"A Time to Speak"----When? (with scans).

When an employee's religious beliefs clash with an employer's privacy rules, the temptation to tattle can sometimes be overwhelming.

As a result, employers are left with a hard-to-handle exposure: the possibility that a devout employee will break privacy regulations in the name of a greater good.

Dr. Gerald L. Bullock, who practiced medicine in Denison, Texas, in the 1980s, said he was stunned when a bookkeeper at his office released patient information to her church elders. As a Jehovah's Witness, the woman admitted that she was following what she perceived as her obligation to her church to report on a fellow church member's perceived sinful behavior, the doctor explained.

The patient had been treated by Dr. Bullock for a sexually transmitted disease. The Sunday after his employee released that information to church elders, the patient was expelled from the church, he said, and told not to communicate with friends and relatives in the church. "It had a major, major impact on her life," Dr. Bullock said.

The patient threatened to sue. Dr. Bullock's attorney advised the physician to immediately fire the bookkeeper and then "call this lady and do whatever she asks because you've got no defense," the doctor recalled.

After the firing and an apology, the lawsuit threat was withdrawn.

While such privacy breaches by Jehovah's Witnesses are not frequent, "it does happen," according to Gerald Bergman, a former member of the society who has written extensively on the church's practices. He teaches biology and chemistry at Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio.

"Their responsibility is to the church, not to the employer," Mr. Bergman said of the approximately 1 million Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States. "The employer is secular, and, therefore, second."

Such privacy breaches, of course, could be committed by anyone who feels morally obligated to do so, noted George Head, director emeritus of the Insurance Institute of America in Malvern, Pa.

"You've got to be careful not to pick on just Jehovah's Witnesses," he said. And no matter why someone feels obligated to release private information, the consequences could be dramatic for the entity that was responsible for that data.

"The ramifications of this are horrendous," said Catherine H. Gates, senior training specialist with Montgomery Insurance Co. in Sandy Spring, Md.

Ms. Gates, who teaches ethics workshops for Montgomery's agents, said, "Think of the damage if an insurance company had a lawsuit against them for the release of private information. Whether it was successful or not, they are going to lose their clients."

Even though it seems obvious that "the right thing to do is keep your mouth shut and the wrong thing to do is share the information with others," Ms. Gates said it's not hard to see the ethical dilemma for someone who would want to be loyal to a church as well as his or her employer.

For others, though, the dilemma is not so clear.

"It is definitely not appropriate to release (private information) no matter what the outside religious obligation is," said Sanford M. Bragman, Dallas-based vp, risk management at Tenet Healthcare Corp.

The Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, the body that directs church affairs, says there is no policy forcing members to report sinful acts or divulge private information. That choice is up to members, according to Phillip Brumley, general counsel for the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based group.

"They should study the scriptures, and what they do is up to them," said Mr. Brumley. If there is a conflict, he said, a member should "think that through and decide what to do."

A 1987 article in the church's Watchtower magazine, which the church says is its most recent on the subject, advises members to consider the ramifications before taking any oath that would put them in conflict with biblical requirements. Doctors' offices, hospitals and law firms are businesses where privacy problems could arise, the article states. "We cannot ignore Caesar's law or the seriousness of an oath, but Jehovah's law is supreme," it reads.

The article further states that if a "Christian feels, after prayerful consideration, that he is facing a situation where the law of God required him to report what he knew despite the demands of lesser authorities, then that is a responsibility he accepts before Jehovah."

It is an employee's promise, though, that appears to be an employer's only protection against the release of private information on moral grounds.

"Even if you have everybody sign something, it isn't going to stop the behavior" if a zealous employee feels obligated to release information, Ms. Gates noted. "The only thing it can do is keep the employer from being held liable," she said.

Dr. Bullock said he now hires only workers who make such promises, and, when interviewing, wants to know whether there is "anything about you that would cause you to tell on a patient," he noted. If so, the applicant isn't hired.

Nancy Hacking, director of safety and risk management at Concord Hospital in Concord, N.H., said hospital employees each year sign a confidentiality agreement stating that they will not release confidential information. Workers who violate the agreement, she said, "are subject to termination."

Apart from educating employees on what information is private, the hospital also runs "audit trails" on its electronic systems to keep tabs on who accesses such information, Ms. Hacking said.

At Tenet, ongoing training, much of it online, keeps employees aware of what information should be kept private, according to Mr. Bragman. The training covers regulations contained in the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act that govern privacy, he said.

Adam G. Linett, associate general counsel with the Jehovah's Witnesses, said employers shouldn't fear HIPAA penalties for unauthorized disclosures because sanctions in the act are aimed at employees.

And, Mr. Linett said, he "can't think of a single case where this has happened and resulted in a lawsuit."

'Think of the damage if an Insurance company had a lawsuit against them for the release of private information. Whether it was successful or not, they are going to lose clients.' -- Catherine H. Gates, Montgomery Insurance Co.

Jehovah's Witnesses are being told for the first time that they should violate confidentiality requirements in medical, legal and other professions when one of their own members is discovered to have committed a serious sin.

"The objective would not be to spy on another's freedom but to help erring ones and to keep the Christian congregation clean," says the Sept. 1 issue of the Watchtower magazine, an authoritative publication of the Witnesses' Brooklyn-based Watchtower Society.

The 3.3 million members worldwide, including 745,000 active U.S. Jehovah's Witnesses, are advised to confront the sinner first, but if he or she is unrepentant, the sinner's elders should be told "because of the superior demands of divine law."

Warnings of Armageddon

Jehovah's Witnesses, best known for their warnings of a world-ending Armageddon, have clashed in the past with governments for refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag or to serve in the military-out of a greater loyalty to God. But both sect officials and critics of the movement say this is the first published advice to members that they breach oaths of confidentiality when they learn of serious violations of their faith.

The Witnesses' stance goes beyond anything practiced in conservative churches, said Charles Teel Jr., professor of Christian ethics at Loma Linda University. "I know of no evangelical or fundamentalist community that has that kind of understanding of being faithful to the congregation or breaking pledges in the workplace," Teel said.

The magazine used a hypothetical case of "Mary," a medical assistant, discovering that a fellow Witness had had an abortion. "Did she have a scriptural responsibility to expose this information to elders in the congregation, even though it might lead to (Mary) losing her job, to her being sued, or to her employer's having legal problems?" the article asked.

The answer was yes, and Witnesses were advised to determine, before pledging confidentiality in their jobs, "what problems this may produce because of any conflict with Bible requirements."

One critic of the Jehovah's Witnesses said the opinion will have "frightening" consequences for members already working in certain professions. They may find that requesting transfer or resigning is "the only honorable and responsible thing to do," said David Brown, spokesman for Alpha and Omega, a self-described "counter-cult" ministry in Phoenix.

Regarding the confidential client relationships required of attorneys and physicians, William Van De Wall, a Witness headquarters spokesman, said Wednesday that "in the majority of cases" both the professional and the client could protect themselves.

"At the community level, most patients who seek out an attorney or doctor would know if they were of the same religion. If a Witness wanted to avoid telling him something, he would seek someone else. And as long as the doctors and attorneys make known their positions when they get the client, that should eliminate the problem," Van De Wall said in a telephone interview.

Van De Wall confirmed that someone who contracted venereal disease or AIDS through sexual promiscuity would be considered to have sinned. Other serious offenses, he said, could include drug abuse, contributing to a sperm bank or receiving artificial insemination, or, if unmarried, obtaining a vasectomy or prescription for birth control pills.

Both Van De Wall and the published guidelines suggested that reporting on an erring member can have a happy ending-with the offender confessing the sin and receiving counseling.

Similarly, Frank Kavelin, an elder with the Beverly Hills congregation, noted Wednesday that the guidelines say that minor transgressions should be overlooked. "While the organization promotes zeal for doing things that are righteous, it also promotes discretion," he said.

Kavelin also said that he was not worried that members would be upset over the guidelines in the Sept. 1 magazine, which has been available to members since mid-August.

But some ex-Witnesses predicted that members will be subjected to increased scrutiny in a church that last year expelled one member for every six it took in.

Raymond Franz, a nine-year member of the Watchtower Society's governing body until he resigned under pressure in 1980, said: "The governing body knows that some little statement made by it will be converted into something mammoth by the time it gets to the elders. No area of personal life is beyond their reach and rulings."

Franz, who lives in Winston, Ga., also disputed the idea "that those people going to the elders are going to be treated lovingly. So often people find they were dealt with in demeaning ways." Franz was disfellowshipped at the end of 1981 in a case involving his changed views of the organization's theology.

I see I much to read and learn from this site.

My comment is how this is simply one more example of how self serving and controlling it all is. This from someone who actually still has love in his heart for those he left behind.

Amazing post you have here. Snitches. I never imagined it would come to that.