Photo: Photo Courtesy Religion News Service / Photo Courtesy Religion News Service

Paige Patterson, the former Southern Baptist Convention president who was recently removed as a seminary head for his handling of sex abuse claims, is being sued by a woman who says he threatened, intimidated and humiliated her after she reported multiple rapes to him.

The woman, a former student of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who is listed as “Jane Roe” in the suit, accuses Patterson of shaming and ignoring her after she said she was repeatedly stalked and raped at gunpoint by a male seminary student in 2014 and 2015.

The 34-page suit, filed in a Texas federal court last month and unsealed Thursday, also lists Southwestern seminary as a defendant. It details meetings in which Patterson allegedly threatened the woman’s family and asked if her attacker had “ejaculated” during the alleged rapes.

Patterson “seemed to enjoy making Roe even more uncomfortable with his questions” and “callously rejected” her requests for prayers or help with medical expenses, the suit says.

Patterson also told Roe that the rape was a “good thing” because “the right man would not care if she was a virgin or not,” and disclosed the abuses to seminary faculty without her consent, according to the suit.

Patterson served two terms as the president of the SBC, the nation’s second-largest faith group. He is among the most influential evangelical leaders in recent history, having orchestrated a conservative takeover that pushed the SBC to adopt literal translations of the Bible.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Read our investigation into Southern Baptist sexual abuse

The suit offers new details on the allegations made by the woman, who came forward last year as Patterson faced mounting criticism regarding two sermons he had delivered years earlier that had resurfaced online.

Patterson was eventually ousted from the Fort Worth seminary for, among other things, saying he wanted to meet alone with a student who said she was raped so that he could “break her down,” according to a statement from seminary trustees. That student was Roe, the lawsuit says.

Patterson and his lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment. His attorney has previously said that the remarks were taken out of context.

Adam Greenway, who took over as Southwestern’s president earlier this year, said in a statement that “we take these matters seriously and are committed to our campus being a safe place for the vulnerable and for survivors of abuse.”

Greenway also said that the seminary has at times fallen short of expectations on various issues. “In any and every area where this has been the case, I am sorry,” he said. “It is my resolve for our seminary to do better.”

Patterson has faced similar accusations before. He once wrote that members of a victims’ rights group were “just as reprehensible as sex criminals” after they criticized him for allegedly ignoring or mishandling sexual misconduct accusations made by multiple women against a former protégé, Darrell Gilyard, who was convicted of child sex crimes almost two decades after he resigned his Dallas church at Patterson’s direction.

The new lawsuit comes at a time of crisis for the Southern Baptist Convention. An investigation earlier this year by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, “Abuse of Faith,” found that more than 400 SBC church leaders and volunteers had been convicted for — or credibly accused of — abusing more than 700 victims in the last two decades. In many cases, leaders mishandled or concealed abuses within their congregations, the newspapers found.

The SBC had resisted calls for reforms for a decade. But at its recent annual meeting in Alabama, the organization overhauled the way its 47,000 churches deal with sexual abuse, making it easier to expel churches that ignore victims or harbor predators.

‘Campaign of terror’

Roe’s lawsuit describes her as a deeply religious child who abstained from alcohol. She looked forward to giving her husband a white rose on their wedding day to symbolize her “commitment” to staying a virgin until marriage.

She enrolled at the seminary in 2014 after repeated invitations from Patterson’s wife, Dorothy, the suit says. Roe soon met her alleged assailant, a seminary student who had access to the building in which Roe lived because he also worked as plumber for the seminary, according to the suit. The man, who is identified in the suit as John Doe, soon began stalking her and saying he would commit suicide unless she dated him, the suit alleges.

Eventually, John Doe began to brag to Roe about his history of sex, drugs, alcohol and violent behavior. He told her that he had met personally with Patterson, who assured him he could still become a Baptist minister because he was not married during his previous promiscuity, the suit says.

That left Doe “undaunted” to “embark on a campaign of stalking, terror, manipulation and violence,” the suit says.

In October 2014, Roe says she awoke to John Doe sexually assaulting her and brandishing a gun. He threatened her with murder-suicide the next day, the suit says, and would often load guns in front of her and say he would “bury her.”

On other occasions, he “brutally pulled out” chunks of Roe’s hair, nearly strangled her or sexually assaulted her. He once cornered her in a restroom and, armed with a gun, took photos of her as he again raped her, the suit says.

‘Break her down’

Roe and her family say they went to Patterson for help in August 2015. At a meeting days later, Roe says that Patterson prodded her for “lurid and graphic details” about the assaults in front of a group of men.

Patterson told her that he was “too busy” to deal with her rape claim because the semester had just begun, and said that he would not have called police if the rape had been reported to him off-campus, the suit says.

Fort Worth police eventually searched Doe’s room and found nine firearms, the suit says. He was expelled for violating the seminary’s weapons ban, but Roe says she did not press criminal charges because she feared him.

The suit then quotes a message allegedly sent by the seminary’s chief security officer to Patterson, in which he asked to accompany Patterson when he met with Roe so as to “see this through, and hear what she has to say.”

Patterson responded: “Well we will see. I have to break her down and I may need no official types there but let me see,” according to the suit.

The “break her down” quote grabbed national headlines amid Patterson’s departure from the seminary.

Months later, Roe arrived at what she thought would be a routine meeting with a seminary professor, who was also an assistant to Patterson’s wife. Paige Patterson was there and, according to the suit, told Roe’s professor about the alleged rapes. When Roe asked that her professor be allowed to leave the room, Patterson said Roe’s family would also have to exit, the suit says. The family did not leave, it says.

He then told her he had obtained a copy of her confidential police report, and had reached out to Doe, who he said told him that they had a consensual relationship. Doe said he had nude photos of Roe that proved she consented to his advances, according to the suit.

The photos, Roe said, were taken while she was being raped at gunpoint in a bathroom.

When Roe’s mother asked Patterson why Doe had been allowed to enroll at the seminary despite his alleged criminal past, Patterson “lunged across the table, firmly pointed his finger in her face and threatened to ‘unleash’ lawyers on her if she dared question his leadership,” the suit says.

“Roe left the meeting in tears, devastated that Patterson, the man she had looked to for support and protection, was now accusing her of lying about being violently raped,” the suit says.”…Consistent with his plan, Patterson had in fact attempted to ‘break her down.’”

Roe withdrew from the seminary. She says she later received a message from Dorothy Patterson, who told her “you are certainly doing the right thing to move away” and that she should refrain from “casting blame on someone else.”