EXECUTIVE SUl\!1MARY

Jehovah's Witnesses in Australia

and
The Final Report of the Royal
Comrr1ission into Institutional Responses
to Child Sexual Abuse
14 November 2018

Introduction

On 14 November 2018 we provided to you our review and opinion on, among other matters, the
findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child
Sexual Abuse relating to Jehovah's Witnesses (Review).

Our Review was divided into four Parts, as follows :

(a)

Part One considered the history and powers of royal commissions in general.

(b)

Part Two considered particular aspects of the Royal Commission into the
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse relevant to Jehovah's Witnesses
(Royal Commission or Commission), including the Commission's Terms of
Reference.

(c)

Part Three considered the Commission's findings and recommendations regarding
Jehovah's Witnesses and the basis of such findings and recommendations.

(d)

Part Four considered the responses, as at 14 November 2018, of the
Commonwealth and State Governments to the Final Report of the Commission.

You have asked us to provide an Executive Summary of our Review, with particular emphasis on
Part Three.

1.

Executive Summary: history and powers royal commissions, and aspects of the
Commission

1.1

Royal commissions have extensive and wide-reaching coercive powers, derived from the
Royal Commissions Act 1902 (Royal Commissions Act or RCA), which sets them apart from

other types of boards or inquiries established or appointed by the government.

1.2

The RCA also impinges on the common law and statutory privileges usually available in
litigation before the courts. Most significantly, the RCA expressly deals with and limits the
availability of 'client legal privilege' and privilege against self-incrimination.

1.3

A royal commission is not bound by the rules of evidence and can receive hearsay and
other evidence that would otherwise be inadmissible in criminal and civil proceedings.

1.4

A royal commission is not, however, a court and does not have the authority or powers of
a court. As such, a report of a royal commission - unlike a judgment of a court - does not

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affect legal rights, although its examination of witnesses and its findings may well have
very significant adverse consequences for the reputation of people and institutions.

1.5

An aggrieved individual or entity may seek judicial review by the court of a decision or
finding of a royal commission on a number of possible grounds including, that a royal
commission went outside its terms of reference, or that a commissioner was biased (or
appeared biased), or because there has been a breach of a rule of procedural fairness.

1.6

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual has been, to date,
Australia's longest running, and most expensive, public inquiry. The Australian
Government committed over $500m to ensure that the Royal Commission was able to
fulfil its Terms of Reference.

1. 7

The Terms of Reference of the Commission directed it to report on child sexual abuse in
"institutional contexts". The Terms of Reference specifically excluded the Commission
from examining child sexual abuse outside institutional contexts and expressly stated that
an "institution" did "not include the family".

1.8

Prior to the Commission commencing its investigation the Royal Commissions Act was
amended to create a process called "private sessions" to allow the Commission to hear
from survivors. However, the amendments made clear that a "private session" was not a
hearing of the Royal Commission and that a person who appeared at a private session was
not a witness before the Commission nor considered to be giving evidence. The
Commission did not require those participating in private sessions to take an oath or
affirmation and they were not subject to cross-examination "but [they] were expected to
tell the truth".

1.9

The Commission held 57 public hearings and 67 private hearings between September 2013
and March 2017. There were 444 public hearing days in total. The Commission also held
6,961 private sessions during which it heard from 6,875 survivors. In addition, it received
992 written accounts and reviewed 1,200,000 documents

1.10

On 15 December 2017, the Final Report of the Royal Commission, made up of 17 Volumes,
plus a preface and an executive summary (Final Report), was delivered to the GovernorGeneral and tabled in Parliament.

1.11

It is evident that the investigation into Jehovah's Witnesses formed a small part of the
Commission's work in terms of the number of hearing days, witnesses called, private

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sessions held and documents reviewed. As set out in paragraph 4.7 of our Review the
Commission's investigation encompassed only 6 hearing days, 15 witnesses, 70 private
sessions and 1,500 documents. It resulted in the publication of an interim report {Case
Study 29) and a review report {Case Study 54) in addition to the Final Report {of which

only Volume 16, Book 3, part D, chapter 15 pages 71-108 specifically concerned Jehovah's
Witnesses).

1.12

As discussed in paragraphs 3.14 {and following) and Part 4 of our Review, the Commission
in its "Final Report: Recommendations" made 409 recommendations. Of those, only 3
were directed specifically to Jehovah's Witnesses. In relation to those 3 recommendations,
the response of each of the Federal, State and Territory Governments was "to note" the
recommendations and comment that they were matters for the Jehovah's Witnesses to
consider.

2.

Executive Review: The Roya! Commission and Jehovah's Witnesses, findings and
conclusions

Set out below is the summary of the principal findings and conclusions contained in our Review of the
Commission's Investigation into Jehovah's Witnesses and its ensuing reports. We have indicated in the
text or in ()at the end of a paragraph, where the material matters are located in our Review.

2.1

It is apparent from our Review that Jehovah's Witnesses and the Commission shared
common goals, namely, to ensure, as far as it is possible, that children are kept safe from
predatory sexual behaviour {Review 5.1).

2.2

Whereas the Royal Commission's approach was secular and focused on the response of
institutions to the crime of child sexual abuse, the approach of Jehovah's Witnesses is
religious, and their response focuses on the gross sin of child sexual abuse {Review 5.2 and
following).

2.3

Despite the differences in approach a number of the issues that initially concerned the
Commission regarding Jehovah's Witnesses' policies, ceased to be issues by the time of
the Final Report (Review 5.46 and following).

2.4

At the suggestion of the Commission, Jehovah's Witnesses codified into one document
"Child Safeguarding Policy of Jehovah's Witness in Australia (Child Safeguarding Policy),

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its policies on child sexual abuse in Australia and the procedures to be followed when
allegations are received (Review 5.48).

2.5

The Child Safeguarding Policy was welcomed by the Commission, but the Commission
remained critical of what it perceived were the reporting policies (Review 5.49 and
following).

2.6

The Royal Commission's fundamental criticism of Jehovah's Witnesses was that their
religious beliefs and their concentration on the sin of child abuse led to a failure to
investigate properly or adequately and a failure to report abuse or allegations of abuse to
the police or other civil authorities which could then respond appropriately (Review 5.4
and following).

2.7

The Commission's dissection of the religious beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses which led to
the conclusion that Jehovah's Witnesses' religious beliefs were causative of the
inadequate response to child sexual abuse, failed to discriminate between religious beliefs
(and the obligations imposed by such beliefs) and the requirements of secular law (Review

5.7).

2.8

If there had been mandatory requirements in place over the period examined by the
Commission, then the examination of Jehovah's Witnesses' religious beliefs - and of such
topics as the so-called "two-witness rule", the principle of male headship, the sanctions of
reproval and disfellowshipping, and the practice of "shunning" - would have been
irrelevant to the Commission's investigation of alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse
(Review 5.8).

2.9

The evidence before the Commission disclosed that Jehovah's Witnesses obey the law
pertaining to child sexual abuse and where reporting of child sexual abuse is mandated,
congregation elders will report even in those cases where there is insufficient Scriptural
evidence to take congregation action (Review 5.9).

2.10

The Commission's criticism of Jehovah's Witnesses Bible-based religious beliefs and
practices was misplaced and should have been directed - as indeed the Commission does
at length elsewhere in the Final report - to the lack of uniform mandatory reporting laws
(Review 5.10).

2.11

For the reasons set out in detail at Review paragraphs 5.18 and following, we consider a
large part of the Commission's investigation into and evidence led about Jehovah's

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Witnesses, which related to child sexual abuse within families of members of Jehovah's
Witnesses, was outside the Commission's Terms.

2.12

In our opinion the Commission's rejection of what the Commission itself termed were two
"key submissions" made by Jehovah's Witnesses led the Commission to conflate
impermissibly, and contrary to its Terms of Reference, familial and institutional sexual
abuse. Those two submissions, as quoted by the Commission in its Case Study 29 Report
were in the following terms (Review 5.20):

(a)

The first key submission.
Familial child sexual abuse is not institutional se xual abuse, as has been acknowledged by the Commission.
Similarly, it is self-evident that when child sexual abuse occurs outside the 'institutional' contexts as
defined, the response to it does not fall within the Terms of Reference of this Commission
The Commission proceeds on the basis that when an allegation of familial sexual abuse becomes known to
an elder and is subsequently Scripturally investigated by congregation elders, it ceases to be familial sexual
abuse and becomes institutional sexual abuse. This conflation of familial and institutional sexual abuse
does not accord with the Terms of Reference.

(b)

The second key submission.
A further significant submission made on behalf of the Watchtower & Ors was that the Jehovah' s Witness
organisation does not sponsor or operate 'creches, schools, orphanages, Sunday Schools, hospitals, sports
clubs, day-care centres, youth groups, or any other activities which separate children from their parents'.
Therefore, it submits that the institutional settings that might present the greatest risk to the safety of
children are not present within the Jehovah's Witness organisation and '[t]here can be no safer "institution"
than one that does not present opportunities for predatory behaviour'.

2.13

The incorporation of familial abuse into the Commission's investigation of Jehovah's
Witnesses was pivotal to the ensuing findings in Case Study 29 and the Final Report
(Review 5.26).

2.14

In our opinion, had a challenge been made to a Court, it is reasonable to conclude that an
Australian Court, applying the plain and ordinary meaning of the words and defined terms
used in the Terms of Reference and applying conventional rules of construction, would
have found that an examination of child sexual abuse in families of people who also
happened to be members of Jehovah's Witnesses, was beyond the scope of the
Commission's mandate (Review 5.30).

2.15

We understand that while Jehovah's Witnesses · did not agree with the Commission's
reasons, they did not wish to exacerbate the trauma of either of the survivors or of their
own witnesses and did not consider that their interests would be advanced by such a

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challenge - which would only have added to the damaging publicity surrounding the
Commission (Review 5.25).

2.16

As a consequence of its finding, the Commission considered that it had carte blanche to
inquire into allegations of child sexual abuse regardless of whether or not the alleged
perpetrator was an official of Jehovah's Witnesses or a parent or family member of the
congregation and despite its acknowledgement Jehovah's Witnesses did not have the
institutional settings typical of religious institutions where abuse commonly occurs
(Review 5.31).

2.17

One of the consequences of the Commission's including familial abuse (in the context of
Jehovah's Witnesses) as being within its Terms of Reference, was that it treated every one
of the 1,006 case files produced by Jehovah's Witnesses, which spanned the previous 65
years, as being within its Terms (Review 5.32).

2.18

Had the Commission applied the same criteria to identify "an institutional response to
child sexual abuse" to Jehovah's Witnesses as it did for other institutions, by reference to
the position of the perpetrator within the institution (usually one of authority) and the
institutional setting of the abuse (such as a school), then the case files produced by
Jehovah's Witnesses disclosed that in the previous 65 years there had been 50 cases of
institutional child sexual abuse where the perpetrator was an official of Jehovah's
Witnesses - or 104 cases if the familial abuse by elders and ministerial servants were
included (Review 5.33 and following and 6.14 and following).

2.19

In our view, even allowing for the Commission's interpretation of the scope of its Terms
of Reference, a more balanced and fair approach should have been adopted by the
Commission to its presentation of the case file data. As it is, it is questionable whether
proper regard was had by the Commission when coming to its findings on its analysis of
the data, to Jehovah's Witnesses' Submissions regarding the case files (Review 6.19 and
following).

2.20

The different criteria applied by the Commission leads to the conclusion that that there
was an inherent unfairness in the Commission's investigation of Jehovah's Witnesses
(Review 5.34).

2.21

As discussed at Review paragraphs 5.37 and following, in making findings that Jehovah's
Witnesses did not understand child sexual abuse and did not properly consider the
potential danger to children of predatory sexual behaviour, the Commission chose to give

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little or insufficient weight to the evidence of the education provided to parents or to the
journals, pamphlets and literature published and disseminated (over many decades} by
Jehovah's Witnesses in hard copy and more recently on the jw.org website.

2.22

As discussed in Review paragraphs 5.41 and following, there appear to be inconsistent
findings in the Final Report as to the prevalence of child sexual abuse within Jehovah's
Witnesses as found by the Commission.

2.23

Although the information obtained by the Commission in the private sessions clearly
assisted the policy objectives of the Commission's Terms of Reference, there are
significant difficulties in relying on any findings based on private sessions (Reviews 6.3}.

2.24

As noted in our Review (5.11 and following and 6.24 and following}, a substantial
proportion of the Case Study 29, concerned the experiences of two Jehovah's Witnesses
who were sexual abused in the 1980s and to the policies and procedures in place in the
1980s and 1990s (when the incidents were investigated}.

2.25

Jehovah's Witnesses chose not to cross-examine either witness. We understand that the
decision was taken as Jehovah's Witnesses did not wish to exacerbate any trauma they
suffered both as a result of their experiences and which may arisen from further
questioning.

2.26

In our assessment the Commission paid little regard or appeared to give no weight to the
historical context in which the two incidents investigated occurred. At the very least, the
Commission should have considered whether the Scriptural requirement of corroboration
in the so called "two-witness rule", was comparable to what the police and the courts
required at a similar historical period as that being examined in the two cases (Review 5.15
and following}.

2.27

Although the findings and recommendations may lead to other investigations by other
civil authorities, the Commission's findings are not determinative and cannot be relied

invesi:nC

upon in any subsequent civil or criminal proceedings. Finally, we note that whatever the

James TG Gibson
5 Wentworth Chambers

5 Wentworth Chambers

11 February 2019
Liability limited by c scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation

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