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February 14, 2007
Couple charged in son's beating death won't take stand
The Tennessean
http://www.tennessean.com/
apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=2007702140424
February 14, 2007
MARIETTA, Ga. — A couple accused in the beating death of their 8-year-old declined to testify in their own defense Tuesday, after a judge strongly advised them not to.
Joseph and Sonya Smith of Mableton face 14 charges that include murder, aggravated assault, cruelty to children and false imprisonment in their son Josef's October 2003 death.
Closing arguments are scheduled for this morning.
The couple had planned to testify as late as Tuesday afternoon, Atlanta's WXIA-TV reported, against the advice of defense attorney Manny Arora.
Arora told Judge James Bodiford while the jury was out of the courtroom that he was trying to dissuade his clients from taking the stand. Bodiford agreed and told the Smiths what they could expect from the prosecutor, Senior Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Dixon.
"If you choose to testify, there is, at least, one danger," Bodiford said. "Experienced counsel is ready to pounce," he said.
"Ms. Dixon is sitting there ready to tear you from limb to limb."
Bodiford gave an example of a difficult question the couple could expect: "Didn't, in fact, you admit to the police officer that you used a glue stick to hit young Josef? Isn't it true?"
The Smiths later told the judge they would not testify, the television station reported.
The Smiths are members of the Brentwood, Tenn.-based Remnant Fellowship Church, which grew out of church leader Gwen Shamblin's Weigh Down Workshop, a Christian diet program she created in 1986.
Prosecutors say Josef Smith was beaten by his parents, locked inside a wooden box and forced to stay in a closet for hours at a time before he died.
Posted by Perry at 06:12 PM
February 12, 2007
Debate over role of sextuplet case lawyer
National Post
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/
news/story.html?id=d0541824-c8cd-
4ec7-adba-ce6b17d64017&k=94344
Witness for the family
Tom Blackwell
February 10, 2007
When the B.C. government seized three sextuplets last month to ensure they received blood transfusions, the lawyer for the Jehovah's Witnesses parents responded sharply, labelling the province's move a legal "hit and run."
But then, Shane Brady is no dispassionate hired gun. As an in-house Witnesses lawyer and respected "Bethelite," he is also a senior religious leader of the sect, lives in its headquarters complex in Georgetown and is known to members nationwide for vigorously defending the group's controversial blood-transfusion ban. His devotion to the religion began when, as a young man, he worked as a baker at the head office.
For some, his intimate involvement in the issue is to be admired. The Canadian Bar Association handed Mr. Brady a young lawyers award in 2004, honouring his "dedication above and beyond the call of duty." But others are less impressed, with an Alberta lawsuit accusing him of using his access as a lawyer and authority within the Church to influence clients to comply with the blood policy, a charge Mr. Brady vehemently denies.
"To Jehovah's Witnesses, Shane Brady is a hero. He is a very important religious figure," says Lawrence Hughes, the Calgary man behind the suit and the father of a teenage girl with leukemia who tried to refuse a transfusion.
"The person coming from Bethel [Witnesses headquarters] is the spokesman of God," said Michael Saunders, a former Bethelite and paralegal with the Church. "I know it sounds really, really ludicrous ... [But] essentially, disobeying him is disobeying God."
Mr. Hughes' lawsuit concerning daughter Bethany's eventual death is now before the Alberta Court of Appeal, after lower court judges quashed the case for partly technical reasons. None of his allegations has been proven in court.
Mr. Brady is not the first Witnesses lawyer to be honoured. Glen How, who fought government discrimination against the Church in the 1940s and after, was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2001.
Yet persecution of the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) in Canada is part of the past now. And some experts question whether the lawyers -- with their single minded defence of the blood stand -- offer impartial counsel to parents faced with an unenviable choice: risk their child's death by spurning a blood transfusion or defy the Church and face painful expulsion.
"Legal advice, solid legal advice should not be encumbered by the values of the lawyer," said Professor Chris Levy, associate dean of law at the University of Calgary. "Certainly, in my view, [Witnesses lawyers] come very close to crossing that line. Whether they cross it or not is a very difficult question."
Mr. Brady rejects as "offensive" the criticism of his role, arguing that he is simply representing clients with strong religious beliefs, not imposing his own principles or acting for the Church. It is no different, he said, than a lawyer in the United States who cares deeply about the rights of African-Americans representing a group such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"It would be incredible to argue that if a lawyer happens to have a certain moral view ... it would preclude them from taking on a certain case," he said. "That would preclude judges who happen to be Jewish sitting on a case involving Jewish individuals. The whole notion is ridiculous."
Earl Cherniak, a prominent Toronto civil-litigation lawyer and friend of Mr. How, said he has no problem with in-house JW lawyers taking on transfusion cases. But if they do, they must fulfill their professional duty to present clients with all their legal options, including accepting the transfusion.
Mr. Brady was in Vancouver recently, demanding a right to oppose the court order obtained unilaterally by B.C.'s Children and Family Development Ministry that allowed hospital staff to give transfusions to three babies against the parents' wishes. Two of the sextuplets have died. The parties return to court on Feb. 23 to debate the matter.
Officially, Mr. Brady and such colleagues as David Gnam appear in court as members of the law firm W. Glen How and Associates. The citation for his bar association award said he did "pro bono" (free) work for a religious charity.
But the pair are identified on the Web site of Eugene Meehan, Q.C., a private-practice lawyer who worked with them on the Hughes case, as "in-house" counsel for that religion. Former employees of the Watchtower Society Canadian headquarters in Georgetown, called Bethel, have indicated in court documents that How and Associates is, in fact, the Jehovah's Witnesses legal department.
Mr. Brady, like others who work at the head office northwest of Toronto, would have been chosen for his faith and loyalty, said Michael Saunders, a former JW employee who quit the religion in 1995. Also like others, he started with menial jobs -- working as a baker and waiter -- before the Watchtower Society sent him to law school in Toronto, said Mr. Saunders, who was a paralegal in the department for three years. Such Bethelites are considered religious authorities whose word is gospel to other members, he said. On speaking engagements at Kingdom Halls throughout the country, fathers would sometimes even offer up their daughters in marriage to him because of the prestige of his position, he said.
Mr. Brady, who is also an elder, and his wife live in the residences that form part of the headquarters, Mr. Saunders said. Frank Toth, another former Bethelite, said in an affidavit filed in the Hughes case that How and Associates "exists to do the society's bidding," with some lawyers particularly beholden to the organization because the group bankrolled their law degree.
In the Hughes case, Mr. Brady and Mr. Gnam represented Bethany and her mother, Arliss, who stuck by the blood ban while father Lawrence broke from the religion and fought to get Bethany a transfusion. Reports from social workers who sat as witnesses in Bethany's hospital room -- after courts ordered she should face no undue influence -- indicated the lawyers visited and called the girl often, more than once hooking Bethany up by telephone with the family's Kingdom Hall so she could listen to a service. In one case, someone at the service told the teen that everyone "supports her and loves her" in the battle against transfusion. Mr. Hughes said nurses saw Mr. Brady and Mr. Gnam praying with his daughter. His lawsuit charges that they and other Jehovah's Witnesses officials pressured the girl and her mother into opposing a transfusion and seeking out an alternative treatment -- involving arsenic -- that helped lead to her premature death.
Mr. Brady says that suggestion is absurd.
"I've taken my barrister's oath," he said. "No judge has ever raised any concern about my representation of clients."
Posted by Perry at 04:25 PM
February 09, 2007
Judge rules that priest files must be released
The Gazette Extra
http://www.gazetteextra.com/
churchabuse020707.asp
February 7, 2007
By Gillian Flaccus
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - A judge Tuesday ordered the Roman Catholic Church to release insurance records and confidential files related to a notorious priest who had been convicted of molestation before being transferred to California.
Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman ordered the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to make public 3,000 pages of insurance records and hundreds of pages from the secret disciplinary files of Siegfried Widera.
Lichtman wrote that Widera's files prove that "priests with known sexual proclivities have been handed off from location to another without regard to the potential harm to the children of the Church."
Kathleen Hohl, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, said it would abide by the ruling but declined further comment. The documents will not be released for at least 30 days.
In his 59-page ruling, Lichtman struck down archdiocese arguments for keeping the documents private, including claims that the records were protected by third-party privacy rights, the First Amendment and the confidential business rights of the archdiocese.
Attorneys familiar with the case differed about the significance of the ruling regarding hundreds of other clergy abuse cases pending in California.
Raymond Boucher, the lead plaintiffs' attorney for more than 700 abuse claims, said the ruling would set a precedent for the release of other confidential files on priests. Those files can show when the church first learned of allegations of abuse and how the situation was addressed.
"I don't think there's anything that's come out of California that's been this comprehensive and significant," he said.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who won the release of clergy abuse files in Boston, agreed.
"It's a significant step in publicizing such documents and a significant victory for victims," he said.
Attorney Donald Steier, who represents accused priests, said Lichtman's order would not have a significant impact on other California cases. He said the order only applies to the files of priests who are dead and even then, only in cases in which the church has not sought protective orders during litigation.
"Apparently, Milwaukee turned all these files over during the litigation phase without protective orders," Steier said. "The facts that Lichtman relied on won't be applicable in the other cases."
Widera was convicted in Wisconsin in 1973 of sexual perversion. While he was serving probation in that state for the crime, a therapist reported that a mother said her son, a 10-year-old altar boy, had been abused.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee transferred Widera to California in 1981, knowing his history. He was facing 42 counts of child molestation in the two states when he died in 2003 after leaping from a hotel balcony in Mexico.
Last year, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee agreed to pay eight California victims $13.3 million, in addition to nearly $15 million they received in 2004 from the Diocese of Orange, in California.
Under the earlier settlement, Widera's personnel files from California were made public.
"It's beyond belief that you could take a person who had been arrested and was clearly a danger to any child within his reach and yet continue, without warning, to put him right in the middle of his prey," Boucher said.
Posted by Perry at 05:52 PM
February 07, 2007
Manitoba transfusion case dismissed
Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
servlet/story/LAC.20070207.
BLOOD07/TPStory/National
Decision ends fight on behalf of teen
JOE FRIESEN
07/02/07
WINNIPEG -- The case of a 15-year-old Jehovah's Witness, who fought blood transfusions forced upon her, was dismissed yesterday by the Manitoba Court of Appeal.
The girl, who can't be identified, said through her lawyer that she's disappointed with the outcome and she may seek medical care outside the province in the future.
The girl was 14 at the time of the transfusion, but the court ruled that, under the province's Child Welfare Act, she has to be 16 to be considered a mature minor capable of making decisions regarding her medical care.
Doctors recommended last April that she receive blood transfusions to treat internal bleeding caused by Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease. When she and her parents refused on religious grounds, she was taken into custody by Child and Family Services and transfusions were given after a hastily arranged hearing before a judge.
"The court has basically drawn a line or confirmed a line that, at 16, a young person can basically make their medical decisions," said the girl's lawyer, Shane Brady.
"What is somewhat disappointing is that my client's argument before the Court of Appeal is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to draw an arbitrary line. Her argument to the court was to accept the standard that is in Ontario or Newfoundland, where they don't look at an arbitrary age but they look at an individual's capacity."
Mr. Brady, who has acted in a number of high-profile cases on behalf of Jehovah's Witnesses, said this decision adds to the patchwork of legal precedents across the country.
In Alberta, the province has intervened with Jehovah's Witnesses between the ages of 16 and 18, he said. In Ontario, each case is treated individually. In British Columbia, the province recently seized three of the sextuplets born to a Jehovah's Witness to provide blood transfusions.
"One would think that, with the Canadian Constitution, which applies across the country, there wouldn't be such a wide variation," Mr. Brady said.
Arthur Schafer, a professor at the University of Manitoba's school for professional and applied ethics, said the Manitoba court arrived at the right decision, but may have set a bad precedent.
"It can, in some circumstances, be arbitrary and harsh to set aside a patient's wishes because she hasn't reached a certain magical age," Prof. Schafer said. "I think the relevant question is whether the person is competent."
Prof. Schafer said the court should have considered the concept of "variable competence," which would allow greater discretion.
"Because the court reasoned in this way, I think they may deny decision-making to teenagers when they're perfectly capable of making a decision, and they might give decision-making capacity in other situations where, in my view, they're not capable."
Bernard Dickens, professor emeritus of law at the University of Toronto, said there are grounds for appeal.
"The underlying principle that the court can exercise power over the protests of a competent 15-year-old is troublesome," he said. "Under the Court of Appeal decision, age is decisive, and that's against the trend of human-rights evolution -- giving respect to individual capacities."
Mr. Brady said the girl will soon finish Grade 11, after being placed in an accelerated academic program. He said it's surprising to her that she can't make the same medical decisions as her classmates.
Although she brought the case to prevent future blood transfusions without her consent, the decision may not affect her: She'll turn 16 in June.
Posted by Perry at 03:57 PM
Une Témoin de Jéhovah ne peut refuser de transfusions sanguines
Canadian Press
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/
en_francais/story.html?id=4a32ad0c-
62d7-4fe6-95d3-b7faa29af4e1&k=13396
February 06, 2007
WINNIPEG (PC) - Un tribunal du Manitoba a nié mardi à une adolescente membre des Témoins de Jéhovah et aux prises avec la maladie de Crohn le droit de refuser des transfusions sanguines.
Dans le cadre d'un jugement rendu à l'unanimité, la Cour d'appel du Manitoba a maintenu la décision d'un tribunal de première instance de permettre à des médecins de donner une transfusion de sang à l'adolescente de 15 ans de Winnipeg, parce qu'ils jugent cette transfusion nécessaire du point de vue médical.
La jeune fille, dont l'identité ne peut être divulguée, a affirmé avoir été bouleversée et avoir eu peur lorsqu'elle a reçu la transfusion contre son gré, en avril dernier.
Les Témoins de Jéhovah s'opposent aux transfusions sanguines parce qu'ils interprètent certains passages de la Bible comme interdisant l'ingestion de sang.
Lorsque l'adolescente a refusé toute transfusion, les Services à l'enfance et à la famille du Manitoba ont obtenu une ordonnance de la cour autorisant la procédure lorsque cela est médicalement nécessaire.
Les juges du tribunal d'appel ont reconnu que les transfusions sanguines allaient à l'encontre du droit de l'adolescente à la liberté religieuse, mais qu'elles étaient justifiées en raison du caractère sacré de la vie et du devoir de protection des enfants.
Posted by Perry at 03:53 PM
February 06, 2007
Winnipeg teen loses fight to refuse blood transfusions
Canoe News - Canadian Press
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/
Canada/2007/02/06/3540730-cp.html
February 6, 2007
WINNIPEG (CP) - A Jehovah's Witness teenager with Crohn's disease has lost her court fight to refuse blood transfusions.
In a unanimous decision, the Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled a lower-court judge was correct in allowing doctors to give the 15-year-old Winnipeg girl a transfusion they considered medically necessary.
The girl, who can't be identified, has said she was overwhelmed and scared when she was given the transfusion against her will last April.
Jehovah's Witnesses oppose transfusions because they interpret certain passages of the Bible as forbidding the ingestion of blood.
When the girl refused treatment, Child and Family Services obtained a court order allowing the procedure when medically necessary.
The Appeal Court judges acknowledged the transfusions infringe on the teen's right to religious freedom, but are justified because of the sanctity of life and duty to protect children.
Posted by Perry at 02:34 PM
February 05, 2007
Request For Default Judment Against Financial Arm of Polygamist Church
Deseret Morning News
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/
view/0,1249,660192626,00.html
FLDS trust objects to a default
February 4, 2007
By Ben Winslow
While Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs is remaining silent on a personal-injury lawsuit filed against him, lawyers for the polygamist church's financial arm are registering their objections.
In court papers filed in Cedar City's 5th District Court, lawyers for the United Effort Plan Trust registered an objection to a request for a default judgment against Jeffs, the FLDS Church and the UEP. A woman known in the lawsuit as "M.J." claims that at age 14, she was forced by Jeffs to marry her 19-year-old cousin.
"M.J." is also known in criminal court papers as "Jane Doe IV," and is expected to testify against Jeffs when he faces a charge of rape as an accomplice, a first-degree felony. Jeffs, 51, is scheduled for an April trial in St. George.
Lawyers for "M.J." have asked for a default judgment in the civil case, saying Jeffs and the FLDS Church have not responded to their lawsuit. In court papers obtained by the Deseret Morning News, lawyers for the $110 million UEP Trust said they fear that "M.J." wants to hold them "jointly and severally liable for the conduct of the defaulting defendants."
"We would hate for the court to say, 'OK, Warren and the church are liable for $10 billion, and you're liable, too,'" UEP attorney Jeffrey L. Shields said Friday.
Roger Hoole, a lawyer for "M.J.," said his client is willing to wait to decide on the damages amount.
In 2005, a judge in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court took control of the UEP Trust, amid allegations that Jeffs and other top FLDS leaders had been bleeding it. The trust was recently reformed.
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
Posted by Perry at 04:24 PM
Transfusion Confusion
Edmonton Sun - Opinion
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/
2007/02/05/3531070-sun.html
By MINDELLE JACOBS
February 5, 2007
There is something decidedly perverse about the Jehovah's Witnesses's couple who embraced modern medical technology to have children, only to reject help to save those very babies.
As I write this, there are four surviving infants of the sextuplets born last month in Vancouver. The family's identity hasn't been disclosed but these struggling babies have achieved instant stardom.
The birth of sextuplets brings fame enough. But a little more than a week ago, the B.C. government seized custody of three of the tots and gave two of them blood transfusions, violating the religious tenets of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Now it's up to a judge to sort it out, since the parents have gone to court to challenge the government's actions. The couple probably doesn't stand a chance.
The law is clear on the issue of providing necessary medical care, including blood transfusions, to minors. The medical rights of children take precedence over religious dictates.
You can refuse any medical treatment based on whatever religious precepts you believe - even if it kills you. But you have no right to impose such nonsense on your kids.
"The substantive law is clear," says Juliet Guichon, a medical bioethicist at the University of Calgary. "They don't have much ground to stand on."
It appears the couple is arguing the government didn't give them proper notice about the blood transfusions, says Guichon, adding the problem with that argument is that they would have been warned long before the sextuplets were born that the babies would face potentially critical complications.
"This could not have come as a surprise," she says of the need for blood transfusions.
Coincidentally, an article on the issue co-authored by Guichon appeared in the December issue of Pediatrics and Child Health. In the piece, she argued that mature minors - teens who are deemed competent enough to make decisions about their medical care - may not be refusing treatment voluntarily.
Before one can give or refuse consent to a medical procedure, the article noted, three conditions must be met: competence, adequate information and lack of coercion. A Jehovah's Witness patient may want to accept blood but refuse because of fear of being excommunicated from the religious community, Guichon wrote.
"It may be difficult to accept a treatment option if that particular choice will lead to the loss of important relationships.
"Coercion can be a great concern in pediatric cases involving JW families," she added.
Patients may actually welcome the intervention of the courts because the law can remove a young Jehovah's Witness from "an impossible social position," she wrote.
Because of the threat of religious sanctions, it's unwise for doctors to ask teen patients whether they'll accept blood products when other Jehovah's Witnesses are in the room, Guichon advised.
Jehovah's Witnesses are warned to "avoid independent thinking," the article observed.
Do the parents of the four surviving sextuplets really object to blood transfusions for their babies or do they feel pressured to take that stand for fear of being shunned by the JW community? Who knows?
This case is surreal in so many ways. Fertility drugs, which experts assume the mother was taking, often lead to multiple pregnancies.
But given the choice to abort some of the fetuses so the others would have a greater chance of living, the couple refused. Then they insisted that the sextuplets be resuscitated. Anything to keep their babies alive. Well, except blood transfusions.
Meanwhile, University of Winnipeg bioethicist Arthur Schafer wonders why doctors are fighting to save babies for whom they originally suggested a do-not-resuscitate order.
"It's impossible to avoid the feeling," he says, "that there are some babies who would have been lucky if their parents hadn't had access to the neonatal ICU."
Posted by Perry at 04:12 PM
January 27, 2007
Jehovah’s Witnesses Lose Freedom of Speech
Progressive U
http://www.progressiveu.org/044355-
jehovah-s-witnesses-lose-freedom-of-speech
Watchtower corporate Intimidation by litigation
January 27, 2007
Denmark court ruling December of 2006 Jehovah Witness lost a key decision to suppress freedom of the press.They were ordered to pay legal fees of 50,000 kroner to one of the largest newspapers in Denmark, Ekstra Bladet.
Ekstra Bladet reported a series of articles on the epidemic of child abuse within the JW organization. Since May of 2002 reports of child abuse problems have been circulated by media worldwide. Stories include the New York Times, Dateline and eight different countries offering testimony from sexually abused kids within the religion.
In the autumn of 2004 the Denmark newspaper ran a series of articles that blasted the religion for polices of covering up abuse allegations. The Jehovah’s Witness local Branch Office Committee in Denmark filed a 350,000 kroner, slander lawsuit against Ekstra Bladet and the editor of the newspaper.
The religion went further and attacked victims of abuse that interviewed for the newspaper articles. Victims were told they would be sued into poverty if they did not retract the stories given to the newspaper of being raped as children. One girl due to intimidation withdrew her story and other victims went into hiding. This is a continuation of religious persecution against members that have spoken out on abuse.
In the summer of 2002 five Jehovah’s Witnesses were disfellowshipped (expelled) for appearing on NBC’s Dateline and providing factual proof of child sexual abuse not being reported to authorities at the direction of the Watchtower Legal Department. The Jehovah’s Witness Public Relations Official, J. R. Brown actually suggested to media that the reason members were disfellowshipped was due to possible sexual sins or theft. As a result of these comments, Joe and Barbara Anderson filed a $20 million dollar lawsuit for slander and the reversal of the disfellowshipping decree. After a three year long battle the appellate court finally dismissed the case saying that the “First Amendment” would not allow them to rule on the case.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have long touted their record as being a defender of “freedom of speech.” They currently claim on their website they have won over fifty lawsuits supposedly establishing the freedom of people to speak as they wish or practice their faith. There is a film/propaganda piece circulating around the USA called “Knocking” that will soon air on PBS touting how Jehovah’s Witnesses protect freedom. Yet another side the public are not informed of is the inverted use of these legal victories to punish and humiliate people they do not like. “Disfellowshipping” a word created by Jehovah’s Witnesses, is used as a weapon within the religion to destroy families and silence members through intimidation to obey whatever they are told to do. If a member is “disfellowshipped” all family and church members view them as dead and will not acknowledge their existence, even if a son walks into the same room with his mother, she will not speak to him. The shunning is indefinite until the deposed member renounces anything the church tells them to and submits totally to church leadership. For example victims of child abuse have been disfellowshipped for attempting to expose the member that molested them.
Intimidation by litigation
Their “freedom of speech” was taken away by no church member being able to talk to them and in many instances they were put out on the street by their families as directed by church leaders. The right of the Jehovah’s Witness religion to take away “freedom of speech” from their members has in large part been won by their successful Supreme Court litigations.
If a whistleblower for a large wealthy corporation tried to alert the public to a child molestation scandal that was covered up with victims blackmailed into silence, they could be sued out of existence in the event they tried to destroy the lives of the individuals that reported the crime. When abuse survivors and advocates attempt to do this against a religious corporation they are bullied into silence with the full endorsement of the US courts. “Freedom of speech” is a relevant term in the United States, for if you choose to speak out against a religion for committing crimes against children you can expect while that religion destroys your life the courts will remain silent. The court’s “see no evil” decisions are based on twisted perversion of the first amendment that Jehovah’s Witnesses fought and won sixty years ago. So the next time a church chooses to destroy you financially, spiritually, mentally and emotionally because they do not like you exposing their crimes against children, you can say a silent thank you to Jehovah’s Witnesses for making sure their perversion of the “First Amendment” guarantees any religion can destroy your life without punishment.
It would appear when they lose their court battles to suppress “freedom of speech” they appear to be silent. Could one of the reasons be the misuse of donated funds to hurt people? When a Jehovah’s Witness calls at your home he is taught to memorize this commentary at the end of offering you some free literature. “Our literature is offered without charge but we would gladly accept a small donation for the Worldwide Work of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
When the public reaches into their pocket and makes a donation to this group they are funding many different things. While part of the money goes to make more magazines and books, a significant amount goes to fund litigation. In the last five years over seventy lawsuits were filed involving the mistreatment of abused kids. When you donate to the “Worldwide Work” you fund the defense of the pedophiles that molested them. In the Denmark litigation 50,000 kroner of “Worldwide Work” donations will be spent to pay legal fees in an attempt to suppress child abuse policy expose articles written by a newspaper. Would anyone that understands what is actually happening wish to donate their money to assist pedophiles and suppress freedom of speech? Even if it was just a few cents of each dollar they donated?
At www.silentlambs.org we call for the immediate cessation of funding for pedophile defense litigation and suppression of freedom of speech that Jehovah’s Witness leadership has approved. It is a sad day when Denmark, a small European country can give Jehovah’s Witnesses a “slap on the ear” for suppressing “freedom of speech” and a few weeks later the U S Courts continue to give Carte Blanc privileges to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and anyone else that wishes to silence victims of abuse and misuse “good faith” donations to hurt the innocent. The next time a Jehovah’s Witness happily approaches you to offer their magazines, if you are inclined accept their offering and then inform them that you prefer not to donate to their “Worldwide Work” until they stop hurting victims of abuse.
So while Jehovah’s Witnesses brag to the public regarding court victories that they say make them champions for freedom of speech, the facts show that lawyer/elders funded by a multi-billion dollar corporation are making a mockery of the US Constitution. They persecute good people like Joe and Barb Anderson and use the Supreme Court as a knife to cut out the tongues of people that are victimized by this religion.
Posted by Perry at 04:43 PM
January 23, 2007
Judge: Explore disenfranchising polygamous sect's towns
The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5062166
By Brooke Adams
01/22/2007
A Utah judge fed up with a polygamous sect wants Utah and Arizona to pursue disenfranchising its towns.
Third District Judge Denise Lindberg asked state lawyers Monday to relay messages to the Attorneys General in both states to look at "systematic action" to end a "revolving door of noncooperation" from law enforcement and elected officials in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.
The two towns are home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakway sect led by Warren S. Jeffs. About 6,000 members of the faith live in the community, which took off in the 1930s as a religious haven where polygamy could flourish.
Without a vote of the people, however, there may be little the states can do.
Tim Bodily, an assistant attorney general for Utah, told Lindberg that his office had reviewed disenfranchisement of Hildale but that such action generally requires a public vote.
"For that reason, we haven't pursued it," he said.
Outside of court, Bodily said there may be "other options."
brooke@sltrib.com
Posted by Perry at 04:59 PM
January 15, 2007
Utah attorney general responds to polygamist's U.S. Supreme Court appeal
North County Times
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/
01/13/news/state/17_58_521_12_07.txt
This isn't about consenting adults, this is about an adult who had sex with a minor
By: JENNIFER DOBNER - Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- The U.S. Supreme Court should reject a Utah polygamist's petition to appeal his bigamy conviction because the case involved an underage bride and not a pair of consenting adults, Utah's attorney general said in a brief filed with the high court Friday.
"This isn't about consenting adults, this is about an adult who had sex with a minor," Assistant Attorney General Laura Dupaix said.
The 22-page filing is a response to an October petition from Rodney Holm, a former Hildale, Utah, police officer convicted of bigamy in 2003 for entering a religious marriage with a teenager when Holm was already married to her older sister.
The Utah Supreme Court upheld the conviction last year.
Holm is a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a faith of nearly 10,000 who practice polygamy in arranged marriages, often with minor girls. Holm married 16-year-old Ruth Stubbs in 1998 when he was 32.
The U.S. Supreme Court last ruled on a polygamy case in 1879, when it banned the practice even in the context of religion.
It is unclear when justices will decide if they'll hear Holm's case.
Holm's appeal claims Utah's bigamy law violates his right to religious freedom and targets polygamists for their beliefs. It also asks justices to consider whether the federal ban on polygamy remains justified given modern cohabitation practices and recent court decisions related to the privacy rights of consenting adults.
In her filing, Dupaix rejects each of those issues as grounds for a Supreme Court review.
Utah's bigamy statute is "drafted to catch all bigamists in its net, irrespective of their subject motivations," she said in the brief. "If any group is being singled out for prosecution, it's predators."
Since the 1970s, three men have been prosecuted under the state law, Dupaix said. Two were polygamists who entered religious marriages with young girls; the third was a secular polygamist who fraudulently married multiple wives.
Dupaix also contends that court rulings protecting intimate relationships apply only to relationships between consenting adults, not to those between adults and minors.
The filing also argues that Holm is trying to elevate a "garden variety" state issue into a constitutional claim to get a case that lacks "widespread national importance" a review by the Supreme Court.
"We just don't think it's a federal question," Dupaix said.
Holm's attorney, Rodney Parker, said he had not read the filing, but was not surprised by Dupaix's arguments. He disputes, however, the idea that the case has no importance outside Utah.
"Local issues that implicate tens of thousands of people by definition are national if those federal constitutional rights are being locally violated," Parker said.
There are an estimated 37,000 polygamists in Utah and other Western states.
Also filing a brief with the court Friday was the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group involved in lawsuits protecting religious freedom and against gay marriage.
"We saw this case as just sort of logically included under the heading of attempts to redefine marriage," ADF attorney said Chris Stovall.
The brief was filed on behalf of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Defense Council and also asks justices to reject Holm's petition.
"Marriage is a venerable social institution inherently involving public conduct, regulated by the state for the public good and justifiably protected from the ill effects of polygamy," Stovall writes.
Parker also had not seen a copy of the ADF brief, but said he finds it ironic that an organization that claims to advocate for religious freedom would fight the case.
Posted by Perry at 03:13 PM
January 11, 2007
Don't martyr these infants
Calgary Herald
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/
news/theeditorialpage/story.html?id=
d2588646-bb3b-4f9b-b9ed-b573a4439c28
Parents' objections shouldn't stop transfusions for sextuplets
Thursday, January 11, 2007
If the sextuplets born severely prematurely at B.C. Women's Hospital need blood transfusions, they should be made wards of the province and transfused over the objections of their Jehovah's Witness parents.
Jehovah's Witnesses base their objection to transfusions on Acts 15:29, with its command to "abstain from blood." As much as they are entitled to hold such a belief, when it conflicts with human rights, the latter must prevail. The sextuplets may require an infusion of red cells that their own immature organs may not be able to provide. Declining to do so could lead to the infants' deaths, and this is where the state has a moral duty to step in.
Adult Jehovah's Witnesses have every right to refuse transfusions for themselves. They do not have a right to deny health care to others. While parents are entitled to make decisions for their children, the line must be drawn when those decisions endanger the children's lives.
Most recently, this precept was tested in the case of Calgary's Bethany Hughes, a 16-year-old Jehovah's Witness suffering from acute myeloid leukemia. She was transfused against her and her mother's wishes, after her father asked a court to intervene. Sadly, Bethany died because her overall treatment, including chemotherapy, failed to halt the cancer.
According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, acute myeloid leukemia causes a reduction in red blood cells, hence the need for transfusions as part of a treatment protocol.
The battleground between religion and health care is strewn with bitter court cases. In 1993, a Minnesota court ruled the Christian Science church had to pay $9 million US in damages after an 11-year-old boy died from untreated diabetes, after his parents had chosen prayer over medical care. In a similar case, The Lancet reports that British Rastafarian parents were found guilty of manslaughter after refusing insulin for their diabetic daughter.
In a 1998 report on child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect, Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, quoted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the matter: "The right to practise religion freely does not include the liberty to expose the community or child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death. . . . Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion."
Nor are Jehovah's Witnesses in agreement about the blood taboo. A group called Associated Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood, notes that the Watchtower Society permits use of fractions of plasma, platelets, red and white cells, but not the whole product itself.
In June 2000, the Society declared that fractionated blood components were permitted and left it up to the individual to decide if a particular procedure violated the taboo. The AJWRB also says Witnesses who do accept transfusions won't be disfellowshipped.
A 1995 article in the Cancer Control Journal reports that "most Jehovah's Witness parents permitted transfusions for their minor children." Parents must never be allowed to risk their children's lives. The sextuplets need intensive care and intervention if they are to survive. If that includes transfusions, the province should ensure they get them.
Posted by Perry at 02:00 PM
January 09, 2007
Polygamist's Papers Topic of Hearing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/
AP-Polygamist-Leader.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
January 8, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- When a Cadillac Escalade ferrying polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs was pulled over in Nevada in August, authorities found $54,000 cash, 15 cell phones, portable radios, wigs and four laptops.
The documents stored on those computers was to be the subject of a legal tug-of-war Monday as Jeffs' attorneys try to convince a judge that the laptops contain privileged communication between the spiritual leader and his followers.
Jeffs, the 51-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was picked up in a traffic stop near Las Vegas on federal warrants after evading prosecution in Utah and Arizona for nearly two years.
He's now in a southern-Utah county jail pending an April trial on two felony counts of rape as an accomplice related to a 2001 arranged marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her cousin.
Attorneys for the United Effort Plan Trust, which holds $110 million in church property, and Shem Fischer, a former follower who sued Jeffs after being fired, want U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones in Las Vegas to grant them standing in Jeffs' case.
They also want access to papers, letters and electronic documents being held by the FBI.
In court documents, Jeffs' Las Vegas attorney Richard Wright contends the information on the laptops is ''sacred and confidential'' because it includes matters of church doctrine and private communications between Jeffs and his followers.
Wright did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. In court papers he asks the court to return the seized evidence to Jeffs.
Shem Fischer's attorneys disagrees. ''The documents may shed more information as to where (church) assets have been hidden, in what form they are held and where they are held,'' Las Vegas attorney Ariel Stern said.
In 2002, Fischer sued Jeffs, the church and a church-controlled cabinet company, for religious discrimination. Fischer said he was fired after he left the FLDS faith. He won a default judgment and now wants to collect the balance of what he's owed.
Like Fischer, Bruce Wisan wants to know if Jeffs' papers and electronic records will lead to church assets that rightfully belong to the trust and should benefit all current and former church members.
The trust is comprised of nearly all the property in Hildale, Colorado City, Ariz., and British Columbia, where church members live in assigned housing. A Utah judge made Wisan overseer of the trust in 2005 after finding Jeffs and other church leaders were fleecing it for personal gain.
Jeffs is also facing felony charges in Mohave County, Ariz., for other arranged marriages. He's expected to be extradited there following the Utah case.
Posted by Perry at 03:18 PM
January 06, 2007
Vietnam Vet Sues Diocese for Alleged Abuse by Priest
The claim of suppressed memories of sexual abuse might over come statute of limitations
The Gospel Herald
http://english.gospelherald.com/article/
society/1673/section/vietnam.vet.sues.
diocese.for.alleged.abuse.by.priest/1.htm
A former Marine and Vietnam War veteran filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and a church in the city, accusing them of doing nothing to stop a priest from sexually abusing him.
Associated Press
Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007
WILMINGTON, Del. - A former Marine and Vietnam War veteran filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and a church in the city, accusing them of doing nothing to stop a priest from sexually abusing him and other boys in the 1950s and 60s.
The diocese has acknowledged that the Rev. Edward B. Carley, who died in 1998 at age 82, abused a young male parishioner during his time as the assistant pastor at St. Ann's Catholic Church, from 1954 to 1962.
The diocese paid $65,000 to that parishioner, John F. Dougherty Jr., to reimburse him for counseling he said he needed as a result of the abuse. Dougherty said Carley raped him when he was 10-years-old and was serving as an altar boy at St. Ann's, and that Carley abused him repeatedly for several years afterward.
Douglas J. McClure, the plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Thursday, was a classmate of Dougherty's. Carley molested McClure two to three times a week over a period of two years, when McClure was between 8- and 10-years-old, said his attorney, Thomas Neuberger.
"I am just one of many victims, but I encourage others who have suffered in silence for so long also to come forward," McClure said in a statement. Neuberger did not allow McClure to speak to reporters, but McClure did say in response to a question at a news conference that the abuse has caused him to lose his religious faith.
Bob Krebs, a spokesman for the diocese, said he had not seen a copy of the lawsuit and had no comment.
According to the complaint, McClure, 60, psychologically suppressed all memories of the abuse until January 2005, when he read newspaper accounts of Dougherty's claims.
The claim of suppressed memories could prove crucial to McClure's case. Delaware has a two-year statute of limitations for civil claims, but a New Castle County judge ruled earlier this month that another man could pursue his claim against a priest because he filed the lawsuit within two years of the date he said memories of his abuse surfaced.
The lawsuit alleges that the diocese and St. Ann's were aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it, instead transferring Carley to St. Peter's Cathedral and then to several parishes on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where he allegedly continued to molest children. Carley retired from active ministry in 1993.
According to the lawsuit, Carley was independently wealthy, and he frequently bought toys, gifts and sporting equipment for boys and took them on overnight trips away from their parents. He also allegedly molested boys while discussing spiritual matters, by reading to them from the Bible orexplaining the mystery of the Eucharist.
Carley was one of 20 suspected pedophile priests whose names were released in November by the diocese, which also dedicated this year's Advent season to victims of clergy sexual abuse and their families.
Under Delaware law, plaintiffs are not permitted to state the amount of monetary damages they are seeking, but Neuberger said "this is without a doubt a case whose value exceeds a million dollars."
"His case is a very substantial case," Neuberger said. "If you think of being victimized two to three times a week, 200 to 300 times (total), the jury is going to have to assess a value to each sexual assault."
McClure did 14 months of combat duty in Vietnam, Neuberger said, and he also suppressed memories of his combat experience, which left him with post-traumatic stress disorder. He's being treated by Veterans Affairs psychiatrists.
Neuberger's firm is also representing two other men who claim they were abused by priests, including Eric Eden, whose case led to the ruling that allowed lawsuits based on suppressed memories to go forward if they were filed within two years of when the memories surfaced.
McClure's lawsuit was put together quickly after that ruling because he began to remember the abuse almost two years ago, Neuberger said.
Posted by Perry at 03:03 PM
January 02, 2007
Doctrine and law collide in a curious test of faith
The Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/doctrine-
and-law-collide-in-a-curious-test-of-faith/
2006/12/28/1166895418679.html
December 29, 2006
The political clout of holy-roller fundamentalist evangelicals has gone off the boil in the US. The mid-term elections put a stake, along with a couple of cloves of garlic, through the heart of that awe-inspiring alliance of capitalism and God-bothering.
Maybe the gifted work of Pastor Ted Haggard from the National Association of Evangelicals, who also liked a bit of rent boy hanky-panky on the side, didn't help the clean lines of the message. Hallelujah to Jimmy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, too. Nor did the text messaging of Republican congressman Mark "Protecting Our Children" Foley do much for the cause.
But down here business is booming - that's the business of cutting-edge fundamentalists bending the ear of politicians and judges to see if they can skew things their screwy way.
Over the past few days the Herald has carried reports of the special pleading by the Exclusive Brethren to the federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, and to the former chief justice of the Family Court, Alastair Nicholson. The brethren want the law to reflect their customary beliefs. It's a debate we've been having in this country in relation to customary Aboriginal law and the extent, if any, it can be accommodated by whitefella law.
The Federal Government says there is no place for the recognition of minority customary law by the one true law. And it has a point, especially when it comes to special pleading by elderly male Aborigines who claim a "right" to take young girls as their wives and rape them.
The brethren are claiming a right to keep children away from parents who have been excommunicated from the sect. Its members have gone to extraordinary lengths to subvert Family Court orders, moving a sister, brother and mother 700 kilometres from an excommunicated father who had right of access.
A member who falls out with the brethren will have their family broken up and their life turned into a fresh kind of hell. This flows from a motley collection of rules and superstitions leaping straight from the early 1800s. There are bans on members going to universities, the beach, cinemas, watching TV, using the internet, mobile phones or listening to the radio.
Members are not allowed to wear shorts (a sensible prohibition) or marry anyone not approved by the higher authorities. Married woman are not allowed to have jobs outside the sect. Members cannot eat with non-members or, mysteriously, share a common wall with someone who isn't of the faith. Members are banned from voting, apparently because God selects governments, not men. This must come close to transgressing the law because it is a requirement in Australia that at elections everyone on an electoral roll should attend a polling booth.
The ban on voting is confusing, especially as the head of the church is called the Elect Vessel. The present Elect Vessel, Bruce Hales, is an office equipment supplier from West Ryde who inherited the leadership from his father, so the electing may not have been all that rigorous in this family enterprise.
Correspondence from supporters of the vessel to Nicholson asked that the Family Court refuse custody or access to a parent who has left the Exclusive Brethren. To do otherwise would only cause "trauma". It asserted that children want to "refrain from contact" with the parent who has been expelled from the sect.
The Herald has reported there was abundant evidence the organisation flouted access orders and denied the rights of parents to see their children.
The Family Court has the power to enforce its orders by citing disobedient parties for contempt, or changing custody and access orders. But enforcement can be difficult if it involves confrontation with ferocious zealots.
Ruddock was asked last year by the brethren to amend the Family Law Act to require the court to reflect the sect's special mode of living. They received a lot of polite waffle from the Attorney-General about the family relationship centres to be rolled out across the land.
Nonetheless, there has been a marked contrast in the understanding the Government has afforded the brethren's desire for special recognition of its customary law. The Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz said Senator Bob Brown's criticisms of the brethren's political interference were "ridiculous assertions about people who are genuinely Christian Australian citizens".
The Exclusive Brethren does not grow by recruitment. It grows by breeding - hence the frantic efforts to keep children of the faith locked away from the outside word, and especially from parents who have seen the light.
Brown is having another crack at getting the Senate to investigate the subterranean political meddling of the brethren. He's got a fat chance of getting this evangelical-friendly Government to support a clean-out of the stables.
justinian@lawpress.com.au
Posted by Perry at 03:58 PM
December 20, 2006
Bill would prevent adults from placing pressure on anyone under the age of 18 to increase or decrease their religious involvement.
Bill handcuffs Chabad's tefillin campaign
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=
1164881934470&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
By SHEERA CLAIRE FRENKEL
Dec. 20, 2006 10:33
The familiar sight of Chabadniks inviting youths to put on tefillin may suffer a serious setback if a bill proposed by Labor MK Ophir Paz-Pines in the Knesset on Monday becomes law. The bill would prevent adults from placing pressure on anyone under the age of 18 to increase or decrease their religious involvement.
According to Paz-Pines, too much pressure is placed on youths to alter their religious traditions. Pressing youths to observe or discard religious practices can 'cause the break-up of a family and cause damage to minors,' he said.
Menachem Brod, a spokesman for Chabad in Israel, said Paz-Pines's bill was absurd, and was intended to undermine religious Jewish life.
'Are they telling me that if someone is lacking a 10th member for their minyan, and they go out on the street and find a 17-year-old boy, they can't invite that bar-mitzvaed boy in to complete the minyan? This is evil,' he said. 'Why do we insist on treating teenagers as though they don't have the ability to make decisions?'
Ephraim Shore, a director of Jerusalem's Aish Hatorah Yeshiva, disagreed with Paz-Pines's reasoning, saying: 'There are so many reasons for schisms in the family... We have a heritage that has lasted over 3,000 years and we believe in teaching it to people. This heritage has not traditionally caused schism in the family.'
Shore rejected the assertion that some teenagers might be brainwashed into adopting religious practices.
'If you teach a Jew the beauty of Shabbat and he lights candles on Friday night, that is his choice, not some brainwashing,' he said. 'It's a free country. We have a popular Web site that 2 million people visit a month. Should we change it to an 'adult only' Web site just so that teens won't be exposed to the dangerous material we post there about Jewish life and traditions?'
Shore said there were dozens of programs in the US to encourage Jewish high school students to adopt Jewish traditions. He said most of Aish Hatorah's programs were geared for young adults over the age of 18, while other organizations, such as Chabad, encouraged teenagers to get involved and participate in their programs.
Paz-Pines's bill is the latest effort by MKs to supposedly protect youth. Earlier this month, MK Zevulun Orlev (NU-NRP) proposed a law that would make it illegal to sell lottery tickets to children under the age of 18. Two months ago Likud MKs sought to limit advertisements that could be placed near high schools.
Posted by Perry at 02:58 PM
August 05, 2005
Social Services settles lawsuit with Word Of Faith Fellowship
August 4, 2005
By JERRY STENSLAND Daily Courier Staff Writer
http://thedigitalcourier.com/articles/2005/08/04/news/news01.txt
SPINDALE -- A federal lawsuit filed by the Word of Faith Fellowship against the county's social service agency has been settled with $305,000 going to WOFF and prior records of child abuse investigations being expunged from the record.
A WOFF attorney called the ruling vindication, while the Rutherford County Department of Social Services officials said the settlement avoided hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal expenses as they denied any wrongdoing.
The originating lawsuit sought over $2 million and multiple items of injunctive relief regarding DSS investigations of WOFF.
During the past 10 years -- and particularly in 2002 and 2003 -- DSS investigated claims of child abuse against the controversial Spindale-based organization.
WOFF contended that the investigations were unwarranted and were a violation of the free exercise of its religion.
Continue reading "Social Services settles lawsuit with Word Of Faith Fellowship"
Posted by Perry at 11:38 PM