William Brangham:

This series makes for very difficult reading, and, frankly, this conversation might not be appropriate for everyone.

After a six-month investigation, the two papers have documented about 700 victims being sexually abused, assaulted or raped by Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers. Many of the victims were children, some as young as 3 years old.

In addition to these violations, some teenage and adult victims were then shunned by their church. Others were told to have abortions. The papers also detail church officials brushing aside repeated warnings of trouble. Some leaders who were convicted of sex crimes and officially listed as sex offenders were later able to return to the pulpit. One still works with teens in Houston today.

The Houston Chronicle's Robert Downen is one of the three reporters on this series. And he joins me now.

Robert, thank you very much for doing this, and just kudos to this really remarkable and horrifying bit of reporting that you guys have done.

I don't want to dwell too much on this, but I wonder if you could start off by just giving us a little more sense of the types of crimes that we're talking about here?