The Jehovah’s Witnesses Church in Australia failed to report to police more than 1,000 cases of child sexual abuse going back more than 60 years, a government investigation into abuse and its aftermath heard yesterday.
Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which was launched in 2013 amid allegations of serial child abuse inside the Catholic Church in Australia, has a broad mandate to examine religious and secular organizations.
At the opening hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses yesterday, senior council assisting the commission, Angus Stewart, described the church as an insular sect with rules designed to stem the reporting of sexual abuse.
“Evidence will be put before the Royal Commission that of the 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse identified by the Jehovah’s Witness Church since 1950, not one was reported by the church to secular authorities,” he said.
“This suggests that it is the practice of the Jehovah’s Witness Church to retain information regarding child sexual abuse offenses, but not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police or other relevant authorities,” he added.
The US-based Jehovah’s Witnesses number about 8 million worldwide and are known for their foreign ministries as well as their door-to-door campaigns. There are about 68,000 members in Australia, Stewart said.
Two church members, identified as BCB and BCG, are expected to give testimony containing allegations that they were discouraged by church elders from reporting their abuse.
Stewart outlined multiple institutional failures to protect children or censure alleged abusers, including doctrine releasing church elders from their responsibility to report abuse where there was no mandatory legal obligation to do so.
It is alleged that although the church expelled 401 members after internal abuse hearings, it allowed 230 of them to return to the fold, with 35 being welcomed back on multiple occasions.
The church also erected high barriers to its internal process, requiring that two or more witnesses be produced before proceeding to a church “judicial committee.” This blocked 125 allegations from being heard, Stewart said.
The royal commission has kept Australians riveted with airings of abuse allegations and cover-ups in the highest ranks of its Orthodox Jewish and Roman Catholic communities going back decades.
They have reached even into the Vatican, where Australian Cardinal George Pell, in charge of reforming the Vatican’s economic departments, has come under scrutiny over allegations he failed to take action to protect children years ago.
Pell dismissed as “false” and “outrageous” allegations heard before the commission that he had little regard for victims.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion