Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower in the news. The good, the bad and the ugly.
The Supreme Court of Russia is set to judge whether Jehovah's Witnesses can be considered as an “extremist” body. This came after the Russian Justice Ministry made its application for an order which will shut the national headquarters of this group. Jehovah's Witnesses has its base near St. Petersburg. The website of the Russian Supreme [...]
The leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses has boldly defied court orders to turn over the names and whereabouts of alleged child sexual abusers across the United States. Since 2014, courts have slapped the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent corporation – the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York – with multimillion-dollar judgments and sanctions for violating [...]
Mélanie Poirier was 10 when she started taking piano lessons and it would prove to be an experience that changed her life forever. At that very first lesson, she said, her piano teacher sexually assaulted her. It went on for five years. "Week after week, at every piano lesson, he would masturbate in front of [...]
The Jehovah's Witness Church in Australia failed to protect children in its care from sexual predators, a report has found. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse delivered its report into the organisation on Monday. It stated that: "Children are not adequately protected from the risk of child sexual abuse in the [...]
Now if every pedophile would simply turn themselves in: Problem solved! OFFICERS in a police station were stunned when Jehovah's Witness Zak Babar walked in and handed over a bag of loot, saying “I think I've done a burglary.” Babar, 48, had committed the burglary while in a “stupor” after overdosing on newly prescribed sleeping [...]
A woman is suing a Jehovah's Witnesses church in Weber County after, she says, one of its instructors repeatedly raped her when she was a minor and the organization's leadership forced her to listen to an audio recording of one of the assaults. The woman filed the lawsuit Wednesday in 2nd District Court, accusing the [...]
Alberta courts are wading into the controversial territory of jurisdiction over religious organizations after the Alberta Court of Appeal decided to allow the Court of Queen's Bench to hear an application relating to the 2014 expulsion of a member of the Highwood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. The appellate court sided with Randy Wall, a local real estate agent and member [...]
KOAA.com | Continuous News | Colorado Springs and Pueblo COLORADO SPRINGS - 66-year-old Waymon Ivery is reliving a nightmare that happened more than two decades ago. Sitting in the KOAA studio conference room, he admitted his regret. “I had no idea -- no clue as to the effect that it would have," Ivery said, referring to [...]
Jehovah’s Witnesses recorded 51 cases of discrimination in 2015 TBILISI, DFWatch–On November 23 last year, shots were fired at a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Vazisubani, a district in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. When bullets slammed into the building again one week later, a lawyer representing the religious community wondered why the police were [...]
COMMENTARY: Although the just signed in-to-law prohibits all religious groups from preaching, obviously it will impact Jehovah's Witnesses most directly since Jehovah's Witnesses are all about witnessing about the truth. Most people probably don't realize that Jehovah's Witnesses were illegal in Russia until quite recently, after the fall of the USSR. All during the Soviet [...]
COMMENTARY: This story could be repeated many times. Child is abused by elder or ministerial servant. The Watchtower denies any responsibility for it and treats the victim as an offender. This case though, after appealing a judgment to pay a relatively small compensation of 275,000 pounds, the appeal judge socked them triple to cover the [...]
COMMENTARY: The police say they have no evidence that Gorski abused anyone "in the church." And that is to be expected, given the fact that the Watchtower has a long-standing policy of suppressing the reporting of crimes committed against the children of Jehovah's Witnesses. Even if a JW child had been abused the authorities may [...]
COMMENTARY: File this one under "crazy." Stories like this add credibility to the Watchtower's claim that the media are bias and negative stories involving the Watchtower or Jehovah's Witnesses are either outright falsehoods or distortions. Would the story even have been published had the vandals claimed to be Catholic? Maybe the vandals were studying with JW's. [...]
NEWS COMMENTARY The Watchtower's Legal Department has been fighting for quite a few years to keep their records private. Although they exhort Jehovah's Witnesses to obey the superior authorities - as the apostle Paul called them - as long as their laws and edicts do not contravene God's laws, the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses apparently [...]
WARWICK — The new Jehovah's Witnesses World Headquarters located in Sterling Forest will be completed in August, thanks to the help of more than 25,000 volunteers from across the country who contributed to its construction. Some of the volunteers have stayed at the site since ground breaking three years ago, such as spokesperson for Jehovah's [...]
The Supreme Court in Russia's southern city of Belgorod has ruled for a local Jehovah's Witnesses group to be disbanded as an “extremist” organization, the RAPSI legal news agency reported Thursday. Prosecutors told the court that the religious organization “tore” apart families and tried to entice young people into the group. The Supreme Court heard [...]
If prosecutors proceed with their threat to liquidate the Jehovah's Witness headquarters near St Petersburg, thousands of local congregations across Russia could also face prohibition of their activities and individuals could be vulnerable to criminal charges for expressing their beliefs, Forum 18 notes. The Jehovah's Witnesses' principal body in Russia is under threat of dissolution [...]
Prince's sexualized lyrics and rock 'n' roll energy make it all the more surprising that the music legend was a Jehovah's Witness. As millions around the world mourn the death of Prince, many are learning that he was a devout Jehovah's Witness. The musician was raised a Christian, a Seventh-day Adventist to be exact, but [...]
The key point to take away from this: The WT has steadfastly refused to turn over documents to the courts. As they have stated in other cases, they have a duty to God to protect the privacy of Jehovah's Witnesses, including pedophiles. But the court is giving them another opportunity to comply. SAN DIEGO — [...]
The Jehovah’s Witnesses appear to have achieved a handshake with their BFFs: Jared Kushner, Aby Rosen and LIVWRK. The pricing is roughly $700 million for the Witnesses’ 733,000-square-foot world headquarters at 25-30 Columbia Heights and a 1.1-million-square-foot as-of-right development site at 85 Jay St. The same group purchased 1.2 million square feet in Dumbo Heights [...]
COMMENTARY A statement dated April 7th posted on JW.org indicates that Russia is moving to implement a total ban on the the work of Jehovah’s Witnesses, including the confiscation of the branch property, known as the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. For a few years the city of Moscow has been suppressing Jehovah’s [...]
Sweetwater rapper Stetson "Toonz" Flores has signed a recording contract with The Life Entertainment, a label owned by superstar rapper Krayzie Bone. Flores, 21, who signed the contract Tuesday, will begin touring with Krayzie Bone on March 31. Bone is promoting his recently released album "Chasing the Devil." "I can't believe it finally happened," said [...]
A Fulton County jury awarded just over $100,000 to the family of a woman who died after refusing to receive blood transfusions because of her beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness. The verdict came after three weeks of trial and two days of deliberation. An attorney for the plaintiffs had argued that the Atlanta Medical Center—which offers [...]
Moscow (AsiaNews) - While in some regions of Russia Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) have been deemed "extremists", like the militants of the Islamic State or neo-Nazis, the State Duma (the lower house of parliament) is studying how to introduce a legal concept of "sect" that does not violate the Constitution and could be used to ban [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — The Jehovah's Witnesses, the door-knocking religious group that's been based in Brooklyn for a century, is selling its headquarters and other properties for an expected price tag of $1 billion or more. The Witnesses' move to a town about an hour north of New York City will likely mean the end [...]
Church’s response to child sexual abuse fell short of best practice, says Angus Stewart QC in his damning submission, published on Tuesday A damning submission to the royal commission on child sexual abuse has recommended 77 adverse findings against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia. It was open to the commission to find the church fostered [...]
A leading churchman has avoided jail after he was caught with child pornography of the most serious level on his home computer. Highly respected Jehovah's Witness Ian Ross, from Billingham, had perverted images of girls as young as three. The 65-year-old pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children between 9 May 2013 and 11 May [...]
A former Pennsylvania man remained jailed Monday after his weekend arrest in a disturbance at a church on North Valley Mills Drive. Police were called about a disturbance at the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, 2308 N. Valley Mills Drive, about 4:30 p.m. Saturday. Officers encountered Brian Gerald Oatman, 43, who previously had been [...]
JEHOVAH'S Witnesses have quashed rumours that the bid to bring their headquarters to Chelmsford could collapse due to financial turmoil. The International Bible Students' Association (IBSA), the organisation which circulates the Christian group's literature, said on Monday that the construction in Temple Farm in West Hanningfield will continue. An anonymous source contacted the Chronicle on Friday claiming [...]
Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, has been identified as the suspect in the fatal shooting that left a Virginia reporter and cameraman dead and a member of the local Chamber of Commerce wounded. According to Virginia State Police, Flanagan, who also went by the name Bryce Williams, reportedly shot himself on a highway not far [...]
Whole article reproduced from the NewYorker Magazine In the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul urges congregants to abstain “from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality.” Jehovah’s Witnesses, apparently alone among Christian groups, believe this verse, along with others, prohibits them from accepting blood transfusions, no matter [...]
The Jehovah’s Witnesses leadership has created sophisticated strategies to conceal allegations of sexual abuse. Witnesses instruct local elders to keep claims of molestation private, internal documents show, all the while collecting detailed information on predators in their ranks. For abuse victims, this can mean enduring a variety of hardships, such as being ignored by leaders [...]
A paedophile who admitted to molesting his daughters was not believed or sanctioned for it by the Jehovah's Witness Church, the royal commission into child sex abuse hears. It is the second day that church elder Dino Ali has been questioned about the way he responded to one particularly shocking case of abuse. Yesterday [...]
Two convicted burglars had a unique way of targeting homes in the Meyerland area; police said they were posing as Jehovah’s Witnesses. The two men were seen on surveillance video from houses in the Braeswood Place subdivision. Neighbors said they were knocking on doors and even handing out fliers to those who answered their doors. [...]
A group of ex-Jehovah’s Witness members have assembled on Reddit to place a billboard calling out leadership in the church for failing to adequately address sexual abuse — and even for actively covering it up. The billboard points viewers to a website that offers evidence for the claims. The group hopes for the message to [...]
A woman traumatised by five years of sexual abuse as a child by a Jehovah’s Witness minister has won £275,000 damages at the high court, in what is said to be the first case against the church in the UK. The woman, now 29, who can only be named as A, was sexually abused from [...]
A Jehovah's Witness' seven-year-old son has been taken into care because she damaged him with her 'religious beliefs and practices', a family court judge has ruled. Judge Clifford Bellamy concluded that the boy had suffered 'emotional harm' from his mother and decided he would be better off with foster parents. The young boy had been [...]
It seems that the Governing Body is gaining publicity for all the wrong reasons. On the one hand I applaud them for utilizing the Internet with their JW Broadcast. But, the downside is it exposes them to public ridicule as never before. Whereas, C.T. Russell, who spent his personal fortune to promote his message, said [...]
Event was originally cancelled due to opposition from anti-assimilation group Hundreds of protesters turned up to demonstrate outside a Jehovah's Witnesses seminar being held in a municipal building in a city in the center of Israel Saturday. Despite police presence, the demonstration against the event became violent, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported. The protesters were angry [...]
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 [...]
