I have read and heard here in the forum that one of the members of the Govering Body was a homosexual and was caught in the act of doing the bad thing at Bethel. Was not disfellowshipped?
Could someone verify the veracity of this for me. Is it documented someplace or are there court records the such...
Also in the Canadian Bethel this was also reported that homosexual practises were committed by Bethel members and Brother Percy. Again I request is there truthfulness to any of these statements.
Thank you.
This is for research I am doing .
Question.......Re Leo Greenlees
by orangefatcat 7 Replies latest jw friends
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orangefatcat
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crownboy
Hey orangefatcat,
I think this link will be very helpful (started by AlanF):
. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=5466&site=3
Go therefore and baptize the people in the name of the father and of the son... what the hell, we just need to bring up the yearbook numbers!
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orangefatcat
thank you CrownBoy
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Amazing
"Could someone verify the veracity of this for me. Is it documented someplace or are there court records the such ... Also in the Canadian Bethel this was also reported that homosexual practises were committed by Bethel members and Brother Percy. Again I request is there truthfulness to any of these statements."
The link provided by Orangefatcat is good. AlanF is very careful about his sources, so his commentary is highly credible, and the risk is low for serious error.
There would never be any court records on anything like a person's sexual orientation unless a crime was involved or a civil suit happened, such as might be the case if he was married and his wife found out he was not heterosexual.
Some trustworthy friends I have known who have or still are serving at Bethel, have told me that part of their 'informal' training is to warn them how to spot homosexual conduct, because it is considered a significant and ongoing problem there. I would not be surprised to find out that various Branch offices have similar issues.
Again, I think you will find AlanF's material the best and most reliable available.
Following Bible principles, we will avoid trying to live - or demand others to live - by an extensive and rigid set of dos and don'ts that go beyond the teachings of the Bible. The Watchtower, 4-15-02, pg 22, pp 15
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AlanF
Orangefatcat said:
: I have read and heard here in the forum that one of the members of the Govering Body was a homosexual and was caught in the act of doing the bad thing at Bethel.
That's right. Crownboy provided a link to material I posted last year.
: Was not disfellowshipped?
No, he was not. Since my post from last year, I've learned that the Governing Body judged that Greenlees was repentant and so they didn't DF him. However, I think that this was entirely self-serving and served the interests of Greenlees and the rest of the GB. Had he been DF'd, think of the scandal. Plenty of JWs would wonder what he had done in order to be DF'd, including and especially an awful lot of Bethelites. Rumors would fly and largely be confirmed, raising a number of other questions such as, "How could the rest of the GB not know what Greenlees was up to? How many other young boys did he molest? How could Jehovah allow this man to continue as a molester for so long? Why did the Society not report Greenlees to the police for raping a young boy?" The list would expand.
As it is, these questions remain, but because the GB covered over Greenlees' criminal act, he was never brought to justice and the Society retains deniability.
: Could someone verify the veracity of this for me. Is it documented someplace or are there court records the such...
The most complete documentation I know of is in the link Crownboy provided. Since the GB never reported Greenlees to the police, there was never any court action. The parents of the boy he was caught molesting worked through the Society and were obviously your typical braindead JWs, and were likely advised strongly against reporting the rape to the police, for fear of damaging the Society's name.
: Also in the Canadian Bethel this was also reported that homosexual practises were committed by Bethel members and Brother Percy.
You're referring to Percy Chapman, former head of the Canadian Branch Office. The reports about Chapman have been argued about by various people on this board. No one disputes that Chapman (as well as Greenlees and others) had rather effeminate mannerisms. However, a friend of mine tells me that at a District Convention in Vancouver, BC, in the late 1950s, in the middle of one of the talks, he walked into the administrative office. As he did, he spotted a young woman sitting on Chapman's lap facing him, dress hiked up, legs sprawled out over his. She jumped up and the two of them were highly embarrassed. Not long after this Chapman was demoted to janitor or something like that. So either Chapman's homosexuality is apparently either only alleged, or he swung both ways.
As for homosexual conduct in Brooklyn, Bethel, it's fairly common knowledge that in the early 1970s a number of Bethelites were dismissed at various times for it. I'll leave it to others to point to posts about this on this board.
AlanF
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cyberguy
Hey Alan!
Regarding Ewart Chitty, I recall a young bethelite who jumped from the second floor of one of the factory buildings in 1979 just prior to Chitty’s exodus from the GB (the kid lived, but was severely injured and ended up in the hospital for about a month). I recall the commotion as everyone in the factory buildings were running to the windows to see what happened. Someone I worked with was a close friend of Ray Franz and said Ray intimated that the kid jumped because he was mentally depressed because of being fondled by Chitty. I heard rumors from this kid’s close friends that substantiated this claim. However, I also heard that this kid and his family were told to keep everything hush-hush!
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orangefatcat
I appreciate very much your responses and I did'nt know that Alan had a post dealing with this, and I welcome your comments Alan as I find that this whole cover-up by the Organization deplorable. Will justice ever come pass? I was wondering if the silentlambs could use this knowledge to help in their cause and to show people of the world and other JWs that the very core of the GoverningBody had corruption in it and nothing was done about it. So if it starts at the top the whole issue of sexual perverstion against young person shouldn't come as any surpise to all of us. And no wonder elders are told not to report it. But at some point and time the truth will come out. The Jehovahs Witnesses organization doesn't want their so-called good name to be sullied and they may fear that their practices will come into light. I feel terribly saddened that so many have suffered sexual abuse and assualt in an organization that is suppose to be clean and a place of safety. Their corruption must be made known in order to free silentlambs from their cries of despair.Thankyou all for your kind help. Bless you all
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AlanF
Cyberguy:
Interesting information. It sounds very much like the young man who jumped may have been the same one who brought the charges of inappropriate conduct against Chitty that led to his forced resignation from the GB. Alternatively, because older men who prefer younger men generally have multiple partners, it may have been someone else. Any chance you could dig out some names? No surprise about being told to shut up. Gotta keep Jehovah's name clean, right?
Orangefatcat:
I don't think that justice will ever be served with respect to this Greenlees thing. The only way for that to happen is for the molested man to come forward and bring legal charges against the Governing Body. But because Greenlees and a number of other GB members at the time are now dead, and more than 17 years have passed, it would be difficult. Likely the man's parents, who brought the charges to the Society's attention, would have to testify. Because all of them were, and likely still are, braindeadly loyal JWs, this is unlikely to happen. I'm hoping that the information brought out in the upcoming NBC Dateline show will get to these people and cause them to rethink what happened to them, and move them to action. Remember that people are bringing charges against Catholic priests for molestations that occurred even more than 30 years ago.
The silentlambs folks are well aware of the Greenlees situation. If a decent amount of publicity results from Dateline, you can rest assured that I will raise the Greenlees issue with as many media people I can. Think about the story: "JW leaders cover up rape of 10-year-old by one of their own".
I think that the greatest failure of JW leaders in this field is that they view child molestation, not as a crime, but as a sexual sin. I think that this is a result of their ivory-tower living conditions, their being very old men raised in an era where child molestation was simply not talked about by anyone and almost everyone covered it up, their being sexually screwed up by the Society's overall paranoia about human sexuality, and by the subtle self-deception that allows them to justify failure to report sexual crimes in the name of "not bringing reproach on Jehovah's name" by thinking of it as a sin rather than a crime. Naturally, elders will follow suit.
Alice