanted her day in court to tell the truth. But she never got it. Even in death, she continues to be disparaged online by those who think only of denominational power, and never of the vulnerable who are trying to survive their trauma.

Jennifer’s story is not unique. It is the pattern, the playbook. It is the predictable outcome when institutions prioritize their reputation over the safety of the vulnerable, when power protects power at all costs.

So next week, in her honor, I’m launching an initiative to make it safer for sexual abuse survivors to pursue justice: The Safe to Speak Initiative.

Unlike victims of other serious crimes, survivors confronting sexual abuse encounter uniquely restrictive statutes of limitations that often expire before they’re ready to come forward. When they do pursue civil cases, institutions pressure them into nondisclosure agreements that silence their stories. Those who speak publicly risk retaliatory lawsuits designed to intimidate them back into silence. These legal barriers don’t just delay justice—they actively prevent it, leaving survivors isolated and perpetrators protected.

The Safe to Speak Initiative is working to change this through coordinated statutory reform across the country. This initiative is bolstered by a documentary podcast series (The Silenced Truth, fiscally sponsored by the Southern Documentary Fund) that launches on January 14. And we need an army of advocates to make it all happen!

There will be a lot more information in the days to come, but announcing this initiative on her birthday is one way I can honor her memory.

If Jennifer had survived her disclosure, she would have been a lawyer, an advocate, a woman who would be reading her children’s story Bible to her Sunday school class, a faithful fan of Rich Mullins and The West Wing.

Jennifer kept this famous C.S. Lewis quote from the Chronicles of Narnia in her front yard. It refers to Aslan’s sacrificial death and resurrection in the Narnia story, which parallels Christ’s death and resurrection: “When a willing victim, who has committed no treachery, was killed in a traitor’s stead… the Table would crack and death itself would start working backwards.”

She believed in resurrection. In tables cracking. In death working backwards.

We owe her and other survivors the kind of justice that would have let her live.

• For resources and information about the Safe to Speak Initiative, visit safetospeak.info.

• To support The Silenced Truth podcast with a tax-deductible gift, please visit the Southern Documentary Fund.

• To join the Safe to Speak community, visit the Safe to Speak Patreon page.

• Subscribe to The Silenced Truth in your favorite podcast app after January 14!