AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail
Jehovah’s Witnesses destroyed more than 1000 cases of child sexual abuse since 1950 to ‘protect their wives’ Royal Commission told
By LUCY MAE BEERS FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP
27 July 2015
Jehovah’s Witnesses destroyed notes relating to 1006 cases of child sexual abuse dating back to 1950 to ‘protect their wives.’
The opening day of the royal commission in Sydney on Monday heard that the cases were instead handled internally with the victims asked to attend ‘meetings’, often with their abuser.
‘We do not want our wives knowing our stuff – what sort of things we are dealing with,’ Max Horley, an elder for the Jehovah’s Witness congregation in Western Australia said.
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, who is now 47, told the commission 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.
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