Trey Bundy, an investigative reporter for REVEAL, recently published an article describing the Watchtower’s ongoing legal problems associated with their policies on dealing with child abuse in their Kingdom Halls.
This time, the scandalous coverups of JW pedophiles and perverts are located in the UK. One court case has been made public that gives the Watchtower Society and its leaders another embarrassing situation to deal with.
Ian Pheasey, a 54-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for choking young girls for sexual gratification in the 1990s. According to the prosecutor handling this case, Pheasey’s victims were told by elders to “keep quiet.” Investigators found that no effective action was taken against the molester and “the matter was swept under the carpet by the church.”
As we reported in an earlier article (see next segment on this page), Kathleen Hallisey, an attorney representing the victims of another Jehovah’s Witness child molester (Mark Sewell), currently has ten lawsuits pending against the Witnesses. She hopes the commission’s work can bring systemic change in spite of efforts by the Watchtower and their representatives to cover up crimes and hide the truth of their involvement. Elders in Sewell’s congregation dismissed allegations against him and allegedly destroyed evidence of his crimes.
Hallisey hopes that an ongoing investigation by the UK Charity Commission will be as effective as the Australian Commission was in August 2015. That Royal Commission uncovered over 1000 unreported child abuse cases among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some went unreported in states that had mandatory reporting laws in effect at the time of the crimes. The patterns of denial and coverup of criminal child abuse by Jehovah’s Witnesses are consistent in both countries and the rest of the world.
“The investigator has reached out to many survivors and has a true understanding of the particular issues that victims of sexual abuse in the Jehovah’s Witness organization face,” she told REVEAL. “I am hopeful that his dedication and diligence in pursuing this investigation will lead to real change in the Watchtower’s child protection policies.”