Jehovah’s Witness elder warned teen not to report father’s sex abuse to police

A teenager whose three sisters were also sexually abused by their father was warned not to report the abuse to police.

A teenager who revealed she and her three sisters were sexually abused by their father, a senior ­Jehovah’s Witness, was warned by an elder not to report the abuse to police because if she did so, she would be “disfellowshipped”, or excommunicated.

The woman, known as BCG, told the royal commission into child sexual abuse that her father sexually abused her when she was 17, while her mother and six siblings were away.

She said she used “to pray to Jehovah to put angels” around her bed to stop her father’s abuse but it did not stop.

Now 43, she said her father quoted Bible scriptures during the abuse, warning her she had to “be obedient” to him.

She subsequently learned her mother had been aware the father had sexually abused her older sister when she was two years old and had also abused her two younger sisters, then five and seven or eight.

BCG said when she first tried to report the abuse to elders, she was told they could not hear her allegations without her father present. The abuse was later investigated by three church elders who were friends of her father.

One of those men, Dino Ali, told the commission he believed BCG’s allegations but could not take action against the father ­because there was no second witness to the abuse.

Mr Ali said “divine law” required two witnesses to a crime or for the perpetrator to confess.

BCG said she had been taught that outsiders to the church were “worldly people” and could not be trusted and if she was “disfellowshipped”, she would be killed by Jehovah. When she left the church, she was “shunned, ostracised and avoided” by the congregation and her ­family.

After the church’s investi­gation of her abuse, BCG became depressed and tried to commit suicide. She said she was chastised by elders for the suicide attempt because it was considered a “wrongdoing” against the church.

The father was “disfellowshipped” from the church but welcomed back a few years later.

He was convicted in 2004 — after three court trials — for unlawful and indecent assault ­attempted rape, and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.