CALIOFRNIA
San Diego Reader
By Dorian Hargrove, April 24, 2016
On Friday, April 29, an attorney for Osbaldo Padron will ask a judge to impose severe sanctions on the Jehovah’s Witness Church for refusing to turn over documents. The documents allegedly show the church was aware of sexual abuse committed over decades by a San Diego–based church leader on young boys, such as Padron.
The request for sanctions is the latest development in a childhood sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the church in several countries in recent years. In San Diego, the case is the ninth against church leader Gonzalo Campos; seven settled out of court.
In 2013, according to a 2014 article in the Union-Tribune, a judge ordered the Jehovah’s Witness Church, also known as the Watchtower, to pay José Lopez $13.5 million for covering up sexual abuse he suffered at the hands Campos. In Lopez’s case, he was seven years old in 1986 when Campos sexually abused him in a bathroom during a Bible-study outing.
Campos’s history of molestation of young boys went beyond the eight victims, according to Padron’s 2013 lawsuit.
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