Have JWs solved 90% of the child abuse problems plaguing the rest of the world?

[JW Insider]

7 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Okay. I did and I was wrong.

I hope you don't feel you are being blamed in any way. I know that you used the original "study" in good faith and for a good motive and purpose.

7 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

This is the fact that was missed.

It was a major one, but not the only one. My response to it was intentionally simplified, so that such a discussion as this could deal with some of these facts incrementally. Otherwise it could seem too overwhelming to someone who hadn't yet looked at it carefully. As I said just prior to getting into the details . . .

On 4/1/2018 at 6:38 AM, JW Insider said:

I won't get into all the potential problems that could bring the final number one way or the other, but I will point out some things that must have been missed.

Here are some other points that make it difficult to compare "apples to apples."

7 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Thus 12% of 225,487 eqauls 27,058 notifications of child sexual abuse

The 12% number, which will vary slightly from year to year does not refer to a percentage of notifications about child sexual abuse. It can only be tallied after all the investigations are completed into every type of child abuse complaint, and only refers to a percent of confirmed cases. It can't be used directly as a percent of not-yet-confirmed cases. In the cases reported by the Witness congregations these have already been identified as child abuse cases requiring reporting. They start out as already identified allegations of sexual abuse, but not confirmed.

But in the case of the reports from the congregations, we don't know how many children were involved. A single report could be about a person accused of abusing 10 different children, for all we know. Or it could be a false claim altogether.

Of course, it is also foolish to try to create a comparison with such a small sample provided by the congregations. A difference of only one case out of such as small number creates a huge difference in the comparison. CPS (Child Protective Services) take reports of accusations, bruises and emotional trauma (etd) from the perspective of teachers, social workers, law enforcement, neighbors, etc. Most of the congregation reports are not from children, but are more concerned with the adult. You can start to see this from a review of the Australian cases and many of the anecdotal cases about Witnesses coming in from around the world. The average time it takes for an abused child to report is several years. The Australian CPS numbers do include persons who have been abused in the past, but are expected to mostly focus on those who are (or might be) in current danger.

A real study could be done if Australia's CPS numbers had accurately kept track of religion both of perpetrators and victims. A better study could be done if there were numbers from the congregations broken down by year, at least since 2011.

But even here we are comparing apples and oranges again. Typically old cases come to the attention of the congregation. If they are new cases, then it is likely that they are already baked into the CPS numbers. CPS focuses on new cases. CPS looks at it mostly from the danger posed to a specific child. The congregations' cases focus on the guilt of an alleged perpetrator who may have victimized anywhere from 0 to 20 children, or perhaps 1 or 2 children 20 times each. (Most familial sexual abuse cases seem to go this way.)

And then again, we have the problem that the Australian ARC data is proof that the congregations never themselves would report cases to law enforcement or social services even when a perpetrator might be victimizing more people inside and outside the congregation. We also know from the interviews that elders involved in the cases did not encourage reporting by victims. ARC went ahead and reported hundreds of these cases to law enforcement for investigation. I read a few of these cases as reported in newspapers and they are horrendous.

So the biggest problem is that we are comparing against a system that evidently OVER-reports (CPS) based on the evidence from its own investigations. The congregations have a long history of UNDER-reporting and hiding. So even a study that goes back many years, based on congregational data, would be worthless for comparison purposes.

I'm sure we do better than most institutions with respect to the propensity for criminal perpetrators to associate with us -- just for the purpose of access to children, and the fact that they are often punished and socially ostracized if caught, and that the nature of the congregation allows for very few interactions with the outside world. (For example, non-JW perpetrators have less access to JW children, as they are less likely to join boy scouts, sleep-away camps, etc.) These things don't stop determined criminals, but they must surely give them some concern.

There are more issues than these, but it's enough for now.

[TrueTomHarley]

For now I see no reason not to run with the 6.3 figure. If it is heralded as the be-all and end-all of truth, that is dishonest. But if it is held out as a rough figure that might alter pending added (and impossible, due to dearth of data) refinement of either side's stats, then it is an acceptable comparison of notifications to notifications.  That way our brothers have something to kick back with when their enemies press for the perception that JWs are the very last place you should go if you want to keep your kids safe. 

The ultimate details will never be known, compared and quantified. But we can run with a simple indicator so long as we do not pretend it is more than a rough indicator. Such kind of imperfect stats are built into models all the time, and policies or forecasts are drawn from them.

2 hours ago, JW Insider said:

A real study could be done if Australia's CPS numbers had accurately kept track of religion both of perpetrators and victims.

Well, that is the real crime, isn't it?

In many settings, negligence is a punishable offense. Either the Australian CPS should have tracked religion for each perpetrator and victim or religions themselves should have kept stats on their own parishioners to hand them over upon demand. As it was, only Jehovah's Witnesses did and it was done for the reason of presenting to God a clean people and to not let perpetrators slide from one congregation into another, as they can anywhere else. 

It is a deed with good motive being spun as a bad without resistance from those who should resist it. All such issues before various courts constitute a classic example of "No good deed goes unpunished." That is the overall picture which supercedes any investigations into child abuse, greivious though the latter might be. The 6.3 becomes in this context a workable indicator so that our brothers do not have to look to JTR as their messiah.

It is quite clear that the GB can do no more. G Jackson pleaded for mandatory reporting laws across the board in all territories. Why has that not been done? That way elders can run roughshod over any family head who, for whatever reason, does not want to report abuse they are aware of to outside authorities. As was stated about the two from case 54, "they were adult survivors and it was their right not to report." Strip them of that right. Make it mandatory that everyone report everything. 

If the greater authorities are as serious about preventing child sexual abuse as they purport to be, seemingly no policy change could be simpler. Then there would be no swiping at people for not "going beyond the law." Make it the law if it is so crucial. If they refuse or neglect to enact that most basic proactive measure, yet they would still issue blistering criticism of Jehovah's Witnesses, what does that tell you? Something more than Capernaum is here.

[Vic Vomidog]

24 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

Where's that Pirate Bird when you need it?

You rang?

[TrueTomHarley]

8 minutes ago, Nana Fofana said:

JW Inciter, your smoove and kindly manner is maybe sort of reminiscent  of detectives in "Crime and Punishment", but it's been so long since I read that- not positive I remember right.

 

Whatever @JW Insider's motives may be, by throwing certain things back in my face he has more than once caused me to reevaluate and even retract some errors I otherwise would have made - errors that I would not have wanted to see go into print.

He was also kind enough to acknowledge that I had succeeded in giving him correct counsel on an occassion or two in the past.

If anyone is playing me like a fiddle, to use @tromboneck's phrase, it is he, but I tend to accept him at face value, and he is among the relative few here who consistently back up their statements with facts, even if I am not sure that the facts are good to broadcast to all and sundry in the first place. He pursues a model that I do not like, but I cannot say that I have not benefited by it.

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

For now I see no reason not to run with the 6.3 figure.

I do see a reason not to run with it. Even if it turns out to be correct, there is no 6.3 figure from any study or anything like a study, just as there was no 10-times-better or 18-times-worse figure. Imagine just a couple of tweaks to account for what are currently unknowns. And, most importantly, you can't draw any conclusions that are based on the 12-13% CPS figure without some idea of how many of the JW cases would have also been "confirmed" using the same criteria that the Australian CPS uses for confirmation. (Which as was said before, should never come into the calculation for any reason, because all of the JW reports were already filtered for sexual abuse, and the Australian CPS only reports the 12-13% after all types have been confirmed or non-confirmed.)

Remember that we can only compare the number of children confirmed to be sexually abused in the CPS data with the number of children that would have been confirmed to be abused based on the JW cases.

For example, lets look at 1 possibility out of thousands of possibilities based on what a confirmation might look like from the "17 cases." (I'll use all 17 cases here based on the likelihood that these cases actually run from a report on the period from about September 1, 2015 to July 31, 2016, or 11 months, although I am rounding to 12 months.)

• 8 out 17 cases: dismissed as false or unsubstantiated claims against these 8 perpetrators. That's about half.
• 1 out of 17 cases: the JW only molested non-JWs, which has been true of known cases elsewhere. (effectively making JW children safer, at least around this predator)
• 1 out of 17 cases: 2 JW children were molested in a public school setting, through no fault of any Watchtower process or negligence.
• 2 out of 17 cases: confirmed to involve only one child each
• 2 out of 17 cases: confirmed to involve two children each
• 2 out of 17 cases: confirmed to involve three children each
• 1 of 17 cases: confirmed to involve 7 children.

Remember, that this does NOT include an unknown additional number of cases that slipped through the cracks, where molestors are no longer JWs, having left or been disfellowshipped in the past but who molested JW children, unreported, while they were in the congregation but whose activities continue to add to the CPS numbers. I say this because of JW "turnover." While currently one out every 352 Australians is a JW, it is probably true that one out of every 140 Australians either is now, or has been a Witness.

But, for simplicity, we are ignoring any kind of old or new numbers from JWs already included in the CPS data.

So, even after dismissing 10 of the 17 cases as having no effect on the safety of JW children, we still could potentially have 19 children confirmed to have been sexually abused. Of course, more JW cases would be dismissed for non-confirmation because they are probably based on reports, accusations, or confessions that are probably 10 years after the crime, on average. On average, we are therefore measuring how many 10 year old cases might come to light against a time when public awareness and new civil laws for teachers, hospital workers, etc, require every potential or suspected case to be reported. We will not even attempt to account for that, but it would clearly skew the JW numbers to appear much better than they would be in actuality. Also, we should keep in mind that CPS must count children who did not wish to report, and whose parents may have wished not to report. But the process works much quicker with CPS, and helps to confirm more cases because they were usually much more recent.

Remember that since we should only be comparing the number of "confirmed" children abused, we can now compare our 19 confirmed children (out of 68,000) to the 5,559 confirmed children (out of 24,000,000). That alone would create a comparison of .0279% for JWs and .02313%. which would mean you would be 20% less safe as a JW than you would be in the general Australian population.

Of course, another person might think that 0 of the 17 cases would be confirmed. And using CPS methods on such old cases this might even be true. Or you might think that only 5 of the cases would be dismissed, and the remaining 12 would confirm sexual abuse on a mix of one, two and three children each (averaging 2), for a total of 24 confirmed cases. That small difference from 19 to 24 would result in a calculation that says you are 54% less safe as a JW.

Because we still have those intent only on creating contentions among brothers, I will add again that I do not believe these numbers mean anything. I'm just showing what could likely happen if there were a real study based on apples to apples numbers. There is no study, and I still believe children are safer among JWs than the average population, and much safer as JWs than among many other religious groups and institutions. And, as I've said before the changes the Watchtower has been making to the process is 100% better now than it was. (But I don't believe that the 100% is a real statistic.)

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

11 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Tonite,  I just finished off my half gallon of Peach Schnapps which I have been nursing for almost two years.

When I read your posts, it helps to be properly anesthetized.

Allen:

You may be laughing, but you have absolutely no reading COMPREHENSION skills that I can observe..

To assist you ... think of my post of the above two lines as separate subjects ... and  THEN think of how inebriated a person can get by stretching out a half gallon of Peach Schnapps over a period of two years.

It is obvious that you have NO sense of humor, so you may want to talk to a Shrink about that laughter

 

33 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

Then we have something in common ROOK! You need to stay drunk, while I need a box of tissues from having to laugh so hard with your falsification of facts and failures and a vomit bag for your cartoons! Where's that Pirate Bird when you need it?

... and if you need a vomit bag when viewing cartoons ... we are talking about some REAL shrinkage here !

..... not to be confused with swimming in ice-cold water .....

.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

 

DefenderOTT:

In response to your "confused" emoticon above, on AllenSmith's  and my post.

Having one's "head shrunk", is an American euphemism for psychiatric sessions. A Shrink is a euphemism for a Doctor of Psychiatry.

For a male, swimming in cold water causes the scrotum to shrink in size dramatically, and testicles to rise up unto the body to keep the sperm warm, and is optically referred to as "shrinkage", colloquially.

...don't get 'em mixed up.

 

[JW Insider]

6 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

In response to you "confused" emoticon above, on AllenSmith's post.

I'm guessing that there is a 98.4572% chance that DefenderOTT actually is AllenSmith. (Do you ever go to that part of the forum that shows who is logged in at a given time and therefore, indirectly, who just logged out, and what post they are currently looking at at any given time?)

6 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

...don't get 'em mixed up.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

33 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Even if it turns out to be correct, there is no 6.3 figure from any study or anything like a study, just as there was no 10-times-better or 18-times-worse figure. Imagine just a couple of tweaks to account for what are currently unknowns.

Oh, for crying out loud, just say there has never been an abuse case without a JW connection and be done with it!

Just take down the blue JW.org signs, replace them with the 'Pedophiles R Us' signs that JRT is working on, and be done with it!

Just tell all the brothers to holler "Molester! Molester!" as they approach, as their counterparts once did "Leper! Leper!" and be done with it!

It is not perfect. It cannot be perfect because everyone that could have put their talants to use instead buried them in the ground. It is processed notifications to unprocessed notifications. It will have to do as the best available. If some of theirs turned out to be duds, it cannot be assumed that all of ours will be grand slams.

If you don't behave, I am going to get Allen to assert that all 17 Witness notifications stem from just a single unfortunate child, which will elevate our cause 10,000 to 1! Kneecap that lone scoundrel perpetrator out and we are perfect!

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

 

 

 

TTH:

You are certainly entitled to your particular world view.

The physical world, and the entire physical Universe "knows" what facts really are, and getting it wrong is in bad times a Universal capital crime, and it is administered without pity, or deference to a faulty world view.

We have the luxury of living in the best time, and the best place, that has ever existed since the Garden of Eden ... and that alone cuts us all some slack.

 

 

 

 

[TrueTomHarley]

32 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

Now your off track. Let's NOT make a hero of someone that doesn't contribute to HONESTY! However, Fiddler on the roof, was a GOOD play and movie, whereas, deception is NOT! Write about that in your next book!

The entire thread, and even forum, does not contribute to HONESTY in that all of it ignores Jesus' counsel to '"let them be" with regard to opposers and blind guides. None of the blind guides will say they are blind. It is for the unblind to follow Jesus' counsel.

Evereyone here, self included, 'ought' to be looking at matters as does Jesus, and no one here, self-included, can quite make themselves do that. 

It is what it is, but no one should be making a hero of themselves for participation here. Even if a person succeeds in knocking his enemy  out of the ring, he has done so by demonstrating an unChristian trait.

Oh. And here's one for JTR:

 

How;s THAT for Christlike?

 

AF1QipMwCMd6ZM4SC_CrQIlOfIWia6zZyz3Mq6EYakng.html

[Foreigner]

48 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

I can say that ANNA and JWinsider can be the same person according to the logins. What does that prove if only “ignorance” from a person attempting to identify another?

Saludos hermano Allen. Creo que soy Allen también. Ha! Ha!