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An astonishing new report in The Atlantic has revealed the alleged existence of a decades-old database of accused pedophiles within Jehovah’s Witnesses, a sect of Christianity with more than 1.2 million members in the United States. The database, which has reportedly been kept for decades, contains up to tens of thousands of names and addresses of accused child molesters within the organization, as well as detailed reports of the specific allegations against them.
The database was allegedly prompted by a 1997 letter that leaders at the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the nonprofit organization that heads up Jehovah’s Witnesses, sent to all U.S. congregations. The letter contained instructions to all congregation leaders to write a report about all known predators, and send it to Watchtower headquarters in a sealed blue envelope without telling anyone, including the authorities. The letters were reportedly compiled to form a Microsoft SharePoint database of all known predators within the religious organization. (“Our policies on child protection comply with the law, including any requirements for elders to report allegations of child abuse to authorities,” Watchtower’s Office of Public Information told The Atlantic. We’ve reached out for additional comment, and will update if we hear back.)
According to the Atlantic, the existence of the database was made public in 2012, when a man named Jose Lopez filed a lawsuit alleging that an adult church member named Gonzalo Campos molested him when he was seven years old. When he reported his abuse to his mother, she immediately told the church, which not only failed to report it to the police but allowed Campos to later become a church elder. (Campos later admitted that he had molested Lopez and a number of other boys in a deposition.)
