Australian Royal Commission - What can the Governing Body do?

by Listener in

as far as i am aware, it's not within the power of the australian royal commission to call as a witness a non-australian.

it is confined to dealing with the jws and child abuse as it is handled within australia.

it is clear from the testimonies so far that it is the branch office that gives the elders direction as prescribed ultimately by the governing body.. there are two witnesses who have been called up to attend the rc from the branch office in sydney, one is rodney spinks from the service desk and the other is vincent o'toole, overseer of the legal department.

snare&racket

You are forgetting the JW mindset....

"Satan's world gave US advice on how to run the organisation!"

It won't happen.

10

How long will all the confidential material be available?

by C0ntr013r in

this is certainly a gold mine of information:.

http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/exhibits/636f01a5-50db-4b59-a35e-a24ae07fb0ad/case-study-29,-july-2015,-sydney.

http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/636f01a5-50db-4b59-a35e-a24ae07fb0ad/case-study-29,-july-2015,-sydney.

snare&racket

This will contribute to a powerful documentary one day, especially as now the elders book and letters were made public, they can be reported on.

Archive, archive, archive! The lies and the evidence have arrived!

104

Do you feel vindicated by the exposure of the WT Society in Australia? It seems like a feeding frenzy on here! I love it. You?

by Wasanelder Once in

are you pleased with the exposure of the society in australia?

do you feel personally vindicated by it?

do you think it gives you credibility with others now that all the things you said were going on, actually are documented?

snare&racket

I wouldn't have left the JW's had I not know for sure it was all lies, yet 25 years as a JW shows how fallible we can be. To sit and watch this is very empowering, we were right to leave, I don't feel ashamed as I did when seeing such reporting whilst a JW, I feel no urge to look for defences and loopholes in the testimony and evidence in order to appease my doubts and concerns. The eldears look like simpletons and rarely even comprehend the question they are being asked. Certainly they have no understanding of the commissions goal in looking at the 'judicial system' within the religion with the aim to see if it is dangerous, the whole thing is abhorrent and there is no doubt it feels good to have left it behind,

For me, the recurring thoughts are centred on respect for Barbara Anderson and the steps she made. I wonder how far behind we would be without her and silent lambs. 15 years ago she initiated this huge exposure and I can't imagine how necessary it was for those that have suffered sexual abuse in the religion that simply didn't care, wasn't allowed to care! Being a JW was hard enough, imagine suffering in the hands of judicial elders also,

What angers me the most is their deceit, every time it comes up that they 'counselled' the abused on discussing the absuse with members of the congregation, we all have no doubts at all what that refers to. I have been a part of such an elders meeting and privelages were taken off the abused because they had discussed it with friends. This is no loving or caring arrangement, it is aggressive and tactical in order to gag the abused. The concern has always been for the brand Jehovah's Witness and nothing more. Proof of this, is that after 100 years of lies, deceit, theological and financial scandals and worst of all rampant child abuse, the brand has now changed.... JW.ORG

15

Child abuse a sin not a crime to JW's

by snare&racket in

jw
friends

this australian investigation is astounding to watch.. the elders clearly don't see child abuse as criminal, if a jw confessed to murder, the police would immediately be called.

yet child rape is a spiritual issue..... ridiculous.. this is what happens when 7 window cleaners lead a bunch of dangerously loyal, ignorant middle aged men ...... in managing 7 million people..

snare&racket

Just finished watching them all......

I'm astounded and ashamed.

15

Child abuse a sin not a crime to JW's

by snare&racket in

jw
friends

this australian investigation is astounding to watch.. the elders clearly don't see child abuse as criminal, if a jw confessed to murder, the police would immediately be called.

yet child rape is a spiritual issue..... ridiculous.. this is what happens when 7 window cleaners lead a bunch of dangerously loyal, ignorant middle aged men ...... in managing 7 million people..

snare&racket

This Australian investigation is astounding to watch.

The elders clearly don't see child abuse as criminal, if a JW confessed to murder, the police would immediately be called. Yet child rape is a spiritual issue..... Ridiculous.

This is what happens when 7 window cleaners lead a bunch of dangerously loyal, ignorant middle aged men ...... In managing 7 million people.

40

Is the two-witness rule really unreasonable?

by stillin in

i'm picturing a situation in which a savvy 12 year old doesn't like the house rules that mom's new husband has put into place.

or something along that line.

i can certainly agree that protection of children is paramount, but who protects the real victim in those cases?

snare&racket

I'm amazed an adult with intelligence is asking this.

18

Gay times at Brooklyn Bethel

by oppostate in

leo greenlees and percy chapman have been exposed as practicing a gay lifestyle while serving at the world head quarters of the watchtower religion.. in this photo greenlees is at the left with glen how to his right and then nathan knorr who has chapman to his right.

i've seen this photo before many times.

it's in jim pentons book, but i never noticed greenlees left hand is holding how's right at his bottocks.. quite the gay times at bethel i'd say.. .

snare&racket

Bearing in mind homosexuality is normal, it shouldn't be a surprise. I don't like it when homosexuality in the JW's is treated like a dirty secret.

It was a world when nature was denied in exchange for loyalty to 7 men we would never even meet,

Homosexuality at bethel doubtless happened and happens at the same rate non married heterosexual sex did/does also.

Dont get me wrong, I don't detect and homophobia in your posts, but I think we need to treat it with less finger pointing and ooooooh's and aaaaaah's.

if they did have consensual sex, good on them! Go for it you beautiful gay dudes!

...,you can see why they claimed I was gay when I left,,,,, but In reality I just get annoyed at anything that artificially separates one human from another, be it race, colour, culture, style, class, wealth, education or sexual preference.

Homosexuality in the Jw's is NOT a dirty secret, it's normal behaviour, let's treat it like it, especially when the organisation has some horrendous dirty secrets that are life shattering, illegal, immoral and evidence of their core values,

22

Sad about the past

by Gorbatchov in

jw
friends

today i feel deep sad memories in my brain.. visiting bookstudy with my parents, doing my best giving answers at 7 years old.. doing fieldservice every weekend and on an evening.. i could write so much story's about it.. we believed from our hart and listened to what the organisation told us.. it makes me sad, what a scam it became.. today i can't stand it.. i can cry about it.

.

gorby.

snare&racket

It's natural to feel stung having been conned. It's natural to feel pain after such loss. It's natural to want to cry when realising we experienced what most thankfully will not, but leaves us asking why?

But Gorby my pal, my buddy, my man.... We got out. That, statistically makes us some lucky mother-duckers...

Quacking hell, it doesn't erase what we had to endure, but it makes us the right side of the fence...TODAY.

Gorby I have these days too, I feel for you as they are not pleasant. But by far, the average day is us getting up, going to work, getting on with life, forgetting the chains that once tied us down,

Constant studying of shallow, ignorant, controlling literature.

Years of repetitive meetings with developments and no intellectual or spiritual satisfaction,

No free thought, heart or mind.

No right to ask, question and never, never, never allowed to doubt.

A lifetime of blunted emotions and biological wants, the ignoring of nature.

The shunning and heartless punishment for nothing more than normality.

Hours, days, months, years going door to door with a very defensive version of our beliefs, sanitised for public consumption.

It was decades of dark turmoil, ignorance and hunger for a refreshing source of information, answers and logic. It was decades of emotional torture. It was decades of unnatural, unhealthy, dictatorial, unquestionable loyalty to an ORGANISATION.

It's normal to look back and feel pain for all this, it's normal to look back and think of the good times and good people we miss.

Whether this comforts or pains you Gorby, the religion we were in simply no longer exists. New name, new leaders, new doctrines, new hopes, Jesus Christ on a bike they even have a new bible!

We value you here Gorby, we are glad to have you as one of us, we are lucky.

We here at this site and sites like it, are the emergency crew escorting and embracing those leaving a burning down. toxic, dangerous, building. A building rife with unnatural control, financial greed, prophetic failures, rampant paedophilia, and oxygen sucking doctrines and beliefs.

They and we need you here, doing what you do..... We all need each other here doing this,

25

New BBC article on JW abuse

by snare&racket in

jw
friends

is religion doing enough to root out abuse?.

he would go upstairs, on the premise that he was saying a prayer with his niece, then sexually abuse her.

mark sewell was sentenced to 14 years in prisonafterwards, the elders told her that as it was only her account against that of sewell, nothing more could be done.

snare&racket

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33609927

Is religion doing enough to root out abuse?

He would go upstairs, on the premise that he was saying a prayer with his niece, then sexually abuse her.

Now in her 30s, Karen wasn't understood when she first told her parents what her uncle, Mark Sewell, was doing.

Sewell was also the son of a trusted older member of the local Jehovah's Witnesses congregation, known as an elder.

Christian churches, as well as other religions, have faced claims of child abuse.

But what is striking about the Jehovah's Witnesses is their explicit policy of dealing with abuse in-house.

Because of their practice of following the Bible literally, they insist there must be two witnesses to a crime, often not the case in child abuse cases.

However, in Karen's case a second witness did come forward: Wendy, a family friend and fellow member of the Barry congregation in south Wales. She had been raped by the same man.

When she reported the crime to elders, Wendy was made to describe it in minute detail to a group of older men.

Later, she had to give her account again in the same room as Sewell.

Afterwards, the elders told her that as it was only her account against that of Sewell, nothing more could be done.

This bringing together of the accused and the accuser in a "judicial committee" is a common feature of Jehovah's Witnesses' justice.

Karen, still a teenager at the time, was put through the process.

Reluctance to co-operate

The elders also ruled that their separate accusations didn't constitute the required two witnesses.

Despite a pattern of predatory sexual behaviour, it took more than two decades to bring Wendy and Karen's abuser to justice.

He is now serving a 14-year prison sentence.

His punishment from the Jehovah's Witnesses? There wasn't one.

Even when the case came to court, the organisation was reluctant to co-operate.

Karen's father, John Viney, who was also an elder in the Barry congregation, says that elders who knew of Sewell's conduct and were asked to give statements or evidence in court did not want to get involved.

In a programme for Radio 4's The Report, we have identified this lack of co-operation in several other similar cases.

Confidential documents from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Britain - the official name for the Jehovah's Witnesses - that we have seen are explicit about the best way to deal with such matters being within the congregation.

Nowhere in the hundreds of pages we have seen are elders told that they must go to the police, even if the perpetrator confesses, unless state or national law makes it mandatory to report such allegations.

The Jehovah's Witnesses' UK leadership declined to talk to us for the programme.

In a statement, they said they were appealing against a recent High Court rulingin the UK that awarded substantial damages against the organisation for failing to protect a child from sexual abuse by a paedophile.

Their statement also insists that the organisation does take child abuse extremely seriously.

Karen Morgan and Wendy are now pursuing a civil claim against the organisation, hoping that further financial penalty may force the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses to change its policies.

For both of them, what made it even harder was the sense that belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses was part of an all-encompassing lifestyle, with members encouraged to socialise and marry within the group.

The organisation has some eight million members around the world, but as Karen found to her cost, those who decide to have a boyfriend or girlfriend who is not a member may find themselves "disfellowshipped" or shunned.

Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only religious organisation to try to deal with allegations of sexual abuse in-house.

Growing awareness

For many decades, that was the preferred method of the Roman Catholic Church, which has since reformed its child safeguarding policies following numerous court cases in the US and Europe against priests for the sexual abuse of children.

Other churches have also tightened up their child safeguarding policies, with the Methodist Church conducting its own recent inquiry into abuse allegations dating back to 1950.

That inquiry has led to calls for the Church of England to hold a fresh internal inquiry of its own, separately from the overarching national public inquiry that has just begun, and from the investigation it published in 2010, which critics termed inadequate.

However, it is the more closed religious communities and new religious movements where it remains hardest for the victims of such abuse to speak out and gain access to secular justice, although awareness of the issue is growing.

Only this month, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish scholar from Manchester - who fled to Israel after he was exposed as a paedophile - was jailed for 13 years.

Karen Morgan said the church offered no help when she reported the abuse

From when Karen Morgan was 12, until she was well into her teens, she was sexually abused by her uncle - a ministerial servant with the Jehovah's Witnesses.