AUSTRALIA
Maroondah Weekly
By Barney Zwartz
Feb. 19, 2013
A FORMER Jehovah’s Witness elder who apologised to his alleged victim on Facebook has been charged with two counts of indecent assault. Richard Hill will appear in the Heidelberg Magistrate’s Court on March 1 over allegations that he sexually assaulted a six-year-old girl in 1981.
The victim, now 38, told Fairfax Media that Mr Hill did everything except penetrate her – ”he tried, but couldn’t manage”.
She said she ”did not realise the gravity” of what had happened until she was about 14.
At that point she told her mother, who could not act because of a Jehovah’s Witness rule that allegations of sexual abuse would only be acted on if two elders witnessed it, she said.
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