Personal vendetta against you

pratt1

Were there any elders, Co's or any one else in a postion of importance that had a personal issue with you that clouded their judgement?

How did you handle it?

xjwms

YES,....

I stopped going to meetings.

AND I told them that would not see me anymore.

daystar

Some of the kids found an elder's porn stash. We were all talking about it one day at a restaurant after service.

After we ate and were leaving, the elder pulled me aside and told me I'd better stop spreading rumors about him, or else. (scary glare)

I've always suspected that he had something to do with the uncompassionate way I was treated in my JC.

hillbilly

yep...and it was part of the "eye opener" that got me out.....

How bad was it? Let me just say this...there are only 3 people on this planet who need to fear me. I now reside miles away from them. ' Nuff said.

~Hill

Yep. I had an issue with an elder's son in another cong. His father then moved into my cong as apparently he couldn't attack me from another congregation (I don't really understand that very much).
He spread gossip about me being a thief and a fraud. I met with some elders (my idea) and tried again to work it out with his son. The elders said that I had done nothing wrong but letting it go on was bad for the congregation so I should just give in. Well, giving in meant paying him alot of money (which I didn't even have AND I didn't owe to him), so that wasn't going to happen. They said I was not being fraudulent or a thief and they could take no action against me.
Anyway, I won't go into all the details, but after that the C.O., who I'd never talked to before, took me aside and counseled me to stop spreading gossip in his (the elder's son's) congregation, which I NEVER DID! I didn't even know anyone in that congregation.
After that I have heard probably 4 or 5 times now people from other parts of town come to me to tell me that brother ******* (the elder) has said to them in just about the same words each time, "The trouble's not over for **** **** (me)".
I moved across the country and gave my new congregation contact information to only one person, the P.O. Not any other person in that entire state (or even that side of the country). Well, the next morning the P.O. of the congregation I was moving to gets a call from the elder's son! So the P.O. must have provided that information to a non-servant in another congregation. From my understanding, he has no right to do that, but he did it anyway.
To the new P.O.'s (P.O. where I moved) credit, he told him there's nothing he can do and to pursue it this way is slander on the elder's son's part.

Jordan

I don't think me in particular, but I think my entire family have been badly treated and victimised by the elders, I honestly think there was something they were scared about with my family, I don't know, maybe something one of us knew about one of them.

coolhandluke

Long story... I'll make it quick.

So at the age of 16 my mom caught me flogging the hunchback and marched me to the elders. I talked to one that I trusted, my bookstudy overseer. No problem. Guilt, embarassment. I worked on it. I was after all a good boy. I was being groomed to be an MS by 17. There was an elders meeting where my appointment came up. Everyone was in favor of it except for this particular elder. He told the body and the circuit overseer that I was not exemplary (I was a pioneer and sound servant at the time). When asked for an explaination, he said that he couldn't give one. The CO wouldn't tolerate it. Pushed, he told what he knew in these words. "Brother CHL has a chronic problem with masterbation. I'm not sure if he has yet gotten it under control (a year had passed) therefore I do not believe he should be "burdened" with further responsibility until he gets a firm grasp on his problem." (pun intended) I was well liked so this information got back to me.

If I ever saw this brother on the street, I'd lay him out. I never trusted another elder again.

dedpoet

Yes, the school overseer didn't like me, and the feeling was mutual. Every talk I gave, he counselled me for minor points, sometimes nothing to do with what I was working on. Others in the kh noticed this, and one night I challenged him over it, in front of other cong members. That really p'd him off, because he couldn't think of a satisfactory explanation for how he had been treating me. I then asked him, again in front of witnesses, if he had some kind of personal grudge against me, and if so, questioned his right to be school overseer. That really got to him, he actually lost his temper in the kh. I stopped going to the kh within a few weeks of that incident, something I'd been planning to do for a while, but it felt good to have put him on the spot before I left. I doubt if he's ever forgiven me for it.

Andrea Wideman

When I was being questioned by a "brother" regarding going further and getting baptized. He said to me that he doubted my commitment because I only owned 1 dress. That really hurt. Silly me I guess I was just so used to being kicked around that I stayed and worked even harder on baptism.One of my friends in the KH bought me 3 dresses. That really shut him up and he stopped protesting my getting baptised.
Later after I was baptised they really started picking on my kids. Other kids could color, draw, and play with toys. Mine weren't even supposed to get up to go to the bathroom. Shortly after they started in on my kids I stopped bringing them to most meetings. They also really started in on Joel and why wasn't he there and called him a non supportive spouse.That is when I just stopped attending meetings at all. I knew if they kept it up I would really lose my temper and verbally let them all have it.
I have to say that it still bugs me that most of those who were raised JW still look down on the converts and treat them all so shabbily.

Forscher

Do bears go in the woods?
Several elders have done that with me. The most memorable of the bunch was one who came to our congregation after being deleted as an elder from another congo because he tried to hide the immoral conduct of one of his kids. Because he was a personal friend of a GB member, he did a token year as a publisher then was appointed as an MS. Then, in another year, he was appointed as an elder. About another year later, he got the goods on the secretary fo the congregation, whose kid was doing the same things his kid had done, and engineered the deletion of the secretary from his position and his own appointment to the post. When he did that, he basically became the king of that congregation.
After that, anybody he didn't like was in deep do do! I found myself relived of whatever priviledges I had without the benefit of a hearing or warning. I just walked in one day and was imformed by the various ministerial servants that I worked under that I no longer enjoyed any priviledges of service. My family and I ceased to be invited to congregational get togethers etc.... I think you know the drill. When my daughter was raped, that elder personally chaired the JC and Df'ed her, despite the fact that she wasn't even an unbaptised publisher at the time (it seems that when one has friends in high places, they are not bound by the rules). My whole family was treated as if we'd all been Df'd at that elder's insistance.
And that was only part of the story! He tried to keep our daughter from being reinstated, but I found a way to get around that and get the reinstatement. So he did his best to tighten the screws every way he could. I really had to watch everything I said or did so that he couldn't find some legitimate way to DF me. Let's just say that the only reason I didn't walk away from the organization at that time was that I could see that was what he wanted and I decided that I'd be damned if I was going to let that bastard get what he wanted. When I moved away to another town years later, the asshole had the gall to brag that he'd run me out of town!
To my knowledge, my family and I were the only ones he ever went after who didn't buckle under, get DF'd, or run. When we did leave that town and congregation, it was on our own terms, not his. I am still proud of that!

Forscher