editor's comment:

In another case:  Sara Poisson and Paul Berry were married in 1980 and moved to Greenville in 1984. Poisson’s daughter, Holly, was born of a prior marriage in 1978. Poisson and Berry’s daughter, Heather, was born in 1982. Both Poisson and her husband were practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In the Jehovah’s Witness faith, elders are selected by the governing body of the local congregation to be the congregation’s spiritual leaders. Elders are lay people who do not have any formal religious training or education. They hold secular employment and are not compensated for their work as elders. As elders they are responsible for meeting with individual members of the congregation when requested to do so and working with them to identify problems and provide spiritual counsel. In the Wilton Congregation, at any given time, there were five to ten elders.

The plaintiffs allege that Poisson approached the elders seeking spiritual advice because she and her husband were having marital problems, which included verbal, mental and physical abuse. In response to her requests, the elders provided the couple with spiritual advice and assistance, which included joint prayers, Bible readings, and discussion of the Scriptures for application to their identified problems. According to Poisson, she reported to the elders on ten to twelve separate occasions that her husband was abusing their children. The plaintiffs further allege that "[i]n accord with directions to publishers, policies and practices of the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the elders . . . told the Plaintiffs’ mother she should keep the matter within the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses." In 2000, Berry was convicted of sexually assaulting Holly when she was a young child. State v. Berry, 148 N.H. 88 (2002).

Meanwhile, California is currently important in the fight against clergy abuse in another way, as well: In Los Angeles, recently-announced Oscar nominations included a richly-deserved one for the stark and disturbing documentary, "Deliver Us from Evil." The film features troubling interviews with a priest child-abuse perpetrator, one Fr. O'Grady -- who was under the watch of L.A.'s Cardinal Mahony. This film has so much power, it truly deserves to win the Award.