maiforpeace wrote:The perpetrator was assigned damages as well, not just the church.
From your link:
Kendrick, 58 ... did not attend the trial in Oakland or defend himself after signing a deal with Conti's attorneys, who agreed not to try to collect the judgment from him.
So the perpetrator is not on the hook for the money. Sounds like it was just a scheme to extract money from the church.
maiforpeace wrote:The crux is the elders knew about the molestation and did nothing. Not reporting it makes them complicit to a crime, the one they knew about, and subsequent ones.
From your link:
Jim McCabe, an attorney for the Jehovah's Witnesses, called the verdict "outrageous" and said he would appeal. He said elders at the Fremont congregation on Peralta Boulevard acted appropriately after Kendrick confessed to them in 1993 that he had touched his young stepdaughter's breast.
The elders admonished Kendrick to stay away from children and stripped him of his unpaid role as a ministerial servant, McCabe said, though his fellow congregants were not told the reason and police were not notified.
"The elders watched him after that," McCabe said. "They met with the family, and the family seemed like they were working it out. No one saw him do anything inappropriate after that, or heard anything inappropriate. ... The congregation never put (Conti) in a situation of danger with this man."
In other words, the church did quite a lot. I think that's way further than the Catholic church would do if someone admitted to something like this in confession. Penalize the church, and all that's going to happen is that people are going to quite admitting this stuff to the church officials, which will just make things even worse.