There’s no question whether Jehovah’s Witnesses policies direct elders to keep child abuse secret from police. They do.
And there’s no question whether the religion’s headquarters maintains a database of alleged child sexual abusers going back decades. Or that Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders have violated court orders to hand it over.
It’s been three years since we began investigating the global child sexual abuse cover-up inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization, and even though we’ve learned many key details, questions still remain.
How many child abusers are still active around the world because the Jehovah’s Witnesses did not report them? Which congregations do they attend? And why, even in the face of lawsuits and multimillion-dollar court judgments, do leaders refuse to change their policies in any significant way?
We’ve demonstrated our findings in text, television, radio and virtual reality stories. But we felt there was more to do because of the strong public interest that would be served by answering those questions.
We decided to go back to our sources, people around the world who had fueled our coverage, and try to gather them in one place for a day. As an independent, nonpartisan journalism organization, we would broker a day of speakers, panels and candid discussions about ways to address the Jehovah’s Witnesses child abuse crisis.
We chose London because the Jehovah’s Witnesses are fighting multiple lawsuits and investigations related to their child abuse policies there. The law firm Bolt Burdon Kemp – which has the largest abuse litigation department in England – currently has civil lawsuits against the Jehovah’s Witnesses and brought child abuse experts and survivors from around the U.K.
In all, more than 60 experts and stakeholders showed up. They were lawyers, law enforcement officials, child abuse investigators, academics, journalists, former Jehovah’s Witnesses elders, and survivors of child sexual abuse. They traveled on their own dimes from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Belgium, Spain, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
We invited representatives from the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters to join us, but they did not accept.
At the gathering last Wednesday, a panel of abuse survivors talked about the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ failure to protect them when they were children. A panel of former elders described their struggles to break the silence of the organization.
Journalists from Spain and Canada reported on the crisis in their countries. Attorneys from the U.S., U.K., and Australia discussed legal strategies and challenges to getting the Jehovah’s Witnesses to turn over their child abuse database. Some British law enforcement officials were learning about the cover-up for the first time.
The day closed with a conversation with Mike Rezendes, the Boston Globe reporter who was part of the Spotlight team that blew open the child abuse cover-up in the Catholic Church. Rezendes said the Jehovah’s Witnesses story had many of the hallmarks of the Catholic Church scandal – particularly the organization’s secrecy and the power abusers have over victims.
The gathering sparked renewed interest in the cover-up from the British media. Journalists from the BBC and other media outlets showed up to interview some of those in attendance and have already begun broadcasting new stories.
The Times of London followed that coverage with a story emphasizing calls for a formal investigation into the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ child abuse files by the U.K.’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
“The Inquiry has got the powers to require the production of those documents,” said Laura Hoyano, an associate professor of law at Oxford University who specializes in child abuse issues and attended the London summit. “And I understand they have already taken some steps to ensure the documents are retained and not destroyed.”
There’s no question. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are protecting the identities of alleged child abusers, and shielding them from prosecution. The courts want that information and so do we. The fight to get it is playing out around the world.
Trey Bundy can be reached at tbundy@revealnews.org. Follow him on Twitter: @treybundy.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Republish Our Content
Thanks for your interest in republishing a story from Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:
-
Do not change the story. Do not edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
-
Please credit us early in the coverage. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Will Evans, Reveal.
-
If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.”
-
Include all links from the story, and please link to us at https://www.revealnews.org.
PHOTOS
-
You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared and do not change them.
-
If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting Digital Engagement Producer Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.
DATA
-
If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact Data Editor Soo Oh, soh@revealnews.org.
IN GENERAL
-
We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us republish@revealnews.org or email Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.
-
Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.
If you have any other questions, please contact us at republish@revealnews.org.