A new ruling from a Madrid court supports that the Jehovah’s Witnesses can be called an “extremist and destructive sect”
MC | EFENEWS
January 10, 2024
A judge has issued a second ruling that endorses, under the umbrella of freedom of expression , the criticism expressed by the Spanish Association of Victims of Jehovah’s Witnesses towards the religious confession, in this case by one of its members, who He refers to it as an ” extremist and destructive sect .”
In the sentence, sent this Wednesday to the media, Judge Raquel Chacón, head of the Court of First Instance number 6 of Torrejón de Ardoz, pronounces in the same sense in which she already did in a resolution published last month December, which was celebrated as “historic” by the victims.
In this case, the lawsuit was directed against Gabriel Pedrero , delegate of the victims’ association in Madrid and administrator of the entity’s social networks, who published messages on his personal profile in which he criticized various aspects of the confession to which he belonged. since his childhood.
Among other things, he accused the religion of having “blood on its hands” , both for the deaths supposedly caused by preventing blood transfusions and for the suicides caused by ” the stress, anxiety and depression caused ” by belonging to this religious community.
Pedrero, 36, has also filed a lawsuit against the organization in which he claims to have suffered abuse from an elder (priest) from the age of 12 to 16 and is awaiting trial. “At the time, I did not dare to report because they teach us that the holy spirit of Jehovah is the one who appoints the elders and I was afraid of disobeying him , but I also knew that I was breaking his rules with what was happening,” he said in a report at 20 minutes .
In it, Pedrero recounted the psychological consequences he suffered after his life in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. At the age of 15, he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder due to “the accumulation of things experienced.” “I was only thinking about taking my life,” he stated, while commenting that when he decided to leave the community the elders recommended his father, a ministerial servant (one step away from becoming an elder), to throw him out of the home. He didn’t do it because of his health problems. “I lived with him and it was horrible.
“They punished me with social death .”
Precisely, in the reported publications of Pedrero, the young man alluded to the cover-up of crimes that is practiced within the confession, as in the case of sexual abuse, the “social death” to which those who are expelled are subjected or the impediment that is placed on the faithful so that they do not pursue university studies .
For their part, the Jehovah’s Witnesses considered this content “degrading and insulting”, which is why they requested the withdrawal of the comments, the cessation of their dissemination and compensation of 15,000 euros for an illegitimate interference with their right to honor.
Ten testimonies from ex-members
Faced with these accusations, the judge relies on up to ten testimonies from former followers who testified at the trial along the same lines as Pedrero and concludes that his criticisms are not “mere rumors, suspicions, intuitions or simple opinions of a third party.” foreign to confession”, but rather ” they are based on their own direct experience “.Regarding the description of “extremist and destructive sect” that Pedrero makes on several occasions in his published messages, the judge considers this expression “truthful, which does not mean that it is true.”
“Many inflexible behaviors have been revealed , rigid demands of the rules regardless of their consequences, which usually cause damage, destroy families or threaten the mental health of those who have been their recipients,” he argues.
For all these reasons, it is considered that the criticisms analyzed are legitimate and are protected by the right to freedom of expression, so they do not entail interference in the right to honor of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The judge who signs this ruling is the same one who issued, last December, another resolution that responded to a lawsuit, in this case against the association as a whole, and in which she already endorsed the accusations made by the entity and the use of the term “sect” to refer to religion.
In total, Jehovah’s Witnesses have filed a total of four lawsuits against the association or some of its members.
The first of all ended with a ruling by the Court of 1st Instance number 1 of Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid), which in this case did condemn the secretary of the association, Enrique Carmona , to pay 5,000 euros.
Although the judge endorsed many of the words that had offended the religion, he did consider that the words “dangerous sect” and “the worst of the sects” to refer to the confession were ” clearly disproportionate and manifestly insulting” and represented an illegitimate interference in the right to honor.
Beyond the appeals to the sentences filed by both parties, the trial is pending as a result of the latest lawsuit, filed before the Court of 1st Instance number 5 of Torrejón de Ardoz, against the president of the association, Israel Flórez .