In another thread a Poster has been in a pitched fight with others about the results from the ARC. Trying to explain away the results and minimizing the damages. What he has failed to understand is that the Society had and still does have certain policies in place that hide the Sexual abuse of minors. So for this poster and all of our newer members lets get started.
The historic position of the WTBTS through its Elders and CO'S encouraged it's members not to make known to the community or congregation that there were and are to this day Pedophiles in Jehovah's (not very) clean congregations. Revel Magazine did the research and published the following: The article is much more extensive then what I have copied. I would also encourage everyone to copy and save the information or at least the address for possible future use. This is powerful stuff.
By Trey Bundy / February 14, 2015
"The leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – one of the world’s most insular religions – for 25 years has instructed its elders to keep cases of child sexual abuse secret from law enforcement and members of their own congregations, according to an examination of thousands of pages of documents in recent cases.
The religion’s parent organization, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, issued the directives in at least 10 memos dating back to 1989. Although the memos were anonymously written, Watchtower officials have testified that the organization’s Governing Body approved them all.
The most recent letter, dated Nov. 6, 2014, instructed elders – the spiritual leaders of local congregations – to form confidential committees to handle potential criminal matters internally.
“In some cases, the elders will form a judicial committee to handle the alleged wrongdoing that may also constitute a violation of criminal law (e.g., murder, rape, child abuse, fraud, theft, assault),” the directive stipulates. “Generally, the elders should not delay the judicial committee process, but strict confidentiality must be maintained to avoid unnecessary entanglement with secular authorities who may be conducting a criminal investigation of the matter.”
Within the organization, the Watchtower has final say over who is considered a serial child abuser. According to a 2012 Watchtower memo: “Not every individual who has sexually abused a child in the past is considered a ‘predator.’ The (Watchtower), not the local body of elders, determines whether an individual who has sexually abused children in the past will be considered a ‘predator.’ ”
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For Jose Lopez, it took almost three decades to find some semblance of justice after he’d been molested – when he was 7 – by a predator who’d operated within a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in San Diego.
When his case against the Witnesses concluded in October, a judge awarded Lopez $13.5 million, a remarkably large sum in an era of frequent payouts in abuse cases. The decision rested in part on the Witnesses’ refusal to hand over documents in the case, prompting the frustrated judge to ban the organization from making a defense.
The Lopez case was remarkable for another reason. It forced the Witnesses into a rare admission: Somewhere within the organization, there is a trove of documents with the names and whereabouts of known child sexual abusers in its U.S. congregations.
During the trial, a senior official from the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters, Richard Ashe, told Lopez’s attorney, Irwin Zalkin, that the organization had collected and electronically scanned internal documents on decades of known abuse cases. Ashe said that the Witnesses keep their child sexual abuse reports in a Microsoft SharePoint database but that it would take years to extract the information because it was mixed up with millions of other documents.
During the case, Lopez said his mother reported his abuse to the elders in 1986, but they didn’t call police or warn the congregation. Lopez and his mother left the religion soon after.
Even as the abuser, Gonzalo Campos, continued to sexually assault children, the elders promoted him within the congregation, first to ministerial servant in 1988, then to elder in 1993, according to a 1995 letter from elders to the Watchtower.
In 1994, John and Manuela Dorman learned that Campos had abused their son a decade earlier, court documents show. They called Campos, who confessed and said the elders already were aware of the situation. When Manuela Dorman went to the elders, they told her not to talk about the abuse. They said too much time had passed, and nothing could be done.
After a letter from the Dormans reached the Watchtower later that year, the elders confronted Campos. In 1995, he confessed and was disfellowshipped, the Witnesses’ version of excommunication. By then, he had at least seven known victims, according to elders’ letters.
But Campos was reinstated to the congregation in 2000, eight months after the elders had sent a letter to the Watchtower explaining that they had managed to keep Campos’ past hidden, court documents show. “The community does not know of all this and there was no publicity about this,” the letter read. “Everything took place in the congregation and because of that he was not prosecuted.” Campos, according to news reports, fled to Mexico.
During Lopez’s trial, Ashe testified that the Watchtower instructs elders that child abuse must be kept confidential.
“And it directs that that should be kept confidential from prosecuting authorities?” Zalkin asked.
“Yes,” Ashe responded.
Asked whether the Watchtower’s policy of silence hinders parents’ ability to protect their children from abuse, Ashe told Zalkin, “Not in my view it doesn’t.”
Ashe did not respond to a request for comment. In a written statement to Reveal, representatives from the Watchtower said, “We continue to educate parents and provide them with valuable tools to help them educate and protect their children.”
But Zalkin, who has been aggressively filing lawsuits against the Witnesses throughout the country, said the pattern is clear.
“Keep your mouth shut. Don’t go to law enforcement,” he said, describing the system he believes the Witnesses have created. “ ‘You come to us first. Don’t tell anybody. … You don’t warn parents in the congregation. We’ll decide what happens here.’ That’s their policy.”