Why is there always a correlation with religion or special interest groups and the abuse of children? It is all very disgusting and so opposite of what these groups preach. The fanatical religion and all their rules and regulations are bazar in of itself and then they have to compound their beliefs with sex and child abuse? The most famous recently is all the scandals with priests abusing altar boys compounded with the church leaders protecting the pedophiles by simply reassigning them to other parishes.  In the Middle East religions there believe that their followers will be awarded with virgin girls if a follower does what they want. Should innocence be a prize? Now the Jehovah Witnesses are abusing young girls.

There is a landmark child abuse case that was won by a girl who testified that she was abused by a church leader. She was awarded millions of dollars and now 2 dozen more cases of alleged child abused children have come forward. The religion itself sounds strange to me. The child is Candace Conti who broke her silence to take on the all- male leadership of a wealthy secretive religion who she said failed to protect her from a predatory pedophile.  What most of us know about the Jehovah’s Witness is that they publish a short magazine and send their congregation to go door to door preaching and reading parts of their scriptures.

Their headquarters is in New York City and like their publication is called The Watchtower where the church leaders are housed and have fostered a policy of silence on child abusers. Some of the leaders have gone on to repeatedly offend. At nine years old Jonathan Kendrick abused her several times a month. The entire religion seems weird to me. Everyone outside the religion is like the walking dead. All of the Jehovah Witness followers are taught that Armageddon is coming; the end of the world as we know it. The only survivors will be their true believers. Wow, well that is not very nice to most of us.

Growing up as a Jehovah Witness means that you do not celebrate birthdays, Christmas or have any friends outside of the church. That does not seem very nice either. They also believe that anyone who is not a Jehovah’s   Witness is evil and could be used as a tool to pull you away from the religion. Must they be so paranoid? Why don’t we all just love and preserve our earthly wonders of beauty, good food and fresh air and stop all this pain under the guise of religious beliefs that only bring war and all the strife of war?

Candace decided to go forward with the lawsuit after she saw Jonathan Kendrick, her abuser on the Sex Offender Registry for abusing another child in a different congregation. The local church leaders did not believe her claims unless she had 2 witnesses to the crime. Who molests children in front of witnesses? That would be even more disgusting. The police never brought charges against Jonathan because he denied all allegations. The next move is to sue the Watchtower itself.  She hired a lawyer Rick Simons who has spent many years representing victims of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. It is a shame that there are so many pedophile religious leaders out there that a lawyer can build an entire practice on just that issue for children.

During depositions, other leaders of the religion knew of the abuse and it was revealed that he abused his own step-daughter yet the other leaders did not call the police or warn the congregation.  They stand  by a confidentiality policy set by their own rules. The Watchtower also said they will not get involved if the abuse did not take place on church property. We must protect our children and stop with all the radical religions out there that are masked by some of the most horrible crimes.