Usually when we hear about sexual abuse in connection with a religious leader, we're inevitably reading about another fallen member of the Catholic Church, but another case is garnering some attention this weekend. In 2010, Jose Lopez filed a lawsuit against the Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, claiming that he was molested back in 1986. A San Diego judge believed his story and on Friday, awarded him $13.5 million in restitution.
Lopez says that in 1986, at the age 7, he was part of a Spanish Jehovah's Witnesses congregation in the Linda Vista section of San Diego. It was there that Lopez claimed to be molested by a church elder named Gonzalo Campos. Six other men and one woman also claim to have been molested by Campos but their cases were quietly settled out of court. Lopez was the only alleged victim that insisted on seeing Campos and the Watchtower organization held accountable.
After court on Friday, Lopez explained in the simplest of terms that the decades that have passed haven't lessened his pain. "It's never going to be over for me. It was just a horrible thing and I want people to know what happened to me," he said. Irwin Zalkin, Lopez's attorney, explained that it his clients belief that the Watchtower organization operates under a veil of secrecy and that's why Campos' other alleged victims' had their silence bought.
In speaking with the press, Zalkin explained, "These guys will deny and deny, they are belligerent, they are arrogant, they treat victims as adversaries." Zalkin also claimed that the congregation in question knew that Campos had molested a child a few years earlier but they allowed him to continue working with children because he was repentant for his actions. The attorney insists that many other abusers are willingly hidden by the organization.
