I support Mike in his efforts to be at the silentlambs march. If anyone can assist I am sure it will mean much to them for all they have sacrificed.
silentlambs
silentlambs
JoinedPosts by silentlambs
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31
A plea for the silent lambs
by mikepence inin early march of this year, in the echoes of uncertainty left after the horror of 9-11, just one year after i had nearly died myself from a massive, still unexplained, seizure, i determined that i wanted to be a writer.
there were so many things i wanted to write about, my head swirled with possibilities.
one topic kept coming front and center, unavoidably.
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19
CAN YOU BE DISFELLOWSHIPPED AND STILL BE EFFECTIVE
by minimus inin view of the fact that bill bowen and others who have supported the silentlambs agenda have been disfellowshipped, do you think this means the end of their effectiveness?
comments on the board suggest that now, jw's won't come forward to bill because witnesses won't want to talk to a disfellowshipped person.
and some have said that this was the reason why they were fighting their disfellowshipping.
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silentlambs
I had a former silentlambs who is df tell me an interesting story the other day. She was df a few years ago but grew up in a congregation with a brother about her age that became a CO. She attempted to make contact with him through "classmates", oddly he responded. A few emails went back and forth and on a visit back to her home town as it was near his circuit she asked if he would like to meet for a drink. He agreed.
They had a few drinks and he started to talk. He was completely diselusioned with the organization. He said if push came to shove he would take blood. The congregations were driving him crazy, the basically ignored organizational procedures when he wasn't there. The meeting attendance was way down and WT was pressuring him to get the numbers up. He said the young peopole were leaving in droves and few had any real knowledge of the organization, they were just in it for their folks.
She then brought up silentlambs, he started off saying it was all apostates and based on lies, but they had been inundated with abuse problems for the last year in the circuit. When she explained she had been molested by her father a very prominent elder, he went pale. She explained the only ones who believed her was silentlambs and she knew none of her JW family would have supported her. she was going to report him to the police shortly, and she was thankful to silentlambs for helping her.
Well he did not have much to say about silentlambs and muttered something about checking out the website. The point taken from all of this is that many are upset with the organization. The letter that was read has angered many within, they know they are lying. I know it is true a few will shut down but I think any abuse survivor who is not treated properly will know there is a resource for them to turn to. As long as WT continues to lie there are going to be many angry within, when they are angry they will seek out assistance.
Staying in would have been the better alternative, but by making this matter completely public I believe even JW's are going ot smell a rat. I plan to put up all correspondence related to this on the website so anyone can review and form their own opinion as to what the truth is of this matter. If they want to believe the lies, then they would have never came to the website to begin with.
I guess from the story above it appears management is in trouble, they see the problems but no one in home office wants to hear it. The rank and file are quietly revolting and it is a matter of time before the "sell books or die" anthem will just not cut it enough to keep people in.
silentlambs
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64
Bill Bowen Disfellowshipped
by silentlambs inas of 8:30 pm this evening the appeal hearing decided to uphold the decision.
i spoke to them for over an hour and tried to reason with them as to the validity of their decision.
frankly, they were not interested.
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silentlambs
Thank you for all the kind comments, we are just exhausted. The telephone has been ringing all day, as we have been loading a coupe of more torpedoes. It appears the media is taking a greater interest in this story.
The judicial hearing was nothing short of nothing. The appeal committee simply ignored everything written to date, ignored any comments made, and like wt refused to acknowledge in anyway there was any child abuse problem in the organization. Every line of reasoning, every question and point of logic was met with either silence or, "OK, anything else?"
There was much stated, I talked for over an hour, but that was all, it was just me talking. In the beginning I asked what witnesses they had against me. They said the evidence was from my website. They then started reading off things they had downloaded. I stated that I refused to accept or agree to evidence taken from the internet as according to the Society's instructions it was not to be trusted. If we are not allowed to accept material aganist the WT from the internet then certailnly information could not be used as material against a brother. At that point they pulled out the GB letter for the "silentlambs march." They read portions and stated I was questioning the "faithful and descreet slave." To which I stated absolutely not, I have hard evidence against a small group of men who represent the FDS and I wish to prove my allegations with eye-witnessses and hard evidence on 9-27-02. This meeting is an attempt to deny me that right.
They then asked, "Are you saying the entire GB is wicked?" I said that I thought two are three were truly wicked due to my evidence and the rest were guilty of being weak and going along with it. If you know of sin and allow it to continue you thus share in the sin. The entire GB are to be considered wicked as they have all cooperated together to continue WT Policy at the expense of ruined lives of children. For their actions if they are found unrepentant, they should be disfellowshipped. If on the other hand the GB are untouchable and no one is allowed to confront them when they break God's law, then in effect they have become God on earth and they thus defy the very theology they support. In the bible no one was above reproof or punishment for wrongdoing.
If I am wrong and I cannot prove my allegations then I should be disfellowshipped, on the other hand, If I am right and can prove the allegations should not the GB be disiplined accordingly?
At this point there was a silence for about 30 seconds and Dan McMullen said, "Ok, anything else?"
I then said, "You men are simply doing as you are ordered to do, and refuse to see the reality that faces so many. If some man had stuck his penis up your behind, and you had been required to sit in the back room of a KH with untrained idiot elders, screwing up a real investigation and helping to ruin your life, you would be on the other side of this table hugging my neck and thanking me for silentlambs. Instead, you have your orders, and it is well known you doing as you are told will mean many rewards for silencing assistance for abuse survivors, but in the end someday you will know, each and every one, that what you did today hurt children.
"Ok, anything else"
One last thing, WT Policy will change, the only question is, how much persecution and how long are you willing to endure it as you support wicked men who hurt children.
"Ok, anything else. Thank you for meeting with us."
What can you say? They did not want to see anything for if they did it would mean they could be DF also. Scared little rabbits who live in fear each day.
silentlambs
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Using The Word "Coward"
by twain30 inone circuit overseer recently stated that those who are speaking against "mother" are such cowards that they can't even use their names, they hide their identity!
so why would you want to listen to degenerates like that?.
this called some interesting thoughts to mind: were the french resistance cowards because they hid their identities from the nazis?
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silentlambs
Give him my name, I will be glad to talk to him.
silentlambs
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PRESS RELEASE 8-12-02
by silentlambs inpress release
monday, august, 12
william h. bowen: ky 270-527-5350, silentlambs.org
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silentlambs
PRESS RELEASE
Monday, August, 12
Contact:
William H. Bowen: KY 270-527-5350, silentlambs.org
Barbara Anderson: TN 931-455-6910
"Whistleblowers" Silenced by Church Tribunal
Bowen Denied Right To Present Evidence
At 1:30 PM today, Dan McMullen of Princeton, KY , Chairman of the Appeal Committee for Jehovahs Witnesses against William H. Bowen informed his attorney Rush Hunt of Madisonville, that the decision to disfellowship was upheld. The announcement will be made at the Draffenville congregation of Jehovahs Witnesses in Benton, KY , on Thursday, August 15 th .
"They produced no eye-witnesses and used a letter I wrote to the home office as the only evidence against me. The letter leveled formal charges against the Governing Body (leadership) of Jehovahs Witnesses for committing crimes against children." Bowen states, "I offered to provide written documentation and testimony from eye-witnesses at the "silentlambs march" in on September 27 th of this year. But they refused to look at any evidence or eye-witness testimony.
Bowen is the founder of silentlambs ,( www.silentlambs.org 877-wtabuse) a support group for abuse survivors among Jehovahs Witnesses.
Barbara Anderson 62, of Normandy Tenn, was disfellowshipped on July 25 th for speaking out about child abuse as well as her husband Joe. " My son called me Friday and disowned both of us as his parents." Barbara laments, "We will n ever see our grandson again."
Sheila Bowen, wife of William H. Bowen, read a letter to the appeal Committee which concluded with the comment, "I am ashamed and embarrassed for the public to know that I was ever one of Jehovahs Witnesses."
Jehovahs Witnesses have one million members in the and over fifteen million attend services around the world. It is their goal to call at every home in at least once a year.
Edited by - silentlambs on 12 August 2002 19:22:12
Edited by - silentlambs on 12 August 2002 20:14:30
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Bill Bowen Disfellowshipped
by silentlambs inas of 8:30 pm this evening the appeal hearing decided to uphold the decision.
i spoke to them for over an hour and tried to reason with them as to the validity of their decision.
frankly, they were not interested.
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silentlambs
I corrected the link above but here it is also,
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Bill Bowen Disfellowshipped
by silentlambs inas of 8:30 pm this evening the appeal hearing decided to uphold the decision.
i spoke to them for over an hour and tried to reason with them as to the validity of their decision.
frankly, they were not interested.
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silentlambs
As of 8:30 pm this evening the appeal hearing decided to uphold the decision. I spoke to them for over an hour and tried to reason with them as to the validity of their decision. Frankly, they were not interested. They refused to look at the letters from people all over the world that stated silentlambs had not divided them from JW's, they refused to look at over 1000 stories of abuse I had with me, they refused to read the New York Times, they tried to refuse the witnesses who came with me the right to speak with them. It did not work they had to face them anyway as they banged on the door and forced the committee to let them in. The result was the worst case of elder abuse I have seen in 20 years. The committee had to sit and listen for another hour and a half to the reality of what their decision meant.
Did it make a difference? Nope.
As you all know, there is no reasoning, no logic, no fairness, no justice, when it comes to the directions the Governing Body has mandated for all who try to speak out on abuse. They will have their control, they will have their silence and if children are raped, so what. Sell books or die...
At least we got pictures......
silentlambs
If you would like to see the appeal hearing click below;
http://community.webshots.com/album/46689807WUXQbp
Edited by - silentlambs on 12 August 2002 2:52:0
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93
NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by silentlambs inwe are going to have an extensive article in the new york times this sunday.
there is an early addition that comes out in most cities around on saturday.
i encourage one and all to get your copy and do not miss the important piece of history.
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silentlambs
The NYT will be online, it should hit about midnight to 1am.
silentlambs
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Could someone give me some information
by Sadie5 inon the jw that is serving time for 17 cases of child molestation?
are there any newspaper articles about him that i could print out?
your help would be appreciated.. i am thinking of putting together a file that i will send to law enforcement agencies about this problem in the jws.
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silentlambs
I have the transcript of Berry's sentencing hearing posted on my website. the charges are discussed therein as well as the impassioned testimony of 29 Jehovah's Witnesses in behalf of Berry. Most wish him to babsit their children.
Yet another priceless moment in the spiritual paradise.
silentlambs
Edited by - silentlambs on 10 August 2002 15:13:32
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NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by silentlambs inwe are going to have an extensive article in the new york times this sunday.
there is an early addition that comes out in most cities around on saturday.
i encourage one and all to get your copy and do not miss the important piece of history.
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silentlambs
We are going to have an extensive article in the New York Times this Sunday. There is an early addition that comes out in most cities around on Saturday. I encourage one and all to get your copy and do not miss the important piece of history.
Sunday will be the eleventh which will mark thirty days before 9-11 it is fitting for the Society to have an 8-11 for the cruel manner in which they have approached this problem.
The truth is being made known and the Governing Body has no place to hide.
silentlambs
For your enjoyment,
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/national/11WITN.html
Ousted Members Contend Jehovah's Witnesses' Abuse Policy Hides Offenses
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
William Bowen always considered himself a devout Jehovah's Witness. As a child, he felt it was his duty to go door to door passing out the church's magazine, The Watchtower. Later, as an elder in his congregation, he said he saw it as his duty to inform church officials that a fellow elder had abused a child.
But when Mr. Bowen contacted the church's headquarters in Brooklyn, he says, he was rebuffed. Frustrated by the church's inaction and by its confidentiality provisions, which he said prevented him from sharing the information with others, Mr. Bowen resigned as an elder in December 2000. A year later, he started a group to monitor child sexual abuse in the church.
Late last month, Mr. Bowen, 44, was excommunicated from the church. Behind a locked door, with plastic bags taped over the windows to ward off onlookers, he said, three church elders meeting at the church's Kingdom Hall in Draffenville, KY, found him guilty of "causing divisions."
The punishment was "disfellowshiping" complete shunning.
In the past three months, four other people have been expelled from the Jehovah's Witnesses after accusing it of covering up the sexual abuse of children by its members. For Mr. Bowen and other critics of church policies on sexual abuse, the expulsions are part of a concerted effort to keep such abuses quiet.
Expelled Witnesses say the church's own policies and culture conspire to conceal abuse. A panel of church elders, all men, meets in secret to decide each case, a procedure which critics say prevents members from knowing there is an abuser in their midst. To prove an accusation, a child must have a witness to the incident, a condition that is usually impossible to meet.
"This is evidence for the world to see how the Jehovah's Witnesses treat abuse survivors and those who try to protect them," said Mr. Bowen. "They silence them with the threat of disfellowshiping."
J. R. Brown, director of the public information office at church headquarters, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, in Brooklyn, said the church had exemplary policies for handling sexual abuse, which were based on biblical standards and had been widely published in church magazines.
"We're not trying to say we handled everybody in the right way and our elders are all-knowing, all perfect," said Mr. Brown, who declined as a matter of policy to comment on individual cases, including Mr. Bowen's. "But we say, if you take what our policy is for keeping our organization clean morally, it far outpaces anybody else's."
While the Roman Catholic Church has been engulfed in its own sexual abuse scandal, the same issue is beginning to plague the Jehovah's Witnesses, a denomination that claims one million members in the and six million worldwide.
But the shape of the scandal is far different than in the Catholic church, where most of the people accused of abuse are priests and a vast majority of the victims were boys and young men. In the Jehovah's Witnesses, where congregations are often collections of extended families and church elders are chosen from among the laypeople, some of those accused are elders, but most are congregation members. The victims who have stepped forward are mostly girls and young women, and many accusations involve incest.
The scope of abuse in the Jehovah's Witnesses is a matter of considerable debate. The church has recently been sued by eight plaintiffs in four lawsuits alleging abuse, one filed in July in Minnesota. Mr. Bowen says that his victims support group, "silentlambs," has collected reports from more than 5,000 Witnesses contending that the church mishandled child sexual abuse.
The church keeps a database of members and associates who have been accused or found guilty of child abuse. Mr. Bowen said church sources had told him the database contained the names of more than 23,000 people in the , and . The church says the number is "considerably lower," but wilot say what it is.
The church has a firm framework for handling sexual abuse cases. Members who suspect abuse are advised to go first to the elders, who are considered spiritual and moral leaders to whom the members are to turn with their personal problems. Mr. Brown said that the church's legal department advised elders to follow the law in states that have mandatory reporting laws, and in cases in which children appear to be in danger.
The elders are the ones required to judge whether someone has committed a sin like child abuse. If the abuser confesses and is forgiven, the only notice given to the congregation is an announcement that the person has been disciplined. No reason is announced. However, the elders report the person's name to headquarters, where it goes into the database so that abuser is banned from serving in a position of authority.
"If a person can cry a good tune, there are virtually no repercussions and nobody besides the elders ever knows," said Jean Kraus, who said she went to elders in her Queens congregation years ago accusing her former husband of abusing their daughter. She said that he confessed, was reprimanded and was still an active Witness. "They told me that he wasn't a wicked man, that it was a weakness," she said.
The church spokesman, Mr. Brown, said: "We view such judicial hearings as an extension of our shepherding work as ministers. In other words, we're there to save a person's soul. In these cases we are not going to be vindictive because these are our brothers, and we would hope that they would change."
If the accused denies the allegation, the victim's testimony alone is not sufficient unless there is at least one other witness to the act. The church says its policy is based on a scriptural injunction in Deuteronomy 19:15 that says two or three witnesses are necessary to prove a man has sinned.
Heidi Meyer, a third-generation Jehovah's Witness in Annandale, Minn, said she went to her elders in 1994, when she was 15, to say that from the ages of 10 to 13 she had been repeatedly molested by a fellow Witness eight years her senior, the older brother of a friend. The only eyewitness was her brother, who had once seen the man grab her buttocks as she got out of a car.
The elders asked explicit questions that made her uncomfortable, she said. According to an internal Witness document "Pay Attention to Yourself and to All the Flock," the elders must determine in which category the accusation fits: if it was "uncleanness," a one-time touching above the waist; "loose conduct," touching below the waist or more than once above; or the most severe, "porneia," direct sexual stimulation or activity resulting in orgasm. Each offense carries different penalties, with the most severe for porneia.
The man she was accusing insisted that Ms. Meyer had misinterpreted what happened. The elders agreed.
"I was expecting spiritual guidance," Ms. Meyer said. "I was expecting them to genuinely, sincerely attempt to find justice and protect the rest of the congregation from this same thing happening. And none of that happened."
She, like several other alleged victims and theielatives, said in interviews that the elders warned her against reporting the abuse or talking about it with other members.
"They told me if I spoke about it with anybody, I needed to be careful because I could face a judicial committee for gossip or slander," she said. "If they felt I had committed that sin, I would be disfellowshiped."
Ms. Meyer says she learned only years later that Amber Long, another young woman in the congregation, had at age 12 gone to the elders with her parents to report that she had been molested by the same man. Ms. Long, who is now 23, said she and her parents received a letter from the Witnesses advising her to "leave it in Jehovah's hands."
"They said we shouldn't hold ill feelings about our brothers," Ms. Long said. "Since there weren't two eyewitnesses, they said there wasn't much they could do."
Neither Ms. Long nor Ms. Meyer is still active in the Jehovah's Witnesses. On July 2, the two women filed suit against the man they accuse of molesting them Derek Lindala, 30, of South Haven, Minn,-- the local congregation, and Jehovah's Witness headquarters. Mr. Lindala did not respond to a message left at his home seeking comment.
Barbara Anderson, of Normandy, Tenn, said that when she and her husband lived and worked at church headquarters in Brooklyn in the 1990's, she was asked to gather information about child abuse in the congregations. She said she handed over to church leaders dozens of letters complaining about how cases were handled. For her it was a revelation.
"Jehovah's Witnesses like to say that we have one of the most crime-free organizations," Mrs. Anderson said. "But all problems are taken to the elders, and the elders keep them quiet." She said that the documents prompted an internal debate among church leaders, and that when there was no action, she left headquarters disheartened in 1993, after 11 years of volunteering.
Carl A. Raschke, a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver who has written about the Jehovah's Witnesses, said the group was no different from many other insulaeligions that aspire to theological and moral purity.
"Groups that tend to be very tight-knit and in-grown historically have a higher incidence of sexual abuse and incest," Dr. Raschke said. "That's an ethnological fact. When a religion tries to be thoroughly holy or godly, it's not going to acknowledge that people aren't living up to the ideals of the faith."
On July 25, Mrs. Anderson was excommunicated. A week later her husband, Joe, who had earlier resigned as an elder after 42 years, was also expelled.
"It is inconceivable to think elders would investigate an allegation of murder to determine guilt or innocence, so why would we investigate an allegation of child abuse?" Mr. Anderson wrote in his resignation letter. "This is just not our field of expertise. We are ministers of God, not police."
Edited by - silentlambs on 10 August 2002 21:52:42
Edited by - silentlambs on 10 August 2002 22:10:49