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Expelled for Talking
Couple alleged abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses
By Ron Howell
STAFF WRITER
May 26, 2002
A New Jersey couple says they were thrown out of the Brooklyn-based Jehovah's
Witnesses after speaking out about alleged sexual abuse among the religion's adherents.
Carl Pandelo, 51, a pharmaceutical salesman, said in an interview last week that he and his wife, Barbara, are appealing their excommunication from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, more commonly known as Jehovah's Witnesses.
Pandelo said he received a phone call May 10 from an official of the witnesses' Bradley Beach congregation in New Jersey, informing him that he and his wife had been "disfellowshipped" from the organization for "apostasy."
The Pandelos and two other members - a man in Kentucky and a woman in Tennessee - earlier had been called before committees of their respective congregations to answer charges of apostasy and causing "division" within the church.
"There's no tolerance in this religion for speaking out," Carl Pandelo said.
The four said they were interviewed by NBC's investigative program "Dateline NBC" and that they accused the Watchtower organization of failing to take aggressive action against child molesters.
"Dateline NBC" is airing its report on Jehovah's Witnesses on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the program said.
J.R. Brown, national spokesman for the Watchtower society, and Dave Semonian, another church spokesman, did not return calls from Newsday on Friday seeking comment on the developments. Brown's office requested a list of questions, which Newsday supplied, and did not respond after receiving the list. A call to the Bradley Beach congregation was not returned.
Earlier this month, in response to allegations regarding cover-up of sexual abuse charges, Brown said, "You cannot be a known sex offender and hold any position of responsibility within the organization. We have a very strong and aggressive policy for handling any sexual molestation that might take place."
These are trying times for the religion founded in the 1870s in Pennsylvania, said the author of a new book who is a former Jehovah's Witness.
"It's time for the veil of secrecy on this organization to be lifted. I think they're in a time of crisis," said Diane Wilson, who wrote the critical book, "Awakening of a Jehovah's Witness: Escape from the Watchtower Society."
Wilson said the leaders of Watchtower were having a difficult time defending longstanding church dogma, such as the belief that 1914 was "the beginning of the end of the world." Wilson's final break with the religion came about 10 years ago, she said, when officials ordered her to "shun" her teenaged daughter, who had been excommunicated after rejecting the religion.
Wilson, in a phone interview from her home in Morgan Hill, Calif., said she did not deal with the issue of child sex abuse in her book because "I never experienced it in my 25 years in the organization."
However, she said that she believes it is a significant problem within Watchtower because of allegations she has heard from Jehovah's Witnesses, some she learned of while researching her book.
Jehovah's Witnesses, known for going door-to-door to find new members, say they have 6 million members in more than 230 countries. The religion's world headquarters is in downtown Brooklyn.
Adherents refer to God as Jehovah and believe the Earth will never be depopulated or cease to exist. Members also reject blood transfusions even in life-and-death cases, and believe that only they will be saved at the time of Armageddon, or the final battle between forces of good and evil.
The Pandelos, of New Jersey, said they began to fall away from the religion when elders refused to take action against a relative, also a Jehovah's Witness, who they say sexually abused the Pandelos' daughter, then 12, in 1988.
But while they no longer are active in the Bradley Beach congregation, the Pandelos said, they do not want to be excommunicated. They cited the shame associated with excommunication and that active members, even old friends and relatives, would have to shun them.
Carl Pandelo charged that the Watchtower Society is "a haven for predators." He said he believed most of the abuse is within families, "but then it branches off into other members of the congregation that he [the abuser] feels he can control."
In an interview for a previous story, Watchtower national spokesman Brown said the organization tries hard to weed out those who abuse children sexually.
Critics - including William Bowen, the Kentucky man who is facing possible excommunication - have complained that the Jehovah's Witnesses have rules that make it difficult to prove sexual abuse allegations. Bowen cited one requirement that there be two witnesses to establish that a sexual assault has taken place.
Brown said the the group does not always follow that rule.
"Action can be taken even though you do not have two or three eyewitnesses," he said.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
When an organization arrogates to itself un-Scriptural powers and authorities and then threatens people who do not submit to it with un-Scriptural punishment, then that organization becomes a racket. --Fred Franz (1943)