United States: default judgment against the Watchtower Society for recommending a known child molester as a boy's Bible-study mentor

Proceedings

1. 2014-01-01 · default judgment

   San Diego County Superior Court, California, USA. San Diego Superior Court Judge Joan Lewis entered a default judgment of $13.5 million against the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York after the organization declined to comply with discovery orders, finding it had failed to protect Jose Lopez, molested in 1986 at age 7 by Gonzalo Campos, an adult congregation member elders of the Linda Vista Spanish congregation had known since 1982 to be a child molester and nonetheless recommended to Lopez's mother as someone he should study the Bible with. The judgment was $10.5 million in punitive and $3 million in compensatory damages; Campos himself was never criminally charged and, per later reporting, is a fugitive believed to be in Mexico.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• elders' recommendation of an adult they already knew to be a molester as a one-on-one Bible-study mentor to a 7-year-old congregant, portrayed to the child as a fatherly spiritual teacher