Today on BBC news site http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42025255 Sorry about typo in heading BIG STORY on BBC news in UK
BBC: Victims 'told not to report' Jehovah's Witness child abuse
by Lostandfound 20 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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stan livedeath
Let's hope it's on the national BBC TV news
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Xanthippe
Brilliant thank you for the link. Great to see it's on the main UK home page. I'm amazed the Charities Commission's enquiry has been going on since 2013, I wonder when they're going to come to a decision?
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Onager
Somewhat freaky to see my home town of Cheltenham and the home of my relatives, Evesham, mentioned. So glad that I am not associated with this disgraceful organisation any more.
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cofty
Top link in BBC News portal...
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darkspilver
Following Louise Palmer's brief interview with the BBC today - highlighted in the OP - thought I'd post this.....
My parents chose my brother, my abuser, over me. I can never forgive them for betrayalThe Sunday People (Mirror Group, UK), Sunday, October 11, 2015
A woman who was raped by her brother as a child has won justice but paid the heavy price of being disowned by their parents.
Brave Louise Palmer, 38, suffered in silence for decades as her strict Jehovah’s Witness parents protected her abuser.
She was only five when 14-year-old Richard Davenport started molesting her.
He had moved into a caravan in the family’s garden because of a strained atmosphere in the house.
He would offer to take little Louise to stay with him, supposedly to shield her from domestic violence scenes, but actually as an opportunity to abuse her.
For six years Davenport, now 47, put helpless Louise through hell. He stopped only when her periods started and he feared she may get pregnant.
She told parents Trevor and Diane and church elders about the vile abuse but shockingly they did nothing for fear of bringing shame on the name of God.
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Lostandfound
darkspilver
thanks for all those links, almost unbelievable what JWs will do for the protection of the Organisation over their own children. If a Jehovah was watching, he would have cried in shame at those accounts, nearly used the word stories but they were not stories, theynwere real
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notsurewheretogo
Currently 8th in the most popular stories column...
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punkofnice
Weirdly enough, my boss at work (Non JW, with no connections to jobos either), sent this article to me.
'2 witness rule,' he said, not amused.
A very small victory against the WBT$, methinks.
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freddo
It's not so much the "two witness rule" - they can play what games they like in lala land for all I care - it's the NOT REPORTING TO POLICE/SOCIAL SERVICES and TRYING TO STOP OTHERS GOING TO THE AUTHORITIES - TO PROTECT JEHOVAH'S NAME that makes my blood boil.
It is insidious. Even in the mid-2000's after Panorama/Dateline forced the bastards in Bethel to put in writing that congregation members could go to the authorities without sanction, the verbal "strong suggestions" were to avoid it like the plague and woe betide any elder who told them he was going anyway.
I remember with another elder phoning the UK branch about a case where we believed that the children were being very badly neglected and we wanted to go to the social services. The Toady little shit on the end of the phone line - who of course is anonymous - really didn't want elders to go even when we explained that the parents or relatives wouldn't go because they knew they might "lose" their kids into care.
We went anyway and didn't tell anyone else about it. Funnily enough the other brother is now an ex-elder too even though he seems to be a true believer.
I believe - but cannot prove - there is a reported case in Ireland only this year where elders were removed (soundness of mind was the charge can you believe?) because they went to the authorities and what they knew came from either elders "investigations" or judicial records.