A jury ruling this week that the Jehovah's Witnesses must pay $35 million to a woman who says the church covered up her childhood sexual abuse puts a rare public spotlight on the normally insular religious organization, experts say.
The penalty, handed down by a Montana jury on Wednesday, will go to a 21-year-old woman who accused the Jehovah's Witnesses' national organization of telling local clergy members not to report her abuser, a relative who she and another woman say molested them and a third family member. The church plans to appeal.
They're a pretty insular and generally odd bunch; most likely if you encounter them at all, it's when a couple of them ring your doorbell in order to "witness" to you. They're probably best known for that approach, although for a while there, I received regular mailings of their "Watchtower" pamphlets, for reasons that remain unclear to this day.
"They are an eccentric group in the sense that they separate themselves from public life," said Mark Silk, a professor and the director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. "They don't vote. They don't celebrate birthdays and holidays. They don't say the pledge [of allegiance]. They are not just another Christian denomination."
He can say that again; "fun" is not to be part of life on this earthly plane, it seems.
