http://www.spokesmanreview.com/pf.asp?date=012302&ID=s1089784
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
SPOKANE
Lawsuit accuses church of fostering sexual abuse
Kelly McBride and Bill Morlin - Staff writers
A 23-year-old California woman filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Spokane against her former Eastern Washington church and the entire denomination, claiming their beliefs and policies allowed her to be sexually abused as a child.
It is the second such lawsuit filed recently against the Jehovah's Witnesses, officially known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. A similar suit was filed in Concord, N.H., last summer, but has not gone to trial.
"The overwhelming majority of victims never sue and when they do, most are settled quietly out of court with gag orders," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, based in Kansas City, Mo. His organization was founded to help victims of Roman Catholic clergy, but recently has been lending support to members of other Christian denominations.
While such suits are fairly common when it comes to large denominations, there have been relatively few against the Jehovah's Witnesses, a church with roughly 1 million members in the United States, 6 million worldwide.
Erica Rodriguez was born into the faith. When she was a child, her family attended the Othello Spanish Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. It was there, she charges, that she was molested weekly, from age 4 until her family moved when she was 11. The assailant was church elder Manuel Beliz.
Beliz, was convicted of molesting Rodriguez in a trial last summer, and is serving an 11-year term in the Washington State Penitentiary.
After her family moved to Sacramento in 1990, Rodriguez revealed the abuse to her parents, who reported it to the elders of the Las Palmas Congregation, also a Jehovah's Witnesses church.
The suit claims that those elders promised the problem would be handled by the church. It further claims that church elders will investigate such claims only when there are two or more eyewitnesses.
"These sort of closed-off, insular, male-dominated, hierarchical religions have a way of keeping these cases under wraps," said Tim Kosnoff, a Bellevue-based attorney on the case.
Church officials deny that charge.
In an interview from his home in New York on Tuesday, church spokesman J.R. Brown said elders are told to comply with the laws requiring professionals to report all allegations of child abuse.
"It ought to be clear, the church handles all sins and transgressions in house," he said. "If such sins are criminal, then it's up to the police."
Brown said he could not comment specifically on the lawsuit.
Jehovah's Witnesses is an apocalyptic faith founded in Pennsylvania. Followers believe the end of world as we know it will be soon. Individual churches, known as Kingdom Halls, are run by a board of elders, or qualified men selected by the congregation.
Elders are not paid. The only church employees are those who work at church headquarters or other national offices. The structure makes it difficult to tie the actions of an individual or even a congregation to the broader international organization.
Unlike Catholic priests or most Protestant clergy, Jehovah's Witnesses elders are not officially licensed by the church, nor are they trained at any church-run seminary.
Still, they are expected to uphold policies and practices that are instituted at the national level, Kosnoff said.
"They are following the dictates of the national organization," Kosnoff said. "It's those destructive and evil policies that fail to protect children and instead protect the predators."
During the seven years of abuse, Rodriguez says, she was warned by Beliz that she would be shunned by her congregation and the Jehovah's Witnesses church "if she told anyone about the abuse," the suit says.
Brown, the church spokesman, denied that victims are discouraged from reporting abuse or other crimes.
"We make it clear that it is up to the individual whether to report. As you know, many choose not to," he said. "We don't chastise them."
Spokane attorney Richard Eymann, who is on a team of lawyers representing Rodriguez, said there is national interest in the case.
"Organizations that allow their employees or agents to abuse young children -- even worse, try to cover up the conduct through intimidation of the victim -- should be brought to justice," Eymann said.
Another member of the team representing Rodriguez is Jeffrey R. Anderson, a Minneapolis attorney who specializes in church-related sexual abuse cases. He has gotten several multimillion-dollar judgments against religious organizations.
The suit says Rodriguez's mother was sanctioned by the church for reporting her suspicions of Beliz's abuse.
At the same time, elders of the Othello Spanish Congregation spoke on Beliz's behalf when he was sentenced to prison for the criminal conduct.
That pattern, the suit says, shows the Jehovah's Witnesses' "long-standing policy and practice of minimizing, defending and tolerating abuse by congregation" elders.
When the sexual abuse occurred, Washington state had a law requiring the reporting of suspected child abuse to law enforcement authorities.
"None of the elders of the Othello Spanish Congregation reported the suspected abuse of Rodriguez to any designated authority," the suit claims.
Rodriguez and her lawyers are hoping the suit will force the church to change its policies.
"Manuel Beliz has been dealt with," Kosnoff said. "Now we need to deal with the organization that allowed him to commit his crimes by giving him sanctuary."
•Kelly McBride can be reached at (509) 459-5449 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Bill Morlin can be reached at (509) 459-5444 or by e-mail at [email protected].
