by DNCall 27 Replies latest jw friends
Sorry if this has been brought out elsewhere, but I have not seen it as of yet.
Has anyone noticed or pointed out that Kathy Conti, Candices mom was sexually abused by an elder when she was a child.
I was reading the transcripts of the actual case and it shows where Mr Schnack had argued that the info about Kathy being abused by an elder should not be told to the jury.
WoW!
NJY
I have not read the details about Conti's parent parenting skills. There are mentions of the issue in the legal briefs. It appears that even Simons believes they may have been a bit negligent. Her parents are not being sued. It makes no difference what her parents did. They had no notice of the abuse. Absent notice, they had NO legal duty. The law assumes that people do not commit heinous crimes. It doesn't matter whether h er parents were ax murderers, it is a side issue.
I wonder if the WT, blaming her parents, for her abuse is for rank and file Witnesses and not the court itself. If I were an impartial judge, their attempt to put her parents on the legal blame block would make me furious. Regardless of the quality of parenting, Kendrick had no righ to touch her. The WT had a duty of notice.
Last night I was able to read Simon's reply brief to the Wt motion to set aside the jury verdict. The WT's chances of winning a reversal of the jury verdict is a little bit more than nil so maybe they are saving their best work for the appellate briefs. I tried very hard to put my personal beliefs to ne side and evaluate the legal work without reading every individual case listed. With the potential outcome of this case, I wonder why the Witnesses did not hire a better lawyer. The lawyer made oral references that would offend anyone who does not live in the Wt cult. The rest of the world does not hang on every utterance from Bethel. HIs lack of detachment hurt the WT with the jury and the judge.
Simon's legal writing is a pleasure to read. It would be an ideal example for law students learning legal writing. He is concise and on point. There is no excess verbiage. HIs reasoning has great clarity. The WT's papers are not terrible. This is not a level playing field.
Corporations have inside counsel (who do the daily legal work of a corp) and outside counsel (an independent, private law firm), The idea is that lawyers whose sole income comes from the employer will not be as able to distinguish realtiy and give good advice. The Securties and Exchange Commission has detailed rules concerning the conduct of each type of lawyer. My main criticism of some of the lawyers who acted as General Counsel was that the clients were too important to the firm. They were too enmeshed emotionally. Cheer leaders are nice. A lawyer who is a cheer leader is dangerous to the client.
It is hard for me to assess at this point in my life, but my take was that Simon's reply could be understood by a nonlaweyr while the Wt was too busy with legalese and tortured arguments. Without reading the cases, I have no sense of the merits. I could easily rewrite the Witness' brief to make it clearer.
My uneducated guess is that in the beginning the Watchtower assumed Candaces case was insignificant. After all, she was only sueing for a small amount of money. Therefore, they used their 2ond string lawer/s and saved the best ones for higher $$$ cases. The interesting twist was that she wouldn't settle UNLESS the WT$ implimented a POLICY CHANGE of reporting pedophiles to the authorities and alerting the congregation to the risk.
The boys at Bethel would NEVER let some young woman tell THEM what to do. After all, they think God talks to and through them. If their precious male PRIDE hadn't surfaced they would have settled, kept their money and made it safer to be a JW child.
I'm sure the whole bunch was absolutely blindsided by the verdict.
This gets more tangled. Remedies are an important part of law. Sometimes you don't want money but policy change. Yet common law emerged with limited remedies in certain types of legal actions. Equity law can tailor better remedies than strict legal actions, such as monetary damages for torts or contracts. Equity and law were different tracks in England. If I recall, the church handled equity claims for many years when the king had control of legal actions.
The two separate types of law created many problems. Modern law has blended the two but not eliminated the differences completely. There are very different rules as to different types of remedies. Policy change is much harder to enforce than a monetary judgment. Short of a detailed court order to change policy, which cts are reluctant to do in any case and, forbidden in Establishment Clause cases, gigantic damage awards certainly impact policy.
Regardless of the outcome, similar to Unthank in Australia, Conti has already won the war because of the devestating public relations the case delivered to the Witnesses. If they don't change their policy now, they may never do so. Also, this award may seriously damage them but not kill them. It comes when they already are in a financial mess and liquidating assets.
When they start paying, they will remember that Bethel is NOT the universe.
I can see some reasons for mentioning her mother's victimization. First, it might explain how Candace could give such details of the abuse. Second, few people walk away from abuse without substantial damage. Rape survivors are much more likely to be raped again than normal women. No one is certain why but people suspect that childhod sexual abuse traumatizes the abuse and, rather than being super sensitive, it dulls your mind to clues that women would otherwise have. Her mom's abuse may have affected her parenting skills. The family may have wanted revenge more b/c of the generational pattern in the Witnesses.
There is some reference to it but I don't recall where I saw it. I don't see where it is relevant.
"This" era or generation is finally standing up and saying "I/we am/are not going to take it anymore!"
That is how it finally came to be for injustice on racial issues and DUI victims, women's equality, etc. The problems still do exist, always will. However, the culture breaks through and finally gets some impact on laws and attitudes that need awareness and changing.
On this child abuse, the abused children get their spirit broken. Their trust, faith, and hope qualities becomes damaged.
It's finally the time, now is the time! It takes a "community," church, city, state and government to create a prevention program, public awareness, and much firmer laws against those who damage and hurt innocents.
Bump...
So, what's the outcome? Anybody know???
Alas, I wish our legal expert Band on The Run had not left JWN when we need her most. Anybody else speak legalese?
