"The WTS has absolutely no such program in place. No background checks, no fingerprinting, no psychological testing to see if one is fit for ministry, no funds to help pay for therapy for victims of abuse. And most importantly, no public acknowledgement that the WTS even has a sexual abuse problem."
There's not a formal arrangement in Jehovah's Organization where elders can abuse children unless they're his own. They don't teach Sunday school, the Watchtower Society doesn't own any schools where elders teach, they don't recruit young men to serve at an altar. The elders do not have open access to other people's children. The men that are appointed as elders have been in the congregation for some years before appointment. There's not a problem that has surfaced of any significance where a person should be subject to a criminal background check before being appointed as an elder. These days anyone can conduct a criminal check on someone at the touch of a button. If someone found any problems with any of the elders in their congregation on Intelius I'm sure that would change.
The incidents that have grabbed media attention contain some issues.
As I stated, mischievous persons have wedged their way into many profit and non-profit organizations and have stirred up trouble. This man here “McLean” was disfellowshipped. There's conflicting information in the initial public release here:
http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=35566
According to US Marshals, McLean was a Ministerial Servant in the Jehovah's Witnesses and was utilizing his position of trust to commit sexual crimes against young girls - some no more than five years old.
As one victim's parents told AMW, they had no clue that an alleged sexual predator was amongst them -- even though church elders had prior knowledge of complaints against McLean from another congregation.
McLean was an experienced outdoorsman and would often take children on overnight camping trips. Police maintain that parents trusted him with their kids because of his almost "fanatical concern" for the kids' safety.
Authorities say that McLean was confronted a number of times over the years by those he molested, but Jehovah's Witnesses judicial committees require two witnesses to an event of molestation before taking any kind of disciplinary action. Detectives believe that by moving from one Kingdom Hall congregation to another, McLean was able to keep his crimes mostly hidden for 25 to 30 years, before finally being "outed" to the general public and "disfellowshipped", or expelled, from the religion.
Camping is not a congregation function. If a single man wanted to take my daughter camping without any other parents going, I would have told him NO. In fact I would ask what other children were going, contact their parents and tell them this is inappropriate. On one end, there's a parent (adult) that claims (they) had no clue that an alleged sexual predator was amongst them.
This man was single with no children. It's been stated he molested the same person over a number of years in another media release.
Before going to the authorities, it's best that there's incrementing evidence against a person so that there's a successful prosecution. Substantial evidence would be; more than one eye-witness, physical evidence or if the abuse is an on going matter (meaning a person knows the same thing is going to happen again).
In this situation, the criteria for substantial incrementing evidence has been met, however, victims with the cognition to tell the secular authorities about this long standing matter never did for a number of years, and what makes this situation less understandable, is if the victims told the elders, you can be assured they told their parents about the abuse; their parents knew about it.
In this story, there are adults (parents) involved that could have told the authorities, but didn't do so over a period of years. The fact that it is their children that are involved leaves some unanswered questions. Whatever the case, it's these children's parents that are just as liable for acting irresponsibly as the congregation elders. If it was my daughter, I could have trapped this man in his actions and seen to it that he was prosecuted with or without the elder's assistance, and upon prosecution the elders would be removed and possibly prosecuted.