the girl next door
In every civil case the finger is pointed at parents by the Watchtower legal team. But often times parents hardly have any measure of culpability because they where never made aware of an abusers past.
Note- I quoted you but I am not directly replying to you as I didn’t take your post as to say that you are saying that I said such :)
Am I saying that the parents are responsible for the fact that their child was abused?
NO, that lays completely on the piece of garbage that actually committed the abuse.
Are there precautions that parents can take to reduce the risk of their child being abused?
YES!
If parents don’t take such precautions and even thou the perpetrator is 100% responsible for the abuse, then they start to bare some responsibility.
Are there precautions that elders can take to reduce the risk of children in their congregation from being abused?
YES!
If elders don’t take such precautions and even thou the perpetrator is 100% responsible for the abuse then they start to bare some responsibility.
This responsibility is in regards to not taken precautions to prevent the abuse, it is not responsibility in regards to the abuse occurring, as I said the perpetrator is 100% responsible for that.
OK now that the abuse has taken place, regardless of precautions taken or not taken… there is now the matter to deal with it.
It is said that the WTS has numerous reported cases of abuse reported to them but these cases are unreported to authorities.
OK, in order for these cases to be reported to the WTS, elders, etc… would have had to report them. In order for the elders to have cases to report to the WTS, there would have to be alleged victims reporting these cases to them, either the victims reported it directly themselves or the parents of the victim’s reporting it, etc.
Now, at this point, if it goes unreported to the authorities, then all that are aware of the abuse but fail to report it is equally responsible for it going unreported, even the victim themselves with the exception of them being a young child.
Now something that gets said often is that if elders are aware of a known perpetrator then they should make that known to parents. I agree and say that is one of the precautions that elders can do to help reduce abuse from taken place to begin with. And many would agree and say that a parent won’t let their child alone with that person now that they know of their history. But what about a person that that is not known about? Does the parent/s say: “this person is not known to be a perpetrator so they can be alone with my child “.
Remember that the known perpetrator was not known to be one until after the fact, so that shows that even thou elders can make known any perpetrators that they are aware of, it still falls on the parents to take the same precaution with all as they would with known perpetrators.