High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, “A v The Trustees of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and others [2015] EWHC 1722 (QB) (HQ13X01985)”
“he was ostensibly performing his duties as a Jehovah's Witness ministerial servant. I am satisfied that the progressive acts of intimacy were only possible because he had the actual or ostensible status of a ministerial servant that meant no one who saw him questioned his being alone with the claimant. ... In such circumstances, in my judgment, it is fair and just to hold the defendants to be vicariously liable for his acts.”
Para 90. The claimant was abused between about 1989 and 1994 (aged about four to nine) by a ministerial servant in the Loughborough congregations (named in the judgment, which records that he has since died), who was later 'arrested and later convicted of and imprisoned for sexually abusing' two other children (para 25). Globe J also upheld the 'safeguarding claim' that elders who learned in 1990 of his abuse of another child failed to take reasonable steps to protect her, and gave judgment for the claimant with quantum to be agreed. The trial was heard 3-16 February 2015 under an anonymity order.
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Provenance and verification note for High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, A v The Trustees of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and others [2015] EWHC 1722 (QB) (HQ13X01985)
Confidence note. Approved judgment opened in full (chambers copy) and quoted verbatim; provenance is a barristers' chambers rather than BAILII, so the text is an approved-judgment copy rather than an official law-report transcript.
Scan provenance. Copy of the approved judgment (31 pp., neutral citation and 'Approved Judgment' header) hosted by Outer Temple Chambers, chambers of the claimant's counsel. BAILII was unreachable from this environment.
Corroborated by. src-iicsa-2021-0902-religious-organisations-report
Notes. IICSA (Part B) treated this claimant, anonymised as PR-A5, as a core witness. The judgment anonymises the claimant, and so does this site.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-ewhc-2015-0619-a-v-watchtower