OK, I'm new to this site. I'm currently questioning a lot of things. I do NOT want to be "preached at" by either side; that'll just make me leave. I just want plain, simple facts.
A little bit about me...
I'm disfellowshipped for immorality. I freely admitted that I was having a sexual relationship with my then-fiance (a "worldly" man). According to the Bible, sex before marriage is wrong. I have no problem with being disfellowshipped for it. What led up to it....
My first husband was studying when we first started dating. We married very shortly after his baptism, and I was privately reproved a couple of times for dating him. Long story short...he was not all sweetness and light, and no one would believe that he got off on dominating me in bed. Some friends later (not JW) went so far as to say that what he did to me was rape. He also played mind games with me. The elders said it was my word against his. Fine. I divorced him, which they counselled against. When the elders came to our house to see us, the first words out of one's mouth were: "So Lisa, what's your problem?" To be fair, the other cringed when he said that. One was fair to me and said they couldn't do anything because it was too personal and that there was no way to prove what had happened. Which was true.
Anyway, I divorced him, and had one of those rebound flings. I think I was rebelling. Stupid "relationship." Met and fell in love with a wonderful Englishman. We had sex before marriage. My ex-husband, who was stalking me at the time, told my family I was involved with another man. He must have told the elders as well, because they came over. I told them it was true, and that I wasn't going to stop. They were pleasant, and asked if I understood I would have to be disfellowshipped. I said I did; I didn't really care.
At the same time all of this was happening, my repressed memories were returning to me. My father, who was an elder, had sexually abused me. That's not to mention the physical and emotional abuse by both parents. My mum pressured me to tell her what was wrong, so I did. She didn't believe me, naturally, but questioned my father. He admitted to the abuse. He told the elders (from his congregation, different than mine) that night. He wanted to step aside as an elder. They said it wasn't necessary because the abuse happened before he became a JW; it didn't matter that he had lied for over 20 years about it. He stepped aside anyway, but he still had all his other privileges. It wasn't until I wrote a letter to the elders asking, among other things, how they could say they were any better than the Catholic Church if they allowed this sort of thing to go unpunished, that he lost some privileges. They said they didn't do anything before that because there was "no public outcry" about what he did. *rolls eyes*
My long-lost aunt (because she is also disfellowshipped) just recently found me in an online search. (She lives in the US; I live in France.) She is the one who told me some things I hadn't heard before, such as the UN thing.
Can someone please provide only solid facts here for me to see? I don't want the shadowy, conspiracy-theory sort of things. Just proof of whatever you know of that can give me something to base future decisions on.
Ta.