203. The Inquiry finds that during the Inquiry period:

a. Elders in the Jehovah’s Witnesses held positions of power and had status and authority conferred on them by the faith.
b. The faith assumed responsibility for the care of children and young people placed in the care of Elders for witnessing activities, pastoral support and care, working bees and other organised activities, and investigations and judicial committee processes. The faith’s assumption of responsibility for those children and young people flowed from its conferral of authority and trusted status on Elders, and the actions of Elders in taking children and young people into their care, unsupervised, in these contexts. In those situations, children and young people were in the care of the faith.
c. There is credible evidence that:

i. sexual abuse occurred in the care of the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith;
ii. the practice of Elders questioning children or young people who were victims of sexual abuse during investigations and judicial committee processes was inappropriate and emotionally or psychologically abusive.

d. There were factors that increased the risk of abuse in the care of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, including:

i. the status of leaders and the power imbalance between them and members of the faith in the context of elevated levels of influence within the faith;
ii. the barriers to the disclosure of abuse, including the place of females in the faith, the fear of exclusion and relative disconnection from the secular world;
iii. lack of vetting and training of Elders in child protection and abuse prevention.

e. The full extent of abuse in the care of the faith cannot be quantified for reasons including inadequate record keeping and the barriers to disclosure described above.
f. Steps taken by the faith to prevent and respond to abuse in care were inadequate. In particular:

i. there was inadequate vetting and training of Elders in child protection and abuse prevention;
ii. the policies, rules, and standards relevant to child sexual abuse were from various separate directives from the governing body, across many different issues of different publications, all based primarily on passages from scripture;
iii. processes for raising, handling and responding to concerns or complaints of abuse in care were inadequate.