GOOD NEWS!!! California’s Governor Gavin Newsom announced on October 13, 2019 that he signed AB 218 into law. Soon California’s childhood sexual assault survivors will have a three-year window from Jan. 1, 2020 until Dec. 31, 2022, for the revival of past claims to file lawsuits that might have expired due to the statute of limitations.
Dutch News announced in January 2019 that Utrecht University would be launching an independent inquiry into sexual abuse by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to the report, this is just the latest in a series of multiple investigations focused on the Watchtower organization and religion in The Netherlands.
On September 20, 2019, the Fresno Bee reported that a 45-year-old Fresno, California Jehovah’s Witness pleaded “no contest” on Friday to charges he sexually assaulted a young girl from his church who was only 17 years old. The man was identified as Martin Phillip Ramos. An additional surprise was reported in the article: The accused worked as a “police dispatcher in Madera.”
Lying in Court and Religion: An Analysis of the Theocratic Warfare Doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses: Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. Northwest State College, Archibold, Ohio
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / Posted Sep 13, 2019 12:34 pm PDT /BILLINGS, Mont. — An attorney for the Jehovah’s Witnesses asked the Montana Supreme Court on Friday to reverse a $35 million verdict against the church for not reporting a girl’s sexual abuse to authorities. Last year, a jury awarded $4 million in compensatory damages and $31 million in punitive damages to a woman who said she was abused as a child in the mid-2000s by a member of the Thompson Falls Jehovah’s Witness congregation.
Legal Newsline reported that a California appeals court affirmed a $4 million judgment against the nation’s governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The ruling was in favor of a woman who claimed she was molested as a child by an elder. In its 44-page opinion issued December 10, 2018, the California 4th District Court of Appeal, a Division Two three-judge panel left in place terminating sanctions and its judgment against the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York Inc.
[Albany Times Union, August 25, 2019, by Steve Hughes] As cases gear up for a long process in New York, the effect of California lawsuits offers an example. Victims and advocates fought for years to get the Child Victims Act passed and waited for the date that would allow them to file lawsuits, seeking a measure of justice for abuse that in some cases goes back decades.