JOHN BUTLER

I can be AFFORDED the opportunity to claim a free Elephant at the Zoo, but unless I invoke that OPPORTUNITY ( NOT a requirement..) the Elephant stays at the Zoo.
If I represent myself as an Elephant handler, and demand the privileges of a trained professional, it complicates my life, and opens me to MANY financial, ethical, moral, and legal considerations I would not otherwise have.
I do not want to be ELEPHANT CLERGY.
The Secular Authorities even have rules for the ethical treatment of Elephants, how they are caged, fed, treated, etc. 
There are different rules for Veternarians, Zoos, Owners ....  and even Restaurants.
Like the WOPR computer said once when playing Global Thermonuclear War Games ...
"The only way to win ... is NOT PLAY"
 

So here we have two opposing views on the Clergy Privilege laws.  
I'm not into laws and I would presume it is different in different countries anyway, but my idera still stands if it would work.
There is one point that as James said and i've always thought it, the Clergy Privilege law applies one on one, and once a group of people know the circumstances then that law no longer applies. But i will admit to being out of my depth on the subject.  
 

Sometimes a short answer, phrased in words familiar to the audience, keeps them from wondering what the hell you said really means, and scratching their head in wonderment, until it bleeds.

The Clergy Privilege is a PRIVILEGE THAT ONLY EXISTS IF IT IS CLAIMED!!!!
If we RECANT it ... it will INSTANTLY cease to be a factor in any deliberations.
That little piece of fluff is REMOVED from the considerations of any firm, persons', corporations', or religious organizational OTHERWISE legally mandated reporting requirements.
Even though in courts of law the Society now claims the Elders and up  are Clergy, and that the World Headquarters is a "Monastery", for real estate zoning purposes, and we should be treated with the same deference as the Catholic Church, this position is held when it is beneficial, and claimed not to exist when it does NOT serve the Society's financial and political  interests.
The Clergy Privilege is a PRIVILEGE THAT ONLY EXISTS IF IT IS CLAIMED!!!!
And CLAIMING something does NOT make it so.
A sad little Lizard claiming ancestry with a T-REX dinosaur only makes it a sad little lizard ... but since happy lizards are in such short supply, I might have a penchant to humor him.
But NOT when The Society demands they be treated like Clergy .... that is flat out DANGEROUS.
To understand that, which I do, would require an essay of massive proportions.  It's a lot simpler to watch the 1939 movie "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara and understand how important the concept of "Sanctuary" is as it has evolved over the centuries, and also the "Priest/Penitent" religious custom which is embodied like concrete in the societal matrix ... and even extends to lawyers who have inviolate "lawyer/client" privilege.
That is between ONE person and ONE other person.
Although when it is to their advantage, the Society has represented themselves in court many, many times as being a hierarchical organization "exactly like the Catholic Church", in matters of Clergy/Penitent privilege, and also in the ownership of Kingdom Halls and other real estate assets, the fact remains that a Congregational trial is held before three or more people, with full details the Circuit Overseer,  copies to the Society's legal department, prepared by the Congregational Secretary, so all in all,  not to even mention back channel gossip from Elder's wives whose curiosity would put Sherlock Holmes to task, this "confidential matter" might be shared with 8 to 15 people.
These Clergy/Penitent laws have a 1200 and more year history in Roman and British and others' "common law" and it has ALWAYS been between ONLY two people ... at least in Theory.
In actuality, the Priests of the Catholic Church have ALWAYS acted as political intelligence officers for the nations they were prostitutes for, and of course for the Vatican, so while giving absolute lip service to the Priest/Penitent relationship, in order to get the gullible faithful to believe in THEM, as they served as spies with that information, serving their own interests.
People KNOW this, but believe to the very core of their bones it is not the way things really are.  They want to see examples of honorable men, where there are none ....or at the least, very few.  Very VERY few.
The Society is trying to have it BOTH ways ... trying to convince the legal systems that they are due the same respect, deference, and privileges long firmly established by the Catholic Church,, when in fact BOTH are completely disingenuous.
Simpler to watch the movie, than for me to continue for the next 20 pages.
If that does not work, read the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo.
I have an audition to host a local radio talk show next  week, and I did not sleep at all last night, mind racing like a mile wide tornado, so I am completely worn out.
Also, remember Ferengi Rule of Acquisition No. 48:
"The Bigger the Smile ... the sharper the knife".

I will repeat what i wrote previously. 
It could be announced from the platform in every KH that all types of crimes reported to the Elders would be reported to the authorities. Then people would be able to make the decision whether to tell the Elders or not.
If it was made clear that ALL CRIMES would be reported to the authorities then I wonder if that would remove the 'clergy privilege' excuse. 
As for the others things you mentioned Billy, if they are not crimes then the authorities do not need to be involved. I suppose in some countries homosexuality may still be a crime, I don't know. 
Did I read on here that an Elder at the ARC said that he would not report a murder ?  If so then where is his love of neighbour ? 

@JOHN BUTLER finds it irresistible to point out how I write books, and I hate to let him down. Perhaps from this episode another chapter can be written:
“Citing a hierarchy that ‘encourages a culture of silence,’ a Quebec Superior Court judge has authorized a class-action lawsuit for current or former Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec who were sexually abused by other members as minors....[The plaintiff] alleges she was repeatedly sexually abused and assaulted by her brother, 13 years older, beginning when she was only 10 months old.”
Do I understand this correctly? One child abuses another within a family, and it is the fault of the congregation elders?
The Canadian judge stated that: “The organization of Jehovah's Witnesses is very hierarchical, led by men, and encourages a culture of silence.”
Take the organization out of the picture for a moment. Are we to imagine that the mom and dad of this family would have otherwise marched their kids straight down to the police station to make sure that proper punishment was meted out?
There is a part of me that thinks what really gets in sticks in the craw of this judge is that Jehovah’s Witnesses are “hierarchical,” as though any other organization is not, and that they are “led by men,” as though anything less than a free-for-all ought to be taboo. Perhaps she even implies that men are inherently evil, so that the greatest travesty of all is to be led by them.
However, says my nemesis: “My guess is that it's not what happened within the family. It was the coverup within the Congregation.”
Well—it is not possible to mishandle what you never attempted to handle in the first place.
The clear implication of rulings such as this is that religious organizations ought not to look into the conduct of its members, for it is only by doing so that they can find themselves in such a spot as this. “Be like the mainline churches,” the ruling says in effect. “Preach to them on Sunday and be done with it. It’s none of your business whether they apply it or not.”
However, the verse Christians feel obligated to follow says that it is their business. “You, the one preaching, “Do not steal,” do you steal?  You, the one saying, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:21) If you claim that your teachings improve the overall moral fiber, you must have mechanisms in place to ensure that that is in fact the case, especially if your view of God is that he insists on a “clean” people, as free of misconduct as possible.
Framed in this way, the ruling is a state attempt to regulate religion, and could be argued on that basis.
Plus, such thinking completely ignores the far superior role of prevention of child sexual abuse, in order to zero in exclusively on meting out punishment when it occurs, as though that is the means by which the problem will be solved. How’s that project going, anyhow? Thirty years into the all-out war against child sexual abuse, is it just about snuffed out? Or is it only the tip of the iceberg that has been revealed?
I’ll take the kids, Caleb and Sophia, video any day, for teaching parents how to protect their children. I’ll take the 2017 Regional Conventions any day, in which every Witness in the world was assembled to hear detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might take place, so that parents, the obvious first line of defense, can be vigilant. Who else assembles all its members and then trains them so?
***~~~***
 
“Jehovah’s Witnesses have a serious problem of child sexual abuse in their midst?”
 There are two ways of looking at this.
1.) They do not.
2.) They do, but the situation is far worse everywhere else.
One must look no farther than who is being outed as perpetrators. If you want to find deviants in most places, you look no further than the leaders. If you want the same ‘catch’ among Jehovah’s Witnesses, you must broaden your search to include, not just leaders, but everyone. A Jehovah’s Witness leader committing child sexual abuse is rare. Not unheard of, but rare. Elsewhere, it is the pattern.
Okay, if the leaders are not committing the child sexual abuse, are they nonetheless "hiding it?" How do they compare with other groups? It is a little hard to say. Nobody else has ever found it. They looked the other way, taking no interest in looking at wrongdoing within their midst. Thus, when child sexual abuse was found, it was a.) found entirely independent of religious affiliation, and b.) it was found that the leaders themselves were the abusers. How would members fare in comparison? There is no data. Nobody ever bothered to look.
Courts will go where courts will go. Will they take the above into account? Time will tell. There are few organizations with pockets--it doesn’t matter if they are religious or not--that are not being flooded with lawsuits today. In New York State, my own state, the governor has just signed into law a bill greatly lengthening the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. Out of nowhere has appeared a major sponsor of programming I watch--a legal firm seeking to sign up clients. The ads briefly eclipsed other legal firms of accident litigation running non-stop ads of how “[So and So law firm] got me $3 million dollars, 15 times what the insurance company offered!” Put together, lawyers have become by far the premier sponsors of television. Can a society really endure that way?
Make no mistake. No one is saying that it is wrong to sue for grievances. But one must sometimes ask whether there will be any organized group on earth left standing when the suing is done. Of course, there will be some. Governments can just raise taxes to recoup legal payouts. Businesses can raise prices. But groups like the Boy Scouts, investigating bankruptcy at last report, are out of luck. One wonders how other voluntary organizations will fare.
The typical person congratulates the client who has come into an extraordinary bonanza via lawsuit. Then he opens his insurance premium bill. It calls to mind, as a rough parallel, the statement of Alexander Fraser that democracy can only endure until “the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” The world has become a lawyers’ playground, with massive transfers of money flowing in all directions--the barristers netting a third, they being the only consistent beneficiaries.
When the rules of the game change, you can hardly blame the small players for adjusting to accommodate them. There was a time, those my age will remember, when nothing was so crass as for lawyers to advertise. It was against their universal code of conduct, possibly even against the law. It explains the phrase “ambulance chaser”—you actually had to chase an ambulance to sign up a client before another lawyer could. You couldn’t just broadcast to the whole wide world that you were scouring the earth for clients.
Someone dear to me was sued several times with regard to property, in another matter that had a very long statute of limitations. When what proved to be the final lawsuit came in, the person sought to make defense through his insurance lawyer, but that one attempted contact several times and could not get a response from the firm bringing suit. Finally, that firm admitted that they were having a hard time locating their client. Seemingly, they had left no stone unturned in seeking business and had finally found “aggrieved” ones who’s cases were so tenuous that they couldn’t even be bothered to show up and make them.
I wonder, too, whether the popular demand for public apologies isn’t largely just a PR event, or even worse, an encouraged legal strategy to secure a clear admission of guilt, thereafter better enabling future lawsuits. Few things are done for the noble ‘window-dressing’ reasons that are given. At any rate, it is worth noting that when the government of Australia apologized for decades of child sexual abuse, and opposers praised that apology to the heavens because they thought they could thereby embarrass Jehovah’s Witnesses, the victims nonetheless rejected it as ‘too little, too late.’ Better than any apology is prevention. Of course, it is good to call in the grief counselors in the aftermath of a school shooting. But it is far better not to need them in the first place.
The situation is a far cry from the Quebec of 70 years ago, during which 400 Jehovah's Witnesses generated 1600 arrests, on charges as minor as peddling without a license but as major as sedition. A key case involving sedition was lost before the Supreme Court of Canada, but was overturned on a rarely-used provision of "rehearing," at which the Court acknowledged that Witness literature and ministry included nothing that incited to violence--a necessary ingredient of sedition--but only contained that which made a powerful faction squirm. The situation is much different today, with altogether different charges, and the game is barely recognizable. But deep within, is the underlying intent not nonetheless the same, cloaked behind a veneer of righteous indignation?

 

So ...if that is so ... what did the 10,000 or so anointed, baptized, dedicated Christians do for the previous three years?
Get together and play soccer?
... or just wander around, occasionally bumping into each other?

I find it very difficult to imagine Jesus and the Apostles in the ministry for THREE YEARS, and no Christian Congregation formed from those being taught and baptized.
How did these new ones accomplish THEIR ministry and make new converts, as did in fact happen?
In fact, I don't believe it.
It does not pass the "common sense" test.
 
 

The Christian Congregation was founded DURING Christ's lifetime ... the Apostles were assembled, not to play soccer on Wednesday afternoons. Disciples by the tens of thousands were not congregated for a concert.
By the time he was executed there were many thousands of believers, and practicers.
Perhaps I should rephrase my original paragraphs .....
Remember .... Among the Jewish Congregations of God,  before Roman  Military Occupation,  trials were held in the city gates, where EVERYONE could see, speak up, and judge the judges.... and judge the PROCESS of Justice.
Among the Jews, the "whole body" of Jews involved in adjudication of sin and crimes worked well for several thousand years ... and it worked well in the Early Christian Congregation for about 270 years along the same model ... until the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, whose evolution was guided by Roman political concerns, under the lead of that master politician, Emperor Constantine.
.... which is how the system evolved into what we have now.
Just remember ... in Jesus' time, during his life and for about 270 years afterward ...  such trials were held before the whole Christian Congregation.
THAT is the example we should be following ...

Just remember ... in Jesus' time, such trials were held before the whole Christian Congregation, while among the Jews, before Roman  Military Occupation,  such were held in the city gates, where EVERYONE could see, speak up, and judge the judges.... and judge the PROCESS of Justice.
Among the Jews, the "whole body" of Jews involved in adjudication of sin and crimes worked well for several thousand years ... and it worked well in the Early Christian Congregation for about 270 years ... until the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, whose evolution was guided by Roman political concerns, under the lead of that master politician, Emperor Constantine.
.... which is how the system evolved into what we have now.

Is there an option for a publisher, the one doing the accusing, to say which elders he wants on the committee? I don't think there is. Has the publisher got any say in who should handle the issue if the publisher feels the elders who are handling it are not suitable?

Ok, I will rephrase it. Why does a judicial committee not consist of the entire body of elders in a given congregation.
A little bit of background info: This question was raised by someone who was concerned about justice being carried out correctly, especially if a situation involved one elder who was being accused. How does a judicial committee judge one of their "own", especially, if there is a possibility of bias due to obvious friendship above and beyond just a brother in the congregation. So for the purpose of an example, lets say the BOE of a congregation consists of 8 elders, one of whom had been accused of a sin, which if unresolved, could lead to a disfellowshipping, or at least the deletion of his position. So that leaves 7 elders who decide to form a judicial committee (on the grounds that the situation with the accused elder had not been settled). Why can't all 7 elders consist of the committee?
 

I have known MANY elders whose children have "left the Truth", because their fathers paid more attention to congregational matters than their own children.  There is such a thing as "theocratic" burnout.
And that fire has an insatiable hunger.

I would bet real money that this would solve the problem ... or at least 95% of it .... for EVERYBODY concerned.
I wonder what ulterior motive is being cherished NOT to have this simple solution adopted everywhere?

But surely Billy if these problems have been going on for fifty years or more, and the JW Org has a bethal/head office in each country , then surely someone within each head office should be up to date on all procedures. These are not new problems. The GB or their legal department has 20 years worth of accusations on record just in the USA, and probably much more earthwide. I cannot see any excuses to any of this. 
And if all Elders were told to report everything to the police and/or outside authorities then it would probably make their lives a lot easier. 
It could be announced from the platform in every KH that all types of crimes reported to the Elders would be reported to the authorities. Then people would be able to make the decision whether to tell the Elders or not. 
Apart from some strange idea of wanting to know how many pedophiles are in the JW Org, what is the point of just keeping it all on record ? Keeping records is not protecting anyone. And our neighbours are supposed to be everyone, so the protection of everyone, especially children, is important. How can keeping internal record protect people outside the Org ? Are the Elders going to follow pedophiles around all day to keep them from attacking people outside ? 
Tell the authorities, the Police, then the matter can be dealt with by those trained to deal with it. 
 

Download
 
Dear reader,
as you may have heard via the media or via our internet channels, Utrecht University is commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and Security to conduct an independent investigation into how Jehovah's Witnesses deal with complaints of sexual abuse.
This research is the result of a motion unanimously adopted by the House of Representatives. Reclaimed Voices has tried to do this by talking to politicians who eventually drew up this motion.
Now the University of Utrecht would like to hear background stories from people who themselves had experienced abuse within the Jehovah's Witnesses. They also like to hear from people who know about someone else who has been abused. The stories can be shared anonymously with the university, but you can also decide to leave your name and contact details if you wish.
All information will be treated confidentially by the University of Utrecht and these stories will NOT be shared with others.
As chairman of Reclaimed Voices, I would like to ask you to consider cooperating with this research. You thereby make an important contribution to the research. 
The questionnaire of this research can be found via this link:  https://usbo.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4HkMbQjHlM0uhMh
You can decide for yourself which information you want to share with the University and what not!
Thanks for your cooperation.
best regards,
on behalf of the board of Reclaimed Voices,
Raymond Hintjes 
Chairman
 
This may already be on here, but better to be sure. It's good to get the word out there to genuine victims and their families. And to all those who support real truth and feelings for others. 
The more response from the more people in the more countries, then hopefully the quicker it can all be dealt with.
Then maybe the GB will have to admit how wrong they have been in their ways of mis-dealing with Child Abuse and deliberately hiding Pedophiles in the JW Org and Watchtower Soc'. 
 

Please go to court hearings and see how many times an elder is the perpetrator. Then go to those of other groups, where you will find that it is nobody but their leaders coming under legal fire.
It is the court hearings where one must look. For lawyers will take the cases that seem easiest to win over those where allegations are more tenuous. For all I know, you wrote many of the stories at lambs. But it is the ones that lawyers adopt because they seem provable that count.
And very few are  elders as perpetrators.

It is not possible to mishandle what you never attempted to handle in the first place.
The clear implication of rulings such as this is that religious organizations ought not to look into the conduct of its members, for it is only by doing so that they can step into messes like this.
“Be like the mainline churches,” the ruling says in effect. “Preach to them on Sunday and be done with it. It’s none of your business whether they apply it or not.”
However, the verse says that it is their business. “You, the one preaching, “Do not steal,” do you steal?  You, the one saying, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery?” If you claim that your teachings improve the moral fiber, you must have mechanisms in place to ensure that that is indeed the case, especially if your view of God is that he insists on a “clean” people.
Framed that way, the ruling is a state attempt to regulate religion and could be argued on that basis.
Plus, such thinking completely ignores the far superior role of prevention of CSA, in order to zero in exclusively on meting out punishment when it occurs, as though THAT is the means for the problem to be solved. How’s that project going, anyhow? Thirty years into the all-out CSA war, is it just about snuffed out? Or is it only the tip of the iceberg that has been revealed?
I’ll take the kids you have criticized, Caleb and Sophia, any day, for teaching parents how to protect their children.
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/children/become-jehovahs-friend/videos/protect-your-children/
 I’ll take the 2017 Regional Conventions any day, in which every Witness in the world was assembled to hear detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might take place, so that parents, the obvious first line of defense, can be vigilant.

Let me get this straight. One child abuses another within a family, and it is the fault of the congregation elders?
Is it alleged that:
Take them out of the picture for a moment. Are we to imagine that the mom and dad of this family would have otherwise marched their kids straight down to the police station to make sure justice was done? 
There is a part of me that thinks what really gets in sticks in the craw of this judge is that Jehovah’s Witnesses are “hierarchical”, whatever that is supposed to mean, and that they are “led by men,” as though anything less than a free-for-all is evil.
Perhaps it is even implied that men are inherently evil, so that the greatest travesty of all is to be led by them.
 

@TrueTomHarley, please go to www . silentlambs . org and scroll down the left hand column to see how many times the word "elder" is found in each story heading.  

You people are impossible to talk to sensibly because you worship the GB and it's Org so much that you are blind to the truth of it all. 
Anything a victim says, that you don't like, you simply consider them as liars. 
Anything that an investigation finds out, that you don't like, you simply say they are twisting facts or making it all up.
Some of you cannot accept the truth about the JW Org. You can accept that the Israelites offered their children in the fire to Molech, but you think that the GB and it's Org are above any such badness.
You can make it known about Catholic priests and others committing Child Abuse but when people make it known about JW Elders you say it's lies or 'just apostate rumours'. 
TTH says " An JW leader committing CSA is rare. Not unheard of, but rare. Elsewhere it is the pattern. " 
Tom likes to pretend that the JW Org is so so different, but unfortunately it isn't any different. Oh yes, slightly different, the JW Org keeps as much of it secret as it can, and it withholds evidence and destroys evidence too. 
The JW Org also tries to stop investigations by those with a legal right to do so. A bit strange when God's word tells us to obey the law of the land and to be in subjection to the Superior Authorities, because those authorities are in their place with God's approval. 
Now if the GB actually believed God's word and therefore followed it properly, they would tell all those brothers in positions of responsibility to cooperate fully with all investigations and to hand over all information asked for by those authorities. The Bible calls it being in subjection and  'going the extra mile'. I'm sure you all know the scriptures well. 

@TrueTomHarley Well there's the UK government. When it comes to their clique it's always secrets.

I happen to know that every single person in the township where you live is a child abuser.
But it is kept hidden, kept quiet, kept secret.
Sheesh.

I wouldn't do it, you're going to melt snowflakes! 

this JW brother could/should not be on the stage without a jacket and tie.....according some elders/congregations rule :))))