FORT KENT (ME)
Portland Press Herald [Portland ME]
January 24, 2025
By Emily Allen
Shannon Simendinger, 45, previously testified against one religious leader in a criminal trial 2 years ago. He was found guilty of sexual assault.
While she was growing up in Fort Kent in the late 1980s, the local congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses was Shannon Simendinger’s world.
“When that’s all you know, you get close to the people and they become your family,” Simendinger said in a phone interview Thursday. “You get attached to them, and trust them.”
But it wasn’t just tight-knit — Simendinger feels now that she was isolated, discouraged from speaking with people outside her religion. That includes the time that Simendinger said she tried to get help after she was sexually abused by her religious leaders.
“I never put anything that happened behind me. It was always there, I just had to suppress my feelings in order to function,” Simendinger said. “You weren’t allowed to bring it up in the organization. You had to keep quiet, to move along like it never happened.”
Simendinger, now 45, filed a civil complaint in Aroostook County Superior Court this month against the Fort Kent Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation, as well as the national nonprofit that oversees all Jehovah’s Witnesses, known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
The complaint targets the institutions, rather than the three men she says repeatedly abused her, and includes counts of sexual assault, negligent supervision, breach of fiduciary duty and infliction of emotional distress.
The Fort Kent congregation did not return a voicemail from a reporter Thursday seeking to discuss Simendinger’s allegations. A defense attorney was not yet listed in the case. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ United States branch declined Thursday to discuss any of Simendinger’s claims.
“We empathize with all victims of abuse but it would be inappropriate for us to comment on the particulars of any litigation,” an unnamed spokesperson wrote in an email. “As Christians, our love of God and our neighbor motivates us to hate all forms of abuse.”
Simendinger’s lawsuit is similar to many others that have been filed against religious organizations in the last few years, largely as a result of a 2021 law removing the statute of limitations for child sex abuse claims. (The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has spent more a year considering whether that law is constitutional.)
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But Simendinger’s case alleges abuse so recent that it still would have fallen within the previous statute of limitations. In her complaint, she says she was abused from 1985 to 1993.
She said she decided to bring a lawsuit after testifying in 2023 against one of the men, now in his 80s, who had assaulted her. He was found guilty of sexual assault and is serving a 20-year sentence in state prison.
“Being up there, in that moment, it was — I was anxious too,” Simendinger said. “But we got a conviction, and that’s really what matters is that he got put away for something that he did.
‘THEY MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS AT FAULT’
Simendinger spent a lot of time as a young girl knocking on doors, trying to spread her faith and recruit others to her religion. According to her complaint, she was often accompanied by respected leaders from her congregation.
On those trips, and later in Bible study classes, Simendinger alleges those men used their positions to gain her family’s trust and sexually abuse her. The abuse only stopped because her family left the state, the complaint states.
Simendinger’s complaint identifies the three men, but none of them are listed as defendants: David Ezzy and Ernest Fyans, who are considered elders in the church, and Bible study teacher Daniel Plourde.
The Press Herald was unable to reach the men on Thursday to discuss the allegations. Fyans is in prison.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are divided into local congregations that are run by a body of elders. The elders direct activities, appoint other elders, handle finances and determine the “guilty, repentance and punishment of church members who commit wrongdoing,” according to the complaint.
That wrongdoing includes sexually abusing children — but Simendinger’s attorney Michael Bigos said they believe the evidence will show those policies enable abuse and its secrecy.Advertisement
“We believe the evidence will show they knew about the abuse, they essentially tried to cover it up, and people were harmed as a result of those actions,” Bigos said.
Her complaint describes handbooks that elders received in the 1980s, giving them discretion to determine whether a child is at fault for their own sexual abuse. Those policies discouraged Jehovah’s Witnesses from reporting abuse to police, according to the complaint, and they discouraged elders from informing their congregations of any threat to children.
That was the case with Simendinger. When she was about 10 years old in 1989, the complaint alleges, her mother discovered she had called a sexual assault crisis hotline for help.
Simendinger and her mother met with their congregation leaders. Simendinger said they blamed her for the assault and ordered her to pray for forgiveness.
“They made me feel like I was at fault,” she said. “When you’re 10 years old and you have them tell you that, you feel automatically that it’s your fault and that God doesn’t love you anymore … They made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of anything,” she said.
RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
The abuse continued for several more years, according to the complaint.Advertisement
Even after Simendinger’s family left Fort Kent and she eventually left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, she said her experiences are impossible to forget.
Still, she remains religious. Her relationship to God matters to her. She’s been going to a Baptist church on Sundays.
“But I still keep it at arm’s length, because I don’t have that trust,” she said. “I do not believe in organizations that have control over the relationship between you and God.”
She is afraid sometimes to leave her child alone with people at church. She is constantly anxious, then depressed. She struggles to feel worthy, despite the love and support of her husband and child.
“I go through all these emotions every single day, and being able to function on a daily basis is a struggle,” she said. “But I still do. I still function, because it’s where I need to be. What I’m doing, helping others and helping myself heal, and making them accountable for what they’ve done, is where I know in my heart I need to be.”
HOW TO GET HELP
IF YOU or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, you can call 1-800-871-7741 for free and confidential help 24 hours a day.
TO LEARN more about sexual violence prevention and response in Maine, visit the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault website.
IF YOU or someone who you is struggling with a mental health crisis, you can also call the Maine Crisis Line 24 hours a day at 1-888-568-1112.
FOR MORE information about mental health services in Maine, visit the website for the state’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Copy the Story Link
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