How Jehovah’s Witness leaders are responding to child abuse scrutiny
Besieged by reports that
Jehovah’s Witnesses shield child sexual abusers from prosecution, the
religion’s top leadership appears to have settled on a strategy: “Let
the story die.”
A Portuguese news documentary
released in October was yet another report from across the globe to
detail the Witnesses’ policy of not reporting child abusers to law
enforcement. As in other media reports, top officials refused to speak
to the journalists who produced it.
After it aired, however, David
Splane, a member of the Witnesses’ Governing Body, spoke to 600
congregations from the religion’s Portuguese headquarters in Carnaxide,
according to TVI, the station that aired the documentary. Splane’s talk provided a window into how Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders are handling the scrutiny.
“Now, sometimes, the brothers will call New York and say, ‘Why don’t
you do something about this? This was a terrible program,’ ” said
Splane, who was visiting from global headquarters in Brooklyn. “What do
you want us to do? The journalist has a closed mind. The journalist
isn’t interested in the truth. And so we usually just leave things as
they are and let the story die.”
The documentary, “In the Shadow of Sin,” was based on the Witnesses’ own internal documents.
“Slanderous, negative remarks that people were making about Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and Jehovah’s Witnesses weren’t there to defend themselves,”
Splane said.
Ana Leal, the journalist who reported the story, said she sent
numerous emails to the Witnesses and went to the organization’s
Portuguese headquarters asking for their participation before the
documentary aired. After Splane’s remarks in November, Leal went back
and tried again.
In a follow-up report, Leal said the Witnesses let her through the gates of their compound, only to tell her, “We have nothing to add.”
Talk about déjà vu.
Reveal has been reporting on the Witnesses’ child abuse policies
since last year. I’ve called and emailed the Witnesses’ office of
public information dozens of times. I’ve phoned the homes of top
officials, including members of the Governing Body. I’ve flown to New
York twice and walked into the Witnesses’ global headquarters to request
interviews. No one would talk.
Both times at headquarters, I asked to visit the office of public
information on the fourth floor, and was told to have a seat in the
lobby and wait for the courtesy phone on the wall to ring.
Each time, I waited 30 minutes before a secretary named Bryce called
down to inform me that there would be no comment. He would not let me
come up to his office to discuss why. When I asked Bryce for his last
name, he refused to give it.
Hours before we published our first story in February, the Watchtower
sent a brief statement in lieu of an interview. It said Jehovah’s
Witnesses abhor child abuse and comply with secular laws.
Two weeks after that story went live, another Governing Body member, Stephen Lett, posted a video
on the Witnesses’ website, dismissing reports that the organization is
permissive toward child abusers. He called such reports “apostate-driven
lies” and “false stories that are designed to separate us from
Jehovah’s organization.”
“Because any human who tries to get us to compromise Bible principles really is an agent of Satan,” he said.
Lett also refused to grant an interview.
Splane told followers in Portugal that Jehovah is already dealing with the misinformation spread by journalists.
“He sends his Witnesses out from door to door to correct the record,”
he said, referring to the doorstep preaching campaigns for which the
organization is known.
Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders have said publicly that they are proud of
their child protection policies and that they do more to shield young
members from harm than other religions. Despite mounting lawsuits and
media reports, however, they have failed to acknowledge that the
organization has hidden child abuse from secular authorities around the
world for decades.
They haven’t expressed outrage over the abuse of
their children. Or given indications that they’ll be changing their
policies. Instead, they’ve made one thing clear: They want the press to
go away.
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Former Jehovah’s Witness lifts lid on stifling, doom-obsessed religion
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/former-jehovahs-witness-lifts-lid-on-stifling-doomobsessed-religion/story-fni0ffsx-1227092921890
Former Jehovah’s Witness Graeme Hammond.
THE invasion of 70,000 neatly-dressed, well-mannered Jehovah’s Witnesses on Melbourne streets and public transport this weekend for their international convention will be hard to miss.
For anyone woken by them from Saturday morning slumber, Jehovah’s Witnesses are just one of life’s annoyances. They have an answer for everything and rarely take “no” for an answer.
But for most householders, they remain a mystery: why do they keep this up? What drives them to keep going week after week for the same curt dismissal?
As someone who spent too long inside this stifling, doom-obsessed religion, I can tell you the answer lies in two powerful forces that control the lives of each of the world’s eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses: a conviction that God will soon destroy “wicked mankind” on a global and bloody scale, (sparing, naturally, just them) and also the unquestioning acceptance of the religion’s New York leadership.
Those leaders require that all Witnesses, from children to the frail aged, devote their lives to proselytising in the hope of gathering millions more into their fold before the divine hammer blow of Armageddon.
But the command is not only to “preach” (usually a forlorn offer of a magazine or leaflet); they must also hand in monthly reports detailing the hours they spent “in the field” and how many calls they made.
The message at their meetings is relentless and laden with guilt and fear: keep on preaching or you, too, will die at Armageddon.
Since the 1920s — when hard-headed Watch Tower Society president Joseph F. Rutherford whipped a once quaint Adventist religion into a regimented, tightly disciplined publishing and recruiting organisation — the church’s belief has always been that the best way to keep members from straying is to keep them busy.
More meetings! More campaigns! More conventions!
But here’s the contradiction. Back then when my heart was in it, my Saturday mornings were often all about perfecting the soft knock, half-hoping no one would hear me.
And I was not alone. For most of those I paired up with on Saturdays, an unopened door was a good door.
When it did swing open, revealing a clearly irritated resident, I felt like saying, “Hey, I hate this as much as you do!”
We were instructed to call at every home and return later if they were out. If they weren’t warned about the coming cataclysm, their blood would be on our hands. But it was plainly futile.
No one wanted us to call and no one believed the world was about to end.
When I joined in the mid-1980s, in those worrying days of imminent nuclear war between Reagan and Gorbachev, Jehovah’s Witnesses offered a positive, secure future.
It was a religion that sneered at the sentimentality, mysticism and tolerant forgiveness of orthodox religion and offered instead a rational, numerical analysis of Bible chronology that proved the world was in the last days.
I was curious, ventured in, got smothered by the “love bomb” … and stayed.
But back then (and this is how I console myself now) there was no internet and given a prohibition on delving into “apostate” literature that questioned their beliefs, there was no easy way for me to learn that the religion had a long history of building up hopes, then rewriting the past when the promised conflagration failed to arrive.
They were masters of the Orwellian art of making inconvenient history vanish.
But as time went on, the false alarms, the demands on my time and the expectation of credulity and obedience became tiresome, worrying.
Not that you could say anything. To doubt the Governing Body, we were told, was to doubt God; just a whisper of criticism could lead to a summons to the dreaded Judicial Committee, with organised shunning to follow.
So I plodded on, did my service to God and man. Everything was about counting hours.
Not the hours to the Apocalypse, but the hours I wrote on my monthly report.
Clever JWs would “do a door” on the way to the meetings where witnessing territory was assigned, just to start the clock and take them closer to their quota.
Two hours out knocking on doors on a Saturday morning was barely adequate and earned snide comments. Three hours was better. That shut them up.
As a consequence we all dragged our feet, congregating on footpaths to chat, always an eye on the clock.
We’d linger at doors when there was clearly no one home before dawdling out to the street again. God wanted us to give our time.
He didn’t seem to mind how much of it we wasted while we were out there.
When my family and I finally quit, our eyes opened and feeling foolish about having stayed so long, family and former “friends” cut us off. What the hell. We were just glad to get our lives back.
When I see those thousands of Witnesses trudging towards Etihad Stadium this weekend, I’ll feel a trace of sadness for them. But I’ll know where they are. This weekend at least, I know they won’t be knocking on my door.
Graeme Hammond is a former Jehovah’s Witness.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Jehovah's Witnesses' Child Sex Abuse Cases Bring Religion's Practices Into Question
Jehovah's Witnesses' Child Sex Abuse Cases Bring Religion's Practices Into Question
By Sami K. Martin , Christian Post Reporter
October 8, 2014|1:43 pm
(Photo: The Christian Post/Nicola A. Menzie)
A
group of Jehovah's Witnesses stand by their table displaying religious
literature on Friday, Jan. 10, 2014, at the Atlantic Terminal subway
station in New York City.
There are over 7 million Jehovah's Witnesses across the globe, according to the group's website. However, there have been numerous accusations and cases brought against elders and leaders of the organization, alleging child abuse of both young men and women, dating back at least 30 years. Four reported victims brought a lawsuit against the Jehovah's Witnesses and Watchtower Organization in Connecticut.
"This is an insidious problem, an epidemic problem with child sex abuse within this organization that so far seems more concerned about protecting its reputation from scandal than about the children," attorney Irwin Zalkin said at a press conference in Connecticut.
One particular case in 2012 saw Candace Conti, a victim, receive awarded $28 million in damages after alleging that member Jonathan Kendrick molested her from 1995-1996. The case was filed in Oakley, California and the $28 million award was the largest paid to a single victim.
"Nothing can bring back my childhood. But through this (verdict) and through, hopefully, a change in their policy, we can make something good come out of it," Conti said at the time.
Jim McCabe, the attorney who represented the religious organization in the case, said that the Jehovah's Witnesses "hate child abuse and believe it's a plague on humanity. Johnathan Kendrick was not a leader or a pastor, he was just a rank-and-file member. This is a tragic case where a member of a religious group has brought liability on the group for actions he alone may have taken."
The Jehovah's Witnesses have plenty of information on their website about how to keep children safe from predators, but take a unique approach to dealing with cases of accused abuse. When an allegation against a member or elder is made, the organization follows a "two-witness rule," which requires that there be two victims made. They claim that they follow Biblical principles when it comes to the rule and cite Scripture such as 1 Timothy 5:19 and Deuteronomy 19:15, which speak of having two persons come forward when making an accusation.
"You can disagree with our religion all you like, but we are a Bible-based organization, and we stand for upholding the Bible. What we are doing is simply being consistent with the Bible laws and principles, and as much as you dislike the outcome, we have told everyone of our stand, and you can't fault us for being consistent," the organization said in its defense of the rule.
In 2013, Elder Ronald Lawrence was charged with 19 felony counts: 11 of lewd molestation, seven of forcible sodomy and one of rape by instrumentation. The victims included two females and one male in Pittsburgh.
"He admitted to his church that all of the allegations were true" to be re-instated in his church after being "dis-fellowshipped" by the congregation to which he belonged, the affidavit read. However, Lawrence said that he never admitted anything and denied committing any crimes.
"The actions of the church, their banishment of (Lawrence) on one or more occasion and the directives of the governing body toward the victims and their family members regarding these crimes were actions of 'concealment' and further actions preventing the victims from reporting the crimes to law enforcement," the motion filed in Pittsburgh County District Court read.
The case against Lawrence was dropped in March 2014 due to an objection by the state. However, the prosecutor in the case plans to appeal the decision.
A call was placed to the Jehovah's Witnesses organization in Brooklyn, New York, to discuss the matter further, but no comment was given.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Another current Jehovah's Witness goes to trial for Child Sex Abuse
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/child-abuse/282815/1/Accused-Rapist-Angela-Montgomery-a-JW-goes-to-trial-Sept-2-5-2014-in-Tennessee#.U_OjsWONAcU
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Jehovah's Witnesses Cult Suicide Memorium Face Book group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1474402276106899
Suicide is common among the Jehovah's Witnesses
cult for many reasons. Here are some .
Unbiblical application of extreme shunning
Domestic Abuse
Child sex Abuse
Mind control
Relying on the Cult instead of Professional help
Here is a list of many JW suicides
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/scandals/221220/9/Suicide-How-many-do-you-know-within-the-JWs#.UyW0_oX4Qyc
Suicide is common among the Jehovah's Witnesses
cult for many reasons. Here are some .
Unbiblical application of extreme shunning
Domestic Abuse
Child sex Abuse
Mind control
Relying on the Cult instead of Professional help
Here is a list of many JW suicides
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/scandals/221220/9/Suicide-How-many-do-you-know-within-the-JWs#.UyW0_oX4Qyc
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