Judge Critical of Church in Handling Child Abuse Claims

By Charles Thomson
Yellow Advertiser
September 27, 2012

http://www.yellowad.co.uk/news.cfm?id=33677&headline=Judge%20critical%20of%20church%20in%20handling%20child%20abuse%20claims

A JUDGE has criticised a Christian church for its handling of a child abuse allegation during the 1970s.

A hearing at Basildon Crown Court last week revealed that ‘elders’ of the Jehovah’s Witnesses knew a teenage member had molested a child.

Although the church imposed sanctions, it did not notify police and the man went on to molest another young girl during his mid 20s.

Barry Snow, 51, of St Lawrence Gardens, in Leigh-on-Sea, was convicted of nine counts of sexual abuse alleged to have taken place between the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He was found to have molested a girl under the age of 10 between late 1977 and 1978, when he was aged 17 and 18, and then abused another girl between 1983 and 1986.

The court was told that the parents of Snow’s victim had informed the church of the first abuse pre-1980. Snow confessed his first offence to the church, but the officials there never informed the police.

In court, Snow twice said church elders had known of the pre-1980 molestation and named one of them as former Benfleet elder Laurie Russell, who is since believed to have died.

Snow said the church had imposed sanctions on him, but he could not remember what they had been.

Prosecutors said Snow not only went on to abuse another victim, but the abuse escalated from touching to digital penetration. The church had no knowledge of allegations made by the second victim.

Before sentencing Snow, Judge Jonathan Black criticised the church’s handling of the first case.

He said: “When your abuse of [the girl] came to light, her father took you to see an elder of the church.

“You admitted to him what you had been doing and the church then provided you with counselling and imposed sanctions.

“It is a matter of some concern that like many other such incidents where a church intervenes in these matters, action was taken against the perpetrator but little support or help was provided to the victim of your offences. Whatever sanctions were imposed, they did not work.”

Snow, who remains a member of the church, pleaded guilty to abusing the first victim but denied molesting the second.

However, jurors convicted him of abusing the second victim after a trial last month.

Accompanied to court last Wednesday by two church elders, Snow was sentenced to a three-year probation order and told to attend the Thames Valley Sex Offenders Programme.

He was also handed a Sexual Offences Prevention Order banning him from unsupervised contact with girls under 16 and told to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years.

A representative from the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ UK headquarters challenged the judge’s criticism and insisted the elders had acted properly and lawfully.

Spokesman Tony Brace said: “We’ve taken counsel’s advice and we have been told that there are very, very limited obligations to report crime.

“We hate child abuse. We abhor it. It is totally incompatible with our Christian beliefs. If somebody comes forward with allegations, they have total freedom to report them. We’ll be totally supportive of it.

“But my understanding is that there’s no obligation for someone who is confided in to report crime.”

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