IMPORTANT: JW Congregation in Britain loses case!!!!!!

by Viva la Vida 13 Replies latest jw friends

  • Viva la Vida
    Viva la Vida

    From the ruling:

    "We note that the Congregation and the Charity are one and the same entity in this case, so that whilst the Congregation understandably wishes to follow its religious practices, its status as a registered charity brings with it, in exchange for public recognition and tax reliefs, a requirement to maintain certain standards of behaviour. It also brings with it the risk that, if there are concerns about its activities, these might be inquired into by the Respondent. We consider that there were significant grounds for concern about the Charity on the basis of the information held by the Respondent"

    “we consider that there are significant on-going grounds for concern about the Charity’s conduct of safeguarding matters. We take into account (i) the Charity’s failure to be entirely frank with the Respondent about the questioning of victims in the disfellowshipping of Mr Rose at the relevant time; (ii) the delay in volunteering the information that third parties had been involved in the disfellowshipping of Mr Rose; and (iii) the Charity’s insistence in these proceedings that there was no legitimate cause for concern by the Respondent about the conduct of those proceedings because of the appointment of third parties to conduct them. The Charity did not appear from the evidence before us to accept that best practice in safeguarding for charities relates not only to the protection of children but also of vulnerable adults, nor did it appear to have considered whether the Charity might have a safeguarding role in respect of adults who had been abused as children in the Congregation. 72. The Charity also did not seem to us to have considered whether Mr Rose might yet present a risk to children currently in the Congregation.”


    http://www.charity.tribunals.gov.uk/documents/decisions/Tayo-etc-decision-09Apr15.pdf

  • disposable hero of hypocrisy
    disposable hero of hypocrisy
    It'd be interesting to hear what the good people over at jw talk are saying about this....
  • Crazyguy
    Crazyguy
    It will be of great interest how this all plays out and how the GB react. It will be really interesting if they the GB go in to panic mode and what they may say and do. We should all be very focused on these developments and the reactions of all the parties involved. We must pay close attention to the GB if these things continue to go bad for the Borg. We have loved ones that could be effected by these issues and can easily be led down a path by the GB with a simple talk at one meeting or letter read at a meeting. Jonestown comes to mind and we can not ever think this is not possible for a cult this size..
  • defender of truth
  • Joe Grundy
    Joe Grundy

    "73.Finally, we were concerned that, although Mr Clayton accepted in his skeleton argument that the disfellowhipping process for Mr Rose was poorly-handled,there was other material before us which suggested that the arrangement of a confrontation of an accuser by their accused, as happened in Mr Rose’s case is official guidance for Jehovah’s Witness Congregations. We particularly noted the “Elders’ Handbook” paragraph 39 in this regard."

    This case is running alongside the Charity Commission's investigation into WTGB, and the same judge has made several rulings on that. (Previous threads on JWN refer).

  • TheOldHippie
    TheOldHippie
    For those of us (at least I hope there are more than just me) who are foreigners and thus neither being familiar with the British judicial system nor with its specialized terms and language - could someone provide me/us with a "Charity vs. congregation for dummies" version?
  • mana11
    mana11
    The Deception of the christian congregation of jehovahs witnesses seems to have created more interest that they wanted...
  • Gadget
    Gadget
    I haven't had a chance to read the full judgement, just the third sector summary. I'm particularly interested by the direction given for witness statements, I'm guessing that this refers to the statements given to be used in the JC. There are no records officially kept from a JC so that nobody can use a subject data access request to get a copy of them, but I wonder how this compares with the charity laws to ensure safeguarding? If the requirement to safeguard require them to keep records to show that they've acted properly, then I wonder if this would enough for them to decide that the tax exempt status isn't worth it and decide to no longer register as charities. If there was 'new light' so that only the national body/bethel was a registered charity and the congregations weren't, then this would remove all the issues like this as long as there was proper separation between congregations and bethel but there wouldn't be any additional tax to pay because all 'profit' in each congregation would just be used as a tax exempt donation to the national charity. Of course something like that would make it harder to defend against things like Menlo Park, it'll be interesting to see how they respond to this.
  • dozy
    dozy

    It's an interesting read. The charity commission also has been criticised for not minuting meetings.

    Reading between the lines , the WTBTS has made a complete mess of this whole process. Their lawyer admits that the disfellowshipping itself wasn't done by procedure ( no surprise there - it really is a kangaroo court as anyone who has been through the process will know ) and from day one they have at every step refused to co-operate with enquiries made. I'm sure if they had been open , honest & transparent initially they would have been preempted the enquiry. I've long seen this arrogance from the Society who seem to view any enquiry by the police or social services etc as a direct attack from Satan.

    We had a similar situation when we had child abuse in our congregation. As instructed ( I was an elder at the time ) we referred the matter to the legal desk who seemed to annoy everyone in the whole process. The police eventually got involved and the CID officer told us that they would never have needed to get involved if ( in his words ) the "idiots" ( WTBTS legal desk ) hadn't been so evasive and confrontational.

    Thinking about the ramifications , I wonder whether in future , DFs & appeals involving child abuse will be handled by a specially trained team of elders who know all the legals ins & outs. Maybe they also will bring in some system where a victim of child abuse will not be able to be cross examined by the accused in a JC hearing.

  • St George of England
    St George of England

    Section 44 - "...small charity and its trustees were not sophisticated people."

    The "do not get an education" policy in action.

    George

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit