ScotlandConfirmed
Lord Braid's opinion of 20 August 2026 covers three petitions that reached Scotland's highest civil court within about two weeks. In two, brought by Greater Glasgow Health Board, Jehovah's Witness parents had refused blood; the court authorised a transfusion only if the treating clinician judged it necessary to avoid serious harm including death. The third, from Borders Health Board, records no religious objection: parents who prefer natural remedies refused a tetanus jab after the family dog bit their daughter. The judge recorded that all three sets of parents were “loving parents.”
· August 20, 2026 · 18 min read
New York federal copyright rulingConfirmed
Judge Kenneth M. Karas denied the anonymous Jehovah's Witness's motion to cancel a DMCA subpoena to Cloudflare on 21 July 2026, leaving one question open: whether a protective order should come first. Both sides have now written to him about it, and through the docket's entries to 18 August 2026 the archivist has not been identified.
· Updated August 20, 2026 · 15 min read
UkraineConfirmed
In Barsuk and Gyl v. Ukraine, a unanimous Fifth Section Chamber held that Ukraine breached Article 3 and Article 9, each taken with Article 14, by describing the attacker's motive with a stock legal formula and letting the five-year prosecution deadline expire. The Court did not decide why the attack happened — only that Ukraine never seriously tried to find out. Each applicant was awarded EUR 4,000.
· July 9, 2026 · 16 min read
LegalReported
Meleah Thompson says she was abused as a child by men connected to her Oregon congregation in the early 1990s and that elders, told of it, invoked the two-witness rule and expelled her instead. Her suit, filed 20 July 2026, argues that the sexual acts she says she was coerced into were 'services' under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and that Watchtower knowingly benefited from concealing them. On 12 August a judge refused to waive her $405 filing fee, ruling on her finances without reaching the claims themselves; the docket records a second order the same day setting a 19 August 2026 deadline to pay it. The allegations are unproven.
· Updated August 18, 2026 · 11 min read
ArgentinaConfirmed
Río Negro's legislature approved the bill 28–15 on 6 August, the first of two votes its constitution requires before it can become law. The bill's operative text never mentions Jehovah's Witnesses; the explanatory findings filed with it name them, and recite three cases, two of them refusals a judge overrode.
· August 6, 2026 · 9 min read
PennsylvaniaConfirmed
After nearly six years of litigation, the Commonwealth Court gave the Ivy Hill Congregation the declaration it asked for on 27 February 2026, while expressly declining to decide whether its elders actually qualify for the privilege. Two judges dissented, calling the result "judicial legislation by default."
· February 27, 2026 · 10 min read
DoctrineConfirmed
A July 15, 2011 study article urged Jehovah's Witnesses to shun former members it described, citing 1 Timothy 6:3-4, as 'mentally diseased.' The wording drew UK press coverage, a Portsmouth police complaint that produced no charge, and an Australian tribunal filing.
· July 15, 2011 · 3 min read
DoctrineConfirmed
In Governing Body Update #5, released on jw.org on August 22, 2025, David Splane addressed 'additional secular education' and, per ex-member transcriptions, presented it more as a personal choice than the spiritual risk decades of Watchtower literature had described.
· August 22, 2025 · 3 min read
Governing Body UpdateConfirmed
A Governing Body Update dated December 15, 2023, and reportedly presented by Stephen Lett relaxed a decades-long grooming norm, reframing a neatly trimmed beard as a matter of personal conscience and local decision.
· December 15, 2023 · 3 min read
MediaConfirmed
The three-part series, released March 2024 on RTL's streaming service, is built on testimony from 57 former members and covers abuse, shunning, and apocalyptic teaching.
· March 13, 2024 · 3 min read
Director Pablo Aguinaga described the survivors' testimonies as 'devastating; these were deeply broken people who had suffered greatly.'Confirmed
The three-part series Sobrevivir al Paraiso: Mas alla de los Testigos de Jehova premiered on HBO Max on 20 February 2026, tracing former Spanish members' accounts of abuse, shunning, and legal action. Reception has so far been mixed and thinly covered by major outlets.
· February 20, 2026 · 2 min read
FinanceConfirmed
Jehovah's Witnesses closed on the 432,989-square-foot 'Blue Lake' facility across the lake from their New York world headquarters on June 26, 2026, for an undisclosed price.
· June 26, 2026 · 5 min read
PropertyConfirmed
In December 2017 a St. Petersburg court cleared the way for the state to take the Witnesses' former national headquarters — a 14-building complex owned by a U.S. entity — as fallout from the 2017 ban.
· December 7, 2017 · 1 min read
Superseded by an August 1, 2016 letterConfirmed
A confidential October 1, 2012 letter to U.S. bodies of elders routed child-abuse allegations through Watch Tower's Legal and Service Departments, kept the two-witness rule, and let the branch decide who counts as a "predator" — while saying nothing about reporting to secular authorities.
· October 1, 2012 · 4 min read
A rare announced departure from Jehovah's Witnesses' highest council, followed by a documented content scrubConfirmed
On February 22, 2023, the organization behind Jehovah's Witnesses announced in one sentence that Governing Body member Anthony Morris III 'no longer serves' — gave no reason — and then scrubbed his recorded talks from jw.org over the following weeks.
· February 22, 2023 · 7 min read
Leaked documentsConfirmed
The confidential 274-page "Shepherd the Flock of God" — which governs the Witnesses' judicial committees, the two-witness rule, and disfellowshipping — was leaked and published, exposing the internal disciplinary system to public view.
· February 5, 2019 · 2 min read