Jehovah's Witness paedophile avoids jail term

[Big Les]

See the BBC (http://news.google.co.uk/news/url?sa=t&ct=uk/0-0&fp=46cd893e061f5be9&ei=cOPNRqj0PISioAPo5tngDQ&url=http%3A//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/6960166.stm&cid=1119840390).

I'm no "hangin's too good fer 'em" type, not by a long chalk, but abuse of 13 young children over a period of years by someone in a position of power (over them) seems like it deserves more than community bloody service.

[Katana]

Linky?

Especially since this is in the religion sub-forum. I presume that the man's religion has something to do with the story?

[Big Les]

Sorry Katana - I remembered to put the link in 14 minutes late.

His religion is as relevant to this as any Catholic priest abuse story - it put him in a position of power over families and young children, and he abused that position. Repeatedly.

If mods want to move this to Social Issues, fair enough.

[andyandy]

I can't understand what we have prisons for if persistent sex offenders don't warrent jail time...

24 counts of indecent assault and gross indecency on 13 victims aged 18 months and older.

twenty four counts? FFS. :mad:

Hopefully there will be an appeal against the verdict....

[SomeGuy]

This doesn't belong in religion, I don't even know why the headline specifically reads that he's a jw, since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with his crimes (other than getting unwarranted trust for just belonging to that church)

This is utterly disgusting of course.

((See, I'm not totally anti-religious :D))

[Big Les]

The more I think about it, the more I agree with you. Although others have commented on the abuse of religious influence by child abusers, this guy is a "broken" (and supposedly rehabilated) individual whose religious affiliations have no direct bearing upon his sexual predilictions and crimes. Especially as my original intention was to point out the unjust sentence, rather than the religious angle. It still could go either way in my opinion - I leave that to the mods.

I still feel his religion is an important factor in this. To quote the Guardian:

Michael Porter, 38, used his trusted position as a prominent Jehovah's Witness to prey on youngsters, many of them children of members of the church.

A respected member of the church in Somerset, Porter regularly babysat for youngsters, took them on holiday and invited them for sleepovers at his home.

Obviously a similar situation could be true of a Scout leader or other respected individual. But in this case it was his religion that gave him opportunity and facilitated the situation.

Perhaps more relevant is this:

The church said yesterday it would support him. But it denied claims by Porter's sister that he would continue to come into contact with children through his religion and visit families.

A spokesman said: "He will be carefully supervised."

That religious angle is surely open for debate as to its relevance, isn't it? Anyway, sorry if I've made the wrong call on this one - by all means relocate it if that's deemed more appropriate.

[Corpse Cruncher]

I saw this on the news yesterday. What on earth is the judicial system coming to. He did the crime and he continued to do it, and I doubt very much he has stopped it either. Therefore he is shown as a predator and should be jailed accordingly.

Is that it now, all paedophiles will claim to be Jehovah's witness's or something like that to avoid jail-time?

[andyandy]

Obviously a similar situation could be true of a Scout leader or other respected individual. But in this case it was his religion that gave him opportunity and facilitated the situation.

.


I think in the context the religious angle is relevant given the details you've outlined - both exploitation of his position within the religion, and the religion's response to the abuse.

I simply can't understand how this doesn't merit a jail sentence.

[Big Les]

I saw this on the news yesterday. What on earth is the judicial system coming to. He did the crime and he continued to do it, and I doubt very much he has stopped it either. Therefore he is shown as a predator and should be jailed accordingly.

Is that it now, all paedophiles will claim to be Jehovah's witness's or something like that to avoid jail-time?

It isn't clear whether or not his religiousness might have influenced the judge to take it easy on him. I'll see if I can find out the judge's wording. Much as I might suspect that to be the case (even if only subconsciously on the judge's part) I've seen no evidence to support that as yet. Supposedly he was persuaded by tales of childhood woe (which the sister says are untrue) and by his successful therapy sessions. I think it's reasonable speculation to suggest that the church backing him up might have helped to persuade the judge that he's fine to get away without jail time.

[Katana]

A leading Jehovah's Witness who was branded an "evil monster" by his own sister was spared prison today, despite being convicted of 24 counts of indecent assault and gross indecency on children - one of which was committed on an 18-month-old baby.

Michael Porter, 38, of Barnet, north London, was handed a three-year community rehabilitation order despite having admitted to using his trusted position as a ministerial servant in the movement to indulge his habits as a paedophile.

...

The court heard that Porter was a respected member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Portishead and Clevedon, when he committed his crimes.

Parents trusted him to look after their children, and Porter regularly babysat for youngsters, took them away on holidays and invited them for sleepovers at his home.

"He was in a very high position. Children loved him and parents worshipped him," Ms Hughes said. "They thought he was God’s son on earth. He was the last man they would ever suspect of doing something so horrific.

"He abused dozens of children and even a baby. But he’s still free."


Link (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2316396.ece)

Bolding obviously mine.

How...HOW could this guy get what amounts to a slap on the wrist? He abused so many children, including an 18-MONTH-OLD! An 18-month-old? Unbelievable!

AND he admits to using his trusted position in the church as a means through which to satisfy his disgusting desires.

I'm really curious to know just what "therapy" he had since we know how well that worked for John Geoghan (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/23/geoghan/index.html). :rolleyes:

As to which sub-forum this belongs in, I can go either way, and don't worry too much about it Big Les. Sometimes we put a thread in one and it takes a different turn. Let's see where this goes.

[tkingdoll]

My understanding is that most paedophiles reoffend - will look for the cite but if anyone has one to hand that would be groovy.

Anyway, if that is true, then we would do well to be skeptical of his amazing turnaround via therapy.

I have no idea if the moral tenets of JWism include 'don't poke around with children', but if a lifetime of religion and all its alleged 'do unto others' morality can't persuade this guy that kiddy fiddling is wrong, then I don't believe that therapy will.

Paedophilia cannot be cured. But behaviour can be controlled - just not sure what evidence there is to support it in this case.

Besides, if the church failed to protect children from this man before, then I don't see why we should give it a second chance to 'supervise' him.

[Flo]

Obviously a similar situation could be true of a Scout leader or other respected individual. But in this case it was his religion that gave him opportunity and facilitated the situation.

No, it was his position in an organisation where he was in constant unsupervised contact with his victims. The fact that said organisation was religious is irrelevant, since as you yourself pointed, he could have been a scout leader or a member of any other non-religious business.

Had the scandalously light sentence been motivated by his religion, then it would have been relevant.

[andyandy]

No, it was his position in an organisation where he was in constant unsupervised contact with his victims. The fact that said organisation was religious is irrelevant, since as you yourself pointed, he could have been a scout leader or a member of any other non-religious business. .

and if a scout leader committed such acts and elicited a response from the scout association, and if we had a dedicated Scouts forum then it would warrant inclusion within that section. :)

[andyandy]

My understanding is that most paedophiles reoffend - will look for the cite but if anyone has one to hand that would be groovy.

Anyway, if that is true, then we would do well to be skeptical of his amazing turnaround via therapy.

I have no idea if the moral tenets of JWism include 'don't poke around with children', but if a lifetime of religion and all its alleged 'do unto others' morality can't persuade this guy that kiddy fiddling is wrong, then I don't believe that therapy will.

Paedophilia cannot be cured. But behaviour can be controlled - just not sure what evidence there is to support it in this case.

Besides, if the church failed to protect children from this man before, then I don't see why we should give it a second chance to 'supervise' him.

I think this is the area society struggles most with. Sexual desire is a very base emotion, the elephant of the automatic subconscious which the rider of the conscious often confabulates to excuse. Perhaps I'm out of step with medical opinion, but i'd be of the opinion that pedophilia should be viewed in terms of biological compunction, and as such there could be no rehabilitation of desire, any more than I could be rehabilitated to stop being attracted to women. So rehabilitation seems to mean "ability to suppress sexual desire." I don't know how possible that actually is - i suppose it is contingent on to how strong the elephant is. Far from seeking to excuse such acts, a view of biological compunction if anything i think leads to more strident measures - and if we had special institutions where life actually meant life, for all such predatory offenders I think that would better than attempting to over-lay a general crime rehabilitation model onto specific child abuse sexual compunction.

[Q-Source]

I am not surprised if this happened in the UK. This country seems to favour criminals all the time, no matter what their crime.

[icantlogoff]

When your social affiliation i.e in this case a JW,s means by default you are going to have contact with children, I think its relevant to have statement from both the head office of the JW's and some public reassurance as to how they are going to protect the children within their religion. The reasoning on this goes further as well, When I was JW i had a number of NON- JW friends, so this reassurance from the Watchtower and bible tract society is vital, and a social responsibility.

(although i don't agree) i understand why he hasn't been disfellowshipped( JW's way of throwing someone out of the congregation) As knowing the congregation set up , i can not see how such an individual will not come into contact with children unless he has someone with him at all times.. e.g
Congregation meetings and toilet visits
Circuit and district assemblies ( where supervision of children is certainly more lax)

The complaint i have heard a number of times is that they never mention the religion of every pedophile just when its a JW or a catholic priest. but the issues is that JW's wear their religion openly and vocally stand for moral people ( in their view) so when that morality is broken it needs to be publicly addressed.

I am intrigued as to how his local congregation will handle him now, as he hasn't been disfellowshipped, he needs to be treat like someone who is not a pedophile... that sounds very dangerous.

[drkitten]

and if a scout leader committed such acts and elicited a response from the scout association, and if we had a dedicated Scouts forum then it would warrant inclusion within that section.

Hmm. So a colleague of mine is a Californian, a Jew, a massage therapist, a martial artist, a computer programmer, and gay.

So if he turned out to be a pedophile as well, and made the news -- would we put that thread into Geography, Religion, Science-and-Medicine, Sports, Computers-and-Technology, or Politics?

Oh, I should also point out that he's an amateur magician. So I guess it would go in the Magic section, too?

[scratchy]

We had a case of sexual abuse among JW here in Sweden a couple of years ago. It was revealed publicly long after it happened, but then it turned out that the church had knew about it, protected the offender and stopped the kids from going forward. Hence more kids had been molested, untill the **** hit the fan when some of them were old enough to break out.

[Darat]

There is another issue with regards to this case - judges have been giving out longer and longer sentences for decades and this is at least being partially fueled by the media constantly portraying sentencing as getting less severe. This is why we have the largest prison population per capita in the EU (or one of the highest not checked recently) and we send more people to jail for more offences.

Saying all that I just cannot (from the limited facts I have) see how this sentence either punishes the git or protects society

[Reaver]

We had a case of sexual abuse among JW here in Sweden a couple of years ago. It was revealed publicly long after it happened, but then it turned out that the church had knew about it, protected the offender and stopped the kids from going forward. Hence more kids had been molested, untill the **** hit the fan when some of them were old enough to break out.

I think the BBC's Panorama did a show on this type of thing by the JW. It even had one of their Elders who had quit and brought out some list of 20k+ sex-offenders that the JW had compiled from within their congregation.

[andyandy]

Hmm. So a colleague of mine is a Californian, a Jew, a massage therapist, a martial artist, a computer programmer, and gay.

So if he turned out to be a pedophile as well, and made the news -- would we put that thread into Geography, Religion, Science-and-Medicine, Sports, Computers-and-Technology, or Politics?

Oh, I should also point out that he's an amateur magician. So I guess it would go in the Magic section, too?

it would have to have a separate thread in each ;)

[darnell11]

Yay! I'll just remember the next time I molest a baby to just say, when I get caught ( because I know i will), " I got help. I'm a changed man!" Then I won't have to go to jail! I can even admit I raped 20 other little kids and I'll still be okay!

[Mid]

Well a comment piece on commentisfree argues that one of the plus factors the judge used in deciding his sentence was that he was a "man of faith"

But then came the bit that caused me to jump from the sofa. According to the Ten O' clock news report, the judge, weighing up the pros and cons, had put in his "pro" column that Porter was a "man of faith".http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/padraig_reidy/2007/08/faith_in_the_system.html

So maybe this belonged in the religion forum after all.

ETA: Although some of the later comments go on to argue against this being the case so go figure.

[andyandy]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/padraig_reidy/2007/08/faith_in_the_system.html

So maybe this belonged in the religion forum after all.

move it back mods!
:)

[Big Les]

Nice catch Mid. Although I clearly didn't know that at the time, I did wonder whether such regard for faith might have played a part.

[ponderingturtle]

I can't understand what we have prisons for if persistent sex offenders don't warrent jail time...



twenty four counts? FFS. :mad:

Hopefully there will be an appeal against the verdict....


Well what does "indecent assault and gross indecency " mean? That could cover a very broad range of behaviors, and does not sound to different from what the Connecticut teacher was charged with for being in the room when a computer was displaying pornographic popups.

hmm, seems she was charged with child endangerment.

[ponderingturtle]

My understanding is that most paedophiles reoffend - will look for the cite but if anyone has one to hand that would be groovy.

I don't know if most do, but it has one of the higher recitivism rates and unlike most crime the rates do not go down with age either.

[sophia8]

Well what does "indecent assault and gross indecency " mean? That could cover a very broad range of behaviors, and does not sound to different from what the Connecticut teacher was charged with for being in the room when a computer was displaying pornographic popups.

In UK law, "assault" occurs when you make uninvited and unwanted physical contact with someone. So simple "assault" would be, say, punching somebody. "Indecent assault" is when the contact involves some sexual area - putting your hand on a woman's breast without her consent or invitation, for instance. "Gross indecency" is a rather general term, but it always involves sexual activity (though not nessessarily contact) by one or both parties. Peadophiles who have 'groomed' children over the net via webcam have been charged with gross indecency even when they have never had physical contact with the child.
So, no, this case is completely different from that of the Connecticut teacher. The man is most certainly a predatory paedophile and he ought to have been locked up.

[ponderingturtle]

In UK law, "assault" occurs when you make uninvited and unwanted physical contact with someone. So simple "assault" would be, say, punching somebody. "Indecent assault" is when the contact involves some sexual area - putting your hand on a woman's breast without her consent or invitation, for instance. "Gross indecency" is a rather general term, but it always involves sexual activity (though not nessessarily contact) by one or both parties. Peadophiles who have 'groomed' children over the net via webcam have been charged with gross indecency even when they have never had physical contact with the child.
So, no, this case is completely different from that of the Connecticut teacher. The man is most certainly a predatory paedophile and he ought to have been locked up.

Thank you that is more informative about what the conduct was.

The reason I brought that up is that you can have a difficult time saying that just because someone was convicted of some offense classifed as a sex offense it is equal. Public urination is a sex crime in some american states, that does not mean I think that someone charged with even many counts of it should recieve a prison sentance, and the exact name of the charge is not always informative for the lay audiance.

[tkingdoll]

This just in: his sentence is being reviewed as it is felt to be unduly lenient. Huzzah for common sense!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7002941.stm

[JJR]

I'm feeling fickle. Let's all request that this tread be moved to "Current Events" and have the thread starter banned.

[Tumblehome]

The complaint i have heard a number of times is that they never mention the religion of every pedophile just when its a JW or a catholic priest. but the issues is that JW's wear their religion openly and vocally stand for moral people ( in their view) so when that morality is broken it needs to be publicly addressed.


Exactly. He was trusted because he was religious. If he was Joe Plumber with no morally superior credentials, it wouldn't be a news story.