News and primary-source research on the Watchtower organization
Germany's Federal Court of Justice quashed a Cologne ruling and remanded the dispute over the Kusserow family archive held in a Dresden military museum. Ownership remains undecided.
In a unanimous but not-yet-final Chamber judgment (application no. 49687/16), the ECHR held that Italy's decades-long failure to ratify an intesa kept Jehovah's Witnesses out of the otto per mille tax-funding system. The Court awarded EUR 10,000 and EUR 8,000 in costs, dismissing a claim that had sought more than EUR 200 million.
In Velev and Others v. Bulgaria, a unanimous ECHR Chamber found a Shumen ordinance banning "religious propaganda at residents' homes" violated Article 9. No damages were awarded, the applicants were never fined, and the ruling is not yet final.
In April 2026 Norway's highest court ruled the state acted unlawfully when it deregistered Jehovah's Witnesses and cut their funding over shunning. The justices were unanimous that the state had not shown harm to children — and split only on a separate question about adults. It was the end of a five-year fight, and part of a wider European reckoning.
An appeals court dismissed the organization's suit against a Spanish victims' association, holding the label falls within freedom of expression. The court did not rule on whether the characterization is true.
A federal complaint filed February 13, 2026, alleges the Governing Body and three Watchtower entities failed to protect a Cordele teenager from more than 100 acts of abuse by his Bible-study instructor, who is separately convicted. The organization's alleged liability is unproven; the case is pending.
A complaint filed in SDNY on Nov. 12, 2025 alleges a Circuit Overseer abused Stella Cristina Gomes De Souza beginning at age 12 in Brazil, and that Watchtower routed reports internally. The allegations are unproven; the case is pending.
Sweden's Agency for Support to Faith Communities (SST) ruled on 24 October 2025 that Jehovah's Witnesses failed new 'democracy conditions' for state grants, citing shunning and membership limits. On 7 May 2026 the Stockholm Administrative Court overturned the denial and ordered the grant restored; the agency has appealed.
Shannon Simendinger's civil complaint, filed January 8, 2025 in Aroostook County Superior Court, names a Maine congregation, Watchtower's New York corporation, and three men; the allegations are unproven and the case is pending.
In Pindo Mulla v. Spain, the ECHR Grand Chamber unanimously found that Spain breached Rosa Edelmira Pindo Mulla's rights when a duty judge authorized three transfusions during emergency surgery despite her advance written refusals. The Court faulted the decision-making process, not the doctors' medical judgment.
The Court of Cassation on 19 December 2023 rejected the final appeals in the "Ghent case," affirming that limiting contact with disfellowshipped former members falls within freedom of religion and association.
In 2023, Judge Dean Ochiai awarded a survivor known as N.D. $40 million against Kenneth Apana, a former Makaha congregation elder who did not defend the suit. The congregation and its entities settled separately and confidentially.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 9 May 2023 that Finland may require Jehovah's Witnesses to obtain householder consent before noting personal data during their ministry — no violation of Articles 9 or 6.
A statewide investigating grand jury opened in 2019 produced criminal charges against roughly nine men affiliated with Jehovah's Witnesses congregations, across waves announced by Attorneys General Josh Shapiro (2022) and Michelle Henry (2023), alongside scrutiny of how congregations handle abuse reports internally.
Named in July 2020 among institutions refusing to join the National Redress Scheme, the organization agreed in March 2021 to comply after the government moved to strip holdout charities of their tax status.
Commissioned after survivors came forward and published over the organization's court challenge, the 2020 Utrecht University study documented 751 abuse reports and found the Witnesses' internal handling favored the community, not the victim.
A 2018 Montana jury ordered the Watchtower to pay about $35 million for failing to report a child's abuse. In 2020 the state's Supreme Court erased the verdict — unanimously — not on the facts, but on a clergy-confidentiality exception in the reporting law. The collision it turned on is still unresolved across the country.
By mid-2018 the 2017 "extremist" ban had become a countrywide campaign of home raids and prosecutions — dozens charged across more than a dozen regions, with masked officers and pre-trial detention.
In Highwood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses v. Wall, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada held in 2018 that a religious group's decision to disfellowship a member is beyond judicial review — closing a legal avenue for the shunned.
In the Padron case, an appeals court upheld daily discovery sanctions against the Watchtower over its refusal to produce responses to a 1997 abuse-reporting letter — and held it couldn't object to a penalty it had once sought itself.
A former member sought to sue the organization on behalf of Quebecers abused as children in its congregations, alleging a "culture of silence." A court authorized the class action in 2019.
In 2017 a Russian court declared the Witnesses' New World Translation "extremist" — sidestepping a law that protects scripture by accepting expert testimony that the translation was not really a Bible.
A 2017 Charity Commission inquiry into the Manchester New Moston congregation found trustees mishandled abuse allegations — including an internal hearing where victims were questioned by the man they accused.
A 2017 Supreme Court ruling outlawed the organization nationwide, liquidated 395 local entities, and seized property — without a single finding of violence. Europe's top human-rights court later called the whole campaign unlawful, but Russia, by then out of the Council of Europe, refused to comply.
The Court of Appeal refused to quash the Charity Commission's inquiry into how the Jehovah's Witnesses' British charity handles abuse allegations — the next-to-last round of a fight the Watch Tower would ultimately lose.
In March 2016 the Prosecutor General's office told the Witnesses' Russian headquarters it faced dissolution for "extremist activity," and a Moscow court rejected the appeal that autumn — the paper trail to the 2017 ban.
In 2015 a national inquiry examined how the Jehovah's Witnesses organization in Australia responded to child sexual abuse. Its records showed 1,006 alleged perpetrators since 1950 — none reported by the organization to police.
In July 2015 an Australian Royal Commission opened public hearings into the Jehovah's Witnesses — and revealed that the organization's own files documented 1,006 alleged abusers since 1950, not one reported by the church to police.
A Ministry of Justice listing in July 2015 made Russia the only country to ban jw.org — the end of a two-year court fight, and a step toward the nationwide ban that followed in 2017.
A 2012 jury delivered a landmark verdict against the Watchtower for a woman abused as a child. In 2015 an appeals court affirmed the organization's negligence but erased the punitive damages — and rejected a duty to warn the congregation.
In December 2014 the High Court declined Watch Tower's bid to halt the Charity Commission inquiry, ruling only that the charity had to use the specialist tribunal first — not that the inquiry was lawful.
In 2014 a judge entered a default judgment against the organization for refusing to hand over its internal child-abuse files. An appeals court reversed it in 2016 — but the fight over those records would recur for years.
In May 2014 the Charity Commission launched a statutory inquiry into how the Watch Tower's British arm handles child protection — the start of a legal fight that would run for nearly a decade.