AUSTRALIA
SBS
The Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse has heard that the Jehovah’s Witness Church in Australia has received more than 1000 child sex abuse allegations over 60 years – and not one was reported to police.
It was an emotional day for victims who shared their stories of abuse by elders at church, who destroyed notes about child sex abuse.
Julia Calixto reports.
The Jehovah’s Witness Church preaches about repentance in preparation for Doomsday.
Instead of a pulpit, it’s been the witness box for elders at the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse.
Max Horley was an elder for the Jehovah’s Witness congregation in Narrogin, Western Australia, in the late 1980s when a woman, known as BCB, was abused by another church elder, Bill Neill.
Commission chair Peter McClellan asked Mr Horley if he had taken notes of his conversations with BCB.
“What don’t you like to have notes of a serious allegations? There are brief notes kept in the file, but all other notes are destroyed. Why is that? I guess it’s because we don’t want them to fall into the wrong hands and other people to find them and they go through them.”
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