Okay, more on my statistical review.
So far:
1. I've focused my attention on two things. The sample of peak publishers in the Australian branch and the population of that sample of cases reported of individuals with standing in a congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses who've sexually molested a child (or children). (See my second post in this discussion for more detail on criteria for inclusion)
2. For the 10-year period of 2005-2014 I found an annual average incident rate of 0.000401 per peak publisher. Applied to the worldwide peak publishers for the same 10-year period extrapolates 28,827 individuals associated with Jehovah's Witnesses that have been reported for sexual molestation of a child.
3. For the 10-year period of 2005-2014 I found victims at an annual average rate of 0.000645 per peak publisher. Applied to the worldwide peak publishers for the same 10-year period extrapolates 46,102 child victims.
Trend
The result of a question asked of trends and subsequent number crunching found the following:
4. When I constructed 10-year averages of reported cases it showed at year 1999 nearly the same case incidence level as the average for years 2005-2014. Prior to this the incident rate had been growing, but it was in 1999 that a 10-year average incident rate of 0.000401 per peak publisher was achieved. This made me look back to in-and-around 1989 to see if something at that time would have augmented reporting of child molestation. 1989 was the year Watchtower sent out a letter to congregation elders that singled out child molestation and directed elders to always report these allegations to Watchtower by calling its legal department. To my knowledge this was the first of such a directive to elders. This would explain why reporting began to rise of child molestation allegations in particular.
5. The 10-year average incident rate of 0.000401 per peak publisher as of 2014 represents somewhat of a downward trend. I say "downward" because as a 10-year average this prevalence was first achieved in 1999. After than it went up, reaching a zenith in year 2008 at 0.000681 per peak publishers as a 10-year average. Since then as a 10-year average the incident rate has slowly declined back to its 1999 level.
6. For whatever it's worth, applied to the worldwide peak publishers for the period of 1975-2014 incident values disclosed in the Australian Branch data extrapolates 81,821 reported cases worldwide of perpetrators with standing in a congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, and it extrapolates 148,040 child victims. Over this span of years the average number of congregations per year is about 73,000. This means for the period of 1975-2014 each congregation has experienced, on the average, at least one reported case of a child molester in its midst. (Personal note: this fits my own experience. In my years working with several congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses, I don't recall one where elders had not reported at least one incident of child molestation. These probably included incidents that are not included in my statistical review because my review excluded for one reason or another more than 150 of the cases included in the Australian Branch data report. But when I was through crunching these numbers it dawned on me that this fits what I've experienced myself.)