by AndersonsInfo 77 Replies latest watchtower scandals
Harry truman had a saying, "the buck stops here".
The GB is at fault for what happens within the WT community and how it is dealt, just like they point out that the Vatican is at fault for what happens in the RCC community.
The Buck Stops here.
The GB is responsible for what happened, whats is still happening and whatever MAY happen because they have NOT made the changes needed.
CHILD ABUSE TELEMEMO: ... Outrageously, one inappropriate question found on the paper asked if any of the elders believed the child victim was “somewhat at fault” for their own sexual victimization.
And, incredibly, if the molestation took place in a mandated reporting state, one of the directives required elders’ to go to a phone booth and call the authorities anonymously. Of course, it was done this way so elders couldn’t be located by police for questioning, but if identified later, elders could argue they obeyed the reporting law.
This stuff is outrageous alright. These guys are not trained experts. Turn it over to trained experts when someone comes forward. Cooperation would be wonderful. The payphone anonymous call would often cause a call to be generally ignored. If they would come forward to the authorities and stand with the victim, think of how it would be handled differently. It would also comfort the victim instead of simply triggering a legal concern.
In other words, if a man molested a child there was no need to remove him as elder or ministerial servant or even to call a judicial hearing if he had led a “godly life” for at least three years after he had sinned in a sexual way and hid that sin.
It is things like that information that disgusted me. When they reminded elders around 2005 that they did not need to step aside or be removed if they kept their nose clean for awhile (hinted at 3 years without saying it) they were refering to internet pornography. I was reminded by older elders that this policy was in place for other things already. That was too much for me. Any "publisher" who came forward would receive a JC even for older violations of WT rules.
Thanks for posting this.
Thank you, Barbara, for this post and all your hard work on behalf of unprotected children who are victims of this insane corporate policy and parents who are too blind to see it for what it is (which is what I was for too long).
And thanks to all the posters who straightened out the shameful apologists who came on questioning the pure motives of the Andersons. This exchange has reminded me once again of why I gave up both organizational and social position to be able to live with a good conscience.
I can assure you that the experiences cited by Barbara, and others, have the ring of truth. I saw the hypocrisy and deceit up close and it sickened me.
The WTBTS is doing what the priests of Jeremiahs time did, when told the Temple would be destroyed and they were wrong and disapproved:
"They say "the Temple of jehovah, the Temple of Jehovah, the Temple of jehovah it is."
The Gibbering Buddies think that by shrieking louder and louder how they are the only annointed representatives who know Christ is invisibly here (see Luke 21) that they will convince people they are not going to be judged with the same measure they use to criticize all other religions with the same problems.
As for FACTS - a fact is a fact is a fact. It cannot be made any less true by questioning the motives of the person presenting them.
Barbaras aims were to protect our children and hopefully to bring about real reform on this evil policy.
The WT declared WAR on her. WHAT WERE THEIR MOTIVES $$$$$$$$$$$$$??
AND - do you remember JR Brown's comment that pedophilia problems among JWs are "no worse than those of the Catholic Church?"
HB
AND I was told by an ELDERS son that when he was a boy a molestor was in his congo. The elduhs did not keep it secret from one another, and made sure that THEIR kids were never left alone, or allowed to go out preaching with him.
NOBODY else with children in that congregation was given that luxury.
HB
I also want to note that in NY for an adult to have sex with an underage (21 or 18????) is a FELONY.
I wonder if any of the older guys at NY Beth hell ever seduced a boy, and so don't want this exposed?
HB
Thanks Barbara for your interesting and detailed speech.
If the Watchtower Society treated pedophiles and spouse abuse as it does smoking, imagine the much happier children and families that would grow up.
According to the PEW report on religion, the children who grow up in JW families are 67% more likely to leave the Truth. No wonder.
I grew up, and witnessed 2 pedophiles in action. Both, esteemed elders in the congregations they attended.
Children are a gift from God, and like a budding plant...need the best environment. The abuse within the JW religion is astounding. No wonder, so many leave.
Skeeter
Barbara, I have just come up to speed with what you are doing. I applaud your work. In the UK the issue was covered by a TV programme called "Panarama", being a good dub I didn't view it and I just swallowed the spin we were given as Elders the day afterwards. Your factual accounts have really opened my eyes to how the WTS have covered over over this issue.
We have always been told that honesty is the best policy, if the society adopted this policy, they would have been able to set a fine example to other organisations on how to deal with those who use infiltrate their ranks in order to satisfy their twisted desires. Instead the WTBS are now seen as a cowardly, reactive organisation, that shows no true leadership. What a shame for those who still can't see through the scam.
Although I can't find fault in ANY of your facts, I however respectfully disagree with SOME of your conclusions. Sola, my conclusions are in harmony with the court decisions and documents I have on my website. My conclusions are the same as the lawyers and producers at NBC Dateline and NBC Nightly News. My conclusions are the same as most of the posters on this thread.
Just to reiterate, my reason for posting the manuscript containing my 45 minute lecture here on JWNet, which I presented at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland, was to share why I believe as I do that it’s WT leadership who should be held responsible for creating rules and directives which ended up not protecting children inside and outside of the Witness organization, but instead protected pedophiles when elders carried out those directives.
For what it’s worth, in my lecture, I outlined eye-witness testimony (mine) of what led up to being the critic that I am today of WT’s improper and absurd child abuse policies. And I actually have many more than two-witnesses to back up my allegations, actual real-life experiences that bolster my claims. These experiences are in the thousands and offered by brave people who were personally mistreated or worse because of the GB’s directives. In your postings, Sola, at times you’re critical of WT leadership at the top, but, generally, you lay the blame for most of what is wrong with this organization at the feet of “elders-gone-wild,” men who you say did not obey the directions of their superiors. I suppose you think that if all the elders did what they were told, crossed every “t” and dotted every “i”, this child abuse mess would never have developed? However, that’s not true. It’s because most elders did obey the Governing Body’s poorly thought out directives that caused the problems. Inasmuch as the elders are not free agents, who have decision-making freedom, but are directly appointed agents by the Governing Body, and each congregation is not autonomous but operated by agents/elders who take their directions from the GB, the GB is responsible for the wrongful actions done in the line of duty of those they appoint. Since it is the GB who establishes policies and directs practices for all JWs and make appointments of men for “positions of trust,” State Supreme Courts in three states agreed that Watch Tower and Watchtower had to remain Defendants in nine lawsuits in that the GB made the rules so legally they had to suffer the consequences of their decisions and appointments if their appointed agents went bad. The facts are that pre-1996, the GB and their top supervisory force did not sufficiently inform or train their agents in the matter of child abuse. They knowingly allowed men who had molested before they were baptized and men who molested since they were baptized to remain in “positions of trust.” When they fully realized how liable they were in the matter, the solution was the directive in the Jan. 1, 1997 Watchtower article, “Let Us Abhor What Is Wicked” Jan. 1, 1997 Watchtower magazine. The article explained if a man was a child molester before he was baptized, he would not qualify for congregation privileges. If he molested after he was baptized, he did not qualify for a responsible position in the congregation. By putting that directive in the Watchtower magazine, Watch Tower leadership inadvertently admitted that this was the situation before the article was published. So here’s proof that it was at the top that we can lay the blame, not with local elders at the bottom of the hierarchy, but with WT leadership that they knowingly allowed molesters to hold responsible positions until the new directive stated in 1997. In 1992, the Legal Dept. became fully involved in trying to solve the problems that Service caused by their inept handling of abuse accusations, preceding and including that year. Lawyers went to the GB and laid out the problems and tried to figure out solutions before the damn of lawsuits broke. From then on the GB ordered that all correspondence about abuse, all manner of abuse, including domestic, were to be copied and sent to Legal. We who knew of the wrangling that was going on behind the scenes between Writing and Service rejoiced. It was not the GB through “Holy Spirit” that solved anything. It was the Legal Dept. that tried to dig the leadership out of the pit they dug for themselves by ignoring the information that was coming in about molestation issues throughout the entire organization. Harry Peloyan told me after the January 1, 1997 Wt article, “Let Us Abhor What Is Wicked” that we can thank our Legal Dept. for pushing through the directive that a man “known” to have been a child molester does not qualify for a responsible position in the congregation. As we all know, that was not the end of the matter. Knowing very well how loyal the GB are towards their appointees, I believe that Legal had to accommodate some GB members, who were very sympathetic towards men who were repentant lawbreakers, by inserting the word, “known” in the new directive so that many men viewed as “good” because of repentance would not be removed. Here another very poor decision was made which led to more problems and public expose’.
Sola’s Conclusion #1: It's WT leaders, not elders, who are responsible for all the harm. My Geneva, Switz. lecture posted here for new ones & Sola Scriptura to read I respectfully disagree with this statement. Here's why: The court records contained a case of a girl in Oregon who was abused from the time she was 5 until she was 14 years old by a JW ministerial servant. She always knew it was wrong and suffered depression and drug problems as she grew older. She complained to her family who spoke to the elders and yet no one reported the man to the police. Because he was not reported to the authorities, this pedophile molested as many as fifty kids in the community including the girl’s brother. The girl ran away from home just so she would be picked up and put in a foster home and then she believed she would be safe from her molester. Otherwise she would have had to endure more times when he would pick her up at her home to take her into the door-to-door ministry, but rather than do that, he molested her. At JW conventions, during noon breaks, he’d come get her, take her to his van and rape her. In foster care this girl told caregivers about the abuse and he was arrested and confessed. Asked by the police why she allowed the abuse, she replied it was because the man was God’s chosen servant! This poor girl 1st complained to her Family (A child's 1st line of defense), who in turn complained to the Elders.
Why the Elders did nothing, I do not know. Please read the Morley case than you’ll know. http://www.watchtowerdocuments.com/downloads/Morley_et_al_vs_Jehovah's_Witnesses.pdf All the answers are there. The questions you ask can’t be answered because they do not apply. I don't have the FULL facts of this case, but based purely on the above statement the Parents were either consistently negligent in their care of their daughter or "wildly" naive. The theme of my lecture was not about this case, and I lacked the time to go into all the details, but what I said was true. In fact, my short synopsis was not nearly as strong as I should have made it considering all the horrific details of a true predacious pedophile made a MS even though people knew his history. Here’s an example of the Society’s policy which was to accept the repentance claim of men who had molested in the past and allow them to have “privileges” in the congregation. By recommending this molester to the Society, the elders were only doing what they were pre-conditioned to do by the constant harping about forgiving your brother’s sins. Of course, until 2001, child abuse was only a sin like fornication and lying, and JWs were told to keep putting up with one another’s faults and sins because we’re all imperfect, just like the infamous story JWs repeat about King David who was imperfect but used by Jehovah even though he committed adultery and had a man killed. Sound familiar? As I said in another post, it was in 2001 that my husband Joe talked to Chuck Woody in the Service Dept. about child abuse being a crime not only a sin and elders should not be involved in truth-finding sessions, but should call the police.
None of the following questions are applicable to this case. The WT leadership has hammered into all of it's Elders and Rank & File's heads, that it is not wise for a Man to be alone with a woman he is not married too (adult or young woman... ie 14). Even in congregation sanctioned duties.
Can you imagine NO ONE gossiping about always seeing these 2 alone. Somebody had to see them alone and wonder in our very JW Judgmental way "That's odd, Brother X is Always hanging around young sister Y. It was cute when she was little but she's a young woman now. That is just not appropriate! I'm calling the Elders about this"
The Local Elders dropped the ball on this. The Parents totally ignored the ball.
(disclaimer: I'm commenting only on the Facts available to me at the moment... The Parents could be totally innocent!)
The only heroes in this case are the foster care caregivers and the Police who arrested the pedophile.
"Let Caesar deal with the crime. Let Elders deal with the sin"™
"Let Caesar bag em and tag em."™
Barbara: Please Tell me how does this one particular case "prove" that all blame (100%) falls on the heads of the WT Leadership? Who most likely was not "fully" aware of the situation until after the arrest was made. Your questions do not apply to this case and you’ll see that when you read the case documents. Anyway, WT appointed the elders who recommended the monster molester, so they’re all to blame. Again, this is the Morley case and it’s on my website, www.watchtowerdocuments.com For your statement above to be completely true, 100% of the blame for the above case should be clearly traced to WT Leadership either through written proof or 1st hand verbal instructions from WT Leadership to these Particular Elders instructing them to IGNORE all that they have "Officially" written on handling Child Abuse cases.
The way I see it is this: Blame (Apart from the Pedophile) = WT 33%, Elders 33% Parents 33% Child 0%
Conclusion #2 Oh, by the way, as our message spreads that the Witness ringing doorbells with Bible in hand could be a convicted pedophile. what do you think will happen to the formerly high growth rate of conversion to this religion? The answer is obvious and it’s already happening!
I respectfully disagree with this statement. Here's why:
I don't think people in general are worried about JW pedophiles at their door, exercising their right to "Free Speech". Why?
(disclaimer: I'm not saying they should go...I'm just explaining why I disagree with your
conclusion)
Witness pedophiles don’t grab children they meet during the door-to-door work. They study with poor, ignorant, divorced women to get to their children who they definitely “groom.” In one case the wife and husband went together door-to-door. She knew what her husband was (a pedophile) and yet she enabled him by not going with him to study the Bible with very ignorant abandoned women and then gaining their trust, he would baby sit with the children and the rest is to awful to talk about.
99% of house holders ignore the JWs message at their door already, regardless of who's bringing them that message. The Majority of the remaining 1% who might listen and start a home bible study, are usually initially contacted by pioneers who are out more often & who are usually women. (Not that women aren't child molesters, but statistically Men are usually the perpetrators)
So the 5-10 hours that a convicted pedophile "might" spend Door to Door knocking on empty or unresponsive homes, doesn't constitute a Major Threat that is frightening the masses from opening their doors to us.
Pedophiles are usually very cunning and discrete. Most of them would avoid going after children in such a brazen open manner as "Door to Door" witnessing.
However, unregulated "Informal" witnessing by a JW pedophile is actually more of a threat to the public then "Door to Door" witnessing, because the pedophile might strike up a conversation with a single mother in a neutral environment, under the guise of a "spiritual" discussion, and wiggle his way into her & her child's life, via a "Family" Bible study. There's NO policy anyone can write to stop that.
Often pedophiles "groom" their victims for weeks, sometimes months before they make their 1st move. So a young child taken under the wing by a JW pedophile is a more likely scenario than a JW pedophile grabbing some kid who answers the door when their parents aren't home.
See answer above Conclusion #3
How would you as a parent like to attend a church and not be informed that a man considered a spiritual brother had served nearly 20 years in prison for child sexual abuse? That his prison records state he is a psychopathic deviant pedophile whose behavior cannot change? This is actually the case in one JW congregation where the pedophile’s past is kept confidential. At one time there were other convicted molesters in this congregation, yet only the elders knew about them. Obviously, these confidentiality policies protect pedophiles, not children.
You make it seem like other churches are doing something JWs are not. I could be wrong, so please name some Major Christian Religions who as their "Official Policy" announce to their congregation the PAST criminal records of their members?
We probably wouldn't be having this debate If the WT Leadership, like most other churches, had no "Official" Policy of dealing out punishment for proven Rank & File Child Abusers.
I was not even thinking about other churches child abuse policies when I mentioned this example. The issue was the WT’s confidentiality policy. I asked a question—How would you like to attend a church, any church, where such a scary person attended and not know it? The answer is of course, nobody would like it. Conclusion #4
...I could no longer in good conscience remain in association with the group whose policies protected pedophiles rather than children. You concluded that JWs policies protected pedophiles RATHER than children.
I respectfully disagree with this statement. Here's why:
The WT Leadership "Official" policies protects ALL of the following:
1) Victims of Child Abuse (Green)
2) The "Rights" of Anyone, accused of something, of which has not
be proven or substantiated. (ie Innocent until Proven guilty) (Blue)
3) Repentant former Child Abusers (Although rare, they DO exsist) (Red)
Here is the proof for my above conclusions:
August 1 1995 Letter to Elders:"Dear Brothers:We are pleased to outline below some guidelines that we hope will be helpful to you in
protecting victims of child abuseand in dealing with a brother or sister in the congregation who has been guilty of sexually abusing a child.When a member of the congregation is accused of child molestation, the elders should
contact the Society's Legal Department immediately. Many states make it mandatory that elders report an accusation to the proper authorities but other states do not.In those states where such is required, oftentimes the parent, the guardian, or the accused person himself can do the reporting. In this way the confidentiality protected by ecclesiastical privilege is not violated. Still, whether or not the accusation is reported to the authorities, when it is established that a member of the congregation is guilty of child abuse, appropriate steps should be taken in keeping with initial direction from the Society's Legal Department.Additionally, steps should be taken to protect the child, or other children, from further
sexual abuse. Obviously, parents would be keenly interested in taking adequate precautions in this regard....Loving elders, too, will want to act in a way that demonstrates their protective care, since the word "overseer" carries the thought of one who watches over, a guardian, a shepherd of the flock. Thus, they would want to take steps to protect a child abuse victimwhen a judicial committee determines that the child molester is repentant and will remain a
member of the Christian congregation. The same concern would be shown when a pedophile is disfellowshipped and later cleans up his life and is reinstated.It would be appropriate to talk very frankly to a former child abuser, strongly cautioning
him as to the dangers of hugging or holding children on his lap and that he should never be in the presence of a child without another adult beingpresent. This may prevent putting that one in the way of temptation or unfounded accusation. At the same time, it is good to remember that the Bible, at Matthew 12:31 and I Corinthians 6:9-11, shows it is possible for a person to stop his or her wrongful course, repent, and thereafter live in harmony with God's righteous standards. This is true of all wrongdoers even a former child abuser."
This ONE letter of many, clearly states "Concern" for Child Abuse Victims, at the same time being scripturally balanced with the "Rights" of the accused and "Mercy" for the Repentant sinner.
It was neither Holy Spirit or great concern that prompted WT leadership to write that letter especially the last three paragraphs that Sola posted. The August 1, 1995 Bodies of Elders letter was written because of me. (See, things are not what they seem, are they?) Before that letter, there was no such “Official” policies protecting all of the 1-3 in your post above.
This is why the letter was written: I called Harry Peloyan and had a long discussion with him that resulted in this letter. The problem up to then was that elders had to forgive repentant molesters. It was required. There was a confessed molester that no one but the elders knew about (except me) in our congregation that held kids on his lap and babies in his arms any chance he could get. He also was just about to be made a servant in the congregation again.
There’s also three more paragraphs to that letter that Sola did not copy on his post that dealt with appointing a “former child abuser” to a position of service again. The negatives of doing so were outlined. Also discussed was what to do if a former child abuser moved to another congregation because that also was part of our conversation.
This letter was a way that Harry could get elders to feel free to enforce a hands-off-children policy to men who were confessed or accused molesters. Before that letter, elders were afraid to “go beyond the things written” and talk to a so-called former molester about not hanging out with children or hold them. To get his point across, and appease the GB, he repeated the Society’s policies in the second paragraph which, he as well as the GB, supported. However, when he heard from me about a molester holding a child in his lap, he was aghast; and about a confessed molester again being made a servant, he was upset; hence the letter.
Barbara
