The behavior you are seeing is by design what the ‘bbPress Moderation’ plugin
From https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpressmoderation/
> “To help reduce spam in bbPress forums, this plugin will change the
> status of new topics and replies to ‘pending’. Any pending
> topics/replies will be shown as ‘Awaiting Moderation’ until the
> administrator approves publishes them.”
Or did you install this plugin to try and resolve the issue but with the plugin disabled you are still seeing this behavior?
What happens when you disable all other plugins on your WordPress install?
