AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Australian Associated Press
Monday 27 July 2015
Jehovah’s Witnesses destroyed notes about child sexual abuse to stop them falling into the wrong hands and to “protect their wives”, a church elder has told a national hearing in Sydney.
The opening day of a royal commission hearing into abuse within the church has heard how 1,006 allegations of child abuse since 1950 were dealt with internally and never reported to police.
It has also heard that victims were made to confront their abusers and left feeling as if they had sinned.
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.
On Monday, BCB, 47, told how Neill, who is dead, groomed her from the age of 15. She said he would molest her and spy on her when she was in the shower.
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