Hi All.
A news article regarding Ali Millar popped up on abc here in Australia.
Some of you folks in the UK may have heard of her.
She has released a book entitled 'The Last Days'. I guess from the article that her story rings true to anyone aware of the WT religions' modus operandi.
Here is the link and I will paste some of the news article.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-09/ali-millar-jehovahs-witnesses-leaving-her-religion-being-shunned/101266998
Ali Millar's upbringing in the Jehovah's Witnesses was traumatic. Now she's speaking out
ABC RN / By Anna Kelsey-Sugg and Catherine Zengerer for Late Night LivePosted Tue 9 Aug 2022 at 5:00amTuesday 9 Aug 2022 at 5:00am, updated Tue 9 Aug 2022 at 5:16amTuesday 9 Aug 2022 at 5:16am
For Ali Millar, the experience of writing her difficult life story wasn't cathartic, it was traumatic.
"I would be sick. I had panic attacks. I've never showered as much in my life. Every time I finished writing, I would really need to wash," she tells ABC RN's Late Night Live.
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Now London-based, Millar was born and raised in a small village in the Scottish Borders among the Jehovah's Witnesses, a religion with around eight million followers around the world.
It's a religion she now firmly rejects.
She says growing up she was told what to read and wear, experienced oppressive guilt and shame, and was constantly terrified of an impending Armageddon.
After documenting her story, Millar began to change how she felt about the past.
"I started to realise that a lot of things that I blamed myself for weren't my fault. I started to understand the [Jehovah's Witnesses] organisation and its mechanisms far better," she says.
Millar, whose memoir is The Last Days: A Memoir of Faith, Desire and Freedom, argues there's a common misconception of the Jehovah's Witnesses group as "benign".
But she describes it as a "deeply coercive and manipulative organisation".
"And that's really why it's important for me to speak out."
'The end is always imminent'
When Millar was born, her mother learnt that she'd been deceived by her new child's father, and that he was already married with children. He didn't stick around.
"When he left, she was really vulnerable," Millar says.
"And the Witnesses came knocking."
The young family entered the organisation voluntarily but they needed to adopt new beliefs.
"[The Witnesses] believe that God's kingdom was established on Earth in 1914," Millar says.
"They believe that Armageddon is imminent, and that war, famine, pestilence [and] earthquakes are all signs of the end."
She says in Witnesses' teachings "the end is always imminent" and only Witnesses will be saved, "to live forever in a paradise on Earth".
"We were told as Witnesses that when the end came, worldly people would eat their babies because there'd be so little food … that mobs would roam the streets."
Avoiding this fate is not as simple as being a Witness, however. "Membership doesn't guarantee your salvation," Millar says.
"It's God who gets to decide at the end, so you're constantly worrying about your behaviour."
As are other members of the organisation.
"There's quite tight peer control over what you listen to, what you read, what you watch ... It's all very carefully monitored," she says.
Millar says the organisation is also "completely patriarchal" and that women are "encouraged not to pursue further education".
The women who left a 'cult like' religion
Sherrie and Naomi were raised in devout Jehovah's Witness families and lived most of their lives under strict religious conditions — then they "woke up".
She says that in the community she grew up in, "Women aren't allowed to lead in any kind of worship. If women pray in public, they have to have head coverings on … Women aren't allowed to wear trousers to the meetings or on field service.
"What they wear is tightly controlled," she says.
"People think, 'Oh, these are nice people' … but their beliefs aren't. And the structure and the system which they live inside is deeply, deeply coercive."
In a statement to the ABC, Jehovah's Witnesses Australasian spokesperson Tom Pecipajkovski denied that the religious group controls what women wear, stating: "Each individual Jehovah's Witness has the freedom to choose what type of clothing to wear. Our organisation does not list which styles of clothing are acceptable and which are objectionable."
He also denied that women are discouraged from further education, stating: "Enrolling in a post secondary education course is a personal decision completely unrelated to a person's gender, age or race".
"We commonly encounter the false allegation that Jehovah's Witnesses 'control' various aspects of a congregant's life. There is no basis for this," the spokesperson said.
He also referred to international international human rights cases, such as a 2010 Russian case, recognising the right of Jehovah’s Witnesses to practise their religion, and questioned the reliability of former members' perceptions of religions they have left.
Inside the secretive world of the Jehovah's Witnesses
Not much has changed since the cruel treatment of abuse victims in the Jehovah's Witnesses was exposed. Now, former members are fighting back.
Eating disorder was a way 'to be pure'
By her teens, Millar says she was doing "normal" things like having relationships and experimenting with alcohol. But she was hiding all of it from her mother and the church.
"I was really ashamed … and I just wanted to be pure," she says.
She developed an eating disorder as a "way of me trying to become clean".
jtg