FINKELSTEIN- I agree with you that in the years I was a JW - elders in all the congregations I attended kept child abuse cases VERY quiet. Nobody knew WHAT was going on. Hell, I wasn't aware there was a WT child abuse problem until several years AFTER I exited in 2007. That being said - as the years go on the general public AND I believe JW's who are getting more frustrated are coming out more openly and talking about child abuse within their congregations as more and more of these abuse cases come tumbling out of the WT closet.
Your statement about the elders handling child abuse - " when it does occur they just basically handle it in similar fashion as another act of sexual misconduct. " I somewhat disagree with you on that statement. From all the cases of fornication and adultery I saw within JW congregations it seems like elders were MORE intent on dfing somebody on extremely slim evidence when it came to fornication and adultery. I saw cases when just hearsay would convict a person of adultery or fornication- and elders would push HARD at a person for hours on end to coerce a confession from them for adultery or fornication.
It's NOTHING like that when a case of child abuse come up in JW congregations. It's like they won't do ANYTHING to convict a pedophile unless two witnesses come against the abuser. Then, they dilly dally along while WT legal has to be contacted , and by then the pedophile has either moved to another area to escape detection, or abused 7 or 10 more children while WT legal puts their net or cloak of secrecy over the whole matter. It's fucking disgusting and criminal. So in what I've seen- WT elders are WAY more severe against acts of adultery or fornication than child abuse. And that's just wrong and criminal