Sex abuse, Should the Church be held financially responsible?

I just saw this documentary that makes it look like the Jehovah's Witnesses are covering up child abuse in their organisation.

Escaping Jehovah's Witnesses: Inside the dangerous world of a brutal religion | Four Corners - YouTube




But I am a pretty strong opinionated person and an independent thinker, and from what I saw in that video I have a completely different perspective than the one being so clearly pushed in that documentary.

People are trying to sue the Jehovah's Witnesses for sex abuse that the organisation is NOT responsible for, trying to get money just because it is a big organisation with deep pockets.

In my personal opinion, this is THEFT and STEALING. If courts are trying to unjustly take huge amounts of money from your religious organisation, then of course you would take all the legal precautions you could, and that might involve taking some measures to obscure the truth.

A lot of people think "If you didn't do anything wrong, what do you have to fear?"
But this is ignorant and naive thinking.
I'm inclined to side with the Jehovah's Witnesses on this. People may not like it, but unfortunately the courts cannot always be relied upon to do the right thing in this situation.

And that's really too bad. Maybe if this problem in the legal system did not exist, organisations could be more open with the truth.
It has to do with widespread attitudes in society. I have written about this in other threads. Lots of people seem to gleefully look for any excuse to take money away from big organisations and give them to a little person who suffered a wrong or misfortune, even if that organisation they want to pay the money is not actually the party that is responsible for what happened.

I think some of this may have to do with prejudice against Christian organisations, especially the more conservative ones, ones that are big with centralisation that are perceived to have power, and especially one that may be a little borderline cult-like. People do not really like the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation.
So of course society and the courts would be more inclined to make this organisation pay out huge amounts of money.
I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say this is somewhat like legal terrorism and persecution.

It seems to me the Jehovah's Witnesses are not encouraging the committing of sex abuse in any way.
But many people want to seem to hold them responsible for it.

Has there ever been an incident where the organisation acted collectively to prevent any victim or family member from reporting the abuse to police?

How in the world could the organisation be held responsible?
This seems completely absurd to me.

It seems like insanity is just accepted as normal. That is what I am seeing here.

This is the type of mentality of mob rule. Those judges who award victims money from the Church, should be removed from their positions.

 

Today is the first National Truth and Reconciliation day in Canada. It is a national statutory holiday that was just created after many of the First Nations groups in Canada have discovered mass graves of children on the site of residential schools. These schools were part of a government mandated effort to assimilate First Nations people into Canadian society. By law, if you were a First Nations person or Indian, as they were misnamed until fairly recently, and you had a child you had to turn the child over to the residential school. The schools were run by various churches. Attendance was mandatory until 1947. The last school closed in 1997.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system

The terrible treatment endured by these children is our national shame.
The protection that the perpetrators received by churches and our government is a national shame.

That other churches and religious organizations feel the need to protect these disgusting people who torture and abuse people sexually is a shame on the name of religion in general and their particular denominations specifically.

I can’t imagine someone feeling the need to protect pedophiles from justice.

 

And that issue is as bullshit as the one being discussed in this thread.
(I have already started a discussion about that here: Indigenous Canadians burning churches in Canada )

Besides that, those two issues have little to do with each other.
I don't really feel like wasting effort arguing over what seems to me like an obviously stupid argument.
But tell you what, if one other member in this forum says that they also think the two have a lot in common, then maybe I will be willing to argue about it.

There's no evidence whatsoever that any native children were mass murdered.
And I find it totally ridiculous and insane that anyone thinks a church should be held responsible (criminally or financially) for the abuse committed by parents against their children, when that church did not encourage the abuse in any way.

This seems to be more about a Leftist ideological mentality about "institutional injustice", with plenty of emotionalism and a lack of common sense or objective logic.
Not to mention of course the animosity and prejudice against organized religion lurking in the background.

 

I think you're being blatantly on-sided and biased here.

There are a range of organisations (not just religious ones) which have (or implicitly claim) a responsibility, authority and duty of care over groups of people but that have failed to meet that duty in the context of child abuse. There are specific examples and cases where Jehovah's Witness groups and leadership have been identified actively discouraging reporting offences to the authorities and treating suspects extremely softly, often less so than alleged victims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses'_handling_of_child_sex_abuse). That by no means implies that the entire organisation is guilty but also means that you can't simple assert that there are (or at least have been) no issues at all.

Clearly a legitimate lawsuit would need to prove in court that the defendants (be that individuals or organisations) were directly responsible for the failures and bad actions they've been accused of, but where that is proven, it seems perfectly reasonable that they should be punished and the victims compensated. That is the whole point of civil lawsuits in general. There will also inevitably be people who seek to abuse this system for their own financial benefit, though there will be checks and balances within the system to combat that. Regardless, that is no good reason to dismiss, attack and insult everyone involved in any such cases. That makes you no better than what you think you're standing up against.

 

There is a doc on Prime about sex abuse in different organizations. While the JW’s are not as bad as the Children of God, they certainly leave a lot to be desired. The JW’S themselves do not promote sex abuse but there are certainly cases where they have not done enough.