Jehovah’s Witnesses: abuse, Sex Cult – Child Rape – Children of God Church, Priest Risdale 38 charges

– Inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses: A ‘perfect storm’ for abuse
“They love bomb you. They sell you this vision of a perfect community. It is anything but. It’s indoctrination. It’s a cult, it really is. But they convince you it’s a religion.”

–  Life after a sex cult: ‘If I’m not a member of this religion any more, then who am I?’
Children of God church “The report documented Berg’s proclivity for incest and witnesses testified that child rape was used as an excuse to “increase the tribe”, leading to many pregnancies in various communes.”

– Ridsdale’s fresh charges grow in number 
“More historical sex abuse charges have been laid against disgraced former Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale. 38 charges, rape, buggery, indecent assault and assault offences against boys and girls”

Inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses: A ‘perfect storm’ for abuse
Rachel Browne March 10 2017

Then one morning a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door to spread the word of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. That was when Jodi’s nightmare began.

“These nice people were promising a community with no drugs, no alcohol and no crime – it sounded very appealing,” said Jodi, who asked that her name be withheld.

“They love bomb you. They sell you this vision of a perfect community. It is anything but. It’s indoctrination. It’s a cult, it really is. But they convince you it’s a religion.”

The Jehovah’s Witness church and its overarching body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, came to the attention of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse with a 2015 case study hearing more than 1000 allegations of paedophilia had been made against the organisation over 60 years yet not one complaint was reported to police.

This echoes Jodi’s experience. Now 35, she says she was abused by a church elder and his daughter when she was eight years old. When she was 13 she mustered up the courage to report the abuse to church authorities but was not believed and branded a liar. She left the church shortly after.

“They preach love but they don’t show love,” she said.

Another former member, Lara Kaput, describes the Jehovah’s Witnesses as “cruel”.

Ms Kaput, 44, was raised in a Jehovah’s Witness family in Victoria where close contact with people outside the church was discouraged, women were taught to obey men and the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society were unquestioned.

She left the Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was 19 and was shunned by the community. Over the past 25 years she’s had only sporadic contact with family members who are still involved in the church.

“You are ostracised from your entire family and friend network,” she said. “Prior to (leaving) they incorporated me as a regular family member. After that I was dead to them.”….

The commission has referred information about 514 alleged perpetrators within the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the police since the initial hearing….
http://www.smh.com.au/national/inside-the-jehovahs-witnesses-a-perfect-storm-for-abuse-20170309-guukur.html

Life after a sex cult: ‘If I’m not a member of this religion any more, then who am I?’
Michael Young grew up immersed in the Children of God church, which was labelled as a sect by the FBI and dogged by child abuse allegations
Sophia Tewa  Saturday 11 March 2017

Of his eight siblings, Michael Young was the most zealous street missionary. As a child growing up in Monterrey, Mexico, he preached up to 10 hours a day, three to four days each week. He spoke to strangers on the streets and often went door-to-door. He’d ask them, in broken Spanish, if they wished to go to heaven. If they said yes, he would pray for them. If they said no, he would ask for at least a donation to The Family International, a church formerly known as the sex cult The Children of God.

Young’s parents, devout American missionaries who moved to Mexico in 1998, told him that such work was his destiny and duty. The alternative was an afterlife spent in the slums of heaven, a place only slightly better than hell.

When he was eight years old, in 2000, Young’s family moved to Texas and started their missionary work anew in mini-malls and Walmart parking lots, handing out theological tracts about the imminent apocalypse that would soon wipe out the unbelievers.

Young says he was happy. “I was spiritual in a way that was kind of very obsessive and very determined,” he says.

But Young was unaware that his parents’ church was labelled as a sect by the FBI and hounded by child abuse allegations. In a 1974 report, The New York attorney general’s office had also called the Children of God a “cult”. The group’s practices drew investigations from the FBI and Interpol, which were on the hunt for its leader, David Berg. One anonymous informant spoke of rape, incarceration, kidnapping and incest inside the group….

The report documented Berg’s proclivity for incest and witnesses testified that child rape was used as an excuse to “increase the tribe”, leading to many pregnancies in various communes.

“A 14-year-old runaway who spent nine days at a COG commune testified that she was raped and because of her refusal to cooperate with the elders, was held in solitary confinement on no less than three separate occasions,” the report states.

The late actor River Phoenix, who grew up in the Children of God, told Details Magazine in 1991 that he was four when he first had sex while in the group….
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/children-of-god-church-sex-cult-texas-mexico-fbi

Ridsdale’s fresh charges grow in number   
Andi Yu – AAP on March 10, 2017

More historical sex abuse charges have been laid against disgraced former Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale.

A prosecutor in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday said two new charges had been filed last week and this morning, adding to the original total of 36.

The 38th charge relates to the sexual penetration of a child under 10, the lawyer said.

Other charges include rape, buggery, indecent assault and assault offences against boys and girls across the state…..
https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/34606087/ridsdale-faces-another-36-abuse-charges/#page1

Three chances to prosecute Labour peer Lord Janner for child abuse were missed, California court guts child abuse ruling against Jehovah’s Witnesses

Three chances to prosecute Labour peer Lord Janner for child abuse were missed: CPS admits mistakes were made but now it is too late because he has dementia

Lord Janner will not face prosecution despite facing credible evidence
Director of Public Prosecutions says decision comes with ‘deep regret’
Alison Saunders tells of botched investigations in 1991, 2002 and 2007
Former Labour MP allegedly preyed on boys in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s
By Chris Greenwood for the Daily Mail and Martin Robinson for MailOnline  16 April 2015
Lord Janner should have been charged with historic child sex offences on three occasions over 25 years and will now never be prosecuted because of the ‘severity’ of his dementia, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions, has expressed her ‘deep regret’ that the 86-year-old former Labour MP for Leicester West will not face trial because of botched investigations in 1991, 2002 and 2007.

The decision not to charge him with 22 alleged sex attacks on children has infuriated police and campaigners, who have called it ‘perverse’ and a ‘step backwards for justice’.

Leicestershire Police may appeal because they handed the CPS ‘credible evidence’, including videos, showing ‘this man carried out some of the most serious sexual crimes imaginable’….

More than a dozen people came forward to claim Lord Janner abused them during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the CPS said.

Today they admitted there is enough evidence to prosecute the peer for 16 indecent assaults and six counts of buggery, but he is no longer fit to stand trial….

Lord Janner attended the House of Lords 15 times in November 2013 and 12 times in December 2013. Police searched his home on December 20, 2013 and he has not attended Parliament since….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3041209/Labour-s-Janner-not-charged-alleged-child-abuse-Prosecutors-say-not-public-peer-86-trial-age-dementia.html

California court guts child abuse ruling against Jehovah’s Witnesses
By Trey Bundy April 14, 2015
Candace Conti drew worldwide attention in her fight against the Jehovah’s Witnesses when a jury awarded her $28 million in damages – the largest verdict for a single victim of child abuse against a religious organization in U.S. history.

The amount was later reduced to $15.6 million, including $8.6 million in punitive damages.

Now, three years later, an appeals court has eroded her courtroom victory even further by ruling that the leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses had no duty to warn congregants that a confessed child molester was one of their own. As a result, judges eliminated the punitive damages in the case. Conti still stands to receive $2.8 million.

The decision by the California Court of Appeal is the latest ruling in a rash of lawsuits aimed at Jehovah’s Witnesses policies directing elders to keep child abuse secret from their congregations and secular authorities.

Conti, who is no longer a Jehovah’s Witness, had sued her abuser, her former congregation in Fremont and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York – the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent corporation – in 2011. She claimed that Watchtower policies allowed a Witness named Jonathan Kendrick to molest her repeatedly when she was 9 and 10 years old.

Kendrick had admitted to North Fremont congregation elders that he had sexually abused his stepdaughter. The elders informed the Watchtower of Kendrick’s confession in 1993, but in accordance with Watchtower policy did not notify police or warn the congregation. Soon after, Conti says, Kendrick began abusing her.

In their ruling Monday, the judges said forcing the leadership of Jehovah’s Witnesses to warn congregants about child abusers would be too burdensome….
http://www.revealnews.org/article/california-court-guts-child-abuse-ruling-against-jehovahs-witnesses/

Jehovah’s Witnesses Church to pay $13.5M for alleged child abuse, Child abuse survivors tell Theresa May: inquiry must have full force of law

Jehovah’s Witnesses Church to pay $13.5M for alleged child abuse
November 1, 2014 by Ellina Abovian

SAN DIEGO — Jose Lopez was awarded a $13.5 million judgment Wednesday from the head of the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church for alleged sexual abuse by Gonzalo Campos of the Linda Vista Spanish Congregation and Playa Pacifica in Pacific Beach.

Lopez, 36, claims that the abuse began around 1986, when his mother enrolled him at age 7 in bible study classes with Campos….

Lopez’s mother went to the heads of the congregation but said that the allegations were overlooked.

“If they don’t get a confession from the perpetrator or they don’t get two eye witnesses to the abuse…under their policies and practices, they will do nothing,” Zalkin said.

After years of staying quiet, Lopez filed a lawsuit against Campos and the church in 2012.

He is one of eight children who have accused Campos of sexually abusing them between 1982 and 1995, according to his lawsuit against the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, the entity that oversees Jehovah’s Witnesses churches.

During the litigation, the head church in New York refused to provide documents and witnesses, Zalkin said….

Associate General Counsel for Watchtower Mario Moreno commented in a statement: “Jehovah’s Witnesses abhor child abuse and strive to protect children from such acts. The trial judge’s decision is a drastic action for any judge to take given the circumstances of this case. We will seek a full review of this case on appeal.”

Zalkin said Campos moved to Mexico soon after allegations against him began to surface….
http://fox5sandiego.com/2014/11/01/jehovahs-witnesses-church-ordered-to-pay-13-5m-for-alleged-child-abuse/

Child abuse survivors tell Theresa May: inquiry must have full force of law
Victims call for Fiona Woolf’s successor to be given statutory powers over witnesses and evidence  Child protection  The Observer  Jamie Doward and Daniel Boffey Saturday 1 November 2014

Home secretary Theresa May is coming under new pressure to redraft the terms of the independent inquiry into child abuse so that it has powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and see those who give false statements prosecuted.

The potentially huge shift in the scope and the nature of the inquiry, hinted at by government-appointed lawyers to the inquiry when they met survivors of abuse on Friday, would go some way to addressing concerns that it will be little more than a whitewash.

The current inquiry has been plunged into chaos after its second chair, Fiona Woolf, resigned on Friday after accepting that abuse survivors had lost confidence in her ability to conduct the investigation impartially. Her resignation followed concerns over her links with the former home secretary, Lord Brittan, who has been accused of failing to act on a dossier of paedophile allegations in the 1980s. Woolf’s departure was a huge blow for the government after the inquiry’s previous chair, Baroness Butler-Sloss, also quit.

The former attorney general, Dominic Grieve MP, said on Saturday that May might need to look abroad for someone to chair the inquiry into historical child sex abuse, in order for the victims to have full confidence that it is independent of the British establishment….
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/01/child-abuse-theresa-may-inquiry-fiona-woolf