EMERYVILLE (CA)
Reveal/Center for Investigative Journalism
November 16, 2017
By Trey Bundy
The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to hand over internal documents detailing alleged child sexual abuse just got more expensive.
A California appeals court last week upheld an order for the religion to pay $4,000 for each day it does not turn over the documents. The tab currently stands at $2 million. The ruling stems from a case in San Diego, where Osbaldo Padron sued the Jehovah’s Witnesses for failing to warn congregants that a child abuser was in their midst.
Padron, a former Jehovah’s Witness, was sexually abused as a child by an adult member of his congregation named Gonzalo Campos. Campos confessed to sexually abusing seven children.
During that time, leaders at the Jehovah’s Witnesses world headquarters in New York – known as the Watchtower – knew that Campos had abused children, according to court documents. Yet they continued to promote him to higher positions of responsibility in his congregation and took no action to prevent further abuse, the documents show.
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting reviewed multiple cases involving Campos as part of a larger investigation into the Watchtower’s institutional cover-up of child sex abuse in its congregations.
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