Spain, Judge Raquel Chacón Continues Her Anti-Jehovah’s-Witnesses Crusade

 SPAIN

Spain, Judge Raquel Chacón Continues Her Anti-Jehovah’s-Witnesses Crusade

01/15/2024

For the second time, the 6th section of the Court of Torrejón de Ardoz ruled against the 1st section of the same court. What according to Section 1 offends the honor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was declared non-offensive by Section 6.

by Massimo Introvigne

I should update the score of the match opposing in Spain, a country famous for its passion for soccer, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their opponents of the anti-cult Spanish Association of the Victims of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (AEVTJ) in the Court of First Instance of Torrejón de Ardoz. In a previous article, I reported the score as 2–1 for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Torrejón de Ardoz judges had ruled twice that the harsh expressions used by the AEVTJ and spread through various channels describing the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a “destructive cult” violated the right to honor of the religious organization. In a third case, however, the same court had decided that similar expressions did not violate the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ right to honor. Hence the 2–1 score.

Now, the AEVTJ has equalized, and the score is 2–2. On December 22, 2023, another Torrejón de Ardoz decision was rendered against the Jehovah’s Witnesses and in favor of a member of the AEVTJ, Gabriel Pedrero, who had also been sued for posting on the Internet statements offending the right to honor of the religious group.

The two decisions in favor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been rendered by the first section of the Court of First Instance of Torrejón de Ardoz, and the two against them by Judge Raquel Chacón Campollo, of the sixth section of the same court.

Given the precedent decision of December 5 by Judge Chacón, the new one of December 22 is not surprising. It is based on the same interpretation of Spanish law, claiming that to avoid been regarded as offending the right to honor of a person or group, the truth (verdad) of a statement is not necessary and its “veracity” (veracidad) is enough. The December 22 decision repeats that it refers to “veracity, which should not be confused with truth” (p. 17). To prove “veracity,” the defendants should simply show that the information they are spreading, although possibly false, is found in a plurality of sources that they might have regarded (perhaps wrongly) as reliable.

I understand that this is a subtle distinction for those without legal training. Yet, it is important since the AEVTJ, its lawyers, and the media are claiming that Judge Chacón confirmed the “truth” of the claim that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a “destructive cult.” In fact, she didn’t. She wrote that “the defendant describes the religious denomination as an extremist and destructive cult which, for all the above, can be considered veracious, which does not mean that it is true, but … is an opinion or statement in which the requirement of veracity is met” (p. 48). Journalists are not lawyers, but those claiming that Judge Chacón certified that the statement that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a “destructive cult” is true misunderstood her decision. She has explained time and again that considering a statement “veracious,” thus not offending the right to honor, “does not mean that it is true.”

However, in this second decision, Judge Chacón stretched the notion of “veracity” to paradoxical consequences. Defendant Pedrero had written inter alia that “it took him five years to deprogram his mind, to rebuild his life outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ cage and to be able to leave a religion about which at that time we did not know what we all know today. That they have blood on their hands from various suicides: both the collective ones, for not allowing medical treatment with blood, and the suicides caused by stress, anxiety, and depression caused by being locked in the Watchtower cage, the religious company behind the medieval regulations and ideology they are forced to follow. We cannot allow ourselves to be influenced by a corporation that is only after money. They are becoming more and more millionaires, and their followers are becoming poorer and poorer in every way. They annul them as persons who are no longer able to think or decide freely” (p. 2–3). Pedrero also launched a petition on the platform Change.org where he expanded these concepts and hailed the repression of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, which has been condemned by most democratic countries and the European Court of Human Rights. The petition’s aim was to have the Jehovah’s Witnesses banned in Spain for “extremism” as it had happened in Russia.

We are by now familiar with Judge Chacón’s methodology to establish veracity: she hear from “apostate” testimonies, she collects press clippings, she watches anti-cult TV programs, and she concludes that, true or not, Pedrero’s and the AEVTJ’s accusations are repeated often enough to be “veracious.” She also reiterates the same mistakes of her December 5 decision, in considering the word “cult” (“secta”) not offensive based on dictionary definitions (while its social use is different and certainly derogatory), and in misinterpreting the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ practices about how accusations of sexual abuses are handled and the Australian Royal Commission report. She also misinterpreted the European Court of Human Rights case law when she stated that interviews or opinions of former members accusing a group of unreported and unproven crimes can be reproduced or quoted without violating the organization’s right to honor just because they were “previously published by other media” (p. 17). Paradoxically, in a decision so full of factual mistakes, she accused a leading Spanish legal scholar, Professor Juan Ferreiro Galguera, who testified as expert for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, of being misinformed.

The main problem is, however, another. Veracity or not, it is a general principle of international law—and of Spanish law, as the same Professor Juan Ferreiro Galguera demonstrated in a brilliant article (“Honor de las confesiones religiosas ante la libertad de expresión: especial referencia a los Testigos de Jehová,” “Revista General de Derecho Canónico y Eclesiástico del Estado” 63 [October 2023], pp. 1–55) that violently derogatory speech cannot be admitted when it betrays an “animus injuriandi,” i.e., an intention to insult and defile a person or organization.

As mentioned earlier, Pedrero described a large world religious organization as a “corporation” that “is only after money” and is full of “blood in [its] hands.” Yet, Judge Chacón assures us that she has seen videos where Pedrero attacks the Jehovah’s Witnesses and has found him as meek as the proverbial lamb. “From the videos examined, it can be concluded that Mr. Pedrero has in no way incited or generated hatred against the religious confession by these broadcasts,” she writes, “since in them he expresses himself calmly and his body language is serene, he does not raise his voice especially loud or use expressions or swear words; neither do they show an aggressive scenography, it seems that they are recorded in a home, bedroom and living room, and the videos show warm tones, white, pastel colors, nor does Mr. Pedrero appear with aggressive accessories or display sinister or violent objects or decoration” (p. 54).

With all due respect to Judge Chacón, this is frankly laughable. If the expressions used by Pedrero do not offend the right to honor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, then such offenses do not exist.

Let me suggest an experiment. In these times of artificial intelligence, we can ask an appropriate software to produce a video where somebody calmly, without swift bodily movements, without raising his voice, speaks from a bedroom or living room with “warm tones, white, pastel colors,” without raising hammers or swords, and explains to us that the Jews are not a religion but a “destructive” corporation out for our money and our blood, and hails regimes who persecuted them (as Pedrero did for Russia). Would Judge Chacón conclude that this gentle, kind anti-Semite who likes warm colors and do not paint his bedroom in black or brown has not offended the right to honor of the Jewish community?

We urgently need superior judges to restore some sanity in Torrejón de Ardoz.

In the photo: The building hosting Section 6 of the Court of First Instance of Torrejón de Ardoz and Judge Raquel Chacón Campollo.

https://bitterwinter.org/spain-judge-raquel-chacon-continues-her-anti-jehovahs-witnesses-crusade/