Jehovah's Witnesses and the Australian National Redress Scheme
Channel: JW News
Date: 2024-02-20

Overview of the National Redress Scheme | This video, narrated by Samantha Radford, is produced to assist child sexual abuse survivors of the Jehovah's Witnesses institution in Australia, navigate and understand, the current compensation scheme that was recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

This information was produced by the JW News Network and Insight Story for SaySorry.org.

LINK TO RELATED ARTICLE: https://saysorry.org/2024/02/19/jehovahs-witnesses-and-the-australian-national-redress-scheme/ 

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What is the Australian National Redress Scheme?

The National Redress Scheme acknowledges the significant trauma caused to people who experienced institutional childhood sexual abuse, including within the Jehovah's Witnesses. It aims to help people access support, and to hold institutions to account.

The Scheme helps eligible Australian applicants to get access to three things:

1. counselling,

2. a direct person response where the responsible institution acknowledges what happened and says sorry for the abuse, and

3. a redress payment which is decided on an individual basis from less than $10,000 to $150,000.

For survivors of institutional abuse from within the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the following examples may constitute institutional settings in which children were under the Jehovah’s Witnesses care, custody, supervision, control or authority. These include:

- The Kingdom Hall, including meetings, hall cleaning, and maintenance;

- At a formal congregation book study meeting held in a private home;

- Receiving assistance under the Jehovah’s Witnesses child mentoring program for “fatherless boys” and spiritual orphans;

- Building construction activities, including quick-builds, using children as child labourers;

- Child minding services, including creche-type settings, operated during the 1970’s and 1980’s;

- Volunteering at assemblies and conventions, including cleaning and food preparation;

- The Assistance for Parent’s Program which operated at large religious gatherings;

- As a student enrolled in the Jehovah’s Witnesses Theocratic Ministry School or the literacy program;

- During religious education classes conducted by Jehovah’s Witnesses in public high schools;

- As a short-term resident in one of the official Jehovah’s Witnesses Accommodation Centers, such as those set up by organisation’s Disaster Relief Committees;

- As a recipient of residential accommodation provided through the official Jehovah’s Witnesses Convention Rooming Department;

- During the congregation visiting speaker hospitality arrangement; or

- During congregational field service while in the care of another member of the congregation.

Do not be deterred by the current disinformation being published by either the Jehovah’s Witnesses institution or its Public Information Department. Such disinformation includes the false claims that:

“The religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses does not and never has sponsored any activities that have resulted in children being under its care, custody, supervision, control or authority”.

These claims are patently false.