Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Volume 16 Religious institutions, Book 3, “Chapter 15 Jehovah's Witnesses; Recommendations 16.27-16.29”
“abandon its application of the two witness rule in cases involving complaints of child sexual abuse”
Recommendation 16.27 as summarised in the search index of the official site and in secondary sources; 16.28 asks the organisation to revise its policies so that women are involved in processes for investigating and determining allegations of child sexual abuse; 16.29 asks it to no longer require members to shun those who disassociate where the reason relates to their being a victim of child sexual abuse. The Jehovah's Witnesses chapter is chapter 15 of Book 3 (confirmed from the Volume 16 table of contents in Book 2, which was opened).
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Provenance and verification note for Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Volume 16 Religious institutions, Book 3, Chapter 15 Jehovah's Witnesses; Recommendations 16.27-16.29
Confidence note. Neither the official nor the royalcommission.gov.au copy of Book 3 could be downloaded from this environment (both hosts time out / TLS fails; a Python download was left running). The recommendation wording is consistent across the official site's search snippet, the ABC's 2017 reporting, the Case Study 54 transcript (which describes the recommendations as they stood in the Case Study 29 report) and multiple secondary summaries, and the claims it supports are labelled accordingly.
Corroborated by. src-arc-2016-1000-cs29-report, src-arc-2017-0310-cs54-day259-transcript, src-abc-2017-0310-jw-defend-treatment
Notes. Volume 16 Book 2 (Catholic Church) was downloaded from tjhcouncil.org.au and its contents page confirms Book 3 contains '15 Jehovah's Witnesses'. Final Report presented 15 December 2017.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-arc-2017-1215-final-report-vol16-bk3