Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Jehovah's Witnesses Timmins–North Bay area, Ontario, Canada · 2001

Canada: Jehovah's Witness bishop-equivalent elder convicted of sexually exploiting a ward member he was counseling

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

elder, Timmins–North Bay area Jehovah's Witness congregation

Organization

Jehovah's Witnesses (Timmins–North Bay area congregation)

Spiritual nexus

The victim began seeing Hayes specifically for pastoral counseling in his capacity as elder; that counseling relationship, and the access it gave him to her alone in his church office, is the documented mechanism of the offence.

Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2002-01-08 · conviction and sentence

Ontario Court of Justice, Ontario, Canada. James Hayes, an elder in the Timmins–North Bay area Jehovah's Witness congregation, was convicted of sexual exploitation in November 2001 for abusing an underage female congregant he had been counseling since she was 14; the sexual contact occurred when she was 16. He was sentenced on 8 January 2002 to 60 days' imprisonment served intermittently, plus probation for the length of the jail term.

Documented coercion mechanisms

pastoral counseling role over a congregant that began when she was 14, escalating to sexual contact when she was 16, conducted in the bishop's/elder's office at the local chapel

Primary record

Sources

case documentation database sentencing report aggregation FLOODLIT case file on James Hayes, citing North Bay Nugget, 'Sentencing delayed for former bishop' (8 Jan. 2002) and 'Former Mormon [sic — Jehovah's Witness] bishop sentenced in Timmins' (9 Jan. 2002).: Case-documentation aggregator's summary with links to the original North Bay Nugget newspaper reports of the conviction and sentence.

Related record

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