The policy of the religious movement does not condone child abuse but does not instruct members to report cases to the police

The Jehovah’s Witnesses should be forced to hand over a secret dossier of followers accused of child sexual abuse, a senior barrister said yesterday.

Pressure for the organisation to be included in the official inquiry into child abuse has intensified after it was revealed that details of alleged abusers were kept by the church in Australia and America.

The organisation follows rules in the scriptures requiring two witnesses to give evidence against a suspect, meaning many allegations of child abuse can not be pursued, the Sunday programme on BBC Radio 4 claimed.

A royal commission reported in November last year that it had found no evidence of the organisation telling police about a single one of the 1,006 alleged child abusers it had recorded in