by paradisebeauty 5 Replies latest watchtower scandals
I wonder what exactly the uk Charity Commission is looking into. Just financial data or also practices of the watch tower?
Because if they will look into practices, I think sending some complains to the uk commission about their shunning practices maybe would make them change things in the future.
These are for 2013:
Question 5 - The charity's income and spending What were your charity's most significant activities during the year and how much did it spend on them?
Charitable activities £ 000s:
Production of literature and magazines. 10,812
Promoting Christian missionary work. 1,403
Donating to further religious education overseas. 19,004
As you can see, they donated 19.000.000 punds to "further religious education overseas"- I guess these are money donated to the watchtower in US
See here for full documents: JW LEAKS - BRITAIN
There are three investigations currently going on. Barry congregation is also undergoing an operational compliance investigation (ie do the trustees know what they are meant to be doing according to law).
The statutory inquiry into the whole organisation is linked to but separate to the New Moston inquiry.
The one which is for the whole organisation will cover whether their policies are proper, whether they're legal, whether trustees of JW charities are aware of their legal responsibilities, and whether they're giving the right advice to congregations. So things like hauling people who've been abused to confront the pedophile, just out of prison for those crimes, in a judicial committee run by the CO sent by the organisation are going to be questioned.
Thanks Memphis, I hadn't appreciated there were three investigations.
With the seeming never-ending series of child abuse scandals in the UK, it's hard to see how the Commissioners can do anything but come down very hard on the WT's practices.
The legal responsibilities point is an interesting one. As I understand it, each UK congregation is a charity in its own right, with a board of trustees. Being a trustee is quite an onerous duty and carries with it a significant degree of personal risk if things go wrong. I wonder how easy it will be to recruit future trustees if things go badly for the WT here.
