Jehovah's Witnesses Sue Japan for Protecting Its Children

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]This, in my opinion, is one of the most revealing things the Watch Tower organization has ever done.

[00:00:08]And I say that as someone who grew up inside this organization, as someone who knows what it means to be raised where the governing body's rules take precedence over everything. Your friendships, your education, your medical treatment, your future.

[00:00:26]I know what that world looks like, and I know what it costs. So, when I tell you that the Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government demanding compensation demanding the government's child protection guidelines be declared unconstitutional.

[00:00:46]I want you to understand what that means.

[00:00:50]Not as a religious freedom debate, but as someone who advocates for the protection of children.

[00:00:57]Because Japan did something that governments around the world have been too cautious, too polite, or too afraid to do.

[00:01:07]They looked at what was happening to children inside this organization and others.

[00:01:13]They looked at the blood transfusion refusal cards being handed to 10-year-olds.

[00:01:18]They looked at the physical abuse inside Kingdom Halls.

[00:01:22]They looked at the social isolation, the birthday bands, the shunning of some of anyone who questions the rules.

[00:01:30]And they said, "This is child abuse.

[00:01:34]And our job is to protect children from it." And the Watch Tower's response was to take them to court.

[00:01:41]Let's talk about it.

[00:01:43]>> [music] >> So, let me give you the facts first because the story has a specific timeline that is relevant to this issue.

[00:01:54]On July the 8th, 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated. The man who shot him was the son of a member of the Unification Church.

[00:02:05]The organization sometimes called the Moonies. The shooter believed his mother had been financially destroyed by the organization, that her donations had bankrupted the family, and that Abe had ties to the group. He shot Abe in broad daylight at a campaign event.

[00:02:24]What followed in Japan was a national reckoning with high-control religious groups, organizations that demand extreme loyalty, isolate members from outside society, and cause devastating damage to families.

[00:02:39]And the Unification Church was the primary target, but in the process of that national conversation, another organization came under scrutiny, the Jehovah's Witnesses. And in December 2022, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare issued guidelines sent to every local government across the country telling child consultation centers to take temporary custody of a child if there are acts that constitute child abuse, even if religious beliefs are involved.

[00:03:12]Even if religious beliefs are involved, the guidelines defined what counts as child abuse in specific and detailed terms.

[00:03:21]At the time of the draft regulations, the one of the local newspapers reported it as follows.

[00:03:29]The draft guidelines specify four acts prohibited under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Law. They then explain what kind of child abuse by religious parents falls into which category. For example, slapping children with a hand or a whip because of their behavior during religious activities is physical abuse. The draft guidelines say, "Parents will commit mental abuse by forcing children to engage in religious activities through threats, including saying they will go to hell if they don't." Another example of mental abuse is when parents restrict their children's freedom to make life choices, such as marriage, study, or work based on religious grounds.

[00:04:11]The draft guidelines also say that if parents don't allow their children to receive medical treatment, such as blood transfusions, on religious grounds, the case should be considered neglect.

[00:04:24]The draft guidelines said child consultation centers or local governments should cooperate with the police, including uh through information sharing, to respond to child abuse cases by religious parents. Such offenders could be charged with assault or causing bodily harm.

[00:04:44]The draft guidelines say that child consultation centers or municipal governments should prioritize the safety of children most.

[00:04:52]Now, from the outside, those guidelines might sound like a reasonable attempt to protect vulnerable children.

[00:04:59]From the ins- from inside the Watch Tower, every single item on that list is a description of normal life in a Jehovah's Witness household.

[00:05:09]And in March of the following year, the Watch Tower's Japanese branch and approximately 20 believing couples filed a lawsuit in Tokyo District Court.

[00:05:19]They want the guidelines declared unconstitutional.

[00:05:23]They claim violation of religious freedom and equality under the law. They are demanding 2 million yen per person in compensation from the state.

[00:05:34]And the first oral argument was heard in July of the same year.

[00:05:38]The case is ongoing, and this is where I need to stop being a news reporter and start telling you what I actually think about this because I have thoughts.

[00:05:49]And they come from somewhere personal.

[00:05:51]Before I give you my opinion, I need to give you one more set of facts because the Japanese government did not issue those guidelines based on speculation.

[00:06:02]They issued them based on what was actually happening to children inside this organization and others in Japan.

[00:06:11]Now, in March 2023, a group of Japanese lawyers, including six former Jehovah's Witnesses who had been raised in the faith as second-generation members, conducted a survey of people who had grown up inside the organization.

[00:06:27]And what they found was published publicly, presented at a press conference, and covered by the Japan Times and major Japanese media.

[00:06:36]Here are the numbers.

[00:06:39]92% of respondents said they had been whipped as children, physically struck as part of their religious upbringing inside the organization. Now, let me repeat that. 92% not a minority of bad actors, not a handful of troubled families. 92% of the people surveyed said they were physically struck in a religious context inside Jehovah's Witnesses.

[00:07:05]The most commonly cited reason for the whipping was napping or taking or or talking during congregation meetings.

[00:07:13]Other reasons included answering back to parents and playing with a schoolmate.

[00:07:19]Playing with a schoolmate.

[00:07:21]81% of respondents said they were made to carry a no blood transfusion card. A card that in an emergency, car accident, a fall, an unexpected medical crisis would instruct doctors not to give them the blood transfusion that might save their lives. Cards given to children who had no meaningful ability to understand or consent to what they were refusing. Some respondents said they have been suffering depression as a result of the physical abuse.

[00:07:53]That is people alive today carrying the weight of what was done to them as children in the name of doctrine decided by men in Warwick, New York. Now, what did the Watch Tower say in response to all of this?

[00:08:08]Their Japanese branch issued a press statement.

[00:08:12]Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan deplore disinformation and mischaracterization spread by a few critics about their beliefs and practices. This disinformation is the same as that spread by Russia against Jehovah's Witnesses and has been repeatedly condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Commi- Committee, and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. And then, and this is the part that I think tells you everything about how the Watch Tower operates on a global scale.

[00:08:46]In November 2023, the world headquarters in Warwick, New York sent instructions to branches around the world, not to Japan, around the world, instructing selected members, government officials, school teachers, professors, academics, to write letters to uh on official letterheads in support of the organization's child-rearing policies for use in the Japanese proceedings. And this was leaked by JW Leaks website, by the way.

[00:09:18]The instructions specifically said, "Do not mention the current situation in Japan." Now, think about what that means. The Watch Tower was asking members of its congregations who held positions of authority and credibility, people in government, in education, in academia, to lend their institutional letterheads to a lobbying effort designed to undermine a national child protection investigation.

[00:09:44]And they were being asked to hide the fact that the letters were related to that investigation. That is not a religious organization defending its practices.

[00:09:55]That is an institution using its global reach and its members professional positions to protect itself from accountability for what it does to children.

[00:10:07]Now let me talk about the religious freedom argument because it is the argument the Watch Tower always makes.

[00:10:14]The organization's lawsuit argues that the Japanese government's uh guidelines violate freedom of religion and parents have a right to raise their children according to their faith. That the government is targeting religious practice and labeling it as abuse without proper consultation or expert input.

[00:10:35]And I want to be honest with you here.

[00:10:36]There is a version of that argument that has genuine merit. Governments do sometimes overreach.

[00:10:43]Guidelines can be overbroad. Religious minorities have historically faced discrimination from states that defined majority cultural norms as the only acceptable way to live.

[00:10:56]I understand that argument. I grew up being taught that version of history about witnesses who were persecuted in Nazi Germany, about the brave stands taken in courts around the world, about the organization's long fight for the legal right to preach. But here is what that argument deliberately obscures and this is the one thing I need you to really understand. Religious freedom is a right that belongs to individuals.

[00:11:21]It does not belong to organizations and it cannot be claimed by adults on behalf of children who have no meaningful ability to exercise it themselves. When a parent carries a blood transfusion refusal card for a child, a child who did not choose to be born into this faith, who did not choose the doctrine, who may not even fully understand what the card means, that is not the child exercising religious freedom. That is the parent imposing the organization's doctrine on a person whose life is at stake and who has no voice in the matter.

[00:11:57]When a 5-year-old is whipped at a Kingdom Hall meeting for falling asleep during a 2-hour service, that is not religious freedom. That is a child being physically punished for being a child justified by a doctrine the child never chose.

[00:12:13]When a teenager is told they cannot go to a birthday party, cannot make friends outside the congregation, cannot participate in the normal social rituals of childhood, and that if they question any of these rules, they risk being labeled spiritually weak or worse, an apostate, that is not religious freedom. That is control and the child paying the price for that control is not the one who chose it. The Watch Tower's argument is that the guidelines target religious practice. The Japanese government's argument is that the guidelines target child abuse. The freedom those men are defending in a Tokyo courtroom is not the freedom of the children. It is the freedom of the organization to continue doing the next generation what it did to the current children.

[00:13:02]I want to talk about something the lawsuit does not mention, shunning, because when we talk about what the Watch Tower does to children and to families, we cannot talk about it honestly without talking about shunning, the practice of cutting off completely and permanently anyone who leaves the organization or who violates the rules.

[00:13:25]And when a child grows up inside Jehovah's Witnesses and reaches adulthood and decides, as hundreds of thousands of people around the world have done, that they cannot remain in the organization with integrity, the consequence is total social death.

[00:13:43]Total severance. Your parents are required to treat you as if you no longer exist, your siblings, your childhood friends, everyone you have ever known from inside the congregation.

[00:13:56]The people who held you at your baptism, who sat beside you at meetings for years, who you considered family, they are instructed by the organization to have no contact with you.

[00:14:09]Not to eat with you, not to greet you in the street, not to acknowledge you.

[00:14:14]I want you to think about what it means for a 20-year-old who has grown up inside Jehovah's Witnesses who has no friends outside the congregation who was never allowed to build relationships in the normal world, who has no educational qualifications because higher education was discouraged, who has no social identity outside the Kingdom Hall to face that choice.

[00:14:41]Stay inside a system you no longer believe in or leave and lose every person you have ever loved. That is coercion and it begins in childhood. It begins the moment a child is prevented from making friends outside the congregation.

[00:14:55]The moment a child is whipped for falling asleep during a meeting. The moment a child is handed a card that tells the world their blood is less valuable than a doctorate.

[00:15:06]The Japanese government saw that and they said, "We are not going to allow this to be done to children in our country without at least having the ability to intervene." And the Watch Tower's response was to sue them. And I want to ask you because I think it is a fair question, even if the answer is uncomfortable. If an organization's primary response to a government saying, "We will protect the children from what we believe is abuse."

[00:15:36]is to file a lawsuit and a global lobbying campaign, what does that tell you about the organization's relationship with accountability? The Catholic Church, when confronted with its own CSA scandals, said eventually, inadequately, but still they said, "We failed. We failed the children. We are sorry." The Watch Tower, when confronted with 92% of surveyed second generation members reporting physical punishment, with 81% carrying blood refusal cards as children, with survivors describing the sounds of other children screaming in Kingdom Halls back rooms, the Watch Tower's response was, "These are disgruntled people."

[00:16:22]And then they filed a lawsuit.

[00:16:24]And I want to end with what I think Japan got right because I think they deserve credit for something that is genuinely rare among governments when it comes to the Watch Tower.

[00:16:34]They named it, not in vague terms, not with careful diplomatic language about concerns regarding certain practices.

[00:16:43]They named specific behaviors.

[00:16:45]The blood refusal cards, the whipping, the social isolation, the birthday bans, and they said clearly and publicly, "This is what we consider child abuse.

[00:16:55]This is what we will intervene to prevent." And that matters because one of the most effective tools in the Watch Tower's arsenal has always been vagueness.

[00:17:06]The organization operates in the space between what is illegal and what is harmful.

[00:17:12]Blood transfusion refusal cards for children are not explicitly illegal in most countries. Whipping your child during a religious meeting is prohibited by anti-corporal punishment laws in many places, but enforcement is limited.

[00:17:26]Preventing your child from having friends outside the congregation, banning birthday celebrations, restricting access to higher education, none of these things are crimes.

[00:17:37]And so the organization has operated in those gray zones for decades, accumulating harm that is real and documented and life-altering while hiding behind the language of religious freedom. Japan said, "We are going to name the gray zones." And the naming is what matters because the first step to protecting children is being willing to say, without apology, that what is being done to them is wrong, regardless of the religious justification offered.

[00:18:09]Now, the Watch Tower's lawsuit argues that the guidelines were drawn up without consulting independent experts or the public.

[00:18:19]That argument has some procedural merit.

[00:18:22]Good policy should involve broad input.

[00:18:24]But the organization does not actually want a conversation about child welfare.

[00:18:32]If it did, it would not have secretly instructed its members around the world to write letters on official letterheads designed to undermine the investigation without mentioning that is what they were doing. That is not the behavior of an organization that welcomes honest scrutiny.

[00:18:50]That is the behavior of an organization trying to make the scrutiny go away.

[00:18:56]Japan has over 214,000 active Jehovah's Witnesses and nearly 3,000 congregations. The children inside those congregations are Japanese citizens. They are entitled to the protection of Japanese law.

[00:19:11]And the Japanese government has decided that protecting those children is more important than protecting the organization's ability to do to them what was done to the 92%.

[00:19:25]The Watch Tower will probably argue this case for years.

[00:19:29]They have the resources and the legal infrastructure to fight it at every level. They have fought similar battles in Australia, in Norway, in Germany, in the UK, and in courts across the United States.

[00:19:42]They are experienced at this. They know how to use legal processes to delay accountability and frame themselves as victims of religious persecution.

[00:19:54]I know the organization would say I am disgruntled. I know they would say I am one of the people spreading misleading claims.

[00:20:03]I know how they talk about people like me.

[00:20:05]Hey, I see it in the comment section of the Jehovah's Witnesses who are trolls on this channel.

[00:20:12]But here is what I also know.

[00:20:14]There are children inside Jehovah's Witnesses right now. In Japan, in the United States, in Canada, in South Africa, in every country where this organization operates, who are living the childhood the Japanese government mentions.

[00:20:33]Those who are carrying cards in their pockets, who are missing birthday parties, who are sitting in 2-hour meetings trying not to fall asleep because they know what happens if they do.

[00:20:44]Who are being told every week that everything outside the organization is spiritually dangerous and that anyone who leaves will be cut off from everyone they love.

[00:20:56]Those children did not choose this. They were born into it.

[00:21:00]Japan looked at those children and said, "Our job is to protect them."

[00:21:05]The Watch Tower looked at those children and said, "Our doctrine takes priority."

[00:21:11]And then they filed a lawsuit.

[00:21:14]Subscribe if you haven't already. Share this video because the more people will understand what is happening in Japan, the harder it becomes for the Watch Tower to make it disappear.

[00:21:23]And if you grew up inside this organization and recognize what I have described here, drop it in the comments because you are not disgruntled, you are witness to the abuse.

[00:21:35]See you next time.