Posts by abbagail

8

Example of how WTS fails to protect the children

by Had Enough in

this article in the los angeles times today, has been bothering me all day.

this sweet little 5 year old girl was abducted, brutally raped and killed and now they have arrested a suspect who was just recently acquitted of charges of molestation of 2 other little girls.. the reasons for which he was acquitted are so flimsy and facts that were not allowed to be presented, could possibly have turned the tables on him.. now they are asking this question: "did the system fail to protect samantha?".

read this and ask yourselves, especially you jws reading this:.

abbagail

LOL Gumby on the cop scenario! Right on!

And 1 Tim. 6:10 --- yeah, what a great reminder for the GB!

Grits

2

Three lies from the Society

by ServetMiguel in

how can the society deceive people?

because nobody check her statements.

check below and you shall see:

abbagail

Yes, Thanks Servet for the hard work and all the details. This kind of presentation is so valuable to have embedded forever on the net for all to see. I am so thankful there are people like you who can keep track of these things, because of the abundance of writings by the WTS, the average bear would just DROWN in it without seeing the discrepancies and "misquotings," etc.

Grits

3

CHILD ABUSE_THE REAL TRUTH_PART 2

by zev in

awake!

church

sex

abbagail

Thanks zev! I love the RED highlighting! So true what you say. They MUST EAT THEIR OWN WORDS!

Grits

9

'Harboring a criminal'

by Dia in

do they not meet the definition?

it is a crime in itself.

what is the punishment?.

abbagail

The word from the local police is that if a person knows of a crime and fails to report it, they legally becomean 'accessory' to the crime. This applies to everyone and it appliesEVERYWHERE in the United States.

They should print that in BOLD in a Watchtower Issue and then STUDY IT at the meeting! If every JW KNEW, or had it pounded into their head, that it is ILLEGAL to know about it and NOT report it, I'm sure the whole org would be a safer place, at least as far as child abuse is concerned.

Can you imagine? If SIX MILLION JWs turned "on" their LASER-BEAM EYES as of right now and kept on the lookout, reporting not only PAST knowledge but FUTURE knowledge of abuse, the whole org would be turned upside down by tomorrow.

But I bet most JWs are so foggy-brained about it, they do NOT even realize this.

They ALL NEED TO KNOW (and I mean KNOW) THIS INFO!!! Thanks Dia for checking with the local PD!

Hey, a new dub slogan should be: "CALL YOUR P.D. NOT YOUR P.O.! STOP CHILD ABUSE NOW!"

Grits

40

Why Edlers are not Qualified to Handle child abuse

by JT in

back drop::.

paducah sun 1-28-01. mario moreno, associate general counsel at the church's new york headquarters,.. j.r. brown, public affairs director for the church,.

both brown and moreno said that the elders, who volunteer and are essentially untrained clergy.

abbagail

Funny (not) scenarios you painted there, JT. What a contrast!

Blondie - excellent distinctions about doctors/dentists v. elders and felonies.

SilentLambs sent around just today an article from The New York Times on this very subject. I'll post it below. /Grits
------------------

Above Expectation: A Child as Witness

By TAMAR LEWIN

THOSE who doubt that children can be reliable witnesses may be forced to rethink that idea, given the sharp eye of young Sarah Ahn.

Sarah, the Santa Ana, Calif., 5-year-old who was playing "Clue" with Samantha Runnion on July 15, gave police a clear-eyed description of how a man had asked for help finding his dog, grabbed a screaming Samantha and abducted her. She described his thin mustache, his accent, his age, his green car, with the chrome wheels and the "H" on the trunk and she guided a sketch artist to produce a "wanted" picture that bore an uncanny resemblance to Alejandro Avila, who has been arrested and charged with Samantha's murder.

"We responded to the call in four minutes, so she was giving that description immediately after it happened," said Jim Amormino, the spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department. "We were definitely aware that it was a 5-year-old witness, but she was right in every particular, from the mustache to the age range."

Her identification would have been impressive from any witness, but it was all the more stunning from a kindergarten child.

"I found it amazing how accurate she was," said Jane Spinak, a Columbia law professor who specializes in children's rights. "But on some level it makes sense that she would remember those details. A child who's interested in colors or cars might notice that the car was green better than an adult. There's always pendulum swings on this issue of how much we believe children. But children can produce reliable accounts, especially when they're interviewed very soon after, by someone who's skilled enough to ask what they know without leading them, and when there's no issue of trying to keep a secret."

The reliability of child witnesses has been a vexing legal issue for centuries: early canon law prohibited children from testifying till puberty, and as English common law developed the age limit was reduced to 7 years old. In the Salem witch trials of 1692, most of the accusers were young girls.

Most recently and notoriously the credibility of child witnesses came into question in dozens of day care sexual-abuse cases nationwide in the 1980's, with children giving elaborate accounts of bizarre sexual abuse and satanic rituals by their day care providers. In 1984, seven people were charged with abusing children at the McMartin preschool outside Los Angeles. None were convicted, but some spent years in jail before a judge dismissed charges that more than 300 children were photographed naked in catacombs under the school.

In another prominent case, in 1988, Margaret Kelly Michaels was convicted of more than 100 counts of sexual abuse at the Wee Care Day School in Maplewood, N.J., based on children's accounts that she had inserted knives, spoons and forks in their penis, anus or vagina, painted them with peanut butter, or urinated in their mouths. None of the children showed any sign of injury, but it was not until 1994, after she had spent six years in jail, that Ms. Michaels's conviction was overturned.

Like the Salem witch trials, the day care cases reflected the beliefs of the era, when it was almost an article of faith among some therapists and child-victim groups that children never lie about sexual abuse. Many of the children were swept into a world of interviewers and evaluators who questioned them repeatedly, encouraging and even leading them to describe sexual abuse.

While the cases, in retrospect, seem like mass hysteria, they also stand as a stark reminder of just how suggestible, and unreliable, children's accounts can be. Several studies have shown how easily false memories can be implanted in young children.

In one research study, 114 children ages 3 to 8 met with a man known as Mr. Science, who showed them several simple experiments. In the first interview afterward, the children recalled the session correctly. But after their parents repeatedly told them a story that included events that didn't happen, like having a wet wipe put in their mouth, one-third of the children included those things in their account. In another study, preschool children were asked, weekly, about a fictitious event, and by the 10th week, more than half not only reported that it had happened, but filled in details.

Typically, before allowing a child to testify, judges try to make sure the child knows the difference between fact and fantasy. Often, the judge asks questions like, "If I say my robes are purple, is that true?" or, while holding up four fingers, "If I say I'm holding up two fingers, is that true?"

"It can backfire," said Elizabeth Loftus, a University of Washington psychology professor, who has studied child witnesses. "I saw one case where the lawyer wanted to question the kid, but the judge decided to do it. So the judge put the kid on the stand and said, `Do you know what truth is?' and the kid held up two fingers. That kid wasn't allowed to testify, since it was so clear the lawyer had been coaching."

A better approach, she said, would be to focus less on lies than on whether the child's memory is contaminated. "What goes wrong in these cases is usually not that you have a lying kid but that you have a mistaken kid," Professor Loftus said.

In the California abduction, there was little time for Sarah Ahn's memory to be contaminated by adult suggestions or intervening events, and her questioners had been trained to interview children. (emphasis added by Grits).

But mistaken accounts also arise out of children's overly literal interpretation of questions, or adults' failure to follow up until they understand what a child really knows.

One former prosecutor remembers her son telling her that his father drank blood.

"I said, `No, he doesn't, I know Daddy and I know he doesn't drink blood,' " she said. "But he insisted that he knew his father drank blood and that he would prove it. So he took me to the refrigerator and took out the cranberry juice. For us, it was a funny story. But you can imagine what might happen if he'd said it at school, or if it happened in the middle of a custody case in which I hated my husband."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/weekinreview/28LEWI.html

10

WT 15 June - Approves of Internet?

by Nemesis in

i just noticed this in the latest mags (15 june, 2002, see picture below) on the top box: if we want .

a concordance to the bible, we can find no better than the internet.. im just wondering if this will lead more witnesses to indulge in some web surfing, with the inevitable consequences of them coming across some critical matter?

lets hope so!

abbagail

I just heard at another forum about this 6-15-02 issue of the WT, as it was the STUDY ARTICLE FOR TODAY, Sunday 7-28-02. And I was totally SHOCKED to see the WTS is DISCOURAGING looking up the ROOT MEANING of Hebrew/Greek words!!!!! Like SpiderMonkey said, the WTS HAS BEEN DOING THAT from Day One! And that is precisely ONE of the reasons I always LIKED the WTS/mags, because I felt they were really digging deep to bring to us the precise original meanings of the words! I can't believe they are doing a complete turn around on that!

AND, just like Spider Monkey said, the CROSS/STAKE wording is EXACTLY a PERFECT example! If the WTS is now saying root meaning of words is NOT important, then can we go back to saying CROSS instead of STAKE?

Will they next begin changing their view on everything from SOUL to HADES to LAKE OF FIRE?

Lastly, the Internet comment was surprising, too. Didn't a recent KM discourage the internet (the August KM?) I guess they figured in the June 15 WT: "If the rank & file are going to use the internet, we might as well plant a seed in their brain as to the ONLY GOOD REASON to use the net..." and hope that will keep everybody in line.

Those boys up in Brooklyn sure like to keep confusing everyone, don't they?

Grits

1

Support Bill

by Crystal in

jw
friends

grits put this together,thanks grits!!.

some of us are getting responses from dateline..thanking us for the enormous responses,lets keep it up so that they just cant ignore us!!

just stopping in again to link up some other threads on the crusade so everyone can check out the others and get ideas.

abbagail

Thanks Crystal! These links will be all OVER the forum, and nobody will be able to miss them! :-)

Goals: Everyone flood the WTS with letters and cc:'s to your favorite media, newspaper, etc. re: WTS sex abuse policy, DF'ing of Bowen, et al.

Let's remember to include Joe & Barb Anderson in our letters:
< http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=32862&site=3>;

Here's two more links for the list:

Mary's Letter to GB: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33127&site=3&page=2

Grits' Get Mad & Stay Mad link:
< http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33201&page=1&site=3#438579>;

A sad post from Silent Lambs: Another elder tried to help "other wrongs" in the cong and is getting demoted:
Date: 26 Jul 2002; Time: 18:37:46 -- Comments: Dear Bill, I'm grateful for what you've donr on behalf of thosr suffering for Watch Tower policy on dealing with pedhofiles. I too tried to help other victims of other wrong policies within the organization and for this reason I'm going to be removed as an elder. Berto from Italy [email protected]

That's Up To The Minute...
Thanks/Grits

1

Heard this today;this may interest U

by badboy in

.

i heard today from someone who goes on my minibus to my daycentre that he knows a jw who was thinking of leaving after seeing panorma.

(she was upset after seeing the programme),there were rumours about child molestering.. she saw a website that had a petition 25,000 strong,something like that.. she thought of writing a letter, but was told she would be cut off completely.. a few years ago they had a child molesting scandal in the congretation..

abbagail

Thanks for that news, badboy. It'd be nice to know where that petition of 25,000 names is!

Sounds like that JW sis is hit hard by the pedophile news, since it's right in her backyard in her KHall. Don't 'cha feel bad for those? And she actually spoke out about writing a letter and they told her, No Way! That's terrible! Nobody can tell you you can't write a letter, but I understand the influence the WTS has when one is a JW.

Thanks again BB.
Grits

11

* Bowen...The newest silenced Lamb*

by HaitianBoston in

now that had been officially disfellowshipped i wonder whether or not dateline will air a follow up story....that would most certainly hurt... .

i guess that new release video on disfellowshipped being a good things, had to do with preparing the friends on what was about to go down.

that's suck.... .

abbagail

Hi Gang: If you want to put that Collective Thinking to work with some others who posted similar thoughts, here are the links I've rounded up so far. /GRITS

Mary's Letter to the GB: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33127&site=3&page=2

RubyTuesday has a thread going: Media Links (for NBC and MSNBC): < http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33135&site=3>;

mikepence also has a thread going:Help to publicize the plight of Bowen
< http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33154&site=3>;

OrangeFatCat has a thread going: Letters of Outrage to Governing Body: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/post.asp?id=437471&method=reply&site=3

Amazing has a similar thread going also: Need Help - New JW Pedophile Project < http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33163&site=3>;

And DakotaRed's letter to the WTS is located at: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33198&site=3

And MacHislopp scanned in an EXCELLENT run of all news reports and WT comments re: the Catholic Church's scandal over the past 10-15 years. We all should copy that list of remarks and attach it to our letters to WTS AND TO THE MEDIA so they can see what the WT has been saying all these years about the CC while covering up their own filthy sandbox. Mac's thread is here:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33077&site=3

YoursChelbie has a thread: Watchtower in NY By Law has to turn in Pedo-Files
< http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33059&site=3>;

Grits' Get Mad & Stay Mad link:
< http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=33201&page=1&site=3#438579>;

10

Convention PR Article Contains Revealing Tidbits

by ErieGuy in

.

edited by - erieguy on 28 july 2002 8:9:22.

abbagail

Thanks for the effort in posting the article, ErieGuy, and your astute observations Ozzie.

Grits