News and primary-source research on the Watchtower organization
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.
The "Palmer Leaks" — 33 confidential documents published by the transparency site FaithLeaks — detailed how Jehovah's Witnesses elders and headquarters handled abuse allegations inside one congregation.
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 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 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.