The Jehovah’s Witness scandal: ‘I said, “He's a paedophile.” The elders mumbled, “Yes, we know”’

telegraph.co.uk:

the Jehovah’s Witness practice of going door to door. She would pair up with another, older Jehovah’s Witness and together they would urge the strangers who answered their knocks to join the organisation, which these days has 140,000 followers in Britain.

They would tell those strangers that worshipping Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, was their ticket to Paradise, a way of saving themselves from Armageddon, which was just around the corner.For many people reading this, their experience of Jehovah’s Witnesses will be as one of those strangers, opening a front door to be greeted by a pair of neatly dressed individuals bearing copies of The Watchtower.

Some people will slam the door in their faces, but most will politely decline the publications on offer and close the door gently as the Jehovah’s Witnesses move on.For Michelle, these sessions were traumatic.

She was unfazed by the doors closing in her face, but she learnt to dread the time alone with the man who more often than not partnered up with her.Peter Stewart was a ‘ministerial servant’, one of the lower rungs in the hierarchical ladder of a Jehovah Witness congregation, and described in the organisation’s literature as ‘spiritually- minded, reliable, and conscientious men’.