i had a fairly long-term bible study with a young woman with a somewhat worldly appearance. this was in the days of very short miniskirts and big hair. i finally got her to come to some meetings with me. at an assembly she met a single brother from another cong. who asked her out. she went and what happened is what we would today call date-rape. she told me and i urged and persuaded her that she had to tell the po. she didn't want to but being the good little jw that i was i told her that she really should and so she did. guess what happened. NOTHING!!!! when i queried the po about this he said they really couldn't get involved because this "brother" was from another cong. after that she didn't want to come to any more meetings. very confusing for me.
there was a young woman who attended a meeting for the first time. she was such a sight. the shortest miniskirt you can imagine with gladiator sandals laced up to you know where, long flowing black hair. she had fallen in love with God and left the meeting that day with a l0" stack of watchtowers to give to all her friends. my then husband and i befriended her and her husband and visited them regularly - the person who started the study with them was herself a very new jw and the powers thought they should have some more mature visitors (ha) which they considered us to be since we had been pioneering for some years, though my husband visited more frequently than i did. i will call her LF. she will play role in future episodes. anyway, one night we went to see them - her husband was still at work, something was very very wrong. we kept asking her. when she left the room my husband said he thought she had been raped by someone who was then ms. we finally pried it out of her and told her she had to report it. she did not want to do so saying nobody would believe her. what ultimately happened was that she agreed to report it provided she could get it on tape which she then did in our presence. we heard him admit it over the phone and heard the tape which she then brought to the elders. guess what happened. NOTHING!!! oh, there was a hearing and he had to temporarily step down from his position, but he remained in good standing, no reproof, no probation, no acknowledgement, no special attention from elders for LF. my head was spinning. no one wanted to talk about it, just covered up and swept under the rug.
shortly before my husband and i split up he was accused of shepherding the flock a little too scrupulously. they called him into conference after one sunday meeting and NOBODY told me what was happening. not him, not them, just all of a sudden we went from being pioneers to being treated like dirt and i had no clue why until much much later when he finally told me what was going on. also, prior to this, when he had been spending so much time visiting various new ones (mostly females of course) one of them had two much younger sisters, im talking 8 & 9 yrs old. my husband confided in me that he was very attracted to them, in fact he was especially attracted to young girls, the younger the better. this was a time when i had never even heard of the word pedophile, and nothing as far as i remember was known then. however, in light of recent wt news it does certainly give me pause.
these are things that happened in a brief time just within my own little sphere of reference. so much for shepherding the flock.
nowisee