Barbara Anderson on Watchtower Documents 2025: Evidence, Accountability, Survivor-Centered Reform
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/01/16
Barbara Anderson is a researcher and whistleblower focused on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ handling of child sexual abuse. A member from 1954 to 1997, she worked at the denomination’s Brooklyn headquarters from 1982 to 1992 in the Writing Department, researching the movement’s official history. She later spoke publicly about internal policies and founded Watchtower Documents, an independent archive used by journalists and attorneys. Anderson has appeared in major media, including Dateline NBC, and continues to document cases, policies, and litigation while advising survivors and reporters. She authored Barbara Anderson Uncensored and maintains public profiles detailing her archival and advocacy work.
In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Barbara Anderson, researcher and whistleblower known for documenting Jehovah’s Witnesses’ child sexual abuse policies and building the archival project Watchtower Documents. Anderson outlines her 2025 work-streams: legal and legislative change, institutional accountability, and survivor advocacy, with increasing attention to adult victims. She explains that document authentication is mainly procedural—rules of evidence, protective orders, pseudonyms, and redaction—designed to admit proof while shielding identities. Anderson also describes trauma-informed collaboration with journalists and legal teams, and highlights systemic gaps in decentralized Protestant structures that hinder oversight, transparency, and consistent reform.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the main 2025 work-streams at Watchtower Documents?
Barbara Anderson: In 2025, main work-streams at Watchtower Documents related to eliminating clergy-perpetrated abuse, center on legal and legislative changes, institutional accountability and reform, and survivor advocacy and support. These efforts involve actions by governments, religious bodies (particularly the Catholic Church), and non-profit advocacy groups. And a growing focus on adult victims.
Jacobsen: Which verification methods authenticate documents while protecting victims’ identities?
Anderson: In legal proceedings related to clergy abuse, documents are authenticated using standard rules of evidence, while a victim’s identity is protected through legal safeguards like pseudonyms, protective orders, and document redaction. These are procedural, rather than technical verification methods, and they allow evidence to be admitted without revealing the survivor’s public identity.
Jacobsen: How do you collaborate with journalists and legal teams?
Anderson: Collaboration in clergy abuse cases involves a survivor-centered, trauma-informed approach where legal teams and journalists work transparently to support survivors, pursue accountability, and maintain confidentiality. Effective collaboration emphasizes shared power and clear communication while prioritizing the survivor’s well-being.
Jacobsen: What recurring themes happen in court filings or organizational policies?
Anderson: To reduce clergy abuse risk, reforms must focus on transparency, accountability, survivor empowerment, and strong internal controls, including mandatory background checks, independent oversight, publishing clergy files, enforcing zero-tolerance policies, ensuring prompt reporting to civil authorities, and banning secrecy pacts, moving away from institutional cover-ups towards genuine, survivor-centered justice and prevention.
Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, where are the biggest observed gaps?
Anderson: The gaps in solving Protestant clergy abuse largely stem from decentralized structures, a culture of denial and niceness that discourages naming inappropriate behavior, and a significant lack of external accountability and oversight. Unlike the Catholic Church, which has a universal hierarchy, the independent nature of many Protestant churches makes systemic solutions difficult to implement.
Jacobsen: Which concrete governance or compliance reforms would reduce risk?
Anderson: To reduce clergy abuse risk, reforms must focus on transparency, accountability, survivor empowerment, and strong internal controls, including mandatory background checks, independent oversight, publishing clergy files, enforcing zero-tolerance policies, ensuring prompt reporting to civil authorities, and banning secrecy pacts, moving away from institutional cover-ups towards genuine, survivor-centered justice and prevention.
Jacobsen: What metrics indicate progress, even regress, in accountability and justice since starting your work?
Anderson: Metrics indicating progress in clergy abuse cases include a decline in new allegations, increased spending on prevention, and legislative changes to statutes of limitations. Indicators of regress, however, include a lack of transparency in canonical trials, continued institutional resistance to accountability, and an increase in the number of cases categorized as “unable to be proven”.
Jacobsen: What near-term research is being prepared?
Anderson: Near-term research in clergy-perpetrated abuse cases is focusing on the experiences and support for adult survivors, the systemic factors within religious communities that enable abuse, and the effectiveness of current prevention and reporting mechanisms.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Barbara.
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