Watchtower's Lawsuit in France Backfires on Them Big Time

In January 2026, France's highest court refused to even hear Watchtower's final appeal in a defamation case it had already lost twice. Along the way, French courts forced Watchtower's confidential elders' manual, plus internal letters marked "do not copy," into the public record — and read them against Watchtower's own public claim that its elders systematically report child abuse to the authorities. Twice, the courts concluded that the manual didn't match the claim.

This is the story of how a single magazine article, and the lawsuit Watchtower filed to punish the journalist who wrote it, ended up doing more to expose Watchtower's internal handling of child abuse allegations than the article itself ever could have on its own.

The Article That Started It All

On October 4, 2021, the French magazine Neon published an investigation by Jade Serrano headlined "Jehovah's Witnesses accused of covering up child sexual abuse." Serrano is an independent investigative reporter with 15 years in the field, previously covering the Islamic State and a traditionalist Catholic fraternity. She hadn't covered Jehovah's Witnesses until a source in the French government pointed her toward Belgium, where the country's cult-monitoring center was counting victims of abuse inside the organization — something no one was doing in France.

Over about three months, Serrano identified more than 50 presumed victims. She put 47 of them in the article and held the rest back, by her own account, to give herself a margin of error given what she expected would follow.

The article told three stories in detail, using pseudonyms. The first was a woman called "Yanik," who was 13 in 1968 when she was abused by a 41-year-old man she went out in field service with. Her mother reported it to the elders, who convened an internal tribunal.

"The elders made me appear before the internal tribunal where I was called a liar."

She was punished for a year — no one was allowed to talk to her or sit next to her at the Kingdom Hall — and afterward was put back into field service with the same man. It only stopped once he moved away.

The second story, about a man called "Michelle," described him and his brother being abused at age 10 by a family friend who taught in the congregation. Elders held a judicial committee and questioned the children in front of their alleged abuser, then decided to treat the man as "undesirable." No one filed a police report. Michelle's older brother went on to abuse their younger sister, which also went to the elders, with the same outcome. Michelle eventually filed a police report himself in 2018, well past the statute of limitations, because — per the article — he needed to do it to rebuild himself.

The third story involved "Madeline," who was five in 1975 when she, her three-year-old sister, and two-year-old brother were left with a Witness couple for an afternoon. Their parents learned what happened three years later and brought the girls before three elders.

"Their silence was appalling. They listen to us, we leave, and that's it. We never heard about it again."

The man was removed as a ministerial servant but stayed in the congregation, where the girls saw him every Sunday for years.

Serrano's article also quoted directly from Watchtower's own elders' manual, Shepherd the Flock of God, including the passage instructing elders to call the branch office when an accusation of child abuse is made, and the line that follows it:

"Reporting to the authorities is left to each one's decision, and whatever a Christian decides, the congregation will not take any sanction against him."

Watchtower Sues — And Its Own Lawsuit Contains a Distortion

Before publishing, Serrano sent Watchtower's PR office a list of questions. Their response pointed her to Watchtower's own published materials, including the May 2019 Watchtower magazine.

On December 30, 2021, Watchtower's French entity sued Serrano and Neon under France's 1881 press law. The lawsuit named nine passages from the article, sought €20,000 in damages plus costs, and asked the court to order the magazine to publish the judgment permanently, as well as in the newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro.

One of those nine passages claimed the article asserted that Witnesses could be excommunicated for getting vaccinated. That claim wasn't actually in the article — Serrano had quoted a former member listing things a person could be disfellowshipped for, vaccination among them, as that person's account, not as her own assertion. Watchtower's lawyers rewrote it as a flat claim by Serrano and added it to the suit. The first court threw that passage out and described Watchtower's version of it as distorted. The only misquote in the entire case was Watchtower misquoting the journalist.

How French Defamation Law Treats This

Under the 1881 law Watchtower sued under, accusing someone of a specific fact that damages their honor is defamation, and the law presumes intent to harm. To defend against that, a journalist has to establish good faith: that the piece had a legitimate purpose, that the author held no personal animosity toward the party described, that it reflected serious investigation, and that the writing was prudent. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, when the subject is a matter of public interest, the journalist additionally has to show they had a sufficient factual basis for what was published.

The First Ruling: A "Centralized Internal System"

On June 28, 2023, the Paris tribunal — a three-judge panel handling press cases — ruled. As expected, it found most of the article defamatory: accusing an organization of covering up crimes against children damages its honor regardless of whether the accusation is true. That part of the ruling was never really in doubt.

What mattered was the next ten pages, where the court examined chapters 5 and 12 of the elders' manual — chapter 5 covering judicial committees and the two-witness rule (which requires two witnesses to an act before elders can act on it, something essentially never true of child abuse), and chapter 12 covering child abuse specifically, where elders are told to call the branch when informed, with the decision to report to authorities left to the person who reported it to them.

The court also examined an October 2012 letter to all bodies of elders, which likewise instructs elders to call the branch when given an abuse accusation, restates the two-witness rule, and directs elders to create a permanent record marked "do not destroy," kept indefinitely. Only the branch — never local elders — may label a man a predator or a known pedophile, and elders may warn parents only after receiving instructions from the branch's legal department. The letter allows past abusers to be given privileges of service again, but only after a call to legal first.

The court additionally cited a 1989 letter to all bodies of elders on confidentiality in judicial matters:

"All material related to judicial matters should be kept in a safe place accessible only to elders. Final reports on the handling of judicial matters should be placed in a sealed envelope in the congregation file."

That letter also instructs elders not to put anything in writing to a disfellowshipped person about the reasons for their expulsion, and closes with a postscript:

"Please do not make any copies of this letter, nor should it be read by others. It should be kept in the congregation's confidential files."

Here is the court's central conclusion, later adopted word for word by the appeals court and left standing by the highest court:

"The documents do not demonstrate the existence of directives expressly forbidding any referral to the competent judicial authorities. They nevertheless establish the existence of a very precise and centralized internal system for handling these abuses in which the reputation of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization holds an important place, where referral to the judicial authorities is never presented as a desirable or sought-after practice, including in the section on supporting minor victims, and where confidentiality holds a central place."

A few pages later, the ruling adds:

"The evidence establishes the existence of a recurrent practice of handling cases of sexual abuse committed within the congregation on an exclusively internal basis, with persons wishing to go to the courts being discouraged from doing so."

Good faith was established. Serrano and Neon were vindicated, and Watchtower was ordered to pay €2,000 plus costs. In the process, Watchtower had put the elders' manual and both confidential letters — materials meant for elders' eyes only — permanently into the public record.

Watchtower Appeals, and Loses Again

Watchtower appealed. The appeals court actually went further than the first court on two passages, ruling as defamatory two things the original court had cleared — meaning the appeals court found the article even more defamatory than the first ruling did. But it still adopted the first court's finding about the "very precise and centralized internal system," holding that the lower court's reading of the evidence logically led there, and added:

"The documents and testimonies confirm the practice of handling internally matters that fall under the judicial authority."

Watchtower lost again and was ordered to pay another €2,000.

The Highest Court's One-Word Answer

Watchtower appealed once more, this time to France's highest court. On January 28, 2026, that court rejected the appeal without writing out its reasons, on the grounds that Watchtower's arguments were manifestly incapable of overturning the ruling. Watchtower was ordered to pay a further €3,000.

Across three rulings, the courts never found that the article's accusations were factually true — that isn't what French defamation law asks. What they found was that a serious journalist, working from Watchtower's own documents, had a sufficient factual basis to publish. That's narrower than a finding of guilt, but far wider than a finding of innocence.

What Watchtower Told the Public vs. What the Manual Says

On January 18, 2008, Watchtower's French association published a three-page communiqué, prompted by press coverage of abuse cases, signed by its president, Jean-Marie Boare. It states:

"The idea that Jehovah's Witnesses would knowingly conceal from the authorities acts of sexual assault committed against children is absurd and unacceptable," and that "facts of this nature must be reported to the authorities and their perpetrators must be punished accordingly."

The communiqué also admits that until France reformed its penal code in 1994, Jehovah's Witness ministers left it to the victim's family to decide whether to go to the authorities. It states that the association created a Bureau of Religious Affairs in 1994, and that ministers have instructions to systematically report to authorities acts of assault not already reported by the victim or their family: first urging a known perpetrator to turn himself in, then inviting the parents or victim to file a complaint, and — failing that — having the elders themselves make the report. Watchtower sent this communiqué to the French justice minister in 2008, and it has remained Watchtower's standard answer to non-reporting accusations since.

Compare that to the 2010 elders' manual — the same one the courts examined. Chapter 12, paragraph 18:

"When you are informed of an accusation of child sexual abuse, you must immediately call the branch office to ask for advice."

Paragraph 19:

"Child sexual abuse is a criminal act. Never suggest to anyone that it is better not to report an accusation of child sexual abuse to the police or other authorities. If you are asked, make it clear that it is left to each one's decision whether or not to report the facts to the authorities. And a victim has the absolute right to report her assault to the authorities if she wishes."

Nowhere in that chapter, or anywhere else in the book, are elders instructed to call the police themselves.

The 2019 edition — the one the administrative court examined in 2024 — softens the language but doesn't add that instruction either:

"Jehovah's Witnesses abhor child sexual abuse. Consequently, the congregation will not protect the perpetrators of such repugnant acts from the consequences of their sin. The congregation's handling of an accusation of child sexual abuse is not intended to replace the handling of the matter by the public authorities."

It adds that the victim, parents, or whoever brings the accusation "will be clearly informed that they have the right to report the facts to the public authorities." The right to report belongs to the victim or the parents — not an instruction for elders to do it themselves.

Chapter 14, paragraph 7, of that edition states:

"To be certain of complying with the laws on reporting child abuse, when the elders become aware of an accusation of child abuse, two of them must immediately telephone the branch's legal department for advice."

It then lists circumstances under which elders must still call the legal department — among them, if the events happened many years earlier, if they rest on a single person's testimony, if they appear to involve repressed memories, if the people involved are dead, if the facts appear already reported to the authorities, if the accused isn't a Witness but attends meetings, or if the victim is now an adult. Even in the manual's most recent edition, from 2025, the department elders are told to call has been renamed from the legal department to the service department — but elders are still never instructed, in any edition, to call the police.

The court's June 2023 ruling noted this gap directly, writing on page 23 that the 2008 communiqué is "counterbalanced by the internal directives recalled above" — meaning the elders' manual.

The Sealed Envelope

Paragraph 25 of the 2019 manual states:

"The documents concerning a person who attends a congregation and is accused of child sexual abuse, whether the facts are established or not, including letters of introduction, will be kept in an envelope bearing the person's name and the words, 'Do not destroy.' This envelope will be kept with the congregation's confidential file, including the disfellowshipping forms, even if they are later reinstated."

That envelope instruction traces back to the July 1, 1989 letter to all bodies of elders, in a section titled "Be Extremely Careful with Written Material," which states that judicial materials should be kept in a safe place accessible only to elders, with final reports sealed in an envelope in the congregation file — followed by the postscript instructing elders not to copy the letter or let anyone else read it.

Nowhere in the manual does it instruct elders to hand that envelope, or its contents, to the authorities.

The Case Watchtower Won

In 2021, MIVILUDES, the French government's cult-monitoring body, wrote in its official report:

"The difficulty lies in the recommendation made to members not to go to the courts even in the case of serious criminal matters. This recommendation and the internal handling of a complaint contravene the laws of the republic and may lead to depriving certain vulnerable victims, children in particular, of adequate treatment of their grievances."

Watchtower demanded that passage be removed. MIVILUDES refused, and Watchtower sued. On June 14, 2024 — a few months before the appeals court ruled in Serrano's favor — the Paris Administrative Tribunal ruled for Watchtower.

The reason is in what evidence MIVILUDES actually had on file: three personal testimonies, the Australian Royal Commission findings, two California court decisions, a press article, and the elders' manual. The tribunal held that the Australian and American material "do not constitute evidence permitting the cultic risk in France to be characterized" — not that it wasn't true, but that it didn't establish anything about France specifically. Watchtower, for its part, filed sworn statements from elders describing reports made to French authorities, its 2008 communiqué, and a supplement to the 2019 manual specific to France instructing elders to call Watchtower's legal department to ensure compliance with French reporting law. The tribunal concluded that MIVILUDES "produces no element relating to investigations or criminal prosecutions targeting Jehovah's Witnesses or reporting a failure to comply with reporting obligations," and had therefore "committed an error of fact in writing that the internal handling of complaints contravenes the laws of the republic." MIVILUDES was ordered to delete the passage and pay Watchtower €1,500.

That ruling and the Serrano rulings aren't actually in conflict — they answered different questions on different evidence. The administrative tribunal never saw the 1989 letter, the 2012 letter, the criminal convictions described below, the Senate report, or the sworn victim statements, because none of that was in MIVILUDES's file. Serrano's lawyers, by contrast, submitted all of it in response to Watchtower's lawsuit, and the civil courts weren't asked whether Watchtower broke the law — only whether Serrano's article had a sufficient factual basis. MIVILUDES asserted a violation of law and failed to prove it. The civil courts described an internal system built around reputation and confidentiality, without ruling on whether that system violates the law. Watchtower's public messaging leans entirely on the first answer while ignoring what the courts said about the second.

The Pattern Predates Serrano

None of what French courts and the French Senate have said about this system originated with Serrano's article.

In Dijon, in February 1998 — four years after France began criminalizing failure to report abuse of a minor, and four years after Watchtower created its Religious Affairs Bureau — three Jehovah's Witness elders were convicted of failing to report a crime. The court record described them as having formed themselves into a "religious jurisdiction" rather than alerting the authorities; the predator continued abusing for another year after the elders knew. The elders received three-month suspended sentences; the abuser received 12 years. A Belgian report states that the elders said:

"If we had known of a crime, we might have gone and reported it, but a rape is different."

A second case, from November 1998, involved an uncle sentenced to five years for assaulting three girls; four Witnesses were fined for not reporting him despite his having admitted what he did.

A third case, reported in 2008 and cited by both civil courts, involved a 12-year-old repeatedly abused while alone with a man during preaching. The congregation was told in 1992; a judicial committee took no action because, per the report, there was no proof and the man denied it — the two-witness rule again. The man was later disfellowshipped, but for adultery. The victim died by suicide in 2006, and the case was reopened only then.

A fourth case, from July 2013, involved a grandfather convicted of abusing seven of his granddaughters, aged 6 to 13, over eight years. The family's lawyer told the press there had been internal directives within the congregation for the victims to stay quiet. Asked why they hadn't gone to the authorities, the parents said:

"We didn't think of it. We were told it wasn't serious."

In May 2019, the French Senate's Information Mission on Sexual Violence Against Minors published a 290-page report and opened a public testimony portal that received about ten submissions concerning Jehovah's Witnesses, mostly from relatives of members. The report states:

"The various testimonies converge in denouncing the law of silence, the will to handle cases internally, the deliberate absence of reporting to judicial authorities, and the lack of protection of children within this religious movement."

And:

"Not only are the aggressors very rarely sanctioned by the organization, but the victims often find themselves in the position of the accused, criticized for having harmed the reputation of Jehovah's Witnesses."

The report specifically names the two-witness rule and notes that two witnesses to this kind of crime almost never exist. It also acknowledges that the mission did not study Jehovah's Witnesses in particular.

Behind all of it sits the Australian Royal Commission, which found roughly 1,006 alleged perpetrators and about 1,800 alleged victims in Watchtower's own Australian records — and found that not one of those alleged perpetrators had been reported to police by the organization. Both the French court and the French Senate cited it.

The Strongest Defense — and Where It Breaks Down

The fairest case for Watchtower runs roughly like this: French law protects clergy confidentiality the same way it does for Catholic tribunals or the Jewish Beth Din. Watchtower's 2008 communiqué says explicitly that abuse must be reported. The Bureau of Religious Affairs was created in 1994 to handle exactly this. The manual tells elders to call the legal department to ensure they're complying with reporting law, and says elders don't shield abusers from authorities. The administrative court rejected MIVILUDES's claim that Witnesses are told not to report. A Belgian court in 2022 found a Belgian cult-monitoring center's claims about Witnesses rested mostly on press clippings. And in a 2025 French case, a Witness went to prison for abuse, with the record showing a report made to the national platform. As for the Serrano case itself: the courts found the article defamatory and protected the journalist on free-press grounds — they never found what she wrote was true.

That defense has real weight in places. No French court has ever found Watchtower itself guilty of failing to report, as an institution — individuals have been prosecuted, not the organization. And Watchtower's process has visibly tightened over time: the 2019 manual is stricter than the 2010 edition, and the 2025 edition stricter still.

But it breaks down on a few points. First, the "systematic reporting" claim in the 2008 communiqué doesn't appear anywhere in the elders' manual itself — the manual tells elders to call the branch, not the police, in every edition examined by the courts. If systematic reporting instructions existed, they would be in the manual elders actually use, and the courts found they weren't. Second, the administrative ruling that favored Watchtower rested on an incomplete file — MIVILUDES simply didn't submit the 1989 letter, the 2012 letter, the criminal convictions, or the victim statements that the civil courts had in front of them. Third, the 2008 communiqué itself admits that before 1994, reporting was left entirely to the family — and elders were still being convicted for failing to report more than a decade after the law changed, while the manual still doesn't instruct elders to report immediately. Fourth, and hardest to answer: a manual that specifies an envelope, a label reading "do not destroy," a locked confidential file, and an indefinite retention period — but never once names an authority to send that information to — tells you what that file is actually for.

Where This Leaves Things

What Serrano's case established is that when all the evidence is put in front of a French court, it does not accept Watchtower's public claim of systematic reporting, and it can describe in detail the internal system built around protecting the organization's reputation. What hasn't been established in France — not yet — is that Watchtower actively covered up abuse as an institutional policy in violation of the law. Australia's Royal Commission went further than any French ruling has. In France, the question tested in court was narrower: does the public claim match the private manual? Twice, the courts read the manual, and twice, they believed the manual over the communiqué.

Watchtower spent four years and three courts trying to make Jade Serrano's reporting disappear. Instead, it put its own confidential instructions permanently into the public record, and lost every single time.