Hi everyone!
All I can say is "WOW!" In the 10 years I've been out I had no idea that forums like this existed. A tad naïve-sounding for someone with a background in IT, I know, but it's taken me this long just to feel comfortable enough to type 'JW' into Google. Anyhow, the past 30 hours has been a massive bOrg debriefing session for me. It all started yesterday evening when I logged into Messenger and noticed a little 'Where are they now?' feature on the cast of Saved by the Bell. A little curiousity about Lark Voorhies's stance on nudity/s3x scenes took me to jwfacts.com and blew my mind. Almost everything I'd ever doubted plus loads more was presented coherently and backed up with so much irrefutable evidence it finally opened my eyes to the raw fact that, yes, I was once in a cult!
My Story
I was born in 1980 in the UK as the eldest DD of 2 JW parents. Dad was a MS at the time and would later become an elder. Both my grandmothers were JWs and a large portion of my Mum's family were too, along with my Dad's step-father (MS) and step-sister (reg pioneer). "The Truth™" was all I'd ever known. Life as a youngster was very black & white, good & bad. Fear was instilled into me from a young age. I remember one occasion when I couldn't have been more than 4 years old, my Dad getting very irrate with my 3 year old sister as, being a typical toddler, she really didn't want to sit still for our weekly family study. He lost his temper and shouted "DO YOU WANT TO DIE AT ARMAGEDDON?!" Talk about God-fearing, I was scared witless, and the graphic depictions of Armageddon in the publications didn't help. Thus I grew up being made to feel I was bad being as I was punished heavily for minor infractions, which looking back were just normal childish behaviour. Like at age 10, repeating "What's for pudding?" x2 in a silly voice meant to sound like a dixie horn, for which I was removed from the dinner table, taken up to my bedroom alone, just me and Dad, and subjected to an entire minute (I counted it in my head to keep myself sane) of being beaten alternately across the chest and back by the 18st former elder. Of course, all bottom smacking and being rapped across the knuckles with a thick perspex ruler was done in the name of "using the rod". My childish sense of injustice instictively alerted me that something was very wrong with that teaching. Didn't Moses use a rod or staff to literally guide the Israelites through the wilderness? Why would a God of love approve of parents and care givers doling out physical punishments to small, defenceless children who didn't know any better? Realistically, how would that guide them to do better? However I'd learned to keep questions like that to myself. I cried when I recently read this outstanding paediatric article - http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/discipline-behavior/spanking/10-reasons-not-hit-your-child (see '6. HITTING IS ACTUALLY NOT BIBLICAL').
When I was almost 11, my cousin was DF'd for allegedly telling lies. My parents gathered us around the coffee table and instructed us that we were not to speak to her as she was unrepentant. That started off a chain of events. Somehow, a simple curiousity expressed regarding baptism wound up with 2 elders in my living room going through the questions with me to become a UBP. Things went downhill from then on. I started secondary school and life got complicated. I was ostracised by many of my classmates for being 'weird' and suffered all kinds of bullying right up to being kicked, pushed, spat on and called a "F'ing Jovi" by one particularly nasty boy. Mum went and spoke with my teachers but it didn't help. All the while the WT preached that JW kids would be persecuted and that we just needed to stand firm. All throughout my secondary school years I was made to feel that I wasn't doing enough spiritually. I was seriously ill, had major surgery and was left with Fibromyalgia which made it difficult for me just to go to the bathroom, nevermind to school, meetings or out on FS. Dad had become increasingly less active (although still associated) since stepping down as an elder for reasons unknown and we began geting regular shepherding calls which never amounted to anything other than telling us to take a more active role (no help provided). We lived in an isolated location and thus it was physically difficult to associate with anyone, so I rarely associated with my fellow teen bro's & sis's. I got baptized at 18. I'd stayed on in school to take A Levels as my illness would have made it impossible for me to hold down a job and yet this was looked down upon by some of the cong. I'd hoped that getting baptized would help prove that I was just as dedicated a servant of Jehovah as everyone else. I couldn't devote much time to FS as I'd make myself ill but I did what I could. Evidently that wasn't good enough. Twice I had my FS monthly report slip returned to me by the elders via my then resigned-elder Dad (note that I was over 18 and baptized at this point, why didn't they come to me?) because reporting less than 1 hour's service wasn't appropriate. Why? The WT and KM were telling us that any witnessing was better than none. Now that I'd grown up, I started seeing all kinds of injustices, double-standards, and behaviour which went unpunished within my congregation. My DF'd cousin had long been reinstated and recounted to me what had happened during her JC and subsequent appeal. She had been dating a UBP who was new to "The Truth™" and he'd talked her into 'taking their relationship further'. She felt instant remorse and confessed. He lied upon questioning. The JC then questioned why she wasn't pregnant to which she replied that he'd used a condom, which he again denied. As there was clearly nobody who witnessed it, the JC put forward the notion of her having a gynaecological exam to prove whether or not she'd lost her virginity!!!! Mercifully for her my uncle (an elder) had talked them out of it. They still would not have been able to prove anything even by a forced examination as the poor girl had an operation as a child to remove a cyst from 'down there'. Needless to say, they chose to believe the guy and claimed she was unrepentant, a liar and deliberately causing trouble for the UBP (they claimed he'd spurned her advances) by defamation! By this point I'd started a University degree (at the insistence of my father, bizarrely enough) and the time spent writing critical analyses helped me think for myself to an extent and I realised that many of the teachings were questionable. It was 1999. Members of the congregation were speculating about Armageddon coming in 2000. We'd recently had several doctrinal changes regarding the 'generation' based on 'new light' (aka being proved wrong and failing to admit it) and I had a lot of unanswered questions. One which played on my mind a lot was why should a transgendered person be so abhorrent when medical studies from autopsies repeatedly prove that the size of the area of the brain governing gender matched a person's perception of their gender when compared with the brain samples of standard males and females. These poor people were literally born that way. It wasn't Satan's doing. Why hate and shun them for a congenital imperfection that they couldn't possibly have chosen? I didn't bother asking as I'd pre-empted the responses - they're imperfect, they choose to live contrary to the outward gender, etc, etc. I decided that I didn't want to be part of the big hypocrisy, and to remain a JW would make me just as bad as them, so I decided to stop going to meetings and made plans to move into shared student accomodation as commuting from home to campus daily was interfering with my studies, but mainly it provided me with an opportunity to break free, so I did it. My parents thought I'd be gone for a semester and would return home after my little adventure into the big bad World.
Sadly, whilst I'd learned to think for myself about religion, I was still very vulnerable and easy to control. After all, being controlled was all I'd known for my 19 years of life. This vulnerability almost cost me my life. As it was I lost a further 6 years to mind control. I'd fallen in love with a male housemate. We became inseparable, but he was (unbeknowst to anyone at the time) suffering from bi-polar disorder, was very manipulative and his cotrolling techniques were incredibly effective. Dictated what I could and couldn't do; who I could and couldn't see; what to wear; what music to listen to; which films to watch (sound familiar?). He told me I couldn't leave because my parents wouldn't want me back, I was worthless, yet he loved me and would 'look after' me. He would frequently fly into violent rages during his manic phases. I was beaten up and hospitalised on several occasions. I still bear the scars, arthritis and nerve damage from one ordeal which resulted in 2 lots of surgery to save my hand and arm. Punched, kicked, pushed, headbutted, strangled and suffocated, verbally and emotionally abused on a regular basis, wore me down just as much as the regular propoganda at the meetings had done so only a few years previous. I was trapped. He began using drugs as a means of subconscious self-medicating which caused a whole heap of other issues.
During this time my former sis's started spreading all kinds of malicious rumours about me which prompted some very confused phone calls from my family asking me why I hadn't told them I was pregnant! I'd stopped going to meetings, had put on 3st in as many months, so obviously I must have been pregnant right?! Nope, I had an undiagnosed thyroid disorder but thanks for the oh-so creative speculation! When my partner and I wound up sharing a 1 bed house a year after I'd gotten out, then the phone calls started. I politely declined to meet with the elders knowing what would happen. I didn't want to be DF'd for fornication as I hadn't purposely left the congregation to do so, neither did I want to enter into any arguement about hypocrisy in the congregation (I'd already been down that route with family and had the stock response re: holy spirit working). So I just said I had not considered myself to be a JW for some time and no longer wished to be associated. I later learned that my mainly inactive Dad had actually reported me to the elders and that my DA was publicly announced to the congregation much to the shame of my mother. She met up with me one day for a coffee and cried saying how she loved me and couldn't really associate with me and did I realise what implications this would have on the entire family?
My family had been difficult since I'd disassociated myself so having spent my entire life always striving to please someone else, I did what I thought was best for everyone concerned and married him. Things were easier for a while. He had me right where he wanted me. My family began communicating with me again. Inevitably the abuse picked back up and my 1st anniversary presented me with a blow to the head, and an attempt at strangulation and suffocation which caused me to pass out and to miss a week of work due to the extensive bruising. Eventually after 6 years I summoned the courage to end my marriage. I was worried my JW parents would disown me again but fortunately they have been supportive and sympathetic. I'm now in a happy long-term relationship with a very mellow guy and we have 2 beautiful, well-behaved children. I have a much better relationship with my parents. Dad gave a rather humble and sincere apology for his treatment of me as a kid and I forgive him. I suspect he is now just as disillusioned with the bOrg as I was but can't really escape due to his sense of commitment to his mother and my mother. My mother still comes out with some odd bOrg comments which are down to the mind control, but under the circumstances both she and my aunt have ignored the scrutiny of the congregation with regards to speaking to me and have stated that they are happy as I'm now happy and out of danger, and whilst my divorce was technically unscriptural, they recognise that it was morally correct (the elders couldn't really argue with that). My brother has recently gotten out and is doing well. My sister on the other hand married within 3 months of meeting a brother and hasn't spoken to me since their engagement. I have never met my brother-in-law and they have never met their niece and nephew. I pity them as they believe what they're doing is right and don't know any better. I've been left with PTSD which has recently been diagnosed after a wrong diagnosis of PND/PPD. I'm on a high dose of anti-depressants and waiting to see a Consultant Psychologist in addition to my existing sessions with a counsellor. I finally feel like I'm getting some closure and hoping I can finally free myself of some of the lasting effects like the nightmares I get about Armageddon. I'd say I'm mainly agnostic these days.
Thanks for reading.
Love, Mummatron x
~No longer a bOrg automotron~