DALLAS (RNS) — In early April, Jennifer Lyell, a former Christian publishing executive, sat for a deposition in a defamation lawsuit filed by her once mentor and professor David Sills.
There she detailed alleged sexual and spiritual abuse by Sills in graphic detail — and insisted he had coerced her into sexual acts without her consent, and then asked her to join him at family meals afterward.
“But he always knew that I never, ever wanted any instance,” she said in an excerpt from her April 10 deposition. “And I always, always tried to stop it.”
Lyell died Saturday (June 7) after suffering a series of strokes. She was 47. A few weeks before she died, her lawyer filed excerpts of her deposition in a federal court as part of a legal battle over discovery in the defamation lawsuit.
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Jennifer Lyell. (Courtesy photo)
Attorneys for Sills had filed a motion to compel discovery of a number of things, including notes from Lyell’s counseling sessions. Lyell’s lawyers argued those notes were privileged and should not be turned over. The excerpts from Lyell’s deposition, filed as part of the response to the discovery requests, revealed additional details about the alleged abuse by Sills. In excerpts from the deposition, Lyell describes being forced to perform sexual acts despite telling Sills no.
“I resisted — attempted to resist verbally, physically squirming, reasoning, no, all these things,” she said in her deposition, adding Sills would often corner her and not allow her to get away.
The conflict over discovery is the latest chapter in the legal battle between Sills and leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. Sills, a former seminary professor, has claimed SBC leaders defamed him by including his name in a report on the issue of sexual abuse published in 2022. Sills has admitted to misconduct but claimed it was consensual and denied in court documents that he was abusive.
Lyell, a former vice president of Lifeway, a Southern Baptist publishing arm, was also named in the lawsuit. In 2019, she went public with her allegations against Sills. But few details of the abuse had been revealed until the May 20 court filing.
Along with abuse, Lyell also described spiritual manipulation by Sills — a longtime missionary a …