First of all by definition a legal case can only be won or loss in a court case. I never said it was right. I present actual facts. Like court after Court judges have ruled that watchtower does not have a fiduciary duty to publishers, the duty to protect or warn. Everyone here can argue if those things are either correct or should be over turned but that doesn't negate that those are the facts atleast in the US. It is part of American law that a person doesn't have to protect a third party if they have no legal duty to do so. Again I in no way says that is right or wrong. But that is facts of the law
Honest Questions About Child Abuse
by Richard Oliver 207 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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OrphanCrow
Richard. You have come on here and taken the position that the court cases are a vindictive act undertaken by people who want to take down the Watchtower.
This is where you are wrong.
You have stated that laws need to change, and what you fail to realize is that it is these cases that fail, the ones that pile up and pile up...all failures...are what lead to a final and decisive victory in changing laws. The laws that you say need to change. That change comes from the victims speaking out. Over and over again.
Don't be myopic - just take a look at that org you are defending. Look to the way they have fought their legal battles. Loss after loss after loss. All the way to the Supreme Court sometimes. And then a victory. Which they crow about for like...forever.
That is what the court cases, instigated by child sex abuse victims, that are being lost are doing - they are paving the way for some smart lawyer to take the WT by the tail and shake it. In a Supreme Court ruling would be nice.
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scratchme1010
Scratchme:
I am sorry but you are actually wrong. Below is 3 cases including more recent cases that a fiduciary duty was not extended. Again I never said it was right but this is what the court has found.
Lewis v Bellows Falls Congregation 114-CV-205-JGM. (2015)
Holdings: The District Court, J. Garvan Murtha, J., held that:
1 alleged conduct by church did not create fiduciary relationship between church and congregant;
2 church allegedly had duty to provide reasonable supervision of its minister;
3 no special relationship existed between the church and its minister, as required to give rise to church's duty to control minister;
4 church had no duty to protect congregant; and
5 church had no separate duty to warn its congregants, distinct from a duty to protect.
Anderson v Watchtower M2004-01066-COA-R9-CV. (2005)
Barbara Anderson et al. Claimed that Moses v Diocese of Colorado, 863 P.2d 310 (Colo. 1993) applied to their case. The Appeals court found that the cited case of Moses: “Recognized that the relationship between a clergyman and parishioner was normally one involving rust and reliance, but further held that in order to be liable to breach a fiduciary duty, the superior party must ‘assume a duty to act in the dependent party’s best interest,’” And footnote 23 goes on “Cases examining a breach of fiduciary durty claim in the contest of a religiously-based relationship have made it clear that the clergy-parishioner relationship alone is not sufficient to establish a fiduciary duty. … (declining to find a per se fiduciary relationship between all clergy and their congregants and requiring “something more” to demonstrate a justifiable trust on one side and resulting superiority and influence on the other).”
Brian R v Watchtower CUM-98-531 (1999)
The appeals court ruled:
There does not exist a general obligation to protect others from harm not created by the actor. “The fact that the actor realizes or should realize that action on his part is necessary for another's aid or protection does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action.” RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 314 (1965). In other words, the mere fact that one individual knows that a third party is or could be dangerous to others does not make that individual responsible for controlling the third party or protecting others from the danger.5
Even with the emergence of expanded liability for nonfeasance, that principle has remained clear—in instances of “nonfeasance rather than misfeasance, and absent a special relationship, the law imposes no duty to act affirmatively to protect someone from danger unless the dangerous situation was created by the defendant.” Jackson v. Tedd–Lait Post No. 75, 1999 ME 26, ¶ 8, 723 A.2d 1220, 1221. Only when there is a “special relationship,” may the actor be found to have a common law duty to prevent harm to another caused by a third party.7 There is simply “no duty so to control the conduct of a third person as to prevent him from causing physical harm to another unless ... a special relation exists between the actor and the other which gives to the other a right to protection.” RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 315(b) (1965).8
We have described the salient elements of a fiduciary relationship as: (1) “the actual placing of trust and confidence in fact by one party in another,” and (2) “a great disparity of position and influence between the parties” at issue. Morris v. Resolution Trust Corp., 622 A.2d 708, 712 (Me.1993). A fiduciary relationship has been found to exist in several categories of relationship, including business partners, see Rosenthal v. Rosenthal, 543 A.2d 348, 352 (Me.1988), families engaged in financial transactions, see Estate of Campbell, 1997 ME 212, ¶ 9, 704 A.2d 329, 331–32, and corporate relationships, see Moore v. Maine Indus. Servs., Inc., 645 A.2d 626, 628 (Me.1994); Webber v. Webber Oil Co., 495 A.2d 1215, 1224–25 (Me.1985).
We have noted, however, that a “general allegation of a confidential relationship is not a sufficient basis for establishing the existence of one.” Ruebsamen v. Maddocks, 340 A.2d 31, 35 (Me.1975). As with any duty, its existence must be informed by “the hand of history, our ideals of morals and justice, the convenience of administration of the rule, and our social ideas as to where the loss should fall.” Trusiani, 538 A.2d at 261. Although a fiduciary duty may be based on “moral, social, domestic, or [ ] merely personal [duties],” Ruebsamen, 340 A.2d at 34, it does not arise merely because of the existence of kinship, friendship, business relationships, or organizational relationships. A fiduciary duty will be found to exist, as a matter of law, only in circumstances where the law will recognize both the disparate positions of the parties and a reasonable basis for the placement of trust and confidence in the superior party in the context of specific events at issue.10 A court, therefore, must have before it specific facts regarding the nature of the relationship that is alleged to have given rise to a fiduciary duty in order to determine whether a duty may exist at law.
Actually you are wrong, wrong, wrong again. And if I can add, you're also full of shit because if you have all this information then you do not have "an honest question" about the child abuse situation with the WT, which is the bullshit that you started this thread with. You just want to start something, as you yourself have proven here. You're just another classic case of passive/aggressive trolling.
You are citing the law, not the cases that were settled in which it was determined that the WT was in fact in a fiduciary relationship with the defendants. That may not have been the case in the cases that you cite, which I do not know, but it was not the case in any of the following cases that (a) were settled and (b) and were determined that the WT did in fact had a fiduciary responsibility with their victims.
Here are the cases:
Amy vs. Jehovah's Witnesses
Bradley et al vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Charissa et al Coordinated Cases vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Churchfield vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Daniel Wes et al vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Grafmyer vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Julianne Wimberlu Gutierrez et al vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Kaleena et al vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Ken L vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Morley at al vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Tabitha H vs Jehovah's Witnesses
Tim W vs Jehovah's WitnessesSo what is good for you is good for me too. I prove my case the same way you do, not that you need any proof because you obviously aren't here wanting information or answer to a question.
One more thing before I send you to hell: Even if what you state is the case in every single case, which is not (May I also point that I have more cases proving my point than you proving yours?) What I posted in my original was "conveniently" not addressed. Don't think for a second that the rest of what I mentioned gets cancelled in any way shape or form. So here it is again, see if any of this answers your "innocent honest question":
First: currently there are plenty of laws that protect children. Every state has specific laws and there are plenty of federal laws that protect all kinds of harm that the children may be. There's no need to create more laws.
Second: not sure where you get that we are more interested in attacking the WT, or that we have no interest in legislation and law. Since the laws already exist, we hold the WT responsible for their disgusting position about child abuse, and for the lack of care for children. Don't expect people to be nice about it if we know that they protect pedophiles and have to be sued for them to admit that they are doing that.
Third: Covering for pedophiles is not the only immoral act that the WT commits against children. I for once can tell you that I grew up going to the KH hearing about fornication, orgies, adultery, bestiality, Babylon the Great having sex with a dragon, beheadings, genocide, rape, slavery, incestuous relationships, children getting killed, children getting sold into slavery, children getting murdered for making fun of a person's lack of hair, etc. You know very well that all kinds of subjects are openly talked about in KHs with children present. JW kids get exposed to all kinds of violent events, sexually inappropriate subjects and all kinds of things that are not suitable for them. That happens every week in every KH. The WT shows no regard for children at all. If that doesn't give you a clue about the WT not caring about the well being of children, I don't know what does.
Fourth: What do you think that the events and cases that are currently being seen in court are doing? They are holding them responsible.
Fifth: It is extremely naive to expect that written laws are going to stop pedophiles and child abusers from causing harm to children. It's not a matter of laws or legislation. JWs have to stop blindly accepting anything and everything that the WT tells them; that's the bottom line. You cannot legislate attitude, you cannot legislate indoctrination, you cannot legislate brainwashing and blind devotion. It really boils down to parents blindly trusting that the WT is acting in their best interest when they are not. There's no law that can enforce people to act appropriately. proof of that is that those laws actually exist and people, including the WT, just don't follow them.
Now you and your trolling can go to hell.
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LisaRose
irst of all by definition a legal case can only be won or loss in a court case. I never said it was right. I present actual facts. Like court after Court judges have ruled that watchtower does not have a fiduciary duty to publishers, the duty to protect or warn. Everyone here can argue if those things are either correct or should be over turned but that doesn't negate that those are the facts atleast in the US. It is part of American law that a person doesn't have to protect a third party if they have no legal duty to do so. Again I in no way says that is right or wrong. But that is facts of the law
I agree that The Watchtower is not legally responsible in every case of child abuse. But these cases are not all as black and white as you seem to think. New legal arguments are made all the time, sometimes the courts agree and sometimes they do not, that is how it works. People said the Candace Conti case would never win, I didn't even think there much of chance, but although part of it was overturned (and rightly so in my opinion), part of it has not been overturned, at least not yet.
So why do you have a problem with people suing the Watchtower when they believe they have been wronged? They have the legal right, as does anyone to use the court system when they believe they have been wronged. As the saying goes "anyone can use anyone else over anything". If they don't have a case, it won't get anywhere, so where is the harm? The Watchtower has plenty of money, it isn't hurting them any, its the cost of doing business for them. Yes, people here do not like the Watchtower and we do know that many times they hide child abuse, so yeah we are going to side with innocent victims rather than an organization that has hurt us in so many ways. What else would you expect? The organization needs to change and they won't do so until they are forced to do so, anything that moves things along in that direction is to the good in my opinion.
The more important question is why you are more sympathetic to an organization with a history of covering up child sex abuse than to innocent victims.
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sparky1
Richard Oliver, as you continue to pursue your 'degree' as an 'armchair lawyer', I am sure that you would like to widen out in your understanding of what direction the American legal field is heading in regards to the 'clergy's fiduciary duty' towards it's parishioners. scratchme 1010 has pointed you in the right direction. The following article may clear up some of your 'misunderstanding' in regards to the subject at hand:
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Richard Oliver
Scratches. First the first post that u posted was the complaint. A lawyer can make any accusation that they want. Second what I posted is from the courts either written opinion on appeal or the judges decision on a motion for summary judgment. If u don't believe me look it up.
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Landy
This is certainly a fair argument and is reasonable. Though, my question is, what do you want Watchtower to do in countries that either have a low age of consent or have a very lax or non-existent law enforcement and judicial branch. There are countries out there that do have a low age of consent and even some states in the US that do. Watchtower makes policies for a worldwide organization.
That's irrelevant - yes Austria ( for example) has a lower age of consent than is normal. If no crime has been comitted then it shouldn't need to be reported to the authorities if a case comes to the attention of the local elders. Where a crime has been committed though and the victim is still underage, then reporting of it should be mandatory. It's not rocket science. Every other organisation, from youth clubs to the scouts manage to have proper safeguarding policies in place regardless of the variation in local laws.
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JWdaughter
I don't know where the laws are so lax that rape is legal. Or child abuse. Or incest.
If it is legal for a 30 y o man to have sex with a 3rd grader, then the fact that the child claimed it or the man confessed to his SIN should be a good enough reason to keep him away from children.
The STATED POLICY OF THIS ORGANIZATION doesn't protect children. They barely even pretend to give a damn.
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notsurewheretogo
Let me get this straight...the Watchtower allows congregations to form, friendships to be made and the WT has certain policies that members must stick to but the WT states they do not need to report sexual crimes against children nor tell the congregation a member has committed such act YET wonders why people want the WT to be responsible?
The WT governs congregations, it governs appointments and governs sexual abuse policy ignoring many common sense practices like notifying members of a case...100% the WT is responsible...if the WT changed these policies then the abuse might not happen.
For instance, a member can be privately reproved for sexual abuse of children, the elders may deem he is repentant but at field service groups they never pair him with a child.
What is stopping the offender to make a private ministry arrangement with a congregation members child and abuse them? The elders would not know about the arrangement and the parents know nothing about the previous abuse.
The WT therefore contributes to the sexual abuse of children.
100% responsible in creating the conditions where abuse of children can occur AND be hidden.
It is clear Richard is "still in" mentally. The questions he ask are through a JW lens.
Take the red pill and wake up.
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punkofnice
This is one of THOSE threads isn't it?!? Before I read all the comments......
Remember. This man was allowed free access to the congregations in Peterborough UK and the elders knew he was a pervert.........any questions?