ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – The president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary issued a statement where he identified a St. Johns County pastor as someone who told another employee to make a document “go away.”
The statement reads that Heath Woolman, now lead pastor of Fruit Cove Baptist Church, told a staff member to get rid of a document detailing sexual assault when he worked at that school.
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“According to Stovall, Woolman instructed her to make the document “go away” during this conversation,” wrote David S. Dockery, president of SBTS in Fort Worth, Texas.
READ | Full statement from the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
That statement came as a response to an article by The Tennessean, a paper doing a story on this indictment of Matthew Queen.
Queen was a professor and interim provost at the school. He was charged with obstructing justice by falsifying records in an attempt to cover up an abuse report.
According to these documents, the U.S. Attorney’s Office began investigating allegations of sexual abuse at the Southern Baptist Convention and its affiliated entities in 2022.
In November of that year, after the school received a subpoena, “Employee 1″ at the seminary also received a report about an allegation of a student at the school committing sexual abuse.
“Employee 1″ immediately brought that allegation to the attention of campus police, but the documents stated the school never took further action.
The document goes on to say in January of 2023, Employee 1 created a document describing the allegation of that sexual abuse.
Then, during that same month, Employee 1 and Employee 2 met with Queen.
During that meeting, Employee 2 told Employee 1 to make the document “go away” in front of Queen.
This is something that Queen denied.
Dockery identified Terri Stovall, dean of women, as “Employee 1,” with her permission and Woolman as the person who told her to make the document go away, which is Employee 2.
After finding out Woolman worked at the church in Fruit Cove, News4JAX visited the office to see if they had any comment. Staff directed us to contact the pastor of administration by email.
We also contacted Woolman.
According to the statement by the president of the seminary, in April 2023, Woolman became a candidate for pastor.
“Woolman became a candidate for the pastoral position he now holds. He requested, and I offered, a brief affirmation of his candidacy to the church given his then role at the seminary, given the fact that he had been a quality student in one of my doctoral seminars, and given the information available to us at the time,” Dockery wrote. Woolman resigned as chief of staff on May 5, 2023, to accept the pastoral position. If asked to provide the same recommendation today, and based on information received subsequent to that time, I would not be able to provide the same recommendation.”
News4JAX is still waiting to hear back from Woolman or the church.