Oregon Jws Face $10.5 Abuse Law Suit

The Freethinker
January 5, 2015

http://freethinker.co.uk/2015/01/04/oregon-jws-face-10-5-abuse-law-suit/


Two people who say that they were sexually abused as children by a leader in a Hillsboro Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation have filed a $10.5 million lawsuit against the cult.

According to this report, attorneys for Velicia Alston, 39, above, and an unnamed man said the Jehovah’s Witnesses leadership continues to cover up sexual abuse against children by leaders. They say it is more than a decade behind other organisations, such as the Catholic Church, that have been forced to address their problems through many years of civil litigation.

Said Irwin Zalkin, one of several attorneys representing Alston and the man:

There is a crisis of silence in the Jehovah’s Witness organisation.

Zalkin described the religious organization as:

More concerned about protecting its reputation than it is about protecting its children.

For example, Zalkin said the seven men who make up the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Governing Body have a policy requiring a confession from the perpetrator or two eye witnesses to the abuse before leaders will take any action.

Even if they do disfellowship a perpetrator, they don’t tell the congregation why. No one but the elders can ever know that there is a child predator lurking in that congregation.

Zalkin, an attorney from San Diego, said this is the first case of its kind that he knows of in Oregon. His firm has 14 active cases against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in other states that include California, Connecticut and New Mexico. Several others also are pending in the US.

Portland attorneys Kristian Roggendorf and Paul Mones also are representing the two plaintiffs who filed Monday’s lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court.

The suit alleges that Daniel Castellanos, who held the equivalent position of a baptised ordained minister in the North Hillsboro Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, molested Alston in 1986 or 1987 when she was 11 or 12 years old. The suit claims Castellanos also molested a boy, described only as John Roe in the suit, when the boy was 8 to 10 years old.

Alston said she chose to use her name and speak to reporters because she wants to give victims a voice. She said filing civil litigation in hopes of changing the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ policies did not amount to committing an act against God, even though her attorneys say the Jehovah’s Witnesses might shun her for doing so.

Said Alson, who now lives in San Diego:

I know that there are other victims. I know that you’re scared because you’re worried about being punished by God. But God would never do something like this. So it’s OK to say something. Because if you don’t say something it’s going to keep happening.

The suit alleges Alston was kissed and fondled under her clothes multiple times by Castellanos, a piano teacher, while he was supposed to be giving her piano lessons at his house. She eventually told her mother, who went to the Hillsboro congregation’s elders. Alston said the elders told her and her mother to tell no one – including police.

Zalkin said Castellanos was ousted from the congregation for three to five years but eventually let back in.

Castellanos was married and had children at the time of the abuse, Alston said. She and her attorneys don’t know how old he is or where he lives, but they believe it’s outside of Oregon. They said they don’t think he has any criminal history.

Oregon’s statute of limitations doesn’t allow Castellanos to be criminally prosecuted because too many years have passed. But state law does allow alleged victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits up until age 40 or within five years of when they realize the damaging effect the abuse has had on their lives.

Castellanos couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Last October, a California judge awarded $13.5 million to a man who said he was molested as a child by a San Diego Jehovah’s Witnesses leader.

Jehovah’s Witnesses count about eight million people within more than 113,000 congregations.