Silent Jehovah's Witnesses

[mistermack]

Do you see a problem with a church being successfully sued for obstructing the course of justice by failing to report criminal acts to the proper authorities and going even further, by destroying documents containing incriminating evidence and sending others to a location that is "out of harm's way"? I think the plaintiff had a good case for claiming that the church actually bears part of the responsibility for what happened to her because of what it did/didn't do.

Well, your post seemed to me to be about civil suits, not justice.
All organisations need to have a policy to deal with lawsuits, in the USA anyway, and increasingly in GB.

If there is a conspiracy to pervert the course of CRIMINAL justice, then that's a matter for the police.

Failing to report something isn't necessarily a crime, or an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
Otherwise, you could convict rape victims who don't report the crime, or who drop the complaint.

Failing to report a rape would, in my book, be far more serious than failing to report someone who touched a teenager's tit.

[Warren Dew]

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.

My mistake. I missed that part about him not paying.

Regarding it being a scheme?

Whether damages came from the the perpetrator or the church, they are compensation for wrongdoing against the victim. So, they told him to stay away from her. Big deal. By not reporting it they were the only ones policing him. Clearly they did a piss poor job of that, so that makes them negligent at the very least.

They weren't the only ones policing him. Again from your link:

Kendrick was convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery in 1994. Still, no one told the congregation. McCabe said the elders had been unaware of the conviction.

Conti said she was molested in 1995 and 1996.

The guy was a convicted sex offender. If any organization is at fault, it seems to me the government is far more at fault than the church is.

So, if A molested your daughter once, and B, a person of trust knew about it and said nothing to you or the police, but simply told them to stay away and A continued to molest her, you wouldn't hold B responsible even in part for the continued molestations?

That wasn't the situation, though I can see how you got that impression as the article is very poorly written.

The alleged perpetrator admitted to the church that he had touched his sepdaughter's breast. This was a situation that the stepdaughter's family was already aware of. This was also, as best I can tell from the article, what resulted in Kendrick's conviction. It seems to me this situation was handled properly from the church's standpoint, though I question the stepdaughter's mother's judgement for not kicking Kendrick out immediately.

Some time later, Kendrick committed statutory rape with Conti, who doesn't appear to have been related to him. The church didn't know about this new situation, as far I can tell from the article. The rape happened at Kendrick's house, not at the church - the only thing that happened at the church was the Kendrick hugged Conti. My question is, where the heck were Conti's parents? Why were they letting her spend unsupervised time Kendrick? Did they think that the church was guaranteeing that every male in the church was safe to leave young girls with?

With respect to your question, in a situation like this:

1. I would never leave my daughter with someone just because they happened to be in the same church.

2. If a mature man started hugging my 10 year old daughter at church, I would take that as an extra sign to keep her away from him, not to let her stay with him.

3. If my daughter somehow got raped that way anyway, I wouldn't be suing for money damages, I'd be getting the police to put him in jail.

4. If I did sue, I would never agree to refrain from collecting damages from the perpetrator.

5. No, I would not hold the church responsible. At most, I might hold the specific elders in question responsible, though in this particular situation I probably wouldn't even do that. In the situation you thought was happening, I would probably hold the elders responsible, but not the church organization as a whole.

[Warren Dew]

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.

My mistake. I missed that part about him not paying.

From the article:

The jury also awarded $7 million in compensatory damages. Kendrick - who is now a registered sex offender living in Oakley - was ordered to pay 60 percent of that judgment, with the rest coming from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the legal entity of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

So what? He's not going to have to pay, because the plaintiffs already signed an agreement not to collect from him.

It's pretty clear what's going on here. The plaintiff's attorneys went to Kendrick and said something like, "look, if you agree not to testify about how Conti seduced you into it, we're likely to get a lot more millions from the church. In return, we'll agree not to collect any damages awarded from you, so you don't have to worry about them."

It's greed driving the plaintiffs here, not any innocent desire for justice.

[amused]

Can we just stipulate that religion = sexual dysfunction?

[Warren Dew]

About thirty years ago, I had a girlfriend who confided in me that her father used to abuse her.
She made me promise not to do anything or say anything, and I kept my word. It was hard, but a promise is a promise, and she was twenty, so she was entitled to handle it any way she thought fit.

It never occurred to me for even a second, that if he abused anybody else, it was MY fault.

Indeed.

We've had members here imply that they've been willing underage participants in sex. Anyone reported those situations to the police? Is rationalia.com responsible if they don't warn every new member about it?

[klr]

It looks to me that the JWs have had the same mindset as the RCC (and who knows who else). Now, if the RCC was hit with multi-million fines every time it's been found guilty in these matters, it could well be bankrupt now.

[amused]

Can we just stipulate that religion = sexual dysfunction?

Apparently so.

[Jason]

About thirty years ago, I had a girlfriend who confided in me that her father used to abuse her.
She made me promise not to do anything or say anything, and I kept my word. It was hard, but a promise is a promise, and she was twenty, so she was entitled to handle it any way she thought fit.

It never occurred to me for even a second, that if he abused anybody else, it was MY fault.

Indeed.

We've had members here imply that they've been willing underage participants in sex. Anyone reported those situations to the police? Is rationalia.com responsible if they don't warn every new member about it?

I'm a more than a little offended here, but I'll try to be nice.

Are you both fucking retards??

These are hardly comparable situations. Your girlfriend, Mistermack, was not obstructed from taking the issue to the authorities in your story. It is JW policy, as I said earlier, to handle such things internally and to obstruct 'secular' justice, even against the will of the parents and/or child. End of fucking story.

Cheezus Christ..

[mistermack]

Are you both fucking retards??

These are hardly comparable situations. Your girlfriend, Mistermack, was not obstructed from taking the issue to the authorities in your story. It is JW policy, as I said earlier, to handle such things internally and to obstruct 'secular' justice, even against the will of the parents and/or child. End of fucking story.

Cheezus Christ..

That's a silly post. The guy was apparently prosecuted for the earlier incident, and put on the sex offender register, so how was justice obstructed? If there was a policy to obstruct justice, it doesn't seem to have happened in this case.

And as I posted earlier, it's not automatic that if you don't report a crime, you are obstructing justice.
Otherwise, you would have to charge all the rape victims who decide not to report it, or to drop the complaint.
In any case, the JW policy of handling it internally is only advisory. Anybody is free to give advice, that's not obstructing justice, unless they forbid you to report something, with threats.

[Hermit]

And as I posted earlier, it's not automatic that if you don't report a crime, you are obstructing justice.
Otherwise, you would have to charge all the rape victims who decide not to report it, or to drop the complaint.
In any case, the JW policy of handling it internally is only advisory. Anybody is free to give advice, that's not obstructing justice, unless they forbid you to report something, with threats.

A deliberate policy that involves instructing elders to not divulge alleged crimes and the identity of their perpetrators they know of to the relevant secular authorities looks to me like systematic obstruction of justice. Not that the JW church is the only church to do so, as the RC's papal letter to his Irish bishops makes so abundantly obvious, but let's not get lost in a tu quoque bunfight, or artificially tease out some qualitative difference between clergy and ordinary church member. Neither church has ever even attempted to make such a distinction when it comes to their orders to keep allegations secret. While they insist on them, it seems perfectly acceptable to me that they pay the price for doing so in terms of money and reputation both.