While looking for a funny pic of Jesus Christ to add to another thread I stumbled across this........
I have nothing to add to it. Let the bastards hang themselves.
| Jehohava's Witnesses protecting thousands of abusers within their ranks | |
| Posted by AquaVelvet on Jul 16, 2002 at 09:24 AM | |
| A BBC investigation reveals that sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church pale in comparison to what has been going on for years behind closed doors of the Jehovah's Witnesses. A former elder in the church admitted that the Watchtower Society has been protecting a secret database that lists almost 24,000 abusers within church ranks. [link] The famously cloistered religious sect, notorious in the US for bothersome door-to-door proselytizing, admits that disgraces like sex abuse allegations are rarely made public, even to police, and are traditionally regarded as the exclusive province of church elders. The procedure unfolds roughly like this: when a victim reports his or her abuse to the church, an elder confronts the alleged abuser with the charge. According to their doctrine, if the accused denies the charge, the matter is dropped and the church "walks away" from it. The matter is left "for Jehova [to sort out]". The BBC report highlights the case of a teenage girl who went to elders after years of abuse by her father, only to have the inquiry abandoned when the father denied the accusations. The girl was sent back home where the abuse continued. Unbeknown to her at the time her older sister had gone to the church years before with details of her own abuse, only to have the investigation quit. Conservative Christian groups in this country call such scandals "aberrations" and have been heavily lobbying the President and Congress to strengthen privacy laws that limit how intrusive outside oversight of their organisation should be. But if there is one benefit to cases like this, or the scandals ripping through the Catholic Church, they provide a clear measure of where the line must be drawn. When the law is this obviously broken, or when the rights of others so horrendously violated, the matter should be ajudicated in a court of law, not in the musty offices of some wrinkled old church fogey. | |
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| by Anonymous Coward on Jul 16, 2002 at 02:01 PM | |
| You make it sound like there is a rash of pedophilia in the Jehovah's Witness organization. As many of my family members are of this faith, I can attest to the fact that these are god-fearing and moral people, and the ones who are accused of child molestation - or anything for that matter - are banned from (officially called being disfellowshipped) attending meetings and association with the others. The matter is left for Jehovah to sort out, but not in the way you seem to think. According to their faith, the guilty person will have to answer to God when it is judgement time, and therefore the matter is out of their hands. I do believe there are many case that go unreported to the authorities, and I can't exactly say why. It is up to the victim to take it to the police. A few years ago it happened to a friend of mine. Her dad was an elder in the congregation, with a lot of moral responsibility. When it came out that he had been abusing her, he was immediately disfellowshiped, even though he denied it all. They decided they didn't have enough evidence to take it to court, and her parents got divorced, he lives somewhere far away and that's the end of it. I wish I could explain these people and their faith in an understandable way, but everyone who has never been associated with them tend to make rash and sometimes unfair judgements against them. | |
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| by Anonymous Coward on Jul 16, 2002 at 02:03 PM | |
| Oh, and for the love of jeebus spell the name right. J-E-H-O-V-A-H. That IS one of God's names you know, not just some made up moniker. -CD | |
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| by RickySilk on Jul 16, 2002 at 02:07 PM | |
| I know nothing about the religion or it's belief's except that they seem to go door to door alot more than other religions. Anyone remember that scene on Friday? "Well , fuuuuuuuuuck you" __________ "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift" - Steve Prefontaine | |
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| by blaid on Jul 16, 2002 at 05:49 PM | |
| With all due respect to AquaVelvet, this is dribble my friend. I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I can personally tell you, the mind numbing crap you saw on Dateline...that man was not only NOT a JW, but he was acting illegally when he taped a phone call to the Watchtower Bible And Tract Society in New York. This man was known as an apostate. (a-pos-state) Apostates are JW's that have been disfellowshiped for one reason or another, and have used their knowledge of our religion, to twist peoples perspective on us. Its not fair, but we have to deal with it.... | |
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| by AquaVelvet on Jul 16, 2002 at 07:19 PM | |
I didn't see the Dateline thing, Blaid. I was actually basing my story on a BBC investigation. And while I'll acknowledge the problem is probably not as widespread as people might irrationally believe, I'll wager that the large number of protected abusers indicated in the report includes ALL cases that they have information on since records were kept and is not necessarily a wildly speculative figure afterall. | |
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| by blaid on Jul 16, 2002 at 09:15 PM | |
| pronunuced Yaw-way, but spelled i believe incorectly. If you look it up though, you will notice that the english translation of the HEWBREW word yawweh (spelling) is in fact...Jehovah. a name that means, "He who comes to be" | |
edited to add: hey check out my new signature that I pulled straight out of this post | |
Edited by - CHEVYSNTATS on 18 December 2002 19:41:18