Royal Commission Case Study 29: 1,006 alleged perpetrators in internal files, none reported by the organisation
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Institutional event
Evidence status
Official finding
Authority role
congregational elders administering internal judicial processes
Organization
Jehovah's Witnesses (Australia)
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
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
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
Cited 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.
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://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/media-releases/report-jehovahs-witness-organisations-released Corpus classification: official-statutory-inquiry-report; evidentiary role: inquiry-report.
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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