iownmylife
I don't think the ARC base their case studies on how much messy interference there has been from people like elders. It is based on the insitutional context in which children are separated from their parents for periods of time and how staff and authorities handled cases of abuse.
can you imagine how many abused victims who were abused in family and in community organisations would have wanted to have their cases included? But these would have been excluded because they did not fit the criteria of having been abused in an institutional context. why then would the ARC include Jehovahs witnesses who operate in the category of family and community and not in an institutional context?
the ARC say that the structure of Jehovah's witnesses resembles organisations that they are interested in and that display institutional type characteristics. But there must be other organisations that are like this but the ARC do not have any others in their case studies at all besides Jehovah's witnesses. So it does appear that they are focusing on jehovah's witnesses fairly uniquely.
this is good because we do want to see them make the necessary changes. However when it comes to strictly legal matters then the ARC could be shown to have been operating prejudicially against Jehovah's witnesses particularly as the ARC's finding have been publicised so much and there are no other case studies that deal with family and community orgs that don't separate children from parents.
If I as a layperson can see this how much more so would this be evident to wt lawyers.
edit: The ARC themselves also acknowledge input re Jehovahs witnesses from overseas activists.
Additionally the UK charity commission did not single out Jehovah's witnesses in the way that the ARC are doing.
