The court must again consider the sex offense around a 49-year-old ex-member of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The court of appeal on appeal determined that.
The court ruled earlier that the Public Prosecution Service (OM) could not prosecute the suspect from Assen for sexual abuse at Jehovah’s Witnesses. By consulting confidential information, it lost the right to prosecute the man. The Public Prosecution Service appealed and therefore immediately reaches the court.
In 2016, the man from Assen would have performed vental acts at an 8-year-old victim at the time. In 2018, the OM searched for documents from committees that form the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a member is accused of sexual child abuse.
Those documents of elders of the religious community are confidential and fall under the so -called right of non -disclosure, as, for example, for doctors, the judge ruled.
The Court only states that the ‘secret holder information’ was not the starting point for the investigation. That did happen after reporting the victim. According to the Court, it can therefore “not be said that secret holder information has given concrete or significant control (the start of) the investigation”.
Moreover, documents from the file, which are part of the right of non -disclosure, could be put aside so that they do not count as proof.