Jehovah's Witnesses Join Australia's Child Abuse Redress Scheme After Charity-Status Threat

The Jehovah's Witnesses agreed in early March 2021 to join Australia's National Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, roughly eight months after the federal government publicly named the organization among institutions that had refused to participate.^[1][2] The organization tied its decision to a new legal requirement, and to the government's move to strip non-participating charities of their tax status.^[3]

The National Redress Scheme was established following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It allows survivors of institutional child sexual abuse to seek redress, including payments and access to counselling, from the institutions responsible.^[4]

Named as a holdout in July 2020

In July 2020, the federal government publicly identified institutions that had declined to join the Scheme. The Jehovah's Witnesses were among a group of organizations announced as non-participants; secondary reporting put the number named at that point at six.^[1]

The Jehovah's Witnesses had argued that they lacked the "institutional settings" that would require participation, and said they intended to handle abuse claims individually rather than through the formal Scheme.^[1]

The charity-status threat

The government moved to pressure holdout charities. Under rules it introduced, institutions that refused to join would be named, made ineligible for Commonwealth grants, and risk being stripped of their charitable status and the associated tax concessions.^[3]

Senator Anne Ruston, then Minister for Families and Social Services in the Morrison Government, framed the consequences in a media release. "Any institution which fails to participate will be named and shamed, become ineligible for Commonwealth grants and risk being stripped of their charitable status and, therefore, lose associated tax concessions," she said.^[3]

Ruston also linked the delay directly to survivors. "It is disappointing survivors who have named the Jehovah's Witnesses have been forced to have their application for redress on hold this long while the organisation has been unwilling to join," she said.^[2]

"Now that the law requires charities to join"

On or around 3 March 2021, the Jehovah's Witnesses announced they would join the Scheme. In a statement to the Australian Associated Press, the organization tied the reversal to the new legal requirement rather than to a change of position.^[1][2]

Survivors' advocates characterized the shift as reluctant. A lawyer for the firm Maurice Blackburn said it was "extremely disappointing that it has taken the threat of financial penalties such as the stripping of charitable status to force the Jehovah's Witnesses to do the right thing by abuse survivors," according to reporting by The New Daily.^[2]

Formally participating by September 2021

The Jehovah's Witnesses were formally participating in the Scheme by 10 September 2021, according to a media release from Ruston.^[5] They were one of a group of institutions — reported at 34 — that signed up after the government's funding and charity-status rules took effect.^[2]

The sequence, as documented in the public record, ran from the July 2020 naming of non-participants, through the legislative threat to charitable status, to the organization's March 2021 statement of compliance and its formal participation later that year.^[4][5]