Holly Folk Speaks to Child Sexual Abuse Among Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Out of nowhere a scholar has appeared who talks dispassionate sense on the subject of child sexual abuse as it relates to Jehovah’s Witnesses and is unswayed by secular jingoism. Are/were you a Jehovah’s Witness who was abused as a child? That is very bad, Holly Folk agrees, but she cautions such ones that they must be on guard not to be abused a second time. It may happen at the hands of those who mostly feign interest in their trauma so as to enlist them in their greater goal of taking down a religion they dislike. “All I ask is that you consider, for a moment, that you might be being used again, by people who care little about achieving justice for victims,” she says.

“Both official reports and media often confuse ‘institutional’ abuse in religious settings and abuse happening in families that happen to be religious.” It is a statement as pithy yet complete as anything I have written in several chapters of TrueTom vs the Apostates! She instantly cuts to the chase of the matter, whereas I pussyfoot around forever before arriving at an echo not quite so well put.

She pinpoints the flaw of the ARC’s Case Study 29, which I also attempted, but did not put it so concisely. Every other case was an investigation of institutional abuse within an agency, sometimes religious, sometimes secular. Case Study 29 was the only investigation of a religion itself. It is unique. It was rammed into the ARC agenda mostly at the behest of ex-Witnesses who hounded them relentlessly until they overrode their normal judgment. It plainly doesn’t fit into the overall program. JWs have no institutional settings, as did all the other agencies on the hot seat. Next move will be to hold Walmart responsible for abuse that has occurred among their shoppers.

It’s why you don’t sign on to a redress scheme tailor-made for situations of institutional abuse that you don’t have. You wait for a redress scheme tailor-made for situations of abuse that occur among Walmart’s customers. That you can sign on to it as a reasonable parallel.

In a second article (it is a four-part series) she criticizes the studies of the Netherlands and Belgium. I hadn’t gone there, assuming they would be no more than a rehash of the ARC. They were all that and less, she writes, so slipshod and lacking in any sound methodology of social science that it will be a scandal if they are relied upon for policy. Yet they might be, she opines, goaded on by the sheer noise that comes from Witness detractors, mostly ex-Witnesses settling the score, and given false credibility by the prestige of the Atlantic journal.

She speaks in conference here:

As a dispassionate outsider, not a Witness herself, she can do what is very difficult for any Witness to do, self included. She can bypass the reputation of a religion as something immaterial and focus on the greater affront to fight child sexual abuse. It is all diluted, she charges, when ex-members redirect rage against child sexual abuse to a target that is essentially a non-factor. The Witness religion overall does pretty well at fighting the perversion, she writes. I mean, who else [my contribution, not hers] gathers every member in the world (at the 2017 Regional Conventions) to consider detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might occur so that parents, obviously the first line of defense, can be on their guard? If there are sleepovers, if there are tickling sessions, if there are unsupervised trips to the restroom, if anyone displays unusual interest in your child—all these things were identified as potential red flags, not conclusive in themselves, but things to keep you eye on.

Witnesses will find her tack hard to copy. Their first response will be violent indignation at these patent efforts to undermine the religious organization they hold in high regard, and in the process, they are likely to come across as tone-deaf to the suffering of victims. But Ms. Folk has no skin in the game, so she can focus directly to how this vendetta of ex-JWs undermines efforts to fight child sexual abuse. She can express dismay that those with an anti-religious agenda squander resources that could be far better employed elsewhere.

Some firebrand on Twitter accosted me the moment I put the subject out there: “So, NO child is EVER separated from its parent(s) for ANY reason for religious purposes (or within a religious setting) by JWs... is that what you are saying?”

Well, duh—no. But NO child EVER separated is a far cry from ALL children ROUTINELY separated, which is the case with other groups Witnesses are compared to, as though apples to apples. Sunday Schools, youth camps and clubs—alas, they have proved to be breeding grounds for child sexual abuse. Witnesses do not have such settings. What! Do they chain their children at home so that no outside contact is possible? Does any balanced person? Imagine the uproar if they did.

Holly Folk also carries the “advantage” of being a survivor herself. “How would you know what it feels like to be abused?” people can (and have) said to me. I don’t. But she does. It gives her a freeness of speech that no non-victim will possess.

The closest I ever came to abuse was when I was walking up and down auto dealer row prior to my 16th birthday, anticipating the used car I might buy once I had my license. A certain slimeball approached and tried to befriend me. “They keep the really good cars in back,” he told me, eager to go there. Even as I evaded him, it was not due to my street smarts or lack of naïveté. I was as sheltered a lad as ever existed, with no specific knowledge of even what a child abuser was. (an ignorance not uncommon at the time.) I just knew that you don’t put the really good cars in the back—you put them up front where people can see them.

They are very thorough articles that Holly writes. Press on the links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I like it also that Holly Folk does not fear to take on the “money tree” that is lawyers. This doesn’t speak for or against victims in itself, of course, just the inherent possibility for abuse of such as system. In my community, there are so less than 7 accident injury firms that constantly advertise. Not to mention about twice that number that advertise over various carcinogens, medical treatments, devices, and of course, sexual abuse claims. Almost always the Catholic Church is targeted, and the Boy Scouts. Sometimes I hear a catch-all of any abuse in any religious setting.

I get it that injured people seek redress. Still, the sheer cacaphony of legal noise will strike most as overkill—a massive societal transfer of funds with lawyers netting a third. Don’t think the profit motive is absent with the Witness situation, Ms. Folk says, just like it is not in any other. It is no different than defense companies cooking up scenarios of peril so as to sell their goods, or pharmaceutical companies overplaying threats to our health for the same reason, or for that matter, any merchandiser doing whatever it must to expand the market for its goods or services.

”My lawyer got me 5 million dollars, 23 times what the insurance company said.” Such are the ads that I hear. What I do not hear is, “My neighbors all celebrated with me. Then they opened their insurance premium bills.” Where does anyone think the money comes from? The insurance company itself? They just pass the cost along. They have to, in order to survive. 

 

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The Reproach of Child Sexual Abuse Falls on the Abuser

In Jehovah’s Witness congregations, victims, parents, or anyone else, have always been free to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police. The troubling reality is that many chose not to do it. They alerted congregation elders and went no further. Why? Because they thought that by so doing, they might be bringing reproach on God’s name and the Christian congregation.

That situation has been resolved. The May 2019 study edition of the Watchtower, reviewed via Q & A participation at all congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses—it will escape nobody—addressed it specifically: 

“But what if the report is about someone who is a part of the congregation and the matter then becomes known in the community? Should the Christian who reported it feel that he has brought reproach on God’s name? No. The abuser is the one who brings reproach on God’s name,” states the magazine.

The problem is solved. Can one bring reproach on God or the Christian congregation by reporting child sexual abuse to police? No. The abuser has already brought the reproach. There will be many who had long ago come to that conclusion, but now, unambiguously, in writing, for elders and members alike, here it is spelled out.

From the beginning, child sexual abuse controversies as related to Jehovah’s Witnesses have been markedly different from those of nearly anywhere else. Incidents have mostly been within the ranks of the general membership, come to light because the Witness organization takes seriously passages as Romans 2:21-22, and investigates wrongdoing within its midst so as to “keep the congregation clean” in God’s eyes, something that they think He demands:

“Do you, however, the one teaching someone else, not teach yourself? You, the one preaching “Do not steal,” do you steal?  You, the one saying “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:21-22)

Elsewhere it is the leaders being looked at exclusively. Usually, no mechanism at all exists that the wrongdoing of religious members comes to light. When the police nab John Q. Parishioner, it is as much news to the church minister as it is to the public. When was the last time you read of an abuser identified by religious affiliation unless it was a person in position of leadership?

As I write this, it now appears that the time has come for Southern Baptists to take their turn in the hot seat. Just eight days prior to this writing, a Houston Chronicle headline (February 10, 2019) announces: “Abuse of Faith - 20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms.”

Who are the victims? Entirely those who were abused by leaders. The latter “were pastors. ministers. youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. deacons. And church volunteers.” Were any of them just regular church members abused by other regular church members? No. There is no apparatus for that to ever come to light. The church preaches to them on Sunday but otherwise takes no interest in whether they actually apply the faith or not. Doubtless they hope for the best, but it is no more than hope. Only a handful of faiths make any effort to ensure that members live up to what they profess.

It has always been apples vs oranges. That is what has long frustrated Jehovah’s Witnesses. With most groups, if you want to find a bumper crop of pedophile abusers, you need look no farther than the leaders. With Jehovah’s Witnesses, if you “hope” for the same catch, you must broaden your nets to include, not just leaders, but everybody. It is rare for a Witness leader to be an abuser, the rotter in San Diego being a notable exception. It is the rule elsewhere. The most recent Witness legal case, involving a lawsuit in Montana, involves abuse entirely within a member’s step-family that did not reach the ears of the police, which the court decided was through leadership culpability.

To account for this marked difference in leadership personal conduct, this writer submits a reason. Those who lead among Jehovah’s Witnesses are selected from rank and file members on the basis of moral qualifications highlighted in the Bible itself, for example, at Titus 1:6-9.  In short, they are those who have distinguished themselves in living their religion. Leaders of most denominations have distinguished themselves in knowing their religion, having graduated from divinity schools of higher education. They may live the religion—ideally, they do, but this is by no means assured—the emphasis is on academic knowledge.

Add to the mix that Jehovah’s Witness elders preside without pay, and thus their true motive is revealed. Most religious leaders do it for pay, and thus present conflicting motives. One could even call them “mercenary ministers.” Are they untainted in their desire to do the Lord’s work or not? One hopes for the best but can never be sure.

Confounding irreligious humanists who would frame the child sexual abuse issue as one of religious institutions, two days after the Southern Baptist exposé, there appeared one of the United Nations. On February 12, the Sun (thesun.co.uk) reported that “thousands more ‘predatory’ sex abusers specifically target aid charity jobs to get close to vulnerable women and children.”

“There are tens of thousands of aid workers around the world with paedophile tendencies, but if you wear a UNICEF T-shirt nobody will ask what you’re up to. You have the impunity to do whatever you want,” Andrew Macleod, a former UN high official stated, adding that “there has been an ‘endemic’ cover-up of the sickening crimes for two decades, with those who attempt to blow the whistle just getting fired.” Sharing his data with The Sun, Mr. Macleod “warned that the spiralling abuse scandal was on the same scale as the Catholic Church’s.”

All things must be put into perspective. Child sexual abuse is not an issue of any single religion, much less a tiny one where otherwise blameless leaders are perceived to have bungled reporting to police. It occurs in any setting in which people interact with one another. The legal system being what it is, one can prosecute child sexual abuse wherever it is encountered. The tort system being what it is, one prosecutes primarily where there are deep pockets. Arguably, the child sexual abuse issues of the Southern Baptists have taken so long coming to light is because that denomination is decentralized in organization, presenting no deep pockets.

With the May 2019 Watchtower mentioned above, finally the reporting issues of Jehovah’s Witnesses are fixed. Anyone who knows of abuse allegations may bring those to the attention of the police, and regardless of how “insular” or “no part of the world” Witnesses may be, they need not have the slightest misgivings about bringing reproach on the congregation. Both goals can proceed—that of societal justice and that of congregation justice—and neither interferes with the other.

Witness opposers were not at all gracious about this change, that I could see. Many continued to harp on the “two witness” rule of verifying abuse, for example. It becomes entirely irrelevant now. Were it a “40-witness” or a “half-witness” rule, it wouldn’t matter. It is a standard that guides congregation judicial proceedings and has absolutely no bearing on secular justice.

“Well, it only took a landslide of legal threats around the world to force their hand on this,” opposers grumbled, as they went on to claim credit. Why not give them the credit? Likely it is true. Everything in life is action/reaction and it would be foolish to deny the substance of this. Once ones leave the faith, people within lose track of them. It is easy to say: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and opponents did not allow this to happen. They should seriously congratulate themselves. Many have publicly stated that their opposition is only so that Jehovah’s Witnesses will fix their “broken policies.” Now that they have been fixed, one wonders if their opposition will stop.

Members have been given the clearest possible direction that there should be no obstacle or objection to their reporting whatever allegations or realities they feel should be reported. Few journalists will hold out for elders marching them down to the police station at gunpoint to make sure that they do, even if their most determined opposers will settle for no less.  There are some experiences that seem to preclude one’s ever looking at life rationally again, and perhaps child sexual abuse is one of them. The only people not knowing that the situation is fixed are those who are convinced that Jehovah’s Witnesses are evil incarnate whose charter purpose is to abuse children, and they will not be convinced until there is a cop in every Witness home.

With a major “reform” making clear that there is absolutely no reproach in reporting vile things to the authorities, some of the most virulent of Witness critics lose something huge to them, and the question some of them must face is a little like that of Tom Brady—what on earth is he ever going to do with himself after he retires? A few face withering away like old Roger Chillingsworth of the Scarlet Letter, who, when Arthur Dimmesdale finally changed his policy, “knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which life seemed to have departed. ‘Thou hast escaped me!’ he repeated more than once. ‘Thou has escaped me!’

This will not be the journalists, of course. Nor will it be the legal people. Nor will it even be Witness critics in the main. But for some of the latter, former members who are vested in tearing down what they once embraced, it will not be an easy transition. They almost have no choice but to find some far-fetched scenario involving “rogue elders” that could conceivably allow something bad to yet happen and harp on that till the cows come home. There are always going to be ‘What ifs.’ At some point one must have some confidence in the power of parents to be concerned for their children, and for community to handle occasional lapses, particularly since governmental solutions have hardly proven immune to abuse and miscarriages of justice themselves. It is not easy to get between a mama bear and her cub.

All told, it would appear that even if the leaders of Jehovah’s Witnesses practiced child sexual abuse themselves, their “contribution” would be the tiniest part of an overall endemic. But since they do not—since their alleged sins are failing to report on what some members have done, the efforts of their apostates to paint them as a prime source of the degradation is but vengeful. They deliberately construct a damning and inaccurate picture of the faith that others in lands less enamored with human rights act upon.

See Part 2

 

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Two-thirds!

 “Tom-why are elders instructed not to report in states where it is not the law? One thing is written, but they were told something completely different when they call the Bethel office for advice.”

The second sentence is slander and need not be taken seriously. The first is the one to address:

Why would there be states where it is not the law? It’s been 40 years of all-out war against pedophilia. If the new gold standard is to go beyond the law, then make that the law. It is what Geo Jackson pleaded for three times before the ARC. If realized, it would make the Witnesses job of administering discipline within their ranks “so much easier.”

From the 2016 book, ‘Tom Irregardless and Me:’

“Since JoePa [Penn State coach from until 2011] was irredeemably trashed for not reaching beyond his legal obligation for a higher moral one, I had assumed that reporting compliance for those with legal obligation must be close to 100% percent. Isn’t that a reasonable assumption? Silly me! Said the Democrat and Chronicle article: “ . . . .it’s a mistake to think that the failure of Penn State authorities to report the abuse is a rarity. . . . Studies over the past two decades nationally have consistently shown that nearly two-thirds of professionals who are required to report all cases of suspected abuse fail to do so. . . . “I think that we fail miserably in mandated reporting,” said Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Kristina Karle.” 

“Two-thirds! Two-thirds of those required to report suspected abuse to police don’t do it! So how is it that Joe Paterno, who was not required to report to police, yet did report to his bosses, how is it that he gets fired?! I tell you, this is so arbitrary, this so closely resembles a witch hunt, that you just have to cry foul. I suppose a witch hunt is okay if you actually catch witches, but the two-thirds who should be fired, if fired is the nirvana solution, have they all been fired? I don’t think so.

“. . . That understandable reluctance is what that Democrat and Chronicle article identified as the reason that the two-thirds fail in their duty because “they are uncertain of whether abuse occurred, are fearful of making false accusations, or are unsure of their obligation.” In fact, that is why ESPN, who sat on their [child abuse report] tape for eight years, despite media eagerness to point fingers at anyone else who would hold back, kept their own mouths shut: they did not “report the contents of the tape, because no one else would corroborate his story.”

Since even persons required to report most often do not, it is sufficient for JW congregation members to know that reporting an abuser to police brings reproach neither on God nor the congregation. That was done several years ago. Thus, if there ever was a problem, it has been remedied:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2023/02/the-reproach-of-child-sexual-abuse-falls-on-the-abuser.html

There is also a downloadable child abuse policy (Google just those words, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses) that specifies do report such incidences when a child is in continuing danger, whether other parties do or not.

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Witnesses Decline to Take Part in the National Redress Program

The announcement that Jehovah’s Witnesses will not sign on to the national redress plan of Australia provoked the instant wrath of some. However, I rather liked the Witnesses’s reasoning.
 

“The Jehovah's Witnesses said the religion does not have the institutional settings that the voluntary redress scheme is designed to cover and it will not join,” said The Murray Valley Standard.

"The Jehovah's Witnesses have not sponsored any programs or activities that separate children from their parents at any time," it said in a statement to AAP.

The statement said the Jehovah's Witnesses did not operate boarding or Sunday schools, did not have youth groups, choirs or sponsor any programs for children, nor run youth centres.

"Jehovah's Witnesses simply do not have the institutional settings that result in children being taken into their care, custody, supervision, control or authority."

Less than 10 redress scheme applicants have referred to the Jehovah's Witnesses, it said.

"Jehovah's Witnesses have responded and will continue to respond directly to individual claims for redress in a caring, fair, and principled manner, taking into consideration the unique circumstances of each claim.

"The religion of Jehovah's Witnesses also provides spiritual comfort and assistance to child abuse victims and their families."

Now—do not misunderstand—my comment only comments on what it comments on. It makes no judgment—pro or con—on Watchtower interaction with those members who have suffered child sexual abuse. Do they fill the bill or not? I don’t go there. It’s for another post. I speak only to the government plan to lump in as one dozens of organizations for their “mutual sins”—sins the Watchtower organization does not have.

How many groups did the ARC look at? Was it not 30 - 40? Every one of them involved some program in which children were separated from parents as a condition of participation. Separation was necessary for participation, and in the case of government schools, mandated by law. It seems reasonable that if you sponsor a youth group and/or even require children to congregate, you have a greater responsibility to provide a safe environment for them.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they alone, so far as I can see, of the scrutinized groups, have never had any such program. They ought not be lumped into the same basket of mutual culpability with those that do. Actually, from the article, it seems that very few are signing on—just a sporting organization or two were cited.

Of course, this comment of mine was not taken lying down. Let us call the succeeding person “John,” an ex-Witness, a vociferous opponent.

John: “I've been on the ministry in the past and a child has actually asked to be with me on the doors. I've declined as I think children should be with their parents.” 

Are there situations in which an adult might come into contact with a child not his own? Of course there are. Your own experience testifies to one. But they are the sort of incidental thing that could happen anywhere—if your child frequents the home of a friend and it turns out that friend’s dad is a pervert, for example. 

There was a time when my father-in-law, a man with little formal education, asked elders to study with his high school son so maybe they could help him reconcile evolution vs creation and such things that he, the father-in-law, had no experience with. The elders said no—it was for him to study with his own son. It may not have even been a wise decision, but the point is there is no program for elders to wrestle children away from their own parents.

The typical abuse case among Witnesses involves the misconduct of congregation members—often members within a step-family. The culpability of the organization, if there is one, is that elders left it to the disgression of the aggrieved parties to report it. The culpability of the other groups is for systemically separating children from the parents and then allowing someone in authority to abuse them. The two courses are different enough that they ought not be included as though two peas in a pod.

The only point I made in the prior post, John, was that groups that insist upon separating children from parents and then fail to protect them ought to be held to more stringent standards than those that do not. There is nothing wrong with that point. It makes perfect sense. That is not to say it covers everything.

John: Elders take young children, that are not their own children, on the ministry. Older brothers ans sisters do likewise. Brothers or sisters take children, that are not their own, to meetings in their cars.

Of course it has happened, and still does—though in view of persons like yourself who want to stunt children by suggesting any adult contact with a child other than its own is perverted, they do it less and with much more discretion. Always in the situations you describe, it happens with full approval of the parent, and often at their request. I’ll give you an example:

My wife and I were in the ministry, along with a sister with her two children—ages probably 2 and 4. We’re all going at a snail’s pace, working in and out of the car, on account of the children. The sister, too, needs adult encouragement—she doesn’t get out all that much—and that’s why the “righteous” solution you might hit on: ‘Work with your wife, and let her work alone with her two kids,’ does not work. 

When I am alone in the car with the two-year-old, and my wife, the sister, and her older child are all working together, I get impatient to do another door or two. “C’mon, Seth,” I swoop the kid up, “Let’s take a door!” I ring the bell and a woman answers. I tell her I am working with my friend Seth (whom I am carrying), and “he wants to show a video to you.” I thumb through a few Caleb and Sophia cartoon videos on my IPad, ask Seth which one did he have in mind, and act as though it is he who has made the decision. Meanwhile, the woman seems bemused by this—she’s playing along—it doesn’t happen all the time. We play the video, she views it attentively, Seth even more so because he knows them all well—they are tools for child-training, and when it is all done, I thank her, acknowledging “You’re a sport,” and we take our leave. I had the feeling that she was playing along simply for the child’s sake, and I stopped in sometime later to discover that I was right. I still reaffirmed that she was a good sport.

Now, I know child’s the mother well. I know the chemistry. This was not a stranger’s child. I know you are probably dying to make a molestation scene out of this, but anyone not completely warped in their own values will instantly see if for what it is—a win-win-win for the child, the householder, and me—and even another win if you include God, for it is advancing the ministry.

(Backtracking)

John: I've been on the ministry in the past and a child has actually asked to be with me on the doors. I've declined as I think children should be with their parents. 

Why in the world would you not agree to this?—unless there is some twisted background that you are not conveying. I would do it in a heartbeat if a child asked it of me, and I knew the parents would have no objection. Do you think you are proving yourself virtuous by your all but criminalizing contact between adults and their non-offspring? Do you think the interests of the world’s children are advanced by the Boy Scouts of America driven into bankruptcy as consequence and retribution for the injuries inflicted upon a handful of children? The Boy Scouts take you out camping. They teach you how to tie knots. They teach responsibility. “Eagle scout projects” are seen everywhere in my area—deeds of civic enhancement, education, historical illumination, ecological projects—deeds that are not likely to be done otherwise. They provide opportunities for children growing up that parents will most likely not be able to provide. And now your type deprive them of that by bankrupting the organization—all the time as you bask in a narrative about how you are ‘protecting children.’

You suggest all contact with a non-related child is wrong, even twisted, and then you think you are doing the village of children a favor? Back in JoePa days—American example, you may not know of it in Britain, when a man outstanding for molding generations of youth was suddenly destroyed because in a certain instance, he did not go “beyond the law” to penalize something he didn’t know was happening—a former coach of youth sports, Bob Cook, wrote: “The most upsetting thing about many child-protection rules is they assume any adult is capable of doing something bad. If you think of yourself as a good person, and the people around you as good people, you can’t help but be taken aback. You can’t help but think a wall has been put between yourself, the children you coach, and the families you deal with. It’s a wall that seems patently ridiculous when, in the case of the Catholics involved in my Virtus meeting, were tight-knit, south side Chicago parishes where families had known each other for generations.”

 

It may well be an example of the verse: “All things are clean to clean people; but to those who are defiled and faithless, nothing is clean, for both their minds and their consciences are defiled.” Nothing seems clean to some, who would act in such a way as to penalize generations of children from the adult interaction that helps them grow into balanced adults themselves.

I do understand the goal of stamping out child sexual abuse. I do agree that few things are as wicked. I do acknowledge that smoking these ones out is difficult. I do agree, particularly in view of the now commonly acknowledged damage done to a child victim, that punishments ought to be harsh. I agree to all these things. But all society ought not be destroyed in order to attain that goal, for the ones who will collectively suffer the most are the children. John Holt, the homeschooling pioneer, used to maintain that a driving factor of juvenile delinquency is children being shut out of the adult world under the guise of protecting them—and this is well before CSA was on anyone’s radar—he was speaking of the overapplication of child labor laws.

I surprised myself for getting into this thread so. I hadn’t intended to. I literally wrote the book on this topic of JW CSA accusations, with ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates!—numerous chapters are on the topic, and I think there is not another like collection anywhere.

It covers events up to the initial verdict against JWs in Montana, and has not been updated to include that verdict being thrown out. Maybe there will be a “Round 2” or maybe I will tack additional chapters on Round 1: At any rate, I’ve done my share on this and did not intend to involve myself much beyond—because the topic will never be dropped, and there are other things to explore. But your demented notion of ‘nothing being clean’ draws me in despite myself.

 
 

 

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Reversal in Montana

After the multi-million dollar verdict against Jehovah’s Witnesses in Montana was reversed, I visited the Witness-bashing website to see how they were taking it. They were not happy. However, the ones who knew law were analytical.

“This isn’t the fault of the courts,” one said. “It’s the fault of the Montana law as written. Courts must follow law or risk reversal on appeal. This case was never going to be ultimately won. The law was way too clear on the matter.”

Another: “Montana followed the law. It’s that simple and of course Watchtower followed the law...”

Yet another: “The case never should have been started, as the law clearly backed JW’s actions. It never had a chance of surviving appeal.”

They sure didn’t talk that way after the first trial. Some of their cohorts wanted to rub my nose—line by line—through that first transcript. ‘The court found your people guilty, TrueTom! Why would they do that unless they had broke the law—they who say they follow the law!’ I didn’t respond because I am not a lawyer that would try to unravel their affairs. Moreover, courts, while they may represent the best human justice available, are clearly not above bias from pre-existing philosophical leanings—if they were, confirming a Supreme Court Justice would take ten minutes. ‘Wait until the fat lady sings,’ was my attitude. When she did, it was to throw out the judgment of the skinny lady.

Not all were so retrospective after that reversal. “F**k the Montana Supreme Court!” was the outraged complaint woven throughout the thread, with some accusing those seven justices (the reversal was 7-0) of being enablers themselves! Child sexual abuse is the most white-hot topic of all and calm heads rarely prevail. One of them muttered at how they must be “celebrating this victory” at Watchtower HQ. But if so, they showed no sign of it. The Witness attorney summed up events: “There are no winners in a case involving child abuse. ‘No child should ever be subjected to such a debased crime....Tragically, it happens, and when it does Jehovah's Witnesses follow the law. This is what the Montana Supreme Court has established.’” Obviously if one is on the hook for several million dollars and then no longer is, they will not mourn over it. But the focus was kept on the victim, as it should have been. Ideally, she gets full justice from the perpetrator directly responsible.

The gold standard in matters of child sexual abuse is to “go beyond the law.” It is a crazy expectation and I can think of no parallels to it. The expectation is found in a remark already presented, but in truncated form. The full remark was: “Montana followed the law. It’s that simple and of course Watchtower followed the law, rather than just simply reporting child abuse like a good Christian organization.”

If the gold standard regarding child abuse is to “go beyond the law” then MAKE that the law! That’s what law is for! Three times before the ARC Geoffrey Jackson pleaded for such a change—it would make his job “so much easier.” ‘Going beyond the law’ is sure to trigger the wrath of those who, not unreasonably, expect you to abide by the law! Change the law and everyone is happy.

As though on cue, a report surfaced regarding another faith. An Oregon woman has filed a lawsuit for $9 million against the Mormon church because they DID report a confidentially disclosed sexual abuse of a minor. “Clergy are not required to report known or suspected child abuse if the knowledge results from a congregation member's confidential communication or confession and if the person making the statement does not consent to disclosure," Justice Beth Baker wrote in the Montana Supreme Court opinion. It is a statement that will clearly help the Oregon woman, but would not if it were not the law. Change the law if you are really serious about nabbing pedophiles.

The way everything unfolded in Montana pretty well accords with my initial assessment. So great is the world”s frustration at not being able to make a dent in the child sexual abuse pandemic that the first court chose to ignore law in pursuit of that end. It might well be combined with some religious bias, but I would not hang my hat on the latter—outrage over child sexual abuse is sufficient in itself. The Witness organization did follow law, as the Supreme Count confirmed, but the first court reinterpreted law and made it retroactive to make it seem that they did not. I wrote about it here:

Change the law! Why cannot that be done? If Watchtower wants to change a policy, they can do it overnight and have it implemented worldwide within the week. It is the basket-case eternally squabbling, turf-guarding, plethora of competing jurisdictions that cause many Witnesses to become Witnesses in the first place—they see how hopeless it is with human governments.

Ones who want to bring the Watchtower down on the pretext of child sexual abuse, such as those who predominate at the Witness bashing site, are hardly out of bullets, but they are continually frustrated. Their efforts to put Witness stories above all others gains little traction because the pattern elsewhere is that the leaders of organizations, religious or otherwise, are the abusers themselves, something rarely true with the Witness organization, and also that child sexual abuse appears to be the primary export of the planet, crowding out stories of “lesser” significance. With Watchtower (as in Montana) the situation is typically that of abuse within a family or step-family and Witness leaders come under the gun for evoking law and not reporting it, leaving that up to the persons involved—sometimes they do but often they don’t. History may well judge that harshly, but it does not hold a candle to leaders actually committing the abuse themselves. The class action suit in Quebec that I wrote about was similarly dismissed. Moreover, that contributing perception—that it is a disgrace to call attention to child sexual abuse—has been firmly put to rest among Witnesses.

The Epstein joke making the rounds is: “If you were surprised at Jeff Epstein committing suicide, just think how surprised he must have been!” Of course. With prison security protocol breaking down “at every level” and with 60 Minutes concluding that his injuries are far more consistent with homicide over suicide, the conclusion that he was put to sleep by powerful interests to protect other pedophiles will never be squashed. People are naive, but not that naive.

A DisneyLand executive was recently sentenced for pedophile offenses, and Erin Elizabeth of HealthNutNews, who has lived in the area, says it happens all too often. The point is, there is no place where child sexual abuse is not, but participants on the anti-JW site see it in only one place—a place where its intensity pales next to places where leaders are the abusers, not just ones trying to stem it who may have done so clumsily.

Thirty years into all-out war against child sexual abuse and barely a dent has been made! For my money, the JW organization is the most proactive of all, gathering every single member on earth to consider detailed scenarios in which child abuse might happen—if there are sleepovers, if there are tickling sessions, if there are unsupervised trips to the rest room, if someone, even a relative, shows unusual interest in your child, and so forth—so that parents, the obvious first line of defense, can be on the alert. This was done at the 2017 Regional Conventions, which were held globally.

It is the common and accepted legal practice to go as high up on the food chain as possible with regard to any lawsuit—everyone knows this and judges it an unremarkable fact of life. “Knew or should have known” is the legal expression that carries the day and effectively amounts to a tax on the common person. Governments raise taxes. Businesses raise prices. When I hear that my neighbor’s lawyer secured him millions of dollars for his auto accident, I rejoice with him—then I open my insurance premium bill.

As people become ever more debased, just where does this end? Women on airlines are reporting sexual abuse. Even rape has been reported, and with passengers being packed in like sardines, attendants expected to monitor this are caught dumbfounded. Do they “know or should have known?” In an increasingly depraved world, your guess is as good as mine.

As to sentiment on the Witness-bashing website? Look, whenever one discards a scenario in which there is discipline for one in which there is not, it will be like releasing a compressed spring—it rebounds wildly, delirious with its newfound freedom, caring not where it goes. This will be true when one leaves behind the school, the military, or the job. It will especially be true if one quit or was expelled from that institution—and that is the case of most on the anti-JW site. Many of them have come out as gay. Witnesses may not gay-bash as do some evangelicals, plenty of whom froth on the subject and tirelessly prod legislators to make it hot for gays in general society—Witnesses don’t do that—still, there is no place for gay sex relations within the Witness organization—and that hardly endears them to former members who have gone that way. There is a plain backdrop of ‘settling the score’ to be detected in many posts. It is anything but easy to hold the line on Bible morality in a quickly changing world.

......

Coverage of the original Montana trial here.

 

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Top Norwegian Awesome Scholar Proves that CSA Hysteria Against Jehovah’s Witnesses Is Bogus”—Rolf Furuli—Part 3

Q: What does Rolf have to say in his new book about the controversy of child sexual abuse and Jehovah’s Witnesses?

A: Almost nothing. “Not even in a much too long dissertation on porneia and similar words,” I am told. However—in the footnotes, he writes:

“I would like to add that several accusations against the GB on the Internet and other places are not true. For example, in connection with child molestation, the GB has been accused of having directed elders to hide such crimes from the authorities. The first time such crimes were known to elders in Norway was around 1990. Since then, elders have been advised to take particular measures to protect children, and always to cooperate with the police. So this accusation is wrong!”

Ah. So the real headline to be taken from the Rolf book, obscured by 50,000 wet dream malcontent posts on the internet, is 

Top Norwegian Awesome Scholar Proves that CSA Hysteria Against Jehovah’s Witnesses Is Bogus

In writing this headline, I hesitated to use the word “proved.” Had he really done that? He just gave his testimony. But then I deferred to the words of a certain dodo on the internet who declared of Rolf’s book—without having reading it: “I think this gentleman and his book proves the point I'm making here.”

In fact, it ‘proves’ just the opposite. (If he can do it, I can do it.)

In a roundabout way, Rolf brings his gift to the altar. Are legal assaults against JW HQ In recent years due to how leadership evolved over time and how Rolf doesn’t care for the current take on Matthew 24:45-47?

“Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on coming finds him doing so! Truly I say to you, he will appoint him over all his belongings.”

Or—are they about sensationalized investigations of CSA that sometimes one could wish the JW organization would kick back a little more on? Put Rolf on the stand as star ‘expert’ witness for the defense—after lauding him as Moses descending with the tablets, opposers can hardly say that he has no sense whatsoever—and knock the legal ball out of the park. It can be a win-win. It is just a matter making lemonade out of lemons.

“If he has said his piece, and remains as low-key as he should,” maybe it will all blow over. That’s what my unnamed source said—“unnamed” because I am trying to prove myself a modern journalist, and also because he may be bashful. Maybe it will be some esoteric matter for the airy halls of academia with little spillover into everyday life—after all, it is well-known that the ‘thinkers’ and the ‘doers’ often are from different sides of the tracks.

Maybe. However, this kind of “wishful thinking” often fails because enemies will not let it remain low-key. It has made their day, if not year, and they will pump and pump until it becomes the only story that matters!!!

The 2003 WT, 4/1 writes in the article ‘Mildness—An Essential Christian Quality’ of how a “young man reported to Moses that Eldad and Medad were acting as prophets in the camp—“My lord Moses, restrain them!”he cries. Moses mildly replied: “Are you feeling jealous for me? No, I wish that all of Jehovah’s people were prophets, because Jehovah would put his spirit upon them!” Maybe the HQ brothers will act the same, it was surmised. Maybe. But I added to the account:

“But the young man again said, this time emphatically, “My Lord Moses, restrain them!’ Moses mildly replied: “Not a problem. Chill.”

But the young man once again said: “My Lord Moses, restrain them!!!!!” Moses mildly replied: “Let’s stay low-key about this.”

But the young man once again said:MY LORD MOSES, RESTRAIN THEM!!!!”  (this is going to be good!!!!)”

Time will tell.

.....[Edit] I was called out on this one several days later:

“So the real headline to be taken from the Rolf book, obscured by 50,000 wet dream malcontent posts on the internet” - this quotation from your blog exhibits a complete contempt for the experiences of others. Would love you to use this language on the doorstep!”

Of course I will not use it there, for every saying must be put in its proper setting. “If it helps,” I replied, I will concede that the “50,000 wet dream posts” is not a phrase that would be heard in the Kingdom Hall, though it is exceedingly mild for the internet. Nor when I speak of them am I referring to anyone who genuinely was wronged. I am referring to a 2nd buttressing layer of supporters who have opposed the JW work and faith since long before CSA arose as a topic.

Even so, maybe certain phrasing should be backed away from. No sooner do we imagine we have razor-sharp intellect than we use it to get others riled. It is the reason that I recently changed but a single letter to take a bite out of Vomidog.

 

 

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I Almost Wish There Would Be More Public Response

If there has been kickback on ‘manipulation’ and ‘control’ charges, and if there has been kickback on ‘flip-flopping’ charges, then I would like to see kickback on charges that Witnesses ‘cover up’ child sexual abuse. A good place to start is by pointing out that leaving reporting up to the involved parties is not the same as ‘covering up.’

Instead, the Witness organization states that it “abhors child sexual abuse,” which, in combination with its reluctance to go there otherwise, is spun by determined enemies as though they love the stuff. Not all will do what reporter Elizabeth Chuck did and attribute it to a “penchant for privacy.

Why do they not respond in more detail? It may be on account of their own statement. It may be that the sheer wickedness of the charge takes their breath away and makes them look like deer caught in the headlights. Yes, they know well the verse, “every sort of wicked thing will be lyingly said about you” but this—this is the wickedest thing of all! And the proactive arrangement started with such good intentions. Not so many years ago the notion of a religion “policing its own” was lauded as the ultimate in practicing what one preached.

It wouldn’t be hard to do—to provide a brief defense of criticisms leveled at them. It might start with points such as:

  1. “Covering up” is not the same as leaving it to the digression of ones affected to report.
  2. There wouldn’t be anything to be accused of covering up had not the Witness organization practiced what almost nobody else did—policing its own. Countless persons are arrested with regard to child sexual abuse. Unless they are clergy, their religious affiliation or lack of is never reported. The reason that it is so with rank and file Witnesses is that they tried to do something about with regard to their own.
  3. Unlike virtually anywhere else, where the leaders of an organization are themselves the abusers, the leaders of the Witness community are accused of botching the handling of instances—bad, perhaps—history will judge—but nowhere near as bad as being the ones who commit it.

That’s a few for starters. More could be added, such as

  1. The current “gold standard” of child sexual abuse to “go beyond the law” will inevitably cause you problems with those who, not surprisingly, expect you to abide by law.
  2. Child sexual abuse would appear to be the primary gross planetary product—30 years into all-out war against CSA and barely a dent has been made. Therefore efforts to prevent it ought to be given at least as much creedence as efforts to secure the barn door after the cows have fled. Nobody, but nobody, has done what the Witness organization has done, gathering every member in the world to consider detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might occur so that parents, obviously the first line of defense, can be vigilant. This was done as part of the program of the 2017 Regional conventions.
  3. The reason that the greater world will never make inroads with regard to child sexual abuse it that it feeds with one hand what it is trying to punish with another. Many portion of social media are a pedophile’s dream come true. Though it is parallel and thus not exactly the same thing, the 2020 NFL halftime show demonstrates that objectifying woman is the force that makes the world go round—the MeToo movement is doomed from the start.

The matter of CSA in the greater world does not go away. It is not being solved. Rather, each month brings some new revelation of how the very elements of this world keep it firmly entrenched as a societal ill. It’s intricate involvement with the Child Protective Service agencies recently was reviewed in a story I must have missed. “We have set up a system to sex traffic American children” said Newsweek in January 2018:

And the latest scandal—pediatricians! “Sheds light on a problem that could rival priest scandals,” states an article extrapolating from a notorious case just how many there might be. And to think I got into a squabble once with someone determined to put down the Caleb and Sophia video “Protect Your Children,” while she heralded one that specifically said that it was okay for a doctor to touch you in private areas. “Ask the young women of the U.S. Gymnastics Olympic team which video they think would have offered them more protection,” I told her.

Just a few basic tenets of defense for those who would like to have some response to when workmates, schoolmates, or neighbors hit them over the head with what they just saw on TV. It doesn’t cover every tiny thing—just the general outline. The nature of critics everywhere is that they would like their complaints on center stage, to the exclusion of whatever else used to be there. Maybe its not a good idea to indulge them so. Maybe it’s enough to correct matters that need it, such as making it crystal clear to members that there is no reproach in reporting child sexual abuse to police, since the abuser has already brought about the reproach. Maybe it is enough to focus on creating an atmosphere where CSA is less likely to happen.

Maybe. But sometimes you do wish there was more (or any) of a public response.

I did like the WT attorney’s words at the reversal of the Montana verdict. “There are no winners in a case involving child abuse. No child should ever be subjected to such a debased crime....Tragically, it happens, and when it does Jehovah's Witnesses follow the law. This is what the Montana Supreme Court has established.”

.... There was, however, one of my own side who took issue with me:

“What puzzles me, Tom, is you want people to show you their false representation of facts, yet even you have never submitted the following from the Watchtower:

In rare instances, one Christian might commit a serious crime against another—such as rape, assault, murder, or major theft. In such cases, it would not be unchristian to report the matter to the authorities, even though doing so might result in a court case or a criminal trial.

Why is that? Does this mean the phrase “child sexual abuse” needed to be included in order for this statement to be of value?”

Tom: It’s a valid point. Thank you for making it. Certainly it is concise enough and to the point. In my ‘defense,’ if that statement is in the Shepherd the Flock book not meant for general distribution, then I would not quote from it even if I had read it. It is a little silly, I know, to avoid what others have already put out there, and I don’t criticize anyone doing it with good motive. But I am still old fashioned that way and inclined to respect ‘confidential talk.’ It is a educational guide put out for elders.

I’m not a stickler in that regard. There is an example or two of the contrary in ‘Dear Mr. Putin’ But in general I stay away from what has not been made public. For all I carry on about wishing there was more access to what is critical, I am sparing in how much I go there myself. I don’t chow down on the stuff. For the most part, I agree with the expression, “You are what you eat.”

I don’t have the book. I could easily obtain it, but I haven’t. I once served as an elder, but that was 20 years ago. I know precious few in Bethel and I keep up with nobody there.

An advantage to all this is that I can come across as a regular person. Another reason that I have been slow to leave open forums is that I don’t like to be just singing to the choir. I like the challenge of discussing mature Witness topics, such as submission to authority, before people who find the notion very strange because it does not reflect the way the world is today.

Many Witnesses are not much good at speaking with non-Witnesses without going into ‘preaching mode.’ I even had someone shush me upon spotting the RING internet doorbell. “What! Do you think I’m telling dirty jokes here?” I said. “I hope they do hear me talking about regular things because then they will know that I am a regular person.”

See Part 2

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At the Wilkes-Barre “Love Never Fails” Regional Convention

We took supper at a Red Robin after the first day of the “Love Never Fails” Regional Convention in Wilkes-Barre. At the table just behind me, a child—about 5 years of age (and not one of ours)—began raising a horrible ruckus, screaming at the top of his lungs. His mother took him out, but when she returned he started up anew. I turned around and asked the parents if everything was okay.

I admit that I was looking for signs of endangerment. Maybe one “parent” or the other would look shifty. Maybe the child would act as though they were not his parents. It is a sign of the times that I should do this, but I saw nothing alarming.

There was a time not too long ago when most parents would respond in a certain way to such a tantrum, but that way is likely to land them in jail today. Jehovah’s Witnesses work with many refugee groups. Almost always, they encounter ones whose flight has turned their lives upside-down, and one of the most bewildering things they confront is that child-rearing customs that were absolutely routine and unremarkable back home are taboo in their new home. Do not misunderstand. I make no argument for its return. That said, it is by no means clear that today’s children are better adjusted for its disappearance.

My turning around put the parents even more on notice that they were disrupting the entire restaurant. They could hardly have not known it before, but here was a fresh reminder. The father became heated, threatening no TV for a week and the like. Upon leaving, I said to him: “Don’t worry about it. Whatever you do, stay calm. I’ve been there. They’re kids. It happens.”

Taking in the convention program over three days, I began to wish that silly reporter from the Phoenix New Times would have accepted the offer from the attendants (whom she seemed to regard as wardens) to be seated. With her anti-JW story already written, she could hardly run it during the day of their convention without at least having briefly been there, and it is plain she comes with that rationale.  She looks around hastily, notices that people are paying attention, and writes that “attendees listened rapturously.”

Of course, she is not silly. What she latches onto for her story is certainly not nothing. She will forgive my grumbling on the basis that she is young enough to be my daughter. For all I know, she is the daughter of some friend of mine. Reporters are not silly, or if they are, they are no more so than anyone else. They are typically concerned with injustice. They sometimes put their safety on the line in confronting it. Nobody is silly who does this. They have faith that shining the bright light of journalism on something will cause the cockroaches to disappear. Usually, however, they just go somewhere else—and failure to recognize that circumstance is what triggers the charge of silliness.

Though her focus is certainly not nothing, neither is it everything. She entirely misses the big picture. She would have benefitted from the program that she cited as “three days of music-video presentations, prayers, songs, addresses, symposiums, and dramatic readings from the Bible” on the theme of “Love Never Fails.” The public address of that convention (the program is identical at all locations—only the speaker differs, and not even that for every talk, since portions of that Phoenix “international” convention, so-named for the foreign delegates attending, were streamed into other locations, such as Wilkes-Barre) opened with a truth as self-evident as are the truths Thomas Jefferson addressed in the Declaration of Independence.

In this case, it is that all instances of injustice occur and are cultivated due to a lack of love. That being so, and obvious, the question becomes: “Just who will teach love?” Will it be the university? That is not its job. It focuses on training the intellect, with the apparent assumption that the moral qualities such as love will take care of themselves. As even the sloppiest purview of world headlines reveals, they do not. So who will teach it? Will it be agencies that are guided in training from the university that does not teach it? Is the quality so innate that it not need be taught? Again, a review of news headlines reveals the fallacy of such a notion. So who?

Training that takes its cue from humankind’s Creator has traditionally played that role. “God is love,” states 1 John 4:8. Such training appears under attack from the Phoenix reporter, though she has nothing to replace it with. In the case of Bible training, Witnesses will say that it is a “treasure,” but it is a “treasure” carried in “earthen vessels”—that is, us, as flawed humans—just as Paul states at 2 Corinthians 4:7. Humans are capable of error, poor judgment, and even villainy. But that doesn’t mean that the training from God is no good, and the reporter should have sat through it.

When she cites the Pew report that reveals Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest rate of retention of all faiths, why does she not also cite what appears on the same page? “Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the most racially and ethnically diverse religious groups in America,” it says. Nobody is concerned about racial prejudice more than reporters, and here Pew makes a statement to indicate that the Witnesses have solved it to a remarkable degree. All she had to do was look around and see for herself the harmonious diversity that she will not soon see again. But she does not notice it. She is caught up in an agenda pushed by the faith’s opponents. She is interested in the child sexual abuse angle—an angle that is seemingly shared by every group of persons on the planet. Pedophiles are a pernicious lot that nobody has succeeded in vanquishing, and the Boy Scouts of America, who taught generations of boys responsibility, self included, are at risk of going under because of it.

In New York State, where I have lived and still keep up, a new law eliminates the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. Law firms have flooded the media in search of plaintiffs. Hundreds of new lawsuits are being filed, and the challenge may soon be to find somebody NOT being sued, as lawyers preside over a massive transfer of wealth that amounts to a tax on everyone else. Businesses raise prices. Governments raise taxes. Insurance rates of all sort skyrocket at a time when overall inflation is quite low.

In fact, had I detected abuse at the Red Robin restaurant, and had I reported it, and had the police and child protective authorities arrived and confirmed that it was indeed abuse, and had they removed the child on that account, I still would not have been sure that I had done the right thing. Among those squarely in the crosshairs of child sexual abuse lawsuits are many agencies dedicated to placing them in “protected” settings, but who have put them into settings no better and sometimes worse than where they were before. The world is a shell game of persons wanting to “do something” who, though well-intentioned, are likely to simply shift the evil from one place to another.

In contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses, during their 2017 Regional Conventions, considered detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse has been known to occur—if there are sleepovers, if there are unsupervised trips to the restroom, if there are tickling sessions, if someone is showing unusual interest in your child, for example—so that parents, who are obviously the first line of defense, can be vigilant. Nobody, but nobody, gathers their entire worldwide membership for such training with the aim of protecting children from harm.

It is certainly not wrong for the reporter to report on the Witness connection with child sexual abuse. Much as they would love to say that they have vanquished the crime, such is plainly not the case. But neither has it been the case for anyone else. In some ways, Jehovah’s Witnesses have created a unique legal vulnerability for themselves, for unlike most faiths that were content to preach to the flock weekly and thereafter take no interest in whether religious training was actually applied or not, Witnesses attempt to “police their own,” and thus did become aware of sordid things.

Yet she was right there at the three day convention focusing on all aspects and applications of love. (And an international convention of 40,000 must make a greater impression than a Wilkes-Barre convention of 3500) Had she paid attention, she would have heard from the Cherokee man who grew up embittered because the white man had stolen the lands of his people. He was embittered again when he was required to fight their war for them (Vietnam). When his wife began studying with two Witness women, he was sullen and unwelcoming—the last thing he wanted was the religion of the white man. When she reached the point of wanting to be baptized, he declared that he would not come. When asked who would watch his baby during the baptism, he declared that maybe he had better come on that account. There, he observed the atmosphere for four days (conventions used to be longer) and his already softened attitude toward the Witnesses softened further. The reporter could have taken in that atmosphere, too, had she not had a deadline to meet.

(Jehovah’s Witnesses is not a “come down and be saved” faith. The process of learning and trying Bible teachings on for size seldom (in this area) lasts less than a year. Throughout that time, persons are grounded in their own familiar routine and environment. College is more “manipulative” than is anything having to do with the Witnesses, for there young people are typically cut off almost 24/7 from all that once stabilized them, be it family, friends, and general environment—a classic tool of those who brainwash)

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Lessons to be Learned re Child Sexual Abuse

The Old Testament tells some very strange tales and one of them is told at 2 Samuel. David, the Israelite king, pressured facing an armed insurrection led by his own son, enters a town where loyalty is not assured. As it turns out, he and his men are received hospitably, but there is one man decidedly not hospitable.

The account reads: “...a man…came out shouting curses as he approached. He was throwing stones at David and at all the servants of King David, as well as at all the people and the mighty men on his right and on his left. Shimei said as he cursed: “Get out, get out, you bloodguilty man! You worthless man!”“…Then Abishai the son of Zeruiahm said to the king: “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over, please, and take off his head.” But the king said: “…Let him curse me, for Jehovah has said to him, ‘Curse David!’ …Here my own son, who came from my own body, is seeking my life… Leave him alone so that he may curse me, for Jehovah told him to! …With that David and his men kept going down the road while Shimei was walking alongside the mountain abreast of him, shouting curses and throwing stones and a lot of dust.” (16:5-19)

The fellow curses him, throws stones at him, shouting he is bloodguilty and worthless. And David as much as says: “Well, maybe he has a point. I mean, if God is letting it happen, who am I to kick in his head?”

This obscure passage was included twice in recent meeting programming, though it was the focus of neither. I think that the Governing Body inserts it and applies it to itself. Do not think that they throw Bible verses at everyone else while they crest above it all themselves. No. They themselves are chastened by it. Even as the Witness who first dreamed up keeping track of pedophiles, whoever he may be, is probably on potato-peeling duty in the Bethel kitchen and will be till the day he dies—do not think that they are not reflecting upon how they got into this situation so easily spun negatively, even as David must have reflected upon how he got into the mess he was into, with stones bouncing off his helmet.

There is a verse in Ecclesiastes about being “righteous overmuch:” “Do not become righteous overmuch, nor show yourself excessively wise. Why should you cause desolation to yourself?” How might either course cause “desolation to yourself?” Might it not be that both courses are guaranteed to trigger backlash? “Wise” is okay, even good, for who wants to suffer stupid people? But if one shows oneself “excessively wise,” it too readily slides into becoming “full of oneself.” “Righteous is okay, even good, for who wants to associate with lowlifes?  But “righteous overmuch” also too readily slides into becoming “full of oneself.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses did not consciously cover up child sexual abuse. They handle it internally with punishments as severe as excommunication—you can’t execute them, after all—and it has always been written policy—from the moment it occurred to anyone to write about it—that any member is free to report to outside authorities any abuse of which he or she becomes aware. But could it be argued that they inadvertently covered up child sexual abuse? Here one must pause and consider.

Almost any setting in which human beings interact is being revealed these days as steeped in child sexual abuse. It is endemic to human society. If Jehovah’s Witnesses had said: “Oh, man, we’re having a struggle with this bunch, too!” all would have been well. Not with their most virulent detractors, of course, who principally zero in child sexual abuse within the ranks of their former faith. But everyone else would have understood. Most would even have given Witnesses high marks for attempting to do something about the problem, creating an internal sex offender registry long before anyone else thought to do it. They would have understood that the program is not to protect child molesters but to mete out strong discipline and protect congregation members from them.

Unfortunately, those of the “righteous overmuch” mindset were loath to communicate the notion that child sexual abuse could ever occur among those guided by Bible standards. To that end, a culture emerged in which ones suffering it were loath to communicate it outside so as not to “sully God’s name.” It is hardly just Jehovah’s Witnesses. The very reason that there is an expression “skeletons in the closet” is that people once succeeded in keeping them there. No organization has proved eager to reveal whatever child sexual abuse has been found in its midst. That is usually because whatever organization it is believes that overall it is doing much good and does not want to tarnish its image and thereby cripple itself. Yes, “they are commendably proactive over there,” they know will be the reaction of some, but they fear “they are all a bunch of perverts over there!” will be the reaction of most.

This understandable, if not laudable, misgiving is common to all. With Jehovah’s Witnesses there is an added factor. They have attempted to do something about child sexual abuse within their midst, and thereby they become linked with it in the popular mind. Others have circled the wagons when it comes to child sexual abuse among their leaders, but the prospect of being shamed by having it uncovered among their membership does not worry them—there is no mechanism to uncover it; when a pedophile abuser is nabbed by the police, the church minister is as surprised as anyone.

Jehovah’s Witnesses thereby have greater ‘exposurability’ than most; hence the temptation not to advertise it will also be greater than most. The ones “righteous overmuch” have caused tremendous trouble in this regard, it seems to this writer, in creating a culture in which persons will be reluctant to go to outside authorities even though they know they have every right to do it. Reputation of their faith becomes the overriding concern for them. It does not affect all Witnesses, of course, but it does affect a high proportion.

The underlying attitude is not easy to root out, for several reasons. First, it is a common circumstance with anyone having a goal to “do what is right,” and certainly the doing of what is right is not to be discouraged. Secondly, it is not as though there are two factions among Jehovah’s Witnesses, as though rivaling street gangs. Rather, as with people anywhere, there is a spectrum. Separating the wheat from the chaff is not so easy, for there is a mixture of both in everyone—which leads to the third consideration: an actual application of scripture by a group of persons will almost inevitably lead to the present situation, because Christians who are Bible-based are by definition “no part of the world” (John 17:14, for example: “I [Jesus in prayer to his Father] have given your word to them, but the world has hated them, because they are no part of the world.”) The “insularity” that critics of Jehovah’s Witnesses complain of is virtually mandated by the Bible they try to follow. That’s what insulation is—a device to keep something away from what is harmful. The house insulation keeps the harmful cold out. The wire insulation keeps the harmful electricity in. In many cases, good things will not work if they cannot be insulated, and it is the same with Christianity true to the Book.

That said, looking at the overall situation of child sexual abuse, one would easily surmise that something must have gone wrong. Jesus’ words to his followers may be true that they will “lyingly say every sort of wicked thing against you,” (Mathew 5:11) but in this case some will not be so sure about the “lyingly.” Even if it is misrepresented, there must be something to it at root—and in this case it involves hurt children.

Legal accountability is argued over in court each day, and this writer does not comment on individual court cases. He did not comment on OJ or Michael Jackson or Paul Manifort or any of them. They involve persons that one doesn’t know and 99% percent testimony that one doesn’t hear. Cancel trials altogether and determine outcomes based upon Facebook likes if we are expected to all weigh in on with such minimal input.

Everyone sues everybody these days over everything. Lawyers have assumed the place as premiere sponsors of television news. Only vaccine makers operate liability free. Legal chips will fall where they will—everyone understands that. But it is the “righteous overmuch” ones who somehow missed the fact that those outside of the congregation also cared about children. They were so insulated that they barely knew another world existed, and that is what most rankles. That is the soul-searching that must remain as a lesson. That is what David will most likely take away from the stones pounding his helmet. They look like deer caught in the headlights sometimes—aghast and dumbfounded at how what started with such good intentions some now portray as so deliberately evil.

The Witness website contains not a mention of the child sexual abuse court litigation, though there is abundant material on Russian persecution. Perhaps it is simply due to the same reason that one does not expect to find a citation from the Building Department on the restaurant menu. At any rate, it certainly is the case that once one starts addressing the critics one never stops, so the Witness Governing Body overall heeds the recommendation of Jesus expressed at Mathew 11 to not go there—they criticize you no matter what you do, so it is best to ignore it all, press on ahead, and maybe someone else will come to your defense as you trust that “wisdom [will be] proved righteous by its works.”

In the final analysis, anyone visiting jw.org and perusing the abundant material geared to help children, teens, and family must work very hard to leave with the impression that here is an organization that abuses children. It is not that it cannot be done, but only if one has that notion locked-in previously, as (an old friend used to say, about Witness beliefs in general, and not this specifically) one who has a mind of concrete: “all mixed up and firmly set.” The experience is not all that different from Russia declaring Jehovah’s Witnesses extremists. Curiosity piqued, some visit the website to investigate, where they very quickly discover that they are not.

As the divide between what is Bible-based living widens from that of general society, the temptation to allow harmful aftereffects from “insulation” must be resisted, even as the insulation itself must continue. The inevitable divide of lifestyle itself is easily seen in scripture. “In my letter I wrote you to keep mixing in company with fornicators,” the apostle writes at 1 Corinthians 5:9, “not meaning entirely with the fornicators of this world or the greedy persons and extortioners and idolaters. Otherwise, you would actually have to get out of the world. But now I am writing you to quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator that is a fornicator or a greedy person or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man.”

Okay? The direction to separate and stay separate is very strong. It also flies in the face of current philosophy that we are to “come together” and overlook such differences. Differences that are not ones of conduct Jehovah’s Witnesses from their beginning came together on—those of race and nationality and social class—but differences in conduct the Word says is to be put into another category.

1 Peter 4:3 tells of the rising tensions that are inevitable with regard to two different ways of life: “For the time that has passed by is sufficient for you to have worked out the will of the nations when you proceeded in deeds of loose conduct, lusts, excesses with wine, revelries, drinking matches, and illegal idolatries,” says the writer, but not all will agree. Not everyone would consider what he has listed as so terrible, and many would think a little of all of them is a good thing that adds spice to life. Peter goes on to say: “Because you do not continue running with them in this course to the same low sink of debauchery, they are puzzled and go on speaking abusively of you.” Okay? They are puzzled about it at first but soon enough figure out what to do about it. “Water’s fine in the low sink!” they cry. “Who are you to judge?”

Separation of Christians from the overall world is scripturally mandated. Any attempt to chastise the Witness organization for being that way is actually an attempt to chastise Christianity itself and the Book that it stems from. Still, one must take care not to inadvertently aggravate this situation by being “righteous overmuch.”

Hopefully, somewhere along the line it will be seen that failure to report child sexual abuse is not to be equated to committing it. Court matters will resolve as they will and matters will settle. The most virulent of ex-Witness opposers were barely placated at all by the recent May 2019 study edition Watchtower that essentially solved the problem, by removing all doubt that reporting child sexual abuse to outside authorities DOES NOT bring reproach upon the congregation. They will continue to rail about the “two-witness” rule, which now becomes irrelevant. Report the slimeball to the cops and, if guilty, off to the hoosegow he goes. The “two-witness rule” is for internal procedures only. The reason they are not too quick in the Witness world to throw it out the window emerges every time a person falsely imprisoned is exonerated and released from prison over new DNA evidence, after having served years convicted over less strenuous proof.

 

***~~~***

Meanwhile in Russia, where any connection of Jehovah’s Witnesses to child sexual abuse is completely unheard of and the charge has never been made:

On March 26, 2019, in the town of Yemanzhelinsk (Chelyabinsk Region) at about 7 a.m., there was a soft knock at the door of the apartment where the couple Pavel and Elena Popov live. When they opened the door, they saw about 10 people in masks with assault weapons and a sledge hammer for breaking the door out.

The Popovs were informed that a search would be conducted in their home due to the fact that they profess the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their computer, phones, tablets, family photos, books and international passports were confiscated. After the search, the pair was taken away for questioning in another city. According to law enforcement officers, whether they will be detained, “depends on how they will cooperate.” (Law enforcers across the country threaten believers to intimidate them into incriminating themselves or others by “confessing” that they are carrying out extremist activities.)

This sort of story from Russia is becoming quite common. The game of good cop/ bad cop continues. Both cops want for the activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop. Both cops cloak their attacks in misrepresented threats posed by this decidedly peaceful group—among the very few peoples who swear off violence on all accounts.

Recent meeting congregation material considered Hebrews 12:3: “Indeed, consider closely the one who has endured such hostile speech from sinners against their own interests, so that you may not get tired and give up.”

Why ought one “consider closely” the fact that Jesus “endured such hostile speech” from those who opposed him? “So that one may not get tired and give up.”

Hostile speech always pastes one’s ears back, unless persons are completely insensitive. Few today ever really hear that about Jesus: that he endured “hostile speech” as a matter of course. The reason is plain. If Jesus was the subject of hostile speech—and we all know that Jesus was good—then it follows that anyone venting on him is not-so-good. Since the bulk of people today are pretty much where they were then, to highlight the hostile talk he endured amounts to little more than self-condemnation. The world has rejected Christianity. Mark Twain was not so far off when he wrote that there has only been one Christian and “they caught and crucified him—early.” It is easy to see why he puts it in such short supply. Try sincerely to follow the Christ and they come after you as well.

“Nevertheless, I have told you these things [again, these things about the hostile talk and opposition Christians would face] so that when the hour for them to happen arrives, you will remember that I told them to you,” Jesus counsels disciples at John 16:4. The hour pretty much has arrived for Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are enduring just that hostile talk, not only in Russia, but in the West. Ostensibly it is for different reasons. The most virulent hostile talk in the West has never been heard in Russia. The meeting material is increasingly geared to reinforcing ones’ faithfulness in the face of hostile talk and even action, and that is obviously the enemies’ motivation to deprive them of it.

When Jehovah’s Witnesses are declared extremists in Russia and then, being “extremists,” cannot be detained as one might arrest a speeder, but must be violently arrested with SWAT teams, then you know that the “bad cop” is alive and well. But the overall scenario—Russian and Western—is that of good cop/bad cop, for the goals of the good cop are the same as the bad cop: that Jehovah’s Witnesses cease being Jehovah’s Witnesses and that the kingdom message that they alone preach should cease. To that end differently tactics are used—in the West it is something so scurrilous as child sexual abuse—but the overall goal is the same.

A brief moment of levity was provided by Sergey Skrynnikov, who told the Russian court as part of his closing statement before sentencing: “Let us take a look into the future. If for another ten years or so the government keeps putting Jehovah’s Witnesses in prisons and correctional colonies, there will be about 200 of them in each penal facility. Imagine four congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in one prison! The prison administrators will be begging the Ministry of Justice to set Jehovah’s Witnesses free. What do you imagine the majority of Witnesses would pray for? “Lord, don’t soften the heart of the administrator; don’t let him set me free. I have so many Bible students and sincere people to talk to in here.”

He sort of has a way with words, doesn’t he? And math.

 

Included in the eBook; TrueTom vs the Apostates!

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Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Child Sexual Abuse Storm on the 'Atlantic'

“Tom, you’re on here quite often justifying or defending some pretty horrible doctrine. I get it, it’s your faith and you’re probably a decent guy IRL so I hope one day you’ll find a religion that won’t require you to perform logical contortions to rationalize your adherence to it.”

Actually, you don’t get it. Of course I see the point your community makes. But you make it so persistently and to the exclusion of all else that I say “Okay, those bases are covered” and I focus on the all else. You are a community that plays and perseverates over the movie bloopers and in time imagines that the bloopers were the movie itself. I am struck by the exuberance your pals display in re-embracing the life they once left. Most long-standing residents of that life will not share that exuberance, I think. It is as though they sing the Vioxx ‘It’s a Beautiful Morning!’ song, forgetting that the FDA ultimately pulled that product because it kills people.

I have no problem with saying the Jehovah’s Witnesses governing arrangement makes mistakes. But (we have many trees on our property) it’s like when we contracted the tree trimmer and my wife kept pointing out more and more flaws. “Don’t look so hard,” the fellow told her. “You’ll cut them all down.” It is like that with people anywhere. Taken to extremes, one will dismantle any organization of any sort.

Look, everyone today describes the other side as delusional and even hate-filled. It’s just the way people are. I don’t take it personally. We are spiritual enemies not because of CSA. You have probably done us a favor in that by triggering such 5/19 Watchtower statements as “the reproach falls upon the abuser,” which effectively solves the problem. We are spiritual enemies because you have reversed course on the ‘everything else,’ trading in the diamonds for the turds. The CSA stuff was turds all along, but every group is pulling out its hair trying to cope with it, many less effectively than us, and at any rate, it is not the big picture. It is but a component of the big picture, overall a very small one. If you focus on any tree of the forest long enough, it becomes the forest. Your points I see all the time. Many of my points I have never seen anyone make but me. Even the Watchtower organization itself, which has a “penchant for privacy” as one reporter put it, does not make them. I take for granted going into your community that I will lose. I just want to get another view on the table. Any group with a narrow focus becomes myopic over time. I just seek to counter that.

 

***~~~***

It is a solid base hit—even a double or a triple—with the publication of the Atlantic article and opposers are crowing as they seldom crow. Other sources have picked up on it, such as the New York Daily News. As for me, I would just as soon not see such articles. Given that they exist, however, this one I liked. It helped me with the listings. I have many times interacted with some of these characters, mostly through Twitter, without knowing exactly who they were, where they came from, and what were the relationships between them. Now I know.

I find myself, much to my surprise and even shock, trading tweets with some of the most celebrated ex-Witness opponents on the planet (and seriously getting under their skin, in some cases). I don’t hang out there. I don’t engage overmuch—though I guess I can hardly say that I don’t engage at all. After I learned that one reporter used an anti-Witness forum as his practically sole source, I went there to see if I could leave material that contrasts with what he otherwise finds monolithically. I post long articles there. Each one produces a flurry of protests and I briefly answer a few of them before disappearing. It is the same way on Twitter. Once in a while there is a mighty storm, but most of the time there is nothing at all and I am chatting about the local weather and relaying cat and dog gifs like everyone else.

Crossing swords with these folk is not exactly what a Witness is expected to do. I approach it, like Paul approached the Corinthians, with fear and trembling. One misstep and your head is handed to you on a platter. I wouldn’t dare do it if I didn’t have 15 years of communicating in writing under my belt, not specializing in, but also not avoiding controversial topics. Some of these characters goad and taunt, I think in hopes of provoking an intemperate response. You’d better not give them one or you and what you represent are toast. To be sure, I have blundered a few times, but not beyond recovery. You must not respond in anger even if your blood boils. Neither be too sympathetic, because that is inevitably thrown back in your face as hypocritical. It is the mark of zealotry that you cannot agree with part of a position. You must endorse all of it, otherwise you are said to hate that position and even whoever makes it. The trick is for your blood not to boil—to regard these ones as opponents, but not enemies—even as some of them express the most virulent hostility to you. You answer them evenly and dispassionately.

“Yeah, well if you could see things though their eyes, you would be hostile, too, you delusional fool!” someone will retort. Who can say? Never expound on what you do not know. Refrain from assigning motives even if they seem to you crystal clear. You may be wrong. Indeed, some of them describe themselves as whistleblowers. Why deny them the status? Having blown the whistle and effecting some change with it, they could return to the fold if they wanted to, even if disfellowshipped. What! Even some of pedophiles disfellowshipped have been allowed to return and the elders forever more have to watch them, for one cannot read hearts, so these “whistleblowers” could not? All one must to is “repent” and “turn around” and “produce fruits that befit repentance”—manifested by doing and saying the right thing, giving no further evidence of causing trouble, and enduring months or even years of sitting through meetings and afterwards in silence. The “whistleblowers” are not going to “make trouble,” because they already made it and it turned out to be just the ticket for solving a vexing problem. It could happen.

Of course, why it may not happen is that they might insist upon a heroes’ welcome. They might insist upon thereafter being a “power broker” in the congregation. What they also would “repent” over would be “pushing ahead,” and speaking injuriously of congregation governance. But they could say that there were driven to distraction by what they had heard or experienced and will from this point on “behave” and it would all be smoothed over in time. Time heals most everything that wants to be healed.

The reasons they become “enemies” is not simply due to any whistleblowing, but because they quickly progress to the following, as illustrated by a remark of Lloyd’s:

“And there’s Tom’s approach in a nutshell: join a religion, even if it doesn’t make sense, and just hope eventually your questions will be answered & everything will fall neatly into place. Never mind that people of other religions do the same, wasting their lives on nonsense.”

There it is. He threw out the baby with the bathwater. In fact, it does make sense and is not nonsense. He once thought so, too. It is one of the few things in the world today that does make sense—that is the reason that Witnesses were attracted to Bible teachings in the first place. It is the reason that they stick to it despite trials and even blunders. Current blunders, if they be that, and some courts have said they are, present the framework that Jehovah’s Witnesses often call ‘the Truth’ through its least flattering light. But it is still the same framework. Lloyd illustrates what

Professor David Bromley, author of The Politics of Religious Apostasy, wrote—that “individuals who elect to leave a chosen faith must then become critical of their religion in order to justify their departure…Others may ask, if the group is as transparently evil as he now contends, why did he espouse its cause in the first place? In the process of trying to explain his own seduction and to confirm the worst fears about the group, the apostate is likely to paint a caricature of the group that is shaped more by his current role as apostate than by his actual experience in the group.”

If a court case goes against you, you are duly chastened. But that does not mean that the entire picture has been seen, nor that another court might see things another way. It frequently happens—so many times that one could even stretch matters a little and say that it tacks in the light of ever-brightening approximations of truth, using verbiage that the Watchtower itself is fond of. What about the classic Supreme Court case that went against us in the 1940s, after which Jehovah’s Witnesses were accosted and beaten up so that even Eleanor Roosevelt had to speak up in their behalf, and then three years later, that same Court, with a few new members and a few others chastened at the brutality they had unleashed, reversed itself in the Gobitis decision regarding flag salute? Courts are the best humans can do, but they are not impartial. Everyone knows it. If they were impartial, confirming a new Supreme Court Justice could be done in an afternoon. Justices are swayed by interpretation of the law which is, in turn, swayed by pre-existing ideology. And no ideology is so white-hot as that which accompanies the subject of child sexual abuse, the plague of the planet.

The civil court is not so much a forum to establish truth but one to assign blame. The two goals overlap, but they are not the same. A conciliatory tone, for example, would seem to be a prerequisite in a forum seeking truth, but in an adversarial court forum, one must eschew it, for it will only result in getting beaten over the head with it by the other party. It is the nature of an adversarial legal system.

Yes, one is chastened upon losing a court case. On the other hand, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia did not need the Supreme Court declaring it extremist and the equivalent of ISIS (the only other officially designated extremist group) to know whether they were extremist or not. They did not need the Russian cops being told: ‘There are bad people inside. Do with them what you like,’ to determine whether they were bad people or not. It is the same when a Western civil court rules against them in a child abuse matter. They know the original intent of whatever record-keeping exists—to monitor some abhorrent conduct, in accord with Romans 2:21: “You, the one saying ‘do not steal,’ do you steal? You, the one saying ‘do not commit adultery,’ do you commit adultery?” They know, too, the intention was to protect their general community, so that molesters could not slip quietly out of one congregation and into another (as they could anywhere else). They know these things—even if they are misrepresented, sometimes deliberately, as attempts to protect pedophiles.

 

As Jehovah’s Witnesses experienced Bible teachings come together to convincingly answer deep questions of life—questions answered nowhere else—to them it was like a jigsaw puzzle assembled. They thereafter look at the mountain vista from the box cover replicated before them and are not quickly swayed by opponents saying they put it together wrong—even if there are some frayed pieces. This is especially true if that opponent’s own puzzle lies unassembled in the box on the upper shelf of his closet.

That consideration will be the predominant factor for most Jehovah’s Witnesses as they respond to what is here undeniably sordid. Child sexual abuse is the growth industry of the planet. Nearly all groups of size have suffered ship damage attempting to navigate those shoals. The common view now for any organization in which it has not been revealed is that it is only a matter of time. See how the United Nations, for example, is a pedophile haven—wear a blue helmet and nobody questions your authority or intention.

 

Lloyd will not return, not because he has spotlighted something unsavory, but because he has responded to the JW ship running into the shoals by burning every part of it. Is it really so that the Witness world is the one that “makes no sense?” One glance at the news will reveal that it is his world that makes no sense. Is it really so that religion is a crutch of which we have no need? The premise of the question is wrong. It is indeed a crutch. The flawed premise is that we have no need of one. In his day, Ronald Reagan was arguably the most influential person on earth. Ten years later, in the throes of Alzheimer’s, he didn’t know who he was. Will anyone maintain that they need no crutch in the face of a pathetic reality as that?

I approach online “in fear and trembling,” not just because these characters will rip you to shreds if you say something dumb, or because you are invariably battling a dozen of them at once, or because everything you say they think is dumb, but also because I do not know the reaction of my own people. Many of them, if not most, will think a Witness should not be doing what I am doing, and they will give me the fisheye.

Will I one day hear from the Witness organization: “What are you doing, TrueTom?! You’re messing everything up!?” If so, I will recalibrate, for I do not think that I am above them. It is no more than acceding to the authority of the coach, the teacher, the boss, the mentor, the union steward—something that used to be the most unremarkable thing in the world and is now portrayed as domination by those who would abuse. You can over-play the victimization card.

I am very glad—and did not plan it this way at all—that I wrote two timely books (four altogether) and put portions online so that, should I choose to respond to a tweet, I can also link to something relevant, effectively answering someone’s 50 words with my 1000. Let me tell you that gets rid of trolls in a hurry.

It started out as such a small project. As our people experienced problems in Russia, I wrote a few posts about it in my blog. In time, it occurred to me to assemble them for the record. Emily Baran, a non-Witness, wrote the history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia from their beginning up till 2007. Nobody has written an account of the present happenings, so I figured that I would do it.

All I had in minds was something on the order of a brochure. However, as opposition in Russia intensified, the precise reasons for opposition were never stated, leaving reporters to venture educated guesses as to just what Russia has against them. Putin himself doesn’t seem to understand it, stating that he doesn’t know why Jehovah’s Witnesses are persecuted since “they are Christians, too.” So I decided to state them myself, along with how each might be defended in Parts 2 and 3 of what became a book—with references endnoted because that is what one does with history.

Thus the book is not only a chronicle of history (Part 1). It is also a witness to persons who might not know much about us. It is what I would say were I on a return visit there. It is literally what I would say, in many cases. One personal friend said about my first ebook, Tom Irregardless and Me that he was having a hard time following along until a light went off in his head: “Oh. Tom writes like he speaks,” after which he had no trouble.

The defense portion of Dear Mr. Putin – Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia grew and grew and is as large as the history portion. Moreover, everything is interwoven. When I put it out there, I thought my book-writing days were done. However, opposition that had taken a pause in the West kicked up again—I found myself responding to that in other posts—and presently I thought to package them into another book: TrueTom vs the Apostates!

The two were always meant to stand separately. I didn’t think of Dear Mr. Putin while I was writing TrueTom. However, they will end up sharing a few common chapters, even though both have already been released—you can do that with ebooks—they will share common material because, in a spiritual sense, the situation in Russia and the situation in the West are the same. It is a good cop/ bad cop situation. The good cop may really not want you to fall into the hands of the bad cop, because he knows how bad that bad cop can be. But both cops have the same goal—that Jehovah’s Witnesses cease being Jehovah’s Witnesses and that kingdom message that they alone preach should stop.

Will my own people upbraid me? Their preference, sometimes stated strongly, is for Witnesses to not go cavorting about online, even if as self-proclaimed sheriffs determined to drain the internet swamp—perhaps especially so, because they always look foolish in so doing. The internet is not the congregation and cannot be made to behave like one. But for me, it will be sort of like what Brother Sivulsky in Russia, from a far more secure perch organizationally, but from a far more dangerous one physically, said. Just after the Russian ban went into effect, he was interviewed from afar by American media: “Are you putting yourself in danger just by speaking with me?” the reporter asked. His answer:

“I don’t know—to be frank, I have no fear. if something will happen—okay it will happen—what I can do? What I am telling only the truth—then why I should fear? If something happens, okay, we will face this problem. For me it is easier because my family was exiled to Siberia. My father spent seven years in prison. My mother spent four years in prison. And I also myself spent one and a half years in prison for military service objection. That’s why I know what does it mean to be persecuted and I have no fear.”

I should be at least as courageous (even though my father did not spend seven years in prison), because my brothers in Russia are showing that quality in spades, and everyone else wonders if, when it comes to them, they will handle it as well. “You can’t do it on your own strength,” comes the scriptural answer. “Nor could they. They lean upon God for strength.”

Upbraiding from my own folks may not happen. When a widow asked me to give the funeral talk of a close friend at the Kingdom Hall, I said that I would if it were allowed—there would be no problem at a funeral home but, neither being a current elder or servant, it might not be allowed at the Kingdom Hall. It was. I’ve been around for a while and people like me. The day I arrived to give it, however, one elder known for crossing ‘t’s and dotting ‘i’s asked me if I was speaking from the supplied funeral talk outline that most speak from. I said I was not. He was not real pleased about that, but after the talk he reversed his position. Another elder present, a former Bethel member, told me afterwards that Bethel has no problem departing from customary practice whenever it can be improved upon. An older man can chance it more readily than a young man, for whom it would likely come off as immodest. You don’t have to speak the healthful words verbatim. You have to speak the pattern of the healthful words, as Paul told Timothy.

See: Tweetstorm Over the Atlantic    and/or

Lessons to be Learned

Included in the eBook; TrueTom vs the Apostates!

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Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

A Class Action Suit in Quebec

“Citing a hierarchy that ‘encourages a culture of silence,’ a Quebec Superior Court judge has authorized a class-action lawsuit for current or former Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec who were sexually abused by other members as minors....[The plaintiff] alleges she was repeatedly sexually abused and assaulted by her brother, 13 years older, beginning when she was only 10 months old.”

Do I understand this correctly? One child abuses another within a family, and it is the fault of the congregation elders?

The Canadian judge stated that: “The organization of Jehovah's Witnesses is very hierarchical, led by men, and encourages a culture of silence.”

Take the organization out of the picture for a moment. Are we to imagine that the mom and dad of this family would have otherwise marched their kids straight down to the police station to make sure that proper punishment was meted out?

There is a part of me that thinks what really gets in sticks in the craw of this judge is that Jehovah’s Witnesses are “hierarchical,” as though any other organization is not, and that they are “led by men,” as though anything less than a free-for-all ought to be taboo. Perhaps she even implies that men are inherently evil, so that the greatest travesty of all is to be led by them.

However, says my nemesis: “My guess is that it's not what happened within the family. It was the coverup within the Congregation.”

Well—it is not possible to mishandle what you never attempted to handle in the first place.

The clear implication of rulings such as this is that religious organizations ought not to look into the conduct of its members, for it is only by doing so that they can find themselves in such a spot as this. “Be like the mainline churches,” the ruling says in effect. “Preach to them on Sunday and be done with it. It’s none of your business whether they apply it or not.”

However, the verse Christians feel obligated to follow says that it is their business. “You, the one preaching, “Do not steal,” do you steal?  You, the one saying, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:21) If you claim that your teachings improve the overall moral fiber, you must have mechanisms in place to ensure that that is in fact the case, especially if your view of God is that he insists on a “clean” people, as free of misconduct as possible.

Framed in this way, the ruling is a state attempt to regulate religion, and could be argued on that basis.

Plus, such thinking completely ignores the far superior role of prevention of child sexual abuse, in order to zero in exclusively on meting out punishment when it occurs, as though that is the means by which the problem will be solved. How’s that project going, anyhow? Thirty years into the all-out war against child sexual abuse, is it just about snuffed out? Or is it only the tip of the iceberg that has been revealed?

I’ll take the kids, Caleb and Sophia, video any day, for teaching parents how to protect their children. I’ll take the 2017 Regional Conventions any day, in which every Witness in the world was assembled to hear detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might take place, so that parents, the obvious first line of defense, can be vigilant. Who else assembles all its members and then trains them so?

***~~~***

 

“Jehovah’s Witnesses have a serious problem of child sexual abuse in their midst?”

 There are two ways of looking at this.

1.) They do not.

2.) They do, but the situation is far worse everywhere else.

One must look no farther than who is being outed as perpetrators. If you want to find deviants in most places, you look no further than the leaders. If you want the same ‘catch’ among Jehovah’s Witnesses, you must broaden your search to include, not just leaders, but everyone. A Jehovah’s Witness leader committing child sexual abuse is rare. Not unheard of, but rare. Elsewhere, it is the pattern.

Okay, if the leaders are not committing the child sexual abuse, are they nonetheless "hiding it?" How do they compare with other groups? It is a little hard to say. Nobody else has ever found any. They looked the other way, taking no interest in looking at wrongdoing within their midst. Thus, when child sexual abuse was found, it was a.) found entirely independent of religious affiliation, and b.) it was found that the leaders themselves were the abusers. How would members fare in comparison? There is no data. Nobody ever bothered to look.

Courts will go where courts will go. Will they take the above into account? Time will tell. There are few organizations with pockets--it doesn’t matter if they are religious or not--that are not being flooded with lawsuits today. In New York State, my own state, the governor has just signed into law a bill greatly lengthening the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. Out of nowhere has appeared a major sponsor of programming I watch--a legal firm seeking to sign up clients. The ads briefly eclipsed other legal firms of accident litigation running non-stop ads of how “[So and So law firm] got me $3 million dollars, 15 times what the insurance company offered!” Put together, lawyers have become by far the premier sponsors of television. Can a society really endure that way?

Make no mistake. No one is saying that it is wrong to sue for grievances. But one must sometimes ask whether there will be any organized group on earth left standing when the suing is done. Of course, there will be some. Governments can just raise taxes to recoup legal payouts. Businesses can raise prices. But groups like the Boy Scouts, investigating bankruptcy at last report, are out of luck. One wonders how other voluntary organizations will fare.

The typical person congratulates the client who has come into an extraordinary bonanza via lawsuit. Then he opens his insurance premium bill. It calls to mind, as a rough parallel, the statement of Alexander Fraser that democracy can only endure until “the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” The world has become a lawyers’ playground, with massive transfers of money flowing in all directions--the barristers netting a third, they being the only consistent beneficiaries.

When the rules of the game change, you can hardly blame the small players for adjusting to accommodate them. There was a time, those my age will remember, when nothing was so crass as for lawyers to advertise. It was against their universal code of conduct, possibly even against the law. It explains the phrase “ambulance chaser”—you actually had to chase an ambulance to sign up a client before another lawyer could. You couldn’t just broadcast to the whole wide world that you were scouring the earth for clients.

Someone dear to me was sued several times with regard to property, in another matter that had a very long statute of limitations. When what proved to be the final lawsuit came in, the person sought to make defense through his insurance lawyer, but that one attempted contact several times and could not get a response from the firm bringing suit. Finally, that firm admitted that they were having a hard time locating their client. Seemingly, they had left no stone unturned in seeking business and had finally found “aggrieved” ones whose cases were so tenuous that they couldn’t even be bothered to show up and make them.

I wonder, too, whether the popular demand for public apologies isn’t largely just a PR event, or even worse, an encouraged legal strategy to secure a clear admission of guilt, thereafter better enabling future lawsuits. Few things are done for the noble ‘window-dressing’ reasons that are given. At any rate, it is worth noting that when the government of Australia apologized for decades of child sexual abuse, and opposers praised that apology to the heavens because they thought they could thereby embarrass Jehovah’s Witnesses, the victims nonetheless rejected it as ‘too little, too late.’ Better than any apology is prevention. Of course, it is good to call in the grief counselors in the aftermath of a school shooting. But it is far better not to need them in the first place.

The situation is a far cry from the Quebec of 70 years ago, during which 400 Jehovah's Witnesses generated 1600 arrests, on charges as minor as peddling without a license but as major as sedition. A key case involving sedition was lost before the Supreme Court of Canada, but was overturned on a rarely-used provision of "rehearing," at which the Court acknowledged that Witness literature and ministry included nothing that incited to violence--a necessary ingredient of sedition--but only contained that which made a powerful faction squirm. The situation is much different today, with altogether different charges, and the game is barely recognizable. But deep within, is the underlying intent not nonetheless the same, cloaked behind a veneer of righteous indignation?

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To be added to TrueTom vs the Apostates!

 

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'