Brazilian woman's $100M federal suit names Watchtower and the Governing Body over alleged childhood abuse

Update, 10 July 2026: The case has been stayed. On 4 May 2026, Judge Nelson S. Román granted a letter-motion to stay and halted the entire action.^[3] The stay remains in effect, and the motions to dismiss described below were never filed on the docket — the stay intervened first. Details are in "Current status," below.

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A Brazilian woman has sued three of the highest-level entities in the Jehovah's Witness organization in United States federal court, alleging that she was sexually abused as a child by a senior traveling minister and that Watchtower leadership routed her reports internally rather than to police. The lawsuit — a matter of public record — names not only the two principal Watchtower corporations but the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses itself, and it seeks damages of "not less than $100,000,000."^[1][5]

The allegations at the center of the case are unproven. What is confirmable is that the complaint was filed, that it makes these claims, and that the case remains open though currently halted. Nothing in it has been tested at trial.

What was filed, and where

The suit, captioned Gomes De Souza v. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc. et al., was filed on November 12, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) — a federal court.^[1] It carries docket number 1:25-cv-09458, which also appears as 7:25-cv-09458-NSR after the matter was reassigned from Manhattan to the court's White Plains courthouse and to Judge Nelson S. Román.^[1][3] Both docket references point to the same case; the White Plains number is the operative one.^[3]

The complaint is brought under diversity jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1332 — the mechanism that lets a foreign plaintiff sue U.S.-domiciled corporate defendants in federal court.^[1] The docket classifies it as a personal-injury tort action.^[1]

The parties

The plaintiff, Stella Cristina Gomes De Souza, is a Brazilian national suing under her own name rather than as a "Jane Doe."^[1][5]

The complaint names three organizational defendants and no individual defendants in its caption:^[1]

- Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc. - Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. - The Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses

The man the complaint identifies as the abuser, Angelo Roviezzo, is described in the filing as a Circuit Overseer — a senior traveling minister who supervises multiple congregations. He is named in the complaint's factual allegations but is not himself a defendant in the U.S. civil caption.^[1][5] Multiple secondary sources report that Roviezzo was later criminally convicted and imprisoned in Brazil; that conviction is asserted by advocacy coverage and has not been independently confirmed here.^[5][6]

The core allegations

According to the complaint as summarized by court-record aggregators and advocacy coverage, the abuse allegedly began in 2011, when Gomes De Souza was 12 years old and living in Brazil.^[5][6] The lawsuit alleges she was repeatedly raped and sexually abused by Roviezzo, and that the abuse continued for roughly a year.^[5] The complaint alleges the abuse resulted in pregnancy and miscarriage, and that she has suffered lifelong harm including infertility, PTSD, and depression.^[5][6]

The suit also makes institutional-conduct allegations against the organization. It alleges that Jehovah's Witness leadership and policy routed abuse reports internally — "upward for containment, not outward for protection," in the language attributed to the filing — required elders to contact the branch office or headquarters before contacting police, failed to report to secular authorities, and silenced, punished, or retaliated against the plaintiff while protecting and transferring the alleged abuser.^[5][6]

Those institutional claims echo documents this site has covered elsewhere — including a 2012 letter to elders instructing them to contact the branch office about accusations of child abuse — though the letter is a separate record and its relationship to this specific complaint has not been established.^[6]

The legal claims and the demand

Per a legal-press summary of the docket, the complaint pleads negligent supervision, gross negligence, vicarious liability, sexual assault, sexual battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.^[4]

The plaintiff seeks compensatory and punitive damages of "not less than $100,000,000," plus attorneys' fees and costs, and has demanded a jury trial.^[4][5]

Why the case is being watched

The lawsuit is significant, according to advocacy coverage, for how high it reaches. It names the Governing Body — the organization's central leadership body — alongside both principal Watchtower corporations, framing the alleged handling of abuse reports as a systemic policy rather than isolated misconduct.^[5][6]

If the case survives a motion to dismiss, discovery could compel disclosure of how abuse reports are handled across the organization — a longstanding pressure point in Watchtower litigation.^[5][6] The combination of a $100 million demand, a U.S. federal forum, and abuse that allegedly occurred abroad, in Brazil, is an unusual and aggressive jurisdictional posture.^[5][6]

To establish that New York is the proper venue, the plaintiff argues that the alleged cover-up and reassignment decisions were "directed from New York leadership," pointing to Watchtower's historic headquarters nexus there.^[6] That venue theory is central to the case's structure: rather than framing the claims around a state look-back or revival window, the complaint uses diversity jurisdiction to bring alleged abuse that occurred in Brazil into a U.S. federal courtroom, on the theory that the institutional decisions being challenged were made in New York.^[1][6]

The plaintiff's willingness to litigate publicly, under her own name rather than a pseudonym, is itself notable in this category of case; abuse plaintiffs frequently proceed anonymously.^[1][5]

Current status

The case is pending but stayed. No merits ruling and no settlement have been entered, and the allegations remain unadjudicated.^[3]

On 20 April 2026, the Governing Body filed a letter-motion asking the court to stay the action; the plaintiff opposed it.^[3] On 4 May 2026, Judge Nelson S. Román granted that motion and stayed the entire case, writing that the court stays the action "as other courts in this district have similarly done."^[3]

The order itself gives only that brief rationale. The motion the court granted sought a stay pending a decision by the New York Court of Appeals on a question certified to it by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Parker v. Alexander, No. 25-487 (2d Cir., 23 March 2026): whether a New York City revival statute, N.Y.C. Administrative Code § 10-1104.1, is preempted by New York State's Child Victims Act.^[3] That is a state-law question about which revival statutes govern time-barred abuse claims. It is not a bankruptcy proceeding, and it is not a challenge to the constitutionality of the Child Victims Act itself. The court did not adopt or rule on that reasoning; it granted the stay by reference to parallel SDNY cases held for the same certified question.^[3]

The plaintiff moved for reconsideration of the stay on 18 May 2026; briefing was completed on 1 June 2026, and that motion had not been decided as of this update.^[3]

One consequence is worth stating plainly: the motions to dismiss were never filed of record. They had been scheduled for filing in early May 2026, and the stay intervened first.^[3] Defendants' reported positions — that the claims are time-barred and that venue is improper because the alleged events occurred abroad — come from pre-motion correspondence, not from a briefed and decided motion.^[6] Those are attributed litigation positions, not public statements. On the limitations question, the plaintiff argues the period should be equitably tolled because of trauma, coercion, and psychological incapacity.^[6]

On service: Watchtower's New York corporation was reported served in late November 2025, while the Pennsylvania corporation and the Governing Body were served via the New York Secretary of State after personal service proved difficult.^[6] Advocacy coverage also reported that a First Amended Complaint, with exhibits, was filed in the days after the initial November 12 filing.^[6]

This account reflects the public docket as of 10 July 2026, when the stay remained in effect. Any later development — a decision on reconsideration, a lifting of the stay, a ruling, or a settlement — would not be captured here; readers tracking the case should consult the court docket directly for the current posture.^[1][3]

A note on sourcing

No official Jehovah's Witness or Watchtower public statement on this specific case was located. The defendants' reported arguments come from in-litigation filings, not from any press release or newsroom statement.^[6]

Readers should also weigh the sourcing landscape. The confirmable facts of this case — the caption, docket, court, filing date, parties, damages figure, and the stay — are corroborated across independent court-record aggregators and, for the stay, against the docket itself.^[1][2][3][4] The narrative detail and significance framing draw substantially from advocacy coverage that is openly adversarial to Watchtower.^[5][6] Some advocacy pages describing this case have not been updated since the stay was entered and still describe it as unstayed. As of this writing, no major mainstream national outlet was located reporting on the case. The allegations are serious, and they are also, at this stage, only allegations.