Spiral - "Why are they even keeping that information? I'd think it would be time to hit the delete button."
I've lost count of how often I've though that, too (and by extension, why they kept such stringent records in the first place).
The only explanation(s) I can come up with that seem to make any sense of it all is that...
...since the problem was becoming more and more prolific by the early 80s, they had enough brains to realize that the more widely known it became to the rank-and-file, the more untenable their claim of being "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" became. They'd just come off the "apostate" witch-hunts of the 1970s (which were really all about ruthlessly suppressing any refutation of that), and still firmly believed that "Biblical" means of dealing with - well, anything, really - couldn't help but be vastly superior to any "worldy" methods.
I think the database started out as an attempt to keep a leash on individuals they knew were offenders, whilst thinking that this should be enough to slowly eliminate the problem internally, but still keep it all in-house (I suspect focusing on the acts as "sins" rather than "crimes" was probably an attempt to mollify any of the more conscience-driven elder bodies out there who may have otherwise done the right thing and involved secular authorities).
It's recently been alleged that Ted Jaracz was particularly responsible for crafting their pedo-related policies and an offender himself, but he was still a serious heavy hitter within the WT leadership hierarchy (Barb Anderson once reported that he was the one who pushed the hardest for any victims who came forward to be DFed for "slander"). A guy like that would have definitely wanted evidence of the problem destroyed, but may have compromised on the record-keeping aspect of it in order to mollify other GB members and stay in the game.
An unforeseen wrinkle, however, was a slowly growing staffing issue at the grassroots level.
Fewer and fewer "qualified brothers" were "reaching out" for congregation duties, and so the Org had no choice but to allow more and more JW men with dirty secrets to become MSs and Elders just to keep local congregations functioning, and hope the dirt they had on them would keep them in line, without fully realizing (or admitting) that pedophila is - in many ways - far more akin to addiction than homosexuality or other such "sins"...
...and abusers, like addicts, become very adept at finding ways to continue feeding their addiction whilst hiding their habit.
As a result, twenty or thirty years on, the problem has become so prolific, endemic, and institutionalized (in no small part because of all the flawed, misguided, and ill-informed measures they took trying to prevent-slash-hide it, not to mention the almost pathological aversion to doing anything "Satan's World" tells them to do at this point), that they're kinda stuck.
If - at this point - they actually destroyed the records, they'd have virtually no way to keep any kind of leash on child abusers that have become spread throughout the JWs now, due to the religion essentially becoming a pedo playground (see previous paragraph)*, which their lawyers have no doubt advised them could theoretically threaten their tax-exemption down the line (and here's where hoping and praying that Armageddon drops and bails them out before that happens comes into play)...
... but...
...they have no choice but to fight harder and harder to keep it from becoming exposed now, because once it's out there in the Public Domain, it becomes way more difficult to dismiss it all as "apostate-driven-lies"...
...and an unfixable problem of pedophiles operating throughout the Jehovah's Witness Organization and being essentially protected by its policies undermines the aforementioned claim of being "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" like nothing else... something I firmly believe the WT leadership would literally sell their own souls to prevent...
...because, let's face it... despite any claims to the contrary, actually being an active, obedient Jehovah's Witness isn't really the most pleasant way of living (it's why a lot of us are here, after all)...
...so if it's not actually "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization", where the fuck is the incentive to stay?
...
(*not to mention that destroying it would be tantamount to admitting that the decision to make it in the first place rather than deal with it more concisely was wrong, which the Org would rather piss glass than cop to)
