Dateline

by ARoarer 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  COMF

  I suggest not making any promises.

  Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring
  Your winter-garment of repentance fling:
  The bird of Time has but a little way
  To flutter--and the bird is on the wing.
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  ARoarer

  DevonMcBride, You are right about Sweeps Week. Awhile back they mentioned wanting to air the show at that time because of the ratings.
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  Frenchy

  ...But it will definitely come within our twenty-first century of this we can be sure!

  (Editors' note)
  Please change this to read 'in our day' once this date has passed
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  Seeker4

  Aroarer,

  Hope you are correct. Also contacted the Dateline producer several weeks ago, and he wrote me about the same problems you mentioned. He and I had talked several times for background about the program when it was in production. He told me that people just have no idea the amount of work that goes into just one segment like this. And Sept 11 along with the pedo issue in the Catholic Church would have created a huge backlog of other segments, and the Olympics also preempted several shows.

  As I wrote to the board a couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to visit Witness family members in another state and find that the Dateline show was common knowledge among many in the congregation, and I was especially shocked to hear that they were anxious to have it aired!! They said they felt there were a number of problems with the WTS and JWs, and felt the program would be a good wake up call for a lot of Witnesses. This from active JWs. Some had actually been emailing Dateline urging them to put the show on!

  Anyway, three weeks or three months, I'll keep waiting. My Witness wife keeps checking the Dateline site, and she tells me "they're not going to air it." I tell her just be patient. It's not a story that is "time sensitive" as it were - it's certainly not going to go away.

  I also found it interesting that one of the big criticisms I heard from Witnesses when I talked about this issue, is that a lot of the poorly handled pedophilia stuff goes back ten and twenty years or more, as though that makes it a non-issue. Yet this is exactly the same thing that is happening with the Catholic Church. It seems that these cases most often come to the fore when the abused child reaches adulthood, and what has happened in the CC has really established this as a precedent that will make the Witness situation all the moe relevent.

  The other thing the CC situation has revealed is that the Church over the past several decades has bought its way out of these situations, settling tons of them out of court to avoid publicity and protect the Church's image and reputation. Perhaps some of you saw a scathing editorial about this that novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiassen wrote that was widely circulated in Sunday papers a month or two ago.

  Well, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE WTS DID. My father-in-law, a JW elder, was talking to me about the CC situation the other day. I bit my tongue, but I'm sure they'll see Dateline when it airs. And he was involved in a lawsuit against a body of elders several years ago where the body had kept a young girl in a sexually abusive home situation - she was being molested by the father, and the father readily admitted it! The elders worked hard to keep the parents from either seperating or the mother going to the authorities, and they discouraged them from getting "worldy" counseling. Finally the case exploded, the father was convicted and went to prison, and the elders were sued.

  Society settled it quietly, out of court. There are many such examples, and it's really the same dispicable way the CC handled things.

  Dateline won't be the end of the WTS by any means, but it will be another powerful blow to a weakening organization. One more nail in the coffin.

  S4
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  waiting

  Howdy Seeker4,

  Anyway, three weeks or three months, I'll keep waiting.

  Well, thank you - I'll keep you too. Do we have to tell our respective mates about this arrangement?

  As for the Dateline Show? I'll keep waiting too - it'll be worth it, I'm sure.

  Thanks, ARoarer!

  waiting
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  amccullough

  Seeker4,
  

  Society settled it quietly, out of court. There are many such examples, and it's really the same dispicable way the CC handled things.

  Actually, I think I would prefer both organizations to handle these out of court. This is can be viewed as an admission of guilt and it frees up the court system. Also, it is obviously up to those bringing charges against the organization to decide if they will settle. If they're for it, then I think it's a great way to settle.
  The obvious negative impact is that it shows the prosecuting party is either more interested in money or fearful of time in court than they are in creating public knowledge about any problems in the organization.
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  AlanF

  To a certain extent, settling out of court makes sense -- but to a very small extent.

  The problem with settling out of court is that it creates exactly the situation we have now -- victims don't know about other victims, and don't know that they can win in court, and don't know that they can get recompense, and most of all, don't know that their actions will often result in the criminal conviction of the perpetrator with the result that other children will not be molested.

  A gag order virtually always accompanies these out-of-court settlements. That means that the victim cannot talk about the crime committed against him or her, cannot talk about the amount of money or other recompense, and worst of all, cannot name the perpetrator. Thus, future victims are guaranteed to be made, because most molestors don't quit. Again the proof is in the pudding: look at the out-of-court settlements the Catholic Church has made, where the priestly molestor has gone on to molest many others.

  A very public trial and condemnation of a child molester, therefore, is demonstrably in the best interests of everyone. Only the perpetrator and those who wish to protect him really benefit from the usual out-of-court settlement.

  AlanF
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  ARoarer

  Alan, you are so right. In our own case my father in laws lawyers wanted us to settle out of court a few years before the civil trial. The settlement did not even amount to the expenses that we had with lawyers representing us and also the years of therapy bills that were paid to help our daughter deal with the trauma of the molestations. Also if we had settled, the pedophile would be able to keep his secret and actually acuse the victims of being in it only for the money. It was not about the money, it was about the justice of being able to bring the perpetrator to court. This in itself is very healing. There is also a gag order within the congregation.
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  AlanF

  ARoarer, thanks for pointing this out about your own experience. It shows that the mewlings of Watchtower defenders like this "amccullough" are not made with the goal of protecting children, but of protecting the Watchtower Society.

  AlanF
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  morrisamb

  The dialogue here is excellent. I'm with you Alan F.on the settling out of court nonsense.
  Although I sat in the Hall and was abused for 11 years by my father, (yeah, he was a Witness who brought me to those meetings), and although the Elders knew about it for the last five of those 11 years, I'd never even accept monetary compensation from the society let alone ask for it. That is totally an insult to my experience and the experience of my siblings.
  Is a "we are extremely sorry for not having considered your feelings. We were not qualified to handle this situation. Please forgive us..." too much to ask. Apparently--- 'Cause we've been waiting for two decades and it still hasn't happened. In fact, the last communication all four of us have had with "Elders" is our disfellowshipping or disassociations spread over those same 20+ years. So the people who owe us an apology won't even speak to us.
  But we don't give much weight to this now. We "KNOW" God loved us the whole time his "disciples" failed us.
  And we don't give up hope they will see the light. We're sure there will be a lot of Witnesses, especially Elders in my area, wearing trench coats and sunglasses as they pick up my book to read my take on these events.
  For more information on my book, visit: www.fatherstouch.com