Posts by konceptual99

73

2 witness rule

by punkofnice in

i'm gobsmacked.. the 7 rock star popes in warwick know darned well that the 2 witness rule allows child rapists to get away with their crime.. geoff (whacko jacko) jackson was at the australian royal commission and should have seen first hand what a vile man made law the 2 witness rule is.. my question is, why do they still insist on this pervert protecting rule?.

i know it's a highly controlling cult but still...........................stuff my old boots, mate!.

the above is more a rhetorical question.

konceptual99

I am sure there has been something documented where the org does say that should evidence such as forensics come to light then they would accept that but I can't find it. The example I was thinking of is where an allegation is made, no cong action is taken due to there not being two witnesses but the crime is reported and then the authorities find evidence of abuse and then prosecute. This would be the second witness and then cong action could be taken.

I am sure this has been documented somewhere...

41

Watchtower Loses an Appeal

by TerryWalstrom in

publication court of appeal, fourth appellate district division one state of california osbaldo padron, plaintiff and respondent, v. watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc., defendant and appellant.findingwatchtower has abused the discovery process.

it has zealously advocated its position and lost multiple times.

yet, it cavalierly refuses to acknowledge the consequences of these losses and the validity of the court's orders requiring it to produce documents in response to request number 12. and, in a further act of defiance, watchtower informed the court that it would not comply with the march 25, 2016 order 39 requiring it to produce documents responsive to request number 12. the court, following lopez, supra, 246 cal.app.4th 566, as an incremental step toward terminating sanctions if watchtower persists in its unjustified conduct, imposed monetary sanctions.

konceptual99

It doesn't matter. The existence of such files are verified, the files are soepenable, church privacy is defeated, wt is now losing cases in the Courts.

I demand you tell us what you have done with the real Fisherman

73

2 witness rule

by punkofnice in

i'm gobsmacked.. the 7 rock star popes in warwick know darned well that the 2 witness rule allows child rapists to get away with their crime.. geoff (whacko jacko) jackson was at the australian royal commission and should have seen first hand what a vile man made law the 2 witness rule is.. my question is, why do they still insist on this pervert protecting rule?.

i know it's a highly controlling cult but still...........................stuff my old boots, mate!.

the above is more a rhetorical question.

konceptual99

Hell yeah punk

24

Reveal News Article: Jehovah’s Witnesses double down on Scripture used to ignore abuse by Trey Bundy

by AndersonsInfo in

https://www.revealnews.org/blog/jehovahs-witnesses-double-down-on-scripture-used-to-ignore-abuse/.

jehovah’s witnesses double down on scripture used to ignore abuse.

by trey bundy / november 9, 2017. gary breaux, a senior jehovah's witness official, speaks on the religion’s official internet video channel.

konceptual99

They don't need to scrap the policy. What they choose to do as far as their internal club rules are concerned is up to them. At a high level, the principle of requiring corroborative evidence is a sound one in terms of the execution of justice.

As jwfacts says, they don't actually have to compromise their interpretation of scripture to accommodate more robust procedures when faced with an allegation of child abuse. They just need to modify the policy and the reality is that they have taken some steps to do this.

The utterly bizarre situation is that instead of publicising the policy changes, promoting and reinforcing a culture where elders support the victim and get help from the authorities - something that would help their cause as far the secular authorities are concerned - they instead choose to reiterate their dogmatic view of scripture.

This is why my fear is that whatever the policy changes there will still be a disproportionate risk of these allegations being handled badly since the organisation from the top down simply seems to be reverting to type. Clueless indeed @jwfacts.

41

Watchtower Loses an Appeal

by TerryWalstrom in

publication court of appeal, fourth appellate district division one state of california osbaldo padron, plaintiff and respondent, v. watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc., defendant and appellant.findingwatchtower has abused the discovery process.

it has zealously advocated its position and lost multiple times.

yet, it cavalierly refuses to acknowledge the consequences of these losses and the validity of the court's orders requiring it to produce documents in response to request number 12. and, in a further act of defiance, watchtower informed the court that it would not comply with the march 25, 2016 order 39 requiring it to produce documents responsive to request number 12. the court, following lopez, supra, 246 cal.app.4th 566, as an incremental step toward terminating sanctions if watchtower persists in its unjustified conduct, imposed monetary sanctions.

konceptual99

There goes confidentiality for child molestors if they see those files and now who is next when a Court orders to see anybody's file if wt has a record on anyone. It could be yours.

I doubt anyone is interested in seeing whatever my local cong has written on me, especially since they've not even had a report for over a year.

I, on the other hand, as a father would be very interested to know if any of the members of my local congregation is a paedophile.

73

2 witness rule

by punkofnice in

i'm gobsmacked.. the 7 rock star popes in warwick know darned well that the 2 witness rule allows child rapists to get away with their crime.. geoff (whacko jacko) jackson was at the australian royal commission and should have seen first hand what a vile man made law the 2 witness rule is.. my question is, why do they still insist on this pervert protecting rule?.

i know it's a highly controlling cult but still...........................stuff my old boots, mate!.

the above is more a rhetorical question.

konceptual99

Uh?

73

2 witness rule

by punkofnice in

i'm gobsmacked.. the 7 rock star popes in warwick know darned well that the 2 witness rule allows child rapists to get away with their crime.. geoff (whacko jacko) jackson was at the australian royal commission and should have seen first hand what a vile man made law the 2 witness rule is.. my question is, why do they still insist on this pervert protecting rule?.

i know it's a highly controlling cult but still...........................stuff my old boots, mate!.

the above is more a rhetorical question.

konceptual99

That is arguable. Any accusation of wrong against the church is considered on a case by case basis.

Fair point and the fact the elders put everything past Bethel does mean they could get specific instructions. It's also fair to say that the current guidelines do make statements about ensuring victims are not at further risk.

The reality so far has been that this has not been the case and the WTS has been reticent to be pro-active in any positive sense for decades. I fear the culture is stronger than the words. You also still have a strong bias by elders to ignore their gut feelings and defer to whatever Bethel say. The people that should be determining if an individual poses a risk to an alleged victim or the wider community is not a drone at Bethel or even a local elder. It should be the proper, qualified local authorities.

73

2 witness rule

by punkofnice in

i'm gobsmacked.. the 7 rock star popes in warwick know darned well that the 2 witness rule allows child rapists to get away with their crime.. geoff (whacko jacko) jackson was at the australian royal commission and should have seen first hand what a vile man made law the 2 witness rule is.. my question is, why do they still insist on this pervert protecting rule?.

i know it's a highly controlling cult but still...........................stuff my old boots, mate!.

the above is more a rhetorical question.

konceptual99

Statutory mandatory reporting yes however whilst there are arguments against mandatory reporting, many organisations have implemented a mandatory reporting policy regardless of what the local laws are.

Even if the WTS held back from implementing this themselves they also fall short from any form of pro-active support of the victim. They are simply told to make sure the victim and family are informed they can go to the authorities but given no support to do this. They should be doing everything possible to support the victim and help them get the right help as well as ensure the authorities are able to investigate an allegation so that the risk of leaving a predatory sexual abuser free to do whatever they want is minimised as far as humanly possible.

73

2 witness rule

by punkofnice in

i'm gobsmacked.. the 7 rock star popes in warwick know darned well that the 2 witness rule allows child rapists to get away with their crime.. geoff (whacko jacko) jackson was at the australian royal commission and should have seen first hand what a vile man made law the 2 witness rule is.. my question is, why do they still insist on this pervert protecting rule?.

i know it's a highly controlling cult but still...........................stuff my old boots, mate!.

the above is more a rhetorical question.

konceptual99

At the risk of being really unpopular I think the two witness thing is increasingly a red herring.

In the past there have been countless examples of where the elders have not acted on accusations because of two witnesses not being available. They have also not supported, suggested or taken any other positive action to ensure an accusation is reported to the authorities and in some case have gone so far as colluded to ensure an accusation has been suppressed.

The current guidelines to elders as a result of the ARC and other negative publicity has changed the framework. Elders still will not take congregation action unless they have the evidence of two witnesses. They will now accept the word of a different person or evidence from the authorities as a second witness. They are also instructed to ensure that the victim is clear they can go to the authorities even if the elders cannot take congregation action themselves.

I would agree with those that would suggest this still falls short of what they should be doing in terms of self-imposed mandatory reporting, active support of reporting and so on but is a step in the right direction and should prevent the repetition of these cases where the victim and family have felt it impossible to report an accusation to the authorities.

The two witness rule still applies to congregation action and this certainly leaves a risk that a perpetrator may still be free to access other vulnerable people if the elders take no action to monitor their behaviour. There is still a risk that an accusation may remain unreported if the victim or family decide not to report it themselves. There are still plenty of areas that the WTS should feel ashamed about in terms of their protection policy however I think there has been steps taken to separate the two witness rule and congregation judicial action from the secular side of things and that criticism of the policy should be focused onto those areas that still remain astonishingly weak and out of step with current best practice.

110

Exjw activists protesting inside a Kingdom Hall today!

by Crazyguy in

spoonfed nomore, has uploaded a video on his youtube site, of exjw activists protesting inside a kingdom hall during this sunday meeting.

several people speak out.

if some one can put a link on here that would be awesome, i can’t figure out how to do it with an i phone.

konceptual99

The reality is that JWs simply are not *that* extreme. Of course it is possible to highlight a number of issues but you don't go to a meeting and hear outrageous hate speech, violent oppression of people, highly visible sexism and so on. To most people Witnesses are essentially a slightly odd but harmless religion. Most people are happy to allow Witnesses to exercise their freedom to worship as they see fit.

Even the child abuse issues are not enough to cause a major upset, after all many organisations have historic child abuse issues and it's certainly not something that is endemic within the organisation or intrinsic to a Witness way of life.

The protesters therefore are as irrelevant to the masses as the Witnesses themselves, if not more so since small scale protests and disruption can easily be assumed to be the work of those with a chip on their shoulder, a petty axe to grind.

I respect everyone's right to work out their opposition to the WTS in whatever way they see fit just so long as it legal however there direct activism such as this has, as far as I can tell, a zero percent success rate in changing anyone's mind.

The mass media will only be interested in the WTS if a serious scandal comes to light. The most productive method of getting people to stop being Witnesses is through the internet and having material out there that the questioning person comes across and that strikes a chord with them.