The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Catholic Church, two religious organizations that have come under fire for covering up child sexual abuse, share a series of troubling themes and tactics.
In this hour of Reveal, we take you behind the scenes of The Boston Globe’s Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, look at the legacy of the groundbreaking story and see how other journalists went on to expose more crimes by Catholic priests around the world.
One abuse case in Australia highlights a pattern among Jehovah’s Witnesses: Elders fail report child sexual abuse to secular authorities. The perpetrator is kicked out of the organization, only to be reinstated later.
A panel of judges in Philadelphia has ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses used an “abusive tactic” to delay a trial in which a woman accused the religion’s leaders of covering up her abuse as a child.
Claims that Jehovah’s Witnesses hide child sexual abuse from secular authorities have surfaced again in England. The Daily Mail reported last week that Ian Pheasey, a 54-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for choking young girls for sexual gratification in the 1990s. Prosecutor Nicholas Taplow said that Pheasey’s victims were told to […]
In the face of evidence that the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization in Australia failed to report more than 1,000 allegations of child sexual abuse, the religion’s leaders say they’re doing a great job of protecting children. The response comes from a 141-page document filed by the Witnesses to an Australian government commission investigating rampant child sexual […]
A Portuguese news documentary released in October was yet another report from across the globe to detail the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ policy of not reporting child abusers to law enforcement. As in other media reports, top officials refused to speak to the journalists who produced it.
