I'm very happy to hear your story, amccullogh! It shows that the issues brought up by silentlambs this past year have had a good effect in forcing the Society to tell elders to do the right thing.
In order to understand the criticisms from various people that the Society's policy has been to conceal child molesters, you have to understand a bit of history of their policy, and note that the issue is complicated by the fact that their continually changing policy is implemented to varying degrees by local elders and by whatever responsible individuals the elders contact within the Society. Since I don't have reference materials available at the moment, but have some time on my hands, I'll give you my recollection of some of this history.
Until the late 1980s the Society essentially had no child molestation policy, except that elders generally treated molestation more or less as a sexual sin like fornication or adultery. However, given that molestation occurs to children and not adults, many elders, perhaps for cultural reasons, did not view molestation as being as serious as, say, fornication between two adults. This is along the lines of the way the Society did not, until the early 1970s, view things like homosexual sexual activity or bestiality as "fornication" and so a JW was not allowed to divorce if their mate practiced these things. We know that this attitude about child molestation persists among certain high Watchtower officials because, according to certain internal Bethel sources, certain officials have voiced the opinion that little girls often invite molestation by older, "good Society men" simply by climbing on their laps and doing what comes naturally -- being affectionate with a grandpappy. When men like this are in control of an organization, their attitude naturally propagates down through the ranks.
On top of this is the overriding tendency of JWs to protect the public image of their organization. Of course, they say that they're only "protecting Jehovah's name", but we who have watched the way this has worked out over the years know very well that they're mainly protecting the image of the JW organization, along with the reputations of the leaders -- the "faithful and discreet slave". Naturally, any kind of negative publicity tends to tarnish the image of that "slave", not only to the public but most importantly to the JW rank and file, and so it is natural for JWs at all levels to tend to suppress all negative information, even if it results in injustice or failure to punish a child molester. This attitude among JWs is fundamental to their religion and has been with it from its beginning. It doesn't go away overnight, even in the face of adverse publicity about the child molestation issue, and given the age of JW leaders and many elders, the period from the late 1980s to today is not long enough to have effected much change in this attitude, even where child molestation is concerned.
During the 1990s the Society got hit with a number of lawsuits over their improper handling of molestation cases, and there were a number of good souls within Bethel who understood the seriousness of child molestation. These forces gradually produced better Watchtower policies for handling molestation. Sometimes there were steps back, such as a 1995(?) Watchtower article that essentially instructed elders not to put much stock in "repressed memories" of child abuse (the article never defined "repressed memories" but clearly indicated that virtually any abuse not immediately reported could be classed as a "repressed memory"), which was soon followed by instructions to bodies of elders to ignore all cases of "repressed memories". But in early 1997 the more enlightened JW leaders put out a Watchtower article stating that known child abusers could not hold positions of responsibility within a congregation ever again. This was followed by several BOE letters that generally reinforced the seriousness of properly handling child abuse cases, but unfortunately these were somewhat cancelled by another BOE letter that produced a loophole in the "no responsibility for molesters" rule. According to this, prospective elders were not to be questioned about their background in order to screen them for possibly having been molesters.
One of the biggest loopholes in the Society's policy on child molestation is the requirement that two witnesses or a confession are required to convict someone before a judicial committee of any offense. Of course, it is the rare molester who confesses or who commits his crime in front of anyone besides the victim, so this rule effectively cuts off punishment for any molester who does not confess. However, there is one rule that elders optionally can apply here: that if there are two witnesses to two separate crimes, the elders may apply the two-witnesses rule. This has often happened with cases of smoking, where two JWs separately observe another JW smoking on two separate occasions. Unfortunately, in the case of child molestation, the Society never put out clear guidelines on how to apply the rule, so elders can do what they please. Thus, given the tendency for JWs to protect the organization along with no clear guidelines on the two-witnesses rule, the tendency has been for elders to reject claims of child abuse if two witnesses to the same act of molestation were not available. This tendency goes right to the top of the Watchtower organization, and we know it because there are JW child molesters in prison who were never disfellowshipped because the criminal never confessed and the required two witnesses to each act of molestation were not available, and Watchtower officials know about these cases and do nothing.
By the beginning of 2001, most elders knew that their best option when confronted with a case of molestation was to call the Society's Service Department for advice. Experience has shown that this advice has not been entirely consistent, and sometimes the advice has been to ignore the molestation and let the matter drop. Some recent highly publicized cases where JW elders let a molester off the hook, such as the case of Erica Rodriguez in Washington State, show how elders and the Society have seriously screwed up in some instances. These cases also illustrate clearly how the JW rank and file will often close ranks against a victim who has quit the religion and will defend a molester who still professes to be a JW.
Into this confusion dropped "silentlambs" at the beginning of 2001. He went public with some of the above information, and a lot more besides. The publicity has forced the Society to become much more careful in handling accusations of child abuse. An upcoming NBC Dateline program will examine some of these issues, and the threat of a clear presentation of facts on this program and via other public media is forcing the Society to do what it should have done a long time ago -- to clean up its act and deal responsibly with child molesters. Thus, at the recent Kingdom Ministry Schools for elders held in November and December, elders were instructed in no uncertain terms not to handle any accusations of molestation, recent or ancient, without first getting in touch with the Watchtower Legal Department. There is no doubt whatsoever that the negative publicity generated by "silentlambs" has forced the Society to begin to handle molestation cases more responsibly.
Nevertheless, they still have a long ways to go in getting rid of the old attitude of protecting the holy organization at all costs. They also need to be more proactive in protecting children from known molesters, in protecting society at large from known molesters by prohibiting them from going in the door to door preaching work, in encouraging both victims and elders to actively seek the help of police, in getting known molesters out of positions of responsibility, and in informing the JW rank and file of molesters in their midst. These things are important because elders are simply incompetent to handle crimes like molestation. Furthermore, the Society's policy is still to do just the bare minimum required by law in reporting cases of molestation to the police, so that only in states that require "clergy" and so forth to report does the Legal Department instruct elders to report. In view of the Society's dismal record, this is simply not enough to reverse the attitudes created by decades of lousy policies and to turn the minds of elders and other WTS officials around and orient them towards protecting children first and their holy organization second.
I hope this has given you a better picture of why critics are still beating their drum.
AlanF