by Paul Bonanno 11 Replies latest jw friends
As you are all aware the elders are instructed that when they come across a case of “child sexual abuse” they have to call the “legal desk” / “legal department”.
Prior to 1993 this was the policy that as an elder we had.
Do you know when this policy was introduced or started and what was the history behind it?
Sorry, the old memory is not what it was, so I won't attempt to guess a year, I remember the Letter coming, and on a subsequent C.O visit, he read it and emphasized how important it was.
Important to the Org that is, as the motivation behind it was to make sure that no Elder implicated the Org in any way, they did not wish to be in Court as an Org, and even less did they wish to pay compensation.
This effectively left Elders out in the cold, and highlighted the greedy money-grubbing attitude of the Org, and its total lack of love or concern for the victims. Things have not changed.
The G.B and leaders of the J.W Org are heartless avaricious BASTARDS !
I did a little digging: looks like it was in 1989, there's a scan of the letter at https://jwfacts.com/watchtower/paedophilia.php
Paul: Do you know when this policy was introduced or started and what was the history behind it?
Barbara Anderson reveals much about the history of the child sex abuse policy, including the dates of the elder letters etc and events that influenced the policy development:
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/life-discoveries-barbara-anderson/
I would like to thank both John.prestor and OrphanCrow for your information.
In a July 1989 BOE "Legal" letter, elders were told to call the Legal Dept. when an accusation of child abuse was made. Also, the Child Abuse Telememo secret form that I discovered in court documents in 2007 was printed at headquarters to begin to use beginning in July 1989 by an attorney in the Legal Dept to fill in when elders called in with an accusation of child abuse.
In 1991, the GB ordered that the Service Dept. share with the Legal Dept. any accusations that came into Service Desks about child abuse. Before that Service was keeping that info from Legal. Too many times up to that point, Legal found out about accusations of child abuse when a lawsuit was filed and that had to change.
If you want to learn when the instructions went into effect that JWs go to the elders rather than the authorities when "criminal" wrongdoing was committed by a JW, read the long, "boring" article that I wrote and posted on my website last year. This rule began to take form in 1968.
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/flawed-decree-conceals-criminals/
This is very interesting and I hope newbies take the time to read all of this information also.
Thanks Barbara as always for the background information. We are very grateful for all the work that you are doing especially related with the “child sexual abuse” policy.
Paul Bonanno - "When did the policy to report to the legal 'desk'/'department' was introduced?"
When they started cluing in that it was a problem which could call their claims of divine exclusivity into question, and thusly had to be muzzled.
Happy to help, Paul. I'm getting ready to publish (try to publish, ha) a paper that deals with child sex abuse and how the organization handles it, I'll keep you guys posted.
