Have Watchtower changed their polices to report to police child sex abuse?

by pleaseresearch 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  pleaseresearch

  I just want to thank each of ever one of you for your comments.
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  ToesUp

  "The policy states that Parents have the primary responsibility for the protection,safety and instruction of their children. The implication being that it is their responsibility to protect their children not the elders responsibility."

  The parents may have the primary responsibility for their childs safety but when there is a pedophile in the congregation, the Elders do not let the congregation know that there is one in their midst. Even in the "world" there is a list of child molesters and the public has access to that info. In the congregation, NO ONE knows there is a monster in their midst. I have a issue with that one!
  
  
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  Finkelstein

  Good point ToesUp
  

  There is a long standing core agenda within JWS in how they strive to show how righteous and pure they are among other Christian faiths and all other religions, this why the WTS with its controlling elders were more concerned about the image of the organization and toward specific congregations.

  The question remains with this new policy is how the elders are going to act when a situation of child sexual abuse occurs and when the person in question denies the act, how will the various elders react .
  

  I would assume that there will still be elders out there that would rather persuade the parent to not bring the matter to local law authorities in an attempt to protect that all important image of their congregation.

  The two witnesses doctrine/rule which the WTS held onto for so many years created two elements of potential harm, one being that individuals would take advantage and exploit that rule making quite sure there were no witnesses and if the said perpetrator denied the accusation, the elders would say well it should be left in Jehovah's hands.
  
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  Vidiot

  pleaseresearch - "Have Watchtower changed their polices to report to police child sex abuse?"

  If anything, they're even less inclined to comply with secular authorites, IMO.

  So, yeah, kind of.
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  zeb

  PR.

  The above are quite correct. The elders from the NSW (Australia) branch office stated the Policy would be made available to any who wanted it. But, they were very evasive as to how it would be made available.

  I have a copy of this so called policy.

  • It has a series of quotes from Awake!
  • the pages are not numbered
  • there is a photocopy of a staple in one top corner indicating that it is a selection of some other document
  • There is no signature of any of the orgs executive.

  Simply it is not a policy at all.

  The two goons at the last ARC hearing repeated endlessly that the wt would not prevent anyone from calling the Police. But they avoided to the enth the questions as to why they the elders don't call the Police.

  and, 'Authority would be called if the elders considered a child was still in danger.' what crap!

  • the elders with no training in Human Services at all would never know if a child was still in danger.(here admitting that the child/children have been in danger)
  • How would the elders know if the child 'was still in danger' by what parameters. If the offender was not 'spiritual'. (slack in meeting attendance, field service, bad suite-shoes, doesn't answer at the meetings.
  • so many cases of abuse have been orchestrated by jw who had the happy face, the nice suit-shoes and put on the good meeting performance.
    
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  smiddy3

  And apart from not letting anyone in the congregation that their is a child molester in their midst as bad as that is this child molester is also a danger to the general public in that he/she is still allowed to go from D2D in the community putting their children in danger also of being sexually abused.

  Local councils and local Governments should be very concerned with this potential danger in their community`s.

  It was a big cop-out at the ARC for "Elders" to say that parents have the right to go to the police or child protection agency`s with allegations when they obfuscate their responsibility to notify such authorities while investigating these allegations in-house.

  They failed dismally in their duty of care to the abused children .
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  keinlezard

  There is a video on tv.jw.org where Gary Braux said "we never change the 2 witnesses rules".

  And in addition, many letters said "call legal departement" first ...

  In France, in my congregation an elder says that there where 2 pedophiles affairs

  one my wife .. but cannot complain to the authority because of prescription

  and another one ...

  He said to us , there was 2 month ... but no ... JW of my congregation seem to be concerned by this ...

  All seem to be like before this "change" of policy ... in fact .. no change at all !

  Best Regards