I just listened to another podcast and I am truly amazed at how wonderful it is.
I agree knowledge is power. Thank you again for doing such great work.
LITS
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/trey-bundy-one-year-of-reporting-jw-child-abuse/.
trey bundy: one year of reporting jw child abuse.
it’s been one year since trey bundy first reported the watchtower’s child abuse problems.. twelve months ago the center for investigative reporting (cir) began publishing information about jehovah’s witnesses and their cover-up of child sexual abuse on their website, reveal.
I just listened to another podcast and I am truly amazed at how wonderful it is.
I agree knowledge is power. Thank you again for doing such great work.
LITS
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/trey-bundy-one-year-of-reporting-jw-child-abuse/.
trey bundy: one year of reporting jw child abuse.
it’s been one year since trey bundy first reported the watchtower’s child abuse problems.. twelve months ago the center for investigative reporting (cir) began publishing information about jehovah’s witnesses and their cover-up of child sexual abuse on their website, reveal.
Thank you also for all you do, please keep reporting and please do not give up. It has been so frustrating to me that so many people do not care what happens to the children who are victims of these abusers who are keep hidden inside WT.
We need people like you who will speak out and let the world know. Thank you again.
LITS.
this video will be played at one of the clam meetings in march 2016.. the content is kind of old news because it is a recut version of a previous video produced for the elder's school.
however, it's still significant because it shows that the organization still has dissenting brothers in positions of leadership.. my thanks to the leaker.
feel free to claim credit here.
Yep that was how they dealt with me when I was so depressed that all I could think of was suicide. Pray more and take pedophiles out in service with you.
Seriously that is how they dealt with me, just pray more and go out in service more. This video just makes me crazy.
LITS
from the time i was a small boy - i loved rock n' roll music.
beatles, rolling stones, led zeppelin, hendrix.
i started getting slighted for the music i listened to as i lay in my bedroom listening on headphones to led zeppelin's song " black dog " at age 14 with my elder dad looking suspiciously at me as i'm rocking out .
When I was single this MS who I babysat for came into my home and went through my records and found 1999 by Prince. OH MY GOD he just royally flipped out and made me feel like scum.
Oh how I wish I could have known he would become a JW. I would have said you mean I have to get rid of brother Prince.
Mostly I hide my music and didn't talk about it to anyone. I was also really tame. My parents were insane and forbid me to listen to any rock when Elvis died I was about 9 or 10 years old and I was watching TV they broke the show I was watching to say he had died. I did not have a clue who he was and went and asked my mom. She told me he was some crazy rock singer that we should not listen to.
Yeah the joys of growing up in the cult.
LITS
warning of a long boring post ahead.
i feel like i need to vent my story out, as i feel quite helpless at the moment.. i'm 31 year old, married, father of toddler with another one on the way, due later this month.
i've been serving as elder for about 4 years now in a south florida congregation.
in my old congro the p.o's wife came 1st before anyone and i mean anyone!!.
karter..
Divergent
You are so right about wealth. If you had money you were top dog. I live in the northwestern US and have served at Brooklyn Bethel. Everywhere I have been money is the power trip.
We lived on nothing $200 a month and pioneered where the need was great, we gave up everything for the "truth" and yet I have been yelled at, told I was stupid by one of the anointed non the less, on and on for putting the truth first and not having money, yet you cannot live in an area where there is hardly any work to serve where the need is great and have money. Then we had a couple move in who did none of this but the elder husband had really high paying job. You would have thought he walked on water, watching the other elders and their wives suck up to him.
Yet when my job offered me the chance to go to college I got so much hell for it that I had to stop. I really hate this religion and it is just so wrong in so many ways.
LITS
i've seen it mentioned by a few on the forum that at some point there was a realization that had they not been born a jw, they never would've converted no matter how many times the jws tried to study with them.
this was my experience too, and i'm wondering how universal it is for those that were born-in but eventually left.
i think i started having this thought (more specifically that if i were not born a jw, i would surely have become an atheist by now) in my late teens.
startingover you said "I now realize i was a closet atheist for most of my life."
That was myself. I remember clearly the day when I realized I was agnostic, I was four years old. My grandfather had been talking about God when we were visiting and we were in the car, I asked my mother what grandpa had said and why. She was frustrated with me and told me that it was crazy, etc to not believe in God.
I clearly remember thinking even though I went to all the meetings and both my parents and older sister who was 10 years old had a strong belief in God that they were wrong and grandpa was right. My grandfather was atheist and at 4 years old I did not believe like he did that there was no God but I felt that God did not care about us.
Even though I went on to embrace the JW's as a teenager, young adult. I pioneered, served where the need was great, went to Bethel, etc in my heart I was and have always been agnostic. I just find it strange how a child can be so sure like I was, and even though I lied to myself and tried to force myself to believe in God or a God that cared I always knew deep inside that God never did and does not care about us.
We are such strange people when we can lie to ourselves even.
LITS
i've seen it mentioned by a few on the forum that at some point there was a realization that had they not been born a jw, they never would've converted no matter how many times the jws tried to study with them.
this was my experience too, and i'm wondering how universal it is for those that were born-in but eventually left.
i think i started having this thought (more specifically that if i were not born a jw, i would surely have become an atheist by now) in my late teens.
I told a CO this once. That if I had not been born into the family I was that I would never have become a JW. He looked at me and said 'see that is how much love Jehovah has for you because he read your heart and put you into that family knowing this. This is how much Jehovah loves you.'
I told the CO let me get this straight my parents were extremely abusive and I suffered hugely for that, not having a childhood at all and then the friends treated be badly because of how strange my family was I had to overcome so much. I was never invited or included with any of the JW's as a child everyone kept away from us, I was not even offered rides to the meetings and had to walk 3 miles each way when I was in my late teens, I struggled to pioneer because the other pioneers did not want me with them in their car groups, I have been to Bethel and and some of the friends treat me like dirt for that for some insane reason. So you are telling me Jehovah had me go though all of this pain because he knew I would not join on my own.
The CO said "yes." This is when I really started to wake up.,
LITS
in my old congro the p.o's wife came 1st before anyone and i mean anyone!!.
karter..
I always hear how the elders wife's are the queen, top dog, the one really in charge at the hall, etc.
I do not know what was wrong with me but as an elders wife I was put down, treated like crap, etc. It was horrible, Other elders wives would not speak to me period, they had their cliques and I WAS NEVER INCLUDED. One time my husband gave a talk out and he was in his circle talking to the elders from that hall and I was just standing there feeling like an idiot and then I looked around and there were groups of other women at least two and they were talking and then looking at me and then back to talking. Not one came toward me to say hi, I felt like I was in jr. high school again. Sometimes I would approach them and try to introduce myself and they would just stair at me and not even acknowledge me. Hello I am standing right in front of them. It was totally crazy and I honestly do not to this day know why.
When they would call for an elder's meeting after the meeting it was HELL. The other wife's would huddle in groups and I would just stand there feeling stupid. Sometimes these emergency meetings would go on for an hour or more. There were many nights that we did not get home until after midnight or latter.
I hated being an elder's wife.
LITS
l have observed the types of people attracted to the sect are many times unbalanced,unstable,emotionally insecure types.the jdubs seem to home in like vulchers circling the prey ,preying on the vulnerables.they tried it on me when my father who was an elder died.promising that if you become a dub you will one day see him again.l said how can you promise that when you keep making false misleading predictions.l was wondering if others have observed this phenomenon.
Yep that was what always got me was how many mentally ill there were. And to make these poor people go door to door to recruit others after they get done love bombing them is criminal.
I have been door to door with mentally ill people who are hearing voices and selling door to door stresses them out so badly that they are shaking like a leaf. It is beyond embarrassing to be standing at the door when a householder opens it and this totally mentally ill person stumbles and shakes telling the person that that have to become a JW or else die. Almost all of the mentally ill people I was around INSISTED that they TAKE ALL THE DOORS. I do not know what was with that but they would get so wigged out if I did not let them that it was just easier to go with the flow and look stupid to strangers at the door then to have to spend the day with a crazy person mad at me.
LITS