IS THE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY A
 PEDOPHILE PROTECTION SOCIETY?

  The BIGGEST news these days is old news just out of the closet. As
 former Jehovah's Witnesses and people in the countercult community,
 many of us have been concerned about the mistreatment of children in
 the Watchtower cult. Now, the Jehovah's Witnesses are having to face
 this issue in the most radical way. Press reports are circulating that the
 Jehovah's Witnesses are a safe harbor for child molestors. One of many
 examples comes from The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY). Here are a
 few statements to give you the story in a nutshell:

 "The Jehovah's Witnesses church is under growing attack by some of its
 members for policies they say can allow child molesters to go unreported,
 putting church members and the public at increased risk."

  "Church policy also allows some confessed molesters -- whose offenses
 are usually kept secret -- to stay in the church community, sometimes
 with tragic results.

 An examination by The Courier-Journal of court cases involving church
 members in Maine, New Hampshire and Texas showed that the
 confidential church disciplinary process was blamed by some victims for
 allowing molestation to continue.

 Among the cases:
 In Maine, a teen-age boy was molested between 1989 and 1992 by a
 church member after church elders disciplined the offender secretly for
 molesting another boy. Elders did not report the first case to
 authorities, and the law did not require them to. The second victim told
 a therapist, who notified authorities.

 In New Hampshire, a former church member said elders failed to act when
 she told them her husband was physically abusing their children. The man
 received a 56-year prison sentence in October 2000 for sexual abuse that
 continued years after the woman went to elders. New Hampshire law
 required clergy to report suspicions of abuse.

 In Texas, a prosecutor said church elders told a teen-age boy to stop
 molesting his younger sister in 1992 but failed to report it to police in
 apparent violation of state law. The boy later molested a second sister
 and in 1997 was sentenced to a 40-year prison term. Police were alerted
 when one victim reported the abuse to hospital staff following a suicide
 attempt.

 Church policy also allows molesters who are deemed repentant to continue
 evangelizing door to door -- accompanied by another member -- bringing
 them into contact with unsuspecting households that don't have the
 church's knowledge that a child molester is at their door....
 The court cases have played out against the backdrop of a growing
 national consensus that all suspected child abuse must be reported and
 known molesters aggressively identified....
 Mario Moreno, associate general counsel for the Watch Tower Bible and
 Tract Society, a legal corporation of the church [said] "The laws of this
 country, as well as people's moral values, tell you there are some things
 that should be kept private. That's why laws protect confidential
 communications between clergy and their flock."

 "Parents are encouraged to do whatever they need to do to protect their
 child," said Moreno.
 However, some abuse victims and their advocates, in lawsuits and in
 interviews, said that fear of reprisals by church leaders, coupled with
 the importance of the church in their lives, made them reluctant to
 report abuse outside the church. William H. Bowen resigned Dec. 31 as
 presiding overseer (chief elder) of the Draffenville [Ky] congregation near
 Paducah, saying he could no longer support church policies that he felt
 allowed child molesters to go undetected.
 'I refuse to support a pedophile refuge mentality that is promoted among
 bodies of elders around the world,' wrote Bowen in his letter of
 resignation. 'Criminals should be ousted, identified and punished to
 protect the innocent and give closure to the victim.'"

 "When a family in the Houston-area church reported that a teen-age son
 was molesting his younger sister, elders visited the home, counseled the
 family and received the boy's assurance he would stop, according to
 allegations in the family's lawsuit against the church. Instead, the
 abuse continued, the lawsuit said. A criminal court jury in 1997
 convicted the then-22-year-old for abuse committed as an adult. He was
 given a 40-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault.

 'The elders sat at that kitchen table and listened to her tell what her
 brother had done," said Kelly Siegler, an assistant district attorney for
 Harris County. "All they did is tell him to stop and they prayed about
 it. They just blew it off. No one ever told the police.'"

 "For victims who can't produce witnesses or persuade the accused person
 to confess, elders are instructed to 'explain to the accuser that nothing
 more can be done in a judicial (church disciplinary) way,' according to a
 1995 article in the Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower -- a magazine with a
 circulation of 22 million in 132 languages.
 "And the congregation will continue to view the one accused as an
 innocent person," the article continued.
 The article offers one other avenue of justice: 'The question of his
 guilt or innocence can be safely left in Jehovah's (God's) hands.'"

 "But the strict rules of confidentiality -- in which elders are warned
 not to tell even their own family about disciplinary proceedings -- can
 leave a molester's identity shielded from those not involved."

       A Surgical First?

  Doctors at the Children's Hospital In Los Angeles performed the first bloodless liver transplant on an infant..
  Normally the procedure requires transfused whole blood but because the parents of 7-month old Aiden Michael Rush are Jehovah's Witnesses, doctors made special arrangements to accomodate the family's religious beliefs.
  Young Aiden was born with biliary astresia, a condition where the bile duct is obstructed, he underwent surgery to correct the condition but later developed liver disease requiring a liver transplant.
  To perform the surgery doctors had to use drugs to increase the production of red blood cells and the recycling of Aidens blood during the surgery to avoid the use of transfusions.
  Although it is nowhere found in Scripture, due to the Watchtower Society's teaching against blood transfusion, most Jehovahs Witnesses will not take whole blood transfusions.
 

         Our Question!
  If the Watchtower's prohibition is that the Witness is not to take any whole
blood into their body, then why do they allow things like a liver transplant? In a liver transplant, great care must be taken with the liver, once removed from the donor, to preserve it and it cannot have the blood drained from it, otherwise damage will occur to the liver. The blood in the liver then enters the body of the liver recipient.
  This means that the patient is, along with the donated liver, receiving whole transplanted blood that is present in the liver!
 
  Food for thought! 

Subject: Watchtower posts new false increases
through slight of hand tactics...

Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:05:50 -0500


"By lowering the threshhold for counting publishers, they have taken a one-year improvement in their numbers (kind of like a prior period adjustment in financial statements). Next year, the developed world will again dip into the red, unless they find some other statistical slight of hand."

"Furthermore, thousands who previously did not report time due to circumstances (age, health, etc.) are now able to report even as little as 15 minutes in a month. The previous minimum was an hour. With more now qualifying as active publishers, this quite naturally would have the effect of instantly swelling the ranks. Without this "lowering of the bar" I wonder how the report would look???
 

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