Moriah Smith says she was raped by a fellow congregation member when she was 14 and he was 25.
Although Smith, now 20, did not feel comfortable disclosing to her parents, she worked up the courage to report it to 3 elders.
"They told me that I wasn't sorry enough to God for what I had done," says Smith, who has since left the religion.
"They had used the Bible to victim-shame me for what I had done, and they never did anything to him," Smith says. "He got married, and he remained within the congregation — a child molester living among them.”
In the past decade, there have been at least 30 lawsuits nationwide against the organization arising from its responses to child sex abuse. A jury recently awarded $35 million to a woman who claimed the congregation covered up abuse she suffered.
Smith says she hopes that by taking legal action, she will prevent what happened to her from happening to other Jehovah's Witness children:
"It is absolutely an environment where the abuser is set up to abuse again.”
