Again this has already been posted but I just want to keep all the September 10, 2002 news stories together. Note this version adds Frank Mott Trille's testimony.
http://www.canoe.ca/NationalTicker/CANOE-wire.Jehovah-Lawsuit.html
September 10, 2002
Woman scarred by sex abuse, not life as a
Jehovah's Witness, lawyer suggests
TORONTO (CP) -- It was a childhood of sexual abuse at the hands of her father, not the ways of her church, that sent a former Jehovah's Witness down a rocky path of job insecurity, sexual dalliances and emotional turmoil, a lawyer suggested Tuesday.
Colin Stevenson, who represents the defendants in a $700,000 lawsuit against the church and three of its elders, confronted 31-year-old Vicky Boer with a list of problems that have plagued her in the years since leaving the family she says abandoned her.
None of them -- sexual harassment on the job, being ostracized by friends and her mother, a nervous breakdown and marital troubles, including a variety of extra-marital affairs -- are the fault of the church elders whom she alleges failed to deal properly with the abuse, Stevenson argued.
But Boer stood her ground, wiping away tears as she insisted none of it would have happened had she been allowed at age 18 by the church to get psychiatric and medical help.
With her military husband overseas, she had a nervous breakdown "because my husband was gone and because my family had disowned me; I was being blamed, and everything I knew in my life was gone,"
Boer sobbed. The alleged efforts of the three elders to cover up the abuse, led to her being shunned by other Witnesses who believed she had lied. "If I had had the support of people I had known my entire life ...I wouldn't have suffered the things I did," she said. "If things were done properly, none of this would have happened. My mother wouldn't have hated me and I wouldn't have been left alone." Boer is suing the three elders along with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Canada, the religion's governing body, for failing to allow her adequate treatment for the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her father, Gower Palmer, between the ages of 11 and 14 in the family home in Shelburne, Ont., about 100 kilometres northwest of Toronto.
Rather than inform the Children's Aid Society and permit Boer to seek counselling outside the church, she was forced to confront her father and give him a chance to repent his alleged "sins," court has been told.
Church elders also allegedly refused to allow her to see a psychologist, warning her that it would lead to an investigation and might cost her father his job and her mother her only source of financial support.
While victims of sexual abuse normally aren't identified in public, Boer has agreed to allow her name to be publicized as part of her effort to promote what she alleges is abuse within the confines of the church's congregations.
As part of their beliefs in a strict interpretation of Bible teachings, Jehovah's Witnesses reject anything political or "worldly" that distracts from their focus on Christ and the second coming, which they consider imminent.
Birthdays, secular holidays and Christmas are not celebrated; children are often required to leave class during the Lord's Prayer and the national anthem, Boer said.
And anyone who runs afoul of the religion's strictest tenets will find themselves ex-communicated, often to such an extent that they're shunned by their own family, she said.
Boer testified Tuesday that when she was finally allowed to see her doctor, she chose not to tell him about the abuse for fear the elders would find out.
During afternoon testimony, elder Frank Mott-Trille, 72, whose 36-year-old son Jonathan remains one of Boer's best friends, described how angry he and his son became when they learned of how the church was handling Boer's case.
Mott-Trille, convinced the elders were trying to protect Boer's father, looked close to tears as he described a congregation meeting that took place several months after Boer met with her father, Palmer.
Her father had been invited to deliver a prayer to the congregation, an honour usually reserved for senior members who are held in high esteem by the elders for their spirituality, Mott-Trille said. Jonathan stormed out of the meeting and his father followed.
"I found him with his hands on the front of the car, and he was being sick," Mott-Trille testified. "He turned to me and said, 'Frank, how can you possibly say this is Christian?' I've never been able to answer him."
Mott-Trille, an Oxford-schooled lawyer and Rhode scholar, is involved in separate litigation against the church, Stevenson noted earlier in the day.
The Watchtower has not yet had the chance to defend itself in court, although in a statement of defence it says it has "no knowledge of the allegations" that Boer was abused and that the abuse was never reported to church elders in Shelburne or to the Children's Aid Society. The defendants also deny that two of the elders named in the suit prevented Boer from reporting her allegations or from seeking psychological help.
"If the plaintiff chose not to seek advice from a psychiatrist or psychologist, it was solely of her own volition and because she believed such advice was unnecessary," says the statement of defence.
Gower Palmer, 58, continues to live in Shelburne and has never been criminally charged.
It's not the first time that the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses have made headlines. The most recent example is the case of a 17-year-old girl in Alberta who died last week after a lengthy and unsuccessful court battle to avoid blood transfusions to treat her leukemia.
Edited by - hawkaw on 11 September 2002 10:6:13
