I am just looking at it from a point of view of common sense. Common sense tells me that; IF the elders believed in any way that Kendrick was going to re-offend, they would have put in place some other provisions where this would be minimized.
Putting the law aside, and just looking at this from a common-sense point of view, anyone who has been a JW knows that the elders will do whatever those higher up in the chain of command tell them to do, whether that's the CO, letters from the branch, WT legal, etc. So whether or not they believed he was going to re-offend, I think that the most reasonable assumption is that they would do whatever they were directed to do.
Who in their right mind would WILLINGLY allow such a danger to exist? (same goes for the WTS)
People who are trying not to bring shame on their organization and are trying to minimize liability - that's who. The Catholic Church willingly allowed dangers to exist when they transferred pedophile priests from parish to unsuspecting parish, didn't they? What is the purpose of letters to the bodies of elders telling them to call Watchtower legal when child abuse occurs? Is it really to protect anyone besides the Watchtower? They don't have to call legal in cases of fornication or drug abuse, do they? A reasonable conclusion (and I think the one that was arrived at in this case) is that this process was in place to attempt to protect the organization from bad publicity and legal liability, with any concern for protecting children a distant afterthought, even though headquarters knew or should have known that its policy was not in the best interests of the children.
Also, while it is not contained in any official letter, there are numerous anecdotal accounts indicating that at least in the past, elders were told to discourage parents in such a situation from going to the authorities, without forbidding it or putting it in writing (out of fear of liability I'm sure). Again, anyone who has been a part of this organization knows that people will follow what the elders recommend a majority of the time.
But you and I and any reasonable person can surely see that this was not deliberate.
I don't think that any elders or the WTS wanted any child to be molested, and I think everybody acknowledges that, even those posters who may be a little over the top with the pedophile rhetoric. But getting back to the law, what the jury found (and I think appropriately), is not that it was "deliberate" as you say, but that it disregarded a significant risk of harm, and put concern for its image above legitimate safety measures.
Just one question: when you said that the jury found that “the Watchtower was aware of the probable dangerous consequences of its actions, but deliberately and willfully failed to avoid those consequences” can you explain what that means in practical terms? And what was the evidence of that if you can remember.
This is very close to the legal definition for recklessness. It means that you aren't trying to cause harm, but you should know that what you are doing is dangerous, to the point that it would be fair for a jury to conclude that you don't care very much if someone is hurt. If you accidentally get into a collision while doing 70 MPH in a 65 MPH zone, that is not going to support punitive damages (absent some other factor). If you are doing 110 MPH, on the other hand, there is a good chance you could be exposed to punitive damages, as even if you didn't want to hurt anyone, you deliberately ignored the risk. Or firing a gun without looking where you are shooting. These analogies don't exactly hold up because they deal with affirmatively causing harm, whereas the Conti case involved failing to prevent harm, which is unusual in the law. The evidence is that when the elders informed Watchtower legal about Kendrick and his stepdaughter, it instructed the elders to keep the information about him secret, in accordance with its national policy.
