Can JW Television (digital news) be trusted?

[Pudgy]

Oops! I couldn’a hep mashelf.

Details ARE IMPORTSNT!

[betoken]

[Pudgy]

it’s always encouraging to me when a mighty micro superhero rodent emerges from such humble beginnings.  On the land, on the sea, and in the air…… He is there!

[JW Insider]

18 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

So, you are concerned. But it's wise to be concerned, for the correct information.

Yes, I found my source documents. You are right that the sheet has exactly 1,006 entries for the number of perpetrators. Some people identify the perpetrators as the number of cases. But notice that the next column is the number of victims which I counted as 1,700+ (which other Witnesses numbered at 1732 or thereabouts.) The reason I added the plus is that most people had just totaled the numbers in the column without considering all the ones that had "text" in the cell.

In the screenshot I skipped 1000 lines so you can also see the headings. The sheet matches all the numbers that other JWs and Holly Folk were using, for all the columns, not just the first few I am showing in the screenshot. I won't promote the sheet by posting the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure you can find someone who downloaded it at the time it was available. (I might be mistaken, but I don't think it is currently available on the ARC site.) 

When you look at the original sheet and total the number of alleged victims column, you get 1732 see below.

But many of the cells display Unclear. And we should assume that any accusation involves at least one accuser. So if we replace the Unclear's with a 1 then you get a total of 1766 victims.

But several of the perpetrators (even ministerial servants) had 10 or more victims, and those were marked with the term "10+". The plus sign keeps it from being put in the total because the sheet formula treats it as text, not a number. So if you change all the 10+ to just the number 10 (the minimum), you get a minimum of 1,857 victims:

Again I don't know the accuracy of the report that the Australian Watchtower Branch gave to the court, but it represents at least 1,857 victims. This is why I called it 1,700-plus. But if it comes up again, I supposed I should be more accurate and admit that it shows at least 1,857.

[JW Insider]

I still see nothing in the ARC docs that answers the original question about where anyone (like Holly Folk) got the number of 383 cases that were reported. Obviously a conviction requires a report at some point in time, but there were less than 200 convictions in the entire sheet.

On 6/7/2023 at 6:42 PM, JW Insider said:

On 6/7/2023 at 5:48 PM, Fausto Hoover said:

I'm curious as to why the 383 incidents that involved police weren't included in the ARC investigation.

I wouldn't be surprised at this. Do you have a source? Is there a reason that the Watchtower lawyers forgot to include this in any kind of defense? I heard a rumor about this too but was surprised that it took so many years for this rumor to begin circulating. . . . 1000 perpetrators and at least 1500 unreported cases versus nearly 400 reported incidents is still embarrassing.

I guess to be more accurate, if there really were 383 reported cases, then I should have subtracted 383 from 1857+ and changed that last line to 1006 perpetrators and at least 1474 unreported cases versus 383 reported incidents . . .

[Pudgy]

When one person is abused, tortured, bullied or killed it’s a human tragedy.

When over 200 people are abused, tortured, bullied or killed …

…. it’s a statistic.

[JW Insider]

On 6/9/2023 at 11:48 AM, Fausto Hoover said:

I also don't count an allegation unless it was proven to be one.

Good. You are like me then. I put no faith in any of the numbers. Even the fact that in more than half these listed cases, (nearly 58%) the perpetrator actually confessed to the elders, it still doesn't mean it's a true number. Most of the perpetrators on the list are shown to have confessed, somewhere between about 58% and 70% according to the data provided. But people have been known to confess to things just to get the questioning over with, and try to put the matter behind them. Only Jehovah knows for sure. Of course, I also don't put faith in the fact that up to 40% did not confess. Obviously, that doesn't mean that the allegation is false. People have been known to make false allegations, but people have also been known to withdraw true allegations. Even the number of convictions can be misleading. People have been falsely convicted while other perpetrators never get caught or turned in.

On 6/9/2023 at 11:48 AM, Fausto Hoover said:

The document the ARC provided is 1730 total.

That will easily happen when you don't want "live" formulas in the sheet, and you change it to "values only" before all the editing is completed. It could easily happen in quite a number of ways. If various numbers had to be edited or corrected when the formula had already been removed, then that total will change once the formula is put back in. I saw the 1730 but there is no formula behind it. So I put the formula back in and that's when it showed 1732 instead of 1730.

I left this original number 1730 out of the discussion on purpose however to see if you would admit that you knew the actual number in the document really was 1730. Now I know that you either already knew I was correct when I said the document contained 1700+, or you just found out and still want to quibble about the difference between 1732+ and 1730. Either way, I'm glad I did it. It was very revealing.

[Srecko Sostar]

2 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

The court documents and final summaries provide me with sufficient information.

 

 

35 minutes ago, Fausto Hoover said:

What's my prerogative is to keep the numbers honest.

There were 1,006 cases of child sexual abuse reported among the Jehovah's Witnesses in Australia during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

 

Number 1006 represents a big obstacle for you to prove a wrong conclusion. 

1006 JW members who have been counted by WT Australia in relation to CSA allegations.
And you still claim that it is about 1006 cases of CSA.
1006 people can be participants in a single case of a crime or in 10000 cases of crime.

So I conclude like this. Regardless of the arguments and showing a lack of confidence in the numbers on your part or on the part of @JW Insider, the fact of reality regarding the life of believers in WTJWorg "spiritual paradise" remains clear ... Paradise is far away.

[Pudgy]

The churches are teaching that you have an immortal soul. They used to teach that you went to hell and burned forever, had your skin stripped off your body and other nasty stuff forever and ever because you’re soul was immortal,  and God for some strange reason gave you over to his arch enemy to be entertained with your torment.

…. later, later we learned about how volcanoes really work, and plate tectonics which was only learned in my lifetime and the churches changed their spiel to “…. well……HELL Was only a figure of speech, and what really happens is that you are eternally separated from God.“

So, people with a particular mindset, always looking for loop holes, think about that and realize that if it is true, then they will be eternally separated from God, and live forever, and perhaps, just perhaps, something can be a arranged so that they can live as a ghost or something in Las Vegas!

….. So that they can live forever as a ghost or something in Las Vegas!

So, they have in their mind, that would be a Paradise …. with no downside whatsoever!

And THAT is why digital currency was invented!

 

 

[JW Insider]

19 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

So, you're saying that you've just confessed to making up the figures regarding the victims.

No. What I did was explain how one can best determine the minimum number of alleged victims that are represented in the spreadsheet. I'm not saying the spreadsheet numbers are correct. I'm just discussing the most accurate way to read it correctly. If someone else has an idea about reading it even more accurately, that would be welcomed.

19 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

I sensed an intense effort from you to undermine my post,

I would certainly hope you were able to sense that your post was being undermined because it was. Unfortunately for you, that's a typical result of presenting facts alongside fiction. The fiction often gets undermined by facts. The only thing you sensed incorrectly was that you thought the effort was intense. But there was nothing intense about it. The facts are simply there, and I simply presented them.

19 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

There were 1,006 cases of child sexual abuse reported among the Jehovah's Witnesses in Australia . . .

I have been referencing the cases not the victims.  Multiple individuals can be victims in a single case. . . .We need to stay focused on the quanity of cases, not the victim numbers.

No. That's false. Actually, we don't need to stay focused on the number of cases (perpetrators), and not the victim numbers. That might be your own agenda, but my goal was to clarify the false impression you continued to give that there were not at least 1,700 victims included in the same documentation which referenced 1,006 perpetrators.

You are welcome to use the term "cases" to refer to the number of perpetrators alone. As I said above, some people will want to use the term "cases" to mean only that without any reference to the number of victims. What needed clarification was the fact that there really were 1,700 plus victims. Whether intentional or not, you made it appears as though you had an agenda to apply "case" only to the lower number as a way to obfuscate the fact that there were 1,006 alleged perpetrators and over 1,700 alleged victims. I thought it better to be concerned about both numbers, not just the lower one.

19 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

Spychanolizing the numbers means analyzing the data to find patterns or trends in the information.

That's also false. Psychoanalyzing the numbers definitely does not mean anything like that.

19 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

In theory, those 383 cases referenced by Holy Folk could have 600+ victims.

I'm sure that's possible. Although most of her data appears now to have come from merely analyzing the same spreadsheet you referenced. It's the spreadsheet we already have that gave her the 161 convictions, and 1,006 perpetrators for example. She appears to have had no extra help from police sources but merely made some assumptions based on the data about the number of convictions (which MUST have been reported at some point) along with her interpretation of another column about reporting statuses. That same spreadsheet has a column called "Reported to Authorities by JW." That column was claimed to have the word "NO" 1,006 times. Actually, it had "NO" only 994 times and 12 marked "UNCLEAR." (You referenced this earlier, I think.)

21 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

Could you explain how your chart shows an increase to 1857 even though the total number of "alleged" victims on the list is 1730?

Yes. Easily. The formula had been turned off before the JW Branch or the ARC made final edits to the document. I put the formula back in and it gave 1732 instead of 1730 in that same cell. If you count the numbers manually you will see that the formula is correct.

But that formula counts the cells containing the word "Unclear" as a 0, and I think the word "Unclear" should have represented at least ONE alleged victim. Before you tell me I was just making up numbers, let me know how many victims YOU think the term "Unclear" most likely represents.

That formula also counted NINE cells containing the term "10+" as 0. Because when you put a plus sign after a number it now becomes just a string of text, and can't be counted as a number. I counted them as only 10 even though it's possible that the average of those was much higher. 10+ doesn't mean that all nine alleged perpetrators all were associated with exactly 10 alleged victims. Again, before you tell me I was just making up numbers, please let me know what number you would have used for the term 10+.

Anyway, counting the 9 perpetrators with 10+ victims apiece added a minimum of 90 additional victims to their sheet, and adding the "Unclear" as 1 instead of 0 made up the rest.

[Pudgy]

If the Howdy Doody Show program ever comes back on the TV, the scripts have already been written!

Why, I remember back in the “Old Days”, when a hundred acolytes would apply to become monks at French Monasteries, and they would seat them in a drafty castle dining room at individual tables, ten across and ten deep, with ink and parchment, and the Abbot would enter the room, lower the hood on his robe, and say “Today … we are going to do spreadsheets!”.

….and his little hunchback midget sidekick with the gravely voice, tugging on his robe, would look up with his one good eye, and say “Master… Could you explain how your chart shows an increase to 1857 even though the total numberof "alleged" victims on the list is 1730?”.

It’s worth noting that the midget who was half Italian and half Spanish, some years before had his toes eaten off by wolves, but because of his survival was nicknamed “Lucky”.

 

[JW Insider]

21 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

The actual number of cases remains at 1006 over 65 years, and not 1730, 1766, or 1857.

As I made clear all along, I have used the term "case" to refer to every case of child abuse based on the number of alleged victims in the data. You have used it to refer to the number of alleged perpetrators. I have always agreed with the number 1,006 as the number of alleged perpetrators.

21 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

Subtracting 383 from 1006 would be the ideal solution.

Yes, it would be ideal in that it lowers the overall number, but I can't see why you would remove 383 alleged reported perpetrators from the total number of alleged perpetrators, just because those 383 were reported? Does reporting someone somehow make them no longer an alleged perpetrator?

21 hours ago, Fausto Hoover said:

Then you have those none witness cases.

One needs to be careful about making too much of these "NON-WITNESS CASES." In actuality, those cases come from a column called "ROLE IN CHURCH AT TIME OF FIRST ABUSE." It does not mean that were not Witnesses at the time of their second or third (or more) accusations.

That may explain why some of these same alleged perpetrators who were marked "Non-Witness" at the time of the first abuse accusation were called into a judicial hearing with the elders. Some of these so-called "non-Witnesses" were disfellowshipped, some reinstated, and some disfellowshipped again. Some of these "non-Witnesses" were removed from their position as an Elder or Ministerial Servant. Some of these were re-appointed to their position. In some cases, it was reported that the two-witness rule kept the case from progressing to a judicial committee.

So it can't be right to just blanketly say that all of these so-called "non-Witnesses" should not be counted. Especially if some were Elders and Ministerial Servants. In some cases, it may also have been another way of saying that their first case of child molestation happened before they were baptized.