A UK appeals court let the Watch Tower safeguarding inquiry stand in 2016

On March 15, 2016, the England and Wales Court of Appeal handed down its ruling in the Watch Tower's long-running effort to stop a Charity Commission safeguarding inquiry — and split the difference between the two sides.^[1]

The court refused to quash the Commission's decision to open the statutory inquiry, dismissing that part of the Watch Tower's appeal. But it allowed the charity to pursue a judicial review of a separate order — the Commission's demand that it produce its safeguarding documents — in the High Court rather than being forced to the specialist Charity Tribunal first.^[1][2] It was a partial win on procedure inside a loss on the substance.

The inquiry at the center of the dispute had been opened in 2014 to examine how the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain — the registered charity through which Jehovah's Witnesses operate in the United Kingdom — handles allegations of child sexual abuse in its congregations. The charity had already lost a bid to halt it in the High Court in December 2014; the Court of Appeal ruling was the next round in that fight.^[2]

It was, in the end, the last round the Watch Tower would win anything in. The Supreme Court later refused the charity permission to appeal on the inquiry question, and in January 2017 the underlying dispute settled: the Commission withdrew its production order, the charity withdrew its judicial-review challenge, and the statutory inquiry — the thing the Watch Tower had spent more than two years trying to stop — was left free to proceed.^[2]

The stakes reached beyond the Witnesses. Had the courts curbed the Charity Commission's power to compel a charity's internal records, the ruling would have echoed across the regulation of religious organizations in England and Wales. By letting the inquiry stand, the Court of Appeal preserved the regulator's authority to demand documents even from a body that cast the demand as an intrusion on its faith — an authority the Commission would go on to exercise. For the Watch Tower, the practical result was the one it had fought hardest to avoid: an outside authority, backed by law, would examine how the organization handles abuse allegations in Britain.