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Child safeguarding · Claim record

The Royal Commission found it was the general practice of the Jehovah's Witness organisation in Australia not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to police or other authorities unless required to do so by law, and that this practice 'demonstrates a serious failure by the organisation to provide for the safety and protection of children'.

Claim ID claim-safeguarding-general-practice-not-reportingConcerns October 2016Independent finding
Independent finding · October 2016 Verified

The Royal Commission found it was the general practice of the Jehovah's Witness organisation in Australia not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to police or other authorities unless required to do so by law, and that this practice 'demonstrates a serious failure by the organisation to provide for the safety and protection of children'. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The organisation submitted that any finding of a 'policy of not reporting' was wrong; the Commission replied that 'although there may not be a specific policy, it is the practice of the organisation not to report such abuse in the absence of a legal requirement' (p. 61). Since 2015 the organisation says it reports whenever a child is at risk; at the March 2017 hearing it said 15 of 17 new allegations had been reported.

Show the evidence (1 source)
Official public record Verified

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, “Report of Case Study No. 29: The response of the Jehovah's Witnesses and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia Ltd to allegations of child sexual abuse”

October 2016 · pp.1-110 (ISBN 978-1-925289-89-3) · pp. 10-12, 14, 24-25, 58-70, 75-78 · The Hon. Justice Peter McClellan AM (Chair); Professor Helen Milroy (Commissioner) · Commonwealth of Australia

“Although the position is not clear in relation to a few files, there is otherwise no evidence before the Royal Commission of the Jehovah's Witness organisation having reported to police or other secular authority a single one of the 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse recorded in the case files held by Watchtower Australia.”

P. 60. Other key passages: p. 58 (files since 1950 record allegations against 1,006 members; 579 admissions; at least 1,800 alleged victims); p. 59 ('The numbers tell their own story'); p. 61 ('We are satisfied that it is the general practice of the Jehovah's Witness organisation in Australia not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police or other authorities unless required to do so by law'); p. 65 (two-witness rule: 'retention of and continued application of the rule to a complaint of child sexual abuse is wrong'); p. 67 (men-only decision-making is 'a fundamental flaw'); p. 69 ('places children within the organisation at significant risk'); p. 70 (BCG 'completely shunned, ostracised and actively avoided'); p. 77 ('We do not consider the Jehovah's Witness organisation to be an organisation which responds adequately to child sexual abuse').

Official source Scan of original Link not auto-checkable

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The official Royal Commission host could not be reached from this environment (TLS renegotiation failure / timeouts), so the NZ-hosted copy of the same Commonwealth publication was downloaded and text-extracted; all quotations verbatim with printed page numbers. Tabled in Parliament 28 November 2016.

Scan provenance. Copy of the Commonwealth publication (CC BY 3.0 AU) held in the New Zealand Abuse in Care Royal Commission evidence library; identical ISBN and pagination to the official release.

Corroborated by. src-wt-subs-2015-1109-royal-commission, src-arc-2015-0814-day155-transcript

Notes. Public hearing 27 July-5 August and 14 August 2015, Sydney. Survivors identified only as BCG and BCB. Also on parlinfo.aph.gov.au as a tabled paper.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-arc-2016-1000-cs29-report

Claim page

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