The following are the main details transcribed from the BBC1 TV Panorama programme broadcast in Britain at 10:15 p.m. on the 14^th of July/02. The investigating reporter for BBC1, Betsan Powys, began revealing matters that should be of great concern to people of every nation: Namely, the rampant incestuous sexual abuse suffered by many of the children of Jehovah's Witnesses. The programme was called 'Suffer The Little Children'.

Two years ago, elders from one of their churches heard a shocking story. A young woman of their congregation at Stevenson on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland told them that: "Her father was sexually abusing her. The elders called her a liar. The elders sent her home to her father. They didn't tell her that three years earlier he'd confessed to them that he was abusing her sister." He had been abusing her sister from the age of 11 until she was 15. "So she gave them an ultimatum: Either they did something or she'd go to the police. They did nothing." Alison then went to the police, warning them that her father had contact with other young girls in the church and had been sexually abusing a friend of Alison's. Only during the police investigation did she discover that: "The elders had kept a record of her father's name and confession on a church database; a register of suspected and convicted paedophiles to be monitored. The Jehovah's Witnesses had known for three years that her father was a self-confessed paedophile. When Ian Cousins confessed to the church elders, he received a mild rebuke. When he confessed in court, he got five years in jail." Unfortunately, elders of JWs have always adopted a policy of protecting not their children, but their abusers! The elders had called her a liar, but had described Ian Cousins as: "A very nice man."

Bill Bowen, had been a lifelong member of Jehovah's Witnesses and had been an elder from 1984-2000, but resigned. He said: "The men at the top protect the church not the children. They do not want people to know that they have this problem. By covering it up they hurt just one person, by letting it out then they hurt the image of the church."

Apparently: "Elders must report abuse to the church's legal desk. Only if the law demands it must they contact police. If it doesn't, they may be told they have a moral duty to call them, but often it seems to stop there. It seems to go no further than the church's own secret database."

Despite there being a total of 23,720 recorded cases of sexual abuse in the USA, Canada, and Europe in the secret database of Jehovah's Witnesses, one of their members stated: "Focusing on numbers isn't important." To date, campaigners from the US organisation 'Silent Lambs' have heard from 5,000 victims. Bill Bowen is now calling for JWs to 'come clean'. "Once they're found out, it causes their own members to be deeply disturbed," he said.

Another father who abused his daughters Heather Berry and her sister Holly Brewer from New Hampshire is serving a minimum of 56 years imprisonment. The sisters are now taking JWs to court. The sisters call themselves the first survivors. When the BBC interviewer sought an interview with JWs at their headquarters, she said: "Jehovah's Witnesses refused an interview, but sent a box of video tapes instead". We also heard their mother Sara Poisson say concerning her two daughters: "My loyalty to the church cost my daughters dearly." Her husband Paul Berry also beat them. Sara Poisson reported her husband's severe incestuous abuse to the church. The elders' solution was that she be a better wife, and pray more. That it was a bad thing to speak against her husband. A policeman said two dozen JWs turned up at the court hearing to provide the abuser with good character references. After Paul Berry was sentenced, the JWs said that they did not believe the children, the judge, the jury, or the system of justice. The policeman, Detective Sgt. Jack Zellaer from the New Hampshire Police Dept said: "Paul Berry had already been found guilty, and they found room in their hearts to stand in front of that child and say, 'We don't believe any of it'. What they were saying was they didn't believe anyone except themselves…" Regarding the people of JWs, he said in great anger: "Shame! Shame on them!"

Sgt. Steve Colley of West Midlands Police in the UK referred to Simon Brady of Birmingham a Jehovah's Witness who had been severely abused. JW elders had said that unless they could provide two Jehovah's Witnesses who had actually seen the offence, then as far as they were concerned the offence hadn't taken place. Simon Brady said that when he was nine he was sexually abused by someone from their Kingdom Hall, a Mr Jasman Patti. JW elders wouldn't believe Simon Brady or his father. Patti was sentenced to 5 years jail. Under police pressure the elders at Bethel apologised, and the local elders were demoted, but not sacked. The police contacted the JWs legal team at Bethel and informed them of a lack of co-operation in the police inquiry.

At one of their conventions in Tulsa in the US, Ted Jarrett, a member of their governing body and one of the men responsible for child protection, was asked questions by Betsan Powys of Panorama: "Tell me about the databases. How do you justify keeping a list of people, men in some cases, who have confessed to paedophilia, but you have not reported them to the authorities? What justification is there for you to keep that list"?
His reply was: "You know, you're from Britain, you have a privacy law. You have a directive from the European Union. You observe that, don't you?"
Then she asked him: "So when allegations of abuse are made, it's all right to keep it private?"
He replied: "I think you were answered. That question was answered, it should be to your satisfaction".
She then asked: "Could you answer it now?"
He said: "I'm not going to repeat. I'll just tell you exactly that you can go, and you will see it in writing. Its all in print. You know, the Bible says, 'Do not go beyond the things that are written'. We don't go beyond the things written."

Campaigner Bill Bowen in his summing up said: "They're living in denial, denial of what's happening to their children. And if they accept that, then they accept that there is a problem. So rather than admit there is a problem, they will just let children go on and continue to be molested and not do anything about it".

This exposure of the immoral filth within the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses organisation is too important ever to be forgotten. Now that it's out, international agencies and local police should be busying themselves more than ever, and force JWs to hand over the records of abuse they hold on their secret database, so that the abusers can be brought to trial. If nothing is done, then congregations of JWs will continue to be a protective home for abusers. State carers should be selecting normal families to take in child victims of abuse, and provide some deprogramming facilities for them. I appeal to God, and to compassionate readers of this article, to please help. These are not the sufferings The Christ meant for his children to "come to me".

Paul's first letter to Timothy 3:4,5, makes it abundantly clear that an elder must know how to preside over his own household. An accusation of molestation from a family member, or from anyone else is proof that a man is not presiding over his own household or over a congregation of God in a fine manner. JW member Ted Jarrett, and indeed all congregations of JWs, are guilty of this abuse against the children in their congregations.