Two people who say that as children they were sexually abused by a leader in a Hillsboro OR, Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation filed a $10.5 million lawsuit Monday – among the first in Oregon to accuse the religious organization of hiding decades of sexual abuse.
The suit alleges that Daniel Castellanos, who held the equivalent position of a baptized ordained minister in the North Hillsboro Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, molested Velicia Altson in 1986 or 1987 when she was 11 or 12 years old. The suit claims Castellanos also molested a boy, described only as John Roe in the suit, when the boy was 8 to 10 years old.
Alston said she chose to use her name and speak to reporters Monday because she wants to give victims a voice. She said filing civil litigation in hopes of changing the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ policies did not amount to committing an act against God, even though her attorneys say the Jehovah’s Witnesses might shun her for doing so.
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This rotten, warped and warping behavior is the perpetrators’ sexual orientation. That is the only way to explain it, because simple fetishes wear out, and change with the passage of time. Just as professionals in the mind sciences and field of religion have thrown up their hands and admitted that there is nothing they can do to “cure” homosexuality, professionals in law enforcement have realized that pedophiles cannot be cured, and really need to be on lifetime probation. It would be great if somehow they could be identified before they victimize their first child, but that would set all manner of bad precedents with regard to other crimes within our system of justice and the presumption of innocence.
Best course of action on this front would seem to be contnued education of the public, coupled with vigorous enforcement of the law. Victims should undergo intensive counseling, because a certain percentage of victims are known to become predators, perpetuating the cycle. People also need to realize that there are certain things from which their churches are not a totally effective sanctuary. As goes pedophilia, there can be no rose colored glasses.
BB
“…professionals in law enforcement have realized that pedophiles cannot be cured, and really need to be on lifetime probation.”
Lock their ass up for life I say. What selfishness these people display. Abusing an innocent child is of the lowest behavior within the human species. But in religious circles it is the norm.
The JW’s are no different than the armstrongites. The later also cover this deviant behavior up. I just can’t imagine Jesus whipping his dick out and putting it in a child. When the armstrongite’s dismisses Herbies incest with his daughter, this is what they are saying: It is acceptable.
My daughter and the grandchildren came down for Thanksgiving and she brought the turkey. She is actually an excellent cook, especially impressive considering what Armstrongism put her through. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Early in her teens, she had a best friend whose father was committing incest with her. The Worldwide Church of God did nothing when it was brought to them: They said it wasn’t their responsibility (Completely ignoring I Corinthians 5). My daughter did tell me before about the incest, but this was the first time she told me the WCG did nothing. Dennis Luker was the minister in the area.
In the afternoon, I showed my daughter “Herbert Armstrong’s Tangled Web” by David Robinson. She read part of the chapter on Incest. I told her that Herbert Armstrong committed incest with his daughter for 10 years.
At this point she told me how terrified she had been during high school: She was afraid to go to the bathroom in school and in church because Dennis Luker gave sermons on demons that frightened her very badly. I told her Dennis Luker had died. She said, “Good!”.
She has only partly recovered from the traumatization of the Armstrongist churches of God and Herbert Armstrong. She has had terrible nightmares of demons chasing her.
I don’t think that pedophiles in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia should be imprisoned for life. David Robinson pointed out in his book that had Herbert Armstrong been convicted of incest in the State of Texas before the mid 1950s, he would have been put to death. That is what I believe the pedophiles in the Armstrongist cult should be sentenced to without any exception.
Fortunately, generally speaking, the prisoners in jails and prisons find incest and pedophilia so heinous that they themselves usually carry out the death sentence themselves, finding, as it were, that those committing incest and pedophilia are the lowest of the low and have complete contempt of the other prisoners.
What is so disturbing about the situation in the CoHAM is that depending upon who commits the crime among the ministers, it is no big deal to the members — those committing incest and pedophilia are given a free pass. One commenter noted recently that Victor Kubic found the incest of Herbert Armstrong to be no big deal.
Those involved with the cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia should have absolutely nothing to do with it: Those who have been through Ambassador College have been so perverted as to be villains without redemption without even realizing just how out of step they are with civilization in general. They are guilty as being accessories after the fact and, in some cases, coconspirators.
It occurs to me that these monsters have been so corrupted that they can’t even begin to imagine how little integrity they have.
And as Rex Sexton said, another man’s sins don’t excuse your own.
The worst evil anyone can ever do is to corrupt an innocent’s conscience to do heinous acts without so much as a twinge — and that’s exactly what Armstrongism has done.
Speaking of demons, when I was in my late twenties, I was still having WCG-induced nightmares. I would be enjoying a normal r.e.m. sleep dream, and then suddenly feel myself being supernaturally picked up, and propelled at a high rate of speed directly into a wall, and as my head slammed it, abruptly wake up gasping for breath, and shaking, and then realizing it had been a nightmare. I’d also dream about being able to fly, which was great fun, until I flew over a WCG congregation, only to see the brethren look up at me and say, “Hey! There’s Bob! Look at him flying, he must be demon possessed!”
It’s bad enough to have nightmares, but it really sucks to have additional, unnecessary nightmares that were directly caused by your church!
BB