UPDATE: Oregon abuse suit against Watchtower takes an unusual route: federal trafficking law

Update, 14 August 2026: the judge has refused to waive the plaintiff's court filing fee — a ruling about her finances, not about her claims.

On 12 August 2026, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken denied Meleah Thompson's application to proceed in forma pauperis, or IFP.^[3] That is the request, filed alongside her complaint, to bring the case without paying the court's $405 filing fee up front — a provision meant to keep the federal courts open to people who cannot afford the cost of using them.

The order gives two reasons.

First, she has lawyers. The judge wrote that people who apply to sue without paying the fee are usually representing themselves, having been unable to afford a lawyer, and for whom "the $405 filing fee is a formidable barrier to federal court access."^[3] Thompson is represented by two attorneys. They did not tell the court how they are being paid, and the judge wrote that she "presumes, given Plaintiff's IFP filings, that the representation is based on a contingency fee agreement" — an arrangement in which a lawyer is paid a share of whatever the case recovers, and nothing if it recovers nothing.^[3] Citing a 1996 federal decision from New York, the order states that such applications "ordinarily should not be granted in a contingency fee context."^[3] The judge added that where a plaintiff has already secured counsel "there is little risk that the plaintiff will be denied meaningful access to the federal courts" — while noting that a barrier may still exist, which is why some courts require counsel to disclose the fee arrangement.^[3]

Second, her financial showing fell short. The order concludes that "Plaintiff's income, obligations, and assets, taken together, are insufficient to show financial hardship and inability to pay the $405 filing fee."^[3]

What the order does not decide

A judge handling one of these applications has two questions to answer: whether the person can afford the fee, and — separately — whether the case is frivolous, malicious, fails to state a legal claim, or seeks money from a defendant who is legally immune from paying it. That second screening step, under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B), lets a judge dismiss a case before the defendants are ever served with it.

The order sets out both steps and decides only the first.^[3] It contains no assessment of the strength or weakness of Thompson's claims, and it dismisses nothing: on the record through the docket's most recent entry, that screening has not taken place.^[2][3]

The fee must now be paid for the case to go forward, and the order sets no deadline for paying it.^[3] On the case docket, whose most recent entry is the 12 August order, nothing further has been recorded.^[2]

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A Colorado woman has sued the Jehovah's Witnesses' principal American corporation, an Oregon congregation and two men, alleging she was sexually abused as a child by men connected to the congregation she grew up in near Eugene, and that elders who were told did not report it to authorities. The suit takes an unusual route: it asks a federal court to treat the abuse as human trafficking.^[1]

The complaint was filed on 20 July 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division.^[1] Everything in it is an allegation. Nothing has been tested in court, and on the docket, whose most recent entry is the 12 August order, no defendant has responded.^[2]

Who is suing, and whom

The plaintiff is Meleah Thompson, now an adult living in Colorado, who is suing under her own name rather than anonymously.^[1] The complaint says she was raised in the faith and attended the Junction City East Kingdom Hall in Lane County, Oregon, from childhood.^[1]

She names four defendants, plus ten unidentified "John Does":^[1]

• Matthew Zoller, a California resident who the complaint says was associated with the congregation
• Jason Farr, an Oregon resident and her brother-in-law, who the complaint says was not a congregation member at the time
• Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., the corporation the complaint describes as directing Jehovah's Witness congregations across the United States and setting the rules elders must follow
• the Junction City East Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses itself

She is represented by Joel Shapiro of Portland and Travis R. Walker, a Florida lawyer appearing in the Oregon court by special permission for this case alone.^[1][3]

What the complaint alleges

According to the complaint, the abuse began with grooming between roughly 1989 and 1992 — gifts, special attention and "assurances of spiritual approval" that it says were used to build dependency — and escalated between about 1992 and 1995 into repeated sexual assaults by Zoller and Farr, while Thompson was a minor.^[1] The complaint says Zoller and other adult members of the congregation cultivated access to her through religious and social gatherings.^[1]

It also says she was assaulted at around age fourteen by an adult congregant, Gene Baird, who it states has since died. She reported that incident to elders, the complaint alleges, and they did not notify authorities, investigate, or restrict his access.^[1]

The heart of the institutional claim concerns what the complaint says happened when she reported the abuse in about 1995–1996, to elders it identifies as Bill Neuhaus, Robert Kimes, Mel Zoller and Ray Clark. No report was made to civil authorities, the complaint alleges, and she was told that action required a second witness — a reference to the Jehovah's Witness practice of requiring two witnesses to establish wrongdoing in an internal hearing. That rule, the complaint says, "functioned as a barrier to reporting."^[1]

According to the complaint, the congregation did not investigate; instead it opened disciplinary proceedings against Thompson. Between 1996 and 1998 she was disfellowshipped — expelled, a status that brings shunning by members including family — and later pressured to apologise for her accusations in order to regain standing. An appeal panel of elders in Eugene upheld the expulsion.^[1]

Two later episodes appear in the complaint. It alleges that Farr, years afterwards, confessed to misconduct in front of three elders at another congregation, and that the elders encouraged Thompson to "forgive him" so that he could receive a leadership position.^[1] It also alleges the Governing Body, the religion's central leadership, issued an apology acknowledging that her disfellowshipping had been improper, delivered by an elder named Dennis Vaughn.^[1]

The complaint says it then happened again: that in 2020 a congregation in Fort Collins, Colorado disfellowshipped her over an allegation of adultery — she had, it says, already filed for divorce and was living apart from her husband — and that elders asserted during the proceeding that her conduct showed "a pattern of sexual misconduct since she was a teen," referring back to the years she says she was being abused.^[1]

The unusual part: trafficking law

The complaint's lead theory sets it apart from most suits of this kind: rather than resting on negligence alone, it invokes the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a federal statute written to combat human trafficking.

The theory has two moving parts, and both are contentions the defendants will have the opportunity to contest.

First, the complaint argues that the sexual acts Thompson was allegedly coerced into count as "services" under the trafficking statutes, which prohibit obtaining someone's labour or services through force, threats, fraud or coercion. It contends no commercial transaction is required where a minor is compelled through "psychological domination" and fear of religious punishment.^[1] That contention is untested here, and it is not equally strong across the counts: the sex-trafficking provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1591, requires a commercial sex act by its terms, and defendants can be expected to argue it does not reach conduct with no commercial element.

There is a further timing problem. The statutes the complaint relies on postdate the conduct it describes: Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in October 2000, and the civil remedy in § 1595 was added by a reauthorisation in 2003 — years after the abuse Thompson alleges, which the complaint places between 1989 and 1995. Defendants can be expected to argue the trafficking statutes do not reach conduct from that period at all.

Second — and this is the part aimed at the institution — the complaint invokes what lawyers call beneficiary liability. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1595, someone who knowingly benefits from participating in a venture that they knew or should have known was violating the trafficking laws can be sued, even if they did not commit the abuse themselves. The complaint argues Watchtower and the Kingdom Hall benefited by keeping the allegations quiet: preserving the organisation's reputation, retaining members and their donations, and avoiding legal exposure. Those, it contends, are "things of value" within the meaning of the statute.^[1]

Running alongside is a claim under 18 U.S.C. § 2255, a federal civil remedy for people sexually abused as minors, brought against Zoller and Farr only. The complaint leans on a specific feature of that law: it states there is no time limit for filing.^[1] That matters in a case about conduct alleged to have occurred three decades ago — though whether the provision revives claims that had already expired under earlier law is itself disputed, and defendants can be expected to raise it. For its remaining claims, the complaint argues the clock should be paused because the abuse was concealed, because the coercive environment prevented her from recognising the conduct as wrongful, and because of the retaliation that followed her disclosures.^[1]

The complaint also anticipates a religious-freedom defence, arguing the claims turn on secular conduct — abuse, failure to report, negligent supervision — and can be decided without a court interpreting religious doctrine.^[1]

Nine causes of action are pleaded in all: three federal trafficking counts, the federal § 2255 claim described above, Oregon involuntary-servitude and child-sexual-abuse claims, negligence and negligent supervision, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy as a theory of joint liability.^[1]

Within the negligence count, the complaint also pleads negligence per se against the two institutions — a doctrine under which violating a safety statute can supply the breach element of a negligence claim, though a plaintiff must still prove causation and harm. Oregon law lists clergy among those required to report suspected child abuse, subject to an exception for privileged confessional communications; the complaint alleges the elders who heard Thompson's disclosures were mandatory reporters who did not report.^[1]

What she is asking for

The complaint seeks compensatory, punitive and statutory damages, restitution, and attorneys' fees. It puts her past treatment costs at more than $100,000 and projects at least $500,000 more, and it claims lost earning capacity, arguing that Watchtower's discouragement of higher education left her without qualifications when she left the religion after fourteen years as a stay-at-home mother.^[1] Against the two men, it says a finding under § 2255 would entitle her to the greater of her actual damages or statutory damages of not less than $150,000.^[1]

The complaint also seeks an injunction requiring institutional reforms and compliance with reporting obligations, and Thompson has demanded a jury trial.^[1]

Where the case stands

This is a newly filed case at an early stage. The complaint was filed with an application to proceed in forma pauperis — that is, without prepaying the court's filing fee — and the court denied that application on 12 August 2026, as described in the update above.^[2][3] The court issued summonses on 21 July 2026 to Zoller, Farr and Watchtower, and to the Junction City East Kingdom Hall on 24 July.^[2]

On the docket, whose most recent entry is the 12 August order, no defendant had responded and no return of service had been recorded.^[2] Watchtower, the Kingdom Hall, Zoller and Farr will each have the opportunity to contest every claim.^[2]

A note on sourcing

This account is drawn from the complaint itself — the 27-page document filed on 20 July 2026, read in full — from the court's three-page opinion and order of 12 August 2026, also read in full, and from the case docket, current to 12 August 2026.^[1][2][3]

The elders named in the complaint — Bill Neuhaus, Robert Kimes, Mel Zoller, Ray Clark and Dennis Vaughn — are not defendants in the case. The complaint does not say whether Mel Zoller is related to the defendant Matthew Zoller.