Jehovah’s Witnesses fail on abuse, says royal commission

The response by the Jehovah’s Witness organisation to child sexual abuse is inadequate, a royal commission says.

The Jehovah’s Witness organisation in Australia has files ­detailing child abuse allegations against more than 1000 of its members, but there is no evidence any have been reported to the police, a royal commission has found.

“We do not consider the Jehovah’s Witness organisation to be an organisation which responds adequately to child sexual abuse,” the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said in a report released yesterday. The organisation insists abuse allegations be investigated by its “elders” and relies on a literal ­interpretation of Bible passages to set policies and procedures governing its response, the commission found. Among those are the rule that elders may take action against an alleged abuser only if they confess or if there are two or more ­“credible” witnesses to what took place.

“The Jehovah’s Witness organisation relies on, and applies ­inflexibly, even in the context of child sexual abuse, a rule which was devised more than 2000 years ago,” the commission said.

The organisation, founded in the US in the late 19th century, has more than 68,000 active members in Australia, the commission heard. It has recorded allegations, reports or complaints of child abuse made against 1006 members since the 1950s, but could produce no evidence that any of these had been reported to police.

Evidence before the commission shows “it is not the practice of the Jehovah’s Witness organisation to report child sexual abuse to the authorities”, the report found. Instead, members are told “that the matter should be left in the hands of the elders and that one should ‘trust in Jehovah that it will be resolved’.”