VERMONT
Burlington Free Press

Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer September 30, 2014

Two sisters, one of them a Vermonter, filed lawsuits Tuesday alleging they were sexually molested as young girls in the mid-1990s by a Jehovah’s Witnesses official in Bellows Falls.

“These very courageous and brave young women have decided that they need to do something about what happened to them as children that has been kept silent by the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” San Diego attorney Irwin Zalkin said at a Tuesday news conference in Burlington.

According to court papers, Miranda Lewis, 23, of Chester and Annessa Lewis, 27, of Austin, Texas, claim Norton True fondled them on several occasions when they were little girls living in Bellows Falls.

True, who still lives in Bellows Falls, was a ministerial servant with the church, a deacon-like position that performs clerical and other duties. The alleged abuse occurred either at the…