AUSTRALIA
9 News
AAP
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia foster distrust of secular authorities and the church’s way of responding to child sex abuse falls short of best practice, it is open to the royal commission to find.
In a damning submission published on Tuesday, Angus Stewart SC, counsel to the child abuse commission, recommends 77 adverse findings against the fundamentalist church, which since 1950 has received 1066 allegations against its members and never reported any of them to police.
Mr Stewart’s recommendations arise out of a public hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and its oversight body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia, in July this year.
He said the Witnesses receive approximately three and four reports of allegations of child abuse a month.
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