CALIFORNIA
Courthouse News Service
By JULIE BAKER-DENNIS
SAN DIEGO (CN) — The national Jehovah’s Witnesses organization must produce any documents in its possession relating to perpetrators of child sexual abuse, a California appeals court ruled.
Jose Lopez sued Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York and the Linda Vista Spanish Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in June of 2012 for the sexual abuse he allegedly suffered when he was seven years old at the hands of his Bible instructor Gonzales Campos.
In 1986, Lopez’s mother allowed Campos to give her son bible study lessons after an elder from her congregation recommended him because he was “good very good with children.”
According to the complaint, after Campos had given Lopez several lessons, he sexually molested him.
The abuse was reported to an elder of the church after Lopez told his mother, but nothing was done after the elders spoke to Lopez about where he was touched.
This was not the first time there had been allegations Campos had sexually abused young boys.
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