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Church did not sanction self-confessed paedophile

ABC

ABC

A paedophile who admitted to molesting his daughters was not believed or sanctioned for it by the Jehovah’s Witness Church, the royal commission into child sex abuse hears.

It is the second day that church elder Dino Ali has been questioned about the way he responded to one particularly shocking case of abuse.

On Tuesday a woman known by the initials BCG, who was a member of the Mareeba congregation in Far North Queensland in the 1980s and 1990s, told the commission that when she spoke to the church hierarchy of the abuse against her and her three sisters she was treated with disdain.

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On Wednesday morning, in the face of new evidence, Mr Ali was questioned by counsel for BCG, Pauline David, about why no finding of abuse was made despite the perpetrator BCH making a confession.

On Tuesday Mr Ali gave contrary evidence that there was no confession or corroborating witness accounts, therefore the abuse could not be proved under biblical law.

The commission has heard the church has not reported a single suspected perpetrator of child sexual abuse to police despite there being more than 1000 since 1950.

BCH was eventually tried and jailed once his daughter left the church and reported the abuse to police.

Mr Ali was questioned by counsel assisting the commission, Angus Stewart, on Wednesday morning about why the church did not take that step itself, seeming to suggest the church believed it was up to the perpetrators to report themselves.

Mr Stewart asked him whether it was appropriate for the perpetrator BCH to be walking the streets and continuing an ordinary life after the allegations.

“It’s certainly not a good thing for him to be freely doing what he was doing,” Mr Ali said.

On Tuesday BCG gave evidence that her father sexually abused her on a number of occasions over a two-week period when she was 17 years old.

She believes he may also have abused her around the age of five, and her three sisters have said they were also abused at a young age.

“It felt so wrong that my father’s abuse affected me so much and yet didn’t even qualify as something wrong in the eyes of Jehovah’s Witnesses who professed to be acting with the authority of Jehovah and the Holy Spirit which is considered to be above Australian law,” she said.

BCG said the formal proceedings offered by the church were woefully inadequate.

“The trials were easy compared to what I had been through with the elders during the committee meetings – at least the court has rules when questioning survivor witnesses,” she said.

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses can do what and insinuate whatever they want and there are no protections for the victims at all.”

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