This affected me immensely.
My father, an Elder told me I had to attend a JC, nobody told me why until I was at the JC. I had started meeting a guy after work for half an hour. A JW taxi driver from another congregation, who I didn’t know and had never spoken to, had reported the meeting.
At the JC I was told I would be publicly marked. There were no questions, just reprisal. I asked where this policy came from and was told they had received a letter from the Branch only the month before. Apparently it was in an old Watchtower but I had not read it and they didn’t mention it. I asked to see the letter. I remember vividly the total silence and the funny looks all three of the Elders had until one piped up and said that the letters were only for the Elders to view.
I was shocked and deflated. I had no idea there were secret instructions to the Elders or that I could be hauled in front of three men at any time for who knows what. It left my head spinning and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. My father wouldn’t talk to me at all. I couldn’t live at home like this, it was not a home any more. I had to leave. Not one jw from the congregation reached out until later, after it was discovered that I was living with someone. An Elder called me at work and asked that I attend a JC. I asked that he leave me alone.
At 19 and having been cocooned in a cult all my life I was too young to be virtually on my own.
The Elders had been tough on me at the JC because this was my second one and the first had been a train wreck which would have left them embarrassed and humiliated (and had been very difficult for me). All from no fault of my own, other than maybe being an Elders daughter. So the Elders went all out even though they couldn’t df and it was a sin for which they could only mark me for. But they didn’t even ask if I would stop seeing the bloke or when the marking would be lifted. I was in the dark about what they were doing.
The Elder that had called me at work and whom was a close friend of my father, had said in the conversation that I should come back and prove the Elders (on my JC) wrong. I still find that distasteful today because I thought he was more spiritual than the others yet putting a challenge like that is not shepherding or Christian.
Although I am not disfellowshipped, I would still be marked.
I doubt any of this would have happened under the new arrangement but I don’t know when I would have woken up either.
