Jehovah's Witnesses Lose Big Fremont Molest Suit

By Demian Bulwa
San Francisco Chronicle
June 16, 2012

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/15/BAUQ1P2PH2.DTL

An Alameda County jury ordered the Jehovah's Witnesses to pay an unprecedented $21 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed the church for allowing a fellow congregant in Fremont to molest her when she was a child in the mid-1990s.

Candace Conti said elders at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in northern Fremont knew Jonathan David Kendrick had molested his stepdaughter a few years before, but declined to warn others or tell police. That silence, Conti said, allowed Kendrick to gain her trust and repeatedly assault her at his home when she was 9 and 10 years old.

The jury also awarded $7 million in compensatory damages. Kendrick - who is now a registered sex offender living in Oakley - was ordered to pay 60 percent of that judgment, with the rest coming from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the legal entity of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Awards' significance

Attorneys said they believed the damage awards, handed down Wednesday and Thursday, were the largest a single alleged victim of sexual abuse has ever won against a religious organization. They said it may also represent the first time a church has been held responsible for the alleged sexual abuse of a congregant, rather than a priest or high official.

"This is a validation I never thought I would get in my life," Conti, who is now 26 and lives in Stockton, said in an interview. "This won't take away what happened, but I think this will bring to light a very serious issue."

Conti said Kendrick had taken her along when he did fieldwork, going door to door in neighborhoods spreading the Gospel. She said he "was a member of our congregation, and he became a friend of our family. It was a really troubling time for my parents, and I think he took advantage of that."

Jim McCabe, an attorney for the Jehovah's Witnesses, called the verdict "outrageous" and said he would appeal. He said elders at the Fremont congregation on Peralta Boulevard acted appropriately after Kendrick confessed to them in 1993 that he had touched his young stepdaughter's breast.

The elders admonished Kendrick to stay away from children and stripped him of his unpaid role as a ministerial servant, McCabe said, though his fellow congregants were not told the reason and police were not notified.

"The elders watched him after that," McCabe said. "They met with the family, and the family seemed like they were working it out. No one saw him do anything inappropriate after that, or heard anything inappropriate. ... The congregation never put (Conti) in a situation of danger with this man."

McCabe said Conti's attorneys "wanted an announcement in the congregation, and that's just not the practice of any religious organization, at that time or today."

1994 conviction

The stepdaughter's family later reported the abuse to police, and Kendrick was convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery in 1994. Still, no one told the congregation. McCabe said the elders had been unaware of the conviction.

Conti said she was molested in 1995 and 1996. "Kendrick's abuse started out as hugs and attention," her attorneys wrote in a court filing, "which then deviated into oral copulation and penetration of plaintiff with foreign objects."

In 2004, Kendrick was convicted of felony charges for molesting another relative and was forced to register as a sex offender.

Kendrick, 58, did not return a telephone message left at his home Friday. He did not attend the trial in Oakland or defend himself after signing a deal with Conti's attorneys, who agreed not to try to collect the judgment from him.

Denied allegations

His former attorney in the case, Eric Graves, said Kendrick "has been steadfast in his denial of (Conti's) allegations."

He said Kendrick was now part of a Jehovah's Witnesses congregation in Oakley. Efforts to reach church officials there were unsuccessful.

Conti said she did not report the alleged abuse at the time it happened and declined to comment on whether she had gone to police more recently. But according to sources familiar with the matter, the Fremont Police Department has an active investigation.

Conti's attorneys said she had suffered from post-traumatic stress and chronic depression in the years after she was abused, and used methamphetamine before going sober two years ago.

One of the prime disagreements in the case was over a letter the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society sent to congregation elders around the country in July 1989, at a time when churches of many denominations were facing slander lawsuits from worshipers.

The letter stressed "the need for elders to maintain strict confidentiality" in personal matters involving congregants, including criminal investigations, and to follow the direction of the organization's leaders.

"The legal consequences of a breach of confidentiality by the elders can be substantial," the letter said.

An attorney for Conti, Rick Simons, said it represented a policy of keeping sexual allegations secret.

'This jury bought it'

McCabe said Simons "did a great job of spinning it into a policy of secrecy, and this jury bought it."

In fact, McCabe said, the letter was a run-of-the mill reminder that some communications must be kept confidential. He noted that a section of the letter devoted to child abuse instructed elders to report all allegations to church lawyers so victims can be "protected from further damage."

According to church officials, as many as 1.2 million Jehovah's Witnesses practiced the faith last year at more than 13,000 U.S. congregations.

"Jehovah's Witnesses abhor child abuse," McCabe said. "They've been at the forefront in exposing it."

Demian Bulwa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: dbulwa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @demianbulwa