Ordered to hand over its 'known child molester' files, Watchtower settled two New York abuse suits over the same man

Two lawsuits filed the same day, by the same law firm, over the same man have ended in confidential settlements — but not before a New York judge ordered the Jehovah's Witnesses' publishing arm to hand over records it had fought for years to keep sealed, including its nationwide reports of men "known to have committed child sexual abuse" while serving as elders or ministerial servants.

The two suits, brought under New York's Child Victims Act, both accused the organization of failing to protect children from Robert Warne, a ministerial servant at the Jehovah's Witnesses' congregation in Middleport, a village in western New York.^[1][7] The court filings — complaints, decisions, and orders in the public record of Kings County (Brooklyn) Supreme Court — lay out allegations that were never tested at a trial, because both cases settled in the spring of 2026.^[6][9] A settlement is a negotiated resolution, not a finding of wrongdoing, and the organization admitted nothing. What the record does establish is a documented fight over the organization's own files, and a pair of rulings that went against it.

The two cases

The lawsuits were filed on the same date, May 18, 2021, by the firm Robins Kaplan LLP, on behalf of two people the court allowed to sue anonymously under the court-assigned pseudonyms "Pearl Grape" and "Daniel Owen."^[1][7] (Pseudonyms are common in child-abuse cases; the survivors' real names are shielded.)

Both plaintiffs say Warne abused them as children at the Middleport congregation. Grape, a woman, alleges the abuse happened from roughly 1975 to 1981, when she was about 7 to 13 years old.^[1] Owen, a man, alleges his abuse ran earlier — roughly 1965 to 1971, when he was about 8 to 14.^[7] Taken together, the two suits allege Warne abused children at the same congregation across a span of some sixteen years.

Each suit names the same three organizational defendants: the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. (the movement's principal U.S. corporation), the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses (its central leadership), and the Middleport Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses itself.^[1][7] The complaints allege the organization negligently placed and kept Warne in a position of trust, and that Jehovah's Witness policy kept reports of child abuse inside the organization rather than reporting them to police.^[1]

According to Grape's complaint, Warne "confessed to Congregation's elders that he had sexually abused" her, and the congregation "disfellowshipped" him — the Witnesses' term for expulsion — "and then reinstated" him.^[1] Watchtower's own court filing states that Warne was disfellowshipped in April 1981 after allegations that he had abused two girls.^[5] Those are the parties' assertions in litigation; no court ruled on whether the abuse occurred.

The Governing Body: dismissed in one case, kept in the other

One of the more striking features of the two cases is that the identical claim against the Governing Body came out in opposite ways.

In the Grape case, Justice Mark I. Partnow granted the Governing Body's motion to dismiss — a request to be dropped from a case before trial — in a decision filed September 13, 2023.^[2] His reasoning turned on a technical but consequential point of New York law: the Governing Body is an unincorporated association (a group with no separate legal existence apart from its members), and under a 1951 precedent, Martin v. Curran, someone suing such a group must show that every individual member authorized or approved the specific conduct at issue.^[2] Grape had not pleaded that the current members had authorized or ratified anything about Warne, the court held, so the claim against the Governing Body was dismissed.^[2] After that, only Watchtower and the Middleport congregation remained as defendants in Grape's case.

In the sister Owen case, the opposite happened. A different Kings County justice denied the Governing Body's motion to dismiss, and on November 6, 2024, the Appellate Division, Second Department — a mid-level state appeals court — affirmed that denial, keeping the Governing Body in the case.^[8] The appeals court did so "for the reasons stated in" a companion decision, RKJW1 Doe v. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., a published ruling issued the same day holding that the Governing Body is not entitled to dismissal at the pleading stage of a Child Victims Act suit.^[8] Because the Governing Body was never dropped from Owen's case, Owen's later settlement resolved claims against all three defendants, including the Governing Body.^[9]

The result: two suits, same firm, same abuser, same congregation — and, at least at the trial level, opposite outcomes on whether the organization's top body could be sued, with the controlling appeals-court law favoring keeping it in.

The fight over Watchtower's files

The most consequential rulings in the Grape case came in February 2026, from Justice Alexander M. Tisch, and they concerned discovery — the pre-trial stage in which each side must turn over relevant documents.

Watchtower had asked the court for a protective order — an order shielding certain records from disclosure — to avoid producing what the plaintiff sought: the responses congregations across the country had sent back to a letter Watchtower mailed to all U.S. bodies of elders in March 1997.^[3][5] That letter, according to Watchtower's own filing, asked each congregation to report anyone then serving or who had previously served as an elder or ministerial servant "who was known to have committed child sexual abuse."^[5] The replies form what critics have long described as a national repository of abuse reports held at the organization's headquarters.

Watchtower argued the material was irrelevant, privileged as clergy communications, and protected by religious autonomy, and it pointed to rulings in other states that had limited such discovery.^[5] On February 18, 2026, the court denied the protective order.^[3] It directed Watchtower to "provide the responses it received in response to its March 14, 1997 Letter" — allowing Watchtower to withhold only the identities of other victims, and only if it itemized each redaction on a privilege log.^[3]

A second ruling reached a document even closer to Warne. The Middleport congregation had produced a letter — a committee's report to Watchtower about the "Disfellowshipping of Robert Warne" — but had blacked out portions, asserting clergy-penitent privilege, the legal protection for confidential communications between a religious adviser and someone seeking spiritual counsel.^[4] The congregation argued the redactions shielded Warne's confession.^[4] The court rejected that and ordered the letter produced unredacted, in language that cut to the nature of the document:

Because an elder who investigated Warne had shared his statements with the rest of the committee and reported them upward to Watchtower rather than keeping them confidential, the court found, any privilege that might once have attached "has been pierced."^[4] It concluded the congregation had "not met its burden of establishing Warne's statement to the elders was privileged."^[4]

The settlements

Weeks after those rulings, both cases resolved. Owen's case was marked settled and disposed on the court's records in early May 2026, with the Governing Body still a defendant.^[9] In Grape's case, the plaintiff, Watchtower, and the Middleport congregation told the court on May 22, 2026 that they "have reached a settlement agreement in principle" and jointly asked the judge to mark the matter disposed and retain authority to enforce the deal.^[6] As is typical, the settlement terms — including any payment — are not stated in the public filings.

Neither settlement is an admission of liability, and the underlying abuse allegations were never adjudicated. But the settlements came only after the court had ordered the organization to open records it had fought to protect — a sequence that plaintiffs' lawyers in these cases have argued is the point of pressing such discovery in the first place.

A note on sourcing

This account is drawn entirely from the primary court record in Grape v. Watchtower (Kings County index No. 511806/2021) and Owen v. Watchtower (index No. 511807/2021): the complaints, the decisions and orders described above, Watchtower's own motion papers, the appellate ruling, and the settlement filings. The organization's positions are quoted from its own filings. The most sensitive documents at the center of the discovery fight — the congregation responses to the 1997 letter and the Warne committee letter — were ordered produced to the plaintiff under confidentiality rules and are not themselves public; the identities of other minors referenced in them remain shielded, and are not reported here.