Britain | Jehovah's Witnesses hushed up child sex scandal | July 16, 2013

by jwleaks 172 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  Phizzy

  Besty, Richard Daniel is actually wrong in his assertionthat "there is no power in Law to breach such a confidence".

  From the WIKI article I quoted earlier, about English Law, :

  " The only professional privilege granted in English law is for the purposes of obtaining legal advice from professional advisers, so there is no priest-penitent privilege." (Italics mine).

  These Elders are not Priests anyway according to the WT, they certainly are not profrssional Legal Advisors, so they have no basis in Law for not disclosing this crime immediately to the Authorities.

  As I said before, they should be prosecuted.
• 

  cedars

  Phizzy

  As I said before, they should be prosecuted.

  More specifically, somebody should do some digging and find out that the elders were acting under the orders of the London Branch - and they should be prosecuted.

  I'm amazed that no investigative journalist has picked up on this. Do they really think the three elders were remaining tight-lipped just to be awkward?

  Cedars
• 

  GoneAwol

  Its in the Daily Mail newspaper page 20. Title is: "Jehovah's Witness is guilty of child sex abuse". Now thats better than 'sex scandel'.

  If the victim reported the abuse in December 2009, why was a meeting only set up to investigate the allegations in April 2010? 4 months later! Seems to me the elders weren't taking this seriously from the start. If you were caught smoking or apostasizing you would be on the doorstep inside 2 weeks...
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  cedars

  GoneAwol - would you be able to scan the Daily Mail article? Web pages are great, but these stories carry more weight when you can see them in print.

  If you can't post it here, email it to me at [email protected] and I will post it.

  Cedars
• 

  Phizzy

  Dear Cedars, I think you are aware that the days of real investigative journalism are long over, sadly. Today's journo's will only take stories given to them on a plate, I thought that was part of the function of AAWA ? To do just that ?

  I wonder if Panorama or a similar outfit might be interested in showing how even small insignificant cults like the WT are as bad, if not worse, than the Catholic Church in their cover-ups, and general attitude to abuse in their midst.
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  GoneAwol

  Email for Cedars
• 

  besty

  we need the court transcript hosted up somewhere and then all of us to tweet every religious affairs correspondent in the UK with a summary of the case and the location of the transcript - after that its up to them...

  dawkins would re-tweet no doubt...
• 

  cedars

  This is GoneAwol's scan of today's Daily Mail...

  

  Cedars
• 

  Phizzy

  Just been thinking, it would be better not to bother with "Wasting Police time", it wouldn't stick, but Accessories after the Fact and Perverting the Course of Justice could well stick, and as Cedars rightly says, if it could be shown the London legal desk advised these Elders to act that way, they should be in the Dock too.

  I bet there is no record of "Legal's" advice, it would all be done by 'phone, no paper trail.
• 

  besty

  I bet there is no record of "Legal's" advice, it would all be done by 'phone, no paper trail.

  I believe they try to maintain a closed loop by claiming attorney - client privilege for their Legal Dept <-> Elder communications, which is fair enough.

  But that makes it difficult to deny that Elders are acting as Agents of the Watchtower, and therefore there is some transfer of liability for the actions of local elders back to HQ.