Right on people - we got another story.
http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoNews/ts.ts-09-10-0027.html
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Abuse case opens
Church, elders sued over alleged coverup
By IAN MCDOUGALL, TORONTO SUN
A New Brunswick woman who claims the Jehovah's Witness church hid the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father took the stand yesterday as a civil trial of her case began.
The 31-year-old woman, whom the Sun is not identifying, is suing the church and its elders for $700,000, alleging they did not report the abuse she suffered to the Children's Aid Society.
Instead, she alleges, they tried to hide the abuse, discouraged her from getting counselling and made her confront her father and relive the abuse.
Under questioning from her lawyer, Charles Mark, she testified yesterday that she suffered guilt and was ostracized by her friends and family in her congregation in Shelburne after she revealed the abuse she suffered from age 11 to 15 in the late 1980s.
"I felt so guilty because it was wrong," she said yesterday. "I was scared of him."
She eventually told her mother of the abuse and her father confronted her, she said.
'YOU ENJOYED IT'
"The conversation started off, 'I know you've told your mother, but come on, you enjoyed it. You were a willing participant,'" she said her father said. From that point, she said, her mother blamed her for tensions at home and in the community.
Still suffering from guilt over the abuse, the woman reluctantly took her case to two church elders, Brian Cairns and Steve Brown, who are also named as defendants in the suit, which was filed in 1998.
Brown and Cairns forced a meeting with the woman and her family in late December 1989, at which her father confessed he violated her.
Mark opened his case by arguing the church had never notified the province's CAS office once it became aware of the abuse.
"The statute says on suspicion of sexual molestation it must be reported to the Children's Aid Society. That never happens," he said.
But defence lawyer Colin Stevenson said the church fulfilled its obligations and in fact forced the woman's father to turn himself in to CAS officials in February 1990. No charges were laid.
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This is great news folks.