Amac, I don't believe you have a very good understanding of the JW religion and how it works. It appears that you were once a JW, but you don't seem to have absorbed the nuances of the culture.
Rank and file JWs, like Sarah Berry, are given a rather different set of standards by the Watchtower hierarchy than are elders. In turn, elders are given somewhat different sets of standards than Circuit Overseers, and so it goes on up the hierarchy. At each level, more knowledge of how the Watchtower really works is given. At the bottom level, issues are deliberately made warm and fuzzy, and often represent reality only from a view of 100,000 meters. For example, in The Watchtower the Society often strongly promotes the notion that elders are appointed by holy spirit. Well of course, what this really means is that, to the extent that elders are appointed according to perfect Bible standards, it can be said that elders are in effect appointed by holy spirit. That notion "in effect" is all-important, because the Society almost always leaves it extremely fuzzy, and so most rank and file JWs miss it completely and think that elders -- in particular the Governing Body -- are directly appointed by holy spirit, and so God has literally inspired someone in the hierarchy to appoint each individual elder. Elders themselves, however, are perfectly well aware of this notion "in effect", and are not deceived into thinking that they themselves, or any of their fellows, are literally appointed by holy spirit. Getting up to the GB level, these men are perfecly well aware that they rarely have anything to do with appointment of elders, which is taken care of by the Watchtower bureaucracy, which is mainly composed of "non-anointed" and uninspired men. At intermediate levels, the hierarchy is well aware that their level is further from being "spirit directed" than levels below them.
With this knowledge comes responsibility. Since no Watchtower official such as a GB member claims to be inspired, and most of them know perfectly well that they can rarely even claim to be "spirit directed", they also know that the laws, commands and doctrines they promulgate to rank and file JWs are at best their own personal interpretations of the Bible. They may cause the Writing Department to deceive the rank and file about this, but I'm talking about what these men know to be the facts down deep in their hearts. Thus there is increasing level of personal responsibility to do what is right, despite pressures from above, all the way up the ranks.
One might compare this to the Bible story of Adam and Eve. Eve was thoroughly deceived by the serpent, even though she had direct knowledge of God by virtue of hearing his voice in the garden of Eden every day. But Adam was not deceived. Eve can be compared to rank and file JWs and Adam to GB members. They all believe more or less the same thing, but with quite different levels of knowledge of how strong the claims to direction by holy spirit are.
So it is in the case of Sarah Berry, her former elders, and Watchtower leaders. Sarah was thoroughly deceived into believing that elders' words are based on direction by holy spirit. She had no incentive, once becoming a JW (and many of us were raised as JWs and never had any reason to question what we were taught) to question this claimed God-given advice. But the elders knew better. They knew that their advice was not from God, but was from their own interpretations and from the Society, which they also knew was not getting direction from holy spirit about the girls' abuse. And when Watchtower itself was consulted, they knew that their advice was purley human. And when all of these people who did or should have known about reporting laws -- after all, they all claim to be spirit-appointed "shepherds of the flock of God" -- failed to report, and failed to do what they knew what was right, and bullied Sarah Berry into keeping quiet, they abused their authority and they failed in their claim to be such shepherds. While one might argue that Sarah has some responsibility for failing to report, that argument fails to take into account the thoroughly deceptive nature of JWism and how it causes otherwise bright and responsible people to abdicate all responsibility for their decisions -- even the most important ones of life -- to the Watchtower hierarchy. Thus, as Hillary Step has argued, the responsibility increases up the chain of command. Watchtower officials on every level cannot be excused from this merely because some responsibility might be assigned to 'Eve'.
AlanF
