Friday, July 26, 2024
Toby Manhire
These are the stories the Jehovah’s Witnesses went to court to stop you reading
The inquiry expressed ‘concern about the faith’s overall approach to the safety of children and young people in its care’.
The stories below include accounts of sexual abuse.
It was the early 1980s and Ms SC, then 15, was a member of the New Zealand Jehovah’s Witness community. Elders in the church – a fundamentalist Christian group, which adopts a literal interpretation of its bible and believes Armageddon is imminent – were concerned about her behaviour. She was required to attend an Elder’s home for extra religious study, led by his wife.
“I would often be at their place after school or to go on outings. In addition to one-on-one bible studies with the Elder’s wife, I would join their family regularly for their family bible study,” she recalled.
When the tuition was over, the Elder “would drive me home”, said Ms SC. Except that, “instead of going home, he took me to another area nearby where there were no houses or anything at that time. This was when the abuse took place. It happened many times over a period of four to five months. At first he touched my genitals, then he digitally penetrated me, then he had full sexual intercourse with me.”
Ms SC’s story appears as part of a 64-page case study focused on Jehovah’s Witnesses in New Zealand, part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care, tabled yesterday in parliament. The church unsuccessfully applied to the Court of Appeal at the 11th hour to halt publication of the case study pending an application to the Supreme Court to appeal an earlier ruling. The application was denied.
Statements to the Royal Commission included descriptions of an arcane investigation process followed by the church. “Jasmine Grew told the inquiry that she had disclosed abuse [by a family member] to her mother in 1989, when she was 12 years old. Her mother told the Elders of her congregation ‘as she was expected’ to do. Soon after at a faith meeting, an Elder came up to Jasmine and said ‘we’d like to speak to you in the back room’.”
Grew said: “I went back into the back room and the elders [both male] were there. I had no support, no friend, no mother, nothing. My mother did not know, at the time, what was happening.”
She continued: “The elders interrogated me. They were asking the worst questions you can imagine, for someone who was just 12 years old. They asked me, ‘Was it hard,’ referring to my abuser physically. They wanted to know everything. Their questions were inappropriate. At that age it was a terrifying experience for me. It seemed as abusive as the sexual abuse itself … I was honest, and I told them everything because I had to be honest. I was fearful of the consequences of Armageddon. The two words that come to me still now are humiliation and embarrassment … [The Elders] were very intimidating. They made no attempt to support or comfort me in this process.”
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