Jehovah’s Witnesses head to court on Abuse in Care Inquiry, victims feel a ‘kick in the guts’

Photo / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

By Bill Hickman of RNZ

The New Zealand Branch of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is going to court in an attempt to have the church made exempt from the Abuse in Care inquiry today.

In the High Court at Wellington, lawyers for the church are seeking a declaration that the church is not responsible for the care of children or vulnerable people in New Zealand.

Abuse survivor advocate and former church Elder Shayne Mechen said the church was trying to use a technicality to side-step its inclusion in the inquiry.

“The response from former Jehovah’s Witnesses is they’re basically saying ‘what a bunch of liars’. Because everyone who has been a part of that organisation knows that the Elders are encouraged to look after children, to do things with them.”

Mechen said the move was a “kick in the guts” for those who suffered abuse and those brave enough to relive their experience for the inquiry.

“They had high hopes, those hopes have been smashed,” he said.

The Jehovah's Witness church has been fighting scrutiny from a national inquiry. Photo / RNZ

“They’ve been re-traumatised and there’s no hope at all for them to get any justice from what the Jehovah’s Witnesses are doing.”

Mechen said the argument was based on the church’s lack of bricks and mortar facilities for young people.

He said, if upheld, the review could allow Jehovah’s Witnesses groups across the commonwealth to evade their culpability for past abuse.

Luke Hollis was an abuse survivor from a Jehovah’s Witnesses following in Britain.

He said he hoped the New Zealand courts would see through the church’s argument.

“It is a very common rhetoric: ‘We don’t have any nurseries, we don’t have specific schools for children who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, so how can we be accountable? We are not care givers’. But the actual reality is very, very different,” Hollis said.

The power structure of the church meant trusted Elders could control who young people spend time with, Hollis said.

As a child, he said he would be assigned to spend time in the sole supervision of his abuser well beyond the confines of any formal church structure.

“In their preaching work they go door-to-door, they go to different events and what not. For myself, every week my abuser would have the power to say ‘that person is going to come with me for two hours and knock on some doors’.

“So even though that isn’t in a physical setting that is an example of how perpetrators of abuse have access to children but not in an official setting such as a school or a nursery,” Hollis said.

The judicial review was scheduled take place over two days in Wellington High Court this week.