You didn't know this happened? Why am I not surprised.

There's a old saying, "if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck...it's likely a duck."
Sometimes it blows my mind seeing developments in the Organization I once put so much faith in.

Earlier this year, there was an investigation launched by the Australian Royal Commission in an effort to understand how Jehovah's Witnesses handle cases where child abuse is reported.

Now, growing up as a Witness, I don't think that Jehovah's Witnesses love pedophiles. I don't believe that for one moment. I know many good people on the inside that are just not like that. However, if there's one thing I've learned over the years - Jehovah and his Organization's image must be protected at all costs.
It was through my own personal experiences that I learned that the Organization is corrupt on a grand scale, but they do an amazing job of keeping the dirt behind closed curtain.

Unfortunately, in this effort to keep their skeletons in the closet, they make decisions that are considered wrong and immoral at the cost of protecting their image. So wrong, that many would first believe the whole situation to be a lie.

Anyways, back to the Australian Royal Commission! So they launched an investigation into the Australian Branch of Jehovah's Witnesses. This wasn't a court of law, this was merely an investigation to understand how the Witnesses handle these serious situations.

With a little digging and using Bethel records they seized, they found out that in the span of fifty years, there had been over 1,000 different reported cases of child abuse. Of all those cases, ZERO were reported to the police. Everything was handled internally.
During this investigation, they interviewed numerous Elders, Branch Overseers and even subpeonaed Geoffrey Jackson, a member of the Governing Body to get answers.
These interviews were about learning about policy, how they handled specific matters and whether their policies and procedures were up to code.
As expected, the brothers did EVERYTHING they could to avoid answering any questions that might be damning to the Organization. "Theocratic Warfare" at its best.

This investigation went on for weeks and after a few months break, the ARC (Australian Royal Commission) has found the Witnesses negligent and uncooperative on many levels and now this review is being passed on to the powers at be.
This was a big deal. Ironically enough, a lot of Witnesses don't know this event ever happened.

Then you get articles like this on JW.ORG.
It really upsets me that JW.ORG would do PR damage control by calling these kinds of events as lies.

This event really happened and was not a hate campaign launched by apostates. Geoffrey Jackson himself acknowledged that this investigation was not an attack by apostates, but an effort to improve policy and procedures when something serious like this arises.

Ironic how and Organization would rather spend time telling it's parishioners to close their eyes and cover their ears rather than admitting a mistake and say, "We'll do better next time."