Is forensic evidence a "witness" for chid abuse cases?

by jwfacts 30 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  ABibleStudent

  IMHO this sounds like a WTBTS PR ploy for non-JWs. A victim would need to ask or consent for medical personnel to collect the evidence and submit it for analysis. If local law enforcement were to get involved, a victim would be put in a Catch-22 situation of identifying the perpetrator without corroborating DNA evidence (i.e., DNA needs to be collected from the perpetrator too) or being Df'ed/DA'ed for not protecting the reputation of the WTBTS.

  Peace be with you and everyone, who you love,

  Robert
• 

  DesirousOfChange

  there is nothing in writing about the acceptance of forensic evidence as a 'second witness.'

  Would it be any different than a pregnancy? Circumstancial evidence.

  Does a conviction in criminal court count if one is found guilty by the Superior Authorities? I know that one pleading guilty in court can be used by a JC as a confession of wrongdoing.

  Doc
• 

  blondie

  I wonder if BOEs would accept a DNA test as to paternity in the case of a brother who denies he is the father of sister's child, not his wife.
• 

  Band on the Run

  The problem I see is similar to the Conti case in many ways. We know the WTBTS exercises great control over congregations. The Witnesses are highly regimented (as is North Korea). Knowing the Witnesses, I do believe there is databank of sexual offenders within the org. It is just the type of thing they love to do. The illusion of power is more important to them than legal concerns. Why have a database without liability? The mere existence shows that child abuse is far from a local KH problem. Yet great discretion is left to individual Board of Elders.

  Some discretion locally is a good idea. The problem is similar to franchising, though. How to you brand yourself when people far down on the totem pole have power, too? Child abuse is so important a concern that we should not have to wonder. I would love to a be a fly on the wall when the Legal Department instructs the lower elders. If I had the WT as a client, I would never allow such calls. So much that happens to Witnesses stems from the power of two or three jerks. There are unofficial ways around the elders but the ordinary JWs does not them.

  B/c they have no true canonical law (rules and processes in church governance), they cannot rely on precedent. No, all is brand new. The WT never has been sued for child abuse. Even if they were separate from KHs, our discussions here and elsewhere hold a public spotlight on their practices. The next time people discuss priests and the Roman Catholic Church scandals, we can add the "two-witness" rule to the discussion. Paul wrote the scripture in a time period when witnesses had to be male and own vast amounts of land. Our situation today is very different.
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  jwfacts

  Thanks for the extra comments. With the calibre of people answering not being aware of any guidelines regarding forensic evidence, it seems highly unlikely that any formal guidelines have been released to elders regarding this.

  Band on the Run - Knowing the Witnesses, I do believe there is databank of sexual offenders within the org.

  There has been a lot of discussion around whether the silent lambs accusation of a database containing thousands of names is correct. I have no doubt that there is such a database. The official guideline is that every accusation globally needs to be reported to bethel. As with information on JWs disfellowshipped, Bethel archives all this information.
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  Band on the Run

  I was taught by superb, internationally known lawyers to not create databases. They can be discoverable in litigation. To create a database with no purpose is creepy. Normally, routine business advice is to shred or destroy ditigal records every so many years. You do it on a set schedule. It is an elegant way of getting rid of troublesome docs.

  Telling a client to destroy records could be criminal. They were deposed in the Conti case. Simons should know.

  The existence of such data is so consistent with the Witnesses.
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  Oubliette

  jwfacts: When a child comes forward to the elders, they don't view the medical evidence, and so treat it as if there is only one witness. Neither do they encourage a police report if not mandatory, so medical evidence may not be forthcoming, and lost by the time a child decides to take the matter further.

  I see two problems here. First, due to confidentiality laws (HIPPA in the US), how would the elders even get access to such evidence; and secondly, even if they did have access to such a medical report, they would not be qualified to interpret it.

  jwfacts: There has been a lot of discussion around whether the silent lambs accusation of a database containing thousands of names is correct. I have no doubt that there is such a database. The official guideline is that every accusation globally needs to be reported to bethel . As with information on JWs disfellowshipped, Bethel archives all this information.

  Hasn't Barbara Anderson already corroborated that this is so?
• 

  Vidiot

  Band on the Run - “I was taught by superb, internationally known lawyers to not create databases. They can be discoverable in litigation. To create a database with no purpose is creepy.”

  Exactly.

  While, at this point, I have no doubt about the existence of a database containing the names of JWs accused / JCed / disfellowshipped with regards to child abuse, I’m not convinced said database was originally started with that purpose in mind, or for that matter, that a database per se was even the original goal.

  I suspect it simply evolved in that direction due to the WTS’s habit of meticulous R&F-related record-keeping that started back in Rutherford’s era (it certainly wasn’t created or used as a means of reducing the risks of having accused or confessed pedophiles active in JW congregations, or curtailing their movements around minors).

  Unfortunately, since the sexual victimization of young people is an almost universal (not to mention virtually incurable) characteristic of authoritarian high-control groups, that aspect of the WTS’s records on the R&F came to dominate the overall body of information; it became (for all intents and purposes) the “WT pedo database” by default.

  However, to acknowledge that ugly fact in and of itself would be to (again, for all intents and purposes) acknowledge that the problem is far more widespread amongst the R&F than anybody had ever thought possible (which, frankly, is implied by the fact that they’ve issued fairly explicit instructions for BOEs regarding how to deal with the problem should it come up).

  What I’ve been scratching my head over for a while, now, is why the hell the WTS kept the info instead of shredding it.

  Is the pedo-related information so inextricably linked to the rest of their records that they can’t do it without wiping the virtual slate clean (which would, now that I think about it, play havoc with their efforts to keep ”apostates” from influencing the R&F)?

  Did they never think that it would be discovered in future litigation (as you said), or do they simply possess so much hubris that they can’t bring themselves to consider that it would be used successfully against them that way?

  Hmm. Maybe I just answered my own question.
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  Oubliette

  BOTR: To create a database with no purpose is creepy.

  Agreed, yet certain personalities cannot help themselves. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, consider the Nazis, for example. They kept impeccable records of their atrocities.

  Here's an excerpt from a 60 Minutes news report dated February 11, 2009:

  Revisiting The Horrors Of The Holocaust:

  The Nazis were famous for record keeping but what 60 Minutes found ran from the bizarre to the horrifying. This Holocaust history was discovered by the Allies in dozens of concentration camps, as Germany fell in the spring of 1945.

  As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, the documents were taken to a town in the middle of Germany, called Bad Arolsen, where they were sorted, filed and locked way, never to be seen by the public until now.

  The storerooms are immense: 16 miles of shelves holding the stories of 17 million victims – not only Jews, but slave laborers, political prisoners and homosexuals. To open the files is to see the Holocaust staring back like it was yesterday: strange pink Gestapo arrest warrants as lethal as a death sentence, jewelry lost as freedom ended at the gates of an extermination camp. Time stopped here in 1945.
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  Band on the Run

  Oh, the Nazis. I majored in Poli Sci. Part of the course in political movements involved watching an explcit, detailed film that is only shown to select audiences. We were told not to eat before the class. I thought it would be standard liberation propaganda films. No, the Nazis were so proud of their achievementsn they spared no effort recording it. The camera angles and film angles were superb.

  Part of the film showed German citizens from surrounding towns being forced by British and American soldiers to view the butchery at the camps before they were dismantled. I could detail the horrors but it would be over the top gross.

  I don't understand their lawyers. It takes a certain mindset to have the sophistication and education and be a Witness, too.