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. A judge refused on 12 August to waive her $405 filing fee, ruling on her finances without reaching the claims themselves; the fee was paid on 19 August, so the case continues. The allegations are unproven.
· Updated September 16, 2026 · 11 min read
UkraineConfirmed
Five men who refused a mobilisation call-up each drew three years, four of them suspended. The two the army had already taken in drew five years, neither suspended — one a man posted as a cook in a supply section, who told the Stryi court he had applied for alternative service in 2022. All are trial-court verdicts, and only one is recorded as having taken legal effect.
· September 7, 2026 · 11 min read
UkraineConfirmed
On 19 August 2026 the Eighth Appellate Administrative Court in Lviv dismissed a Jehovah's Witness ministerial servant's challenge to his mobilisation call-up, holding that the statutory grounds for deferment are an exhaustive list he did not fall within — while finding, and not acting on, the recruitment centre's failure to decide his application at all. Three months earlier the same court quashed another Witness's call-up order, not on religious grounds but because a recruitment centre had exceeded its powers. And in April, in a judgment that is final and unappealable, a Kyiv panel held that Ukraine's alternative-service law is not clearly confined to peacetime conscription, absent any statutory restriction on that service — the proposition both Lviv panels treated as settled. No Supreme Court ruling reconciling them was found in the judgment-register searches this article describes.
· August 19, 2026 · 18 min read
UkraineConfirmed
In a final ruling of 19 August 2026, a panel of the Cassation Criminal Court upheld the conviction of a baptised Witness deacon under Article 336 for refusing a call-up notice, then released him from serving his three-year term on two years' probation. The precedent it applied — that belief is no answer to a mobilisation charge — is one two Supreme Court judges dissented from, that panels of the court tried three times to reopen, and whose underlying statutes four constitutional complaints were challenging as of the Court's notice of 6 May 2026. The same precedent holds that call-up during mobilisation does not cancel an objector's right to refuse to carry or use a weapon.
· August 19, 2026 · 13 min read
JapanReported
Filed in the Naha District Court on 18 May 2026 and reported in late August, the suit seeks about ¥16.74 million in damages and, Ryukyu Shimpo reports, a ruling that the policy at two prefectural hospitals is invalid. The plaintiffs say they were turned away for declining to sign a transfusion consent form; the hospitals say they are examining the complaint and cannot comment. The allegations are unproven and the first hearing is listed for 16 September.
· August 27, 2026 · 6 min read
BrazilConfirmed
On 28 August 2026 the STF's president, Edson Fachin, put ADPF 618 and ADPF 642 on the plenary calendar for 30 September. The merits judgment opened in a virtual session in 2025 and has been suspended twice by justices asking to study the file; the dockets record two justices' positions. Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania and the Associação das Testemunhas Cristãs de Jeová are admitted friends of the court in ADPF 618.
· August 28, 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
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
