Australian Royal Commission - Case Study 29
Australian Royal Commission! There! I said it! A bit more on that later in this entry, but first, the “Don’t Give Up!” convention of 2017. I went to it, and came away from the convention quite perplexed if I may be honest. Perplexed negatively. There were 3 things that hit me quite hard.
1. From the Remember Lot’s Wife videos: Featuring a JW family
a. The JW wife is sitting with her non-JW mother. The mother is watching TV, a comedy series, it seems, starring two homosexual men. The mother says something along the lines of that the two men are funny, as in humorous. The JW wife looked on in horror at her mother and said, “But they’re gay!”
b. The JW daughter brings home a few colleagues from work. One of them, a young woman, mentions her parents, notably the fact that they are a lesbian couple who had raised her. The look of horror on the JW husband’s face as he hears this.
Now, these two instances are so homophobic. I was especially shocked by the second example above when the JW husband starts telling the young woman that the fact that she was raised by a same-sex couple was wrong. Now I must be honest, and please I sincerely do not mean to offend, but I do not agree with same sex couples raising a child. Sorry. But I would never say to somebody’s face that their parents are morally wrong. I’d keep that opinion to myself. The offence and hurt this could cause!
c. The JW husband comes home to find a lot of people in his house. His wife greets him and tells him that she has invited various family members over for a meal. The husband looks shocked and says, “but they’re not in the truth!”
Am I to take from that third example, that as a JW I cannot invite family members who are not JWs to my house for a meal! I didn’t like this three-part video at all.
2. The “1975 – Some Brothers” video:
a. A JW guy is thinking back to 1975, and explains that “some brothers” were teaching/saying that the world was expected to end, or at least this “system of things” was due to end in that year. He explained that he found it hard to accept at the time. Two things immediately struck me:
(i) This guy seemed to speak as if these “some brothers” were some minority splinter group of brothers, perhaps in a congregation somewhere, who were teaching that the end of this system of things would happen in 1975, and he seemed to suggest it was a wrong teaching. But hold on! It wasn’t “some brothers”, a minority group, that were teaching these things. It was the Watchtower Society and the Governing Body! They were putting out literature talking about 1975 and how the system of things was expected to end in that year. It was the Society that was teaching people to have Bible studies of no longer than 6 months, for brothers and sisters to sell houses and give up their jobs to urgently preach the message in this last year of this system of things. The literature is still available showing this. So why is this guy talking as if it was a wrong teaching that was being put about by “some brothers”. It seems as if the organisation is trying to blame a few renegade members of the congregations for the teaching that the organisation itself put out.
(ii) This guy said that at the time he didn’t feel that the 1975 teaching was right. Now back then if he voiced that opinion, he would have been seen as going against the teachings of the Society and Governing Body, which can land you in all sorts of trouble. Yet here he is acting as if he were some “super JW” by not listening to these “some brothers”.
All the above really knocked me back somewhat. However, the biggest shock was to come …
Yes, the Australian Royal Commission (ARC). As a JW I had heard about this on numerous occasions purely because I surf the Net. I did not hear about it at a Kingdom Hall or at a Convention. In fact, I don’t think I heard it mentioned or even alluded to once within the organisation, which is odd considering the outcome of the Commission, and I’ll explain why I say it’s odd later. Yes, I had heard about this commission case study into instances of child abuse within the JW “church”, but like all JWs I chose to ignore it. That is until curiosity got the better of me. I noticed that the entire proceedings of the live broadcast had been uploaded onto YouTube by various YT users for all to see. Now, I have read in various forums and in comments made to various YT videos that commenters/posters have boasted about how they have confronted JWs at their door, or how they are going to confront them, not necessarily about the ARC, and I know most of that is rubbish. Most of the people that say that don’t actually do it, but probably boast that they have. However, I wanted to be prepared to give good answers in defence of the JW organisation, and so I decided to sit down and watch the entire proceedings. It took a few days as there is 8 days’ worth to watch, and some of those days are split into up to 4 videos each, some of which are over 2 hours in length. By the end of it I was gob-smacked, and, I am afraid to say, “stumbled”. Why? Well:
Point 1: I listened to the evidence given by the two victims. Both victims were from different Kingdom Halls in Australia, and both were historic allegations of child abuse by JW elders, meaning that the victims/survivors (depending on which label you prefer to use, I’ll use “victim” as I think it better describes the situation) had brought the allegations sometime after the offences were alleged to have taken place. At least one of them went to court, some 20+ years later, resulting in a conviction and imprisonment of the perpetrator. The evidence of both victims, both of whom were JWs at the time of the offences, though one has now left the organisation, but I think the other victim is still a JW, was harrowing to listen to. Not just because of what happened to them as children, but because of the way they were treated by the JW organisation. Such as:
· Being made to sit in front of a panel of three MEN and give explicit details of what had occurred.
· Being made to make their allegations with the perpetrator present, and even have the perpetrator cross-exam his victim. This disgusted me!
· Being told that if they went to the Police about this they would be dragging Jehovah’s name through the mud. Yes, that is what was actually said by, I believe, a Circuit Overseer to an elder who informed him that the victim was considering going to the Police.
· Being told that in the new system all hurt would be healed and life would be better, as if that was comfort enough for these poor women.
· One of the victims wrote to the Australian Bethel after she found out that her abuser, who had confessed, eventually, to the elders that the allegations were true, and had been disfellowshipped, was, some two and one-half years later, being reinstated as a JW. She told the branch that she was not happy with this. The reply she received said that they could not hold the wrongs against him forever, and that Jesus (?) had said to “bottle one’s tears in a skin cup!” Yes, that is actually what they said to this poor woman. I also noted that the elder/abuser had not been disfellowshipped for the abuse, to which he had admitted, but he had been disfellowshipped for lying about the offence. Not for committing the offences of child abuse, but for lying about it.
The counsellor and Justice assisting the Commissioner both appeared to be utterly dumbfounded at this treatment experienced by the victims.
Point 2: Various elders and branch committee/Service Desk elders were called to give evidence. Now, if the statements made by the two victims were not bad enough, these elders giving evidence were shameful. Now, considering some of these elders were giving evidence about something that happened 20+ years ago, I do accept and understand that they would not be able to remember every word of every conversation they had back then. However, it was clear to me that they had “selective memories”, and it appeared that they skirted around certain questions and tried to give anything but direct answers to many of the questions. There was a lot of “I can’t recall what was said” and even some passing of the buck. By the answers and the wording of the answers given, it seemed to me that these elders had been prepped on what to say and what not to say. The whole proceedings were broadcast live, and those elders present who had yet to give their evidence were able to watch the proceedings before they took the stand. Yet when the Counsellor Assisting (CA) the Commissioner, and the Justice himself, asked the elders if they had been following the evidence given, including had they heard the evidence given by the two victims. Every one of the congregation elders said they had not. The CA and Justice seemed to be astounded by this, so much so that when an ex-JW Elder was called to give evidence, they asked him if he knew why these elders had not viewed the proceedings prior to appearing themselves. Now this ex-JW elder had left the organisation (due, he said, to choosing to live a lifestyle that was not compatible to the JW religion. He did not elaborate, and neither was he asked to, but it was obvious that he was either disassociated or disfellowshipped.) He was not one of the elders directly involved in the investigation of either of the allegations back then, but he was the elder of another congregation that one of the disfellowshipped abusers had applied to for reinstatement. This ex-elder said he did not know why the other elders had not been watching the proceedings (he himself had been), but that he could speculate as to why. The CA and Justice did not want him to speculate and so they moved on. I think the ex-JW elder probably suspected the same thing as me, that they were instructed, or at least advised, by the JW lawyers not to watch the proceedings.
Point 3: Also asked to give evidence was the Service Desk Overseer (SDO) and Branch Committee Overseer (BCO) of the Australia branch HQ - they might not be accurate titles, I’d have to go back and watch the videos again -, but basically the latter was the head guy at the Australian WTBTS HQ. Now, both these guys said they had watched all, or some of the proceedings prior to their appearing, but they too, when asked simple questions, seemed to do everything to avoid giving clear simple answers. When they, and indeed the elders, were asked about the Governing Body (GB), they all seemed to clam up, as if they didn’t want to talk about the GB. The CA learned that Geoffrey Jackson, a member of the GB, was in Australia, and so he enquired of the CDO and SDO if it would be possible for Mr Jackson to attend and give evidence. Both said that they felt that he would not be able to contribute much to the proceedings as he was only on the translation committee, and so the CA left it at that. This was backed up by the Watchtower lawyer sitting behind the CA. Until, that is, the CDO let it slip that not only was Mr Jackson on the translation committee, but he also oversees the publishing and policy committees. I thought the CA was going to start kicking off. He told the CDO that he had mislead the Commission. D’oh! Anyway, Mr Jackson did appear in the end, albeit by video link.
Now, I thought that as Jehovah’s people we were Godly people, not like those “worldy ones” out there, you know, the ones who lie and deceive and treat others with a lack of respect. I am not so naïve as to believe that there could never be any pedophiles in any of the JW congregations. There are pedophiles in all walks of life, even in those organisations that are set up with the sole purpose of protecting children, such as child welfare centres. We read of pedophiles found among school teachers, and not just male pedophiles, but females too. I recently read a news article in which a 30-something year old female teacher was regularly meeting one of the 13-year-old boys in her class and having sex with him. We even sometimes hear of police officers being convicted of child abuse related crimes. So, for me, and anybody else, to assume that no JW could ever be a pedophile would be stupidity. But what I would expect is that somebody in authority within the congregation would report the matter to the police. The elders were asked several times by the CA and Justice, “Would YOU (i.e., the elder themselves) go to the police and report any allegations of child sex abuse within their organisation?” Again, they seemed to skirt around the issue and say that it would be up to the victim, or if the victim was still a child, then it would be up to the parents. The CA and Justice asked what they would do if the parents were the ones committing the abuse, but again more skirting around the issue and attempts to shift the burden of responsibility of reporting to sexual abuse matters to the police was on the victim/victim’s parents. One elder was point blank asked by the Justice whether they would go to the police if they found out that a member of their congregation had murdered somebody. He told them he would not! The whole situation seemed, to me, to centre around not sullying the name of the organisation rather than going to the authorities with reports of such abuse. In the end, the Commission told the JW organisation that their methods of dealing with child sex abuse were woefully inadequate.
Now this Commission took place in 2015, and I knew there had been, earlier this year, 2017, a review by the Commission in which they called back the SDO and BCO to ascertain what they had done to improve the way in which they deal with child sex abuse matters within the organisation. I had high hopes that after the 2015 Commission the WTBTS would have responded to this wakeup call and taken serious steps to deal with such offences. I was disheartened to discover they had not. Yes, some steps, albeit half-hearted steps, had been put in place, but they were still inadequate. These steps included a letter from the Branch Office to all elders on how to deal with such allegations. The Justice asked these two if anything had been announced or provided to every rank-and-file member of the congregation on how to deal being a victim of child sex abuse by other members of the congregation. Their answer was that all members of the organisation knew they could simply go to the WT Library, type in the search words “child sex abuse” and find many articles about how to deal with it. The Justice asked him again, has anything been formally announced to each member of the congregation, and something produced for each of them to read on this subject. It seems that nothing has. Certainly, I have heard nothing announced or been hinted at in the 4 years I’ve been attending meetings.
I was told a few weeks ago that my hairstyle might cause others to “stumble”. Well, let me tell you this; the lying and deception of those elders who appeared before the Commission, and the organisation’s apparent priorities being to protect the abuser (yes, the abuser, not the abused) and protect the organisation’s name rather than protect the child, sickened me, and stumbled me. I am sorry to say that I am actually ashamed to say that I am a Jehovah’s Witness due to the actions and attitude of the organisation towards and in dealing with, these awful problems.
Oh, and when Geoffrey Jackson was asked if the GB were God’s only representatives on earth, he replied that it would be presumptuous of him to say this. Huh? But that's what we are taught! We are told that the GB are God’s only spokespersons on earth. I have seen so many double standards watching these videos.
I could go on, but perhaps it’s best you see this all for yourselves. Below are links to the YouTube videos showing the procedures, and to the ARC website itself.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPQ6KZ-AGhVQbadlzMQN26dvMPzddxlui
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmTEz8GhJE8
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/636f01a5-50db-4b59-a35e-a24ae07fb0ad/case-study-29,-july-2015,-sydney
