How on earth can WT lawyers continue to believe WT has God’s backing, when they see all the deception play out in Court.

by pistolpete 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  pistolpete

  Here is a post on reddit from Mark and Kimmy O’ Donnell, from the Crusaders Documentary,

  Ask us anything.

  Mr. O'Donnell gives his assessment of why WT lawyers continue to defend the Child Sex Abuse cases that the Organization continues to fight, even though they see firsthand the deception, the lies, the withholding of facts and dirty tactics used in court. by an Organization that claims to be God's earthly representative, and the only one to hold the TRUTH. .
  

  QUESTION from one poster.
  

  My question is one that asks for your opinion or perhaps for you to speculate a bit but here it goes.

  WT lawyers see first hand how the deception, lies, withholding facts, stall tactics and so on are commonly used in court. These lawyers are also JW elders I assume, correct?

  How on earth can they see this as "giving a good witness" and how can they expect anyone witnessing this behavior think that JW's have the truth?

  In addition, how can these lawyers think that this behavior is honestly showing the "Christian personality?" I would expect to see a WT lawyer pull a "Barbara Anderson" at some point and exit the organization for conscience related reason.

  I guess my question is, how do you think these elders/lawyers internalize their behavior and the effect this behavior has on Child abuse victims ? To put simply, how do they sleep at night?

  ANSWER from John-Redwood

  This is a really great question, and I was just commenting on this on another person's question.

  The JW Legal Department is managed by JW elders, of course. There's a special group of these JW lawyers handling the child abuse cases.

  It's hard to say how they sleep at night. I talk about this with the attorneys who represent victims. The ones I work with are very moral and decent people who can't seem to understand why the JWs are doing what they are doing.

  During one trial, a trial attorney turned to me and asked me "Why are they doing this??"

  The answer is partly religious fervor- and the belief that God is backing them, and that they have the backing of the US Constitution. However they are learning that this is becoming more difficult every day.

  Another thing to keep in mind is that while the Legal Department is managed by JW elders, they have FAR too many cases to handle them alone. Watchtower hires a large number of non-JW lawfirms in nearly every state to defend themselves in child abuse cases. This takes some of the pressure off the JW Legal department, but it comes at a very high price. It's taking its toll on the JW organization, as it should.

  Please remember that the JWs believe that the confessional process is sacred, just like it is with the Catholic church. Read 1 Corinthians chapter 6. They believe their process is higher than secular laws. But they also use the Constitution and secular laws to their advantage whenever possible.

  The problem is that we have a conflict now, where we have reporting laws, but we also have the clergy-confidentiality provisions, and the organization does not want to lose their power of confidentiality and the ability to handle judicial cases internally, including child abuse cases. They don't want to lose control of the whole process. They want to be able to disfellowship a baptized 14-year-old child if they believe the child was guilty of "willful participation" in sexual acts with an adult or even another child.

  These are some of the issues in play. But yes- I am hoping we see a few Legal Department members wake up and leave. You never know...
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  dozy

  I guess you could ask the same about Catholic lawyers or Mormon lawyers etc. Most criminal lawyers tend to have something of a relaxed attitude to the truth and have the ability to rationalise away any doubts or concerns - their job is to defend their client ( in this case the Watchtower Society.)
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  pistolpete

  In case you all wanted to know what is going on with Watchtower Lawsuits and the Millions they are paying now, here is a brief summary of current lawsuits.

  Perhaps this will be the reason why thousands of Kingdom Halls are being sold and the constant begging for more money from the members.

  
  
  John-Redwood

  There are so many, it's hard to know where to begin.

  First, many cases are being settled that we will never hear about, because they never made it to a public court filing. It would be impossible to know the extent of these settlements because they always come with non-disclosure agreements. But rest assured, they are happening.

  As for the litigation filed in civil courts, there's so many that it's difficult to keep up. This is especially true now that the New York Child Victims Act (CVA) 2-year window just closed- but not before a few dozen additional lawsuits were filed against Watchtower.

  These will all take years to move through the judicial system, which is normal.

  In Montana, Watchtower is now in settlement agreements in a major case- the Nunez case. That's a massive deal, since I'm sure most people know about the case and all the notoriety that came with it.

  However there are 2 additional Montana cases happening right now involving multiple alleged elder-abusers and multiple victims. Those cases alone could cost Watchtower many millions for their negligence. Stay tuned.

  In September, two elders will go to trial in Illinois for violating the mandatory reporter law on reporting child abuse. This is a ground-breaking case.

  There are cases popping up everywhere, and these are not frivolous cases- they are founded on real events and facts, and Watchtower is being held responsible.

  What I mentioned is just a small part of the cases we will be following very closely
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  Listener

  I guess they believe it's not due to their own failures but it's an attack from Satan. As one GB member said at their recent convention, they are at war.
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  Anony Mous

  The real WT lawyers, video producers and website developers are all third party. They are all well versed in what they do and have clients much bigger than the JW.

  How can a criminal defense lawyer sleep at night, if their client admits something illegal will happen in the future, they have a duty to report this, if there is admission of guilt and they consider this makes them in fact legally guilty, they generally will go into damage control mode and tell them that it is better to plead out, they generally have to present any factual evidence they are aware of in discovery, so they can kind of judge in advance how the case will go. 95-98% of cases in the US are plea deals, which is a great thing, you get the criminal in jail without going through expensive trials, since 1989, only ~30 people who plead guilty have later been exonerated (which doesn’t mean they weren’t involved or knowledgeable about the crime, some people plead guilty to avoid incriminating gang members or family who they know are the true guilty party).

  The entire WTBTS defense is that they aren’t responsible for what their members do, this isn’t admission of guilt, but the lawyers know that if there is some culpability they will generally tell their client to settle. The WT lawyers aren’t generally criminal defense lawyers, they are corporate and civil law professionals and there the question isn’t who is guilty of a crime, but how much, if any, damages are due to the mistakes made in the organization they represent.

  Cult members can simply explain away why they don’t have to report crimes committed by their members to the police. But it is not a policy they can hold without becoming civilly liable, so the current official policy is that the victim is free to report and that elders are personally responsible of making a report to hold to the law. The lawyers see that as similar to an HR policy that someone made up a long time ago and crossed them in the law. It’s not the leaders and organization that did the crime, but they made a mistake that allowed it to happen.
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  pistolpete

  The WT lawyers aren’t generally criminal defense lawyers, they are corporate and civil law professionals and there the question isn’t who is guilty of a crime, but how much, if any, damages are due to the mistakes made in the organization they represent.

  Interesting!

  I guess in a way, that softens the conscience and allows those lawyers working the case to sleep better at night.
  
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  slimboyfat

  The human mind is capable of believing many things. I’ve read there is good research to suggest that people with high intelligence are more able to believe things that appear to contrary to the evidence. How do they do that? They use their intelligence to find weaknesses in the argument of the other side while building intricate defences of their own position.

  We may think that we arrive at opinions about the world on the basis of evidence and then act in accordance with those views. But we are not the rational beings that we often think we are. In fact it seems to function in the opposite direction: actions come first, then beliefs. We first of all behave in a certain way and then look around, after the fact, for reasons and justifications to satisfy ourselves that our actions and beliefs are based on good evidence and logic.

  Our actions determine our beliefs, not the other way around.
  

  It’s not an experiment I would recommend, but if any one of us committed for one year to: go back to all the meetings, lots of preaching, pray often, Bible/Watchtower reading, watch all the videos, really put sincere effort into it, and completely avoid any apostate or hostile media, and never say a word against the society and refuse to listen to anyone else with any remotely critical comments about the truth.

  At the end of a year, if you do those things faithfully and without exception, you will probably end up believing JWs have the truth all over again. In fact, you will be confused about how you could ever have been fooled by apostate lies in the past!

  Watchtower lawyers probably combat exposure to critical information about the truth by complete immersion in the activity of defending Watchtower. And having defended Watchtower, they are utterly convinced that it must be the truth, because if it wasn’t the truth then why would they have gone to all that effort defending them? I know that sounds back to front. But it seems to me that’s a more realistic model of how the mind works.
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  road to nowhere

  You must have a higher opinion of lawyers than I
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  Sigfrid Mallozzi

  WTBTS quietly seeks specific trades through letters questioning CO's or to the body of elders, including lawyers, doctors, dentists, nurses, etc. Since this question is specifically about lawyers, have we thought that perhaps that the lawyers found by WTBTS are not now and were not ever the brightest students of law? Just because you have a law degree doesn't mean you have wealth in your future. Look up statistics of the income of lawyers in their first years. Add in the fact that universities do everything they can to purge and discourage people from getting a law degree. Why? Because there are too many g.d. lawyers in the United States.

  I've been working on the east coast for 6 years now and the billboards and local television advertisements are all about lawyer's services. Driving to work you can see a selection of 6 lawyers on billboards competing to represent you if you were involved in an accident with a semi-truck. Maybe these JW's who are also lawyers found out it is an easier and more stable life to defend WTBTS than having their own law practice and covering the monthly bills. I would imagine that a WT lawyer and their wife or husband are treated more generously by WT than a "new boy" they assign to cleaning. Just like the doctors, dentists, and nurses are.

  It all comes down to the selfish needs of the individual and why they accepted the beliefs of JW's and are volunteers. Fred Franz was an intelligent man that realized he needed to secure his future and he was oh, so creative in weaving history into the bible with a smidgin (ok, a lot) of imagination. Perhaps the lawyers volunteered their legal services in good faith and then years later they start to question themselves about the moral aspects, however, the fact is they cannot go back to their former employment and they are stuck working for WTBTS.
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  Ding

  If they are JWs, they probably think of it as theocratic war strategy.

  After all, if they're JWs, they've bought into the claim that the WTS is God's organization and that the "faithful and discreet slave" speaks for Jehovah.

  And given how the organization discourages higher education, I wonder how many of their lawyers are JWs and how many are non-JW lawyers just representing a client.