Jehovah’s Witness Sexual Abuse Lawsuits and Settlements

Hundreds of civil lawsuits in the United States and abroad accuse the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their parent organization, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, of concealing child sexual abuse inside their congregations. The Jehovah’s Witness sexual abuse lawsuits generally allege the same pattern: elders learned of abuse, declined to call police, handled the matter through secret internal procedures, and left known offenders in contact with children. Those cases have produced multimillion-dollar jury verdicts and settlements, forced disclosure of a confidential abuse database kept at Watchtower headquarters, triggered an ongoing Pennsylvania grand jury investigation, and drawn government inquiries in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

The Policies Driving the Lawsuits

Nearly every suit traces back to a small set of Watchtower rules. In March 1997, the organization told all U.S. congregations to send reports on members accused of child molestation to its headquarters in “special blue envelopes.” Those reports feed what a Watchtower official described in court as an “easily searchable Microsoft SharePoint database.”¹ The organization has fought in court for years to keep that database out of plaintiffs’ hands.

Two internal rules draw the most legal fire. The first is the “two-witness rule,” based on the Witnesses’ reading of Deuteronomy 19:15, which requires either a confession or two witnesses to the act itself before elders will discipline an accused abuser. Without that proof, elders are told to “leave the matter to God’s judgment.” In November 2017, senior Watchtower official Gary Breaux said: “We will never change our Scriptural position on that subject.”²

The second is the organization’s stance on calling police. Since 1989, Watchtower leadership has told U.S. elders not to report child abuse to secular authorities unless specifically required by state law.³ Instead, elders are directed to call a Watchtower legal hotline that has been in place since July 1989.⁴ The Watchtower has said its “policies on child protection comply with the law, including any requirements for elders to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.”¹

A third practice, “disfellowshipping,” cuts a member off from contact with every other Witness, including immediate family. Former members and prosecutors have described it as a tool that keeps victims from going to police. An assistant district attorney involved in an Oklahoma case noted that victims there did not call police specifically because they feared being disfellowshipped.⁵

Major U.S. Verdicts and Settlements

Conti v. Watchtower (California)

The first major jury verdict came in 2012, when Candace Conti sued her abuser Jonathan Kendrick, the North Fremont Congregation, and the Watchtower. The jury awarded $28 million, later reduced to $15.6 million, with $8.6 million of that in punitive damages. Evidence showed that in 1993 elders had received Kendrick’s confession to abusing his stepdaughter and never told police or the congregation.⁶

On appeal in 2015, a California Court of Appeal narrowed the result. The court ruled that the Watchtower had no legal duty to warn congregants about known molesters and eliminated the entire punitive award, since the secrecy policy had been its sole basis. The court kept the negligent-supervision finding tied to Kendrick’s door-to-door preaching activity and sustained a reduced award of roughly $2.8 million. Fault had been apportioned 60 percent to Kendrick, 27 percent to the Watchtower, and 13 percent to the Fremont Congregation.⁷

The Gonzalo Campos Cases in San Diego

Two San Diego lawsuits became the main battleground over the Watchtower’s secret files. Jose Lopez and Osbaldo Padron both alleged childhood abuse by Gonzalo Campos, an elder at local congregations in the 1980s and 1990s. Campos had confessed to abusing at least eight children between 1982 and 1995.⁸ Despite knowing about the 1982 abuse, elders allowed him continued contact with children and involvement with another congregation.⁹

When the Watchtower refused to produce its abuse database, the Lopez trial court entered a $13.5 million default judgment. An appellate court reversed the default on procedural grounds but upheld the underlying order requiring the organization to turn over its records.¹⁰ In Padron, the court imposed a $4,000 daily fine for noncompliance, which the California Court of Appeal upheld, rebuking the Watchtower for “obstinately” refusing to produce documents and finding that it had “abused the discovery process.”⁹ Both cases settled for undisclosed amounts in March 2018.⁸

The $40 Million Hawaii Settlement

In July 2023, a $40 million settlement was announced in a Hawaii case brought by a plaintiff identified as “N.D.” against the Makaha Congregation and elder Keneth L. Apana. Filed in 2020, the suit alleged Apana abused the plaintiff in 1992 when the victim was twelve. Court findings identified Apana as a sexual predator who abused minor girls over more than two decades.¹¹

The Pennsylvania Grand Jury Investigation

The largest U.S. law enforcement action against the Jehovah’s Witnesses is a statewide grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania, opened under then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro following a referral from York County prosecutors.¹² Prosecutors have used subpoenas to obtain internal congregation files and entries from the Watchtower’s “CM” (child maltreatment) database. Many of those entries conclude there is “no duty to report” allegations to police, often citing confidential communications with elders.⁴

As of mid-2025, the investigation had produced 16 arrests and 11 convictions, with at least three defendants awaiting trial. Only one defendant has been acquitted. Western Pennsylvania has seen at least nine arrests.⁴ Notable outcomes include:

Shaun Sheffer of the Zelienople congregation was convicted in January 2025 of three counts of rape, three counts of indecent assault, and corruption of minors, for assaulting a girl between ages seven and twelve. He was sentenced to 14 to 34 years. Prosecutors said congregation leaders knew of the allegations about a decade earlier but never questioned the victim or contacted police.¹³
Marc Brown was sentenced to up to 30 years for assaulting two young girls.⁴
Jesse Hill pleaded guilty in 2023 to two counts of rape and received 10 to 20 years.⁴
David Balosa, from a Philadelphia congregation, was convicted in September 2024 of two felony counts of aggravated indecent assault. He was sentenced in January 2025 to two to four years, plus six years of probation, lifetime sex offender registration, and a bar on holding leadership roles in religious communities.¹⁴
Eric Eleam, targeted by the grand jury over alleged abuse in Butler County, died by suicide in 2025 when law enforcement arrived with an arrest warrant.⁴

A parallel legal fight concerns whether Jehovah’s Witness elders are protected by Pennsylvania’s “clergyman privilege.” A Philadelphia congregation sued the state in 2020, arguing its elders are exempt from mandatory reporting for information shared in confidence. A lower court dismissed the suit, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has sent the case back for further review.⁴

Recent Civil Lawsuits

Barry Davis v. Watchtower (Louisiana)

A lawsuit filed June 12, 2024, in New Orleans civil district court alleges that Joseph Fitzgerald Hall, a former ministerial servant and elder, raped and sexually abused Barry Davis between 1990 and 1996, starting when Davis was eleven. The case was made possible by a 2021 Louisiana law that temporarily eliminated civil statutes of limitations for child molestation claims; the state Supreme Court upheld that law’s constitutionality the same day the suit was filed.¹⁵

In his required response, Hall admitted to an “inappropriate relationship” with Davis and described specific sexual acts. At a March 27, 2025, deposition he confirmed the truth of those written admissions but invoked the Fifth Amendment at least 48 times on other questions. The suit also alleges that the Watchtower and local congregation leaders failed to report the abuse and ordered Davis to keep it quiet. Hall received only an 11-month “disfellowship” in 1998 and, as of 2025, continued participating in religious activities at a congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina. An attorney for the Watchtower said Hall’s actions were “contrary to the beliefs and practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses” and occurred “outside the scope of any religious activities.”¹⁵

John Doe v. Watchtower (Georgia)

In February 2026, a civil complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on behalf of a teenager identified as “John Doe.” It alleges that Lorenza Davis, a Bible study teacher at a Kingdom Hall in Cordele, Georgia, subjected the plaintiff to more than 100 incidents of sexual abuse between August 2019 and January 2022. Davis pleaded guilty in March 2024 to two counts of aggravated child molestation and was sentenced to 60 years in prison, with 27 to be served in confinement. The civil suit names the Jehovah’s Witness Governing Body and Watchtower entities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida, alleging that church leaders knowingly let Davis conduct one-on-one Bible studies in violation of the church’s own COVID-era restrictions.¹⁶

How Revival Statutes Reopened These Cases

Many of the recent suits were only possible because states passed laws temporarily reviving claims that had expired under old statutes of limitations. In 2019 alone, 13 states and the District of Columbia extended or eliminated limitations periods for child sex abuse claims. Eight jurisdictions enacted full revival statutes allowing previously barred claims to proceed: New York, the District of Columbia, Montana, New Jersey, Arizona, Vermont, Rhode Island, and North Carolina.¹⁷

Louisiana’s version, passed in 2021, was initially declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in March 2024. On rehearing, a five-justice majority reversed course on June 12, 2024, ruling the revival provision served a “legitimate government interest” and that the rights of survivors outweighed defendants’ interest in asserting expired limitations defenses.¹⁸ A subsequent law extended the filing window until June 2027.¹⁹

In these revival-window cases, Watchtower attorneys have repeatedly argued that elders and ministerial servants are unpaid volunteers rather than employees, so the organization owes no duty of care. Plaintiffs have countered with the Watchtower’s own internal documents, including a 1998 letter warning elders that appointing known child abusers to positions of trust could trigger “costly lawsuits.”¹⁷

The Clergy-Penitent Privilege Fight

A key legal obstacle in these cases is the clergy-penitent privilege, which in many states lets clergy withhold information shared in spiritual counseling from mandatory abuse reporting requirements. An Associated Press review found 33 states exempt clergy from mandatory reporting when information comes through a confessional or counseling context. More than 130 bills over the past two decades have tried to close the loophole and largely failed, often because of lobbying from religious organizations, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.²⁰

Washington state has become a test case. The state removed clergy from its list of mandatory reporters in 1975 and kept a privilege shielding church communications. After investigative reporting on how Jehovah’s Witnesses in Washington had covered up decades of abuse, State Senator Noel Frame introduced legislation making clergy mandatory reporters. Governor Bob Ferguson signed the law on May 2, 2025, explicitly overriding the privilege for child abuse reporting. Three days later, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the new law, saying it appeared to violate the First Amendment by failing to carve out privileged communications.²¹

International Investigations

Several national governments have examined the organization directly, with mixed outcomes.

Australia

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse held public hearings on the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Case Study 29) in Sydney in July and August 2015.²² The commission reviewed internal records showing the Watchtower held documentation on 1,006 alleged child sexual abusers in Australia, none of whom had been reported to police by the organization.²³

United Kingdom

The UK Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain in May 2014. The investigation stretched nine years, in part because of legal challenges by the charity that a judge said created “ongoing risks” to children. In its August 2023 final report, the Commission found Watch Tower had been “not as straightforward or transparent” as it should have been but did not find deliberate obstruction. By then, safeguarding responsibility had been transferred to the Kingdom Hall Trust after a merger of more than 1,000 congregation charities.²⁴ The UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse separately found that the two-witness rule “lacks compassion for victims, disregards the reality of sexual abuse, and serves to protect perpetrators.”²⁵

Canada

Two class actions were filed in Canada in 2017. In Quebec, the Superior Court authorized the class action brought by plaintiff Lisa Blais in February 2019; it survived a Watchtower appeal in December 2020 and is proceeding.²⁶ In Ontario, a parallel class-action certification was rejected by the Superior Court of Justice in July 2024. That court found the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not operate institutions like schools or orphanages that would create a traditional duty of care, calling the alleged abuses “private and familial rather than an institutional matter.”²⁷

Why Holding the Watchtower Liable Is Hard

Corporate structure has been a persistent complication. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania is a nonprofit corporation established in 1884, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses use “dozens of legal entities in various countries” to support their work; the organization says its religious activities are “not dependent on any of them.”²⁸ The UK Charity Commission’s inquiry was hampered by what it called a “significant lack of clarity” and “blurred” roles among the various entities, which clouded responsibility for child protection.²⁵

The Watchtower’s volunteer defense has had mixed results in American courts. A California appeals court rejected it in a 2018 ruling, finding that elders hold the highest authority at the congregational level and that liability can attach even for abuse occurring off congregation premises.¹⁷ As new suits continue to be filed under state revival windows and as the Pennsylvania grand jury keeps producing arrests, the question of institutional responsibility remains the central legal fault line.

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