Child abuse inquiry: Jehovah’s Witnesses never reported offenders

By Rick Morton
Australian
July 27, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/child-abuse-inquiry-jehovahs-witnesses-never-reported-offenders/story-fngburq5-1227458506467

Jehovah’s Witnesses destroyed notes about child sexual abuse to stop them falling into the wrong hands and to “protect their wives”, a church elder has told the royal commission.

The opening day of the inquiry into abuse within the controversial church has heard how more than 1000 cases of child abuse since 1950 were dealt with internally and never reported to police.

It has also heard that victims were made to confront their abusers and left feeling as if they had sinned.

Max Horley was an elder for the Jehovah’s Witness congregation in Narrogin, Western Australia, in the late 1980s when a woman, known as BCB, was interviewed about her relationship with another church elder, Bill Neill.

In evidence on Monday, BCB told how Neill, who is dead, groomed her from the age of 15. He would tongue kiss her and spy on her when she was in the shower at his home.

When the abuse was revealed, she was asked to attend meetings where on one occasion the abuser joked about what he had done.

When commission chair Peter McClellan asked Mr Horley if he had taken notes of his conversations with BCB, he said he may have but did not have them now, and they would probably have been destroyed. “We do not like to keep any notes outside of what is kept on file in the congregation,” Mr Horley said.

He said the file notes were brief, and they and others were destroyed because they did not want them to “fall into the wrong hands”.

Asked to define what the wrong hands were, he replied: “We do not want our wives knowing our stuff — what sort of things we are dealing with.”

He also said they destroyed notes because they wanted to limit the number of people in the congregation who knew about the abuse. When pressed on why this was done, Mr Horley said: “Just to protect them, I guess.”

He said it was not the church’s practice to report serious allegations of sexual abuse to police.

The elders would go for advice to the branch if they had any hesitation about how to proceed “legally and scripturally”.

Mr Horley said he thought they would advise the person who was making the allegation to go to police if they wished.

BCB, who is now 47, told the commission she was never advised to go to police, the purpose of the several meetings with elders was never explained to her, and she was never offered any support. On one occasion, her husband was warned by another elder about dragging the church’s name through the mud.

Jehovahs never reported abusers

At least 125 allegations of child sex abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses did not proceed to further investigation because the church’s internal practices required at least two observers of the abuse to come forward, the royal commission will hear.

And of the 1006 alleged offenders identified by the church since 1950 not a single one was reported to the police or other “secular authorities”.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse began its new study of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sydney today and will hear evidence that the Church believes the best defence against child sex abuse are “loving and protective parents”.

The commission will hear that the most severe punishment inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses for abuse of this kind is to be “ disfellowshipped”, the equivalent of being excommunicated in which no member of the church is to contact the person kicked out.

Since 1950 401 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse were disfellowshipped and 190 were reproved, which means they can remain in the church.

Of the 401 kicked out of the church, 230 were later reinstated, 35 on more than one occasion.

The hearing continues.