I was called an Apostate once by my brother-in-law. My only crime was doing research on the Watchtower, only using all their past publications. I was not sharing any of this information with anyone but my husband. The only reason why he found out was, he popped over for a "visit" one day, and I did not have time to hide the stuff.
When he called me a stupid woman and an apostate, my husband lost it and told him, "Then the Watchtower must be an Apostate with God", because I was using only their literature. I was only using the internet as a guide on where and what to look for, pages and paragraphs, and which publication to look in. When my husband told him that, all of a sudden my brother-in-law went silent, and that was the end of that. One thing a person does not do is to attack me like that, or my dear hubby will go off on them. He nearly beat the snot out of his brother that very night. The only thing stopping him was there were about 4 police officers right outside. They were there because our next door neighbor was fighting again. This all went down at 1 am, yes, that bozo would come over for visits at weird hours.