NBC NEWS in Yakima, Washington reported that “A man who pleaded guilty to raping two underage girls he met at the Jehovah’s Witness congregation they all belonged to has been sentenced to five years in prison. Elihu Rodriguez, 32, of Yakima, Washington, was given five years, the maximum sentence prosecutors had recommended after Rodriguez agreed to plead guilty to three felony counts of child rape in the third degree in September 2019.”
The limits of religious freedom: America must come to grips with when faith groups limit personal liberty — “When Pastor Robert Jeffress, a member of President Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board and the White House Faith Initiative, recently dismissed climate activist Greta Thunberg by saying that rainbows are evidence that polar ice caps aren’t melting, my heart sank…”
It’s a rare week when a new case of child abuse or rape among Jehovah’s Witnesses isn’t reported somewhere in North America. That’s in spite of new court cases and successful convictions every few months that are destroying Watchtower’s reputation. The following report comes from a small town in Illinois (USA) where there was limited coverage about just such a case. But it includes a surprising and horrific twist that proves Watchtower leaders at all levels still refuse to take decisive action to protect children.
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.]