Child Sex Abuse Investigators May Probe the Jehovah’s Witnesses

By Ryan Sit
Newsweek
March 8, 2018

http://www.newsweek.com/jehovahs-witnesses-child-sexual-abuse-investigators-allegations-united-kingdom-837351

Independent investigators in the United Kingdom are weighing whether to launch a new investigation into the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.K. after receiving a “considerable number” of abuse allegations.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, or IICSA, a government-sanctioned investigative panel in England and Wales, told Newsweek that it had gotten a “considerable number” of reports from both the public and elected officials about the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.K. A spokesperson told the newspaper the panel would “consider calls for a Jehovah’s Witnesses–specific investigation carefully.”

It was unclear how many reports the watchdog group had received. When contacted by Newsweek, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ public information office did not immediately comment.

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Kathleen Hallisey, a lawyer who brought charges against the Jehovah’s Witnesses for sexual abuse in 2015, said she suspected there are thousands of such cases in the U.K., The Guardian reported.

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to recognize the issue of child abuse in their organization or to create robust safeguarding procedures to protect children,” she said. “An investigation by IICSA into the Jehovah’s Witnesses is an opportunity for the inquiry to effect real change in an organization that refuses to shine a light on child abuse and protect children.”

A man speaks during the annual Jehovah’s Witnesses assembly gathering of 30,000 believers in Villepinte, in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, on on July 22, 2011. An independent investigative panel may launch a probe into the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.K. after it had received a large number of child sexual abuse reports on the church.

News of the possible investigation comes weeks after the nonprofit religious transparency organization Faithleaks leaked 33 letters and internal documents revealing a pattern of sexual abuse by one Jehovah’s Witness member, and the lengths the church went to cover up the scandal.

Those documents detail communications among church leaders and several legal entities—collectively known as Watchtower—between 1999 and 2012. In one letter to Watchtower dated November 14, 1999, the Palmer Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses from Brimfield, Massachusetts, said it had reviewed claims by two women who alleged their father sexually abused them as children. The group found those claims to be true.

“Our impression upon speaking with both girls was similar. That they are both quite rational. It certainly appears that these were real events,” the letter said.

In that case, church leaders pressured one of the accusers not to report the abuse to police. Years later, the church held an in-house trial and briefly excommunicated the father.

That victim was not the only person pressured to remain silent.

In the U.K., several alleged victims had come forward with similar claims in November 2017, according to The Telegraph.

“Frankly, I would equate this to a scandal and a cover-up akin to the Catholic Church,” Hallisey told The Telegraph at the time.