JW Whips 12 year old daughter to death !! This is very graphic be warned!!

by Hairyhegoat 61 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  life is to short

  All I can say is as most of you know I totally flipped out about the fact that there were three child molesters in my hall. All the elders, the CO, even the DO, I talked to them all, I wrote to Bethel many times even sending all the GB the court and police records of this one really horrible molester in the hall. Nothing of course was really done, one of them did have to stop holding children but the other one still goes out in service alone with just his current wife who married him with a small child just the age he likes them.

  So to cut to the point the CO was in my house just a little over a year ago, he was asked to come to visit me from Bethel. So he goes off on a straw man and says he likes it when he sees parents take their small children under the age of three out and spank them during the meetings. I do not even know why he brought that up. I was speechless. The PO's son was there who is an elder in his early 30's he chimed in with stories of his dad beating spanking him as a kid for not sitting still during the meetings.

  I was just sitting there so upset and blown away. Why spanking was brought up was beyond me, as we were talking about children being raped.

  LITS
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  Lion Cask

  A contrarian perspective, perhaps one that will precipitate heated feedback.

  There is a line, a very wide one, between spanking and beating, and a wider line still between beating and bludgeoning.

  My parents reserved spanking for very serious offenses. I was spanked twice as a child. Both times when I was 6 years old. The first time was for playing with matches and setting the back field ablaze and the second time for playing on the railroad tracks and crawling up and into and under slowly moving boxcars. In other words, I had endangered my life, was too young to understand how serious my actions were and my parents needed something more than words and reason to make an indelible impression on me. Both of them in turn sat by my bedside hours after each spanking, spoke to me in soft reassuring words and made me promise not to repeat my behaviour. I remember my father's face in particular was drawn and his eyes were moist, as if he'd just lost someone dear to him. Probably 25 years later my father offered an apology. The act of spanking a 6 year old boy who adored him had played on his mind all that time and he was afraid that my memory of it might diminish our relationship. I told him he probably saved my life and thanked him for having the courage to do what he did. He was not assuaged, saying he wished he had been older and wiser at the time and had exercised some better option. What option would that have been? He didn't know. And neither do I.

  I spanked one of my three kids, once. I hated it. The child was five and had done something very serious, which I will not get into lest she someday stumble upon and read this. Two slaps on the bottom, with my wife in the room with me. The pain was momentary, no physical damage was done and behaviour was corrected. Do I regret having done this? Yes of course, and no, for reasons that should be apparent. Now that it is more than 25 years on, I wish I had been older and wiser and had exercised some better option. But I don't know what it would have been.

  I expect there will be some pushback from people in here, but that's ok. Beating a child under any circumstance whatsoever is criminal. Spanking a child for minor offenses like acting up in the mall or at the Kingdom Hall is unconscionable. But in very rare circumstances corporal punishment may be the best option. In the end, it's the one doling out the punishment who has to live with the memory of it.
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  SnakesInTheTower

  hamsterbait..

  I sometimes think the emotional abuse is worse. At least with a physical beating there are bruises that can be seen by others and they (usually) heal in time. With emotional abuse, the scars are there, maybe for life. But no one can see them but you. My fiancee experienced both with her ex-husband. Neither is fun of course. I promised her I would never even lay a finger on her in anger or even raise my hand to her in a threatening way. I promised her 9 year old son the same. The only time corporal punishment will ever be (and has ever been) used by his mom or I is if he endangers his own life or others. He got a good whooping when he was little for running in traffic. Scared his mom to death.

  LITS...

  CO's are no more qualified to give parenting advice than I am to give physics advice to NASA. Not at all. Elders just about as unqualified... especially single elders such as I was back when (4 years ago this week deleted). And no one is truly qualified to tell you how to raise your children as you are.

  Snakes (Rich of the "new to this parenting thing" Sheep Class)
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  blondie

  I remember this case...the real issue here is similar to sexual abuse of children in the WTS...how do people outside the family react...do they get help for the child or pretend it isn't happening.
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  sabastious

  The sad part the wtbs likes to point fingers when it happens to other religions.When it happens in their own back yard they will sweep it under the rug.If you say anything they say keep quit or we will df you.Two faced they are.

  That's true, you can bet the Witnesses would use this example of the "signs of the times" and how false religion is a "false refuge."

  -Sab
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  DagothUr

  There will be a day when all people on Earth will be atheists. Atheism is the maturity of the human society. Faith in God (or gods) is just the childhood.
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  Deceived

  that is just HORRIBLE!!! As far as I am concerned it has a lot to do with religion and the JW religion encourages it.

  I am not comparing myself to this incident but for example of JW mentality. When I was 16 my JW Dad (a elder) beat me with his belt repeatedly until I was bleeding and bruised, He tried to pull off my pants but I kept pulling them back up and that made him angrier. I was not tied down though. It was over some silly thing but it was his JW principles that inspired it. He said my Mom and I were worshipping animals because we were visiting some JW friends and we took our little dog with us. they didn't allowed dogs in the house and it was 40 below 0 outside so my Mom and I kept going out to the car to make sure the dog was OK. This infuriated my Father. That same night he threw pots and pans and my Mom and hit her too because she told me I could go to bed (3 AM). He had told me and her to look up watchtower articles on how we were worshipping animals. He hauled me out of bed by my hair and whipped me and shouted at me. If that was these days he would be in jail for sure. I did not talk to my Dad for 3 months after that. I hated him and vowed to leave home the minute I turned 18. I did and got disfellowshipped shortly after. I finally forgave my dad in the year 2000 when he said he was sorry and begged my forgiveness. He had left the JW religion by then. He died in 2001.
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  brotherdan

  I really have to agree with Mad Sweeny on this one. I don't want to blame JWs for this...but my experience has shown me differently. Everytime we talk about the scripture in Proverbs there will always be comments about spanking children and how it is good for them. The Watchtower has never come out and condemned the action. While they HAVE said that the "rod" does not necessarily indicate a physical stick to beat children with, they also do not condemn the behavior.

  My mom prided herself in following the WT to a "T". The Watchtower said boys and girls can't be friends, so I was not allowed to be friends with girls. They said "No talking to girls on the phone", so I was not allowed this. They said, "No worldly association" so I was not allowed to play with the kids next door. They also encouraged spanking (I will look up some references and post them in another post), so we were spanked until puberty.

  Obviously no JW would justify what this creep did to his daughter. But I am actually surprised that this sort of abuse is not documented more regularly. Perhaps the physical abuse is more prevalent than we hear about but not reported so much...
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  brotherdan

  Here is a ref that Farkel did not quote:

  Awake 1979, May 8:

  Jehovah, a God of love, counsels parents: “Do not be irritating your children, but go on bringing them up in the discipline and mental-regulating of Jehovah.” (Eph. 6:4) Discipline—instruction or training that molds—can be an expression of love. We read: “‘My son, . . . whom Jehovah loves he disciplines.’ . . . True, no discipline seems for the present to be joyous, but grievous; yet afterward to those who have been trained by it it yields peaceable fruit.” That is so in the family, too.—Heb. 12:4-11.

  But does loving discipline include a parent’s use of spanking? According to God’s Word, it definitely can, when the spanking is an expression of and in a manner consistent with love. Consider these verses from the inspired book of Proverbs:
  “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.” (22:15) “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.” (23:13, 14) “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” (13:24)—New International Version.

  HERE IS THE SHOCKING PART! SAME ARTICLE:

  Whether they do it with the hand, a wooden ruler or some other type of appropriate “rod,” parents are authorized by God to use spanking in lovingly disciplining their children.

  (Could this type of "rod" include an electrical cord? According to them I believe it could...)

  Here is one from 1988 WT, Dec 15th:

  “Spare the Rod, but Note the Consequences” was the title of an article appearing in The Natal Mercury, a South African newspaper, lamenting the modern trend of holding back physical punishment from children at home and in school. Who is responsible for this changed attitude toward spanking? Professor Smythe, a pediatrician at the University of Natal, South Africa, places the blame squarely on child psychologists. “Usually on delving into the roots of an emotional issue,” Smythe explains, “one finds the change in attitude starting with psychological dogma. At first violently opposed to any form of physical punishment, then appalled by the consequences of the indiscipline resulting from a creed of no frustrations and no inhibitions.”
  Smythe advocates a balance. “Extremes of permissiveness are as bad as extremes of punishment,” he notes, “but the fact that remediation is easier with the overdisciplined than the underdisciplined child favors leaning on the side of discipline when in doubt.” The professor emphasizes that the motive for giving physical punishment should be loving concern for the child’s present and future welfare.
  Such advice is not new but a return to the infallible Biblical guidance: “The one holding back his rod is hating his son, but the one loving him is he that does look for him with discipline.”—Proverbs 13:24; see also Proverbs 23:13, 14.
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  keyser soze

  This is a old case but just shows what goes on behind closed doors if you are a JW family.

  I agree that JWs are no less prone to abuse than any other group. But such an extreme case as this doesn't really exemplify what goes on in JW families.