Let's talk numbers.
Research on sexual abuse offenders shows that most offenders abuse up to 75 children before they are caught by the police. It is a grave error to think that the 23,720 reported sexual offenders have only 1 victim each. The 23,720 is the number that was on the list of reported (to the WTS legal dept) was given to Bill Bowen (http://www.silentlambs.org/answers/23720.cfm) in 2002.
Bowen makes the statement that the number of offenders that reported does not include cases where there wasn't enough evidence for the elders to say the abuse allegations are true. Those cases stay buried in the congregation records. They are not included in the 23, 720.
Also not included are all the people who were reported to the elders who may eventually have been forwarded to the Legal dept because there was enough evidence and it doesn't include all those cases where there wasn't enough evidence.
We can only guess at the real numbers of offenders and victims.
Sexual offenders go hunting for their victims and they find them everywhere. The elders would only hear about problems within the congregation. If a JW in the course of his or her employment has the opportunity and access to children and is reported that will never wind up in the WT database.
A true story;
A man is married and has 3 daughters. He sexually abuses all of them. Then he runs off and meets a woman who he lives with. They have a daughter together. The man and woman get custody of the woman's younger sister (a baptized JW) because she was being sexually abused by her father who was a baptized JW. The woman also has a daughter from her previous marriage.
The man who has already sexually abused his own daughters sees opportunity, He now has 2 pre-teen girls living in his home. Easy pickings. So he moves on to the two preteens and gets caught abusing the woman's sister. He is only studying with the JWs. He isn't even baptized. But the elders choose not to report the abuse. The younger sister is sent to live somewhere else and the man is kept in the home where he has access to the woman's daughter. And he gets caught. The woman walks in and sees him abusing her daughter. Again the elders decide that she should send the child away and keep him in the home. Remember this man isn't even a JW. They are just studying. But the abuse is covered up. Two kids out of the house but there is still a baby girl in there.
And yes eventually he moves on to her. She is 5 yrs old. He knows he will get caught and disappears. Many years later the woman finds out he moved to the US where he marries a woman who has 3 daughters and together they become foster parents - and you guessed to - to more girls.
If he had been reported to the police when he abused the younger sister, maybe many other children could have been safe from his continuous hunt for more victims.
No matter how loudly they say they will never do it again they are lying. They will do it again. Given the opportunity they will abuse again. Even if opportunity isn't slapping them in the face they will hunt out more victims. They DO NOT CHANGE. They CANNOT STOP themselves.
For those of you who haven't read this story I am the woman's daughter. My aunt committed suicide shortly after she was sent away. My younger sister tried to down out her memories with alcohol and drugs for 30 years before she committed suicide. I suffered for decades with severe depression to the point where I was planning my suicide.
The WTS, my mother and the elders had an opportunity to stop him. They didn't do it. Who knows how many other lives he destroyed. As it is we know of 9 victims but we know there were others among those foster kids they took in.
Reporting all instances of sexual abuse to the authorities should be mandatory. Actually it is mandatory but the WTS likes to claim clergy privilege (even though the claim to have no clergy calls). And they wrongly use this clergy privilege of confidentiality. Clergy privilege applies when the accused confesses to the religious leader. It does not apply when the victim and the victim's family go to the clergy and ask for help.
What they need to do is help the victim report the abuse to the authorities, And they need to butt out and let the professionals do their jobs.
Always remember that for every child that comes forward to report an abuser there are also many victims from the same abuser that never speak out.
