Looks like Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es will join the redress scheme in Aus­tralia final­ly, but don’t think it’s because god some­how inspired them to do the right thing:

The organ­i­sa­tion says it will sign up because of new rules intro­duced by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, which mean it would lose its char­i­ty sta­tus — and sub­se­quent tax exemp­tions — for con­tin­u­ing to hold out.

“Now that the law requires char­i­ties to join the scheme, Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es will com­ply,” it said in a state­ment to AAP on Wednesday.

Ah! Okay! Well at least the orga­ni­za­tion is being hon­est about being rot­ten. It can’t lose its pre­cious tax sta­tus! The orga­ni­za­tion still takes absolute­ly no respon­si­bil­i­ty for the abuse that’s hap­pened under its watch, but don’t take my word for it:

“Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es did not vol­un­tar­i­ly join because we object to the asser­tion that the reli­gion of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren,” the group said.

For an orga­ni­za­tion that micro­man­ages every aspect of life for mem­bers, this is cer­tain­ly an inter­est­ing twist. But hey, a win is a win. I’ll take their hand being forced to do the right thing for vic­tims, over noth­ing, any day.