Long Term Effect of Conti & Similar Cases?

by Chaserious 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Fed-up

  Why does a person have to be told to contact the police when a child is being abused? How can that not be questioned by bodies of elders? It's because JW's have to be told everything!

  -This is where you stay for assemblies, becasue we said so.

  -This is how your wedding should be held, because we said so.

  -Accept this pagan practice but reject that one, because we said so.

  -Beards are just bad, now quit asking!

  It's absurd.

  Quick! Don't think, act! A child is drowning, what do you do? You try to help them AND call 911. It's so simiple. Find a person who survived drowning and survived childhood sexual abuse. I bet they will tell you the sexual abuse screwed them up worse than the drowning.
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  frankiespeakin

  Well when you add the internet into the equation and the fact that computer savey is a nessesarry fact of life, this case has a very bad effect on the image of the squeaky clean Governing Body as they present themselves to the Rank and File. As information becomes more plentiful and easily availible it has an osmotic effect of infiltrating JW programming.

  Finacially they are hurting because of blunders in business and marketing stradages, cause by delusional short sightedness with some narsistic flavor of appointment by god almighty.

  I will expect these delusional men be it the Governing Body and the lawyers who operate in this fogged up thinking to make blunder after blunder. They need a completely new business plan to come out of this, selling magazines ain't gonna pay the bills no more. Expect more property sell offs in the future, lay offs of old timers at headquarters and branches, told to leave with little finacial support from the Organization, reduced to needing the support of the local congregations just to survive.

  Sad end for so much loyal service.
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  Incognito

  To my understanding by what has been posted on this forum by persons claiming experience, actual reporting (when advised to by legal) has in the past been accomplished by an elder making an anonymous call to authorities from a payphone or communicated by other unidentified and untraceable means. I have not seen any indication that this 'procedure' has been changed to identify the person doing the reporting.

  I have read of a case where Elders came to an agreement with an admitted abuser whereby the abuser would report him-self to authorities. Since the abuser could easily claim to have followed through with this, the elders conceivably would only be relying on the person's word that he/she did so.

  JW's praise the WT's policies as being top notch, of the highest moral quality, designed for the benefit of the person(s) abused and a means to keep the congregation clean. In actual fact, those policies are primarily designed to protect the organization from legal liability. It appears that any benefit provided to the abused, the elders or the congregation, is only coincidental.
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  NeverKnew

  Read through the thread and am with all of you on many points EXCEPT the notion that the impact will be far less than what the Catholic church has swallowed. I'm thinking about this in three of many areas...

  POPULATION

  To my knowledge, the Catholic church has never paid out for an adherent (adherents were reported - not hidden), it's paying out for its priests. We all know that as a ministerial servant, Conti's abuser was the equivalent of an adherent but because of their policies, they are being forced to pay for his wrongdoing. With 1.4 million US adherents (as opposed to 42,000 US priests) and 7 million worldwide adherents (as compared to 400,000 priests), can we really surmise that the impact would be less? Even removing the females to normalize the demographics of the sampling, we are still looking at numbers that are off the charts.

  REVENUES

  This is a no-brainer. The WT does not, will not, and can not have the financial resources of the Catholic Church. Period.

  LEGAL COSTS

  NOW, consider the next layer - the legal costs. Sadly, the WT is defending their practices and protecting the organization - not the elders that will be wrapped up in the mess the policies have created. Conversely, the Catholic Church could not and would not have extricated itself from those who served to represent the faith. They paid out.

  Just as we exponentially increased the number of potential abusers, you have to exponentially increase the number of legal proceedings. Folks... each country, state, county, municipality, region has variant laws that have to be researched for briefs and motions. We're not talking about a couple of lawyers and clerks here.... This defense is costing the WT MILLIONS. And each claimant is trying to get a piece before the faith goes belly up....

  I have read posts suggesting that the WT is attempting to decrease its liability by changing things that will make the elders carry more of the liability. Many on this board know what happens when one falls victim to WT policy... THEY END UP HERE!
• 

  Fed-up

  Thank you Incognito...

  This makes the point so well. Yes, the piece of crap who molests a child can surely be trusted to contact the authorities to report themselves, And anonymous phone calls are treated with the utmost urgency. Somebody on that elder body needed higher education.

  However, " It appears that any benefit provided to the abused, the elders or the congregation, is only coincidental." Maybe. I'd say any benefit provided would be accidental. Telling the victim or the family of the victim that they may be disfellowshipped if they contact the police is abuse all by itself.
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  wha happened?

  Hey I'm all in favor of the WT continuing it's policy of crazy. It continues to cross lines, and everytime that happens, someone ends up here, or a similar site
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  Fed-up

  wha happened, i'd agree, except for the lives of the kids involved. it shouldn't take a kid getting screwed up for life to change a policy or get someone to question the veracity of their faith.

  just curious, how did you come up with your handle?
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  wha happened?

  I didn't think it very far and only thought of other inane issues, there's nothing about the end results qualifying any means in any sense on this one.

  It's from "A Mighty Wind"
• 

  Chaserious

  I totally agree with the moral culpability in this type of case. So much for "protecting the flock". It's more like protecting the corporation. I was questioning whether there would be a significant direct effect, either in terms of lawsuit payments or declining attendance, and I suspect that there just won't be. If anything, I suspect the effect will be long-term in nature, as this type of thing gets media coverage and makes it harder for publishers to bury their heads in the sand and ignore all but what WTS tells them.

  NeverKnew - I do agree that they want to shift some liability from the WTS to individual elders. I hope if this happens, some of them open their eyes. But plenty of them will just call it persecution for Jehovah's name if they have to incur personal liability, go broke, delcare bankruptcy and the like. I knew one elder who sustained a serious injury working parking at an assembly when some idiot ran over his leg. He had no health insurance and the policies on his own car insurance and that of the person who hit him weren't enough to cover his medical bills, and he ended up having to sell his house to pay his medical bills and survive. He would rather lose everything then file a lawsuit over it. Bit of a different situation, but still...

  I do however, disagree the Conti case somehow sets a precedent that the WTS is on the hook (legally) for any abuse by a MS, or rank and file member, if that's what you are implying. First of all, if the verdict gets upheld (which is no slam dunk), it only sets legal precedent in California. Second, the case isn't a matter of vicarious liability against the WTS (in other words, automatic liability for its adherent's actions, such as exists in the employer/employee context). The WTS had to be found liable for its own acts, which were in connection with the 1989 letter and the elders knowing about the abuser prior to the time he abused Candace. For the reasons discussed in this thread, I think that even if the verdict sticks, to duplicate it you would need a very similar set of facts which is not going to exist in all abuse cases, most notably being that the abuse would have had to take place before the implementation of their legally slick, morally shameful new policy.
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  frankiespeakin

  Governing Body blunders on the power of delusion, any non delusional are dismissed from the group. Any solutions they come up with are very short sighted because they are stalling for time for the end to come and Jehovah rescue them.

  It is a corporation operating under a shared delusion, bad for survival type business decisions only the imediate fix is used with out any far reaching insights to propell them very far in the new information age.

  Poor planning based on delusion sends them off the finacial cliff of severe profitability loss, just applying bandaids to slow the bleeding of funds. No ability to come up with new ideas just relying on old solutions that don't works so good in this new day and age.