shortly after rising this morning (monday 20th november 2017), i checked the news on the bbc’s teletext service.
in the uk (page 1010) the following had top billing…... “jehovah’s witnesses ‘covered up’ abuse”.
“children who were sexually abused by jehovah’s witnesses were allegedly told by the organization not to report it.. victims from across the uk told the bbc they were routinely abused and that the religion’s own rules protected perpetrators.. one child abuse lawyer believes there could be thousands of victims across the country who have not come forward.. the organization said it did not ‘shield’ abusers and any suggestion of a cover-up was ‘absolutely false’.”.
Yes Darkspilver, analogue teletext was closed down years ago (BBC CEEFAX). Digital teletext continues! Piece I quoted was from UK teletext news section - page 1010. Now removed due to incursion of other news items.
BBC continuing to broadcast short synopsis of the "cover up" during regular half hour cycles in its 24 hr news channel however.
shortly after rising this morning (monday 20th november 2017), i checked the news on the bbc’s teletext service.
in the uk (page 1010) the following had top billing…... “jehovah’s witnesses ‘covered up’ abuse”.
“children who were sexually abused by jehovah’s witnesses were allegedly told by the organization not to report it.. victims from across the uk told the bbc they were routinely abused and that the religion’s own rules protected perpetrators.. one child abuse lawyer believes there could be thousands of victims across the country who have not come forward.. the organization said it did not ‘shield’ abusers and any suggestion of a cover-up was ‘absolutely false’.”.
Shortly after rising this morning (Monday 20th November 2017), I checked the news on the BBC’s teletext service. In the UK (page 1010) the following had top billing…..
“Jehovah’s Witnesses ‘covered up’ abuse”
“Children who were sexually abused by Jehovah’s Witnesses were allegedly told by the organization not to report it.
Victims from across the UK told the BBC they were routinely abused and that the religion’s own rules protected perpetrators.
One child abuse lawyer believes there could be thousands of victims across the country who have not come forward.
The organization said it did not ‘shield’ abusers and any suggestion of a cover-up was ‘absolutely false’.”
I then turned to the BBC online news to find this more detailed account…..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42025255
I know that there are a few individual elders in the UK who are also professionals and who are registered with a professional body as legally required to continue practicing their profession. I have in mind, those who are health professionals. Without exception, there is a moral and ethical expectation that such a health professional will follow established guidelines in reporting any type of child abuse to the requisite department of the local authority – be it social services, or police. An elder who is such a health professional and who yields to the requirements of their esteemed eminences - the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses - to confine their reporting to the legal/service desk will likely be putting their professional registration in jeopardy in consequence. Yet, if such an elder lives up to his professional ethics / code of conduct and involves local authority departments, he will likely be deleted as an elder by the representatives of the Britain Branch of the WTBTS (aka The Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, aka the International Bible Students Association). Such an elder is thus in a “double-bind” (Bateson – 1956) or “loose loose” situation in that he will likely place his professional registration in jeopardy or his position as an elder in jeopardy. The latter scenario is now clearly established following the Britain Branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses having sent three of its sentinels to Eire resulting in two elders being deleted (including the CoBE). That they sent their own sentinels rather than issuing instructions to trusted individuals in Eire is highly significant and demonstrates no tolerance for elders who elect to follow their conscience.
It could be argued that more is now expected of health professionals than formerly in that the safeguarding provisions were, until recently, focused on children and vulnerable adults. Vulnerable has now been removed so that anyone who has been abused can benefit from safeguarding provisions – not just children or those hitherto regarded as vulnerable.
So what can you do?
You can just hope that you are never presented with a situation of abuse. However, you would be well advised to reflect on the response of the Britain Branch to elders in Eire who followed their conscience. Hardly Christlike! Not at all loving!
You could make a tactical withdrawal from the role of being an elder. Family pressures, personal problems perhaps? You will receive a visit if you withdraw from the role however (see your Shepherding the Flock text).
If you feel unable to withdraw, then you could consider obtaining 3rd party indemnity insurance. This will likely not protect you against your professional registration being jeopardised, but might provide you with protection if you are sued for not disclosing abuse to the local authority. This protection is not guaranteed however. You would need to check the provision of the indemnity insurance. Wilful, planned non-disclosure may not be insurable in which case your estate and your profession could be at risk and your only option may be to mitigate risk by withdrawing from the elder role as already mentioned. Inadvertent failure to disclose may be covered by insurance – again, it’s best to check.
Are you reaching out?
If you are, then bear in mind what deep risks you may be facing as a result of your required deference to their esteemed eminences - the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you are a health professional, or other professional which involves registration with an ethical/regulatory body in order to practice, then give reaching out a very wide berth!
Even if you are not a registered professional, your adhering to the requirements of the Governing Body as outlined above, could lead to you placing your estate in jeopardy should you fail to disclose child abuse to the local authority.
PS: More coverage of the "cover up" on BBCs main news.
i think with all the child molestation lawsuits the watchtower corporation is and has been hit with is the main reason for all the prime property sell off recently.
the silent lambs protest back in 2001, and the dateline prime time expose probably was the death knell for the watchtower's hey day in brooklyn.. their membership is drying up, young people are leaving in droves, the situation is no doubt far worse than the annually published yearbook figures show and so they ceased it's publication permanently.
and those left remaining are experiencing a huge grab of money from their congregations accounts and now are required to make pledges about how much they can contribute which i think is a last ditch effort by the governing body to squeeze more money out of the rank and file watchtower indoctrinated drones.. i think all this is happening because even those still loyally attending are hearing reports of these tremendous pay out that the watchtower is making to the victims of their self serving policies that put young ones at great risks so that even the rank and file don't want to contribute to pay court costs and so are withholding giving contributions to a very great extent.
In my congregation, there are at least nine persons that I know of who have ceased giving any contributions. Of those nine, three hitherto gave to the congregation and the WT society. The overall amount given to the congregation is reduced such that it has to draw on its savings to meet expenditures. Its savings however, was reduced from £50,000 to £30,000 following the branch suggestion of donating the £20,000 "held by the society".
latest perspective of the san diego reader on wts loosing its $4000 per day sanction appeal.... https://m.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/nov/10/ticker-jehovahs-witnesses-withheld-info-4000-day/?templates=mobile.
Latest perspective of the San Diego Reader on WTs loosing its $4000 per day sanction appeal...
i happened to come across a time article in 2008. it was basically talking about the high turnover in american faiths.
it mentioned the jdubs and highlighted the following point.. an even more extreme example of what might be called "masked churn" is the relatively tiny jehovah's witnesses, with a turnover rate of about two-thirds.
that means that two-thirds of the people who told pew they were raised jehovah's witnesses no longer are — yet the group attracts roughly the same number of converts.
The aberrant behaviour of many a BoE is - I'm sure - a significant factor. Very few are in possession of people skills / emotional intelligence. Those who are tend to find a way of stepping down from the role.
i put this under the "scandal" section because it is both a scandal how the wtbts can flaunt its evil hypocrisy and an even bigger scandal that the u.n. and governments in general turn a blind eye to the treatment inflicted on anyone who questions or challenges the org's teachings and practices.
"the right to change religions is supported by the universal declaration of human rights, which the united nations has called “the foundation of international human rights law.”......of course, these rights carry with them the obligation to respect the rights of others both to maintain their beliefs and to reject ideas that they disagree with.
https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/change-religion/.
Oh yes! They are truly mendacious. They are condemned by their own bible which says at Psalm 12:2...
"Untruth they keep speaking one to the other; With a smooth lip they keep speaking even with a double heart."
Their "pushing ahead" to project themselves into congregations is revelatory of this and their lack of competence.
at the agm on oct 7th, his eminence miserable morris iii stated the jw yearbook would cease publication and that the annual report would instead be released via the "about us" menu in the jw website.
related to this, the "life and ministry meeting workbook - january 2018 (living as christians)" outlines the following item to be considered jan 1-7 2018...."annual service report: (15 min.
) talk by an elder.
Hello George One Time:
You might well be right and the item could be intended for the local congregation. However, in that the script in the Jan 2018 MWB specifically mentions... "after reading the letter from the branch office regarding the annual service report"... I was rather assuming the reference was strongly alluding to the world wide annual report.
If we look at this year's January MWB it states.....
"Local Needs: (15 min.) As an option, discuss the lessons learned from the Yearbook. (yb16 140-142)"
So they did give the choice of local needs or use of the year book. I note too, that on many occasions the GB hijacks the "Local Needs" for their own message so that it is in reality not a local need. Thus, I strongly suspect that the emphasis in Jan 2018 will be on the world wide (emasculated) annual report.
at the agm on oct 7th, his eminence miserable morris iii stated the jw yearbook would cease publication and that the annual report would instead be released via the "about us" menu in the jw website.
related to this, the "life and ministry meeting workbook - january 2018 (living as christians)" outlines the following item to be considered jan 1-7 2018...."annual service report: (15 min.
) talk by an elder.
At the AGM on Oct 7th, his eminence Miserable Morris III stated the JW yearbook would cease publication and that the annual report would instead be released via the "about us" menu in the JW website. Related to this, the "Life and Ministry Meeting Workbook - January 2018 (LIVING AS CHRISTIANS)" outlines the following item to be considered Jan 1-7 2018....
"Annual Service Report: (15 min.) Talk by an elder. After reading the letter from the branch office regarding the annual service report, interview publishers, selected in advance, who had outstanding experiences in the ministry during the past year."
It struck me that this is very advanced notice of a WT letter being issued. I can't remember such notice before.
These points arise in my mind immediately...
1. The wording of the above item suggests the annual report will have been published online prior to Jan 2017.
2. Will the annual report be lesser in detail compared with the workbook? Will the letter from WT excuse such as a further example of "keeping a simple eye" and/or augment the absence of a 2018 yearbook similarly?
3. I suspect that the interviewing of publishers who "had outstanding experiences" is designed to distract from the negative growth in the organisation. So it's local experiences which hold primacy! Never mind the negative growth. I suspect the GB will be trying to emasculate the negative growth.
4. The interviewees are to be "selected in advance" rather than broad impromptu participation via raising of hands. So the item is to be carefully managed. Hard to do a worse job than that done by Miserable Morris at the AGM however.
I do hope this latest mess by the GB will cause more JWs to reflect and begin the process of disengagement.
a friend of mine has contacts to a family with several circuit overseers and special pioneers.
they have good connections to bethel.. he told me that the latest rumor from bethel states that the cos should be abolished in their present form.
they have also recently begun to take cos back to bethel.. over the same channel i have already heard of the car fleet program and that the dos should be abolished.. has anyone else already heard of it?
The decisions revealed at the AGM perhaps lend credance to the subject of this thread. The impression is of a need to drastically curtail expenditure. COs represent a significant expenditure.
The GB has been ruthless so far in making savings - elimination of many bethalites, special pioneers, DOs, sale of kingdom hells. This ruthlessness will likely continue. The GB is now blind to the message of 1 Cor 13 - "love is kind" and are a bunch of self-appointed and cold hearted overlords who worship the "obese altar of the $". So eliminating COs may come to be. They will surely have discussed it as an option. If they are reluctant, then the deteriorating state of accounts may force their hands.
There are many ambitious elders who would take delight in the role of standing in as a CO on a temporary basis and thus help "kingdom resources" go further. The GB could portray such a change as a further example of "keeping a simple eye" as they like to say. Just add a bit more to the syllabus of the kingdom elders' school - that'll do it!
i've picked up from several replies to posts here that the org has stopped using the term "worldly" as it applies to people.
this must have happened after i left.
would someone be so kind as to explain the "rationale" behind this shift?
They may have stopped using the term "worldly" in literature as others have observed. However, there is nothing published - that I'm aware of - which gives counsel against using the term in day to day speech. I heard it used only last week.
What I would say, is that the printed language used by the governing body is even worse than their choice of "worldly" hitherto. Consider the language employed in the January 2018 study Watchtower for instance, which is truly egregious....
"Likewise, many of us live and work with those who are infected with attitudes and characteristics that run counter to godly qualities.... We will also see how we can protect ourselves from being infected..."
So now, non JWs are infected individuals who spread contagion from which JWs need protection. Not a Christian way to see others. More than anything else, this is a revelation of the dark thinking of the governing body and its writing committee. Far far removed from anything which could be considered as even remotely edifying!
