Fort Kent woman sues Jehovah’s Witnesses, alleging child sex abuse
Shannon Simendinger, 45, previously testified against one religious leader in a criminal trial 2 years ago. He was found guilty of sexual assault.
Shannon Simendinger, at age 9, holding her cat. Simendinger says she was abused by several people within the Jehovah’s Witnesses church in Fort Kent as a child in the 1990s. Photo courtesy of Shannon Simendinger
January 24, 2025
By Emily Allen
While she was growing up in Fort Kent in the late 1980s, the local congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses was Shannon Simendinger’s world.
“When that’s all you know, you get close to the people and they become your family,” Simendinger said in a phone interview Thursday. “You get attached to them, and trust them.”
But it wasn’t just tight-knit — Simendinger feels now that she was isolated, discouraged from speaking with people outside her religion. That includes the time that Simendinger said she tried to get help after she was sexually abused by her religious leaders.
“I never put anything that happened behind me. It was always there, I just had to suppress my feelings in order to function,” Simendinger said. “You weren’t allowed to bring it up in the organization. You had to keep quiet, to move along like it never happened.”
Simendinger, now 45, filed a civil complaint in Aroostook County Superior Court this month against the Fort Kent Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation, as well as the national nonprofit that oversees all Jehovah’s Witnesses, known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
The complaint targets the institutions, rather than the three men she says repeatedly abused her, and includes counts of sexual assault, negligent supervision, breach of fiduciary duty and infliction of emotional distress.
The Fort Kent congregation did not return a voicemail from a reporter Thursday seeking to discuss Simendinger’s allegations. A defense attorney was not yet listed in the case. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ United States branch declined Thursday to discuss any of Simendinger’s claims.
“We empathize with all victims of abuse but it would be inappropriate for us to comment on the particulars of any litigation,” an unnamed spokesperson wrote in an email. “As Christians, our love of God and our neighbor motivates us to hate all forms of abuse.”
Simendinger’s lawsuit is similar to many others that have been filed against religious organizations in the last few years, largely as a result of a 2021 law removing the statute of limitations for child sex abuse claims. (The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has spent more a year considering whether that law is constitutional.)
But Simendinger’s case alleges abuse so recent that it still would have fallen within the previous statute of limitations. In her complaint, she says she was abused from 1985 to 1993.
She said she decided to bring a lawsuit after testifying in 2023 against one of the men, now in his 80s, who had assaulted her. He was found guilty of sexual assault and is serving a 20-year sentence in state prison.
“Being up there, in that moment, it was — I was anxious too,” Simendinger said. “But we got a conviction, and that’s really what matters is that he got put away for something that he did.
To read the entire article, go here.
