AUSTRALIA
Sky News
A victim of sexual abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses would face an ‘impossible choice’ between staying in the church and being cut off from friends and family, the child abuse royal commission has heard.
One of the most senior members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia, Terrence O’Brien, told the commission on Wednesday that a victim would know that by ‘disassociating’ or leaving the church, they would be shunned by other Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Counsel assisting the commission, Angus Stewart SC, said in a scenario where a survivor of abuse could not bear remaining in the same organisation as her abuser, the fate she faced was ‘cruel’.
‘No one, is it not right, should be put to the choice of remaining in an organisation which she feels is protective of her abuser, and losing her family and social network?’ Mr Stewart asked Mr O’Brien.
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