Did Jehovah's Witnesses Hide Thousands Of Cases Of Child Abuse?

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

For years, reports of an alleged network of sexual abuse against minors have emerged within the Jehovah's Witness church. Now, an explosive report published by the prestigious publication The Atlantic is giving much to talk about by shedding new light on these allegedly hidden abuses.

According to Douglas Quequa, author of the article, he had contact with Mark O'Donnell, a former Jehovah's Witness who abandoned the religion in 2013 and who has since been dedicated to exposing the controversies surrounding the cult.

O'Donell, 51, who lives in Baltimore, Maryland, showed documents, letters and messages sent to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the organization that heads the said religion, where various flaws committed by its members were reported. Some of them range from smoking marijuana to sexual abuse of minors.

The documents were retrieved from Watchtower offices and sent to O'Donell through an anonymous source.

As reported in the past, in 1997 the top hierarchy of Jehovah's Witnesses ordered the creation of a report that would collect information from child abusers and abusers. Through a private survey, church members - currently numbering about 8.5 million - were asked to report the abuses. Thereafter 10,883 envelopes with various complaints were sent to Watchtower detailing the abuses in multiple communities.

The survey was closed in 2011 and since then the information remained in the hands of the Jehovah's Witnesses without any abuse being reported to the authorities. Despite multiple lawsuits against him, Watchtower has refused to comply with various court orders to make the contents of its database public with the alleged abuses and has paid millions to keep it secret, even from those who they were abused and whose cases were reported to the church, according to Quequa.

"Our policies on the protection of minors obey the norms of the law, including the requirements of the elderly to report accusations of abuse to the authorities," said Watchtower spokesmen.