AUSTRALIA
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting
By Trey Bundy / February 17, 2016
A Jehovah’s Witnesses elder in Australia was put behind bars last week for sexually abusing minors, according to The West Australian.
Over seven years, David Frank Pople sexually assaulted two teenage boys he met through a congregation near Perth. One of his victims told elders about the abuse in 1997, but no one notified police until one of the victims filed a report in 2014. Pople pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.
The details of Pople’s story mirror those of other abuse cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world. Elders failed to report child sexual abuse to secular authorities. The perpetrator was kicked out of the organization, only to be reinstated later.
Moreover, the story fits a pattern of Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders ejecting members who abuse children, not for the abuse, but for failing to show adequate repentance.
After Pople admitted to elders in 1997 that he had assaulted one of the boys, he was disfellowshipped – the Witnesses’ version of excommunication – for being “insufficiently repentant,” according to the newspaper’s story. A year later, after Pople requested reinstatement, the congregation welcomed him back.
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