Barrister Angus Stewart, senior counsel for the Australian Royal Commission Inquiry Into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, has released his initial findings regarding their questioning of Jehovah’s Witnesses. (See this post to find out more about this inquiry and its purpose.) One thing I noted was on page 104 of his report:

First, understand that the Inquiry discovered that Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia have had 1,006 reported pedophiles in their religion in the last few decades, with not one being reported to police by elders. Not one.

What Barrister Stewart is saying in the above section is that, yes, Jehovah’s Witnesses do perform a background check, or “Working With Children Check” (WWCC) on potential elders, as legally needed. It is a law in some parts of Australia that clergy who work with children go through this vetting process before they can be appointed; visit this website to find out more about this check.

However, note Mr. Stewart’s statement about the hypocrisy of Jehovah’s Witnesses performing these police checks, while they themselves don’t report known pedophiles to the police!

It’s obscenely brazen of Jehovah’s Witnesses to boast that they comply with the law by performing background checks, but to then withhold the same information that should be contained in the database that is referenced for those checks. If Jehovah’s Witnesses were selling a product, it would be like them saying, “Of course our products are all safe, we’ve checked and there’s no record of anyone getting injured while using them,” while purposely not reporting the very injuries that they boast about checking.

Safety of Others

It’s also especially shameful to note that many Jehovah’s Witnesses may need to go through this background check for reasons outside the religion; according to the website listed above, a person goes through this check if their secular work, or any volunteer activity, brings them into any contact with a child, such as with teachers, coaches, and the like.

Potential employers may then be referencing this background check to protect the children in their care, but they will also come up empty, because Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t report their own known cases of pedophilia. This puts other children in danger, because those employers may unknowingly and unwittingly hire a pedophile, based on this lack of information in the WWCC database.

This is something that Barrister Stewart also noted, and which I bring out in this post, when he pointedly told an elder that, even when Jehovah’s Witnesses are not satisfied that a pedophile will not re-offend, they still don’t call the police. Stewart asked, “You don’t take into consideration, do you, how people outside of the church might be kept safe from such a person?”

Failing to report these crimes to the persons responsible for this database shows the obscene lack of concern on the part of Jehovah’s Witnesses, as these pedophiles could very well be hired by schools, youth detention centers, sporting leagues, etc.. The molesters could then have even more unfettered access to vulnerable children.

Interesting that Jehovah’s Witnesses often say that they are a “loving” religion and that they “love their neighbors”:

“Second, Jesus said: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” (Verse 31; Leviticus 19:18) Love of God and love of neighbor are really inseparable. The second is a by-product of the first. (1 John 4:20, 21) If we love our neighbors as ourselves, we will treat them the way we want them to treat us. (Matthew 7:12) We thereby show that we love the God who made us—and them—in his image.—Genesis 1:26.” (March 1, 2013, Watchtower)

Despite their words, this love doesn’t seem to extend far enough to reasonably protect their neighbors’ children from the risk of sexual molestation by one of their own.

Access to Children

Consider too the entire purpose of this check; it’s to legally restrict people who are a risk to children from coming into contact with them and making them victims of their abuse, even in their church.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have failed miserably to understand this danger; as brought out in the Pedophilia category of this site and the post mentioned above, they refuse to remove someone from the congregation unless there is a second witness to child sexual abuse. Even then, they’ve been known to dismiss such testimony, and welcome predators back to the church after a short excommunication.

In turn, these ones then have access to children in the congregation and when they go to people’s homes for their preaching work and bible studies, something that would no doubt be limited by law if these molesters didn’t pass this check.

Yet, Jehovah’s Witnesses boast that they comply with this check while, at the same time, as Barrister Stewart said, undermine its efficacy (intended result) by not providing the same reports that others are expected to supply.

Property Over Children

Their bold hypocrisy aside, it’s this overwhelming and systemic lack of concern for children that is the real problem. We’re not talking about checking someone’s credit to see how well they handle money, or checking a criminal record to note if they would be a risk for stealing funds or vandalizing property. We’re also not talking about reporting damage to a building, as elders are directed to do so in these instructions:

We are talking about protecting children, all children, from vicious cases of rape and sexual molestation. Jehovah’s Witnesses make hollow gestures at doing this by having elders go through this WWCC before their appointment, but then purposely suppress information meant to be used in this same check.

As long as they appear to be clean, law-abiding citizens with no child abuser under their roof, that’s all that matters. Actual child abuse itself is of no consequence to them, so it would seem.

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