AUSTRALIA
The Age
Chris Johnston
A former Jehovah’s Witness elder recently convicted of child sex offences is back working with children from a Melbourne parish run by his father-in-law.
Richard Hill was found guilty last year of the offences against his six-year-old female cousin, who was also in the religion. He was put on the sex offenders’ list and fined. The offences happened in 1981 when he was 20.
Hill, a roofing plumber of Doreen with an office in Brunswick, this week maintained his innocence and confirmed he was working with children while doorknocking as part of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious practice called ‘proselytizing.’
His wife’s father, Ken Hall, is the senior elder at the Plenty Kingdom Hall in outer Melbourne, where Hill now worships. “I am allowed to attend under strict conditions,” Hill said. “The police know about that.”
Hill appealed his conviction but then dropped the appeal.
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