CALIFORNIA
San Francisco Chronicle
Demian Bulwa
Saturday, June 16, 2012
An Alameda County jury ordered the Jehovah’s Witnesses to pay an unprecedented $21 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed the church for allowing a fellow congregant in Fremont to molest her when she was a child in the mid-1990s.
Candace Conti said elders at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in northern Fremont knew Jonathan David Kendrick had molested his stepdaughter a few years before, but declined to warn others or tell police. That silence, Conti said, allowed Kendrick to gain her trust and repeatedly assault her at his home when she was 9 and 10 years old.
The jury also awarded $7 million in compensatory damages. Kendrick – who is now a registered sex offender living in Oakley – was ordered to pay 60 percent of that judgment, with the rest coming from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the legal entity of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.