United Kingdom: former Jehovah's Witness elder jailed for indecently assaulting a schoolgirl in his congregation
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Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
elder, Jehovah's Witness congregation
Organization
Jehovah's Witness congregation, Stoke-on-Trent
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Winkle was an elder in his Jehovah's Witness congregation when he indecently assaulted a schoolgirl connected to the church on three occasions in the late 1970s, using the trust his eldership commanded within the congregation to avoid scrutiny for decades.
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2015-11-22 · guilty plea/conviction and sentence
Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court, England. Admitted two charges of indecent assault and was convicted at trial of a third; sentenced to 4 years' imprisonment for indecently assaulting a schoolgirl on three occasions nearly 40 years earlier. Placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- eldership standing used to access a schoolgirl connected to the congregation over multiple occasions
Cited record
Sources
- aggregated court reporting criminal disposition and nexus Cult Education Institute (reprint of local press), 'Ex-Jehovah's Witness elder jailed for sex assaults on schoolgirl.'
Court report confirming Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court sentencing, the eldership role, and indefinite sex-offenders-register placement.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://culteducation.com/group/1267-jehovah-s-witnesses/28993-ex-jehovah-s-witness-elder-jailed-for-sex-assaults-on-schoolgirl.html Corpus classification: aggregated-court-reporting; evidentiary role: criminal-disposition-and-nexus. SHA-256 0e9acb5cb81d6c0172f72404b84190b8849384fc361659002120c721e49e027e
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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