black adder
JoinedI was Baptized in 1976 at the age of 15 and started pioneering in 1980. I went to the ministerial training school in 1989 and was assigned to the Spanish speaking circuit in 1990. I started to become dissalusioned with the "truth" from 1996 especially after the change of understanding with the generation of 1914. I decided to stop attending meetings regularly after 2002 especially seeing the panorama programme on the BBC on child abuse. Being an elder `i have been involved in 2 judicial cases to do with child abuse and thought it was only an isolated case. But after watching Panorama I could see it was a real problem worldwide. It wasnt the fact that child abuse existed among JWs but the way it was and is handled by the org which got to me. as an elder i could not go to the police or authorities but had to go to the legal desk at bethel to seek advice and guidance. To me that stunk of cover up and had nothing to do with protecting the child and many other elders agreed with me on this but were too scared to do anything about it. What I see is denial by many that a problem exists. I stopped attending meetings completley by the end of 2002, Me and my wife just drifted away quietly without fanfare. No elder has ever contacted me to see why because again I feel they were not brave enough to face the issues. They were happy to let us go to save problems.