Australian court awards abuse survivor $1.5 million—and exposes Jehovah's Witnesses' cover-up

The damning ruling highlights how JW Elders protected one of their own and silenced his victim for decades

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In a welcome decision from the New South Wales Supreme Court in Australia, a judge has ordered a father to pay nearly $1.5 million in damages to the daughter he abused for years. But the bigger story may be how it shines a light on how the Jehovah’s Witnesses cover up for abusers.

(Image via Adobe Spark)

As the story goes, the daughter (who’s anonymous and referred to as “BDS2” in court documents) was raised in a family that joined a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation when she was about five years old. The JWs promote a family dynamic in which the father is the head of the household and everyone must be obedient to him—BDS2 and her siblings did just that, attending JW meetings multiple times a week, avoiding anyone who wasn’t part of their religious community, and never reading anything besides JW literature—and her father soon became a lay leader in their local congregation. It gave him even more unchecked authority.

Then the physical abuse started.

BDS2 said that whenever she broke the rules, she was “belted, slapped, hit, punched, or [had] her hair pulled.” Her body would be left bruised by her father’s beatings. This went on until she was 17.

The plaintiff described a number of examples of specific incidents of physical violence, including one occasion where the defendant continuously beat her because she could not stop crying, and another where the plaintiff locked herself in the bathroom and the defendant broke down the bathroom door. The plaintiff said the defendant would beat her if she so much as turned her head towards someone she was forbidden from speaking to, and that he would sometimes punish her for things she had not done.

When BDS2 was 17, her father began sexually assaulting her over a two-week period when the rest of her family was out of town, and at this point, the court record gets graphic and disturbing. (The following paragraph may be troubling for many to read.)

The father told her to “wax the pubic hair on the shaft of his penis.” She refused. He climbed into her bed at night and sexually assaulted her—when she told him to stop, he told her she needed to “be obedient to your father.” He made her watch pornographic material with him, then gave her a drink with what sounds like a sedative. The assaults continued even after that. He watched her take a shower. He offered her $300 if she would “bend over the bed.” When she refused, he forced her to do it, but she managed to break away and run to a neighbor’s house. When the rest of the family finally returned home, the father began tracking BDS2’s movements, becoming even more overbearing, and telling other people that his daughter was “rebellious” and “a troublemaker” and someone who served the devil.

BDS2 eventually reported his behavior to the JW Elders in her congregation, hoping that could put a stop to it. But he soon found out about those allegations and turned on her again, yelling things like, “what have you been saying to the Elders behind my back?” He then “slapped her across the face so hard that her head and body hit the brick wall behind her.”

At this point, she ran away from home and began living with the neighbors. It was 1989.

The JW Elders later held a “Judicial Committee Hearing” and directly asked the father if the allegations were true. He immediately lashed out against his daughter—in the presence of the Elders—and said something to the effect of “Just wait until I get out of this room!” The Elders repeatedly told him to said down, and the father then said BDS2 had “seduced” him.

At a second “Judicial Committee Hearing,” when the father was directly confronted about his actions, he admitted, “Yes, I stepped out of line.”

Despite all of this, the Elders didn’t believe her story. Furthermore, they told her not to go to the police, and that if she did, she could be disfellowshipped—essentially cut off from her family and religious community forever. They wouldn’t allow her to speak to them without her father present. (BDS2 said her father “threatened to kill her” if she spoke to them alone.)

None of it seemed to make a difference. Her father was allowed back into the JW congregation as if nothing had happened.

It wasn’t until 2000 when BDS2 reported all this to the Queensland Police Service. In 2013, she also detailed her story for Australia’s Royal Commission into “Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.” (The commission found, for example, that 7% of Catholic priests in the country had been accused of sexually abusing children between the years of 1950 and 2010. The same commission also found serious problems with the Anglican church. Regarding the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the commission found that they were not a group that “responds adequately to child sexual abuse.”)

If there’s any good news here, it’s that the police took action. Her father was eventually convicted of his crimes in 2004—five counts of unlawful and indecent assault and another count of attempted rape—and spent three years in prison.

But that doesn’t wipe away the damage he caused. In fact, BDS2 continued to suffer, and the Supreme Court detailed the impact he had on the rest of her life:

The plaintiff reported feeling worthless and defeated to this day as a result of the harm caused by the defendant’s actions. She feels that no matter what she does or what she achieves, she will never be able to escape the effects of the harm caused by the defendant. She described the impact on her relationships with her mother, her siblings and her extended family. She says that she is treated as an outcast by her family.

The plaintiff reported suffering from nightmares and struggling with ongoing anxiety. She says that she lives her life in a hyper-alert state. She has difficulty socialising with people outside of her immediate family, so that she rarely forms new friendships and generally has difficulty trusting people. She feels anxious that her social interactions may be interpreted as sexual.

The plaintiff says that she finds it difficult to love and accept herself. She says that she feels dirty and spends a lot of time bathing and scrubbing herself in an effort to feel clean.

The plaintiff says that the defendant’s actions towards her have impacted upon every sexual experience she has had since the assaults. The plaintiff reports that during her recent treatment for cancer, she opted to have a bilateral mastectomy, in part out of a hope that removing both breasts would help rid her of the memory of the defendant’s abuse. She struggles to identify the difference between a loving and a controlling relationship. She says that she has experienced controlling and abusive behaviour in her marriages which she attributes to the defendant’s abuse.

The plaintiff says that she spends most days trying to distract herself from thinking about the future, so that she does not have to think about how depressing and pointless her efforts have been to erase what the defendant did to her.

BDS2 is now 52 years old. She actually got her law degree in 2017 and joined the Queensland Police Service herself a year after that, but the PTSD she continued to suffer because of the abuse made it harder to stay in that job, forcing her to retire in 2022.

BDS2 also told the court how the Jehovah’s Witnesses had an impact on her life even after she had left the clutches of her father. She got married at 18 to someone within the JW community, but he was also “psychologically controlling, demeaning, demoralising and objectifying.” When she wanted to get a divorce, the JWs wouldn’t allow it. She eventually left him anyway.

All of this ended up in the Supreme Court because BDS2 was seeking compensation for all she had suffered. Her father represented himself in court and attempted to defend his actions in a way that will just leave you shaking your head:

[BDS2] was cross-examined by the defendant. He put to the plaintiff that he was uncircumcised, contrary to her account of her observations of his penis. He suggested to her that aside from the one occasion when she consented to digital penetration, her allegations of sexual abuse were lies. He further suggested that she was capable of providing services as a victim’s rights advocate which (presumably) demonstrated that she was capable of employment. He put to her that she was a strong and capable woman. He suggested that she had had dysfunctional and violent relationships with partners after the alleged abuse which had caused her emotional trauma. He suggested to the plaintiff that he had never physically abused her and that he only smacked her on the bottom, and on occasion with a wooden spoon.

He also insisted his daughter’s testimony was a “gross exaggeration at best” and filled with ”outright lies.” He admitted to digitally penetrating her, but only because, at her request, he was trying to teach her how to track her “vaginal mucus” so she could assess a natural method for birth control. (That was “poor judgement” on his part, he claimed.)

The judge didn’t buy any of those defenses, writing, “I accept the plaintiff’s evidence in its entirety.” The only question was how much compensation BDS2 was entitled to from her father. She was asking for $300,000 in damages and the judge agreed to it. Furthermore, there were aggravated damages (which are for more intangible forms of suffering), interest, and legal fees. There was also past and future economic loss (because the father’s actions had an impact on BDS2’s ability to get an education and maintain her employment):

However, there were many events that likely impacted the plaintiff’s capacity to earn other than the abuse. The first and perhaps most important is that the plaintiff was raised in a “cult-like” environment which no doubt impacted upon her psychological state and her future educational and employment opportunities. Second, the plaintiff was involved in several abusive relationships which likely affected her ability to earn. Third, the plaintiff was a single mother with significant child-rearing responsibilities. Fourth, the plaintiff has suffered from several disabling medical ailments over and above the PTSD suffered as a result of her father’s sexual abuse. Fifth, the plaintiff moved to the USA by choice. She must mitigate her loss of income as a lawyer by attempting to qualify there, or attempt to find employment which she might be capable of performing.

Ultimately, Justice Richard Weinstein calculated all this to come out to just under $1.5 million:

While the Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t pay any of that, this entire debacle reveals how they had the opportunity to take serious action against the father, but they chose not to—and actively told BDS2 not to go to police—prolonging the number of years it took to finally get justice. It’s no wonder the religious group is described in the ruling as “cult-like.”

Other former JWs are hoping people who hear about this case also take away from it just how problematic that religion is:

Other victims of child sexual abuse suffered within the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society – the name for the Australian brach of Jehovah’s Witness – told news.com.au they hope the payout will shed light on how the church protects abusers.

More than 70,000 Australians are members of the church, according to the organisation.

They also hoping Australia removes the JWs as an official charity, which would seriously handicap their ability to take in money. (For Americans, that would be the equivalent of revoking the group’s tax-exempt status.)

In 2024, the church reported a total income of $14.4 million.

Due to its status as a religious charity, the organisation receives federal and state tax exemptions.

This entire saga obviously tells us a lot about the horrors one religious zealot can inflict upon his daughter, but it also reveals the moral bankruptcy of a religious institution that chose self-protection over a child’s well-being.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses Elders weren’t confused or unaware; they were handed credible allegations, witnessed threatening behavior first-hand, heard an admission of sorts (“I stepped out of line”), and still didn’t want one of their own to take the fall. By discouraging police involvement and threatening spiritual shunning, they indirectly promoted the abuse. That’s the system working as intended and why so many ex-JWs have been fierce advocates demanding change.

Even a $1.5 million judgment won’t undo decades of trauma or make up for all those years stolen from BDS2’s life. But it does have a symbolic importance: It rejects the notion that BDS2 was exaggerating or confused, much less complicit. It accepts her story in a way the religious leaders never did. It gives her tangible justice when those Elders preferred to sweep everything under a rug.

The fact is: You can’t trust these religious leaders to protect children when it means admitting their own beliefs and systems are flawed. Their methods only make things worse. In this case, they delayed justice, but too often, they deny it entirely, allowing the abuse to go on unchecked.

That is why this decision resonates. People want accountability. Survivors deserve it. And religion should never serve as immunity against justice. Any group that takes in millions of dollars in donations while shielding abusers and silencing victims shouldn’t be rewarded with tax exemptions or public trust.

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