Jehovah’s Witnesses Doctrine Allows Hiding Truth in Court, Reveal Report Says

On a Friday morning in August, one of the top leaders of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Geoffrey Jackson, a member of the seven-person Governing Body, sat before an Australian government commission investigating whether the organization hid child sexual abuse from secular authorities. Former Witnesses around the world watched the public questioning on live streams.

During two weeks of hearings, Jackson and members of the organization’s leadership in Australia gave hours of sworn testimony. Reveal’s account raises the question of whether any of them told the truth.

Since the 1950s, according to the report, the Witnesses have taught a doctrine that allows Jehovah’s followers to deceive people outside the religion when doing so protects the organization. The group calls this “theocratic warfare.” A 1957 article in The Watchtower magazine, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, grants permission to hide the truth from “enemies” of the religion. The religion teaches that the world outside the organization is controlled by Satan. The article states: “So in a time of spiritual warfare it is proper to misdirect the enemy by hiding the truth.” The doctrine, as described in the report, also teaches that refusing to cooperate with criminal investigations involving Witnesses is sanctioned by God because outsiders are not entitled to the truth.

The term theocratic warfare appears less often in Watchtower literature over time, the report notes, but the leadership still teaches that secrecy is an important way to avoid the justice system. Reveal reports that there is reason to believe the practice continues. According to confidential documents from inside the organization, Watchtower policies for 25 years have directed elders in all U.S. congregations to hide cases of child sexual abuse from law enforcement and from their own congregations.

Reveal reviewed more than a dozen lawsuits and found evidence suggesting that Witness leaders have either lied under oath or refused to cooperate with secular authorities seeking abusers. In some cases, the elders involved remain in positions of power in their local congregations. Reveal reports that three Witness elders lied under oath about their role in enabling a known child molester to keep abusing children, according to another elder who says he has knowledge of the events. Truthful testimony matters in such cases, and the account of who knew what is central to them (Ephesians 4:15).

In a 2011 lawsuit, elders in the North Fremont congregation, Michael Clarke, Gary Abrahamson and Larry Lamerdin, testified about why they did not report to police that a congregation member, Jonathan Kendrick, had confessed to sexually abusing his stepdaughter. Clarke and Abrahamson testified that they had gathered all of the congregation’s elders and instructed them to watch Kendrick closely so that he would not abuse more children.

Rod Francis, who served as an elder in the North Fremont congregation in the 1990s when the abuse occurred, wrote a series of letters to Witness leaders in 2013. In them, he accused the three elders of lying under oath. “None of the other elders, including myself were aware that a child sexual predator was in our midst even though the offender was in my book study,” he wrote. “Because of this the congregation and our own families were unable to be adequately protected resulting in catastrophic outcomes for other young girls and damage to my own family. These three brothers lied in court about this and much more.” Francis declined to comment for the story. Reveal obtained his letters from a third party.

The 2011 case was brought against the Watchtower by the plaintiff, a former member who claimed the Witnesses could have prevented her abuse by Kendrick in the 1990s by warning the congregation that he had previously abused a child. The court awarded her $28 million in damages. That amount was later reduced to an undisclosed sum.

Source: Read the original report