Jehovah's Witnesses Settle 9 Lawsuits Over Men who Sexually Abused Children

NBC ^ | November 21, 2007 | Lisa Myers

[hawkaw]

Frederick McLean is one of the most-wanted fugitives in the United States, charged with 17 counts of child sexual abuse in California. Law enforcement sources say that when a victim’s family confronted McLean in 2004, he allegedly confessed. But before he could be arrested, McLean fled.

Snip

His role in the church also became a matter of legal controversy. Last year, some victims’ families filed suit against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, alleging that both McLean’s local congregation and the church’s national headquarters, the Watchtower Society, “knew, or should have known, that Frederick McLean was a pedophile.”

Snip

The Jehovah's Witnesses recently agreed to pay to settle that lawsuit and eight other similar cases, without admitting wrongdoing. The cases all involved men the church allegedly knew had sexually abused children.

Snip

Internal records now coming to light from the settled lawsuits may help explain why the church agreed to settle the cases. Documents show that the church knew for years that some prominent members were sexually abusing children and did little. Church officials allegedly became aware of several of the cases in question through what amount to internal judicial proceedings, at which local elders confronted suspected abusers, obtained confessions, then meted out punishments

Snip

The court filings include a church form called a Child Abuse Telememo. “Just thinking that they had a memo made up, printed up that says ‘Child Abuse Telememo,’” Anderson says, “indicates to me that they were handling this a lot. Because why make up a form for it?” ... In reporting states, the form instructs officials to advise local elders “to make an anonymous phone report from a neutral location, such as a phone booth.”

Snip

Read the whole story Here

[sourcery]

Here's the root of the problem: `...in [Jehovah's Witness'] internal proceedings against accused molesters, the church applies a biblically based “two-witness” rule. “They require another witness to the actual molestation,” Anderson says, “which is an impossibility.'

[Nevadan]

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses recently agreed to pay to settle that lawsuit and eight other similar cases, without admitting wrongdoing.”

Of course they won’t admit wrongdoing. They never do. The Watchtower Society believes that it is God’s sole representative on Earth, and when it speaks, it is speaking the words of Jehovah.

[The Duke]

They are a cult.

[Does so]

OK, Henderson is a pederast—just as the Catholic priesthood were who were sued.

Isn't it misleading to state that McLean's victims were "children"? There should be a distinction.

[DannyHaszard]

Jehovah’s Witnesses Pedophile coverup facts

What’s the situation with child abuse?
Not good. They take Deuteronomy 19:15 literally, which demands two witnesses to a crime (not easy in cases of abuse). And they cite 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 – “Does anyone of you that has a case against the other dare to go to court before unrighteous men, and not before the holy ones?” – to justify trying to deal with criminals with courts of elders rather than courts of law.

Studies in the US suggest they (Jehovah’s Witnesses) have proportionally four times more sexual assaults on children than the Catholic Church.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/features/article3133271.ece (from here major UK paper)

It’s the WAY that the Watchtower’s protocol for (non) handling of Criminal Pedophilia that is the root of this evil.
Recent Watchtower ‘damage control’ in house memos on ‘correcting’ past cover ups and years of past stone walling/foot dragging does not undo decades of child abuse damage.

The Watchtower needs to stop harassing whistle-blowers and denying it all like the Catholic church did at first.
I was born a JW in 1957 and have seen countless congregation sins dismissed to fester.

Sexual Abuse and Child Abuse Among Jehovah’s Witnesses http://www.exjws.net/sexabuse/index.htm