CALIFORNIA
KTVU
OAKLAND, Calif. —
An Oakland jury has awarded $28 million in damages to a woman who said the Jehovah’s Witnesses allowed an adult member of a Fremont church to molest her when she was a child in the mid-1990s.
Alameda County jurors awarded $7 million in compensatory damages on Wednesday and another $21 million in punitive damages on Thursday to Candace Conti, her attorney, Rick Simons said.
“This is the largest jury verdict for a single victim in a religious child abuse case in the country,” Simons told The Associated Press.
In her lawsuit, Conti, now 26, said from 1995-1996, when she was 9 and 10 years old and a member of the North Fremont Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, she was repeatedly molested by a fellow congregant, Jonathan Kendrick.
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