The Brussels Court considers the CIAOSN report unfounded

 BELGIUM

The Brussels Court considers the CIAOSN report unfounded

June 26, 2022

The government "cult watchdog" CIAOSN published a text that was methodologically flawed and included false statements, the judge said.

The Brussels Palace of Justice, the seat of the Brussels Court of Justice. Credits.

Jehovah's Witnesses won another legal victory in Belgium on June 16, 2022, this time against the government "cult watchdog" called CIAOSN (Centre d'information et d'avis sur les organizaciones sectaires nuisibles, Center for Information and Advice on Harmful Cults). Organizations), an independent centre established by the Belgian law of 2 June 1998, as amended by the law of 12 April 2004, at the Belgian Ministry of Justice.

On November 30, 2018, the CIAOSN prepared the report “Signalement sur le traitement des abus sexuels sur mineurs au sein de l'organisation des témoins de Jéhovah” (Report on the treatment of sexual abuse of minors in the Organization of Jehovah's Witnesses). The report was shared with the House of Representatives and the Minister of Justice. In the following months, several Belgian media outlets published news about the report, stating that an official document of the CIAOSN had indicated that Jehovah's Witnesses were hiding cases of sexual abuse of minors within their congregations, and that a public investigation was needed. In fact, a parliamentary Working Group was created in February 2019 to investigate the issue. On April 5, 2019, the Working Group issued an interim report, which recommended that the Parliament continue with the “study of the CIAOSN report”.

At the same time, also based on the CIAOSN report, a criminal prosecution was initiated. As reported by Bitter Winter last yearctober 5, 2021, after an investigation and a search at the Belgian national headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Brussels Court of First Instance dismissed the accusations against the Belgian organization of Jehovah's Witnesses and individual members of the organization, who had been accused of not reporting to the police the allegations of child sexual abuse in their congregations of which they had become aware, thus violating articles 422 bis and 442 trimester of the Belgian Criminal Code, which oblige reporting.

In 2019, Jehovah's Witnesses sued the author of a particularly vicious article published in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir and the editor of the newspaper. On November 16, 2020, the Brussels Court ruled against Jehovah's Witnesses, arguing that the newspaper had based its article on a report by CIAOSN, a reliable government agency. The Jehovah's Witnesses then proceeded to sue the Belgian State, responsible for the activities of the CIAOSN, on June 17, 2021.

Jehovah's Witnesses pointed out that the CIAOSN report was based on a flawed methodology, which led to unsubstantiated conclusions and the dissemination of false and defamatory information in the media.

The CIAOSN said in the document that, “In June 2018, the CIAOSN received a notification according to which three of the 286 testimonies received by the ‘Reclaimed Voices’ Foundation in the Netherlands refer to events that allegedly took place in Belgium.” It would seem that this was one of the elements that motivated the preparation of the CIAOSN report.

However, on March 9, 2021, the Brussels-based NGO Human Rights Without Borders reported that, “A Dutch-speaking member of the board of directors of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) contacted Reclaimed Voices in the Netherlands to verify the credibility of this information and to obtain more details about the three alleged cases of sexual abuse in Belgium. In his response, the head of Reclaimed Voices in the Netherlands denied such a news made public in Belgium and said in a private correspondence dated February 10, 2021: ‘The information in the CIAOSN report is not correct. On March 29, 2019, we sent an email to CIAOSN about this inaccuracy. At that moment it came to our attention that Koen Geens, Minister of Justice (CD&V), had said on Radio 1 in Belgium: ‘It is the CIAOSN itself that has gone to the Netherlands to look for this information and has stated that among the 286 Dutch complaints there were three Belgians."Something similar was said on TV in 'Van Gils & Guest'. In the Dutch media we have only testified about the situation in the Netherlands. The figures that were mentioned are only alleged victims of abuse in the Netherlands”"

The way the data from the Netherlands was collected and compiled is also very questionable, but as far as Belgium is concerned, the fact is that the three Belgian cases on the Reclaimed Voices list never existed. In the case of Brussels, the Belgian government acknowledged this fact, but stated that this did not invalidate the report in its entirety.

Apart from the incorrect reference to three Belgian cases "found" in the Netherlands, the CIAOSN mentioned that it had received other "direct or indirect" complaints, but most of its report did not refer to Belgium, no specific cases were cited and most of the "information" offered came from press clippings.

The CIAOSN report - Jehovah's Witnesses and sexual abuse: the Brussels Court declares the CIAOSN report unfounded

The CIAOSN report.

The Jehovah's Witnesses also relied on an expert report criticizing the CIAOSN text prepared by the undersigned (Massimo Introvigne) and by American academics Holly Folk and J. Gordon Melton.

In its decision of June 16, 2022, the Brussels Court summarizes the main point of our criticism as follows“ "Lack of discussion of the methodology; a selective use of a few reliable academic sources; a subjective appreciation of certain beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses as peculiar or strange, when these beliefs are shared by many Christian denominations; the predominance of press clippings as sources of information, and the omissions and errors that such sources have caused; lack of contact with the national office of Jehovah's Witnesses; the lack of verification of the veracity of the allegations; the lack of evidence of an alleged connection between sexual abuse and the expulsion of those who report it; the dependence on the controversial Australian Parliamentary Commission [Royal Commission] report, whose figures are based largely on unconfirmed allegations of abuse within the family and outside any institutional context; reliance on the CIAOSN's biased theory that its dualistic worldview makes Jehovah's Witnesses an ‘at-risk’ organization, while this worldview is shared by most religious communities.”

The decision informs our conclusions as follows: “Jehovah's Witnesses are singled out because anti-sectarian ideology stigmatizes them as the quintessential 'sect' and creates a climate in which ’sects' cannot expect to be treated fairly. The CIAOSN report is methodologically problematic and is based largely on press clippings and information provided by anti-cultists, some of them related to FECRIS, an organization that an official American commission has denounced for systematically spreading false information about groups that it labels as 'cults'. especially Jehovah's Witnesses. The claim that there are a large number of unreported sexual abuse cases among Jehovah's Witnesses in Belgium is not supported by the content of the report itself. Unfortunately, the CIAOSN Report cannot be considered an objective and impartial report. The fact that no representative of Jehovah's Witnesses was interviewed during the preparation of the report, that the Claimed Voices cases were accepted at face value without an effort to investigate whether they really happened and whether they were reported correctly, that press clippings, as well as information from anti-cult organizations, were used to a large extent and uncritically, are all elements that point to a bias. We recommend that no governmental or other action be taken based on this document. [the CIAOSN report].”

The judge noted that all the Belgian government and the CIAOSN had to oppose to the critical analysis of the experts was that "the disputed report 'is based on verified and reliable sources, cited in the footnotes.'" The judge was not convinced. and he concluded that “the simple allegation of the Belgian State that the report is the result of a meticulous investigative work by the CIAOSN does not allow to deny the critical analysis prepared by the experts”. In fact, the judge found that press clippings and biased versions, including the controversial Australian report, were the only sources of the CIAOSN report. A "government research center that claims to be objective and impartial cannot reasonably base most of its assessment on press clippings or television reports, the judge said. Such a position defended by the Belgian state ignores the principles of the scientific method and reverses the roles. A serious scientific discourse cannot find its source in the media.”

In conclusion, the Brussels Court, in addition to ordering the Belgian State to pay the legal costs of Jehovah's Witnesses, considered "that the CIAOSN committed misconduct when writing and disseminating in December 2018 the report entitled 'Report on Treatment of Child Abuse within the Organization of Jehovah's Witnesses'”.  The court ordered “the State to publish, at its expense, this Judgment on the home page of the CIAOSN website, for a period of six months counted from the expiration of a period of eight days counted from the notification of the present Judgment;  ” and “publish a mention of this judgment with reference to its full text in the 'news' section of the CIAOSN website”.

 The sentence will surely become a key precedent.  It states that religious scholars are a more reliable source on these matters than journalists and anti-cultists, and that government agencies dealing with the alleged "cult danger" are not above the law and can be legally prosecuted. when they spread false information.  and slander.

 https://europahoy.news/2022/06/the-brussels-court-considers-the-ciaosn-report-unfounded-europeantimes-news/