Inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses: A ‘perfect storm’ for abuse

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Browne

Three decades ago Jodi*’s family were searching for a better life for themselves and their four children, well away from the gritty inner-city high rise apartment they called home.

The family packed up their belongings and moved to rural Victoria where they planned to start anew.

Then one morning a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door to spread the word of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. That was when Jodi’s nightmare began.

“These nice people were promising a community with no drugs, no alcohol and no crime – it sounded very appealing,” said Jodi, who asked that her name be withheld.

“They love bomb you. They sell you this vision of a perfect community. It is anything but. It’s indoctrination. It’s a cult, it really is. But they convince you it’s a religion.”

The Jehovah’s Witness church and its overarching body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, came to the attention of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse with a 2015 case study hearing more than 1000 allegations of paedophilia had been made against the organisation over 60 years yet not one complaint was reported to police.

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