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Jehovah’s Witness ‘ministerial servant’ held in high regard by congregation while assaulting daughters
By Janet Fife-Yeomans
A TEENAGE girl prayed to Jehovah to put angels around her bed and stop her father from sexually assaulting her but no-one listened, she told the sex abuse royal commission today. While the rest of the Jehovah’s Witness branch held her father in high regard as a “ministerial servant”, he was flogging her at home until she bled and had sex with her and three of her sisters, the commission was told. His second eldest daughter, now aged 47, said that when she tried to kill herself over the abuse, she was chastised by the church because it was seen as being a sin against Jehovah - while her father was stood down for some time but then accepted back with open arms by the congregation. The woman, who cannot be named, said that one of the elders of her church branch in rural Queensland told her she could not report her father to the police because “you will bring reproach upon Jehovah’s name and you will be disfellowshipped”. A TEENAGE girl prayed to Jehovah to put angels around her bed and stop her father from sexually assaulting her but no-one listened, she told the sex abuse royal commission today. While the rest of the Jehovah’s Witness branch held her father in high regard as a “ministerial servant”, he was flogging her at home until she bled and had sex with her and three of her sisters, the commission was told. His second eldest daughter, now aged 47, said that when she tried to kill herself over the abuse, she was chastised by the church because it was seen as being a sin against Jehovah - while her father was stood down for some time but then accepted back with open arms by the congregation. The woman, who cannot be named, said that one of the elders of her church branch in rural Queensland told her she could not report her father to the police because “you will bring reproach upon Jehovah’s name and you will be disfellowshipped”. She said she was taught that the police were “bad people” like people in Soddom and Gomorah. She said she finally quit the church in around 2000 because she could no longer stand the hypocrisy. She reported her father to the police and he was convicted of assaulting her and jailed for three years in 2004. The commission sitting in Sydney is investigating how the secretive Jehovah’s Witness church dealt with child sex abuse and why it did not report one instance to police. After her father had first tried to rape her aged about 18, the woman said she felt helpless. “I used to pray to Jehovah to put angels around my bed to stop father from coming to me but he didn’t help me and my father didn’t stop,” she said. When she finally reported her father’s abuse to church elders, she had to be interviewed by three elders and have her father in the room. Then she learned that two other sisters, aged seven and five, had also been assaulted but the church elders would not listen to the abuse against her sisters because they were too young. “Because the elders were all male and all were friends of my father’s, I was reluctant to speak to them about what had happened,” she said. “I never felt as though the elders believed me. In fact they seemed incensed by what I was saying and took the allegations personally. “At times it felt as though they were getting off on what I was telling them.” She said that when she told her mother, her mother had said her father had sexually assaulted one of her sisters when she was two but she thought he had stopped because he had become a Jehovah’s Witness. Then she learned that two other sisters, aged seven and five, had also been assaulted but the church elders would not listen to the abuse against her sisters because they were too young. During one meeting with church elders, the woman said her father accused her of seducing him. “At the time I said to my father ‘you’re my father, you’re big and fat, why would I seduce you’,” she said. He had shouted out that he would kill her. He has since left her mother for another woman, she said. The first involved uncleanness which includes “intentional momentary touching of sexual parts or caressing of breasts” and heavy petting. Previously, the royal commission heard details on the church’s severity table of sinning. Secretly watching a teenage girl showering and “inadvertently” touching her breasts on several occasions as she was tongue-kissed goodnight did not constitute either “uncleanness” or a case to report to the police, a former church official Doug Jackson told the child sex abuse royal commission today. Mr Jackson, who investigated the allegations of abuse made by a young woman in 1991 about her local church elder, admitted today that he had been wrong to report it as uncleanness at the time. It should have been loose conduct. The victim, now 47, has cried as she told the commission how she felt brainwashed and betrayed by the church after reporting the abuse by the late elder Bill Neill when she stayed at his house in Narrogin, southwest Western Australia. It was investigated at the time in 1991 by two other elders — Mr Jackson and Max Horley — and Mr Neill was found to have been guilty of “uncleanness” and was stood down as an elder until this “died down” and he could be reappointed, the commission has been told. Mr Jackson, 71, a Jehovah’s Witness all his life, was taken through the church’s document “Uphold Jehovah’s righteousness” in the commission sitting in Sydney. The document states there are a number of crimes forbidden in the scriptures. Under those involving fornication and porneia, there are three categories. Mr Jackson said that he could not recall being told that Neill had tongue-kissed the girl every night however she has told the commission that she did tell the church elders about that. The first involved uncleanness which includes “intentional momentary touching of sexual parts or caressing of breasts” and heavy petting. The second is loose conduct — “a shocking flagrant disregard for Jehovah’s moral standards” — which includes “fondling of breasts, explicitly immoral proposal, showing pornography to a child, voyeurism and indecent exposure.” The third is porneia, a Greek term which covers the immoral use of genitals “of at least one human” and includes “fornication and other forms of immorality including oral sex, anal sex and mutual masturbation”. The commission has heard that the church failed to report any of the 1006 recorded allegations of child sexual assault since 1950 to the police, instead dealing with them under Biblical standards. When he was interviewed in 1991, Neill had admitted that he had secretly watched the teenage girl, a close friend of his daughter’s, in the shower but said that he had touched her breasts at night through her bedclothes only “inadvertently”. Mr Jackson said that he could not recall being told that Neill had tongue-kissed the girl every night however she has told the commission that she did tell the church elders about that. Commissioner Justice Peter McClellan put it to Mr Jackson that in his report at the time, he stated that Neill had committed “uncleanness” on several occasions. Justice McClellan: “Now one can understand an accident?” Mr Jackson: “Yes.” Justice McClellan: “But it’s difficult isn’t it, if you’ve got several occasions?” Mr Jackson: “Yes, yes. That’s why I say of the wording of (the report), I would probably word it different.” He said that with hindsight he would have called Neill’s behaviour “loose conduct”. The hearing in Sydney continues.
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