UPDATE: Judge paused Brazilian woman's $100M abuse suit against Watchtower's Governing Body in May 2026

Update, 22 July 2026: A federal judge has paused this lawsuit. On 4 May 2026, Judge Nelson S. Román granted a request by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses to "stay" the case — a stay is a court-ordered pause, during which the case does not move forward.^[8] The judge's entire stated reason was that he was doing so "as other courts in this district have similarly done."^[8] A stay is not a dismissal and not a ruling on the allegations. On that record the case was open and the allegations untested.

On 18 May 2026 the plaintiff asked the judge to reconsider — a motion for reconsideration asks the same judge to take a second look at an order he has already made. Both the Governing Body and the two Watchtower corporations filed written responses on 29 May 2026, and a further paper was docketed on 1 June 2026.^[3]

How current this account is: it reflects the live federal court docket, checked on 25 July 2026. The case remains formally stayed, and the most recent filing of any kind is still dated 1 June 2026 — the plaintiff's final paper supporting her request that the judge reconsider the pause.^[3] That request is fully briefed and undecided: as of the date of this check, no ruling on it, no lifting of the stay, and no settlement had been entered on the docket.

A Brazilian woman has sued three of the highest bodies in the Jehovah's Witness organization in United States federal court, alleging that she was sexually abused as a child by a senior traveling minister and that Watchtower leadership steered her reports of it inward — up the chain of command — rather than to the police. The lawsuit names not only the two main Watchtower corporations but the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses itself, the small group of men who lead the religion worldwide, and it asks for damages of "not less than $100,000,000."^[1][5]

The allegations at the center of the case have not been proven. What can be confirmed is that the lawsuit was filed, that it makes these claims, and that on the last docket JW Files could obtain — which runs through 1 June 2026 — the case was open and under a court-ordered pause. None of it has been tested at a trial.

What was filed, and where

The suit — its formal name is Gomes De Souza v. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc. et al. — was filed on November 12, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a federal court based in Manhattan.^[1] Its case number is 1:25-cv-09458 (it also appears as 7:25-cv-09458-NSR after the case was reassigned to the court's White Plains courthouse and to Judge Nelson S. Román; both numbers refer to the same case).^[1][3]

Because the woman suing lives abroad and the organizations she is suing are based in the United States, the case was brought in federal court under a rule — lawyers call it "diversity jurisdiction" (28 U.S.C. § 1332) — that lets a foreign resident sue American companies there.^[1] The court files it as a personal-injury case.^[1]

The parties

The plaintiff — the person bringing the suit — is Stella Cristina Gomes De Souza, a Brazilian citizen. She is suing under her own name rather than anonymously as a "Jane Doe."^[1][5]

The lawsuit names three organizations as defendants, and no individuals, in its official title:^[1]

• Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc.
• Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.
• The Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses

The man the complaint identifies as the abuser, Angelo Roviezzo, is described in the filing as a Circuit Overseer — a senior traveling minister who oversees a group of congregations. He is named in the body of the complaint but is not himself one of the defendants being sued here.^[1][5] Several secondary sources report that Roviezzo was later criminally convicted and imprisoned in Brazil; that conviction is reported by advocacy coverage and has not been independently confirmed here.^[5][6]

The core allegations

According to the complaint — as summarized by court-record services and advocacy coverage — the abuse allegedly began in 2011, when Gomes De Souza was 12 years old and living in Brazil.^[5][6] The lawsuit says she was repeatedly raped and abused by Roviezzo over roughly a year.^[5] It alleges the abuse led to a pregnancy and a miscarriage, and that she has been left with lasting harm including infertility, PTSD, and depression.^[5][6]

The suit also makes claims about the organization itself. It alleges that Jehovah's Witness leadership and policy kept reports of abuse inside the organization — "upward for containment, not outward for protection," in wording attributed to the filing — required local elders to call the branch office or headquarters before going to police, failed to report the abuse to the authorities, and silenced, punished, or retaliated against the plaintiff while moving the alleged abuser elsewhere.^[5][6]

Those claims about how the organization handled reports echo a document this site has covered separately — a 2012 letter instructing elders to contact the branch office about accusations of child abuse — though that letter is its own record and the lawsuit has not been shown to rely on it.^[6]

What the suit accuses the organizations of

A legal-press summary of the case lists the formal claims the complaint makes: negligent supervision, gross negligence, vicarious liability, sexual assault, sexual battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.^[4]

In plainer terms, beyond the assault allegations themselves, the suit accuses the organizations of failing to supervise and rein in the abuser, of being legally responsible for what he did because of the position they gave him ("vicarious liability" — holding an institution answerable for its representative's conduct), and of deliberately causing the plaintiff severe emotional harm.

She is asking for damages of "not less than $100,000,000" — money awarded both to compensate her and to punish the organizations — plus legal costs, and she has asked for a jury trial.^[4][5]

Why the case is being watched

The lawsuit stands out, according to advocacy coverage, for how high up it reaches. It names the Governing Body — the religion's top leadership — alongside the two main Watchtower corporations, casting the way abuse reports were handled as a deliberate policy rather than a one-off failure.^[5][6]

It also matters because of what a full case could expose. If the lawsuit survives the defendants' attempt to have it thrown out before trial — see the procedural history below — it would reach the stage lawyers call "discovery" — where each side must hand over internal records.^[5][6] That could force the organization to disclose how it handles abuse reports, something it has long resisted. And the combination of a $100 million demand, an American federal courtroom, and abuse that allegedly happened abroad, in Brazil, makes for an unusually aggressive legal strategy.^[5][6]

To argue that New York is the right place for the case, the plaintiff says the alleged cover-up and the decision to move the abuser were "directed from New York leadership," pointing to Watchtower's historic headquarters there.^[6] That argument is central to how the case is built: it uses the cross-border federal rule to bring abuse that happened in Brazil into a U.S. court, on the theory that the decisions being challenged were made in New York.^[1][6]

That she is willing to sue publicly, under her own name rather than anonymously, is itself unusual in abuse cases, where plaintiffs often stay anonymous.^[1][5]

How the case moved before the pause

The six months between the filing and the pause were taken up almost entirely with paperwork — first over which version of the complaint counted, then over the defendants' attempt to have the case thrown out.

The pleadings. The complaint filed on 12 November 2025, and a first amended version filed days later, were both struck — removed from the record — on 18 November 2025 over filing errors. A corrected complaint was re-filed on 19 November 2025, and that document became the operative complaint: the one version of the claims the court actually treats as live.^[3] It matters here because, as the plaintiff's lawyers later told the judge, that operative complaint does not contain a claim under New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law — a city law that briefly reopened the filing deadline for sexual-violence claims, and, on the plaintiff's account of the Governing Body's motion, the law at the center of the pause.^[8]

The plaintiff tried twice to replace it. An application to file an amended complaint was denied as untimely on 17 February 2026. On 23 February she formally moved for leave to amend — a request for the court's permission to file a revised complaint — and asked to put the dismissal briefing on hold; on 27 February that motion was struck as having been filed without permission, and the judge held a status call and reset the schedule.^[3]

The motions to dismiss. Lawyers appeared for all three defendants in December 2025 — Carl J. Schaerf for the Governing Body, Glen Feinberg and Jeffrey Gasbarro for the two Watchtower corporations — and each asked to file a motion to dismiss, a request to throw the case out before any trial or exchange of evidence. On 19 December 2025 the court skipped the usual preliminary conference and set a briefing schedule; the Pennsylvania corporation was folded into it on 29 December.^[3]

Those motions were made and argued in writing. Under the revised schedule, the plaintiff served her opposition and her cross-request to amend on 23 March 2026, and the whole bundle of briefs was to be placed on the public docket on 8 May 2026 — this court has the parties exchange their papers privately first and file them together at the end.^[3] The plaintiff's own filing describes the defendants' motion to dismiss as live and awaiting decision at that point.^[8] The stay landed on 4 May, four days before the filing date.

Current status

On the record JW Files could obtain — the docket through 1 June 2026 — the case was open and paused. No judge had ruled on the merits, and no settlement appeared on the docket; the allegations were untested.^[3][8]

On 20 April 2026, the Governing Body asked the court, in a short letter, to pause the case; the plaintiff objected the next day.^[8] On 4 May 2026, Judge Nelson S. Román granted the request and stayed the entire action, writing only that he was doing so "as other courts in this district have similarly done." He gave no other reasoning.^[8]

The order takes an unusual form: a memo endorsement, meaning the judge did not write a separate opinion but stamped his ruling in the margin of a letter already before him — here, the plaintiff's own letter opposing the pause. That is why a single three-page court document contains both the plaintiff's argument against a stay and the order granting one.^[8]

Why the Governing Body wanted the case paused is known here only second-hand. According to the plaintiff's opposition letter, the Governing Body sought a stay pending a decision by the New York Court of Appeals — the state's highest court — on whether the city's gender-motivated violence law is preempted by the Child Victims Act; preemption is the rule that a higher level of government's law can override a lower one's on the same subject.^[8] The Governing Body's own motion was not obtained for this account, so its wording, its reasoning and the authorities it cited are not reproduced here; every characterisation of it above is the plaintiff's.^[8]

That underlying legal question is about which level of government's deadline-reopening law controls, and it has nothing to do with whether the allegations are true. It arises in a separate case with no connection to Jehovah's Witnesses. On 23 March 2026, in Parker v. Alexander, No. 25-487-cv, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit asked New York's highest court to answer a single question: whether the two-year window that New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law opened for victims of sexual and gender-based violence to bring otherwise-expired claims is "preempted by the earlier revival periods set forth in New York State's Child Victims Act … and Adult Survivors Act."^[7] The federal trial court below had held that the state laws did override the city's window.^[7] On 16 April 2026, the New York Court of Appeals accepted the question, to be considered "after briefing and argument," with all seven judges concurring.^[9]

That is the decision the Governing Body was waiting on, according to the plaintiff's letter.^[8] It is a technical question about which reopening law applies — not a bankruptcy, and not a challenge to the abuse claims themselves. The judge took no side on it. His order names no case and gives no reasoning beyond the observation that other judges in the same district have paused cases too.^[8]

One note on labels: the plaintiff's opposition letter uses the shorthand "Gender-Motivated Violence Act," while the certified question names the statute in full as New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law.^[8][7] They are the same city law. The court's stay order itself names no case.

What is actually at stake in that question

The fight is about filing deadlines for long-ago abuse, and which level of government got to set them. When abuse happened decades ago, an ordinary lawsuit is normally barred as too old — so survivors depend on special "revival" laws that reopen the door for a limited time. Several such New York laws overlap here:

• New York State's Child Victims Act gave people abused as children a one-time window — running from August 2019 to August 2021 — to sue over abuse that would otherwise be too old to pursue. That window closed in 2021. (The Act also permanently lets childhood-abuse survivors sue up until they turn 55.)
• New York State's Adult Survivors Act did the same for people abused as adults, through its own one-year window (November 2022 to November 2023), also now closed.
• New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law then opened its own, broader window for sexual and gender-based violence, running from March 2023 to March 2025 — later than either state window, which is precisely what the preemption fight is about.^[7]

The question the court must answer is whether the city could reopen a deadline after the state had already set and closed its own. Defendants in these cases argue the state laws are the last word and "preempt" — cancel out — the city's later window; survivors argue the city law is a valid, independent route to sue.^[7]

For a case that relies on the city's window, the answer is close to all-or-nothing:

• If the city's window is upheld, it stands as a lawful way to sue over old abuse, and a claim that depends on that window can be judged on its facts.
• If it is struck down as overridden by the state laws, that route disappears, and a claim that depended on it would likely be dismissed as filed too late — unless the person has some other still-valid basis to sue.

It may not be that tidy, though — and that is the third possibility. New York's high court could land somewhere in between, upholding the city law only in part or on narrow grounds, and even a clean answer might not end this case on its own. Gomes De Souza's suit has features the test case lacks: the abuse is alleged to have happened abroad, in Brazil, and her claim rests on the argument that the decisions she is challenging were made at New York headquarters. So even once the deadline question is settled, the case could still turn on separate fights — whether New York is the right place to hear a claim about events in Brazil, or her argument that her own deadline should be paused because of the trauma she describes.^[3][6]

The plaintiff's push-back

The plaintiff fought the pause on three grounds, set out in the 21 April letter the judge later stamped his order onto. Procedurally, she argued the Governing Body had skipped a step the judge's own rules require before such a motion. Substantively, she argued the preemption question would not decide the case anyway, because her claims are timely under equitable tolling and equitable estoppel — related doctrines under which a court may stop the filing clock, or bar a defendant from relying on it, where the victim was prevented from coming forward; her lawyers cited federal decisions applying them to the psychological aftermath of prolonged sexual abuse. And she argued the request was premature, since the operative complaint carries no Gender-Motivated Violence Act claim at all — that claim appears only in the amended version she had not yet been permitted to file.^[8]

She then asked the judge to think again. On 18 May 2026 she moved for reconsideration of the stay, filing a supporting memorandum; the Governing Body and the two Watchtower corporations filed their responses on 29 May 2026, and one further paper was docketed on 1 June 2026. That is the last entry on the docket JW Files was able to review, and this account stops there.^[3]

What the defendants' dismissal motions actually argue is not set out here: the briefs were exchanged between the parties but were scheduled to reach the public docket on 8 May 2026, four days after the stay, and JW Files did not obtain them. In earlier letters the defendants had signalled two lines of attack — that the lawsuit was filed too late under the legal deadline, and that New York is the wrong place to hear a case about events in Brazil.^[6] On the deadline question, the plaintiff argues the clock should be paused because trauma, coercion, and psychological incapacity kept her from coming forward sooner.^[6][8]

On the paperwork: Watchtower's New York corporation was reported served with the lawsuit in late November 2025, while the Pennsylvania corporation and the Governing Body were served through the New York Secretary of State after direct service proved difficult.^[6] Advocacy coverage also reported that an amended version of the complaint, with exhibits, was filed in the days after the original November 12 filing.^[6]

This account reflects the live court docket as checked on 25 July 2026, on which the last entry of any kind is dated 1 June 2026 and the case is marked stayed. Anything docketed after that check — a decision on the reconsideration request, a lifting of the pause, a ruling, or a settlement — would fall outside it, so readers following the case closely should consult the court record for where it stands now.^[1][3]

A note on sourcing

JW Files searched for an official statement from the Jehovah's Witnesses or from Watchtower about this specific case and did not find one; that is the result of our search, not evidence that none exists. What is described above as the defendants' position comes from their filings and letters in the case, not from any press release.^[6]

It is also worth being clear about where the details come from. The confirmable facts — the case name, number, court, filing date, the parties, the amount sought, the procedural history and the pause — are backed by independent court-record services and, for the pause itself, by the court's own order.^[1][2][3][8] The narrative detail and the framing of why the case matters draw heavily on advocacy coverage that is openly opposed to Watchtower.^[5][6] Some of those advocacy pages, when checked for this update, had not been revised since the pause and described the case as active. No mainstream national outlet covering the case turned up in our searches. The allegations are serious — and, at this stage, they remain only allegations.