by Lady Lee 144 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
particularly youth clubs
Got any data to back up that claim? Thats a new one.
Your post, scholar, is your usual, in that it contains apoligies for the JW and no substantive answer to the question. Perhaps you should go back once more and check out the Silent Lambs website. There is evidence from people INSIDE Brooklyn headquarters about this travesty of justice and how it was covered over by your FDS.
Back to the drawing board, please, you can do better.
Sherry
that the victim will address the wrong in a suitable manner.???????
??? Surely it is the perpetrator of Child Absue that should address the wrong - or those that collaborate in concealing it - not the f----g victim for God's sake?
to go about seeking reform of an organization that is running beautifully.
Scholar you are delusional and sick my man - get some help
Let me say firstly that I empathize with you in your pain of child abuse. My family too has suffered the scourge of child abuse and I am confident that at the appropriate time that the victim will address the wrong in a suitable manner. I will say no more on this as it is a private matter.
I have a real problem with this. If my abuser had been reported to the police and benn dealt with legally my aunt would not have committed suicide. And if he had been sent to jail my mother would not have caught him in the act of abusing me. And if he had been reported then maybe he would have never had the chance to move on to my little sister who never dealt with the issues of her childhood and committed suicide Nov 7 2005. "I am confident that at the appropriate time that the victim will address the wrong in a suitable manner." You are putting the burden on the victim. Haven't the victims been through enough. The WT policy is to get the child to confront the abuser - who most often is a family member and whom she has to go home with after this confrontation. That is totally insane and only firthers the trauma inflicted on a child who has to sit there and repeat every vile thing the abuser did to her while he sits there with a smile on his face and denies it. The elders can do nothing in their little JC meetings so drop it all and don't let the authorities know unless the area they live in mandates reporting. So they retraumatize the child and send her home with her abuser who now is fully convinced that as long as he denies it he will continue to repeat it.
However, child abuse or sexual abuse is a demonic scourge on our modern corrupt world and has affected to some degree most churches and organizations particularly youth clubs. Parents sadly need to be ever so vigilant in the protection of their young as never before and this the more so as we live in a world corrupted by violence and pornography largely perpetrated by the media.
Some facts. Child sexual abuse is most often committed by a family member or someone very well known to the child.
Who are the Abusers?
The report of the CIS states that, among substantiated sexual abuse cases, non-parental relatives represented the largest group of alleged perpetrators (44%), followed by biological fathers (8%), stepfathers (8%), other acquaintances (8%) and babysitters (7%). A child’s friends (peers) and family friends were each identified as the alleged perpetrator in 5% of substantiated cases. Teachers were identified in 4% of cases, and other professionals, strangers and a parent’s boyfriend/girl-friend were each identified in 2% of cases. In 5% of substantiated sexual abuse cases, mothers were identified as the alleged perpetrator (3% biological mothers and 2% step-mothers). 8 It is possible that cases of abuse within the family are under-reported because of the risk of breaking up the family and are, therefore, under-represented in this study. Furthermore, the CIS statistics do not reflect those cases –which may be more severe – that are reported only to police. from http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/html/nfntsxagrsexadult_e.html
In the above the red include my abusers.
Since JWs rarely participate in community activities (baseball, football, extra-curricular, etc activities) it would be extremely rare for any JW child to be abused by anyone in any of those groups. JW children participate solely in activities with other JWs. By talking about other churches and organizations is dodging the ball. JW children are most at risk from the very people they are told they can trust. And their parents are told it is only with other JWs that their children are safe. But the reality is that JW children are most in danger from other JWs!
Jehovah's organization has done much in providing uplifting Bible education throughout the world in order to create better families and promote a higher standard of morality which sadly the churches have failed.
So they say. But after reading people's stories here and elsewhere on the net and from my own experience in the JWs they don't seem to be doing a very good job of it. For every ex-JW who posts on this board and has a tragic story of abuse to tell there are probably 10 more who have not made it onto the net to share their stories. The WTS has a list of over 23,000 abusers. That alone should tell you this is a huge problem.
The matter of child abuse has been a major challenge for churches and in many repects they have been caught on the hop as it were and even for us it has been a learning curve.
A learning curve shouldn't even be necessary. Common sense says that when a person commits a crime you tell the police.
In hindsight, mistakes have been made even within our ranks and we have learnt many valuable lessons which will no doubt deal with potential cases in a proper manner in accordance with Scripture and the laws of the land.
As long as the WTS stands by their 2-witness rule they will bury the abuse and keep the abuser in the congregation. The WTS has absolutely no business interrogating a child victim. They contaminate the event with demands for details at the expense of the child. The "proper manner" is for the elders to contact the WTS instead of the police and only if they legally have to report will they even consider it.
The Society has as as its official spokesman a Public Affairs Offices and Branch Offices which deal with inquiries from the public in regard to such matters so I am not a representative of the Watch Tower Society so I cannot comment on the manner as to how and why cases should or should not have been dealt with. What I can do is make some observations from my perspective on this matter.
OK th eoperative words here are "Public Affairs Offices" Public affairs means "how we protect our name at the expense of the victim" The WTS' goal is always to "give a good witness". Heaven forbid that anyone should know abuse occurs in the WT org.When I finally got permission from the elders to get counseling (20 years after the abuse) I was clearly told that I was to never tell my counselor that I was a JW. "We wouldn't want to bring shame on Jehovah's name. Now would we?"
I believe that Jehovah's Witnesses are a clean people both spiritually and morally and are led by a body of men who practiced these same values and ethics. We are a people of ethics and high morals and it is a challenge for the individual to live these biblical standards.
I believe that is what most JWs want to believe. And there are many that I knew personally who do live this kind of life. But when it comes to anything that threatens the name of the WT and Jehovah you can be assured they will sweep it under the carpet if they can. My abuses happened many years ago. But I am astounded that even now much younger people are coming forward with the same stories. My case was not an isolated incident. It was a pattern of hiding the truth about the WTS/JWs.
Cases of wrongdoing in the congrgation are dealt with and such unrepentant wrongdoer can be expelled, a practice uncommon in most religions. Regardless of the type of wrong we are not authorized to punish people for moral wrongs as was the case in ancient Israel and in some modern societies today, all that can be done is to withdraw fellowship with the wicked one.
"unrepentant wrongdoer can be expelled" Notoice that little word - "can" And this applies only to those who admit and aren't repentant. From the moment an abuser acts out his thoughts and touches a child sexually the abuser starts creating ways to not get caught and if he is caught ways to deny. Very few admit the abuse. And I have worked with a couple of abusers. They did admit it to me. But one did not disclose the whole truth. And refused to say other things happened. And the other one said she seduced him. Denial is their game and if any JC thinks they can break through the abuser's wall of denial then they are in denial.
Apostates have an agenda and that is to destroy, corrupt God's Organization by means of deceit, trickery and controversies. They have no light or truth and cannot point the way to a better life or religion to those stumbled by them. They have sought and to continue to seek all sorts of ways of means to discredit sacred things whether it be the blood issue, chronology, child abuse, UN membership, past doctinal errrors, etc
And that is exactly what the WTS wants you to believe. But what if we don't have this agenda? What if all we ask is the truth - the whole truth. What if all these things which are problems within the org are true and have been swept under the carpet? What if the WTS is more concerned with reputation than the lives of JWs?
Satan the Devil has as his principal aim to devour the Lord's people, ministry and organization and he uses as many methods to carry out his evil desires. What we need to do is to be focussed on the truth and to wait patiently for matters to be adjusted or corrected as the Head of the Christian Congregation see fit and it is not the province of some Elder or Grandmother who have enjoyed a priviliged status to go about seeking reform of a organization that is running beautifully.
"What we need to do is to be focussed on the truth" agreed - but I want the WHOLE truth. Not the white-washed version. "to wait patiently for matters to be adjusted or corrected" Well the abuser that got to my aunt, my sister and I is now dead. And at least 2 of his victims are dead. BTW the family KNOWS he had other victims. The elders did absolutely nothing to stop this man from abusing children. He never paid one day in jail for what he did in my family. "it is not the province of some Elder or Grandmother who have enjoyed a priviliged status to go about seeking reform of a organization that is running beautifully" If the WTS fails to protect children than YES it is most definitely the moral responsibility of anyone who knows about the abuse to report it.
Lee
With all due respect scholar:
I am confident that at the appropriate time that the victim will address the wrong in a suitable manner
What would you consider to be a "suitable manner"? My interest are similar to LL in that I too am a survivor of child abuse. Unlike her however, my father is still a ministerial servant. The elders in my congregation told me I was the only one to make any complaint of abuse, and yet on this very board, years later, I discovered someone from that same congregation. At that very moment they were being abused by a relative and the elders knew about it and covered it up.
I was told, by the circuit overseer, that if I pursued the matter, he "would see to it personally that [I] were disfellowshipped and shut up permanently." With this background, and quite a bit more, I am very curious about what a "suitable manner" would be in Jehovah's spirit directed organization.
child abuse or sexual abuse is a demonic scourge on our modern corrupt world
While I can agree with you that raping of children is a "demonic scourge", I should inform you that incest and child rape are as ancient as man. Surely you know of the Biblical prohibition against it, which means it was at least as common as it is today. Unfortunately child abuse is not a topic that is easily swept under the rug by such platitudes that say it is a sign of the end.
Parents sadly need to be ever so vigilant in the protection of their young as never before and this the more so as we live in a world corrupted by violence and pornography largely perpetrated by the media
This only works when the parents are not the abusers. Perhaps you are unaware, but the vast majority of child abuse cases occur either within the family or by someone the child knows and trusts. In my case I was raped at ages 3 and 4 by my father, at least one of his friends, my grandfather, and my mother. Sadly I am a very typical example of the trauma that children go through, and while I appreciate your platitude, in reality it does little to protect a child living with a pedophile.
Jehovah's organization has done much in providing uplifting Bible education throughout the world in order to create better families and promote a higher standard of morality which sadly the churches have failed.
Indeed. Leaving aside doctrine, I fail to see how Jehovah's organization is any different in the area of child abuse than say the Catholic church. Unless of course you mean that Jehovah's Witnesses will threaten victims with being disfellowshipped and the Catholic church does not.
I have personal knowledge of dozens of people who, like me, were Jehovah's Witnesses, were raped by Jehovah's Witneses, were threatened by the elders to maintain silence "or else", and our rapists are still Witnesses in good standing. I am reminded of someone who once advised to remove a rather large timber from one's eye so that it is easier to see the speck in another's eye. A little less beating of the chest, and a lot more looking after innocent children might be advisable.
The matter of child abuse has been a major challenge for churches and in many repects they have been caught on the hop as it were and even for us it has been a learning curve. In hindsight, mistakes have been made even within our ranks and we have learnt many valuable lessons which will no doubt deal with potential cases in a proper manner in accordance with Scripture and the laws of the land
I appreciate your candor. And yet if an organization, whose sole purpose is to learn the essence of spirituality, i.e. love, and then to inspire others to do so, while at the same time ignoring, even threatening men, women and children who are pleading for help is not only incongruous but hypocritical in the extreme. I submit that such an organization, if it followed the only two laws Christ gave to his followers, would have little difficulty in ministering to those innocents who have been raped, beaten and brualized. I for one have always been at a loss as to why elders want to get involved in determining guilt or innocence of a criminal.
Let the law deal with criminals. Let the law determine guilt or innocence.
Imagine if the focus had been on giving tender care, support and comfort to thousands of children over the years. Imagine if just common human decency had been shown victims of abuse, something that any ordinary human being would gladly offer. Instead thousands upon thousands of people were shamed in silence, or forced to continue to endure endless mind-numbing rapes or propped back up to face more beatings, all because this spiritual, Godly organization cared more for appearance than they did for their fellow human beings.
What you call mistakes, some might easily call evil.
We are a people of ethics and high morals and it is a challenge for the individual to live these biblical standards.
" What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cases of wrongdoing in the congrgation are dealt with and such unrepentant wrongdoer can be expelled, a practice uncommon in most religions.
The operative word being "can", eh?
And yet, by their actions, Jehovah's Witnesses have shown themselves to be morally inferior to the Catholic religion. At the very least, the Catholic organization did not expel victims, nor did they order family members to shun those victims once they were out. It's a small point I grant you, but consider for a moment how an isolated abuse victim feels.
You don't want to believe your body was used, so you bury it deep inside. But then comes the day when the secret is out and you literally doubt your own sanity. Flashes of hideous, disgusting rapes, sounds of heavy breathing, a man having an orgasim, the feeling of your own blood traveling down your leg and you being a small child have no comprehension what is happening. You only know you hurt. Those feelings do not go away, even with time. And so you turn to the only place you've got left: the one, true organization of Jehovah. But they are angry at you. It matters little that you're telling the truth. You find out out quickly they are not interested in justice. Worse, you find out they are not interested in showing the tiniest bit of kindness, the barest modicum of common human decency. You are reviled, hated, and threatened with expulsion. What friends you have abandon you as they do not want to be disfellowshipped.
Realize the immense damage done by Jehovah's spirit directed organization to someone already made fragile by years of hideous abuse. This damage is not because of ignorance but because they did not apply Christ's second command (not suggestion, command): "Love your neighbor as yourself." I was once told by an elder "A child will hurt the parent more than the parent can ever hurt the child."
Perhaps he'd like to spend a night with my father.
Apostates have an agenda and that is to destroy, corrupt God's Organization by means of deceit, trickery and controversies. They have no light or truth and cannot point the way to a better life or religion to those stumbled by them. They have sought and to continue to seek all sorts of ways of means to discredit sacred things whether it be the blood issue, chronology, child abuse, UN membership, past doctinal errrors, etc. Satan the Devil has as his principal aim to devour the Lord's people, ministry and organization and he uses as many methods to carry out his evil desires.
You see what I mean? It's so easy to demonize another. It's so easy to ignore the very real pain of abuse, wipe out all that the victim has gone through and brand them "APOSTATE". Scholar you are guilty of the similar behavior as I, and thousands of others, experienced. Empty platitudes about "someday" when Jehovah acts are meaningless to a child facing another night of rape. Do you want to know the difference between a child of abuse and a functional (i.e., "normal" child? Try this:
I remember once when I was 3 (or maybe 4, it's difficult to know time from those memories). I was awake and I looked out the window. There was a full moon that night. I prayed to God and asked him for one simple thing: Make my Daddy stop hurting me. The last thing I remember that night was the click of the door as it opened. To this day I don't remember what happened next, only that it was bad.
Now then, when my son was the same age he prayed for snow and ice one day (living in Texas we don't get much and he wanted to make a snowman). When it didn't happen, he was disappointed but he reasoned that must "not be how it works".
Your solution is to pray to Jehovah and one day he will magically work it all out so everyone lives happily ever after. Tell that to a child from a functional home and say the same thing to a child from an incestuous home. Now, look at the difference. Look at the impact on one child versus the other.
No sir. I believe God helps those who help themselves. There are pedophiles prowling around your organization and if you're too deaf, dumb or blind to recognize it, I submit you are no better than they. In point of fact, I submit you are worse as you claim to be "clean, moral". Behind closed doors, those monsters do not make that claim.
The only thing more evil, more despicable, is the policy of Jehovah's Witnesses that demands a victim must have TWO eyewitnesses to each rape, each act of abuse. Otherwise, the victim is assumed to be lying.
Be well,
Chris
I too was sexually abused as a child (my abuser was not Jw) I didn't have anyone to turn to, it must be totally devistating to turn to the elders and expect help from them (*which is after all what the f&ds preaches loud and clear thats where to turn to for help*) Only to be told as the victim of this crime I could be shut -up permanently. How would a person sleep at night knowing they had turned there back on a person hurting so much. And it's a fact pedophiles don't stop at one victim. So by not helping a victim a person has allowed who knows how many more to be abused.
I am confident that at the appropriate time that the victim will address the wrong in a suitable manner.
Scholar I hope this is a type-o.
Dorothy
Lady Lee
I am quite sure that regardless of what I say you will not be satisfied for you youself are not only a victim of some monstrous crime but you are also a victim of apostate propaganda. Even Raymond Franz who bears some reponsibility for the increase in apostasy in recent times has kept a distance from this controversy for he does not support much of the hysteria that underlies that propaganda. The whole child abuse issue has been corrupted and distorted by vengeful and dispirited people who have no love of goodness, truth or the sacred. If they were really sincere they should ask the question: what have they done for victims and do they really care about their spirituality long term?. It seems to me that such anti-Witness movements do nothing but exploit victims for their own personal reasons in order to create embarrassment and controversy for God's people
If such people truly care about this issue and refrain form a making a lot of noise then perhaps they could engage in a more profitable work of spiritual healing and education. They could use their resources to minimize those things that cause these evils in society such as pornography and violence as perpetrated in the media. Our organization has risen to this challenge in the manner in which we see best and that may not be what you wish but that is the way things are done only in a theocratic manner. If you really want to reform or change things then try to change the world and its corrupted institutions with its emphasis on immorality and ungodliness. Our mission is simply to focus people's minds on the only permanent solution for man's evils namely God's Kingdom ruling from 1914.
scholar JW
"Our mission is simply to focus people's minds on the only permanent solution for man's evils namely God's Kingdom ruling from 1914."
Yeah.....we know......
What planet are you from?
Scholar you underestimate L Lee's intelligence by telling her in this forum that no matter what you say it will make no difference to her because of her being a double victim of criminals, one that robs you of your innocence and child hood and leaves us to rebuild our hearts and heal our hearts, The other is the blood guilty cult that does not have the back bone to support the helpless victims young children, yet does support the pedophiles. After all the children aren't providing monetary gain.
The whole child abuse issue has been corrupted and distorted by vengeful and dispirited people who have no love of goodness, truth or the sacred. If they were really sincere they should ask the question: what have they done for victims and do they really care about their spirituality long term?. It seems to me that such anti-Witness movements do nothing but exploit victims for their own personal reasons in order to create embarrassment and controversy for God's people
If anyone has caused embarrassment and controversy for God's people, It's those very people themselves. that have not had the "love" & courage it takes to stand up to corrupt people no matter who they are.
Ask any one of us here how much comfort we recieved from the org. and how much love and help we have recieved from persons on this forum? And then you honestly listen to reply you get.
Dorothy
Scholar, the sheepskin is slipping. I see underneath you are a ravening wolf. Lady Lee has risen above her abusive past and now invests in the lives of hundreds of people. She gives, she heals. She was the first counsellor that made me feel safe and in control about talking (or not talking) about the evils that happened to me in the past.
What do you do?
