Excerpt
SUMMARY: In San Francisco, a woman is suing the Jehovah's Witnesses for failing to protect her from a known child abuser when she was a child. The Center for Investigative Reporting has shed light on accusations that religious leaders led a cover-up of child sex abuse. Special correspondent Trey Bundy of the CIR’s Reveal reports on how the organization is using the first amendment to fight these charges.
Editor’s Note: The graphic appearing in the introduction of this report mistakenly contains an image of a cross. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not use the image of a cross as a symbol for Christianity. We regret the error.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Next, an investigation into child sexual abuse among Jehovah’s Witness and accusations that religious leaders led a cover-up within inside some of the group’s 14,000 U.S. congregations.
Our colleagues from the Center for Investigative Reporting obtained confidential memos shedding new light on the revelations.
Special correspondent Trey Bundy has the story from Reveal, a new Web site, radio show, and podcast run by the center.
TREY BUNDY (NewsHour): At a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in California, new members are taking the plunge.
MAN: At your baptism, you said yes.
TREY BUNDY: They’re joining more than eight million members worldwide.
Believers are taught to renounce secular society because it’s controlled by Satan, and not to socialize too much with outsiders. But charges of sexual abuse have brought this insular community under greater scrutiny. And now, in this San Francisco courtroom, the first child abuse case against the Jehovah’s Witnesses to go to trial is under way.
Candace Conti is suing the organization for failing to protect her from a known child abuser when she was 9 years old.
CANDACE CONTI, Plaintiff: If I were to sum up our goals in this case, it was to attack the policies and procedures that where in place that let a serial molester continue to molest children.
TREY BUNDY: Conti’s lawyer says instructions from Jehovah’s Witness leaders have enabled child molesters.
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