Ray Franz -some personal recollections. (page 3)

minimus

Gil, That was the BEST response to a criticism I've read on this board. I recommend any that may try to match wits with Gil, to reconsider. Please give us more recollections. I enjoy your writing style!....and no mistakes, either....lol

messenger

Hello Gil,

You make an interesting assumption, for a newby on the board you have a lot more experience than a typical new person and speak with authority. I will not waste several hours trying to present allegations about your identity. Could it be you are not who you present yourself to be?

IslandWoman

Messenger,

Could it be you are not who you present yourself to be?

Maybe he is just a quick read.

IW

hamptonite21

that was a great post welcome to the board

Gilgamesh

Carl/COJ,

Thanks. I did call him this morning. Tried to leave a message but it sounds like there's an issue with the answering machine. BTW, I've really enjoyed your books. A friend of mine in Writing in '79 said at the time that the manuscript for Gentile Times was a real "hot potato," that no one could touch it. Yet, he supported it completely and told several of us about its contents. I'm glad it finally reached a more appreciative audience.

I do enjoy these discussion groups, but have avoided them for the most part over the years because they can be just a little bit too time-consuming for a family man trying to work and raise children. Also, I still have ties with several JWs and exJWs, some of whom we are working closely with at the moment. Otherwise I would be much more open about my name and experiences. (Today I'm supposed to be looking into support connections for ex-JWs in groups like the Landmark Forum or Humankind Group Org. There are supposedly some good resources there for ex-JWs.)

I was hoping that the nature of the issue regarding Ray could have turned into a reasonable discussion of why so many of us stayed beyond the time when we knew about very serious judicial and doctrinal problems. I know a case of someone who has been intimately aware of most of the WT problems since 1980 and is actually is appealing his DF to get back in. His rationale would make an interesting topic.

The best to you, Rud and others,

Gilgamesh

LDH

UMMMMM I think I've just been kicked off of my Troll Patrol Throne, LOL.

Seriously, I wonder where is ol' Imbue when you (don't) need her?

Lisa

Knows Patterns When I See 'Em Class

Prisca

LOL @ Lisa's Troll Patrol Throne comment

Welcome to the board Gil. It's nice to hear the observations of someone who was there during the purging of Bethel in the early 80s.

Interesting research on "Messenger" too. Goes to show not everyone can be taken at face value, eh?

hurt

''...both Jesus and Paul were saying that a good Law, even a Biblical law, SHOULD be broken when the letter of the Law results in harm''- Gilgamesh

Impressive!

Dismembered

Gilgamesh

Thanks for your insight. I'll be looking foward to much more. Thank you again!

Edited by - Dismembered on 3 November 2002 7:27:8

Gilgamesh

Thanks for the kind responses to this thread, (and COJ, I spoke with him at some length yesterday, thanks.)

I've noticed after reading more posts in this category that there is a strong tendency to expect a black and white (or polarized) answer to the two-witnesses rule: either it should ALWAYS be used for child abuse accusations, or it should NEVER be used for child abuse accusations. I didn't intend to express either opinion, nor did I want to make it appear that this was someone else's opinion.

Considering the very high numbers of child abuse accusations that have been extrapolated from the evidence to date, doesn't the likelihood of false accusations also increase? My guess is that it would be very unlikely that an accusing child on their own would ever dare re-face the accused -- the monster -- unless they were sure of the accusation. But are we going to try to say a false accusation won't or hasn't happened?

The closest analogy I have experienced is truly not on par with child molestation, but there may still be some lessons. I was recently asked to help "arbitrate" an after-school incident. We had a case of a young child who accused a friend's grandmother of swatting/pushing him. The grandmother tends to think that "it takes a village to raise a child" and evidently doesn't always remember to avoid the Biblical principle of "spare the rod, spoil the child." She finally admitted to making the motions that could have been interpreted as pushing and swatting but she denied actually touching the child. She even had her own grandchild with her, who supposedly witnessed it, whose story was obviously prepared to completely clear her. That grandchild "blew it" later by admitting that "she didn't hit him very hard" and I admit that I got him to use those words through some subtle speech cues. I wouldn't have done that, however, if it were not for the fact we already had spoken to three witnesses who all agreed that her grandchild was too far from the incident to see what he was describing. Also, I must note that other children who witnessed the incident could describe real "hitting/swatting/pushing" by this older woman when when they knew a parent was the one actually confronting the woman to "get her into trouble." When asked if they would step up to confront the older woman themselves, they were ready to describe a much more toned-down incident. Only the child who was swatted stood up to her. It was not possible to judge the physical pressure of the swatting/pushing. What I did have was the fact that there was almost a non-existent probability that the three child witnesses to the incident would have colluded in advance about the "cadence" of the swatting and pushing. Yet they were separately in agreement about the number and timing of hits/swats and that they preceded a couple of mild pushes to the chest.

Still, I knew that every one of those children, was susceptible to manipulations by parents and grandparents. Even the "innocent" question, "How hard did she hit you?" which I addressed to the accusing child during the controntation with the grandmother was wrong. It assumes that I was supporting the fact of a "hit." When the child honestly answered that it wasn't very hard, I quickly turned to the grandchild, and said, "Is that true, that she didn't hit him very hard?"

It would be as difficult to claim that a child always tells the complete truth as to claim that an older man who is accused will always tell the complete truth. Therefore credibility has to become part of the evidence. Everyone would expect that the accused in such cases is not likely to admit guilt. Too much is at stake. They could rationalize that hurting their own reputation, their family's reputation, and the organization's and/or Jehovah's reputation is a greater sin than the hurt to the child. An elder may therefore be even more inclined to self-medicate, prescribing a few extra "Hail Jehovah's and a higher dosage of Field Service." After all, they've treated the sins of others with the same formula.

It seems that if we are to be consistent in claiming that so many JW elders are willing to treat children as worthy of being merely used and and discarded, then the following scenario should not be too difficult to imagine:

An elder decides to step down and speak out because he is fed up with the WT judicial system based on some specific wrongdoing covered up by fellow elders, perhaps child molesting. One of those sinister fellow elders has a plan. He knows that a less than mentally balanced sister/child in the congregation once expressed an improper "crush" on the former elder in question. This elder, for the greater good of saving the reputation of the Organization, hatches a plan to see if the sister can "remember" any improper activity and see where it goes from there. Congregations, as I experienced them, had plenty of jealousies, rivalries, envies and a pretty good supply of mentally unbalanced people.

I don't have a good solution to offer, but I believe the WT should trust that the congregation is better served by treating any accusation as a possible crime, and making consistent use of secular authorities, both police and case workers who have expertise getting to the heart of such matters. The secular authorities becomes the second witness, if necessary. Additionally, the elders shouldn't be afraid to share "accusatory" information with a new congregation even if they were forced to treat the person as innocent due to lack of evidence by both their own investigation and that of the secular authorities. Any second accusation anywhere of any kind must serve as a second witness. From a PR perpective alone, the Society would have to see that their reputation is much worse each time one can show that their own rules made it easy to cover these crimes. Also, what would it hurt if any accused brother, after a lack of evidence to convict, still got counselling from a secularly accredited counselor. I don't think the WT track record has earned them enough trust in this matter to rely on their own "spiritual" accreditation alone.

Whether there are more JW abusers than in other groups. I wouldn't know. I would guess that, as religious groups go, Catholics would have the biggest problems due to celibacy in the priesthood. In many countries Catholics still represent the "general" population and wouldn't be expected to have a much smaller proportion of molestors, unless the level of guilt pushed many out of the church before they acted on their perversion. But we know that many feel the guilt and therefore stay to try to get God's help, lay and clergy alike. Any who leave the church might be counterbalanced by any molestors who choose the priesthood since that profession has the highest access to children - much higher I think than JWs afford.

JW's, however, get a large percentage of their number through conversion. Some of those converts may recognize a molestor's paradise, but I would hope the constant hammering about sexual sins of all kinds and maintaining cleanliness, Jehovah's reputation, and all that would effect some kind of filtering process. JWs do choose primarily from "marginalized" classes, and JWs have no real knowledge about counselling for such issues specifically. With other fundamentalists, JWs are very late in catching on to which Biblical principles are obsolete. (e.g., corporal punishment, absolute male headship, subjection of the female, undervaluation of present life based on blood issue, etc.) I was just explaining to my son yesterday on a different topic that in effect, the Mosaic Law, said it was bad to beat your slave to death, but more or less OK as long as it took the slave a couple days to die -- after all, the slave was your money, the Law said. Hammurabi's Law had exactly the same types of problems.

Gilgamesh

Ray Franz -some personal recollections.

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