Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Christian institutions & contexts Jehovah's Witnesses Australia (national) · 2016

Royal Commission Case Study 29: 1,006 alleged perpetrators in internal files, none reported by the organisation

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

congregational elders administering internal judicial processes

Organization

Jehovah's Witnesses (Australia)

Spiritual nexus

The Commission's findings concern the exercise of congregational religious authority over reporting itself: elders' internal processes governed whether abuse within the community ever reached secular authorities.

  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2016-10-01 · royal commission finding

    Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Australia — Case Study 29. The Commission found the organisation's internal case files documented allegations against 1,006 individuals, none of whom the organisation itself referred to police; that the 'two-witness rule' was misapplied to child sexual abuse allegations; and that internal disciplinary sanctions left perpetrators at large with inadequate regard to reoffending risk.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • misapplication of the two-witness rule to child sexual abuse
  • internal discipline substituted for reporting to authorities

Primary record

Sources

official statutory inquiry report inquiry report Royal Commission, 'Report of Case Study No. 29: The Jehovah's Witnesses' (Oct. 2016).

The Commission's findings on internal files, the two-witness rule, and non-reporting.

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