Jehovah's Witnesses: Church Policy HIdes Abuse?

Brooklyn, NY —

About 50 people protested in front of the world headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses, in Brooklyn Heights, calling for a change in the way the church handles allegations of child sexual abuse. WNYC's Amy Eddings reports.

People, chanting: One two three four! Silent Lambs, no more!

The protestors came from California, Kentucky, and upstate New York. They wore white tee-shirts, with the the slogan, Silent Lambs No More. They held signs, saying, "No More Witness Tampering," and they cradled little toy lambs in the crooks of their arms. Rochelle Baker says they symbolize the innocent.

Baker: Well the lambs, the children that were victims .and that they were silenced by the governing body, by the organization of this society. And so we have the little tape on their mouths, and we're ripping them off because they are silent no more!

Bill Bowen founded Silent Lambs last year. As a former church elder, or leader of his congregation, he thought it was his duty to report to officials that a fellow elder had abused a child. But he says he grew increasingly frustrated with church officials and church policy.

Bowen: All Jehovah's Witness members have to respond to the policy of the governing body. That policy protects child molestors. I call it a pedophile's paradise. Because, if I'm accused, all I have to do is deny it. The child has to produce a witness, or it's called a liar, and not believed.

Church officials say the witness policy is based on a scriptural injunction, saying that two or three witnesses are necessary to prove someone has sinned. Bowen wants this changed. He also wants elders to stop investigating claims themselves, saying they often hamper criminal investigations. And he wants church members who are convicted of abuse to stop participating in church duties, especially door-to-door prostelytyzing. Bowen says he's paid for speaking out like this. In July, he was excommunicated. The punishment is known as "disfellowshiping."

Bowen: That means the Biblical equivalent of being stoned to death, in the bible. It means your own mother won't speak to you if she passes you on the street. Since I started speaking out about Silent Lambs, my parents haven't spoken to me in approximately a year. They haven't saw their grandchildren in two years.

Many child abuse victims and their families say elders have urged them to keep their stories to themselves, and to avoid going to civil authorities. Twenty-six year old Cori Pandello was at the protest with her parents. She says she was molested by a relative, a fellow Jehovah's Witness. At 14, she told her mom and dad, and they took her to church elders.

Pandello: the elders sat down with me and told me I couldn't talk about it. It wasn't something that goes on in this particular organization. And they didn't know what to do or how to handle it, and that they were learning on my case.

Pandello says won a three million dollar civil suit against her alleged abuser. Others at the march have also found justice; Erica Garza from Sacramento says her abuser is serving an eleven year jail sentence for raping her. But she still wants the Jehovah's Witnesses to change.

Garza: Yeah, I got justice from the United States. When it came down to justice from the organization, I was treated like I had done something wrong.

J.R. Brown is a spokesman for the church, at their headquarters, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. He says child sexual abuse is a sin, deserving censure and rebuke for those who confess, or are convicted of the crime. Elders are told to report allegations to police, when the law requires them to do so, he says. And he says victims are not sanctioned for going to authorities. But Brown acknowledges that some elders may not follow these policies.

Brown: We have 95,000 elders. That's a lot of teaching and instructing. They are appointed weekly -- new ones -- that may not have had beefit of direction in the past. There are many factors that might influcence some elder not strictly complying with what the policy is.

Brown says he does not know how many elders haven't followed policy. Nor could he say how many members have been accused or found guilty of child abuse; he says the number's "very small." Brown thinks the protestors may not have a full understanding of what he calls a "progressive" policy.

We would rather they addressed these matters within the organization, naturally. That it had to go public in this way, we think is unnecesary, because we have a mechanism for handling and addressing problems.

Some victims' advocates say requiring clergy to report child sexual abuse allegations would do even more. A bill making clergy mandatory reporters of sexual abuse allegations has languished in Albany. In July, State Senator Joseph Bruno had suggested that since Catholic leaders voted on a new policy requiring priests to report sexual abuse allegations to authorities, the bill was no longer a priority. Former Jehovah's Witness Jean Krause disagrees.

Krause: Because the thing is, is that, even though they did step forward, and say they're willing to hand over the records .The Watchtower is not going to surrender. They need to have a law passed to force them to hand these abuse cases forward.

State Assemblyman Jack McEneny, who is a sponsor of the clergy mandatory reporting bill, agrees, and he thinks differences in the bill will be worked out in time for it to get passed before the current legislative session ends this year. For WNYC, in Brooklyn Heights, I'm Amy Eddings.