Society as a whole might not have had quite the full picture we have today of the long term effects of child molestation, but it certainly had 95% of it. So making excuses like "we just didn't know" is pure bullshit.
There were some good JWs 20 years ago who worked with people suffering from severe "multiple personality disorder" (or whatever it's called today). Some of these mentally disturbed people had been severely molested/abused and that's apparently what messed them up. These JWs had close connections with certain Governing Body members and made it known that molestation was clearly a major issue. Barbara Anderson described to me how one prominent Bethelite told her how disgusted he was at the attitudes of certain Watchtower officials about child molestation, like it was no big deal. At one early 1990s meeting of these higher-ups, one of them actually complained about how horrible it was that a five year old girl had actually seduced a long-time elder and caused him to be removed. "He was such a good elder" the higher-up said. Sure, good in terms of Watchtower Society goals -- goals that take little account of human beings. The really sad thing was that this higher-up was not severely censured during the meeting or after, which shows that the Governing Body itself simply did not care.
What proves unarguably that Watchtower officials don't really consider child molestation a horrible crime is the material coverning "sexual sins" in the elders' manual, aka the Flock book. This manual explicitly states that certain acts do not need witnesses to the acts for disfellowshipping to occur: if witnesses simply testify that man stays over at the home of a known homosexual, the man can be disfellowshipping merely on the presumption that he engaged in homosexual acts. The same applies to someone who stays over at the home of someone of the opposite sex. The situation with smoking cigarettes is similar: two witnesses to the same act of smoking are not needed; a witness to one act and another witness to another act will suffice to establish guilt. On the other hand, we know from numerous court cases that the Society directs elders not to pursue an accused child molester unless there are two witnesses (or a confession) to the same act. Any number of witnesses who only witness one act (obviously, this is the molested child) cannot in practice establish guilt. What hypocrisy!
I know that this JW apologist Death to the Pixies is going to object right about now. But the case of Daniel Fitzwater in Nevada proves my point. Fitzwater was convicted in court in 1997 of molesting four young girls. The Society was forced to give up relevant documents, one of which was a letter from a Circuit Overseer to the Society complaining that Fitzwater actually had seventeen accusations against him, but that nothing had ever been done! Even with the court conviction, Fitzwater was never disfellowshipped. While in prison, he actually conducted Bible studies with other prisoners with the Society's blessing. Laurie Fitzwater, Daniel's daughter-in-law, objected to all this bullshit and was threatened with disfellowshipping. Her husband even asked the local elders why they never DF'd Daniel Fitzwater. They claimed that the Society directed them not to. He contacted a Watchtower lawyer named Mario Moreno, who claimed that the elders acted entirely on their own. The guy went back to the elders and told them this; they again said this wasn't so and that the Society told them what to do. The guy went back to Moreno and explained this again. Moreno then pulled the "confidentiality card" and refused to talk to him any more. Today, Fitzwater is a JW in good standing. It's real-world experiences like this, rather than the oh-so-holy sounding nonsense spouted by Watchtower officials, that proves what their real policies toward child molestation are.
AlanF
