Jehovah’s Witnesses historic child abuse `confession’ unearthed by Royal Commission
Elders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sat on a `confession’ of historic child abuse for nearly a decade before it was unearthed by the Royal Commission, a court has heard.
Central Coast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Central Coast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Nightclub owner pleads guilty to drugs, weapons offences
- Pair face court over alleged drug, robbery offences
A man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was convicted and placed on a community corrections order for 12 months at Gosford District Court on Friday.
It comes 38 years after the now 51-year-old sexually and indecently assaulted a girl, 5, at a Killarney Vale home when he was just 14 years old.
The court heard the Jehovah’s Witness wrote a confession to elders of the church in 2008 but the confession was never passed on to police until it was produced at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
It was only then in November 2017 the letter was referred to NSW Police who extradited the man from South Australia and charged him with two counts of sexual assault, one of which was withdrawn and dismissed.
The court heard the man and the victim’s families met through the Woy Woy congregation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the early 1980s and became close.
Towards the end of 1982 the offender and his older sister were playing “hide and seek” with the victim and her sister at the girls’ Killarney Vale home.
An agreed set of police facts states he found her hiding behind a brick pillar under the house and told her something like “do you want to have long legs like your sister?”.
He told her to lie down on her back and said “I’m not sure if this will hurt or not. It might just feel a bit funny.”
He pulled her shorts and underpants down below her knees and started rubbing her genitalia.
At the time the victim was five and he was 14 years old.
Within a couple of months the victim remembers playing another game of hide and seek and a similar thing happening.
Sometime around 2008 the victim spoke to an elder at the Torquay congregation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses about what happened.
They spoke to the elders in Whyalla, where the man was then living, who then had a conversation with the offender.
The court heard he wrote a confession to the elders of the church, which was date stamped August 20, 2008.
After it was produced at the Royal Commission police commenced an investigation and extradited him on April 6, 2019.
The agreed facts state when he was arrested he told police “Okay, I was a different person to who I am now. If me going back to NSW and resolving the matter can somehow help (the victim) in her healing I will help and not fight the extradition”.
Judge Tanya Bright said while there was an aged disparity between him and the victim, he was 14 at the time and had a “level of immaturity”.
She accepted he had genuine remorse and took full responsibility for his offending.
“He has been remorseful for a long period of time and has suffered as a result of it,” she said referring to a psychologist’s report documenting his long history of mental health issues.
Judge Bright said had he been dealt with at the time, aged 14, he would have been unlikely to have received a custodial sentence.
A response has been sought from Jehovah’s Witnesses.