France: MIVILUDES Loses Again Against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Court
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In the 2021 report from the French governmental anti-cult agency, the Administrative Court of Paris found eleven passages defamatory.
July 21, 2025
The French governmental anti-cult agency MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviances) has lost yet another case against the French Jehovah’s Witnesses—the Fédération Chrétienne des Témoins de Jéhovah de France (FCTJF). Just as it happened on June 14, 2024, the Administrative Court of Paris ruled that a number of passages concerning the Jehovah’s Witnesses in a MIVILUDES report were defamatory.
On July 11, 2025, the Administrative Court of Paris examined nineteen passages of the 2021 annual report of the MIVILUDES that the Jehovah’s 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.
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 “inaccurate.” The court reasoned that its jurisdiction as an administrative court was limited to reviewing the lawfulness of statements that produce “notable effects” or are “likely to significantly influence behavior.” 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.
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’s Witnesses and not vice versa.
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’s Witnesses by their opponents. Those eleven passages can be conveniently grouped into five groups of passages.
The first group of passages, according to the judges, that should be deleted as defamatory are the parts of the report “in which MIVILUDES asserts, on the one hand, that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have established ‘ecclesiastical jurisdictions’ 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.”
The court dismissed the Ministry’s 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’s Witnesses. An Australian report “is not, in itself, sufficient to establish that Jehovah’s Witnesses in France reject the justice system,” the court commented. “The three testimonies submitted in defense [by the Ministry] are not sufficient to contradict the evidence” presented by the FCTJF (sworn testimonies and written documents) all proving that they comply with France’s child abuse reporting laws and that their internal ecclesiastical disciplinary procedure does not obstruct reporting to the French authorities.
The second group of passages, the court declared defamatory are the statements “in which MIVILUDES asserts… that the consent of Jehovah’s 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.” The Ministry submitted, as evidence that this is the case, “a 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 hemorrhage during cancer treatment, receives regular visits from other Jehovah’s Witnesses and might move into a house owned by them; and an email dated 2019 from a hospital official reporting on the ‘activism’ of the Jehovah’s Witnesses Hospital Liaison Committee, without providing further details.”
According to the judges, “these testimonies alone are insufficient to demonstrate, either in the specific case mentioned or more generally, that the patients’ consent was vitiated by pressure.” The judges went on to observe that “the FCTJF, by contrast, submits twelve attestations from hospital practitioners in both the private and public sectors, reporting on the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses and noting no such pressure or any other infringement on the patient’s freedom of choice, which may lead them to refuse treatment contrary to their religious beliefs.”
The third group of passages, the court considered defamatory were MIVILUDES’ statement that “the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses movement… instruct women in the community to have sexual relations with their husbands under threat of sanctions, [and thus] commit acts of incitement to rape.” The judges observed that the MIVILUDES “relies exclusively on allegations made during an interview on 26 November 2021 by two individuals presenting themselves as former members of the movement.” However, the MIVILUDES “could not, in either case, rely on a single testimony, especially from individuals who did not specify that they had directly witnessed such acts,” to generalize and accuse the Jehovah’s Witnesses of routinely counseling wives to submit to “rape” by their husbands.
The fourth group of passages included “MIVILUDES’ assertion that Jehovah’s Witnesses live in fear of eternal suffering if they fail to fulfill their proselytizing obligations.” 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, “the Jehovah’s Witnesses submitted a copy of the FAQ from their website stating the opposite: ‘Do Jehovah’s Witnesses go door to door to gain salvation? No. We do go door to door regularly, that’s true, but we do not hope to gain salvation through this activity.’”
The fifth group of passages to be deleted were comments MIVILUDES included in its reports about the children of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, claiming that they “are 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.” The Ministry, to support the MIVILUDES’ statements, submitted “three testimonies, two of which are dated 2018 and one undated, indicating that the children concerned are often absent from public school or must 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.” However, the court said, “these 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’s membership in Jehovah’s 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.” The statements were thus considered defamatory.
What is particularly important in this decision is the court’s dismissal of the so-called “evidence” provided by the Ministry, which consisted entirely of statements by apostate ex-members. Other countries should carefully examine this aspect of the Paris decision. The apostates’ 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.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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