{"id":210853,"date":"2025-10-09T17:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T17:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/?p=210853"},"modified":"2025-10-09T17:01:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T17:01:46","slug":"france-miviludes-loses-again-against-the-jehovahs-witnesses-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/france-miviludes-loses-again-against-the-jehovahs-witnesses-in-court\/","title":{"rendered":"France: MIVILUDES Loses Again Against the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Massimo Introvigne<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 2021 report from the French governmental anti-cult agency, the Administrative Court of Paris found eleven passages defamatory.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The French governmental anti-cult agency MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviances) has lost yet another case against the French Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses \u2013 the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration Chr\u00e9tienne des T\u00e9moins de J\u00e9hovah de France (FCTJF). Just as it occurred on June 14, 2024<\/a>, the Administrative Court of Paris ruled that a number of passages concerning the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in a MIVILUDES report were defamatory.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Branch facilities of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Normandy, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On July 11, 2025, the Administrative Court of Paris examined nineteen passages of the 2021 annual report of the MIVILUDES that the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses considered defamatory, but the mission had refused to delete from the document. The court found parts of eleven of the nineteen passages defamatory and ordered them deleted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is responsible for the MIVILUDES and was the defendant in the case.<\/p>\n

That the court ruled that the claim was inadmissible regarding eight passages is cold comfort for the MIVILUDES, as the court did not state that their content was true and acknowledged that they may well be \u201cinaccurate<\/em>.\u201d The court reasoned that its jurisdiction as an administrative court was limited to reviewing the lawfulness of statements that produce \u201cnotable effects<\/em>\u201d or are \u201clikely to significantly influence behaviour<\/em>.\u201d It explained that it did not have jurisdiction to review statements by MIVILUDES that merely cite sources or alleged facts without MIVILUDES taking an explicit position on those alleged facts or sources. Concerning the eight passages, the court noted that MIVILUDES was reporting the opinions of third parties without presenting them as its own or simply describing doctrines and practices (as in the case of the so-called shunning) without passing judgment about them.<\/p>\n

In defamation cases, there is always a clear indication of who the winning party was: the Ministry was ordered to pay money to the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and not vice versa.<\/p>\n

The eleven passages for which the MIVILUDES has been found, once again, guilty of defamation, are all key elements of the campaigns against the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses by their opponents<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Those eleven passages can be conveniently grouped into five groups of passages.<\/p>\n

The first group<\/strong> of passages, according to the judges, that should be deleted as defamatory are the parts of the report \u201cin which MIVILUDES asserts, on the one hand, that the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have established \u2018ecclesiastical jurisdictions\u2019 substituting for ordinary courts, particularly in criminal matters; on the other hand, that members of this religious movement are discouraged from turning to these [secular] courts; and finally, that their leaders do not proceed, as required by criminal law, to report certain criminal offenses to the justice system, particularly those committed against minors<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court dismissed the Ministry\u2019s objections that these statements are corroborated by a controversial report of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and by three declarations by apostate ex-Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. An Australian report \u201cis not, in itself, sufficient to establish that Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in France reject the justice system<\/em>,\u201d the court commented. \u201cThe three testimonies submitted in defence [by the Ministry] are not sufficient to contradict the evidence<\/em>\u201d presented by the FCTJF (sworn testimonies and written documents) all proving that they comply with France\u2019s child abuse reporting laws and that their internal ecclesiastical disciplinary procedure does not obstruct reporting to the French authorities.<\/p>\n

The second group<\/strong> of passages, the court declared defamatory are the statements \u201cin which MIVILUDES asserts\u2026\u2026. that the consent of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses is vitiated when it comes to undergoing a blood transfusion, due to pressure exerted on the patient by the rest of the community to refuse it<\/em>.\u201d The Ministry submitted, as evidence that this is the case, \u201ca 2019 testimony from a person stating that her aunt, a member of the movement, who announced she would refuse a blood transfusion in case of haemorrhage during cancer treatment, receives regular visits from other Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and might move into a house owned by them; and an email dated 2019 from a hospital official reporting on the \u2018activism\u2019 of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses Hospital Liaison Committee, without providing further details<\/em>.\u201d According to the judges, \u201cthese testimonies alone are insufficient to demonstrate, either in the specific case mentioned or more generally, that the patients\u2019 consent was vitiated by pressure<\/em>.\u201d The judges went on to observe that \u201cthe FCTJF, by contrast, submits twelve attestations from hospital practitioners in both the private and public sectors, reporting on the treatment of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and noting no such pressure or any other infringement on the patient\u2019s freedom of choice, which may lead them to refuse treatment contrary to their religious beliefs<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third group<\/strong> of passages, the court considered defamatory were MIVILUDES\u2019 statement that \u201cthe leaders of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses movement\u2026\u2026. instruct women in the community to have sexual relations with their husbands under threat of sanctions, [and thus] commit acts of incitement to rape<\/em>.\u201d The judges observed that the MIVILUDES \u201crelies exclusively on allegations made during an interview on 26 November 2021 by two persons presenting themselves as former members of the movement<\/em>.\u201d However, the MIVILUDES \u201ccould not, in either case, rely on a single testimony, especially from persons who did not specify that they had directly witnessed such acts<\/em>,\u201d to generalize and accuse the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses of routinely counselling wives to submit to \u201crape<\/em>\u201d by their husbands.<\/p>\n

The fourth group<\/strong> of passages included \u201cMIVILUDES\u2019 assertion that Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses live in fear of eternal suffering if they fail to fulfil their proselytizing obligations<\/em>.\u201d It is also regarded as defamatory. The court explains that it is based on the allegations of a single apostate ex-member, who left in 2004, made before the 2006 French parliamentary commission of inquiry on cults and in a book he published in 2007. However, the court notes, \u201cthe Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses submitted a copy of the FAQ from their website stating the opposite: \u2018Do Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses go door to door to gain salvation? No. We do go door to door regularly, that\u2019s true, but we do not hope to gain salvation through this activity\u2019.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The fifth group<\/strong> of passages to be deleted were comments MIVILUDES included in its reports about the children of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, claiming that they \u201care subjected, due to their religious education, to challenging anxiety and stress and, on the other hand, that their health, safety, or the conditions of their education and development are likely to be particularly compromised by the environment in which they grow up<\/em>.\u201d The Ministry, to support the MIVILUDES\u2019 statements, submitted \u201cthree testimonies, two of which are dated 2018 and one undated, indicating that the children concerned are often absent from public school or need to give up extracurricular activities to devote themselves to their involvement in the movement. It also submits a 2017 testimony stating that a child, despite good academic performance, had no contact with other children at school and refused to attend philosophy classes, and an undated testimony stating that the parents of a child opposed certain school teachings based on their beliefs and threatened to opt for homeschooling<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the court said, \u201cthese few elements, which are not recent and do not relate to the period covered by the report, are not sufficient to support a general claim that a parent\u2019s membership in Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses endangers the health, safety, or development of their children, particularly in the absence of any findings to that effect by a doctor or in the context of judicial proceedings<\/em>.\u201d The statements were thus considered defamatory.<\/p>\n

What is particularly important in this decision is the court\u2019s dismissal of the so-called \u201cevidence\u201d provided by the Ministry<\/strong>, which consisted entirely of statements by apostate ex-members. Other countries should carefully examine this aspect of the Paris decision. The apostates\u2019 testimony should not be taken at face value but compared with the statements by those who are still members of a religious organization and with its official documents. Following this method would clarify several misunderstandings and avoid much unnecessary suffering.<\/p>\n

Source: <\/em>bitterwinter.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

**********<\/p>\n

About the author<\/strong><\/p>\n

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia<\/em> (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy<\/em>). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion<\/em> and of the executive board of University of California Press\u2019 Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the \u201cRepresentative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions\u201d of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

yogaesoteric
\nOctober 9, 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The French governmental anti-cult agency MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviances) has lost yet another case against the French Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. The Administrative Court of Paris ruled that a number of passages concerning the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in a MIVILUDES report were defamatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":210705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[835],"tags":[1512],"class_list":["post-210853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-modern-crusade-against-spirituality-3480-en","tag-bivolaru_case"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210855,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210853\/revisions\/210855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}