Hey all! So many nice responses, I thank all of you including Simon, Dino, Sunny, John W., Farkel, Rex, Lilacs, Abaddon, tdogg, Littletoe, Room215, MrMoe, Just2laws, D Wiltshire, and dannyboy. I did not take Cygnus comments as an attack, but it is a tacky question to ask a person in a public forum. :-))
To Utopian,
I call the incident that happened in 1980 as the Franz Incident because it is descriptive. Yet it is every bit my story as much as Ray's,
for the following reasons:
1) I was a Bethel elder and heard most of the same lines from the GB members as Ray did during the Bethel elders meetings, which were not family affairs. Most of my notes from the tract at:
http://www.freeminds.org/history/whathapp.htm
were taken from my own handwritten notes during those meetings. I also attended several that Ray did not, since he left early on during that time. I wrote about a lot of stuff that happened there that he missed. Yet we all add some things. I was the first ex-JW to write about what happened then, a year before Ray's book came out. So I am not riding on anyone's "fame." It is my story. It is Tom Cabeen's story. It is Cris and Norma Sanchez' story.
As far as training, there is no school to learn exit-counseling. You learn it as an apprentice, and that is hard to do, since the teacher has to want to train you and you have to be good with all kinds of people. That is the main training, along with a good knowledge of cults and their methods. For several years I spent about $100 a month on books to learn many related topics. Univ. training? No, just high school. I suppose it would help in taking classes on psychology, but it is not a field I wanted to do full-time, and I have been successful so far, so no worries to me.
Steven Hassan and I did host a training class for exit-counseling, and we even offer the videos of the class for those who wish to learn. Steve has a few degrees.
Thanks to all of you, and for the web suggestions. I will do some in the days ahead.
yours,
Randy
