CHILD
ABUSE AMONG JWS
(Investigator 93, 2003 November)
Information
on protecting
children from "Child
Molesting" appeared in the Jehovah's Witness magazine Awake! in
1985 (January 22).
The article
suggests that
most molesters
and sexual abusers of children are child minders, family friends and
relatives
of the parents. Unmentioned, however, is that many offenders are
parents,
step parents and – in the JW sect – people of influence such as the JW
Elders.
Since the 1990s
many ex
JWs have told of
sexual abuse by JW Elders. Sex in the Sect (1995), for example,
is an autobiography by Vicki J, a JW female who grew up near Brisbane
in
Australia. She describes years of sexual molestation by her Overseer
father.
In 1999 Main's Portland
Press-Herald
reported on a sexual molestation suit filed in the Cumberland County
Court
by Bryan Reece against another JW who had molested him during 1989-1992
while both attended the Kingdom Hall in Portland. Reece's position was
that the congregation Elders and the JW hierarchy were all culpable.
A report in the Tri-City
Herald (2001,
August) said in part:
RITZVILLE –
Erica
Rodriguez and her mother,
Alejandra Garza, broke down and cried when the verdict came in. It took
slightly less than four hours for a seven-man, five-woman Adams County
Superior Court to declare Manuel Beliz, 48, of Othello guilty of two
counts
of first-degree child rape and two counts of first-degree child
molestation…
Rodriguez said
she
believed Beliz, a Jehovah's
Witness elder, had also molested other girls and her whole purpose in
coming
forward was to keep him from doing it to someone else. She said that
even
though her church disfellowshipped Beliz – or removed him from the
church – for
six months, church elders pressured her not to report him to the police…
A jury convicted
Beliz on
two counts of first-degree
child rape and two counts of first-degree child molestation in 1998.
However,
the state court of appeals granted Beliz the right to a new trial on
the basis that then-deputy prosecutor Dennis Scott sought to exclude women
from the jury panel.
Like other
religions that hit
the headlines
in recent years for ignoring child sexual abuse JWs tried to handle the
problem internally to avoid bad publicity. The following letter in Outreach
Tidbits (2003 May/June) is representative of the JW approach:
I was thirteen
in 1975…
An elder talked
my
mother’s husband into
getting baptized. While the elders were trying to make him act more
spiritual
he was trying to molest me… Instead of calling the police or going to a
therapist, Mom went to the elders about his behavior.
A bunch of men
who had no
training in marriage
problems or abuse issues…investigated things and decided it was Mom's
fault
that Lee was interested in her daughters. She was not a good enough
wife.
My mother believed them and did everything she could to keep him
'happy’.
The elders also said it was my fault and my sister's, we wore our jeans
too tight. Never did they blame Lee for having no self control or just
being a pervert. My sister and I lived with fear…
These so-called
religious
men did nothing
to protect the children. They didn't want Mom to tell the police, that
would make the witnesses look bad and that just couldn't happen.
The Paducah Sun
reported about JWs as
follows:
Bill Bowen,
who resigned
his leadership
in the congregation in December 2000 to protest the church's policy on
reporting accused paedophiles to secular authorities, is charged with
causing
divisions in the church…
Barbara
Anderson, a former
researcher at
the church's New York headquarters, and Carl and Barbara Pandelo, a New
Jersey couple whose daughter was molested by Carl’s father, have been
disfellowshipped
in the last two weeks for talking to the media. The Pandelos spoke to
the
Sun for a January 2001 article, and they, Andersen and Bowen
cooperated
with the TV magazine "Dateline
NBC"… (2002, May 25, p.14A)
William Bowen
founded an
organization called
Silent Lambs and started a website of the same name to expose JW child
abuse. The claim surfaced that the WTS has over 23,000 child molesters
on file for the USA:
…William Bowen
of
Kentucky and Barbara
Anderson a former office worker at Watchtower headquarters reveal files
on these paedophiles the number being 23,120! … Lawsuits are now pending
all across the country… 5,000 victims have now contacted William Bowen
reporting personal abuses and molestation.
(Outreach
Tidbits,
2002, July/August, pp.
3, 6)
Television
documentaries about child
abuse among JWs were recently broadcast in North America, England,
Germany,
Australia and Sweden.
<>New WTS policy
as of mid
2002 prevents JW
child-molesters going door to door alone and also gives JW victims the
right to go to the police without elders hindering them.
Comment:
Despite the positive final sentence in the above, child abuse among JWs got worse:
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