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.”
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.
KIRO-TV, Channel 7 in Seattle, Washington, reported on August 13, 2019, that an Assembly Hall in Puyallup was damaged by fire – an apparent case of arson. The Pierce County Fire Marshal is investigating what appears to be another attack on local Jehovah’s Witnesses. Two other reported incidents occurred during March 2018. [Video included.]
On August 9, 2019, Jules Johnston of The Brussels Times reported that “No fewer than 90 victims of sexual abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation in Belgium have been discovered over a six month period, according to an association for victims. The organization “Reclaimed Voices” has worked with other groups in the country to identify cases within the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization in Belgium,” reports Le Soir.
The Zalkin Law Firm P.C. has filed a new lawsuit in New York on behalf of two childhood sexual abuse victims naming Jehovah’s Witness Governing Body members and other empowered and responsible individuals within the Watchtower organization as defendants. The Watchtower has a long history of defying court orders to produce pertinent documents and records.
Two former Jehovah’s Witnesses claim the church looked the other way when they were sexually abused as children for years — and now plan to sue under a landmark state law that takes effect this week. Lawyers for Heather Steele, 48, and John Michael Ewing, 47, alleged at a press conference Monday that the Witnesses and its eight-member leadership council even maintain a database of church sex offenders that it’s kept secret. The two alleged victims now plan to fight back with separate lawsuits that will be filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday when the Child Victims Act goes into effect.