A sensible fix for the Jehovah's Witness "two witness rule" when dealing with child sex abuse

by Watchtower-Free 23 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  Watchtower-Free

  Jehovah's Witnesses could retain their two witness rule for internal judicial

  congregation matters . But in the case of a child abuse allegation they should

  report to the Authorities immediately no matter if there are 2 witnesses or not .

  They can stick to their antiquated rules for their own justice conducting a

  parallel inquiry while still letting police know.

  It could happen that the police investigation results in a conviction where as

  the JW judges could not DF without admission or 2 witnesses.

  Wouldn't this address the JWs current excuses?
  
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  flipper

  No, it wouldn't address their current excuses - because it doesn't address their multitude of OTHER excuses of how they handle child abuse. On the PBS show last night Richard Ash a higher up WT representative and the other WT attorney stated that the WT Society doesn't believe in revealing " confidential talk " about child abuse and they claim it's scriptural. So essentially the WT Society is saying they do not believe they need to report child abuse to law authorities as it exposes that " confidential talk ". Even if exposing that " confidential talk " would protect innocent children from getting raped.

  The WT Society is mainly concerned about HIDING how prevalent the child abuse problem is within it 's organization. A little tweaking of a technicality regarding " two eyewitnesses " is NOT high on their priority list. The priority is hiding how much child abuse is happening within the WT Society organization and the other priority is hiding it from the courts and media so WT doesn't lose it's cash cow and go financially bankrupt
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  The Searcher

  The Org employs Mosaic Law reasoning and Hebrew scriptures when it wants to reinforce its doctrines/policies/greater fulfilments agenda!

  I can't remember the last time a Judicial Committee was set up to investigate a case of murder, bank robbery, or kidnapping by a Witness.

  So why do these wannabe Columbos "investigate" the disgusting crime of paedophilia? They are collaborating in a crime, when they should be reporting it to the police!

  I wonder how many Elders' wives are aware of their husbands' obedient collusion?
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  Dagney

  Oh no, I they should keep it! Not make one change. In fact, they should be enforcing all the old testament laws.

  That would be so awesome!
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  TheOldHippie

  Watchtower-Free:

  What you recommend, is exactly what they are doing in European countries.
  
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  wannabefree

  What they do is what the law of the land requires. The lawsuits brought against the Organization are from decades ago for the most part. Because laws vary from state to state, they are instructed to call Watchtower legal ... even if there is only an accusation by a single individual. Elders are then instructed to comply with the law for their particular area, no more and no less. This clearly isn't for the protection of the innocent, although it may provide more protection than years gone by, it is a protection from future litigation for the corporation.
  
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  bafh

  I don't understand how they don't report child abuse when in many states clergy are considered mandatory reporters. I think this is considered a legal exception to the clergy privilege they claim to follow.

  Funny how they are "not clergy" in every other aspect, and they suddenly are "clergy" when it comes to this.

  It is just disgusting. What bothers me more is that they seem unphased by what is happening to the children. Ashe's testimony was sort of, "it's not our problem. we provide spiritual protection, not physical." So does not follow Christ's example. Why did Jesus feed people physical food before the spiritual food? It is not one or the other, it is both - even the Catholics know that.

  UGH.

  BAFH
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  Finkelstein

  One of the main factors why its important to report pedophilia to the authorities is that its known that these people have a physiological condition which as such that they are prone to re-offend, even after they've been exposed and caught.
  

  The real core problem the WTS has with dealing with pedophilia within their organization is that the WTS wants to hide these occurrences from both inside their organization and outside as well.

  Keeping a pretentious clean image of the organization is more important than protecting children from this awful behavior. "Mustn't bring reproach onto Jehovah's organization" is the indoctrinated mantra and that is the background initiative by the Watchtower Corporation from the Top down.
  

  If the WTS was smart they would be adamantly aggressive to rid people away from their organization and let the legal authorities do what they perceive to be the proper handling of these situations..

  From there they could boldly say that they deal with pedophilia differently than other religions but in reality they handle it just like the rest of Christendom. .... they hide it.
  
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  Finkelstein

  The lawyer representing the WTS in court quoted a bible scripture of Proverbs 25:9 as a reason why the WTS doesn't openly want to talk about their members transgressions. From this ideology they assume that all sins such as alcoholism, smoking, adultery and pedophilia are all in equal as inappropriate behavior but they are not to openly talk about by reason of that scripture, particularly to outside government authorities.

  As I mentioned before the WTS has always deemed pedophilia as equal to other sins such as adultery or fornication, they wont accept or acknowledge that its a very egregious crime and that the general public whats to stop it at all costs or possibilities.
  
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  blondie

  I wonder if they would report a murderer in their midst? I wonder how the secular legal system would view that? Or drug use/selling? We had a baptized jw husband and wife selling drugs in the KH restrooms.