Lawsuits Accuse Jehovah’s Witnesses of Hiding Sex Abuse

More than a dozen lawsuits nationally, many by the same law firm or its affiliates, accuse Jehovah’s Witnesses officials of covering up sexual abuse, sometimes by congregation leaders who the suits claim used their positions of authority to abuse children.

The most recent series of lawsuits was filed last week in three California counties. The law firms involved are holding public meetings this week in Sacramento, Red Bluff, Clearlake and Napa in a search for more alleged victims and witnesses.

The church’s general counsel, Philip Brumley, said the denomination’s own investigation of previous lawsuits had found that church elders did nothing wrong as they tried to protect the victims, comply with laws on reporting sexual abuse and adhere to Biblical admonitions against accepting accusations by single witnesses.

Brumley said 10 lawsuits had been filed before the California suits. William H. Bowen, who was excommunicated after he set up a critical Web site and hotline for alleged abuse victims, estimated that 15 to 17 suits are pending, not counting the California cases.

“It is a widespread problem and nothing’s been done about it to protect these children, to protect future children,” alleged Bill Brelsford, one of the Sacramento attorneys who filed four lawsuits last week, in Napa, Yolo and Tehama counties. Even when church leaders know about abuse, he said, “they don’t do anything to stop it.”

Bowen said he had posted more than 1,000 abuse stories on his Web site, and fielded more than 6,000 complaints since 2001. The denomination puts its membership at 6 million worldwide, including 1 million in the U.S.

“I have literally the last couple months been bombarded with this stuff. These are not liars, they’re abuse survivors,” Bowen said. “It never stops.”

Some of the allegations date to the 1970s. The perpetrators in the California complaints were convicted, but the suits allege that church officials didn’t do enough to stop the molesters before they were caught.

Last year, church members or elders in Tennessee and Kentucky were banned from the church after they went public with allegations that the church had protected pedophiles.

One, Barbara Anderson of Tullahoma, Tenn., a researcher at Watchtower Bible and Tract Society headquarters in the early 1990s, said that, at the time, a church official had asked her to look into the handling of sexual abuse cases. She said she had found hundreds of allegations kept secret in church files.

Brumley said, “We abhor child abuse. The assertion or allegation of a cover-up, or a nonchalance about child abuse, is just so far from the truth.”