IN PRINT: Jehovah’s in bid to block Irish blog hosting secret documents - Sunday Business Post (Ireland), Jan 28, 2018, front page

[Jack Ryan]

[Jack Ryan]

Jehovah’s in bid to block Irish blog hosting secret documents

The Sunday Business Post (Ireland), Sunday, January 28, 2018, front page

Lawyers at the organisation’s headquarters in New York have been trying to find out who runs the blog for more than a year

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are trying to block a blog run by an Irish man from publishing hundreds of internal memos related to the religion’s handling of allegations of child sex abuse worldwide.

Lawyers at the organisation's headquarters in New York - known as the Watch Tower - have been attempting to discover the identity of the person behind the blog for more than a year now.

The Watch Tower is also trying to get its hands on log files for the WordPress account to find out who was visiting the site.

The website, AvoidJW.org, is run by an Irish man. Through it, he has published thousands of documents related to the religion - from the books and pamphlets it distributes on the street to internal memos and regulations about alleged child sex abuse. In June last year the Watch Tower went to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to apply for what's known as a DMCA subpoena to shut down the blog.

A DMCA subpoena is a little-known provision of an American law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows the complainant to identify people who may have infringed their copyright.

In legal documents submitted to the court in New York - which The Sunday Business Post has seen - the Watch Tower sought the subpoena to force search engine Google and web hosting company GoDaddy to provide the Jehovah's Witnesses with customer account contact information, contact information for the domain, any related email accounts, and log files for the WordPress account.

The documents show that the organisation was attempting to identify the real people behind a number of user names, including Celia McCavidge, Tom Durbridge, Jehovah McGeddon, Frank Malton, Kenneth Floodin, Eamon Lowe, Rose Mark Media, Bartley Trayors, Dork Benedict, Lorcan Clarke, Watch Tower 1900s, and Stephen Lett.

All of the names are pseudonyms of an Irish man who has since moved the hosting to an offshore location to avoid the shutdown.

The Jehovah's Witnesses religion - known for its strict interpretation of the Bible and for its evangelical proselytising - has come under increasing scrutiny worldwide over how it handles abuse allegations, as has been reported in The Sunday Business Post in recent months. The religion has been criticised by statutory inquiries in Britain and Australia, and sued in US courts, over abuse cases. 

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/jehovahs-bid-block-irish-blog-hosting-secret-documents-407712

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[Noble Berean]

Imagine trying to plug a critically flawed dam with your fingers. That's what the WT is doing. It's going after these leakers to no avail. There are obviously many JWs at the source ("mother") that have lost their faith in the GB--that is why they leak to the public. The sources of the leaks are internal. They desire to see the house of cards fall. A big media storm is incoming, and the GB will be powerless against it when it starts. Just as they have been powerless to stop the Bethel leaks. They are so thoroughly incompetent that they can't even keep their own ones loyal. I can only imagine the atmosphere at Bethel now. It will be witchhunt-level paranoia. 

Instead of focusing on the leaks, those taking the lead should be turning inward and acknowledging the severe problems they have promoted. The problems that are causing earnest-hearted JWs to become whistle-blowers on the organization they once staunchly protected. But the GB is too prideful to take accountability for their mistakes. They constantly twist the narrative to make the questioning of abuse as attacks by apostates. So, it will all fall down. Pride is before a crash. The GB has demonstrated its true colors...they would rather legally fight victims of abuse to protect their image than make reforms for the better.