avaddohn94, what an excellent letter. Your English is spot on as well. If all of us are basically saying the same thing, and someone like Geoffrey Jackson keeps saying "I am not aware of that" it makes it look like Jackson has either been completely isolated from his entire organization's membership or he's a liar.
I also emailed Mr. Stewart on Tue Aug 4, 2015. Here is what I said:
Dear Mr. Stewart,
Thank you so very much for all you, Hon
Justice Peter McClellan, and the rest of the Royal Commission team are
doing in the investigation of institutional responses to child sexual
abuse within the Jehovah's Witnesses. I am very impressed with your
professional manner and depth of knowledge of this organization.
Remaining composed during this is an amazing task you all manage to
accomplish very well. This must be very difficult, if not exhausting.
I
was raised in this religion but chose not to join for a number of
reasons, misogyny being one of them. It has been a tough road where my
Witness family are concerned.
I once started to document the
known child abusers within this religion reported online from various
news sources and after page one I had to stop as I was becoming
physically ill.
Most Witnesses are unaware of the magnitude of
the issue of child abuse as it is kept secret from them. They are not
warned that there are abusers amongst them and are encouraged not to
listen to outside sources of information including the news media. When
they do hear of it, they believe these sources are telling lies or that
the cases are very few. Preventing the "dragging of Jehovah's name
through the mud" is really more important to this group than actually
protecting people.
My Father once told me that children in
Africa born with HIV must be pre-destined to be sinners in Jehovah's
eyes after I challenged his idea that Jehovah is loving but then allows a
child in utero to contract HIV. My parents also accused me of provoking
a man at work who was harassing me. They felt I must have done
something for this man to be behaving this way. I assured them I had
not.
I have always hoped that the laws of various countries would
change to remove the harmful, damaging, and destructive aspects of
fundamentalist type religions and groups. There is more than child abuse
going on within many of these, the Witnesses included.
I wish
you and the RC much success in bringing about positive change. When a
group is based on outdated principles such as Patriarchy, various abuses
seem to abound. If laws are not enacted, though, as a result of these
investigations, The Watchtower will not adopt any changes. Their
authority is their interpretation of the Bible unless there is a law
which prohibits them from using the Bible literally. They will view this
investigation as persecution by Satan.
Regards,