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From Jehovah's Witness to Hollywood actress
St. Louis Post-Dispatch/September 11, 2006
By Tim Townsend
On a sunny summer day, film director Matthew Van Vlack sits in the lush courtyard of an uberhip teahouse talking about "Art Imitating Life," a movie he'll begin filming in the fall. All around the Buddhist-influenced courtyard, young beautiful people read scripts and talk to agents on cell phones as they sip their Echinacea Royale Tonic Herbal.
One of the stars of "Art Imitating Life," Juliana Dever - a pretty, freckle-faced St. Charles native wearing a "Put Me Out of My Missouri" T-shirt - sits next to Van Vlack as he talks about Callie, the character Dever will play in his new film.
"Callie's an ex-stripper, trying to become a singer, and she's in an abusive relationship with a Mafiosa-type boyfriend," Van Vlack says. "She has this girl-next-door cuteness, but she's also extremely damaged."
Dever, who is blond, curvy and tiny - barely over 5 feet tall and nowhere near 100 pounds - is perfect for the part, he says.
"Juliana's cute and bubbly, but she also has this mysterious, sultry quality," Van Vlack says.
And then there's Dever's upbringing in the Jehovah's Witness church. That, Van Vlack says, is where the damage comes in.
The actress has created a new life outside the church's strict system of beliefs, "and she's making it work for her," he said. Dever has transformed herself from a sheltered St. Charles teenager forbidden from celebrating her birthday or attending prom into the celluloid star of horror flicks such as "Sasquatch Hunters" and "Mangler Reborn."
She also has written a screenplay that merges her two worlds - Jehovah's Witnesses and Hollywood. They are dramatically diverging worlds, and Dever's experience and screenplay reveal the challenges young Witnesses sometimes face as they try to reconcile their faith and the sometimes chaotic society outside its protective walls.
Conflicting feelingsas a youth
The Jehovah's Witnesses, which began as a small Bible study group near Pittsburgh in 1872, has more than 6.5 million Witnesses around the world. Witnesses are premillennialists: They believe Armageddon is imminent and that the second coming of Jesus Christ will precede the 1,000 years of peace mentioned in the New Testament book of Revelation. Witnessess consider holidays such as Christmas and Easter pagan-influenced corruptions of biblical Christianity, and the Pledge of Allegiance idolatry.
At Willie M. Harris Elementary School in St. Charles, Dever often felt like the strangest kid in her class. Witness doctrine did not allow her to recite the pledge with her classmates or celebrate birthdays and other holidays with friends. She also couldn't participate in many after-school activities, such as plays or sports.
"School was weird for me," she said. "Whenever it was someone's birthday, I had to sit in a room by myself while everyone else had cake. I couldn't draw Christmas trees or turkeys for Thanksgiving."
David L. Weddle, chairman of the religion department at Colorado College, said Witnesses base their rigid patriarchal authoritarian rule on the Bible, "and part of the strategy they use to keep the next generation loyal is strict social control."
Bill Kissell, a Jehovah's Witness spokesman in Missouri, said Witness parents are simply concerned with whom their kids associate.
"Certain parts of school activities are not appropriate," he said. "Young people could be accidentally involved in something immoral or unacceptable."
Dever's conflicting feelings about the church started at an early age. When she was 15, her parents approved chaperoned visits from an 18-year-old member of their congregation. He would come to the family home to watch movies and eat pizza. But the encounters still drew fire from a church senior elder who humiliated the family in front of their congregation, said Dever, who asked that her maiden name not be used to protect her parents. The elder accused Dever's parents of being lax caretakers with little concern for their daughter's blatant promiscuity.
"It was sickening," Dever said. "My skin felt like it was on fire. I sat there frozen and trying not to breathe, trying not to look at my mom. It was tantamount to some kind of sentence, like being up there in stocks for everyone to spit on. My parents were devastated."
Soon Dever found herself questioning the church's strict beliefs and yearning for a different lifestyle.
The church discourages Witness parents from sending their children to college, Kissell said.
"Obviously among Jehovah's Witnesses, there are people with a good education," he said. "But in view of the atmosphere at many universities and colleges today ... many families decided to do something else with their children's education, to help them have a skill that will allow them to provide for themselves but also keep them away from an atmosphere that is not helpful morally."
Dever was not allowed to attend college, so she went to work for TWA after high school. A year or two later, in 1998 (since Dever set up shop as a Hollywood actress she has shed her Midwestern, devil-may-care attitude about revealing her age), a former TWA boss offered her a job in Orange County, Calif., licensing feature films to airlines. She jumped at the chance. She relished a change of scenery, and the job would put her a step closer to her dream: acting in the movies.
But Dever's wish for stardom was in direct conflict with church teaching, which, according to Church literature, says that Witnesses "avoid being excessive in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure or prominence."
As soon as she arrived in California, Dever acted on instinct and sought out a local Witness congregation. After two decades, the church had become a part of her, and she wouldn't leave it easily. Also, she knew that when she did leave, some members of her family and her Witness friends would cut off communication.
She was only 40 miles from Hollywood, but fear kept her from seizing the life she yearned for less than an hour up Highway 5. It would take her three more years to leave the church for good.
Walking away from the Witnesses
Dever had no friends outside the church and so nowhere to turn for support or advice about her decision. Instead, she devoured books about acting, hoping for a career in film.
In October 2001, she finally made the leap to Los Angeles, leaving the church and everything she once knew behind.
New friends helped Dever through months of depression and doubt about life outside the Witnesses, especially in a place as ethereal as Hollywood.
"I kept thinking, 'If everything I was told up to this point in my life was a lie, what's true now?'" she said.
The following year, she met Seamus Dever, a fellow actor who appears with Adrien Brody and Ben Affleck in the new movie "Hollywoodland," ) and she married him earlier this summer. Her parents attended the California wedding.
Today, Dever studies acting with the hunger of someone deprived of food for weeks. Last year, she studied at Russia's famous Moscow Art Theater. In 2002, she made her first movie, "Sasquatch Hunters," a B-level horror flick released last year. Other damsel-in distress-roles followed.
Two nonhorror indie performances are on the art-house and festival circuits, and her life is full of auditions, readings and more auditions. Though Dever's getting more acting work, she still works part-time at her day job in Orange County.
But Dever's major project is a screenplay about people she knows best: those too afraid to leave the church, the people she loved and ultimately lost when she walked away from the Witnesses. The screenplay follows several Witness friends as they struggle with the tensions between their lives in the church and in the outside world. Dever is finishing a final draft and hopes to meet with producers in coming months.
"I don't want to come across as angry in the screenplay, because I'm truly not," Dever said. "And I don't want to be exploitative or condemn anyone."
For now, Dever expresses no doubt about leaving the church. She is focused on her fledgling Hollywood career - though she admits that being estranged from some family and friends has been difficult.
"When you leave, you lose people you love, and you have no say in it," she said. "I have no regrets about leaving, but I have many about the life I lost."

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From Jehovah's Witness to Hollywood actress
St. Louis Post-Dispatch/September 11, 2006
By Tim Townsend
On a sunny summer day, film director Matthew Van Vlack sits in the lush courtyard of an uberhip teahouse talking about "Art Imitating Life," a movie he'll begin filming in the fall. All around the Buddhist-influenced courtyard, young beautiful people read scripts and talk to agents on cell phones as they sip their Echinacea Royale Tonic Herbal.
One of the stars of "Art Imitating Life," Juliana Dever - a pretty, freckle-faced St. Charles native wearing a "Put Me Out of My Missouri" T-shirt - sits next to Van Vlack as he talks about Callie, the character Dever will play in his new film.
"Callie's an ex-stripper, trying to become a singer, and she's in an abusive relationship with a Mafiosa-type boyfriend," Van Vlack says. "She has this girl-next-door cuteness, but she's also extremely damaged."
Dever, who is blond, curvy and tiny - barely over 5 feet tall and nowhere near 100 pounds - is perfect for the part, he says.
"Juliana's cute and bubbly, but she also has this mysterious, sultry quality," Van Vlack says.
And then there's Dever's upbringing in the Jehovah's Witness church. That, Van Vlack says, is where the damage comes in.
The actress has created a new life outside the church's strict system of beliefs, "and she's making it work for her," he said. Dever has transformed herself from a sheltered St. Charles teenager forbidden from celebrating her birthday or attending prom into the celluloid star of horror flicks such as "Sasquatch Hunters" and "Mangler Reborn."
She also has written a screenplay that merges her two worlds - Jehovah's Witnesses and Hollywood. They are dramatically diverging worlds, and Dever's experience and screenplay reveal the challenges young Witnesses sometimes face as they try to reconcile their faith and the sometimes chaotic society outside its protective walls.
Conflicting feelingsas a youth
The Jehovah's Witnesses, which began as a small Bible study group near Pittsburgh in 1872, has more than 6.5 million Witnesses around the world. Witnesses are premillennialists: They believe Armageddon is imminent and that the second coming of Jesus Christ will precede the 1,000 years of peace mentioned in the New Testament book of Revelation. Witnessess consider holidays such as Christmas and Easter pagan-influenced corruptions of biblical Christianity, and the Pledge of Allegiance idolatry.
At Willie M. Harris Elementary School in St. Charles, Dever often felt like the strangest kid in her class. Witness doctrine did not allow her to recite the pledge with her classmates or celebrate birthdays and other holidays with friends. She also couldn't participate in many after-school activities, such as plays or sports.
"School was weird for me," she said. "Whenever it was someone's birthday, I had to sit in a room by myself while everyone else had cake. I couldn't draw Christmas trees or turkeys for Thanksgiving."
David L. Weddle, chairman of the religion department at Colorado College, said Witnesses base their rigid patriarchal authoritarian rule on the Bible, "and part of the strategy they use to keep the next generation loyal is strict social control."
Bill Kissell, a Jehovah's Witness spokesman in Missouri, said Witness parents are simply concerned with whom their kids associate.
"Certain parts of school activities are not appropriate," he said. "Young people could be accidentally involved in something immoral or unacceptable."
Dever's conflicting feelings about the church started at an early age. When she was 15, her parents approved chaperoned visits from an 18-year-old member of their congregation. He would come to the family home to watch movies and eat pizza. But the encounters still drew fire from a church senior elder who humiliated the family in front of their congregation, said Dever, who asked that her maiden name not be used to protect her parents. The elder accused Dever's parents of being lax caretakers with little concern for their daughter's blatant promiscuity.
"It was sickening," Dever said. "My skin felt like it was on fire. I sat there frozen and trying not to breathe, trying not to look at my mom. It was tantamount to some kind of sentence, like being up there in stocks for everyone to spit on. My parents were devastated."
Soon Dever found herself questioning the church's strict beliefs and yearning for a different lifestyle.
The church discourages Witness parents from sending their children to college, Kissell said.
"Obviously among Jehovah's Witnesses, there are people with a good education," he said. "But in view of the atmosphere at many universities and colleges today ... many families decided to do something else with their children's education, to help them have a skill that will allow them to provide for themselves but also keep them away from an atmosphere that is not helpful morally."
Dever was not allowed to attend college, so she went to work for TWA after high school. A year or two later, in 1998 (since Dever set up shop as a Hollywood actress she has shed her Midwestern, devil-may-care attitude about revealing her age), a former TWA boss offered her a job in Orange County, Calif., licensing feature films to airlines. She jumped at the chance. She relished a change of scenery, and the job would put her a step closer to her dream: acting in the movies.
But Dever's wish for stardom was in direct conflict with church teaching, which, according to Church literature, says that Witnesses "avoid being excessive in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure or prominence."
As soon as she arrived in California, Dever acted on instinct and sought out a local Witness congregation. After two decades, the church had become a part of her, and she wouldn't leave it easily. Also, she knew that when she did leave, some members of her family and her Witness friends would cut off communication.
She was only 40 miles from Hollywood, but fear kept her from seizing the life she yearned for less than an hour up Highway 5. It would take her three more years to leave the church for good.
Walking away from the Witnesses
Dever had no friends outside the church and so nowhere to turn for support or advice about her decision. Instead, she devoured books about acting, hoping for a career in film.
In October 2001, she finally made the leap to Los Angeles, leaving the church and everything she once knew behind.
New friends helped Dever through months of depression and doubt about life outside the Witnesses, especially in a place as ethereal as Hollywood.
"I kept thinking, 'If everything I was told up to this point in my life was a lie, what's true now?'" she said.
The following year, she met Seamus Dever, a fellow actor who appears with Adrien Brody and Ben Affleck in the new movie "Hollywoodland," ) and she married him earlier this summer. Her parents attended the California wedding.
Today, Dever studies acting with the hunger of someone deprived of food for weeks. Last year, she studied at Russia's famous Moscow Art Theater. In 2002, she made her first movie, "Sasquatch Hunters," a B-level horror flick released last year. Other damsel-in distress-roles followed.
Two nonhorror indie performances are on the art-house and festival circuits, and her life is full of auditions, readings and more auditions. Though Dever's getting more acting work, she still works part-time at her day job in Orange County.
But Dever's major project is a screenplay about people she knows best: those too afraid to leave the church, the people she loved and ultimately lost when she walked away from the Witnesses. The screenplay follows several Witness friends as they struggle with the tensions between their lives in the church and in the outside world. Dever is finishing a final draft and hopes to meet with producers in coming months.
"I don't want to come across as angry in the screenplay, because I'm truly not," Dever said. "And I don't want to be exploitative or condemn anyone."
For now, Dever expresses no doubt about leaving the church. She is focused on her fledgling Hollywood career - though she admits that being estranged from some family and friends has been difficult.
"When you leave, you lose people you love, and you have no say in it," she said. "I have no regrets about leaving, but I have many about the life I lost."

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.




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Growing up J.W.
A new book about being raised among Jehovah's Witnesses sends these SN&R writers down memory lane
Sacramento News and Review/May 6, 2009
By Jenn Kistler and Kel Munger

A small religion, Jehovah's Witnesses have less than 2 million members in the United States, and statistically (according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey), almost two-thirds of Jehovah's Witnesses children decide not to remain members. That's true for us, two former Witnesses here at SN&R. So when a copy of Kyria Abrahams' new book, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing, arrived, we decided to discuss it—and our experiences growing up among the door knockers.
Jenn Kistler: This book is hilarious. Like her, I tried to convert my friends. In the second grade, I placed the Bible Stories book with one friend. The next day she brought it back and never spoke to me again.
Kel Munger: Abrahams says the belief that the world would be destroyed any minute kept her from forming attachments with people outside the J.W.'s.
J.K.: I was afraid to make friends. Even aside from not being able to hang out with them outside the school, the idea that they were going to die very, very soon was pretty traumatizing.
K.M.: She also makes clear how people who've been disfellowshipped [expelled] are completely shunned. She shunned her disfellowshipped mother, then when she was disfellowshipped, her mother shunned her.
J.K.: It was the same for me. When my parents got divorced, my mom wasn't going to meetings regularly and she got remarried, so the elders came to my dad's house and told us that we had to stop talking to her. I was 12 or 13.
K.M.: I was 8 when my dad was disfellowshipped. We weren't supposed to talk to him about anything that had to do with "spiritual matters." But we also had the experience of being semi-shunned by other members of the congregation—treated like lepers—because our dad was disfellowshipped.
J.K.: We weren't allowed to hang out with kids in my congregation, at their house, if one of their parents was disfellowshipped.
K.M.: Yep. Now, on the good side, going out door to door made me an extrovert. I've got no stage fright and could sell space heaters in hell—if there was a hell.
J.K.: I'm confident when speaking in front of people, but I still have a hard time developing personal relationships. I left in my late teens, and making connections with people, close connections, just wasn't something that happened in the organization.
K.M.: Abrahams thinks it's a cult. I'm torn about that. Their doctrine isn't that far off from things like the Bible Students and some of the Adventists groups. And they sure don't have charismatic leadership.
J.K.: Uh, no!
K.M: But it's a very rigidly controlled group that uses social isolation—and the threat of social isolation—to keep people in line. Abrahams nailed that; her fear of leaving, or even of changing too much, because then she'd lose her family and friends. It takes a lot of personal courage to walk away when you know your family is going to reject you.
J.K.: I define the term cult loosely. Any organization that tries to prevent you from integrating into society and being part of your own community and tries to control everything you do is a cult in my eyes.
K.M.: Yeah, it's just that nobody ever tried to put me in an orange robe. So are we doomed to be weird? I'm Perfect, You're Doomed. No, really.
J.K.: No. Maybe. A little. You can't get rid of everything that was ingrained in you as a kid. When I pass by a Ouija board in Wal-Mart, all the stories I was told come back. Or the Smurf stories. I love those. I've still never watched Smurfs to this day. [There is a body of urban lore among Jehovah's Witnesses about the Smurf characters being demon-possessed.] Laughter helps, especially if you've got family members who are still in it.
The pressure to "witness" was constant. Every time I had a science teacher, I had to give her the Evolution book at the beginning of every year, or anti-evolution book rather. In fifth grade, the science teacher was so awesome. We gave her the Evolution book and she sat down with us and said, "Thank you for bringing your beliefs to my attention, but I'm not going to be teaching from this book."
K.M.: I didn't take an Evolution book to the biology teacher, but then I knew that she'd already gotten about a half-dozen copies. That's because every year, the next Witness kid who had to take biology would give an "experience" at the meeting about "witnessing" to the biology teacher. Poor Miss Bailey!
And I was too old for My Book of Bible Stories. That came out after I'd left home. When we were kids, we studied the Paradise book, which has such disgustingly frightening pictures of things like Jezebel being thrown to the dogs, or a Canaanite getting ready to toss a baby onto this fire in the lap of their idol. The worst was part of a big, panoramic picture of Armageddon: this little girl, her doll, her dog and her bicycle all falling down into this big chasm in the Earth. Gave me nightmares. It's probably why I was afraid to learn how to ride a bike.
J.K.: Growing up, I had terrible nightmares, and that's probably why—those are intensely graphic pictures in those books.
K.M.: And we call the books by shorthand names, but they all had these ridiculously long names—Babylon the Great Has Fallen: God's Kingdom Rules!—with lots of exclamation marks, so we'd be sure and know it was important.
K.M.: Abrahams is also pretty good at describing that superior attitude toward "worldly" people—basically, anybody who isn't a Witness in good standing.
J.K.: You have to get baptized. That's one of the things Abrahams writes about that was just exactly the same for me. You're not an adult unless you're baptized.
K.M.: See, I didn't do that. I was afraid to, because my dad was disfellowshipped, so I knew what could happen. Screw up, get hauled before a judicial committee and try to convince them that you were repentant before they threw you out anyway. Well, what I was pretty sure was going to happen, because I knew I'd never be able to follow all the rules. So I'm in the "never-dunked" club. You can't disfellowship me. I never joined!
J.K.: In my congregation, getting baptized was like joining an elite club of cool kids. You would not get invited to the cool parties or get to go to the movies with the group that had the cute guys unless you were baptized. Now, they were doing stuff they weren't supposed to, like dating each other, but you couldn't be a part of it unless you were baptized. So I got baptized in a cattle trough. It had wrapping paper on one side of it to make it look nice, and it was plopped right on the stage at the Kingdom Hall.
Now, try and explain all that to someone who doesn't know any of the lingo.
Sometimes I wonder what those "cool Witness kids" are doing now. I know my two best friends from that time are also no longer Jehovah's Witnesses.
But if you're baptized, you got a "No Blood" card, which was sort of a membership card for Jehovah's Witnesses adulthood.
K.M.: Oh, yeah. I remember how rumors would go around that there were "blood products" in Hershey's chocolate or in Dairy Queen ice cream, so we weren't supposed to have it. Notice that it's always something that tastes good, right? Because you can't be righteous and theocratic if it's easy. Just tell me that they used blood in processing broccoli, please! [Jehovah's Witnesses refuse transfusions of whole blood and consider eating blood a major sin.]
J.K.: I stopped going the minute I turned 18, and so did my sisters. My sisters and I are not the bad kids people said we would be; we've all gone to college and we've got our lives together and we've got jobs and great relationships. We've never been in trouble. But you'd think we were the black sheep of the family anyway, the way they act toward us. They'll call to preach to us and get us to come back because they don't like the lifestyle that we're leading. I think they would be happier if I was a high-school dropout and cleaned houses, as long as I was a pioneer [that's a Jehovah's Witness who spends a particularly large amount of time going door to door].
K.M.: I get you. When there's only one answer, anything I do is wrong.
J.K.: This isn't a big religion, but I don't see it getting any bigger. It's just not self-sustaining; most of the kids leave.
K.M.: And then laugh about it, if they can!

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 Print M Email
Growing up J.W.
A new book about being raised among Jehovah's Witnesses sends these SN&R writers down memory lane
Sacramento News and Review/May 6, 2009
By Jenn Kistler and Kel Munger

A small religion, Jehovah's Witnesses have less than 2 million members in the United States, and statistically (according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey), almost two-thirds of Jehovah's Witnesses children decide not to remain members. That's true for us, two former Witnesses here at SN&R. So when a copy of Kyria Abrahams' new book, I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing, arrived, we decided to discuss it—and our experiences growing up among the door knockers.
Jenn Kistler: This book is hilarious. Like her, I tried to convert my friends. In the second grade, I placed the Bible Stories book with one friend. The next day she brought it back and never spoke to me again.
Kel Munger: Abrahams says the belief that the world would be destroyed any minute kept her from forming attachments with people outside the J.W.'s.
J.K.: I was afraid to make friends. Even aside from not being able to hang out with them outside the school, the idea that they were going to die very, very soon was pretty traumatizing.
K.M.: She also makes clear how people who've been disfellowshipped [expelled] are completely shunned. She shunned her disfellowshipped mother, then when she was disfellowshipped, her mother shunned her.
J.K.: It was the same for me. When my parents got divorced, my mom wasn't going to meetings regularly and she got remarried, so the elders came to my dad's house and told us that we had to stop talking to her. I was 12 or 13.
K.M.: I was 8 when my dad was disfellowshipped. We weren't supposed to talk to him about anything that had to do with "spiritual matters." But we also had the experience of being semi-shunned by other members of the congregation—treated like lepers—because our dad was disfellowshipped.
J.K.: We weren't allowed to hang out with kids in my congregation, at their house, if one of their parents was disfellowshipped.
K.M.: Yep. Now, on the good side, going out door to door made me an extrovert. I've got no stage fright and could sell space heaters in hell—if there was a hell.
J.K.: I'm confident when speaking in front of people, but I still have a hard time developing personal relationships. I left in my late teens, and making connections with people, close connections, just wasn't something that happened in the organization.
K.M.: Abrahams thinks it's a cult. I'm torn about that. Their doctrine isn't that far off from things like the Bible Students and some of the Adventists groups. And they sure don't have charismatic leadership.
J.K.: Uh, no!
K.M: But it's a very rigidly controlled group that uses social isolation—and the threat of social isolation—to keep people in line. Abrahams nailed that; her fear of leaving, or even of changing too much, because then she'd lose her family and friends. It takes a lot of personal courage to walk away when you know your family is going to reject you.
J.K.: I define the term cult loosely. Any organization that tries to prevent you from integrating into society and being part of your own community and tries to control everything you do is a cult in my eyes.
K.M.: Yeah, it's just that nobody ever tried to put me in an orange robe. So are we doomed to be weird? I'm Perfect, You're Doomed. No, really.
J.K.: No. Maybe. A little. You can't get rid of everything that was ingrained in you as a kid. When I pass by a Ouija board in Wal-Mart, all the stories I was told come back. Or the Smurf stories. I love those. I've still never watched Smurfs to this day. [There is a body of urban lore among Jehovah's Witnesses about the Smurf characters being demon-possessed.] Laughter helps, especially if you've got family members who are still in it.
The pressure to "witness" was constant. Every time I had a science teacher, I had to give her the Evolution book at the beginning of every year, or anti-evolution book rather. In fifth grade, the science teacher was so awesome. We gave her the Evolution book and she sat down with us and said, "Thank you for bringing your beliefs to my attention, but I'm not going to be teaching from this book."
K.M.: I didn't take an Evolution book to the biology teacher, but then I knew that she'd already gotten about a half-dozen copies. That's because every year, the next Witness kid who had to take biology would give an "experience" at the meeting about "witnessing" to the biology teacher. Poor Miss Bailey!
And I was too old for My Book of Bible Stories. That came out after I'd left home. When we were kids, we studied the Paradise book, which has such disgustingly frightening pictures of things like Jezebel being thrown to the dogs, or a Canaanite getting ready to toss a baby onto this fire in the lap of their idol. The worst was part of a big, panoramic picture of Armageddon: this little girl, her doll, her dog and her bicycle all falling down into this big chasm in the Earth. Gave me nightmares. It's probably why I was afraid to learn how to ride a bike.
J.K.: Growing up, I had terrible nightmares, and that's probably why—those are intensely graphic pictures in those books.
K.M.: And we call the books by shorthand names, but they all had these ridiculously long names—Babylon the Great Has Fallen: God's Kingdom Rules!—with lots of exclamation marks, so we'd be sure and know it was important.
K.M.: Abrahams is also pretty good at describing that superior attitude toward "worldly" people—basically, anybody who isn't a Witness in good standing.
J.K.: You have to get baptized. That's one of the things Abrahams writes about that was just exactly the same for me. You're not an adult unless you're baptized.
K.M.: See, I didn't do that. I was afraid to, because my dad was disfellowshipped, so I knew what could happen. Screw up, get hauled before a judicial committee and try to convince them that you were repentant before they threw you out anyway. Well, what I was pretty sure was going to happen, because I knew I'd never be able to follow all the rules. So I'm in the "never-dunked" club. You can't disfellowship me. I never joined!
J.K.: In my congregation, getting baptized was like joining an elite club of cool kids. You would not get invited to the cool parties or get to go to the movies with the group that had the cute guys unless you were baptized. Now, they were doing stuff they weren't supposed to, like dating each other, but you couldn't be a part of it unless you were baptized. So I got baptized in a cattle trough. It had wrapping paper on one side of it to make it look nice, and it was plopped right on the stage at the Kingdom Hall.
Now, try and explain all that to someone who doesn't know any of the lingo.
Sometimes I wonder what those "cool Witness kids" are doing now. I know my two best friends from that time are also no longer Jehovah's Witnesses.
But if you're baptized, you got a "No Blood" card, which was sort of a membership card for Jehovah's Witnesses adulthood.
K.M.: Oh, yeah. I remember how rumors would go around that there were "blood products" in Hershey's chocolate or in Dairy Queen ice cream, so we weren't supposed to have it. Notice that it's always something that tastes good, right? Because you can't be righteous and theocratic if it's easy. Just tell me that they used blood in processing broccoli, please! [Jehovah's Witnesses refuse transfusions of whole blood and consider eating blood a major sin.]
J.K.: I stopped going the minute I turned 18, and so did my sisters. My sisters and I are not the bad kids people said we would be; we've all gone to college and we've got our lives together and we've got jobs and great relationships. We've never been in trouble. But you'd think we were the black sheep of the family anyway, the way they act toward us. They'll call to preach to us and get us to come back because they don't like the lifestyle that we're leading. I think they would be happier if I was a high-school dropout and cleaned houses, as long as I was a pioneer [that's a Jehovah's Witness who spends a particularly large amount of time going door to door].
K.M.: I get you. When there's only one answer, anything I do is wrong.
J.K.: This isn't a big religion, but I don't see it getting any bigger. It's just not self-sustaining; most of the kids leave.
K.M.: And then laugh about it, if they can!

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Keep the Faith or lose the Family: Part 1
Jehovah's Witnesses speak out
Echo Magazine/January 7, 1999
 By Bobbi Dugan
See Part Two

Topics
 Cult or Sect?
David and Goliath
Apostles of Denial
Awake! And open your wallets
Go Forth and Tell All Nations
Suffer the Children
Bethel boys will be boys
Come here, little girl 
Family Secrets
The Bible according to WTB&TS
Follow or perish
So different and yet so alike
Five more people--five similar stories
And more mail
Those who beg to disagree

Many of the former Jehovah's Witnesses interviewed for this article gave permission to use their last names. Some asked us not to. To protect all those who shared their stories, and to spare their families further difficulties, we have used first names only for most participants.
What began as a simple news article about a religion's attempt to shut down a gay Web site, turned into a months-long investigation that uncovered physical and emotional abuse, spies and enforcers, and scores of broken families.
It isn't an easy read. This shouldn't happen in the United States. But it does- and in every other nation that has been infiltrated by the secretive and manipulative religion known as Jehovah's Witnesses.
A panel of gay former Jehovah's Witnesses, invited by Echo to a round table discussion, testified they grew up knowing two things for certain: Some day they would be discovered. And when they were, they would lose their religion and probably all contact with loved ones. Fear and the anticipation of punishment is what their faith bestowed upon them from birth.
Like many religions, Jehovah's Witnesses doctrine does not permit sexual activity outside of marriage. But the members of the panel believe this religion seeks out sexual sinners-especially gays-and when it finds them, it sets out to discredit them and to cut off family ties.
Cult or Sect?
Experts disagree on whether Jehovah's Witnesses is a cult or merely a strange sect.
Rick Ross is an internationally known cult expert and intervention specialist. He states, "I do not regard the Witnesses as a cult-although many do. Instead, my view of the group is that they are a totalitarian and destructive group that employs coercive thought reform techniques."
Ross acknowledges he has not had specific experience with gay former Jehovah's Witnesses, but he understands well what they have suffered.
"I have been retained for interventions regarding Jehovah's Witnesses. The group employs isolation, coercive persuasion and unreasonable fear to manipulate potential recruits and retain its members."
Panel member Scott M. calls Jehovah's Witnesses a cult. He shakes with emotion when he talks about how narrowly he escaped its clutches. Scott keeps a large vegetable crate filled with books, magazine articles, and Internet downloads about Jehovah's Witnesses and cults. He offers the material as proof of the abuse he endured growing up a Jehovah's Witness.
Brainwashing is a word the young gay man uses when he talks about his childhood. He has a list called "Eight Marks of a Mind-Control Cult" from the book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, by Robert J. Lifton. Scott ticks off the areas in which he believes the Jehovah's Witnesses earn an "A."
Isolation-Members are separated from society, forbidden educational media that might provoke critical thinking. Information is kept on each recruit by the mother organization. All are watched.
Mystical manipulation - God will punish "bad" members with accidents, ill will, loss of material goods, etc. "Good" members will be rewarded.
Demand for purity-World is black or white, good or evil. Guilt and shame are used to control individuals. All things "evil" must be avoided.
Confession-Serious sins (as defined by the group) are to be confessed immediately. Members are encouraged to spy and report on one another.
Sacred "truth"-The cult holds the only truth. Its ideology is too "sacred" to call into question. Cult leaders must be treated with absolute reverence.
Thought-terminating cliches-These are expressions or words designed to end conversation or controversy.
People vs. doctrine-Human experience and knowledge are subordinated to doctrine. Members are valuable only if they conform to doctrine.
The right to live-The group decides who has the right to exist and who does not. Outsiders can be "sinned" against in the form of lying, deception, separation from families, etc., because "outsiders are not fit to exist."
"I think being gay actually saved me," Scott said. He knew his sexual orientation at an early age. He also knew the Jehovah's Witnesses would not tolerate it. So he refused to be baptized and walked away at 18.
But Scott believes he still is recovering from those first 18 years.
David and Goliath
Jim Moon joined the Jehovah's Witnesses at about the same age Scott was when he left. Like Scott, Moon knew his sexual orientation. He said the Jehovah's Witnesses elder who recruited him in 1975 also knew. The elder told Moon it didn't matter, because Armageddon was imminent, and after that it would be okay to be gay.
"They offered me immortality, " Moon said. "Who could refuse?"
When the end of the world did not happen on schedule-a problem that has plagued Jehovah's Witnesses throughout their history-Moon was left to deal with the incompatibility of his sexuality and his religion.
Eventually, he was pressured out of the sect. The resulting trauma led him to become webmaster of A Common Bond, an Internet gay Jehovah's Witnesses support group.
The San Francisco-based site Moon operates was blocked after his Internet server received a complaint from the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Inc., the Jehovah's Witnesses' controlling corporation.
When his site went down, Moon sent out a distress call on the Internet.
"On July 24, 1998, our group's Web site was blocked access by GeoCities, where this site was formerly located," Moon wrote. He acknowledged that he was not surprised by the action.
A Common Bond "had been the target for some time of hate mail from current cult members, and explicit threats that they would attempt to close the site down somehow," Moon said.
GeoCities told Moon the block was because of an alleged "copyright infringement." A Common Bond had posted an illustration from a Watchtower book, Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Light.
Moon wrote, "The illustration is supposed to be a depiction of the resurrection ... but it depicts same-sex couples embracing. The subliminal message is profound, to say the least."
GeoCities told Moon to work things out with Richard Moake of the Watchtower, who lodged the original complaint.
Moon wrote to Moake that although the Watchtower might perceive A Common Bond as "a threat to your religious organization," the site had a constitutional right to free speech. He maintained since the illustration was used "expressly for the purpose of education and information" its use was not in violation of copyright laws.
Based on years of experience with the cult, Moon didn't expect the Watchtower to budge. However, after flooding the Internet with the story, and after GeoCities received "thousands of complaints worldwide," the Web site was restored within four days, sans the offending graphic.
The unpleasant experience caused A Common Bond to obtain its own URL. When you log on to www.gayxjw.org, you see the infamous illustration, middle blanked out.
"Hey!!" text in the blank part reads, "What happened to the picture?? Click here to find out how the Watchtower tried to shut us down."
Moake was unavailable for comment. But a spokesperson for the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society did speak to Echo. The Society's director of public affairs James Pellechia declined to comment on the legalities of Moon's use of the photo, saying he is not a lawyer.
He added, however, "We are not in the business of shutting down Web sites."
Pellechia also said the Society would not "target" groups comprising former JWs.
"We would ask any Web site using copyrighted material to remove that material," Pellechia said.
Through Moon and A Common Bond, Echo located dozens of gay former JWs eager to tell their stories. The tales were frightening and sadly similar. But to understand the extent to which Jehovah's Witnesses are able to control and alter people's lives, it is necessary to understand the organization itself.
Apostles of Denial
In 1970, Edmond Charles Gruss, a religious history professor at the Los Angeles Baptist College and Theological Seminary, wrote a scholarly expose and history of the Jehovah's Witnesses titled, Apostles of Denial.
Gruss described the defining characteristic of the sect: If any facts in the long history of Christianity did not suit what the Witnesses chose to believe, they would merely deny the existence of those facts. He also wrote that the group went so far as to translate and publish its own version of the Bible, which conveniently changed key words to make scripture fit JW theology.
Charles Taze Russell is generally considered to have founded the religion now known as Jehovah's Witnesses in the late 19th century. But according to Gruss, "The Jehovah's Witnesses claim the first of their number was Abel, and that they are the modern-day representatives of the line of Bible witnesses mentioned in the Old and New Testaments."
Gruss calls the lineage claim preposterous.
In 1870, at age 18, the charismatic Russell started a Bible study class. It soon became wildly popular, and the students' adoration went to Russell's head. In 1879, he founded The Herald of the Morning, which later became The Watchtower. The newsletter showcased Russell's religious theories and scriptural interpretations.
As more people flocked to him, and as the sect's coffers filled, Russell went commercial. In 1884 he established the Zion's Watchtower Tract Society (now the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc.). It was then the sect entered into its present-day area of publishing its own versions of "The Truth."
Once Russell discovered the power of the printed word, his ambition could not be contained. He spent the rest of his ministry stumping from town to town, church to church, selling his slick tracts, books and magazines. Russell convinced his target market that it needed to purchase his publications, because the Bible could be properly understood only through his interpretations.
A showman as well as a preacher, Russell realized the best way to get people's attention was to hit them between the eyes-with The End of the World.
He dramatically predicted specific dates for the long-awaited occurrence. Alas, time and again the big day came and went with no End in sight.
This was but a minor problem for Russell. He lost followers whenever the Apocalypse failed to materialize, but like P.T. Barnum, Russell knew a sucker is born every minute. There always were new lambs to join the fold.
Awake! And open your wallets
In his book Saleskids, Duane Magnani, wrote, "From a simple bible class in the 1870s has sprung one of the world's fastest growing and most influential cults of the 20th century ... because many billions of books, magazines and other publications have been sold to the public in the name of the Watchtower Society."
The January 1986 Watchtower revealed that in 1985, at the height of its publishing prowess, "Jehovah's Witnesses placed nearly 39 million Bibles, books, and booklets in the field, as well as more than 300 million magazines."
The Watchtower, considered by the sect to be the official word of Jehovah, and Awake!, which many experts tag a superior example of propaganda, along with the Bible are the flagships of the JW publication fleet.
For years, Jehovah's Witnesses raked in the converts and the money, Magnani claims. It was easy to make a profit on the publications. The salespeople were herds of JW offspring, trained from early childhood to peddle the magazines door to door. The money was turned over to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which supposedly used it only to produce more books and magazines.
However, Randall Watters, author of Free Minds Journal, has done extensive investigation into the Watchtower's publishing business. He once was a printer for the organization. In Watters' opinion, publishing has been a moneymaker for Jehovah's Witnesses since the beginning.
"The most expensive cost in printing is usually the labor," Watters explains. "The Watchtower has solved that problem by having all their work done by volunteers-none are paid. Second, there is no middleman to be paid-the Watchtower does all the advertising, marketing and shipping. Third, the more copies of a book printed, the lower its cost."
The Watchtower also has its own printing presses, binderies, and other necessities of the trade.
Watters also said, "The Watchtower has created an instant market for its publications. To release just one new book at a yearly District Assembly brings automatic sales of at least five million books."
As a tax-exempt religion, the U.S. branch of Jehovah's Witnesses is very secretive about how it is financed. Watters writes, "They fail to disclose their primary source of income. Rather, they seek to convey the impression that their income comes strictly through free will contributions, with a few estates denoted as well. No mention is made of the major source of their income, which is the distribution of books and magazines."
Since 1990, the U.S. government has forbidden Jehovah's Witnesses to sell publications without paying taxes on the income, because the sect claims nonprofit status, Watters said.
However, the children and their parents still ring doorbells. Now, they ask for "donations." The Society gives its solicitors "instructions on how to suggest the old prices for Watchtower and Awake! subscriptions," Watters says.
Go Forth and Tell All Nations
In many countries, laws governing religious moneymaking are not as strict as in the U.S. Perhaps that is one reason for the phenomenal growth of the Jehovah's Witnesses in other nations.
In 1997, official Watchtower figures claimed nearly 5.6 million members (1) in 232 "lands." Nearly 1 million of those members live in the U.S.
More interesting than the numbers is the ratio of Witnesses to the population. In the U.S., for instance, the Watchtower lists one Witness for every 274 non-Witnesses. In Curacao, it is 1 to 97. In Guadeloupe, 1 to 52.
The religion is growing rapidly in many African nations, especially those where fundamentalist Christianity already has a toehold.
In Zimbabwe, where anti-gay sentiment is nearly out of control and religious fervor is high, the ratio is 1 to 475.
But in non-Christian countries, such as India, few inroads have been made. There the ratio is 1 to 56,919.
It is difficult to determine what the Watchtower means by "lands." Its statistics list membership numbers for Alaska and Hawaii separately from the U.S.
Perhaps Jehovah's Witnesses are not yet aware the 49th and 50th states have joined the Union.
Suffer the Children
As an intervention expert, Ross has seen results of JW parenting, and he does not paint a pretty picture.
"JW children generally are somewhat isolated, insulated and withdrawn through their family involvement with the organization," Ross said. "They also often are forced to sit through long meetings and conferences and also [are] taken door to door to promote the organization/literature.
"The children for some time have been discouraged from advancing to higher education, or being involved in sports and extracurricular activities. This can be seen as a form of 'restrictive abuse."'
One could infer by reading Watchtower Society publications that physical abuse of youngsters is encouraged.
For example, here are quotes from some of the publications:
"The lessons learned at mother's knee do not make as lasting an impression as those learned while stretched across daddy's."
"All children of Adam need correction, and at times firm discipline requires the rod, in the administration of pain…At times, a parent will need to speak to the child by the administration of pain."
Perhaps the most telling is a chapter from Disciplining Children for Life, a "parenting guide" for Jehovah's Witnesses. The section is meant to instruct children on why it is okay for mommy and daddy to beat them.
It describes how animal mothers discipline their young. For example: A mother tiger "took the youngster's whole head in her mouth, squeezed and shook it, while the startled baby whimpered."
A concealed fawn, if it dares move, will "get a spanking from sharp mother hooves."
A bear gave her cub "a good wallop with her paw and sent it rolling."
Abusive animal mother of the year awards must go to a mother koala, who turns her babies over her knee "and spanks them on their bottoms for minutes on end with the flat of her hand, during which time their screams are soul-rending. "
Sexual abuse is common in societies that are almost completely sexually repressed. Married JW adults are forbidden certain erotic activities, such as oral sex.
While sex education is discouraged, children grow up hearing horror stories about sexual sin-especially homosexuality.
Many of the former JW members shared stories of sexual abuse, by family and other church members. Scott M said his older sister sexually abused him.
When he reported the abuse to parents and elders, nothing was done. Talking about sexual matters is an uncomfortable thing in the Kingdom Halls where members gather to worship. Topics such as incest, adultery and homosexuality are swept under the rug.
But while official doctrine says homosexuality is a terrible sin, several former gay JWs reported common homosexuality among the ranks.
A panel comprising former Jehovah's Witnesses meeting with Echo observed that the sect at times seems obsessed with sexual sin. The gathering of men and women agreed that at times, the organization seems willing to forgive its members of anything, but sexual sin.
At the same time, the group's long history is spotted with plenty of stories about some of the sect's elite involved in inappropriate sexual behavior. These stories have included elders who controlled individual congregations and the Governing Body of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (WTB&TS), which controls the entire membership.
Bethel boys will be boys
At Brooklyn Bethel, the Governing Body holds sway over the 5.6 million members of Jehovah's Witnesses. It cannot handle such a task alone, however. Help comes from Pioneers, Jehovah's Witnesses who volunteer to distribute literature, teach Bible classes, build Kingdom Halls, or do what is necessary to keep the sect operational.
Select Pioneers are privileged to go to Bethel* to serve God--and the GB.
In his book Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses, M. James Penton described the strange life within what he calls the publishing houses or "factories" of Brooklyn Bethel.
"Besides two huge factory buildings, the complex includes several residence buildings for the many hundreds of workers who produce literature for Witnesses throughout the world and, additionally, for the administrative, clerical, and support staffs which are necessary for the governance of a highly centralized religious movement."
Originally, only young men were granted entrance to Bethel. In more recent years, after a number of scandals hinting at homosexual activity in the dorms, women have been allowed.
Because marriage between Bethelites was forbidden, admitting women did little to relieve the young men's sexual tension. The rumors of homosexuality continued.
Today, married couples are permitted to toil together for the organization. However, several correspondents told Echo that gay pairings still are common at Bethel. The conditions are ripe for what psychologists call "institutionalized homosexuality."
Until the mid-1970s, Bethel pioneers stayed and worked at least four years, Penton wrote. Now, one year is expected, although workers who maintain a good record can stay longer.
The workers are not paid a living wage. They receive a stipend for personal items. The factories would be considered sweatshops by today's standards, but Penton explains that workers "accept the regimen of life at Brooklyn .... They are both ideologically committed and highly disciplined individuals who have been taught to accept authority, usually without question."
However, Penton continues, "This does not mean that there are no serious problems brought about by the severity of lifestyle; there are."
Promiscuity became a problem once women were admitted to Bethel. But "heterosexual offenses have never been the serious problem that homosexual ones have been," Penton states. "In fact, [former Watch Tower leader Nathan] Knorr, who seems to have had a fixation on sexual sins, kept the matter of homosexuality and masturbation so constantly before workers at the Watch Tower headquarters that one is forced to wonder if he did not have homosexual tendencies himself."
If so, it might explain why he seemed to protect Percy Chapman, the alleged one-time lover of GB member Leo Greenlees. In 1959, under hint of homosexual scandal, Knorr went to Canada to replace Chapman, who was the Canadian Branch overseer.
Knorr demoted Chapman to janitor, but let him remain at Toronto Bethel--on condition he marry.
According to Larry D., a gay Toronto former JW, "Percy ... was totally anti-marriage and he made sure that none of the "Bethel boys" even contemplated the subject ...."
Larry described the Bethel boys of the 1950s. "They were all young and handsome, hand-picked by Percy Chapman; there was even an elite group known as 'Percy's boys' who would accompany him to expensive restaurants and bars ... at the time, Bethel was on Irwin Avenue in the center of the gay district of Toronto. There was even a Kingdom Hall above 'The Parkside,' one of Toronto's few gay bars in the fifties and sixties."
After Chapman's disgrace, Larry, who personally knew Greenlees, wrote, "Poor Leo Greenlees, Percy's close companion for three decades ... had to find himself a new roommate. ... He was very open about his homosexuality to those few good-looking young brothers .... He would bring along another Bethel boy, Lorne Bridle, who was very good looking and charming."
Regardless of his dubious relationship with Chapman, Greenlees became Treasurer of WTB&TS and one of the Governing Body. According to Larry, "He managed to escape the witch hunt at Brooklyn Bethel in the early seventies when dozens of Bethel boys were disfellowshipped after learning of their midnight trysts in the sauna in Brooklyn Bethel."
Other Bethel stalwarts also became grist for the rumor mill.
Come here, little girl
The heterosexual indiscretions of Jehovah's Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell are more shocking and easier to document than JW gay activity.
When Russell's wife Maria sued for divorce, court records show she testified that Russell had engaged in an "improper relationship" with Rose, an orphan who was about 10 years old when the Russells took her into their home.
Maria told the court that not only had she caught Russell at night in Rose's bedroom, but in the servant girl's room as well. In fact, "I found him locked in the servant girl's room," Maria said.
According to Maria and other witnesses, Russell fondled Rose, kissed her, held her on his knee, and called her "his little wife." When the girl responded, "I'm not your wife," Russell answered, "I will call you daughter, and a daughter has nearly all the privileges of a wife."
The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society denies any impropriety took place. In fact, it denies Russell, who lived apart from Maria for the next 50 years, ever was married.
"No one was ever produced who gave testimony against the moral character of Pastor Russell," WTB&TSSecretary/Treasurer W.E. Van Amburgh wrote. "To his dying day, he was able to say ... that he lived a life of absolute celibacy."
Family Secrets
To hear something other than the WTB&TS party line, Echo contacted active Jehovah's Witnesses through a bulletin board service on a JW Web site. We e-mailed 25 BBS visitors--male and female, from the U.S. and several foreign countries--and asked, "How do you feel about the presence of gay members within your congregation?"
Only two U.S. women answered. One said, "I would rather not comment on that one. I feel the best people to ask on that subject are Jehovah's Witness elders. You will find them in any one of our many congregations worldwide ... all I can say is that Jehovah loves everyone that follows what the Bible says."
The other woman was a gold mine of information. For several weeks, she carried on an e-mail dialogue with this reporter. The woman, who identified herself as Kathy A., a Jehovah's Witness for 37 years, opened up a Pandora's box of child molestation, homosexuality, and anger--hers.
In her initial letter, Kathy wrote, "Since I try very hard to live by what the Bible says, I must let [God's Word] speak on this subject." She listed every familiar Biblical injunction against homosexuality, concluding, "So as you can read for yourself, God condemns homosexuality, including lesbians."
We answered that for the purpose of this article, we wanted to know how she personally felt about gay people, and whether she knew any.
"I hate immorality ... whether it be homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, etc. And yes, I do know some homosexuals. One died from aids (sic) one has it, the other I don't know," Kathy wrote. After more religious instruction, she ended the letter with an intriguing tease: "I do have a personal experience on homosexuality you may not want to hear."
But we did. It took several more exchanges to coax it out of her.
Although she denies he is gay, it appears she may have a gay son. She wrote that her son was "raped and ruined" as a child by his cousin.
"When my son was born there was obviously a difference ... no one wanted to play with him because he was a hard child to get along with .... When he was almost eight, a family member, 16 at the time, said he would baby-sit him."
According to Kathy, the older boy babysat her son for the next several years. During that time, the cousin sexually molested the younger boy.
"My son was 12 when he told me what happened to him .... The police got involved but this 16- (now 20-) year-old denied it. But in his room there was found behind a picture on the wall some women's clothing."
A doctor told Kathy her son's sphincter muscle was "destroyed." Emotionally, she also was destroyed, as she was left to deal with the uncomfortable reality that her child had engaged in homosexual activity for four years with another boy, and never told her.
"My son went to the mental hospital for six weeks as his behavior was out of control," Kathy continued her story. "There we were told that when this kind of sexual behavior happens to a young child, this is what they come to expect as normal and that when he got out of the hospital he would need to be closely monitored for years and he shouldn't be around young children unattended.
"This was a nightmare for us. When my son turned 16, we had to have him committed ... my son was confused for a long time about his sexual identity .... My son (now 22) is not normal today. He is scarred for life, and so is the other young man (the son's cousin). My son is not a homosexual, but neither does he have any female relationship ... my son is still in therapy."
Kathy said she believes homosexuality is caused by child molestation. She said the victims become sinners who molest other children and destroy families. Her experience is all the proof she needs.
"I don't hate homosexuals. If they want to experiment, then let them experiment on people their own age, not on young children."
The Bible according to WTB&TS
Professional counselors have trouble helping JWs deal with sexual problems, because to them, all sexual behavior is determined by biblical interpretation. There is no room for understanding, forgiveness, medical science or alternative viewpoints.
JWs hold the Bible before them like a shield. The Bible they use is the WTB&TS' own translation, which it publishes as the New World Translation.
According to Edmond Gruss, who wrote Apostles of Denial, Watchtower representatives claimed that when New World Translation was released in the 1950s, it had been translated and approved by competent scholars.
In the foreword, the translators wrote, "Religious traditions, hoary with age, have been taken for granted and gone unchallenged and uninvestigated. These have been interwoven into the translations to color the thought."
In his book, Gruss countered, "With the arrogant statement, the Watchtower committee waves aside hundreds of the greatest linguists of all time and substitutes the Committee of Seven ... a committee composed of unknowns who hold little in the way of degrees or scholarly recognition."
In his definitive study, In Search of Christian Freedom, Raymond Franz, a former member of the Governing Body, points out the convenience of creative Bible translation.
"Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his Master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so. Truly I say to you, he will appoint him over all his belongings."--Matt: 24:45-47, New World Translation.
"In their calls for loyalty and submission, no other portion of Scripture is so frequently appealed to by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses ... it is employed primarily to support the concept of a centralized administrative authority," Franz writes.
"There is not the slightest question that in the minds of Jehovah's Witnesses ... the "food at the due time" provided by the "slave" is the information supplied by the Brooklyn-centered Watch Tower Organization," Franz says.
Follow or perish
The Jehovah's Witnesses' hold on members is so tight, most find it difficult to leave the sect. Some escape intact. Others, unable to cope with the dichotomy of JW beliefs and the real world, opt for suicide.
In April 1997, Air Force Capt. Craig Button, on an Arizona training flight, broke formation from his unit, flew to Colorado, and crashed his plane into the side of a mountain.
The story made national headlines. People speculated about reasons for what happened. One newspaper report suggested Button committed suicide over a gay love affair with another officer.
In a Dec. 25 New York Times article, James Brooke wrote, "The pilot's parents ... angrily reject the conclusion that he committed suicide." Brooke revealed that Button "raised as the only child of elderly parents, broke as a teenager with the faith of his parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses."
"My mother is a Jehovah's Witness, raised me to think that joining the military is wrong," Button once wrote.
The Air Force claims Button committed suicide over unrequited love for a woman. "It was a dramatic example of a man who seems to have everything going for him in his life, yet cannot have the woman he loves passionately," the official report concludes.
At the time of the original investigation, however, the woman in question denied she and Button were ever more than friends.
Even more damning is the story of Kelly Blake, a Phoenix woman who poured gasoline over herself and her three children, then set the family ablaze in March 1998.
TV reporters said the woman had become very religious and that she was obsessed with the "sinfulness" of herself and the children she had out of wedlock.
The woman's daughter died at the scene of the fire. The rest of the family was rushed to the hospital. The mother and one son were in critical condition.
A neighborhood boy told Arizona Republic reporters that Blake refused to allow her children attend school for "religious reasons." He said the family was Jehovah's Witnesses, the Republic reported.
Jim Moon, webmaster of Internet support group site A Common Bond, flew in from San Francisco to share his story. Also at that initial meeting was Mark Miller.
Later, five more Phoenix-area residents participated in a round-table discussion of their experiences. We interviewed other gay former JWs from all parts of the country, via telephone and e-mail.
Those contributing to this final segment are male and female, in their early 20s to late 50s. They are white, Hispanic, and African-American. Some were born into the Jehovah's Witnesses; some joined later in life.
All share a common experience. They were rejected by their religion, and often by their families, because they are gay.
So different and yet so alike
Moon left his birth religion "because of its condemnation of gays." While a teenager, he met some Jehovah's Witnesses who persuaded him to sit in on weekly Bible studies. "The elder was a master salesman, and he knew all the right things to say and the right scriptures to read," Moon said.
"Armageddon was right around the corner." It was supposed to occur in September 1975, the elder said. That religious man counseled Moon "that in order to guarantee my immortality, all I had to do was to 'stop being gay' for a few months, and after I survived Armageddon, I would be 'perfect.' So my sexuality wouldn't matter any more. I was sold!"
When Armageddon didn't happen, Moon struggled for the next few years to be a good JW and suppress his same-sex desires. Inevitably, Moon met a man and began spending time with his new "best friend."
"In order for the JWs not to accuse him of being a 'bad association,' I started a Bible study with him. ... One night, both of us had too much beer and we found ourselves in bed," Moon said. "I woke up the next morning in absolute terror."
As the religion dictates, Moon confessed his sin to the elders. Because he was "repentant," he was given a "Private Reproof." It turned out not to be so private.
"Word spread through the congregation like wildfire, and I was treated like a leper," Moon said.
Moon tried for several more years to get things right, but finally he was disfellowshipped. "I was told Jehovah no longer loved me," Moon said.
Miller was raised a Jehovah's Witness. When he became aware of his sexuality, he tried to keep it a secret to protect his family. He knew practicing gays were disfellowshipped. That means family members can not associate with the banned member.
But congregations deliberately are kept small, Miller explained, so that members can watch one another. Once sexual indiscretion is suspected, the suspect often is followed or spied upon, he alleged.
Miller moved to another town to escape watchful eyes. He claimed the church's elders "stalked" him.
"I had to say, if you don't stay away from me, I will slap a restraining order against you," Miller said. That legal maneuver worked for about two years. But eventually, everyone from his former life knew about Miller's homosexuality. The elders had to do something.
The worst part of being disfellowshipped was, "I bought into that I had really done something wrong ... that God had turned his back on me," Miller said.
He admitted that at the time he didn't know what to expect from his family and friends. He said JWs treat disfellowshipped members with anything from "you don't even look at them" to "well, it's family, you be courteous."
Miller said his mother wasn't exactly courteous. He got "scathing" letters from her. When she learned he had his ear pierced, she "went through the whole thing about what homosexuals did and I was filthy."
Miller said his mother believed the earring was to advertise that he wanted to have anal sex with men at any given time. Miller reacted to her suggestion with, "Really? Well, it hasn't worked yet!"
Miller said the JWs "are palming themselves off as being loving, gracious people ... and look at the hate they teach."
He and his mother have reunited and made their peace--but not until after years of suffering for each.
Five more people--five similar stories
The five panel members shared the impact revealing their sexual orientation had on them and their families.
Silvana S. grew up in Spanish-speaking JW congregations. She said they have a different attitude about sexual matters.
"You didn't talk about stuff like that," Silvana said.
When she began attending English-speaking congregations, Silvana discovered gays are considered "okay as long as you are not 'practicing.'" She said English-speaking congregations are obsessed with homosexuality.
Silvana laughs a little about her "coming out." She was married and lived far from home. She said she realized she is a lesbian when she bought a pair of cowboy boots. "My husband said I looked like a dyke. I knew what I was doing was a lie. I had a moment of clarity with those boots!"
Silvana kissed her hubby goodbye and found herself some lesbian friends. "They became my family."
When Shanon A. was "maybe 17," his mother figured out he is gay. "She told me to go talk to a [JW] brother. She said it would be confidential."
Within days, "everyone knew. I was asked to leave people's homes and functions. Typical shunning." He was held up to ridicule in front of his congregation when an elder warned, "There is a homosexual wolf coming in to get our children."
Shanon ran away. As a teenager living on the streets, he said he was asked to testify in a court cases against his former religion regarding his opinion regarding JW children running away from their family and church situation.
Melissa R., whose father is a JW elder, said as she grew up, she attended three Kingdom Hall meetings a week. There she heard that homosexuality is "not just a sin, but a gross sin."
It was difficult to hear about lesbians "being the laughingstock of the congregation," Melissa said.
When she couldn't stand it any longer, "I just walked away." She has been free of the JWs for the shortest period of time of all the panel members. She can't get through her story without crying. Melissa misses her family greatly, but worries if she contacts them, they will be disfellowshipped.
"And my brother won't even talk to me," she added tearfully.
Everett I. also confessed his first gay experience to a JW "brother," who immediately told the elders.
"The emotional scars are still there," Everett says of the resultant furor. Everett loved his religion deeply. "I wanted to stay."
The psychological stress of following the church's dictates and to suppress his homosexuality eventually caused him to be hospitalized. When he finally was disfellowshipped, "My mom kicked me out. She said, 'we aren't supposed to talk to you.'"
Scott M, chastised as a child "not to act like that or people will think you are queer," knew he had no choice about who he was or how he acted. So rather than suffer the indignity of being found out and then disfellowshipped, Scott refused to be baptized into the sect and left at age 18.
He recalled how he had been mocked, shunned and even sexually abused by the people who were supposed to love and care for him. "How can this be God's organization?" he asked.
And more mail
We heard from others.
Austen M, in San Diego, said that six months into marriage he realized he is gay but didn't want to tell his wife. But it wasn't long before she and his congregation suspected. His wife and elders followed him.
"It was like a witch hunt," he said. "Like the CIA looking over my shoulder."
Austen wanted a separation from his wife and to leave the religion, but he didn't want to be disfellowshipped because of his relatives. Instead, he avoided meetings and his pioneer duties, in order to be declared "inactive."
But the elders "were not going to let that happen," he said. They "stalked" him until "they broke me down. I was almost suicidal. I lost 35 pounds."
The sect's persistence paid off. JW elders caught Austen in the act, so to speak, and he was disfellowshipped. Sure enough, when this happened, he was cut off from his family.
The thing Austen remembers most about growing up a JW is not having a normal childhood. He said children of JWs do not celebrate birthdays, Christmas or other holidays. Because of this, JW children often are teased and taunted in school.
We still are receiving stories from gay former Jehovah's Witnesses explaining the reason for their anger and pain and why they tried so hard not to be found out.
Shanon summed it up. "It's your family's duty to excommunicate you. Well, I could do without the religion. It was my family I wanted to keep."
Those who beg to disagree
But there are those who disagree with how the panel characterized their life as JWs.
Gary e-mailed his response.
"I am a very gay, very ex-Jehovah's Witness. I am a very active member of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of 'A Common Bond,'" he wrote.
He said the original article (Echo No. 242) contained glaring "bogus statements and misrepresentations."
Gary wrote, "I am not here to defend Jehovah's Witnesses. However, it is a great disservice to our support group (A Common Bond) when such clearly twisted and false information is represented in the media, especially by bitter former members (and most of us are not bitter)."
Gary said he is saddened to think a gay/lesbian JW who has seen the stories may not seek out help from A Common Bond.
On the other hand, in his last sentence Gary recognized how tough it is to be a gay JW, when he concluded: "Your article will unfortunately force many tormented individuals to stay silent and continue in their torment!"
Another e-mail response came from Don S., who said that in his experience, Jehovah's Witnesses taught that God gave us a freedom of choice.
"They understand that there are many viewpoints on religious belief," Don wrote. "Jehovah's Witnesses try to give a different and, in their view, 'true' viewpoint. It is up to the individual to decide."
Don acknowledged that he was worried that he would be discovered as gay, but asked, "Isn't that what someone does when they are doing something their belief denies?"
At the same time, because his father accepted his sexual orientation with love, Don said he never felt that he was "marked as a sinner."
Don left the religion "for my own reasons" several years ago, but wrote, "I still believe many of the things that the Witnesses teach. I have just chosen another path."
_________________________________
1. "Members" denotes Jehovah's Witnesses in good standing. There are far more people involved in, and contributing to, the religion who are not recognized nor counted as members.
*Each JW branch has its own Bethel: London Bethel, Toronto Bethel, etc. For the purpose of this article, unless otherwise noted, Bethel will refer to Brooklyn Bethel, the international seat of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.
See Part Two


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Keep the Faith or lose the Family: Part 1
Jehovah's Witnesses speak out
Echo Magazine/January 7, 1999
 By Bobbi Dugan
See Part Two

Topics
 Cult or Sect?
David and Goliath
Apostles of Denial
Awake! And open your wallets
Go Forth and Tell All Nations
Suffer the Children
Bethel boys will be boys
Come here, little girl 
Family Secrets
The Bible according to WTB&TS
Follow or perish
So different and yet so alike
Five more people--five similar stories
And more mail
Those who beg to disagree

Many of the former Jehovah's Witnesses interviewed for this article gave permission to use their last names. Some asked us not to. To protect all those who shared their stories, and to spare their families further difficulties, we have used first names only for most participants.
What began as a simple news article about a religion's attempt to shut down a gay Web site, turned into a months-long investigation that uncovered physical and emotional abuse, spies and enforcers, and scores of broken families.
It isn't an easy read. This shouldn't happen in the United States. But it does- and in every other nation that has been infiltrated by the secretive and manipulative religion known as Jehovah's Witnesses.
A panel of gay former Jehovah's Witnesses, invited by Echo to a round table discussion, testified they grew up knowing two things for certain: Some day they would be discovered. And when they were, they would lose their religion and probably all contact with loved ones. Fear and the anticipation of punishment is what their faith bestowed upon them from birth.
Like many religions, Jehovah's Witnesses doctrine does not permit sexual activity outside of marriage. But the members of the panel believe this religion seeks out sexual sinners-especially gays-and when it finds them, it sets out to discredit them and to cut off family ties.
Cult or Sect?
Experts disagree on whether Jehovah's Witnesses is a cult or merely a strange sect.
Rick Ross is an internationally known cult expert and intervention specialist. He states, "I do not regard the Witnesses as a cult-although many do. Instead, my view of the group is that they are a totalitarian and destructive group that employs coercive thought reform techniques."
Ross acknowledges he has not had specific experience with gay former Jehovah's Witnesses, but he understands well what they have suffered.
"I have been retained for interventions regarding Jehovah's Witnesses. The group employs isolation, coercive persuasion and unreasonable fear to manipulate potential recruits and retain its members."
Panel member Scott M. calls Jehovah's Witnesses a cult. He shakes with emotion when he talks about how narrowly he escaped its clutches. Scott keeps a large vegetable crate filled with books, magazine articles, and Internet downloads about Jehovah's Witnesses and cults. He offers the material as proof of the abuse he endured growing up a Jehovah's Witness.
Brainwashing is a word the young gay man uses when he talks about his childhood. He has a list called "Eight Marks of a Mind-Control Cult" from the book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, by Robert J. Lifton. Scott ticks off the areas in which he believes the Jehovah's Witnesses earn an "A."
Isolation-Members are separated from society, forbidden educational media that might provoke critical thinking. Information is kept on each recruit by the mother organization. All are watched.
Mystical manipulation - God will punish "bad" members with accidents, ill will, loss of material goods, etc. "Good" members will be rewarded.
Demand for purity-World is black or white, good or evil. Guilt and shame are used to control individuals. All things "evil" must be avoided.
Confession-Serious sins (as defined by the group) are to be confessed immediately. Members are encouraged to spy and report on one another.
Sacred "truth"-The cult holds the only truth. Its ideology is too "sacred" to call into question. Cult leaders must be treated with absolute reverence.
Thought-terminating cliches-These are expressions or words designed to end conversation or controversy.
People vs. doctrine-Human experience and knowledge are subordinated to doctrine. Members are valuable only if they conform to doctrine.
The right to live-The group decides who has the right to exist and who does not. Outsiders can be "sinned" against in the form of lying, deception, separation from families, etc., because "outsiders are not fit to exist."
"I think being gay actually saved me," Scott said. He knew his sexual orientation at an early age. He also knew the Jehovah's Witnesses would not tolerate it. So he refused to be baptized and walked away at 18.
But Scott believes he still is recovering from those first 18 years.
David and Goliath
Jim Moon joined the Jehovah's Witnesses at about the same age Scott was when he left. Like Scott, Moon knew his sexual orientation. He said the Jehovah's Witnesses elder who recruited him in 1975 also knew. The elder told Moon it didn't matter, because Armageddon was imminent, and after that it would be okay to be gay.
"They offered me immortality, " Moon said. "Who could refuse?"
When the end of the world did not happen on schedule-a problem that has plagued Jehovah's Witnesses throughout their history-Moon was left to deal with the incompatibility of his sexuality and his religion.
Eventually, he was pressured out of the sect. The resulting trauma led him to become webmaster of A Common Bond, an Internet gay Jehovah's Witnesses support group.
The San Francisco-based site Moon operates was blocked after his Internet server received a complaint from the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Inc., the Jehovah's Witnesses' controlling corporation.
When his site went down, Moon sent out a distress call on the Internet.
"On July 24, 1998, our group's Web site was blocked access by GeoCities, where this site was formerly located," Moon wrote. He acknowledged that he was not surprised by the action.
A Common Bond "had been the target for some time of hate mail from current cult members, and explicit threats that they would attempt to close the site down somehow," Moon said.
GeoCities told Moon the block was because of an alleged "copyright infringement." A Common Bond had posted an illustration from a Watchtower book, Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Light.
Moon wrote, "The illustration is supposed to be a depiction of the resurrection ... but it depicts same-sex couples embracing. The subliminal message is profound, to say the least."
GeoCities told Moon to work things out with Richard Moake of the Watchtower, who lodged the original complaint.
Moon wrote to Moake that although the Watchtower might perceive A Common Bond as "a threat to your religious organization," the site had a constitutional right to free speech. He maintained since the illustration was used "expressly for the purpose of education and information" its use was not in violation of copyright laws.
Based on years of experience with the cult, Moon didn't expect the Watchtower to budge. However, after flooding the Internet with the story, and after GeoCities received "thousands of complaints worldwide," the Web site was restored within four days, sans the offending graphic.
The unpleasant experience caused A Common Bond to obtain its own URL. When you log on to www.gayxjw.org, you see the infamous illustration, middle blanked out.
"Hey!!" text in the blank part reads, "What happened to the picture?? Click here to find out how the Watchtower tried to shut us down."
Moake was unavailable for comment. But a spokesperson for the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society did speak to Echo. The Society's director of public affairs James Pellechia declined to comment on the legalities of Moon's use of the photo, saying he is not a lawyer.
He added, however, "We are not in the business of shutting down Web sites."
Pellechia also said the Society would not "target" groups comprising former JWs.
"We would ask any Web site using copyrighted material to remove that material," Pellechia said.
Through Moon and A Common Bond, Echo located dozens of gay former JWs eager to tell their stories. The tales were frightening and sadly similar. But to understand the extent to which Jehovah's Witnesses are able to control and alter people's lives, it is necessary to understand the organization itself.
Apostles of Denial
In 1970, Edmond Charles Gruss, a religious history professor at the Los Angeles Baptist College and Theological Seminary, wrote a scholarly expose and history of the Jehovah's Witnesses titled, Apostles of Denial.
Gruss described the defining characteristic of the sect: If any facts in the long history of Christianity did not suit what the Witnesses chose to believe, they would merely deny the existence of those facts. He also wrote that the group went so far as to translate and publish its own version of the Bible, which conveniently changed key words to make scripture fit JW theology.
Charles Taze Russell is generally considered to have founded the religion now known as Jehovah's Witnesses in the late 19th century. But according to Gruss, "The Jehovah's Witnesses claim the first of their number was Abel, and that they are the modern-day representatives of the line of Bible witnesses mentioned in the Old and New Testaments."
Gruss calls the lineage claim preposterous.
In 1870, at age 18, the charismatic Russell started a Bible study class. It soon became wildly popular, and the students' adoration went to Russell's head. In 1879, he founded The Herald of the Morning, which later became The Watchtower. The newsletter showcased Russell's religious theories and scriptural interpretations.
As more people flocked to him, and as the sect's coffers filled, Russell went commercial. In 1884 he established the Zion's Watchtower Tract Society (now the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc.). It was then the sect entered into its present-day area of publishing its own versions of "The Truth."
Once Russell discovered the power of the printed word, his ambition could not be contained. He spent the rest of his ministry stumping from town to town, church to church, selling his slick tracts, books and magazines. Russell convinced his target market that it needed to purchase his publications, because the Bible could be properly understood only through his interpretations.
A showman as well as a preacher, Russell realized the best way to get people's attention was to hit them between the eyes-with The End of the World.
He dramatically predicted specific dates for the long-awaited occurrence. Alas, time and again the big day came and went with no End in sight.
This was but a minor problem for Russell. He lost followers whenever the Apocalypse failed to materialize, but like P.T. Barnum, Russell knew a sucker is born every minute. There always were new lambs to join the fold.
Awake! And open your wallets
In his book Saleskids, Duane Magnani, wrote, "From a simple bible class in the 1870s has sprung one of the world's fastest growing and most influential cults of the 20th century ... because many billions of books, magazines and other publications have been sold to the public in the name of the Watchtower Society."
The January 1986 Watchtower revealed that in 1985, at the height of its publishing prowess, "Jehovah's Witnesses placed nearly 39 million Bibles, books, and booklets in the field, as well as more than 300 million magazines."
The Watchtower, considered by the sect to be the official word of Jehovah, and Awake!, which many experts tag a superior example of propaganda, along with the Bible are the flagships of the JW publication fleet.
For years, Jehovah's Witnesses raked in the converts and the money, Magnani claims. It was easy to make a profit on the publications. The salespeople were herds of JW offspring, trained from early childhood to peddle the magazines door to door. The money was turned over to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which supposedly used it only to produce more books and magazines.
However, Randall Watters, author of Free Minds Journal, has done extensive investigation into the Watchtower's publishing business. He once was a printer for the organization. In Watters' opinion, publishing has been a moneymaker for Jehovah's Witnesses since the beginning.
"The most expensive cost in printing is usually the labor," Watters explains. "The Watchtower has solved that problem by having all their work done by volunteers-none are paid. Second, there is no middleman to be paid-the Watchtower does all the advertising, marketing and shipping. Third, the more copies of a book printed, the lower its cost."
The Watchtower also has its own printing presses, binderies, and other necessities of the trade.
Watters also said, "The Watchtower has created an instant market for its publications. To release just one new book at a yearly District Assembly brings automatic sales of at least five million books."
As a tax-exempt religion, the U.S. branch of Jehovah's Witnesses is very secretive about how it is financed. Watters writes, "They fail to disclose their primary source of income. Rather, they seek to convey the impression that their income comes strictly through free will contributions, with a few estates denoted as well. No mention is made of the major source of their income, which is the distribution of books and magazines."
Since 1990, the U.S. government has forbidden Jehovah's Witnesses to sell publications without paying taxes on the income, because the sect claims nonprofit status, Watters said.
However, the children and their parents still ring doorbells. Now, they ask for "donations." The Society gives its solicitors "instructions on how to suggest the old prices for Watchtower and Awake! subscriptions," Watters says.
Go Forth and Tell All Nations
In many countries, laws governing religious moneymaking are not as strict as in the U.S. Perhaps that is one reason for the phenomenal growth of the Jehovah's Witnesses in other nations.
In 1997, official Watchtower figures claimed nearly 5.6 million members (1) in 232 "lands." Nearly 1 million of those members live in the U.S.
More interesting than the numbers is the ratio of Witnesses to the population. In the U.S., for instance, the Watchtower lists one Witness for every 274 non-Witnesses. In Curacao, it is 1 to 97. In Guadeloupe, 1 to 52.
The religion is growing rapidly in many African nations, especially those where fundamentalist Christianity already has a toehold.
In Zimbabwe, where anti-gay sentiment is nearly out of control and religious fervor is high, the ratio is 1 to 475.
But in non-Christian countries, such as India, few inroads have been made. There the ratio is 1 to 56,919.
It is difficult to determine what the Watchtower means by "lands." Its statistics list membership numbers for Alaska and Hawaii separately from the U.S.
Perhaps Jehovah's Witnesses are not yet aware the 49th and 50th states have joined the Union.
Suffer the Children
As an intervention expert, Ross has seen results of JW parenting, and he does not paint a pretty picture.
"JW children generally are somewhat isolated, insulated and withdrawn through their family involvement with the organization," Ross said. "They also often are forced to sit through long meetings and conferences and also [are] taken door to door to promote the organization/literature.
"The children for some time have been discouraged from advancing to higher education, or being involved in sports and extracurricular activities. This can be seen as a form of 'restrictive abuse."'
One could infer by reading Watchtower Society publications that physical abuse of youngsters is encouraged.
For example, here are quotes from some of the publications:
"The lessons learned at mother's knee do not make as lasting an impression as those learned while stretched across daddy's."
"All children of Adam need correction, and at times firm discipline requires the rod, in the administration of pain…At times, a parent will need to speak to the child by the administration of pain."
Perhaps the most telling is a chapter from Disciplining Children for Life, a "parenting guide" for Jehovah's Witnesses. The section is meant to instruct children on why it is okay for mommy and daddy to beat them.
It describes how animal mothers discipline their young. For example: A mother tiger "took the youngster's whole head in her mouth, squeezed and shook it, while the startled baby whimpered."
A concealed fawn, if it dares move, will "get a spanking from sharp mother hooves."
A bear gave her cub "a good wallop with her paw and sent it rolling."
Abusive animal mother of the year awards must go to a mother koala, who turns her babies over her knee "and spanks them on their bottoms for minutes on end with the flat of her hand, during which time their screams are soul-rending. "
Sexual abuse is common in societies that are almost completely sexually repressed. Married JW adults are forbidden certain erotic activities, such as oral sex.
While sex education is discouraged, children grow up hearing horror stories about sexual sin-especially homosexuality.
Many of the former JW members shared stories of sexual abuse, by family and other church members. Scott M said his older sister sexually abused him.
When he reported the abuse to parents and elders, nothing was done. Talking about sexual matters is an uncomfortable thing in the Kingdom Halls where members gather to worship. Topics such as incest, adultery and homosexuality are swept under the rug.
But while official doctrine says homosexuality is a terrible sin, several former gay JWs reported common homosexuality among the ranks.
A panel comprising former Jehovah's Witnesses meeting with Echo observed that the sect at times seems obsessed with sexual sin. The gathering of men and women agreed that at times, the organization seems willing to forgive its members of anything, but sexual sin.
At the same time, the group's long history is spotted with plenty of stories about some of the sect's elite involved in inappropriate sexual behavior. These stories have included elders who controlled individual congregations and the Governing Body of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (WTB&TS), which controls the entire membership.
Bethel boys will be boys
At Brooklyn Bethel, the Governing Body holds sway over the 5.6 million members of Jehovah's Witnesses. It cannot handle such a task alone, however. Help comes from Pioneers, Jehovah's Witnesses who volunteer to distribute literature, teach Bible classes, build Kingdom Halls, or do what is necessary to keep the sect operational.
Select Pioneers are privileged to go to Bethel* to serve God--and the GB.
In his book Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses, M. James Penton described the strange life within what he calls the publishing houses or "factories" of Brooklyn Bethel.
"Besides two huge factory buildings, the complex includes several residence buildings for the many hundreds of workers who produce literature for Witnesses throughout the world and, additionally, for the administrative, clerical, and support staffs which are necessary for the governance of a highly centralized religious movement."
Originally, only young men were granted entrance to Bethel. In more recent years, after a number of scandals hinting at homosexual activity in the dorms, women have been allowed.
Because marriage between Bethelites was forbidden, admitting women did little to relieve the young men's sexual tension. The rumors of homosexuality continued.
Today, married couples are permitted to toil together for the organization. However, several correspondents told Echo that gay pairings still are common at Bethel. The conditions are ripe for what psychologists call "institutionalized homosexuality."
Until the mid-1970s, Bethel pioneers stayed and worked at least four years, Penton wrote. Now, one year is expected, although workers who maintain a good record can stay longer.
The workers are not paid a living wage. They receive a stipend for personal items. The factories would be considered sweatshops by today's standards, but Penton explains that workers "accept the regimen of life at Brooklyn .... They are both ideologically committed and highly disciplined individuals who have been taught to accept authority, usually without question."
However, Penton continues, "This does not mean that there are no serious problems brought about by the severity of lifestyle; there are."
Promiscuity became a problem once women were admitted to Bethel. But "heterosexual offenses have never been the serious problem that homosexual ones have been," Penton states. "In fact, [former Watch Tower leader Nathan] Knorr, who seems to have had a fixation on sexual sins, kept the matter of homosexuality and masturbation so constantly before workers at the Watch Tower headquarters that one is forced to wonder if he did not have homosexual tendencies himself."
If so, it might explain why he seemed to protect Percy Chapman, the alleged one-time lover of GB member Leo Greenlees. In 1959, under hint of homosexual scandal, Knorr went to Canada to replace Chapman, who was the Canadian Branch overseer.
Knorr demoted Chapman to janitor, but let him remain at Toronto Bethel--on condition he marry.
According to Larry D., a gay Toronto former JW, "Percy ... was totally anti-marriage and he made sure that none of the "Bethel boys" even contemplated the subject ...."
Larry described the Bethel boys of the 1950s. "They were all young and handsome, hand-picked by Percy Chapman; there was even an elite group known as 'Percy's boys' who would accompany him to expensive restaurants and bars ... at the time, Bethel was on Irwin Avenue in the center of the gay district of Toronto. There was even a Kingdom Hall above 'The Parkside,' one of Toronto's few gay bars in the fifties and sixties."
After Chapman's disgrace, Larry, who personally knew Greenlees, wrote, "Poor Leo Greenlees, Percy's close companion for three decades ... had to find himself a new roommate. ... He was very open about his homosexuality to those few good-looking young brothers .... He would bring along another Bethel boy, Lorne Bridle, who was very good looking and charming."
Regardless of his dubious relationship with Chapman, Greenlees became Treasurer of WTB&TS and one of the Governing Body. According to Larry, "He managed to escape the witch hunt at Brooklyn Bethel in the early seventies when dozens of Bethel boys were disfellowshipped after learning of their midnight trysts in the sauna in Brooklyn Bethel."
Other Bethel stalwarts also became grist for the rumor mill.
Come here, little girl
The heterosexual indiscretions of Jehovah's Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell are more shocking and easier to document than JW gay activity.
When Russell's wife Maria sued for divorce, court records show she testified that Russell had engaged in an "improper relationship" with Rose, an orphan who was about 10 years old when the Russells took her into their home.
Maria told the court that not only had she caught Russell at night in Rose's bedroom, but in the servant girl's room as well. In fact, "I found him locked in the servant girl's room," Maria said.
According to Maria and other witnesses, Russell fondled Rose, kissed her, held her on his knee, and called her "his little wife." When the girl responded, "I'm not your wife," Russell answered, "I will call you daughter, and a daughter has nearly all the privileges of a wife."
The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society denies any impropriety took place. In fact, it denies Russell, who lived apart from Maria for the next 50 years, ever was married.
"No one was ever produced who gave testimony against the moral character of Pastor Russell," WTB&TSSecretary/Treasurer W.E. Van Amburgh wrote. "To his dying day, he was able to say ... that he lived a life of absolute celibacy."
Family Secrets
To hear something other than the WTB&TS party line, Echo contacted active Jehovah's Witnesses through a bulletin board service on a JW Web site. We e-mailed 25 BBS visitors--male and female, from the U.S. and several foreign countries--and asked, "How do you feel about the presence of gay members within your congregation?"
Only two U.S. women answered. One said, "I would rather not comment on that one. I feel the best people to ask on that subject are Jehovah's Witness elders. You will find them in any one of our many congregations worldwide ... all I can say is that Jehovah loves everyone that follows what the Bible says."
The other woman was a gold mine of information. For several weeks, she carried on an e-mail dialogue with this reporter. The woman, who identified herself as Kathy A., a Jehovah's Witness for 37 years, opened up a Pandora's box of child molestation, homosexuality, and anger--hers.
In her initial letter, Kathy wrote, "Since I try very hard to live by what the Bible says, I must let [God's Word] speak on this subject." She listed every familiar Biblical injunction against homosexuality, concluding, "So as you can read for yourself, God condemns homosexuality, including lesbians."
We answered that for the purpose of this article, we wanted to know how she personally felt about gay people, and whether she knew any.
"I hate immorality ... whether it be homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, etc. And yes, I do know some homosexuals. One died from aids (sic) one has it, the other I don't know," Kathy wrote. After more religious instruction, she ended the letter with an intriguing tease: "I do have a personal experience on homosexuality you may not want to hear."
But we did. It took several more exchanges to coax it out of her.
Although she denies he is gay, it appears she may have a gay son. She wrote that her son was "raped and ruined" as a child by his cousin.
"When my son was born there was obviously a difference ... no one wanted to play with him because he was a hard child to get along with .... When he was almost eight, a family member, 16 at the time, said he would baby-sit him."
According to Kathy, the older boy babysat her son for the next several years. During that time, the cousin sexually molested the younger boy.
"My son was 12 when he told me what happened to him .... The police got involved but this 16- (now 20-) year-old denied it. But in his room there was found behind a picture on the wall some women's clothing."
A doctor told Kathy her son's sphincter muscle was "destroyed." Emotionally, she also was destroyed, as she was left to deal with the uncomfortable reality that her child had engaged in homosexual activity for four years with another boy, and never told her.
"My son went to the mental hospital for six weeks as his behavior was out of control," Kathy continued her story. "There we were told that when this kind of sexual behavior happens to a young child, this is what they come to expect as normal and that when he got out of the hospital he would need to be closely monitored for years and he shouldn't be around young children unattended.
"This was a nightmare for us. When my son turned 16, we had to have him committed ... my son was confused for a long time about his sexual identity .... My son (now 22) is not normal today. He is scarred for life, and so is the other young man (the son's cousin). My son is not a homosexual, but neither does he have any female relationship ... my son is still in therapy."
Kathy said she believes homosexuality is caused by child molestation. She said the victims become sinners who molest other children and destroy families. Her experience is all the proof she needs.
"I don't hate homosexuals. If they want to experiment, then let them experiment on people their own age, not on young children."
The Bible according to WTB&TS
Professional counselors have trouble helping JWs deal with sexual problems, because to them, all sexual behavior is determined by biblical interpretation. There is no room for understanding, forgiveness, medical science or alternative viewpoints.
JWs hold the Bible before them like a shield. The Bible they use is the WTB&TS' own translation, which it publishes as the New World Translation.
According to Edmond Gruss, who wrote Apostles of Denial, Watchtower representatives claimed that when New World Translation was released in the 1950s, it had been translated and approved by competent scholars.
In the foreword, the translators wrote, "Religious traditions, hoary with age, have been taken for granted and gone unchallenged and uninvestigated. These have been interwoven into the translations to color the thought."
In his book, Gruss countered, "With the arrogant statement, the Watchtower committee waves aside hundreds of the greatest linguists of all time and substitutes the Committee of Seven ... a committee composed of unknowns who hold little in the way of degrees or scholarly recognition."
In his definitive study, In Search of Christian Freedom, Raymond Franz, a former member of the Governing Body, points out the convenience of creative Bible translation.
"Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his Master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so. Truly I say to you, he will appoint him over all his belongings."--Matt: 24:45-47, New World Translation.
"In their calls for loyalty and submission, no other portion of Scripture is so frequently appealed to by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses ... it is employed primarily to support the concept of a centralized administrative authority," Franz writes.
"There is not the slightest question that in the minds of Jehovah's Witnesses ... the "food at the due time" provided by the "slave" is the information supplied by the Brooklyn-centered Watch Tower Organization," Franz says.
Follow or perish
The Jehovah's Witnesses' hold on members is so tight, most find it difficult to leave the sect. Some escape intact. Others, unable to cope with the dichotomy of JW beliefs and the real world, opt for suicide.
In April 1997, Air Force Capt. Craig Button, on an Arizona training flight, broke formation from his unit, flew to Colorado, and crashed his plane into the side of a mountain.
The story made national headlines. People speculated about reasons for what happened. One newspaper report suggested Button committed suicide over a gay love affair with another officer.
In a Dec. 25 New York Times article, James Brooke wrote, "The pilot's parents ... angrily reject the conclusion that he committed suicide." Brooke revealed that Button "raised as the only child of elderly parents, broke as a teenager with the faith of his parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses."
"My mother is a Jehovah's Witness, raised me to think that joining the military is wrong," Button once wrote.
The Air Force claims Button committed suicide over unrequited love for a woman. "It was a dramatic example of a man who seems to have everything going for him in his life, yet cannot have the woman he loves passionately," the official report concludes.
At the time of the original investigation, however, the woman in question denied she and Button were ever more than friends.
Even more damning is the story of Kelly Blake, a Phoenix woman who poured gasoline over herself and her three children, then set the family ablaze in March 1998.
TV reporters said the woman had become very religious and that she was obsessed with the "sinfulness" of herself and the children she had out of wedlock.
The woman's daughter died at the scene of the fire. The rest of the family was rushed to the hospital. The mother and one son were in critical condition.
A neighborhood boy told Arizona Republic reporters that Blake refused to allow her children attend school for "religious reasons." He said the family was Jehovah's Witnesses, the Republic reported.
Jim Moon, webmaster of Internet support group site A Common Bond, flew in from San Francisco to share his story. Also at that initial meeting was Mark Miller.
Later, five more Phoenix-area residents participated in a round-table discussion of their experiences. We interviewed other gay former JWs from all parts of the country, via telephone and e-mail.
Those contributing to this final segment are male and female, in their early 20s to late 50s. They are white, Hispanic, and African-American. Some were born into the Jehovah's Witnesses; some joined later in life.
All share a common experience. They were rejected by their religion, and often by their families, because they are gay.
So different and yet so alike
Moon left his birth religion "because of its condemnation of gays." While a teenager, he met some Jehovah's Witnesses who persuaded him to sit in on weekly Bible studies. "The elder was a master salesman, and he knew all the right things to say and the right scriptures to read," Moon said.
"Armageddon was right around the corner." It was supposed to occur in September 1975, the elder said. That religious man counseled Moon "that in order to guarantee my immortality, all I had to do was to 'stop being gay' for a few months, and after I survived Armageddon, I would be 'perfect.' So my sexuality wouldn't matter any more. I was sold!"
When Armageddon didn't happen, Moon struggled for the next few years to be a good JW and suppress his same-sex desires. Inevitably, Moon met a man and began spending time with his new "best friend."
"In order for the JWs not to accuse him of being a 'bad association,' I started a Bible study with him. ... One night, both of us had too much beer and we found ourselves in bed," Moon said. "I woke up the next morning in absolute terror."
As the religion dictates, Moon confessed his sin to the elders. Because he was "repentant," he was given a "Private Reproof." It turned out not to be so private.
"Word spread through the congregation like wildfire, and I was treated like a leper," Moon said.
Moon tried for several more years to get things right, but finally he was disfellowshipped. "I was told Jehovah no longer loved me," Moon said.
Miller was raised a Jehovah's Witness. When he became aware of his sexuality, he tried to keep it a secret to protect his family. He knew practicing gays were disfellowshipped. That means family members can not associate with the banned member.
But congregations deliberately are kept small, Miller explained, so that members can watch one another. Once sexual indiscretion is suspected, the suspect often is followed or spied upon, he alleged.
Miller moved to another town to escape watchful eyes. He claimed the church's elders "stalked" him.
"I had to say, if you don't stay away from me, I will slap a restraining order against you," Miller said. That legal maneuver worked for about two years. But eventually, everyone from his former life knew about Miller's homosexuality. The elders had to do something.
The worst part of being disfellowshipped was, "I bought into that I had really done something wrong ... that God had turned his back on me," Miller said.
He admitted that at the time he didn't know what to expect from his family and friends. He said JWs treat disfellowshipped members with anything from "you don't even look at them" to "well, it's family, you be courteous."
Miller said his mother wasn't exactly courteous. He got "scathing" letters from her. When she learned he had his ear pierced, she "went through the whole thing about what homosexuals did and I was filthy."
Miller said his mother believed the earring was to advertise that he wanted to have anal sex with men at any given time. Miller reacted to her suggestion with, "Really? Well, it hasn't worked yet!"
Miller said the JWs "are palming themselves off as being loving, gracious people ... and look at the hate they teach."
He and his mother have reunited and made their peace--but not until after years of suffering for each.
Five more people--five similar stories
The five panel members shared the impact revealing their sexual orientation had on them and their families.
Silvana S. grew up in Spanish-speaking JW congregations. She said they have a different attitude about sexual matters.
"You didn't talk about stuff like that," Silvana said.
When she began attending English-speaking congregations, Silvana discovered gays are considered "okay as long as you are not 'practicing.'" She said English-speaking congregations are obsessed with homosexuality.
Silvana laughs a little about her "coming out." She was married and lived far from home. She said she realized she is a lesbian when she bought a pair of cowboy boots. "My husband said I looked like a dyke. I knew what I was doing was a lie. I had a moment of clarity with those boots!"
Silvana kissed her hubby goodbye and found herself some lesbian friends. "They became my family."
When Shanon A. was "maybe 17," his mother figured out he is gay. "She told me to go talk to a [JW] brother. She said it would be confidential."
Within days, "everyone knew. I was asked to leave people's homes and functions. Typical shunning." He was held up to ridicule in front of his congregation when an elder warned, "There is a homosexual wolf coming in to get our children."
Shanon ran away. As a teenager living on the streets, he said he was asked to testify in a court cases against his former religion regarding his opinion regarding JW children running away from their family and church situation.
Melissa R., whose father is a JW elder, said as she grew up, she attended three Kingdom Hall meetings a week. There she heard that homosexuality is "not just a sin, but a gross sin."
It was difficult to hear about lesbians "being the laughingstock of the congregation," Melissa said.
When she couldn't stand it any longer, "I just walked away." She has been free of the JWs for the shortest period of time of all the panel members. She can't get through her story without crying. Melissa misses her family greatly, but worries if she contacts them, they will be disfellowshipped.
"And my brother won't even talk to me," she added tearfully.
Everett I. also confessed his first gay experience to a JW "brother," who immediately told the elders.
"The emotional scars are still there," Everett says of the resultant furor. Everett loved his religion deeply. "I wanted to stay."
The psychological stress of following the church's dictates and to suppress his homosexuality eventually caused him to be hospitalized. When he finally was disfellowshipped, "My mom kicked me out. She said, 'we aren't supposed to talk to you.'"
Scott M, chastised as a child "not to act like that or people will think you are queer," knew he had no choice about who he was or how he acted. So rather than suffer the indignity of being found out and then disfellowshipped, Scott refused to be baptized into the sect and left at age 18.
He recalled how he had been mocked, shunned and even sexually abused by the people who were supposed to love and care for him. "How can this be God's organization?" he asked.
And more mail
We heard from others.
Austen M, in San Diego, said that six months into marriage he realized he is gay but didn't want to tell his wife. But it wasn't long before she and his congregation suspected. His wife and elders followed him.
"It was like a witch hunt," he said. "Like the CIA looking over my shoulder."
Austen wanted a separation from his wife and to leave the religion, but he didn't want to be disfellowshipped because of his relatives. Instead, he avoided meetings and his pioneer duties, in order to be declared "inactive."
But the elders "were not going to let that happen," he said. They "stalked" him until "they broke me down. I was almost suicidal. I lost 35 pounds."
The sect's persistence paid off. JW elders caught Austen in the act, so to speak, and he was disfellowshipped. Sure enough, when this happened, he was cut off from his family.
The thing Austen remembers most about growing up a JW is not having a normal childhood. He said children of JWs do not celebrate birthdays, Christmas or other holidays. Because of this, JW children often are teased and taunted in school.
We still are receiving stories from gay former Jehovah's Witnesses explaining the reason for their anger and pain and why they tried so hard not to be found out.
Shanon summed it up. "It's your family's duty to excommunicate you. Well, I could do without the religion. It was my family I wanted to keep."
Those who beg to disagree
But there are those who disagree with how the panel characterized their life as JWs.
Gary e-mailed his response.
"I am a very gay, very ex-Jehovah's Witness. I am a very active member of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of 'A Common Bond,'" he wrote.
He said the original article (Echo No. 242) contained glaring "bogus statements and misrepresentations."
Gary wrote, "I am not here to defend Jehovah's Witnesses. However, it is a great disservice to our support group (A Common Bond) when such clearly twisted and false information is represented in the media, especially by bitter former members (and most of us are not bitter)."
Gary said he is saddened to think a gay/lesbian JW who has seen the stories may not seek out help from A Common Bond.
On the other hand, in his last sentence Gary recognized how tough it is to be a gay JW, when he concluded: "Your article will unfortunately force many tormented individuals to stay silent and continue in their torment!"
Another e-mail response came from Don S., who said that in his experience, Jehovah's Witnesses taught that God gave us a freedom of choice.
"They understand that there are many viewpoints on religious belief," Don wrote. "Jehovah's Witnesses try to give a different and, in their view, 'true' viewpoint. It is up to the individual to decide."
Don acknowledged that he was worried that he would be discovered as gay, but asked, "Isn't that what someone does when they are doing something their belief denies?"
At the same time, because his father accepted his sexual orientation with love, Don said he never felt that he was "marked as a sinner."
Don left the religion "for my own reasons" several years ago, but wrote, "I still believe many of the things that the Witnesses teach. I have just chosen another path."
_________________________________
1. "Members" denotes Jehovah's Witnesses in good standing. There are far more people involved in, and contributing to, the religion who are not recognized nor counted as members.
*Each JW branch has its own Bethel: London Bethel, Toronto Bethel, etc. For the purpose of this article, unless otherwise noted, Bethel will refer to Brooklyn Bethel, the international seat of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.
See Part Two


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Jehovah's Witnesses speak out: Part 2
Jehovah's Witnesses speak out
Echo Magazine/January 22, 1999
 By Bobbi Dugan

See Part One
A panel comprising former Jehovah's Witnesses meeting with Echo observed that the sect at times seems obsessed with sexual sin. The gathering of men and women agreed that at times, the organization seems willing to forgive its members of anything, but sexual sin.
At the same time, the group's long history is spotted with plenty of stories about some of the sect's elite involved in inappropriate sexual behavior. These stories have included elders who controlled individual congregations and the Governing Body of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (WTB&TS), which controls the entire membership.
Bethel boys will be boys
At Brooklyn Bethel, the Governing Body holds sway over the 5.6 million members of Jehovah's Witnesses. It cannot handle such a task alone, however. Help comes from Pioneers, Jehovah's Witnesses who volunteer to distribute literature, teach Bible classes, build Kingdom Halls, or do what is necessary to keep the sect operational.
Select Pioneers are privileged to go to Bethel* to serve God--and the GB.
In his book Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses, M. James Penton described the strange life within what he calls the publishing houses or "factories" of Brooklyn Bethel.
"Besides two huge factory buildings, the complex includes several residence buildings for the many hundreds of workers who produce literature for Witnesses throughout the world and, additionally, for the administrative, clerical, and support staffs which are necessary for the governance of a highly centralized religious movement."
Originally, only young men were granted entrance to Bethel. In more recent years, after a number of scandals hinting at homosexual activity in the dorms, women have been allowed.
Because marriage between Bethelites was forbidden, admitting women did little to relieve the young men's sexual tension. The rumors of homosexuality continued.
Today, married couples are permitted to toil together for the organization. However, several correspondents told Echo that gay pairings still are common at Bethel. The conditions are ripe for what psychologists call "institutionalized homosexuality."
Until the mid-1970s, Bethel pioneers stayed and worked at least four years, Penton wrote. Now, one year is expected, although workers who maintain a good record can stay longer.
The workers are not paid a living wage. They receive a stipend for personal items. The factories would be considered sweatshops by today's standards, but Penton explains that workers "accept the regimen of life at Brooklyn .... They are both ideologically committed and highly disciplined individuals who have been taught to accept authority, usually without question."
However, Penton continues, "This does not mean that there are no serious problems brought about by the severity of lifestyle; there are."
Promiscuity became a problem once women were admitted to Bethel. But "heterosexual offenses have never been the serious problem that homosexual ones have been," Penton states. "In fact, [former Watch Tower leader Nathan] Knorr, who seems to have had a fixation on sexual sins, kept the matter of homosexuality and masturbation so constantly before workers at the Watch Tower headquarters that one is forced to wonder if he did not have homosexual tendencies himself."
If so, it might explain why he seemed to protect Percy Chapman, the alleged one-time lover of GB member Leo Greenlees. In 1959, under hint of homosexual scandal, Knorr went to Canada to replace Chapman, who was the Canadian Branch overseer.
Knorr demoted Chapman to janitor, but let him remain at Toronto Bethel--on condition he marry.
According to Larry D., a gay Toronto former JW, "Percy ... was totally anti-marriage and he made sure that none of the "Bethel boys" even contemplated the subject ...."
Larry described the Bethel boys of the 1950s. "They were all young and handsome, hand-picked by Percy Chapman; there was even an elite group known as 'Percy's boys' who would accompany him to expensive restaurants and bars ... at the time, Bethel was on Irwin Avenue in the center of the gay district of Toronto. There was even a Kingdom Hall above 'The Parkside,' one of Toronto's few gay bars in the fifties and sixties."
After Chapman's disgrace, Larry, who personally knew Greenlees, wrote, "Poor Leo Greenlees, Percy's close companion for three decades ... had to find himself a new roommate. ... He was very open about his homosexuality to those few good-looking young brothers .... He would bring along another Bethel boy, Lorne Bridle, who was very good looking and charming."
Regardless of his dubious relationship with Chapman, Greenlees became Treasurer of WTB&TS and one of the Governing Body. According to Larry, "He managed to escape the witch hunt at Brooklyn Bethel in the early seventies when dozens of Bethel boys were disfellowshipped after learning of their midnight trysts in the sauna in Brooklyn Bethel."
Other Bethel stalwarts also became grist for the rumor mill.
Come here, little girl
The heterosexual indiscretions of Jehovah's Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell are more shocking and easier to document than JW gay activity.
When Russell's wife Maria sued for divorce, court records show she testified that Russell had engaged in an "improper relationship" with Rose, an orphan who was about 10 years old when the Russells took her into their home.
Maria told the court that not only had she caught Russell at night in Rose's bedroom, but in the servant girl's room as well. In fact, "I found him locked in the servant girl's room," Maria said.
According to Maria and other witnesses, Russell fondled Rose, kissed her, held her on his knee, and called her "his little wife." When the girl responded, "I'm not your wife," Russell answered, "I will call you daughter, and a daughter has nearly all the privileges of a wife."
The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society denies any impropriety took place. In fact, it denies Russell, who lived apart from Maria for the next 50 years, ever was married.
"No one was ever produced who gave testimony against the moral character of Pastor Russell," WTB&TSSecretary/Treasurer W.E. Van Amburgh wrote. "To his dying day, he was able to say ... that he lived a life of absolute celibacy."
Family Secrets
To hear something other than the WTB&TS party line, Echo contacted active Jehovah's Witnesses through a bulletin board service on a JW Web site. We e-mailed 25 BBS visitors--male and female, from the U.S. and several foreign countries--and asked, "How do you feel about the presence of gay members within your congregation?"
Only two U.S. women answered. One said, "I would rather not comment on that one. I feel the best people to ask on that subject are Jehovah's Witness elders. You will find them in any one of our many congregations worldwide ... all I can say is that Jehovah loves everyone that follows what the Bible says."
The other woman was a gold mine of information. For several weeks, she carried on an e-mail dialogue with this reporter. The woman, who identified herself as Kathy A., a Jehovah's Witness for 37 years, opened up a Pandora's box of child molestation, homosexuality, and anger--hers.
In her initial letter, Kathy wrote, "Since I try very hard to live by what the Bible says, I must let [God's Word] speak on this subject." She listed every familiar Biblical injunction against homosexuality, concluding, "So as you can read for yourself, God condemns homosexuality, including lesbians."
We answered that for the purpose of this article, we wanted to know how she personally felt about gay people, and whether she knew any.
"I hate immorality ... whether it be homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, etc. And yes, I do know some homosexuals. One died from aids (sic) one has it, the other I don't know," Kathy wrote. After more religious instruction, she ended the letter with an intriguing tease: "I do have a personal experience on homosexuality you may not want to hear."
But we did. It took several more exchanges to coax it out of her.
Although she denies he is gay, it appears she may have a gay son. She wrote that her son was "raped and ruined" as a child by his cousin.
"When my son was born there was obviously a difference ... no one wanted to play with him because he was a hard child to get along with .... When he was almost eight, a family member, 16 at the time, said he would baby-sit him."
According to Kathy, the older boy babysat her son for the next several years. During that time, the cousin sexually molested the younger boy.
"My son was 12 when he told me what happened to him .... The police got involved but this 16- (now 20-) year-old denied it. But in his room there was found behind a picture on the wall some women's clothing."
A doctor told Kathy her son's sphincter muscle was "destroyed." Emotionally, she also was destroyed, as she was left to deal with the uncomfortable reality that her child had engaged in homosexual activity for four years with another boy, and never told her.
"My son went to the mental hospital for six weeks as his behavior was out of control," Kathy continued her story. "There we were told that when this kind of sexual behavior happens to a young child, this is what they come to expect as normal and that when he got out of the hospital he would need to be closely monitored for years and he shouldn't be around young children unattended.
"This was a nightmare for us. When my son turned 16, we had to have him committed ... my son was confused for a long time about his sexual identity .... My son (now 22) is not normal today. He is scarred for life, and so is the other young man (the son's cousin). My son is not a homosexual, but neither does he have any female relationship ... my son is still in therapy."
Kathy said she believes homosexuality is caused by child molestation. She said the victims become sinners who molest other children and destroy families. Her experience is all the proof she needs.
"I don't hate homosexuals. If they want to experiment, then let them experiment on people their own age, not on young children."
The Bible according to WTB&TS
Professional counselors have trouble helping JWs deal with sexual problems, because to them, all sexual behavior is determined by biblical interpretation. There is no room for understanding, forgiveness, medical science or alternative viewpoints.
JWs hold the Bible before them like a shield. The Bible they use is the WTB&TS' own translation, which it publishes as the New World Translation.
According to Edmond Gruss, who wrote Apostles of Denial, Watchtower representatives claimed that when New World Translation was released in the 1950s, it had been translated and approved by competent scholars.
In the foreword, the translators wrote, "Religious traditions, hoary with age, have been taken for granted and gone unchallenged and uninvestigated. These have been interwoven into the translations to color the thought."
In his book, Gruss countered, "With the arrogant statement, the Watchtower committee waves aside hundreds of the greatest linguists of all time and substitutes the Committee of Seven ... a committee composed of unknowns who hold little in the way of degrees or scholarly recognition."
In his definitive study, In Search of Christian Freedom, Raymond Franz, a former member of the Governing Body, points out the convenience of creative Bible translation.
"Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his Master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so. Truly I say to you, he will appoint him over all his belongings."--Matt: 24:45-47, New World Translation.
"In their calls for loyalty and submission, no other portion of Scripture is so frequently appealed to by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses ... it is employed primarily to support the concept of a centralized administrative authority," Franz writes.
"There is not the slightest question that in the minds of Jehovah's Witnesses ... the "food at the due time" provided by the "slave" is the information supplied by the Brooklyn-centered Watch Tower Organization," Franz says.
Follow or perish
The Jehovah's Witnesses' hold on members is so tight, most find it difficult to leave the sect. Some escape intact. Others, unable to cope with the dichotomy of JW beliefs and the real world, opt for suicide.
In April 1997, Air Force Capt. Craig Button, on an Arizona training flight, broke formation from his unit, flew to Colorado, and crashed his plane into the side of a mountain.
The story made national headlines. People speculated about reasons for what happened. One newspaper report suggested Button committed suicide over a gay love affair with another officer.
In a Dec. 25 New York Times article, James Brooke wrote, "The pilot's parents ... angrily reject the conclusion that he committed suicide." Brooke revealed that Button "raised as the only child of elderly parents, broke as a teenager with the faith of his parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses."
"My mother is a Jehovah's Witness, raised me to think that joining the military is wrong," Button once wrote.
The Air Force claims Button committed suicide over unrequited love for a woman. "It was a dramatic example of a man who seems to have everything going for him in his life, yet cannot have the woman he loves passionately," the official report concludes.
At the time of the original investigation, however, the woman in question denied she and Button were ever more than friends.
Even more damning is the story of Kelly Blake, a Phoenix woman who poured gasoline over herself and her three children, then set the family ablaze in March 1998.
TV reporters said the woman had become very religious and that she was obsessed with the "sinfulness" of herself and the children she had out of wedlock.
The woman's daughter died at the scene of the fire. The rest of the family was rushed to the hospital. The mother and one son were in critical condition.
A neighborhood boy told Arizona Republic reporters that Blake refused to allow her children attend school for "religious reasons." He said the family was Jehovah's Witnesses, the Republic reported.
National headlines of abuse, sexual dysfunction, suicide and murder are not surprising to the former JWs who talked to Echo. In the next issue, they will tell their individual stories.
*Each JW branch has its own Bethel: London Bethel, Toronto Bethel, etc. For the purpose of this article, unless otherwise noted, Bethel will refer to Brooklyn Bethel, the international seat of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.
See Part One


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Nemesis twins excommunicated by Jehovah's Witnesses
The Advocate/December 22, 2006

Jacob and Joshua Miller of the band Nemesis Rising have been officially shunned by their church, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they released a statement Thursday in response.
According to the statement, a Jehovah's Witnesses meeting took place in the Millers' hometown of Kalispell, Mont., where it was announced that they had been "disfellowshipped," or excommunicated, because of their homosexuality and their show on Logo, Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising.
To be disfellowshipped is to limit one or cut one off from all contact with any Jehovah's Witnesses, including family members. While the twins are no longer practicing the religion, they said that they are willing to stay in contact with anyone who is willing to speak with them
"We find it ironic that a religion whose members are asked to knock on the doors of strangers with a message of acceptance into paradise on Earth will not accept two of its own children for who they really are," they wrote in the statement. "Our wish for them is one of tolerance and understanding, and we send to all of them a message of peace and love."

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Nemesis twins excommunicated by Jehovah's Witnesses
The Advocate/December 22, 2006

Jacob and Joshua Miller of the band Nemesis Rising have been officially shunned by their church, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they released a statement Thursday in response.
According to the statement, a Jehovah's Witnesses meeting took place in the Millers' hometown of Kalispell, Mont., where it was announced that they had been "disfellowshipped," or excommunicated, because of their homosexuality and their show on Logo, Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising.
To be disfellowshipped is to limit one or cut one off from all contact with any Jehovah's Witnesses, including family members. While the twins are no longer practicing the religion, they said that they are willing to stay in contact with anyone who is willing to speak with them
"We find it ironic that a religion whose members are asked to knock on the doors of strangers with a message of acceptance into paradise on Earth will not accept two of its own children for who they really are," they wrote in the statement. "Our wish for them is one of tolerance and understanding, and we send to all of them a message of peace and love."

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Jacob and Joshua Miller of Nemesis Claim to Have Been Officially "Disfellowshipped" by the Jehovah's Witnesses
Los Angeles Business Wire/December 21, 2006

The following is a joint statement by Jacob and Joshua Miller of the pop-rock band Nemesis and reality stars of "Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising":
The two of us were just informed that last night a Jehovah's Witness meeting took place in our hometown of Kalispell, Montana. At this meeting it was announced to all members of the Jehovah's Witness organization that we have been, as Jehovah's Witnesses would say, "disfellowshipped" (excommunicated) because of our homosexuality and our participation in our reality show, "Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising," on Logo.
According to Jehovah's Witness doctrine, being "disfellowshipped" means that we have been found guilty of unrepentant gross misconduct. Our immediate family is to have limited or no contact with us. And all other practicing Jehovah's Witnesses around the world are not to speak with us ever again.
Although we are no longer Jehovah's Witnesses, we have nothing but love for those individuals who have been asked to shun us. We will continue to be in contact with our family and those who truly love us unconditionally as long as they're willing.
We find it ironic that a religion whose members are asked to knock on the doors of strangers with a message of acceptance into paradise on Earth will not accept two of its own children for who they really are. Our wish for them is one of tolerance and understanding and we send to all of them a message of peace and love.
- Jacob & Joshua

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Jacob and Joshua Miller of Nemesis Claim to Have Been Officially "Disfellowshipped" by the Jehovah's Witnesses
Los Angeles Business Wire/December 21, 2006

The following is a joint statement by Jacob and Joshua Miller of the pop-rock band Nemesis and reality stars of "Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising":
The two of us were just informed that last night a Jehovah's Witness meeting took place in our hometown of Kalispell, Montana. At this meeting it was announced to all members of the Jehovah's Witness organization that we have been, as Jehovah's Witnesses would say, "disfellowshipped" (excommunicated) because of our homosexuality and our participation in our reality show, "Jacob & Joshua: Nemesis Rising," on Logo.
According to Jehovah's Witness doctrine, being "disfellowshipped" means that we have been found guilty of unrepentant gross misconduct. Our immediate family is to have limited or no contact with us. And all other practicing Jehovah's Witnesses around the world are not to speak with us ever again.
Although we are no longer Jehovah's Witnesses, we have nothing but love for those individuals who have been asked to shun us. We will continue to be in contact with our family and those who truly love us unconditionally as long as they're willing.
We find it ironic that a religion whose members are asked to knock on the doors of strangers with a message of acceptance into paradise on Earth will not accept two of its own children for who they really are. Our wish for them is one of tolerance and understanding and we send to all of them a message of peace and love.
- Jacob & Joshua

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'My Parents Had This Big Argument Over Whose Fault It Was, Why I Chose to Be This Way.'
The New York Times/September 16, 2007
By Zy-Tasia Gaines

I was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and my mom raised me to be open to everything: to all types of sexualities. But I guess she didn't expect it would come out in me. She's like, "Be nice to everybody, but as long as you're not a lesbian, that's cool." So when she found out I was a lesbian, it was really difficult, and she didn't accept it at first. She still sort of doesn't, but she deals with it.
Mostly, people in Manhattan are really open to it. I go to a center on 13th Street called the LGBT Center where they have lots of programs and activities. I'm in a film class, and we're making films about different experiences we have being lesbian.
Mine is about how my girlfriend's parents are homophobic — really, really homophobic. We've been together about a year. As the relationship got stronger and stronger, the more protective her parents got, the more they tried to pull her away. In July, they sent her to live with her uncle in Chicago. She tries to call me about twice a week to check up on things, but I haven't seen her since. I live in Far Rockaway, Queens, and my school is in Jamaica. When I came out in my school, in 10th grade, everybody was pushing me away.
When I came out, I was basically established in the school. I knew everybody. So I had to explain to them, I'm still the same person I was before. I just choose to be with another woman instead of a man.
There was a girl at my high school, and she would ask me really silly questions, like, "Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston"? I'd say, "Angelina Jolie," and she'd say, "See, only a gay person would say that." And she goes, "Red ice cream or grape ice cream?" I'm like, "Red ice cream." She says, "See, you're a lesbian."
My mom's the type of person, she calls everyone in the family and says, "Guess what my daughter just told me!" So then my grandmother called me, and my aunt, too.
Then my father called. I don't live with my father because my parents separated when I was a baby, but we always keep in contact. He goes: "I have gay sisters. Do you think this is genetic?" And my parents had this big argument over whose fault it was, why I chose to be this way.
My father, he still thinks it's a phase. He's like: "I think you're gonna have a boyfriend later on. I'm not worried about it."
But my grandmother's cool with it. She says, "As long as you're not doing pornos and doing anything crazy, getting tattoos on your forehead, I don't care who you go out with."
My mom is just like, "Well, I wanted grandkids, and I wanted you to marry a boy," and every now and then, she throws in: "I met this really nice guy on the train. Are you sure you don't want to meet him?" And I'm like: "No, Mom. I have a girlfriend."
My family was brought up as Jehovah's Witnesses, and Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in heaven or hell. They believe in everlasting life, that everybody's going to die and then God's going to bring back all the people who did right and they'll live on this paradise earth.
And I'm not baptized, so my family's like: "See, this is what happens when you don't get baptized. This is what happens when you sit around and play video games instead of coming to church." And I say, "This has nothing to do with anything."
But the way my family was brought up, basically every little sin you commit is another strike against you being able to come back for everlasting life. They're like: "Do you know you just added a big strike to yourself? Now you have to be extra good so he'll think about bringing you back."
A lot of my friends stopped talking to me, and a lot of them still don't talk to me. My girlfriend in Chicago, I'm her first girlfriend. So when we came out in school, as a couple, everybody said: "See what you did to her? Now you're going to bring two people down to hell." I'm like, "O.K." And her parents really made me feel bad. They were like: "You're ruining our family. She was fine before she met you."
And I said to myself, well, maybe I shouldn't be with girls. Maybe I'm just going to ruin everyone's life. Maybe I should just be with a boy and make everyone happy.

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'My Parents Had This Big Argument Over Whose Fault It Was, Why I Chose to Be This Way.'
The New York Times/September 16, 2007
By Zy-Tasia Gaines

I was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and my mom raised me to be open to everything: to all types of sexualities. But I guess she didn't expect it would come out in me. She's like, "Be nice to everybody, but as long as you're not a lesbian, that's cool." So when she found out I was a lesbian, it was really difficult, and she didn't accept it at first. She still sort of doesn't, but she deals with it.
Mostly, people in Manhattan are really open to it. I go to a center on 13th Street called the LGBT Center where they have lots of programs and activities. I'm in a film class, and we're making films about different experiences we have being lesbian.
Mine is about how my girlfriend's parents are homophobic — really, really homophobic. We've been together about a year. As the relationship got stronger and stronger, the more protective her parents got, the more they tried to pull her away. In July, they sent her to live with her uncle in Chicago. She tries to call me about twice a week to check up on things, but I haven't seen her since. I live in Far Rockaway, Queens, and my school is in Jamaica. When I came out in my school, in 10th grade, everybody was pushing me away.
When I came out, I was basically established in the school. I knew everybody. So I had to explain to them, I'm still the same person I was before. I just choose to be with another woman instead of a man.
There was a girl at my high school, and she would ask me really silly questions, like, "Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston"? I'd say, "Angelina Jolie," and she'd say, "See, only a gay person would say that." And she goes, "Red ice cream or grape ice cream?" I'm like, "Red ice cream." She says, "See, you're a lesbian."
My mom's the type of person, she calls everyone in the family and says, "Guess what my daughter just told me!" So then my grandmother called me, and my aunt, too.
Then my father called. I don't live with my father because my parents separated when I was a baby, but we always keep in contact. He goes: "I have gay sisters. Do you think this is genetic?" And my parents had this big argument over whose fault it was, why I chose to be this way.
My father, he still thinks it's a phase. He's like: "I think you're gonna have a boyfriend later on. I'm not worried about it."
But my grandmother's cool with it. She says, "As long as you're not doing pornos and doing anything crazy, getting tattoos on your forehead, I don't care who you go out with."
My mom is just like, "Well, I wanted grandkids, and I wanted you to marry a boy," and every now and then, she throws in: "I met this really nice guy on the train. Are you sure you don't want to meet him?" And I'm like: "No, Mom. I have a girlfriend."
My family was brought up as Jehovah's Witnesses, and Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in heaven or hell. They believe in everlasting life, that everybody's going to die and then God's going to bring back all the people who did right and they'll live on this paradise earth.
And I'm not baptized, so my family's like: "See, this is what happens when you don't get baptized. This is what happens when you sit around and play video games instead of coming to church." And I say, "This has nothing to do with anything."
But the way my family was brought up, basically every little sin you commit is another strike against you being able to come back for everlasting life. They're like: "Do you know you just added a big strike to yourself? Now you have to be extra good so he'll think about bringing you back."
A lot of my friends stopped talking to me, and a lot of them still don't talk to me. My girlfriend in Chicago, I'm her first girlfriend. So when we came out in school, as a couple, everybody said: "See what you did to her? Now you're going to bring two people down to hell." I'm like, "O.K." And her parents really made me feel bad. They were like: "You're ruining our family. She was fine before she met you."
And I said to myself, well, maybe I shouldn't be with girls. Maybe I'm just going to ruin everyone's life. Maybe I should just be with a boy and make everyone happy.

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LGBT Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses Find a Common Bond
Edge, Boston/June 1, 2012
By Francisco L. White

The worldwide organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, also known as the Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society, is a truly unique Christian denomination; its members do not vote, they do not accept blood transfusions and they do not recognize or celebrate holidays. But when a member of the congregation comes out as LGBT, the international network A Common Bond is there to provide support.
"The more my eyes have opened and seen the broader picture, the more I have come to the conclusion that ACB serves a huge need," said Larry Kirkwood, a Houston asset liquidator who is the president of A Common Bond. "When we are outed or come out, we are forced out of and away from everything we know. We are taught to fear 'the world' and everyone in it, and are scared from being told how cold and cruel it is. ACB bridges that gap...[and shows us that] the world is not as cold, cunning and cruel as the picture was painted."
A remarkable attribute of Jehovah's Witnesses is their claim of political neutrality and their disassociation from "the world," meaning any person or aspect of society that is not adherent to "the truth," that being the word of God according to their New World Translation and interpretation of the Bible.
But like so many other religious groups, Jehovah's Witnesses condemn homosexuality. More specifically, the issue of marriage equality has been raised in one of their independent publications, "Awake!," which is personally distributed door-to-door in countries and localities that allow such solicitation.
With the presence of Jehovah's Witnesses in hundreds of nations, including those in which LGBTQ persons are denied equal rights or even persecuted (such as Zimbabwe), one might wonder to what extent the organization encourages or even creates anti-gay sentiment that influences such political climates. This also warrants consideration of the unique experiences of LGBTQ individuals who either are or have been affiliated with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Kirkwood said that a Common Bond, established in 1980, is an international network of LGBTQ ex-Jehovah's Witnesses and those who are still connected to the organization. He said he joined the organization more than a decade ago. Three years ago, he formed a board and organized ACB into a non-profit. Later that year, he was elected as president.
Since the establishment of ACB, the organization has remained somewhat elusive and uninvolved in the political struggle for LGBTQ equality. And according to the group's website, their mission is not to retaliate against the Watchtower organization, "although we do recognize that we are called such things as 'an abomination,' 'abhorrent,' etc. in their literature, and we know that many of you are now shunned by your families and Witness friends." The group said that their basic purpose was to help guide members to a life of happiness and self-acceptance.
"ACB is not a politically motivated organization with any agenda. We strictly provide support and friendship to anyone who is or once was affiliated with the Jehovah's Witness organization," said Kirkwood. "We aren't here to tell people what to think or to guide them. We merely provide that support and friendship, nothing more. We do our best to keep in contact through an online Yahoo Group, Facebook, private emails, and connect people with others closest to them."
But the Jehovah's Witnesses don't appear to be as neutral as their tenets assert. On the official website of The Watchtower Society, the most prominently displayed article is "Does God Approve of Same-Sex Marriage," from the April 8, 2005 issue of "Awake!" This raises the question of why a religious organization that claims political neutrality would choose to highlight an article from seven years ago that has such relevance in today's political climate.
"Lets be honest; they are anything but neutral," said Kirkwood, whose memoir, "What Lies Within," chronicles his difficult coming-out process. "They take stands against other religions. They stand against families, and loved ones, if they feel they might be undermined...they can claim to be neutral, but that's a lie. They are told kings and priests walk amongst them with a heavenly hope, that they are God's warriors and when called upon will die for him if needed. That doesn't sound so neutral to me."
Another belief and practice of the Jehovah's Witnesses is called disfellowshipping, which the official media site clarifies, noting that, "If someone unrepentantly practices serious sins...he will be disfellowshipped and such an individual is avoided by former fellow worshippers."
"This is permanent psychological damage to anyone [who is] cast aside like a piece of trash," said Kirwood. "When you are forced out of religion, losing not only your religious convictions, but your family and friends, this causes extreme abandonment issues."
When asked what he feels is the most important work of ACB, he said, "The greatest thing we can give to anyone who feels abandoned or alone, fresh out of the organization, is friendship, maybe a shoulder to cry on, an earful of advice on how to move on with their life, connect them to others, and make sure they know they are not alone."
A Common Bond also provides support through annual conferences; this year's will be held in New Orleans. Previous conferences have featured lawyers who provided advice about legal protections for LGBTQ individuals and couples, plus licensed therapists and counselors. Kirkwood said that this year, in New Orleans, the focus would be on developing friendships, connecting with others who think and talk just like we do, adding "It's a horrible thing to think you're all alone. ACB is here to let those with commonality know....you're not alone. We are everywhere."
"I have heard their stories and it's exactly like mine. Different place, different face but the story is always the same," said Kirkwood. "I cry with them, laugh with them, sometimes they listen to me, sometimes I listen to them. But there has not been one face that I have not connected with when I met them. There's something special about an ex-JW. I feel their losses, the hurt inside, even when it's masked with a smiling face."

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LGBT Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses Find a Common Bond
Edge, Boston/June 1, 2012
By Francisco L. White

The worldwide organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, also known as the Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society, is a truly unique Christian denomination; its members do not vote, they do not accept blood transfusions and they do not recognize or celebrate holidays. But when a member of the congregation comes out as LGBT, the international network A Common Bond is there to provide support.
"The more my eyes have opened and seen the broader picture, the more I have come to the conclusion that ACB serves a huge need," said Larry Kirkwood, a Houston asset liquidator who is the president of A Common Bond. "When we are outed or come out, we are forced out of and away from everything we know. We are taught to fear 'the world' and everyone in it, and are scared from being told how cold and cruel it is. ACB bridges that gap...[and shows us that] the world is not as cold, cunning and cruel as the picture was painted."
A remarkable attribute of Jehovah's Witnesses is their claim of political neutrality and their disassociation from "the world," meaning any person or aspect of society that is not adherent to "the truth," that being the word of God according to their New World Translation and interpretation of the Bible.
But like so many other religious groups, Jehovah's Witnesses condemn homosexuality. More specifically, the issue of marriage equality has been raised in one of their independent publications, "Awake!," which is personally distributed door-to-door in countries and localities that allow such solicitation.
With the presence of Jehovah's Witnesses in hundreds of nations, including those in which LGBTQ persons are denied equal rights or even persecuted (such as Zimbabwe), one might wonder to what extent the organization encourages or even creates anti-gay sentiment that influences such political climates. This also warrants consideration of the unique experiences of LGBTQ individuals who either are or have been affiliated with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Kirkwood said that a Common Bond, established in 1980, is an international network of LGBTQ ex-Jehovah's Witnesses and those who are still connected to the organization. He said he joined the organization more than a decade ago. Three years ago, he formed a board and organized ACB into a non-profit. Later that year, he was elected as president.
Since the establishment of ACB, the organization has remained somewhat elusive and uninvolved in the political struggle for LGBTQ equality. And according to the group's website, their mission is not to retaliate against the Watchtower organization, "although we do recognize that we are called such things as 'an abomination,' 'abhorrent,' etc. in their literature, and we know that many of you are now shunned by your families and Witness friends." The group said that their basic purpose was to help guide members to a life of happiness and self-acceptance.
"ACB is not a politically motivated organization with any agenda. We strictly provide support and friendship to anyone who is or once was affiliated with the Jehovah's Witness organization," said Kirkwood. "We aren't here to tell people what to think or to guide them. We merely provide that support and friendship, nothing more. We do our best to keep in contact through an online Yahoo Group, Facebook, private emails, and connect people with others closest to them."
But the Jehovah's Witnesses don't appear to be as neutral as their tenets assert. On the official website of The Watchtower Society, the most prominently displayed article is "Does God Approve of Same-Sex Marriage," from the April 8, 2005 issue of "Awake!" This raises the question of why a religious organization that claims political neutrality would choose to highlight an article from seven years ago that has such relevance in today's political climate.
"Lets be honest; they are anything but neutral," said Kirkwood, whose memoir, "What Lies Within," chronicles his difficult coming-out process. "They take stands against other religions. They stand against families, and loved ones, if they feel they might be undermined...they can claim to be neutral, but that's a lie. They are told kings and priests walk amongst them with a heavenly hope, that they are God's warriors and when called upon will die for him if needed. That doesn't sound so neutral to me."
Another belief and practice of the Jehovah's Witnesses is called disfellowshipping, which the official media site clarifies, noting that, "If someone unrepentantly practices serious sins...he will be disfellowshipped and such an individual is avoided by former fellow worshippers."
"This is permanent psychological damage to anyone [who is] cast aside like a piece of trash," said Kirwood. "When you are forced out of religion, losing not only your religious convictions, but your family and friends, this causes extreme abandonment issues."
When asked what he feels is the most important work of ACB, he said, "The greatest thing we can give to anyone who feels abandoned or alone, fresh out of the organization, is friendship, maybe a shoulder to cry on, an earful of advice on how to move on with their life, connect them to others, and make sure they know they are not alone."
A Common Bond also provides support through annual conferences; this year's will be held in New Orleans. Previous conferences have featured lawyers who provided advice about legal protections for LGBTQ individuals and couples, plus licensed therapists and counselors. Kirkwood said that this year, in New Orleans, the focus would be on developing friendships, connecting with others who think and talk just like we do, adding "It's a horrible thing to think you're all alone. ACB is here to let those with commonality know....you're not alone. We are everywhere."
"I have heard their stories and it's exactly like mine. Different place, different face but the story is always the same," said Kirkwood. "I cry with them, laugh with them, sometimes they listen to me, sometimes I listen to them. But there has not been one face that I have not connected with when I met them. There's something special about an ex-JW. I feel their losses, the hurt inside, even when it's masked with a smiling face."

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When religion is the bully
The Washington Post/November 7, 2010
By Joel P. Engardio

The news of gay teen suicides this fall made me think of my college friend Jeff. When I heard he was depressed and struggling with being gay, I wanted to say it gets better. But I didn't know if it would. I was also gay and too afraid to tell him. Nothing I saw in 1992 gave me any hope. There was no "Glee," no "Ellen" on TV to counter the politicians and religious leaders who demonized me in prime time. Even the Brady Bunch dad had died of AIDS.
We both liked playing tennis, so that's what we did instead of talking about our pain. Then one night Jeff jumped off a parking garage. He was 19.
Gay kids are made to feel worthless from a variety of sources: religion, the culture, bullies at school. I don't know which of these Jeff internalized. For me, it was religious-based shame.
My mom is one of Jehovah's Witnesses and when I told her I was gay, she mourned as if I had died. Not being able to see her son in God's Kingdom was a devastating thought. Many religions share the same belief about homosexuality: a human imperfection that is sinful to act on. I remember at age four or five hearing a Bible scripture about "men who lie with men." I knew the elder was describing what I would be when I grew up. By the tone of his voice, I knew it was something very bad.
It isn't easy growing up gay in any religion that deems gays unworthy, but how can we make gay kids feel better about themselves when they hear anti-gay religious speech that is protected by the First Amendment? Restricting speech isn't the answer because banning the phrase "gay is sin" only makes it easier to ban "gay is OK." The solution is more speech telling gay kids they are good and beautiful people, to counter the negative messages they hear in church, school and in the media.
I recently made a video for the "It Gets Better" campaign, which asks gay adults living open and happy lives to tell gay kids to hang in there. I thought about how this kind of speech would have been impossible when gays were criminalized and shamed into silence. I also thought about how my mom's religion was once denied the ability to speak freely. But in fighting for their own right to live and worship as they choose, Jehovah's Witnesses won 50 U.S. Supreme Court cases that expanded individual liberties for all Americans. The irony only starts there.
When a federal judge ruled this summer that a ban on gay marriage in California was unconstitutional, his key legal precedent was a Jehovah's Witness case from 1943 that said the fundamental rights of a group - no matter how unpopular or marginalized -- can't be taken away by majority vote. A coalition of religions had supported the gay marriage ban, but Jehovah's Witnesses remained politically neutral. They demonstrated the Bill of Rights at its best: exercising religious freedom without the need to legislate beliefs that force everyone to live their way. Yet the irony ends here.
The fact that Jehovah's Witnesses don't block gay couples outside their religion from getting married is little consolation for a gay kid who is told he is a product of Adam's sin to his core. It is especially tough when the religion shuns.
A religion that says gays must remain single and celibate will have a hard time recruiting gay members. But what happens when the religion has gay kids? Among Jehovah's Witnesses there is no easy exit for the adolescent who skillfully parrots theology at age 10 or 12 and decides in his late teens or early twenties that the religion isn't for him. Anyone who officially joins through baptism is subject to shunning if they don't follow the agreed upon rules.
I was never baptized and it saved my relationship with my mom. Gay kids who got baptized before they could come to terms with their sexuality are not so fortunate. In the most extreme cases, parents cut all contact with their shunned adult children.
Freedom in America is complex: gays seek equality from a Constitution that gives religions the right to say gays are sinners. That's why the "It Gets Better" campaign is so important. It provides the hope a gay kid needs when he is being raised in an anti-gay religion. No kid should be so overwhelmed with who he is expected to be that killing himself is the only way to deal with who he is.
I wonder if parents with religious objections to homosexuality have fully considered the consequences of insisting their gay child follow a faith that works for them but not their child. Can the religious parents who lost a gay child to suicide or shunning ever find peace with the outcome? Or would they rather have a relationship with their child, alive, separate from their religion? I think that's why my mom cried so much when I told her I was gay. I know she won't come to my wedding if I'm ever allowed to get married, but I also know she is glad I'm still around.
Joel Engardio is a 2011 MPA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His essays have appeared in USA Today, Washington Post.com and on NPR. Engardio directed KNOCKING, an award-winning PBS documentary on Jehovah's Witnesses.

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 Print M Email
When religion is the bully
The Washington Post/November 7, 2010
By Joel P. Engardio

The news of gay teen suicides this fall made me think of my college friend Jeff. When I heard he was depressed and struggling with being gay, I wanted to say it gets better. But I didn't know if it would. I was also gay and too afraid to tell him. Nothing I saw in 1992 gave me any hope. There was no "Glee," no "Ellen" on TV to counter the politicians and religious leaders who demonized me in prime time. Even the Brady Bunch dad had died of AIDS.
We both liked playing tennis, so that's what we did instead of talking about our pain. Then one night Jeff jumped off a parking garage. He was 19.
Gay kids are made to feel worthless from a variety of sources: religion, the culture, bullies at school. I don't know which of these Jeff internalized. For me, it was religious-based shame.
My mom is one of Jehovah's Witnesses and when I told her I was gay, she mourned as if I had died. Not being able to see her son in God's Kingdom was a devastating thought. Many religions share the same belief about homosexuality: a human imperfection that is sinful to act on. I remember at age four or five hearing a Bible scripture about "men who lie with men." I knew the elder was describing what I would be when I grew up. By the tone of his voice, I knew it was something very bad.
It isn't easy growing up gay in any religion that deems gays unworthy, but how can we make gay kids feel better about themselves when they hear anti-gay religious speech that is protected by the First Amendment? Restricting speech isn't the answer because banning the phrase "gay is sin" only makes it easier to ban "gay is OK." The solution is more speech telling gay kids they are good and beautiful people, to counter the negative messages they hear in church, school and in the media.
I recently made a video for the "It Gets Better" campaign, which asks gay adults living open and happy lives to tell gay kids to hang in there. I thought about how this kind of speech would have been impossible when gays were criminalized and shamed into silence. I also thought about how my mom's religion was once denied the ability to speak freely. But in fighting for their own right to live and worship as they choose, Jehovah's Witnesses won 50 U.S. Supreme Court cases that expanded individual liberties for all Americans. The irony only starts there.
When a federal judge ruled this summer that a ban on gay marriage in California was unconstitutional, his key legal precedent was a Jehovah's Witness case from 1943 that said the fundamental rights of a group - no matter how unpopular or marginalized -- can't be taken away by majority vote. A coalition of religions had supported the gay marriage ban, but Jehovah's Witnesses remained politically neutral. They demonstrated the Bill of Rights at its best: exercising religious freedom without the need to legislate beliefs that force everyone to live their way. Yet the irony ends here.
The fact that Jehovah's Witnesses don't block gay couples outside their religion from getting married is little consolation for a gay kid who is told he is a product of Adam's sin to his core. It is especially tough when the religion shuns.
A religion that says gays must remain single and celibate will have a hard time recruiting gay members. But what happens when the religion has gay kids? Among Jehovah's Witnesses there is no easy exit for the adolescent who skillfully parrots theology at age 10 or 12 and decides in his late teens or early twenties that the religion isn't for him. Anyone who officially joins through baptism is subject to shunning if they don't follow the agreed upon rules.
I was never baptized and it saved my relationship with my mom. Gay kids who got baptized before they could come to terms with their sexuality are not so fortunate. In the most extreme cases, parents cut all contact with their shunned adult children.
Freedom in America is complex: gays seek equality from a Constitution that gives religions the right to say gays are sinners. That's why the "It Gets Better" campaign is so important. It provides the hope a gay kid needs when he is being raised in an anti-gay religion. No kid should be so overwhelmed with who he is expected to be that killing himself is the only way to deal with who he is.
I wonder if parents with religious objections to homosexuality have fully considered the consequences of insisting their gay child follow a faith that works for them but not their child. Can the religious parents who lost a gay child to suicide or shunning ever find peace with the outcome? Or would they rather have a relationship with their child, alive, separate from their religion? I think that's why my mom cried so much when I told her I was gay. I know she won't come to my wedding if I'm ever allowed to get married, but I also know she is glad I'm still around.
Joel Engardio is a 2011 MPA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His essays have appeared in USA Today, Washington Post.com and on NPR. Engardio directed KNOCKING, an award-winning PBS documentary on Jehovah's Witnesses.

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Slamming the door on Jehovah
The Age, Australia/March 15, 2013
By Chris Johnston

She is an apostate, which sounds like a strange disease, and in many ways it is. According to the Jehovah's Witnesses, Bec Taylor of Traralgon, since she escaped from them, is unable to have a life worth living.
In 2011, The Watch-tower, the scripture magazine for the bizarre yet outwardly benign Christian sect, described those who abandon the church as "mentally diseased" outcasts, or apostates, who "seek to infect others with their disloyal teachings".
They can be "shunned" – cut off from their families and, according to ex-members, subjected to bullying, threats, harassment and stalking to lure them back. Families are told that if they mix with their apostate children, they are traitors too.
Even minor infringements within the Jehovah's Witnesses such as smoking can result in "disfellowshipping", and disfellowshipped people can also be shunned.
Critics of the religion call the practice psychologically and emotionally harmful.
Many ex-members do not speak publicly for fear of reprisals. But not Taylor, 29. She was a Jehovah's Witness in South Australia and then Queensland for most of her life until just a few months ago. She was born into them. Now she cannot speak to her family and was not invited to her late mother's wedding.
Her story covers two most troubling aspects of the religion she calls the "Jo-Ho's" – shunning and the harm it can cause and, more disturbing still, persistent allegations of sexual abuse and even paedophilia by church elders and members.
Victoria's current state inquiry into how churches handle child sex abuse has submissions from former Jehovah's Witnesses.
One includes allegations from four states including rape, sexual assault, blackmail and death threats. There will also be a national royal commission.
"I don't need an apology from them," says Taylor, "and I don't need their love or forgiveness."
She has started an arts degree in anthropology. Education is discouraged within the sect. "It is my final victory over them," she says. "It is a giant f--- you."
Taylor says she grew up in a dysfunctional family and was sexually abused as a child by a teenage boy who was not a Jehovah's Witness. This was in remote South Australia. She says her mother, a devout but erratic Witness – she never knew her father – was also abused as a child and nothing was done or reported, so the pattern continued.
The church's rule for dealing with complaints or suspicions of sexual abuse is that generally there must be two witnesses. The Jehovah's Witnesses consider they are the only ones who know the truth, or "The Truth"; they are suspicious of government, police and media when it conflicts with their doctrine.
British sociologist and author Andrew Holden, who has written books on the religion's culture, calls this a "world-renouncing" approach. Members are not allowed to vote, celebrate Christmas or birthdays, get blood transfusions, sing the national anthem or salute a flag.
But, also, if a member or an elder hears of illegal behaviour, such as abuse or violence, it is usually kept internal. "To protect Jehovah's name," says an insider.
Taylor says in her teens she was again sexually assaulted, this time by a devout Witness. Nothing was ever reported to police. Taylor says she stayed with the church because she had low self-esteem and the Jehovah's Witnesses offered her some hope: "the illusion of a better life," she says. "I didn't want to break Jehovah's heart."
She began caring for her ill mother, was baptised as a Witness and doorknocked every day to fulfil a quota set for her of 90 hours a month. Doorknocking, also known as "pioneering" or "publishing", is the recruitment front line; most Australians have answered their door to a pair of Witnesses offering The Watchtower or Awake! magazines.
By the age of 18, Taylor, a smart and feisty young woman, had begun working as a South Australian advocate for Young Carers Australia and had contributed to policy developed by senator Amanda Vanstone, the then Minister for Family and Community Services. Taylor was also offered work experience and training as a journalist with ABC radio in Renmark. But she says "pressure and hatred" from her fellow Witnesses, and suspicion of her being too educated or upwardly mobile, forced her to turn down the offers in order to stay door-to-door preaching. She got a part-time job cleaning toilets instead.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are puritanical Christians who think they have God's messages to themselves. Only they are "in the Truth". They have 8 million members worldwide and 64,000 in Australia, in 800 "congregations" or parishes located in "Kingdom Halls".
The religion's proper name is the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. It was founded by American draper Charles Russell in 1872. They believe in the end of the world and also the paradise beyond and have predicted five times that Christ would come again to signal it. The last time this happened was 1975. More than 1 million devotees abandoned them in the following six years. In America the Jehovah's Witness have the lowest retention rate of all religions.
They also believe Satan has ruled the earth since 1914. The only way to make things better is by creating a heavenly kingdom on earth of a small number of believers. The Jehovah's Witness' trait of being aloof and "separate" comes from this idea that Satan runs things, so the best way to survive is to avoid society.
Membership has flatlined against population growth in most developed countries. The reach of the internet has had a big impact as whistleblower groups, ex-Witness forums, websites, "leaks" sites and negative publicity abounds.
The church is run by a "governing body" in Brooklyn, New York. In Australia there is a headquarters for the "branch committee" where all the senior officials live, in Ingleburn in the southern suburbs of Sydney. It is known as "Bethel".
Former "ministerial servant" (a trainee church elder) Paul Grundy, of Sydney, lived there for four years in the 1990s. "It's like a big four-star hotel," he says. Another former member who visited Bethel says: "It's nice, but it's like a bubble. They walk around like robots." People involved in the church's administration, publishing business and legal affairs live there too, about 400 people in total. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Australia is a public company; the directors are president Harold "Viv" Mouritz, vice-president Donald MacLean, Gordon King, Terrence O'Brien and Winston Payne.
Mouritz, who was born in Nagambie in country Victoria, is aged 86. MacLean, a Canadian, is 90. Company records show the company's income for the 2011 tax year was nearly $19 million and mostly came from donations. It earned nearly $350,000 in interest.
There is no suggestion the directors directly profited. Insiders say they live frugally and money is spent on investment properties. Every country's branch committee is answerable to the cabal in Brooklyn, who they believe God communicates through, but within each country the national branch committee, local elders and more senior men called overseers are authoritative. Elders can form judicial committees to investigate either each other or members of the congregation.
Kingdom Halls are plainly decorated, like school classrooms, with no iconography or adornment. Congregations meet twice a week to listen to Biblical passages. The structure for disciples to live by is uniform and rigid. Moral conservatism (anti-gay, anti-abortion, no sex before marriage) is strictly enforced.
The British sociologist Andrew Holden says the church has a "quasi-totalitarian" approach in which converts "defer unquestioningly to the authority of those who are appointed to enforce its doctrine". The individual, he says, "becomes the property of the whole community".
To defect is to embrace Satan because Satan lurks outside the church's insular micro-communities. Homosexuality, drug addiction and disease are used as warnings of what can become of the apostate. It is considered a betrayal and heresy to want to leave, which is why the practice of "shunning" plays such a large and controversial part in the lives of those, like Traralgon's Bec Taylor, who are connected to the religion.
The director of Cult Counselling Australia, Raphael Aron, a psychologist, says the Jehovah's Witnesses are not a cult. However, they "display symptoms common to numerous cults" with "a warped view" of family.
From his office in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield, he counsels ex-members and also families trying to regain contact with those lost to the sect. He says the Witnesses appear as "almost mainstream" but some of their practices appear to be "draconian, cruel and callous".
For a Christian religion, he says, they lack a "spiritual touch" and also lack tolerance and acceptance. "Shunning means that any member who chooses to leave the church for their own personal reasons will be totally cut off from the family that remains there – zero contact with parents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles or grandparents for the rest of their lives."
Aron says new recruits are often unaware they will go without birthdays and Christmas. "It's a religion without a soul." A young person flirting with the religion can suddenly find him or herself offered accommodation – a sharehouse or a flat – with Witnesses. Young disciples can be physically moved far from their parents, interstate or overseas.
Shunning comes in many guises. I met a man in his mid-40s now living in country Victoria who says when he was a teenage Jehovah's Witness in Queensland in the 1980s, he confessed to having the beginnings of a consensual but frowned-upon sexual relationship – fondling – with a teenage girl in the same congregation.
An elder ordered that he sit in a glass room at the back of the Kingdom Hall at every meeting, twice a week, for four months, for two hours at a time. The glass room was called the fish bowl and members of the congregation were allowed to humiliate him while he was in there. The man says the same elder had sexually assaulted both him and his brother.
Another middle-aged woman, from Melbourne, says that among people she grew up with in the church there was a "conscious class" – she knows about 40 – who only attend so they can keep seeing their families.
They do not believe in the teachings any more but live a complex lie in order to maintain family ties. The woman, who would not give her name for fear of retribution, wants to "break the cycle" for her own children and last year held a secret Christmas at her home for them.
She was baptised into a congregation in Melbourne's south-east despite that congregation later being exposed by Channel Nine for harbouring men – one later convicted of paedophilia offences – involved in sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Another country Victorian man (and ex-Witness) says when two young girls were abused by the older son of a local elder, the elder was moved to another congregation on the fringes of Melbourne.
Congregations in NSW and SA have also held convicted paedophiles. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, a former elder, Richard Hill, recently faced court charged with two counts of indecent assault on a six-year-old girl in 1981.Police and ex-Jehovah's Witness sources say congregations on the Gold Coast and Adelaide and in Cranbourne, Skye, Traralgon and Langwarrin in Victoria remain a concern.
The church's spokesman in Australia, solicitor Vincent Toole, says if the church knew of an elder committing or covering up child sexual abuse he would be removed "from serving in that capacity".
"Witnesses abhor child abuse and consider the protection of children to be of the utmost importance," he says. He also says shunning is a myth and that baptised members who drift away are not treated badly.
Toole supplied a statement from the Frequently Asked Questions on the Jehovah's Witnesses website which reads in part: "We reach out to them and try to rekindle their spiritual interest."
He said the religion did not have a distrust of the wider community but that "the permanent solution to humankind's problems ultimately rests with God's government".
A Victoria Police taskforce, Sano, is investigating allegations of abuse and cover-ups within church groups on behalf of the Victorian government inquiry into the church's handling of such allegations.
One allegation before Sano and also the Victorian Health Services Commissioner is that a Traralgon elder was allegedly able to get into a young girl's hospital ward at Latrobe Regional Hospital in Gippsland without the permission of the girl's parents and without the right access cards.
"The complaint raised with us by the Health Services Commissioner in connection with the Latrobe Regional Hospital has nothing to do with sexual abuse," Toole said.
"We have never heard of taskforce Sano."
Whistleblower Steven Unthank, meanwhile, a carpenter and ex-Witness from Toongabbie in Gippsland, has given the Victorian parliamentary inquiry a submission claiming his family were persecuted after he tried to tackle child abuse. He says the church has covered up widespread abuse and violence over four decades.
"It is a paedophiles' paradise," he says. Unthank has also waged a long campaign to make elders and door-to-door preachers get Working With Children police checks, which the church has now begun to comply with.
In Traralgon, Bec Taylor says she is now a "work in progress" after cutting all ties late last year with her "brainwashed" family and with the church she once loved and pledged loyalty to. She had found herself living in Brisbane, worshipping at the Newfarm congregation and working in a call centre.
She was mugged early one morning walking to work. It took a month for anyone from her congregation to telephone, she says. Then when she finally went back to the church and had a massive panic attack, an elder drove her to hospital and dropped her at the door.
Suffering from post-traumatic stress and the effects of being abused as a child, she ideated suicide alongside the Brisbane River several times. Again, no support from her fellow Witnesses. And that was that. She began to quit, was ostracised further by her family, then quit entirely and moved states.
Too many cover-ups, she says, too little compassion.
"At least now I can say what I hear in my head is actually coming from my own head. I just hope others start to speak out too."

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Slamming the door on Jehovah
The Age, Australia/March 15, 2013
By Chris Johnston

She is an apostate, which sounds like a strange disease, and in many ways it is. According to the Jehovah's Witnesses, Bec Taylor of Traralgon, since she escaped from them, is unable to have a life worth living.
In 2011, The Watch-tower, the scripture magazine for the bizarre yet outwardly benign Christian sect, described those who abandon the church as "mentally diseased" outcasts, or apostates, who "seek to infect others with their disloyal teachings".
They can be "shunned" – cut off from their families and, according to ex-members, subjected to bullying, threats, harassment and stalking to lure them back. Families are told that if they mix with their apostate children, they are traitors too.
Even minor infringements within the Jehovah's Witnesses such as smoking can result in "disfellowshipping", and disfellowshipped people can also be shunned.
Critics of the religion call the practice psychologically and emotionally harmful.
Many ex-members do not speak publicly for fear of reprisals. But not Taylor, 29. She was a Jehovah's Witness in South Australia and then Queensland for most of her life until just a few months ago. She was born into them. Now she cannot speak to her family and was not invited to her late mother's wedding.
Her story covers two most troubling aspects of the religion she calls the "Jo-Ho's" – shunning and the harm it can cause and, more disturbing still, persistent allegations of sexual abuse and even paedophilia by church elders and members.
Victoria's current state inquiry into how churches handle child sex abuse has submissions from former Jehovah's Witnesses.
One includes allegations from four states including rape, sexual assault, blackmail and death threats. There will also be a national royal commission.
"I don't need an apology from them," says Taylor, "and I don't need their love or forgiveness."
She has started an arts degree in anthropology. Education is discouraged within the sect. "It is my final victory over them," she says. "It is a giant f--- you."
Taylor says she grew up in a dysfunctional family and was sexually abused as a child by a teenage boy who was not a Jehovah's Witness. This was in remote South Australia. She says her mother, a devout but erratic Witness – she never knew her father – was also abused as a child and nothing was done or reported, so the pattern continued.
The church's rule for dealing with complaints or suspicions of sexual abuse is that generally there must be two witnesses. The Jehovah's Witnesses consider they are the only ones who know the truth, or "The Truth"; they are suspicious of government, police and media when it conflicts with their doctrine.
British sociologist and author Andrew Holden, who has written books on the religion's culture, calls this a "world-renouncing" approach. Members are not allowed to vote, celebrate Christmas or birthdays, get blood transfusions, sing the national anthem or salute a flag.
But, also, if a member or an elder hears of illegal behaviour, such as abuse or violence, it is usually kept internal. "To protect Jehovah's name," says an insider.
Taylor says in her teens she was again sexually assaulted, this time by a devout Witness. Nothing was ever reported to police. Taylor says she stayed with the church because she had low self-esteem and the Jehovah's Witnesses offered her some hope: "the illusion of a better life," she says. "I didn't want to break Jehovah's heart."
She began caring for her ill mother, was baptised as a Witness and doorknocked every day to fulfil a quota set for her of 90 hours a month. Doorknocking, also known as "pioneering" or "publishing", is the recruitment front line; most Australians have answered their door to a pair of Witnesses offering The Watchtower or Awake! magazines.
By the age of 18, Taylor, a smart and feisty young woman, had begun working as a South Australian advocate for Young Carers Australia and had contributed to policy developed by senator Amanda Vanstone, the then Minister for Family and Community Services. Taylor was also offered work experience and training as a journalist with ABC radio in Renmark. But she says "pressure and hatred" from her fellow Witnesses, and suspicion of her being too educated or upwardly mobile, forced her to turn down the offers in order to stay door-to-door preaching. She got a part-time job cleaning toilets instead.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are puritanical Christians who think they have God's messages to themselves. Only they are "in the Truth". They have 8 million members worldwide and 64,000 in Australia, in 800 "congregations" or parishes located in "Kingdom Halls".
The religion's proper name is the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. It was founded by American draper Charles Russell in 1872. They believe in the end of the world and also the paradise beyond and have predicted five times that Christ would come again to signal it. The last time this happened was 1975. More than 1 million devotees abandoned them in the following six years. In America the Jehovah's Witness have the lowest retention rate of all religions.
They also believe Satan has ruled the earth since 1914. The only way to make things better is by creating a heavenly kingdom on earth of a small number of believers. The Jehovah's Witness' trait of being aloof and "separate" comes from this idea that Satan runs things, so the best way to survive is to avoid society.
Membership has flatlined against population growth in most developed countries. The reach of the internet has had a big impact as whistleblower groups, ex-Witness forums, websites, "leaks" sites and negative publicity abounds.
The church is run by a "governing body" in Brooklyn, New York. In Australia there is a headquarters for the "branch committee" where all the senior officials live, in Ingleburn in the southern suburbs of Sydney. It is known as "Bethel".
Former "ministerial servant" (a trainee church elder) Paul Grundy, of Sydney, lived there for four years in the 1990s. "It's like a big four-star hotel," he says. Another former member who visited Bethel says: "It's nice, but it's like a bubble. They walk around like robots." People involved in the church's administration, publishing business and legal affairs live there too, about 400 people in total. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Australia is a public company; the directors are president Harold "Viv" Mouritz, vice-president Donald MacLean, Gordon King, Terrence O'Brien and Winston Payne.
Mouritz, who was born in Nagambie in country Victoria, is aged 86. MacLean, a Canadian, is 90. Company records show the company's income for the 2011 tax year was nearly $19 million and mostly came from donations. It earned nearly $350,000 in interest.
There is no suggestion the directors directly profited. Insiders say they live frugally and money is spent on investment properties. Every country's branch committee is answerable to the cabal in Brooklyn, who they believe God communicates through, but within each country the national branch committee, local elders and more senior men called overseers are authoritative. Elders can form judicial committees to investigate either each other or members of the congregation.
Kingdom Halls are plainly decorated, like school classrooms, with no iconography or adornment. Congregations meet twice a week to listen to Biblical passages. The structure for disciples to live by is uniform and rigid. Moral conservatism (anti-gay, anti-abortion, no sex before marriage) is strictly enforced.
The British sociologist Andrew Holden says the church has a "quasi-totalitarian" approach in which converts "defer unquestioningly to the authority of those who are appointed to enforce its doctrine". The individual, he says, "becomes the property of the whole community".
To defect is to embrace Satan because Satan lurks outside the church's insular micro-communities. Homosexuality, drug addiction and disease are used as warnings of what can become of the apostate. It is considered a betrayal and heresy to want to leave, which is why the practice of "shunning" plays such a large and controversial part in the lives of those, like Traralgon's Bec Taylor, who are connected to the religion.
The director of Cult Counselling Australia, Raphael Aron, a psychologist, says the Jehovah's Witnesses are not a cult. However, they "display symptoms common to numerous cults" with "a warped view" of family.
From his office in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield, he counsels ex-members and also families trying to regain contact with those lost to the sect. He says the Witnesses appear as "almost mainstream" but some of their practices appear to be "draconian, cruel and callous".
For a Christian religion, he says, they lack a "spiritual touch" and also lack tolerance and acceptance. "Shunning means that any member who chooses to leave the church for their own personal reasons will be totally cut off from the family that remains there – zero contact with parents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles or grandparents for the rest of their lives."
Aron says new recruits are often unaware they will go without birthdays and Christmas. "It's a religion without a soul." A young person flirting with the religion can suddenly find him or herself offered accommodation – a sharehouse or a flat – with Witnesses. Young disciples can be physically moved far from their parents, interstate or overseas.
Shunning comes in many guises. I met a man in his mid-40s now living in country Victoria who says when he was a teenage Jehovah's Witness in Queensland in the 1980s, he confessed to having the beginnings of a consensual but frowned-upon sexual relationship – fondling – with a teenage girl in the same congregation.
An elder ordered that he sit in a glass room at the back of the Kingdom Hall at every meeting, twice a week, for four months, for two hours at a time. The glass room was called the fish bowl and members of the congregation were allowed to humiliate him while he was in there. The man says the same elder had sexually assaulted both him and his brother.
Another middle-aged woman, from Melbourne, says that among people she grew up with in the church there was a "conscious class" – she knows about 40 – who only attend so they can keep seeing their families.
They do not believe in the teachings any more but live a complex lie in order to maintain family ties. The woman, who would not give her name for fear of retribution, wants to "break the cycle" for her own children and last year held a secret Christmas at her home for them.
She was baptised into a congregation in Melbourne's south-east despite that congregation later being exposed by Channel Nine for harbouring men – one later convicted of paedophilia offences – involved in sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Another country Victorian man (and ex-Witness) says when two young girls were abused by the older son of a local elder, the elder was moved to another congregation on the fringes of Melbourne.
Congregations in NSW and SA have also held convicted paedophiles. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, a former elder, Richard Hill, recently faced court charged with two counts of indecent assault on a six-year-old girl in 1981.Police and ex-Jehovah's Witness sources say congregations on the Gold Coast and Adelaide and in Cranbourne, Skye, Traralgon and Langwarrin in Victoria remain a concern.
The church's spokesman in Australia, solicitor Vincent Toole, says if the church knew of an elder committing or covering up child sexual abuse he would be removed "from serving in that capacity".
"Witnesses abhor child abuse and consider the protection of children to be of the utmost importance," he says. He also says shunning is a myth and that baptised members who drift away are not treated badly.
Toole supplied a statement from the Frequently Asked Questions on the Jehovah's Witnesses website which reads in part: "We reach out to them and try to rekindle their spiritual interest."
He said the religion did not have a distrust of the wider community but that "the permanent solution to humankind's problems ultimately rests with God's government".
A Victoria Police taskforce, Sano, is investigating allegations of abuse and cover-ups within church groups on behalf of the Victorian government inquiry into the church's handling of such allegations.
One allegation before Sano and also the Victorian Health Services Commissioner is that a Traralgon elder was allegedly able to get into a young girl's hospital ward at Latrobe Regional Hospital in Gippsland without the permission of the girl's parents and without the right access cards.
"The complaint raised with us by the Health Services Commissioner in connection with the Latrobe Regional Hospital has nothing to do with sexual abuse," Toole said.
"We have never heard of taskforce Sano."
Whistleblower Steven Unthank, meanwhile, a carpenter and ex-Witness from Toongabbie in Gippsland, has given the Victorian parliamentary inquiry a submission claiming his family were persecuted after he tried to tackle child abuse. He says the church has covered up widespread abuse and violence over four decades.
"It is a paedophiles' paradise," he says. Unthank has also waged a long campaign to make elders and door-to-door preachers get Working With Children police checks, which the church has now begun to comply with.
In Traralgon, Bec Taylor says she is now a "work in progress" after cutting all ties late last year with her "brainwashed" family and with the church she once loved and pledged loyalty to. She had found herself living in Brisbane, worshipping at the Newfarm congregation and working in a call centre.
She was mugged early one morning walking to work. It took a month for anyone from her congregation to telephone, she says. Then when she finally went back to the church and had a massive panic attack, an elder drove her to hospital and dropped her at the door.
Suffering from post-traumatic stress and the effects of being abused as a child, she ideated suicide alongside the Brisbane River several times. Again, no support from her fellow Witnesses. And that was that. She began to quit, was ostracised further by her family, then quit entirely and moved states.
Too many cover-ups, she says, too little compassion.
"At least now I can say what I hear in my head is actually coming from my own head. I just hope others start to speak out too."

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 Print M Email
Mind-controlling cult took our Leah
Eastern Daily Press, UK/April 12, 2007
By Stephen Pullinger
For 14 years they were devoted Jehovah's Witnesses, but after a heart-rending dispute which saw them lose all contact with their only daughter, a Norfolk couple have launched a determined campaign to highlight the pitfalls of joining the church.
Where their daily routine had once involved zealously knocking on doors to spread the word of Jehovah, retired David and Brenda Gibbons have taken to touring the streets warning people away from what they now regard as a “mind-controlling cult”.
They take with them a cherished photograph of their daughter Leah, looking radiant on her wedding day, whom they have not seen since they were thrown out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses last July following a family bust-up.
An accompanying letter reads: “We are not appealing to you for sympathy. What we are doing is begging you to be careful when these people knock on your door.”
The couple agreed they had been attracted at the beginning by the “overwhelming love” shown them by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But Mr Gibbons, of Kingfisher Close, Bradwell, who went on to hold a senior post as ministerial servant, said: “Now we have seen the other side and we would not want anyone to go through what we did.”
Members of the church in Bradwell, near Yarmouth - including Leah, 25, and her husband Ben - have been forbidden from speaking to the couple since their expulsion for writing a letter containing personal criticism to their daughter’s mother-in-law.
A judicial committee at Yarmouth Kingdom Hall decided on their “disfellowship” after declaring them “revilers”, people who speak ill of others.
Mr Gibbons, 62, a full-time carer of his wife who has rheumatoid arthritis, said: “I have not committed a crime like adultery or theft; I have simply spoken my mind and I can’t apologise for that. You should not expel people for that.
“I want to warn people about the way Jehovah’s Witnesses can make or break a person’s life. Since our ordeal started, we have learned of several others in the area who have gone through disfellowship, with the same implications for their family and friends. We were a close family. To lose a child who has died is bad; to lose a child who does not want to talk to you is quite heartbreaking.
“We know our daughter loves us dearly but she even moved house without telling us her new address. Like the rest of this cult, their minds are controlled through what I would describe as loving manipulation.
“Ninety-nine per cent of Jehovah’s Witnesses are lovely people. But now if we come across friends from the congregation in Gorleston High Street, they do an about-turn or dive into a shop. One of our best friends hung up when we rang them.”
Trevor Gaskin, the town’s presiding Jehovah’s Witness, insisted the church was very family orientated and “put great store in that”.
He said: “The Gibbonses know what they need to do to heal the breach. To be reinstated in the congregation they would need to show a repentant attitude.”
But he questioned whether talking to the papers was “the way to get their daughter back”.
He said disfellowship did not prevent Leah contacting her family, for example if one of her parents was ill.
Leah told the EDP that she agreed with what had happened to her parents because when you joined a church, you knew the rules.
However, she said their relationship could be restored if they made amends in the right way for what they had done - even though they had made life difficult for the congregation.

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 Print M Email
Mind-controlling cult took our Leah
Eastern Daily Press, UK/April 12, 2007
By Stephen Pullinger
For 14 years they were devoted Jehovah's Witnesses, but after a heart-rending dispute which saw them lose all contact with their only daughter, a Norfolk couple have launched a determined campaign to highlight the pitfalls of joining the church.
Where their daily routine had once involved zealously knocking on doors to spread the word of Jehovah, retired David and Brenda Gibbons have taken to touring the streets warning people away from what they now regard as a “mind-controlling cult”.
They take with them a cherished photograph of their daughter Leah, looking radiant on her wedding day, whom they have not seen since they were thrown out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses last July following a family bust-up.
An accompanying letter reads: “We are not appealing to you for sympathy. What we are doing is begging you to be careful when these people knock on your door.”
The couple agreed they had been attracted at the beginning by the “overwhelming love” shown them by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But Mr Gibbons, of Kingfisher Close, Bradwell, who went on to hold a senior post as ministerial servant, said: “Now we have seen the other side and we would not want anyone to go through what we did.”
Members of the church in Bradwell, near Yarmouth - including Leah, 25, and her husband Ben - have been forbidden from speaking to the couple since their expulsion for writing a letter containing personal criticism to their daughter’s mother-in-law.
A judicial committee at Yarmouth Kingdom Hall decided on their “disfellowship” after declaring them “revilers”, people who speak ill of others.
Mr Gibbons, 62, a full-time carer of his wife who has rheumatoid arthritis, said: “I have not committed a crime like adultery or theft; I have simply spoken my mind and I can’t apologise for that. You should not expel people for that.
“I want to warn people about the way Jehovah’s Witnesses can make or break a person’s life. Since our ordeal started, we have learned of several others in the area who have gone through disfellowship, with the same implications for their family and friends. We were a close family. To lose a child who has died is bad; to lose a child who does not want to talk to you is quite heartbreaking.
“We know our daughter loves us dearly but she even moved house without telling us her new address. Like the rest of this cult, their minds are controlled through what I would describe as loving manipulation.
“Ninety-nine per cent of Jehovah’s Witnesses are lovely people. But now if we come across friends from the congregation in Gorleston High Street, they do an about-turn or dive into a shop. One of our best friends hung up when we rang them.”
Trevor Gaskin, the town’s presiding Jehovah’s Witness, insisted the church was very family orientated and “put great store in that”.
He said: “The Gibbonses know what they need to do to heal the breach. To be reinstated in the congregation they would need to show a repentant attitude.”
But he questioned whether talking to the papers was “the way to get their daughter back”.
He said disfellowship did not prevent Leah contacting her family, for example if one of her parents was ill.
Leah told the EDP that she agreed with what had happened to her parents because when you joined a church, you knew the rules.
However, she said their relationship could be restored if they made amends in the right way for what they had done - even though they had made life difficult for the congregation.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.




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 Print M Email
Couple's faith tested
The Yarmouth Mercury, UK/September 28, 2006
By Miles Jermy
They were once devoted believers - but a husband and wife say their faith has been tested and their family torn apart after they were thrown out of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Members of the Bradwell congregation - including their only child, a daughter - are now forbidden from speaking to David and Brenda Gibbons since they were forced toleave.
They were thrown out by a judicial committee at Great Yarmouth Kingdom Hall in July, after writing a letter containing personal criticism to another member of the congregation.
Declared “revilers”, people who speak ill of others, the decision to “disfellowship” the couple was upheld on appeal to the Jehovah's Witnesses' British branch in London.
They have not seen daughter Leah, 25, since being forcedto leave the organisation.
Retired merchant seaman
Mr Gibbons, 62, and Mrs Gibbons, 64, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, are devastated by the experience.
Mrs Gibbons told the Mercury: “It is heartbreaking that Leah is not allowed to speak to us because of a scriptural point of view.
“I do regret joining the Jehovah's Witnesses because then we would still have our daughter.
“We were renowned for being a close family; to love a child who has died is bad, tolose a child who does not want to talk to you is quite heartbreaking.
“People need to know the consequences of steppingout of line - so many families have been split up andnow we have lost a dear daughter.”
She added: “No religion should impose that on people, but there is very precise manipulation of the way believers think and feel.”
Jehovah's Witnesses are instructed to shun expelled members, who are allowed to attend services and receive spiritual guidance, but cannot be welcomed back into the congregation until they apologise for their actions.
Mr and Mrs Gibbons are adamant they have done nothing wrong and cannot return to the movement that was, until recently, central to their lives.
Mr Gibbons said: “The elders could have helped resolve the situation, but I believe they wanted me out because I was outspoken and this was an opportunity to remove me.
“Our Christian brothers and sisters would like to speak to us, but are fearful of whataction might be taken against them.
“We were loved by so many people, but now when they see us in the street they turn away The body of elders has created a climate of fear amid the congregation, which is divided into cliques.
“Even if I had committed a crime I would expect my family's support, but Brenda and I have done nothing wrong and yet we are completely isolated.
“What is the good of any religion that takes your daughter away from youand does what has been doneto us.”
Mr Gibbons was stripped of his position as a ministerial servant in June; heand his wife had been worshipping with the Gorleston congregation until their expulsion.
Worshippers are not told why a member is removed andMr Gibbons, who had managed the accounts at Bradwell Kingdom Hall, feared they would think he had been thrown out for stealingmoney.
The last few months have been an ordeal for the couple after losing contact with a daughter they had been so close to and who encouraged them to join the Jehovah's Witnesses 14 years ago.
All they are left with now is memories of their time with Leah and a gallery of family photos at their home in Kingfisher Close.
Mr Gibbons added: “It was really Leah who got us into the church as she had a friend at school who was a Witness.
“Her father came round to visit us; we had a Bible study and joined after going along to worship for a year.
“We were renowned for being a close-knit family and well known for riding around together on a tandem cycle. We shared so many jokes and good times.
“This is tearing us apart,we were always so full offun, laughter and life butnow just do not feel whole anymore.”
The Gibbons' daughter, Leah, refused to talk to theMercury when she was approached, and Trevor Gaskin, the presiding Jehovah's Witness also declined the comment.

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 Print M Email
Couple's faith tested
The Yarmouth Mercury, UK/September 28, 2006
By Miles Jermy
They were once devoted believers - but a husband and wife say their faith has been tested and their family torn apart after they were thrown out of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Members of the Bradwell congregation - including their only child, a daughter - are now forbidden from speaking to David and Brenda Gibbons since they were forced toleave.
They were thrown out by a judicial committee at Great Yarmouth Kingdom Hall in July, after writing a letter containing personal criticism to another member of the congregation.
Declared “revilers”, people who speak ill of others, the decision to “disfellowship” the couple was upheld on appeal to the Jehovah's Witnesses' British branch in London.
They have not seen daughter Leah, 25, since being forcedto leave the organisation.
Retired merchant seaman
Mr Gibbons, 62, and Mrs Gibbons, 64, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, are devastated by the experience.
Mrs Gibbons told the Mercury: “It is heartbreaking that Leah is not allowed to speak to us because of a scriptural point of view.
“I do regret joining the Jehovah's Witnesses because then we would still have our daughter.
“We were renowned for being a close family; to love a child who has died is bad, tolose a child who does not want to talk to you is quite heartbreaking.
“People need to know the consequences of steppingout of line - so many families have been split up andnow we have lost a dear daughter.”
She added: “No religion should impose that on people, but there is very precise manipulation of the way believers think and feel.”
Jehovah's Witnesses are instructed to shun expelled members, who are allowed to attend services and receive spiritual guidance, but cannot be welcomed back into the congregation until they apologise for their actions.
Mr and Mrs Gibbons are adamant they have done nothing wrong and cannot return to the movement that was, until recently, central to their lives.
Mr Gibbons said: “The elders could have helped resolve the situation, but I believe they wanted me out because I was outspoken and this was an opportunity to remove me.
“Our Christian brothers and sisters would like to speak to us, but are fearful of whataction might be taken against them.
“We were loved by so many people, but now when they see us in the street they turn away The body of elders has created a climate of fear amid the congregation, which is divided into cliques.
“Even if I had committed a crime I would expect my family's support, but Brenda and I have done nothing wrong and yet we are completely isolated.
“What is the good of any religion that takes your daughter away from youand does what has been doneto us.”
Mr Gibbons was stripped of his position as a ministerial servant in June; heand his wife had been worshipping with the Gorleston congregation until their expulsion.
Worshippers are not told why a member is removed andMr Gibbons, who had managed the accounts at Bradwell Kingdom Hall, feared they would think he had been thrown out for stealingmoney.
The last few months have been an ordeal for the couple after losing contact with a daughter they had been so close to and who encouraged them to join the Jehovah's Witnesses 14 years ago.
All they are left with now is memories of their time with Leah and a gallery of family photos at their home in Kingfisher Close.
Mr Gibbons added: “It was really Leah who got us into the church as she had a friend at school who was a Witness.
“Her father came round to visit us; we had a Bible study and joined after going along to worship for a year.
“We were renowned for being a close-knit family and well known for riding around together on a tandem cycle. We shared so many jokes and good times.
“This is tearing us apart,we were always so full offun, laughter and life butnow just do not feel whole anymore.”
The Gibbons' daughter, Leah, refused to talk to theMercury when she was approached, and Trevor Gaskin, the presiding Jehovah's Witness also declined the comment.

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 Print M Email
Witnesses cost me my family

Halifax Herald (Canada), February 13, 2000
By Susan LeBlanc
Church kept kids away - Waverley man
Arnold Fox has kept it bottled up for 25 years.
He doesn't want to appear crazy.
"People just don't believe that these things take place, and they do," says Fox, 67.
The retired Fall River man says the Jehovah's Witnesses had a role in the 1975 disappearance of his wife and two youngest children. Grief-stricken, Fox paid a private investigation company to pursue the family across Canada.
But he has never seen them again.
It's a startling tale, which Randy Duplak, his lawyer at the time, remembers to this day.
"It was an unbelievable scenario that people just wouldn't co-operate, denied knowledge, denied knowing where his wife and children were," says Duplak, now a provincial government lawyer.
"It was almost like a spy game you see on a TV movie. You didn't see it in real life."
Duplak says he had no reason to doubt Fox's theory, because Fox appeared credible and had been "an insider" - a Witness - until being evicted from the group, or disfellowshipped, two months before his family vanished. Fox says smoking was the reason he was given for being kicked out of the Witness congregation in Dartmouth's Woodlawn area. Smoking is still grounds for being disfellowshipped.
Fox had smoked "for a thousand years . . . played the fiddle and drank and all that good stuff" after running away from his Halifax home, and his Jehovah's Witness mother, at age 16.
Within five or six years he returned and, on May 11, 1957, he married Catherine Lilley Brecknell in Bethany United Church in Halifax.
Influenced by Fox's mother, Catherine converted to the Witnesses. Fox got involved "to a degree," though he says it was half-hearted.
Sadly, his wife suffered from mental illness and attempted suicide twice, he says. In 1965, she took their young son Terry and left Arnold, aided in hiding by Witnesses in Toronto, he says. He found her and, "after having to talk to about 16 bloody Witnesses," brought her home.
Afterwards, they lived what Fox calls "a roller-coaster ride." According to 1974-75 medical records contained in Fox's legal file, and which he has allowed Duplak to show to The Sunday Herald, the Foxes shared an "unhappy" and even "unhealthy" relationship.
Duplak says the medical records were obtained to satisfy lawyers that Catherine wasn't running because Fox was abusive.
In 1975, the couple was living on Bella Vista Drive in Dartmouth and had three children - Terry, 17, Daniel about eight, and Coleen, about six. "I'd had enough religion - and that's putting it in very short form - but the last thing I had said was, 'The children shall no longer attend the Kingdom Hall,' " Fox says.
He knew that made him vulnerable with the Witnesses, because as the father and an obvious doubter, he could try to override the group's ban on blood transfusions if his children were under medical care. Fox was summoned to the nearby Kingdom Hall to appear before a judicial committee. He went, knowing he was to be disfellowshipped. Using smoking as the grounds "was a ploy. They had to use something. . . . The point is, they couldn't have helped (my wife) away on a permanent basis
On Aug. 24, 1975, Fox returned home with Daniel and discovered his wife had fled with Coleen.
On Sept. 15, Daniel "was picked up at school, a ticket was put around his neck and he was put on board a flight to Toronto" to meet his mother, Fox says.
He says son Terry, a devout Witness who would soon marry, admitted that he and "others" had taken Daniel to the Halifax airport. This story is contained in Fox's affidavit dated Oct. 28, 1977, which was filed with the courts in the preliminary stages of Fox's child-custody application. The affidavit was also used to access telephone records in the search for the family. Fox later dropped the custody proceeding because he could not locate the children.
The Sunday Herald tracked down Terry Fox at his home in Lethbridge, Alta. He is still a Jehovah's Witness.
He is hesitant to discuss his father's allegations. But he does not deny Arnold Fox's version of events. He will only say his father is being unfair about the role of Jehovah's Witnesses in the affair.
"The family didn't ever split up over religious reasons," says Terry Fox, 41. "It was such a wild situation. It was so odd and all the rest of it. I don't feel able to elaborate and lay the rest of it on the table." Terry Fox says he last spoke with his father in 1977 and "left the ball in Dad's court" as far as future contact. "I haven't heard from him since." An ex-Witness supports Arnold Fox's story, saying he knew the elder who helped take Daniel to the airport. That elder has since died, he says.
By the time Daniel disappeared, Fox had already hired Duplak, a young lawyer then with the Dartmouth firm Weldon Misener and Covert. The matter was "the kidnapping of his child, Coleen Heather Fox," Duplak alleged in his Nov. 10, 1977, affidavit filed in the early stages of the child-custody application. Duplak squirrelled away Fox's file because the case was so intriguing. Inside are the photographs Fox supplied to help identify his family. One shows a smiling young girl and an older boy standing outside, barefoot and proudly holding a fish between them.
Another shows Catherine, with a beehive hairdo and glasses, posing with the two boys near a lake.
The third photo is a shot of a young Arnold, Catherine and two of the children huddling against the wind.
The loss of the children left Fox "almost out of my mind with grief and sadness." He also feared for their safety because he believed Catherine was suicidal.
He says he went immediately to police, who told him it wasn't a crime for a mother to take her children. (In 1982, the Criminal Code was amended to make it an offence for a parent to abduct his or her child, even when there is no court custody order.)
Fox says police were able to verify that the children were OK, but said they could do nothing further. Fox asked Duplak to hire private investigators, and World Investigation Service of Toronto was chosen. (The firm no longer appears in the telephone directory.)
From November 1975 until October 1976, investigators followed the family from Toronto to various addresses in Victoria, B.C., always coming up short. Fox had learned through a friend in airport security, who is now dead, that the limousine carrying Daniel had gone to a Toronto address, but this was a string of over 100 townhouses.
Because Fox wanted the search done quietly to keep the family from bolting, investigators opted against banging on each of those 100-plus doors. In a letter to Duplak dated March 5, 1976, World Investigation Service reported they had noticed a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall near the townhouse development, but "following Sunday services . . . no one resembling the photographs of Mrs. Fox was observed."
Duplak says there was little police could do. Fox's file refers to a Dartmouth police investigation running from August 1976 until Feb. 16, 1977. Police concluded Catherine and the children might have moved to the United States. That lead was checked, but the U.S. Consulate in Victoria reported Catherine Fox had not applied for an immigration visa. Fox even speculated that the family had changed its name.
In his 1977 affidavit, Duplak stated, "Our investigations show and I do verily believe that Catherine Fox and Coleen Heather Fox (and Daniel Patrick Fox) were transported by members of the Jehovah Witness sect . . . (and) are being harboured and hidden by members of the sect." Today, Duplak still thinks Catherine had help.
"Somebody had to be helping them, for whatever reason she might have left," he says. "It was impossible to trace. It was well done. . . . There were no mistakes."
Dennis Charland, public affairs director for the Witnesses' governing Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in Canada, says there would be nothing wrong with fellow Witnesses helping a woman who wants to leave her husband. Charland cannot comment on Fox's story, but says, "to suggest that (his family disappeared) because of the church, well, that's heresy. "We have nothing to hide," Charland said from Halton Hills, Ont.
In metro, community relations chairman Grant Avery said he does not know the circumstances of Fox's case.
"We keep those matters (of disfellowship and membership) very confidential, and the individuals, they know that as well," Avery says. During the three or four years following the disappearance, Fox also hired police officers in British Columbia and Ontario to do private sleuthing for him. He says he spent about $15,000 trying to find his children.
"Quite frankly, I would rather deal with the Mafia than deal with that organization," he says with bitterness. Fox moved to Newfoundland, trying to forget. He met Betty, whom he would later marry and have a son with. It was a new life. But when Fox returned to Nova Scotia around 1980, the tragedy hit him all over again.
"I folded up for about two months. There were just too many nights I sat in that old La-Z-Boy of mine and cried my eyes out," he says. "I don't care who the man is, unless he's made of granite, it literally tears you apart."
In 1983, he started divorce proceedings against Catherine. Not knowing her whereabouts, he had the papers delivered to her sister in P.E.I. He did not hear from Catherine, and the uncontested divorce was granted on June 4, 1984.
Fox stated in documents he did not know the children's whereabouts and did not request custody. Last Valentine's Day, his daughter Coleen telephoned out of the blue, and they had an awkward 15-minute conversation. He learned his ex-wife had committed suicide about three years earlier.
Coleen said she was calling from Western Canada, that she was married to an older man and had children. Fox assumed she was still a Witness. She promised to write and send photos of the grandchildren he has never seen. She has not contacted him since.
"There were a lot of things I would love to ask her. I don't know where all this fear comes from (on her part), because as children ages six and seven, when I came home, they'd come running to me with open arms, and we had a great rapport."
Fox has heard that his oldest son is in Alberta, is married and has children. He hasn't tried to contact him again, because "it would be to no avail. He won't speak to me." He has no idea what became of Daniel.

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 Print M Email
Witnesses cost me my family

Halifax Herald (Canada), February 13, 2000
By Susan LeBlanc
Church kept kids away - Waverley man
Arnold Fox has kept it bottled up for 25 years.
He doesn't want to appear crazy.
"People just don't believe that these things take place, and they do," says Fox, 67.
The retired Fall River man says the Jehovah's Witnesses had a role in the 1975 disappearance of his wife and two youngest children. Grief-stricken, Fox paid a private investigation company to pursue the family across Canada.
But he has never seen them again.
It's a startling tale, which Randy Duplak, his lawyer at the time, remembers to this day.
"It was an unbelievable scenario that people just wouldn't co-operate, denied knowledge, denied knowing where his wife and children were," says Duplak, now a provincial government lawyer.
"It was almost like a spy game you see on a TV movie. You didn't see it in real life."
Duplak says he had no reason to doubt Fox's theory, because Fox appeared credible and had been "an insider" - a Witness - until being evicted from the group, or disfellowshipped, two months before his family vanished. Fox says smoking was the reason he was given for being kicked out of the Witness congregation in Dartmouth's Woodlawn area. Smoking is still grounds for being disfellowshipped.
Fox had smoked "for a thousand years . . . played the fiddle and drank and all that good stuff" after running away from his Halifax home, and his Jehovah's Witness mother, at age 16.
Within five or six years he returned and, on May 11, 1957, he married Catherine Lilley Brecknell in Bethany United Church in Halifax.
Influenced by Fox's mother, Catherine converted to the Witnesses. Fox got involved "to a degree," though he says it was half-hearted.
Sadly, his wife suffered from mental illness and attempted suicide twice, he says. In 1965, she took their young son Terry and left Arnold, aided in hiding by Witnesses in Toronto, he says. He found her and, "after having to talk to about 16 bloody Witnesses," brought her home.
Afterwards, they lived what Fox calls "a roller-coaster ride." According to 1974-75 medical records contained in Fox's legal file, and which he has allowed Duplak to show to The Sunday Herald, the Foxes shared an "unhappy" and even "unhealthy" relationship.
Duplak says the medical records were obtained to satisfy lawyers that Catherine wasn't running because Fox was abusive.
In 1975, the couple was living on Bella Vista Drive in Dartmouth and had three children - Terry, 17, Daniel about eight, and Coleen, about six. "I'd had enough religion - and that's putting it in very short form - but the last thing I had said was, 'The children shall no longer attend the Kingdom Hall,' " Fox says.
He knew that made him vulnerable with the Witnesses, because as the father and an obvious doubter, he could try to override the group's ban on blood transfusions if his children were under medical care. Fox was summoned to the nearby Kingdom Hall to appear before a judicial committee. He went, knowing he was to be disfellowshipped. Using smoking as the grounds "was a ploy. They had to use something. . . . The point is, they couldn't have helped (my wife) away on a permanent basis
On Aug. 24, 1975, Fox returned home with Daniel and discovered his wife had fled with Coleen.
On Sept. 15, Daniel "was picked up at school, a ticket was put around his neck and he was put on board a flight to Toronto" to meet his mother, Fox says.
He says son Terry, a devout Witness who would soon marry, admitted that he and "others" had taken Daniel to the Halifax airport. This story is contained in Fox's affidavit dated Oct. 28, 1977, which was filed with the courts in the preliminary stages of Fox's child-custody application. The affidavit was also used to access telephone records in the search for the family. Fox later dropped the custody proceeding because he could not locate the children.
The Sunday Herald tracked down Terry Fox at his home in Lethbridge, Alta. He is still a Jehovah's Witness.
He is hesitant to discuss his father's allegations. But he does not deny Arnold Fox's version of events. He will only say his father is being unfair about the role of Jehovah's Witnesses in the affair.
"The family didn't ever split up over religious reasons," says Terry Fox, 41. "It was such a wild situation. It was so odd and all the rest of it. I don't feel able to elaborate and lay the rest of it on the table." Terry Fox says he last spoke with his father in 1977 and "left the ball in Dad's court" as far as future contact. "I haven't heard from him since." An ex-Witness supports Arnold Fox's story, saying he knew the elder who helped take Daniel to the airport. That elder has since died, he says.
By the time Daniel disappeared, Fox had already hired Duplak, a young lawyer then with the Dartmouth firm Weldon Misener and Covert. The matter was "the kidnapping of his child, Coleen Heather Fox," Duplak alleged in his Nov. 10, 1977, affidavit filed in the early stages of the child-custody application. Duplak squirrelled away Fox's file because the case was so intriguing. Inside are the photographs Fox supplied to help identify his family. One shows a smiling young girl and an older boy standing outside, barefoot and proudly holding a fish between them.
Another shows Catherine, with a beehive hairdo and glasses, posing with the two boys near a lake.
The third photo is a shot of a young Arnold, Catherine and two of the children huddling against the wind.
The loss of the children left Fox "almost out of my mind with grief and sadness." He also feared for their safety because he believed Catherine was suicidal.
He says he went immediately to police, who told him it wasn't a crime for a mother to take her children. (In 1982, the Criminal Code was amended to make it an offence for a parent to abduct his or her child, even when there is no court custody order.)
Fox says police were able to verify that the children were OK, but said they could do nothing further. Fox asked Duplak to hire private investigators, and World Investigation Service of Toronto was chosen. (The firm no longer appears in the telephone directory.)
From November 1975 until October 1976, investigators followed the family from Toronto to various addresses in Victoria, B.C., always coming up short. Fox had learned through a friend in airport security, who is now dead, that the limousine carrying Daniel had gone to a Toronto address, but this was a string of over 100 townhouses.
Because Fox wanted the search done quietly to keep the family from bolting, investigators opted against banging on each of those 100-plus doors. In a letter to Duplak dated March 5, 1976, World Investigation Service reported they had noticed a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall near the townhouse development, but "following Sunday services . . . no one resembling the photographs of Mrs. Fox was observed."
Duplak says there was little police could do. Fox's file refers to a Dartmouth police investigation running from August 1976 until Feb. 16, 1977. Police concluded Catherine and the children might have moved to the United States. That lead was checked, but the U.S. Consulate in Victoria reported Catherine Fox had not applied for an immigration visa. Fox even speculated that the family had changed its name.
In his 1977 affidavit, Duplak stated, "Our investigations show and I do verily believe that Catherine Fox and Coleen Heather Fox (and Daniel Patrick Fox) were transported by members of the Jehovah Witness sect . . . (and) are being harboured and hidden by members of the sect." Today, Duplak still thinks Catherine had help.
"Somebody had to be helping them, for whatever reason she might have left," he says. "It was impossible to trace. It was well done. . . . There were no mistakes."
Dennis Charland, public affairs director for the Witnesses' governing Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in Canada, says there would be nothing wrong with fellow Witnesses helping a woman who wants to leave her husband. Charland cannot comment on Fox's story, but says, "to suggest that (his family disappeared) because of the church, well, that's heresy. "We have nothing to hide," Charland said from Halton Hills, Ont.
In metro, community relations chairman Grant Avery said he does not know the circumstances of Fox's case.
"We keep those matters (of disfellowship and membership) very confidential, and the individuals, they know that as well," Avery says. During the three or four years following the disappearance, Fox also hired police officers in British Columbia and Ontario to do private sleuthing for him. He says he spent about $15,000 trying to find his children.
"Quite frankly, I would rather deal with the Mafia than deal with that organization," he says with bitterness. Fox moved to Newfoundland, trying to forget. He met Betty, whom he would later marry and have a son with. It was a new life. But when Fox returned to Nova Scotia around 1980, the tragedy hit him all over again.
"I folded up for about two months. There were just too many nights I sat in that old La-Z-Boy of mine and cried my eyes out," he says. "I don't care who the man is, unless he's made of granite, it literally tears you apart."
In 1983, he started divorce proceedings against Catherine. Not knowing her whereabouts, he had the papers delivered to her sister in P.E.I. He did not hear from Catherine, and the uncontested divorce was granted on June 4, 1984.
Fox stated in documents he did not know the children's whereabouts and did not request custody. Last Valentine's Day, his daughter Coleen telephoned out of the blue, and they had an awkward 15-minute conversation. He learned his ex-wife had committed suicide about three years earlier.
Coleen said she was calling from Western Canada, that she was married to an older man and had children. Fox assumed she was still a Witness. She promised to write and send photos of the grandchildren he has never seen. She has not contacted him since.
"There were a lot of things I would love to ask her. I don't know where all this fear comes from (on her part), because as children ages six and seven, when I came home, they'd come running to me with open arms, and we had a great rapport."
Fox has heard that his oldest son is in Alberta, is married and has children. He hasn't tried to contact him again, because "it would be to no avail. He won't speak to me." He has no idea what became of Daniel.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.




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 Print M Email
Mayoral hopeful left Jehovah's Witnesses
London Free Press, Canada/June 1, 2006
By Jonathan Sher
London's latest mayoral candidate spent years going door-to-door for a faith that bars members from voting or holding office, a religion -- Jehovah's Witnesses -- whose members, she says, now shun her.
So while most candidates announce how proud they'd be to serve citizens, when Cynthia Etheridge says it, it has an air of authenticity.
"Filing to run for mayor makes me so proud to be a Canadian," Etheridge said.
Etheridge, 39, was 18 when she married a Jehovah's Witness. Over time, she grew frustrated by what she describes as the subjugation of women by men.
Women couldn't give sermons in their place of worship. When she objected to only men handling family financial affairs, she says she was called a "Jezebel."
Four years ago, she left the Jehovah's Witnesses and her husband.
After she left, members of the faith shunned her, some going to the A&P where she worked to stare at her, one threatening to report her to Children's Aid, she said.
A mother of five, Etheridge works weekends at the Cherryhill Village Mall A&P and wakes weekdays at 3:30 a.m. to clean an Exeter Street firm.
She returns home before the first child arrives at 6:30 a.m. to her home day care.
Etheridge says she respects London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco "because she's a woman and she's strong."
DeCicco has been in politics for years, while Etheridge's only political experience was a failed run in 2003 for the Thames Valley District school board. But while she's a political novice, Etheridge is no stranger to the bread and butter of local campaigns.
"I did 17 years of door-to-door . . . I love talking to people. It's about the only thing I miss from being a Jehovah's Witness," she said.
Etheridge is getting help from a veteran of local campaigns, Stephen Orser, who's a candidate as well, in Ward 4.
The two had a child together but can't marry until her divorce, which has been prolonged, is final.
Etheridge wants to ban pesticides, restore weekly garbage pickup, eliminate board of control and allow police to impound vehicles of men seeking prostitutes and to screen, for crimes, anyone who goes door-to-door.
Also running for mayor are DeCicco, who's seeking a third term, and Arthur Majoor, a longtime military reservist who wants to shrink the scope of city government and reduce taxes.

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 Print M Email
Mayoral hopeful left Jehovah's Witnesses
London Free Press, Canada/June 1, 2006
By Jonathan Sher
London's latest mayoral candidate spent years going door-to-door for a faith that bars members from voting or holding office, a religion -- Jehovah's Witnesses -- whose members, she says, now shun her.
So while most candidates announce how proud they'd be to serve citizens, when Cynthia Etheridge says it, it has an air of authenticity.
"Filing to run for mayor makes me so proud to be a Canadian," Etheridge said.
Etheridge, 39, was 18 when she married a Jehovah's Witness. Over time, she grew frustrated by what she describes as the subjugation of women by men.
Women couldn't give sermons in their place of worship. When she objected to only men handling family financial affairs, she says she was called a "Jezebel."
Four years ago, she left the Jehovah's Witnesses and her husband.
After she left, members of the faith shunned her, some going to the A&P where she worked to stare at her, one threatening to report her to Children's Aid, she said.
A mother of five, Etheridge works weekends at the Cherryhill Village Mall A&P and wakes weekdays at 3:30 a.m. to clean an Exeter Street firm.
She returns home before the first child arrives at 6:30 a.m. to her home day care.
Etheridge says she respects London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco "because she's a woman and she's strong."
DeCicco has been in politics for years, while Etheridge's only political experience was a failed run in 2003 for the Thames Valley District school board. But while she's a political novice, Etheridge is no stranger to the bread and butter of local campaigns.
"I did 17 years of door-to-door . . . I love talking to people. It's about the only thing I miss from being a Jehovah's Witness," she said.
Etheridge is getting help from a veteran of local campaigns, Stephen Orser, who's a candidate as well, in Ward 4.
The two had a child together but can't marry until her divorce, which has been prolonged, is final.
Etheridge wants to ban pesticides, restore weekly garbage pickup, eliminate board of control and allow police to impound vehicles of men seeking prostitutes and to screen, for crimes, anyone who goes door-to-door.
Also running for mayor are DeCicco, who's seeking a third term, and Arthur Majoor, a longtime military reservist who wants to shrink the scope of city government and reduce taxes.

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 Print M Email
Air Force examines personal relationships of pilot who killed himself

Associated Press/November 18, 1998
By Patrick Graham
PHOENIX -- The father of an Air Force pilot who flew his jet into aColorado mountain denounced speculation Wednesday that his son struggledwithhis sexual identity before killing himself.
A report by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations,obtained bythe Tucson Citizen, examines in part the sexuality of Capt. Craig Buttonandchronicles interviews with his closest friends, most of them women. Thepsychological autopsy report also looks at Button's spiritual mindset.
The report seeks to shed some light on Button's personal life --whichwas questioned in a newspaper report late last year. The Citizen hadreportedthat the military was investigating the possibility Button may have beenhomosexual and distraught he could be expelled from the military.
"My wife and I made a pact following our son's death that we wouldnevertalk to the media," retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Button said in atelephone interview from his Long Island, N.Y. home.
But before ending the phone call, Button interjected: "They areprintinglies and speculation."
The Air Force report, however, never offers a definitive answer astowhythe 32-year-old Button took his life. The Citizen on Wednesday publishedpartsof the report.
"We conducted about 200 interviews during the investigation," saidMaj.Steve Murray, spokesman for the Office of Special Investigations. "Nocredibleevidence to support theories of homosexuality, financial difficulties,familyconflicts, militia ties or any other possible motivation has beendiscovered."
Murray said there are no plans to reopen the investigation. "(TheAirForce) thoroughly explored all potentially relevant areas of CaptainButton'slife in an effort to better understand the circumstances which may havecontributed to this event," he added.
Button's A-10 attack jet, which carried four 500-pound bombs fromDavis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, broke formation during a trainingmissionwith two other planes April 2, 1997. For three hours he flew an erratic500-mile course that ended when he crashed into the 13,000-foot GoldDustPeaknear Eagle, Colo.
The report notes a phone call the night before Button's exercisewithlive bombs on the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Ranger near Gila Bend. TheApril1 call appeared to have upset Button, who refused to discuss it with hisroommate, the newspaper said.
"Something about the last few days and troubling telephone callswasenormously upsetting to him," the report said. "We may never know why hewasin such much turmoil or with whom he talked."
The report makes reference to homosexual allegations and anewspaperstory about a call from a man who claimed to be Button's gay lover. Thecallhad been made just days before Button's disappearance.
The report also focuses on Button's reputed unrequited love with awomanin the Air Force he met as an ROTC cadet at the New York Institute ofTechnology, where he graduated in 1990, the newspaper said.
Though Button and the woman were stationed at different Air Forcebases,the two kept in contact through letters in the months after a 1991 skitrip,the report said.
But the woman said she never considered having a monogamousrelationshipwith Button.
Button called the woman the afternoon before his final flight, butshehad to cut the conversation short because she was at work, the reportsaid.
The final area the report looks into is Button's religious beliefsandpossible conflicts with his job as a fighter pilot. His mother is adevoutJehovah's Witness opposed to killing, the newspaper said.
His parents were in Tucson days before his death. They toldinvestigators they had talked with their son about the end of the world.Button then asked for more information on the subject.
Investigators found in Button's bed-stand the Bible and a religiouspamphlet, which described "God asking a father to sacrifice his only sononaburning pyre at the side of a mountain," the report said.
"Capt. Craig Button intended to die or be rescued by divineinterventionof God at the last possible moment," the report said. "Did thatstruggle tofree himself of his mother's religious beliefs collapse at the moment oftruth? Here he was -- the next step in the mission was to become afull-fledged 'bomb-dropping people killer.' Until now, flying was an art,not akilling science."

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 Print M Email
Air Force examines personal relationships of pilot who killed himself

Associated Press/November 18, 1998
By Patrick Graham
PHOENIX -- The father of an Air Force pilot who flew his jet into aColorado mountain denounced speculation Wednesday that his son struggledwithhis sexual identity before killing himself.
A report by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations,obtained bythe Tucson Citizen, examines in part the sexuality of Capt. Craig Buttonandchronicles interviews with his closest friends, most of them women. Thepsychological autopsy report also looks at Button's spiritual mindset.
The report seeks to shed some light on Button's personal life --whichwas questioned in a newspaper report late last year. The Citizen hadreportedthat the military was investigating the possibility Button may have beenhomosexual and distraught he could be expelled from the military.
"My wife and I made a pact following our son's death that we wouldnevertalk to the media," retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Button said in atelephone interview from his Long Island, N.Y. home.
But before ending the phone call, Button interjected: "They areprintinglies and speculation."
The Air Force report, however, never offers a definitive answer astowhythe 32-year-old Button took his life. The Citizen on Wednesday publishedpartsof the report.
"We conducted about 200 interviews during the investigation," saidMaj.Steve Murray, spokesman for the Office of Special Investigations. "Nocredibleevidence to support theories of homosexuality, financial difficulties,familyconflicts, militia ties or any other possible motivation has beendiscovered."
Murray said there are no plans to reopen the investigation. "(TheAirForce) thoroughly explored all potentially relevant areas of CaptainButton'slife in an effort to better understand the circumstances which may havecontributed to this event," he added.
Button's A-10 attack jet, which carried four 500-pound bombs fromDavis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, broke formation during a trainingmissionwith two other planes April 2, 1997. For three hours he flew an erratic500-mile course that ended when he crashed into the 13,000-foot GoldDustPeaknear Eagle, Colo.
The report notes a phone call the night before Button's exercisewithlive bombs on the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Ranger near Gila Bend. TheApril1 call appeared to have upset Button, who refused to discuss it with hisroommate, the newspaper said.
"Something about the last few days and troubling telephone callswasenormously upsetting to him," the report said. "We may never know why hewasin such much turmoil or with whom he talked."
The report makes reference to homosexual allegations and anewspaperstory about a call from a man who claimed to be Button's gay lover. Thecallhad been made just days before Button's disappearance.
The report also focuses on Button's reputed unrequited love with awomanin the Air Force he met as an ROTC cadet at the New York Institute ofTechnology, where he graduated in 1990, the newspaper said.
Though Button and the woman were stationed at different Air Forcebases,the two kept in contact through letters in the months after a 1991 skitrip,the report said.
But the woman said she never considered having a monogamousrelationshipwith Button.
Button called the woman the afternoon before his final flight, butshehad to cut the conversation short because she was at work, the reportsaid.
The final area the report looks into is Button's religious beliefsandpossible conflicts with his job as a fighter pilot. His mother is adevoutJehovah's Witness opposed to killing, the newspaper said.
His parents were in Tucson days before his death. They toldinvestigators they had talked with their son about the end of the world.Button then asked for more information on the subject.
Investigators found in Button's bed-stand the Bible and a religiouspamphlet, which described "God asking a father to sacrifice his only sononaburning pyre at the side of a mountain," the report said.
"Capt. Craig Button intended to die or be rescued by divineinterventionof God at the last possible moment," the report said. "Did thatstruggle tofree himself of his mother's religious beliefs collapse at the moment oftruth? Here he was -- the next step in the mission was to become afull-fledged 'bomb-dropping people killer.' Until now, flying was an art,not akilling science."

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.





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 Print M Email
Mother Seeks Help to Get Girl Back, Accusation of Brain-Washing Leveled
Watertown Daily Times (NY)/March 19, 1991
 By Andy Leahy
GOUVERNEUR - Sixteen-year-old Ginger S. Griggs of Edwards went to church as usual Sunday morning but decided against returning home afterward, sending a friend and an escort from the St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Department to gather some of her belongings that afternoon.

Her mother, Gail S. Griggs, is afraid she'll never see or talk to her daughter again.

Separating mother and daughter is a state law allowing youths to choose to live on their own at age 16; the Gouverneur congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses; and the girl's fiance, Mark Y. Thomas of Edwards, a 22-year-old fellow church member.

Gail Griggs and her mother-in-law, Marjorie Bevins - who both recently "disassociated" themselves from the Jehovah's Witnesses - charge that the religious group is a cult exercising mind control over Ginger Griggs and its four million members worldwide.

'Mind Control'

"My kid is having her mind controlled, and because she's 16 I can't do a thing about it," Gail Griggs said. "She isn't acting on her own reasoning. She's doing what they tell her because she loves Mark."

An elder with the Gouverneur congregation, Bernard E. Sloan of Edwards, said Mrs. Griggs' charges of church control over her daughter are not true. "It's a sad situation."

Mr. Sloan said. "The girl is making her own choices and there has been no direction from the body of elders.

It's not a religious decision. It's from the legal authorities that she's getting her direction from."

"There have been accusations of brain-washing, but all the Jehovah's Witnesses do is rigid study of the Scriptures," Mr. Sloan said. "There is no such thing as mind control."

The family's relationship with the Gouverneur congregation, whose place of worship, Kingdom Hall, is on Route 58 in Hailesboro, began about three years ago, shortly after Gail and Garry S. Griggs separated and she moved to Edwards and she moved to Edwards with her three daughters from New Jersey.

Psychologically Weak

Her moth-in-law, Mrs. Bevins, and some other members of her extended family were involved with the group, and Gail Griggs and she was at the time physically and psychologically weak from a drug addiction, ill health and her separation.

After a lengthy period of study, she joined Ginger and another daughter as initiated members last May, but she was skeptical and bothered from the beginning by what she considered to be inconsistencies in the group's teachings.

Smoking by members, for instance, is forbidden, she said. Yet she was a closet smoker when elders baptized her "as told to do so by Jehovah, but Jehovah knows all things. That's God."

The rift between mother and daughter opened on March 6, Mrs. Griggs said, in the middle of cleanup from the north country's ice storm, when Mrs. Griggs formally quit the church in response to her doubts and pressure from congregation members to give consent to her daughter's marriage, a legal requirement in New York state for those under 18.

Engaged Three Months

Ginger Griggs and Mr. Thomas had been engaged for three months, and members said the book of the Watch Tower, Bible and Tract Society - as the Brooklyn based Jehovah's Witnesses organization is formally known - suggested a three-to-six month engagement, Mrs. Griggs said.

On March 6, shortly after she had a letter delivered to an elder announcing her own "disassociation" from the church, Mrs. Bevins and her three Griggs granddaughters prepared to travel to Bayville, N.J., to visit Garry Griggs and other relatives.

Hearing of the trip, Mr. Thomas arrived with his cousin, blocked the car in the driveway, and demanded to talk to his fiance, according to Mrs. Griggs.

"If you come back from New Jersey and you're not a Jehovah's Witness, I want my ring back.' that's what he said to her," Mrs. Griggs said.

The confrontation in the driveway was also carried out along Route 58 toward Gouverneur, according to Mrs. Bevins, who said Mr. Thomas and his cousin drove alongside and in front of her vehicle, succeeding in stopping the car near the hamlet of Fowler.

Mr. Thomas was ultimately allowed to accompany the group to New Jersey, Mrs. Bevins said, adding that was the only way she could convince him the five-day trip was not designed to permanently separate the two.

Asked the Father

In New Jersey, Mrs. Bevins said, Ginger Griggs and Mr. Thomas won a private audience with Garry Griggs and asked him to authorize his daughter's marriage. After considering it overnight, however, he refused, she said.

Since Sunday, Mrs. Griggs and family members have been appealing for help from groups run by former Jehovah's Witnesses, experts on cults, and St. Lawrence County legal and social-service agencies.

Church teachings call for total social ostracism of "dissociated" or "disfellowshipped" members, Gail Griggs said, adding the rule is even enforced within families.

"I am dead in their eyes because I've turned my back on God," she said.

Mrs. Bevins said she had a conversation with her granddaughter from the doorstep outside the Fowler home of Jehovah's Witness Lorraine W. Taylor, where Ginger Griggs said she left home because her "spirituality was being weakened," according to Mrs. Bevins.

Reached Monday night, Mr. Taylor said he was "trying to stay clear of everything so I'm not accused of anything," but he declined to respond to the Griggs family's charges

Ginger Griggs and Ms. Taylor could not be reached for comment.



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 Print M Email
Mother Seeks Help to Get Girl Back, Accusation of Brain-Washing Leveled
Watertown Daily Times (NY)/March 19, 1991
 By Andy Leahy
GOUVERNEUR - Sixteen-year-old Ginger S. Griggs of Edwards went to church as usual Sunday morning but decided against returning home afterward, sending a friend and an escort from the St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Department to gather some of her belongings that afternoon.

Her mother, Gail S. Griggs, is afraid she'll never see or talk to her daughter again.

Separating mother and daughter is a state law allowing youths to choose to live on their own at age 16; the Gouverneur congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses; and the girl's fiance, Mark Y. Thomas of Edwards, a 22-year-old fellow church member.

Gail Griggs and her mother-in-law, Marjorie Bevins - who both recently "disassociated" themselves from the Jehovah's Witnesses - charge that the religious group is a cult exercising mind control over Ginger Griggs and its four million members worldwide.

'Mind Control'

"My kid is having her mind controlled, and because she's 16 I can't do a thing about it," Gail Griggs said. "She isn't acting on her own reasoning. She's doing what they tell her because she loves Mark."

An elder with the Gouverneur congregation, Bernard E. Sloan of Edwards, said Mrs. Griggs' charges of church control over her daughter are not true. "It's a sad situation."

Mr. Sloan said. "The girl is making her own choices and there has been no direction from the body of elders.

It's not a religious decision. It's from the legal authorities that she's getting her direction from."

"There have been accusations of brain-washing, but all the Jehovah's Witnesses do is rigid study of the Scriptures," Mr. Sloan said. "There is no such thing as mind control."

The family's relationship with the Gouverneur congregation, whose place of worship, Kingdom Hall, is on Route 58 in Hailesboro, began about three years ago, shortly after Gail and Garry S. Griggs separated and she moved to Edwards and she moved to Edwards with her three daughters from New Jersey.

Psychologically Weak

Her moth-in-law, Mrs. Bevins, and some other members of her extended family were involved with the group, and Gail Griggs and she was at the time physically and psychologically weak from a drug addiction, ill health and her separation.

After a lengthy period of study, she joined Ginger and another daughter as initiated members last May, but she was skeptical and bothered from the beginning by what she considered to be inconsistencies in the group's teachings.

Smoking by members, for instance, is forbidden, she said. Yet she was a closet smoker when elders baptized her "as told to do so by Jehovah, but Jehovah knows all things. That's God."

The rift between mother and daughter opened on March 6, Mrs. Griggs said, in the middle of cleanup from the north country's ice storm, when Mrs. Griggs formally quit the church in response to her doubts and pressure from congregation members to give consent to her daughter's marriage, a legal requirement in New York state for those under 18.

Engaged Three Months

Ginger Griggs and Mr. Thomas had been engaged for three months, and members said the book of the Watch Tower, Bible and Tract Society - as the Brooklyn based Jehovah's Witnesses organization is formally known - suggested a three-to-six month engagement, Mrs. Griggs said.

On March 6, shortly after she had a letter delivered to an elder announcing her own "disassociation" from the church, Mrs. Bevins and her three Griggs granddaughters prepared to travel to Bayville, N.J., to visit Garry Griggs and other relatives.

Hearing of the trip, Mr. Thomas arrived with his cousin, blocked the car in the driveway, and demanded to talk to his fiance, according to Mrs. Griggs.

"If you come back from New Jersey and you're not a Jehovah's Witness, I want my ring back.' that's what he said to her," Mrs. Griggs said.

The confrontation in the driveway was also carried out along Route 58 toward Gouverneur, according to Mrs. Bevins, who said Mr. Thomas and his cousin drove alongside and in front of her vehicle, succeeding in stopping the car near the hamlet of Fowler.

Mr. Thomas was ultimately allowed to accompany the group to New Jersey, Mrs. Bevins said, adding that was the only way she could convince him the five-day trip was not designed to permanently separate the two.

Asked the Father

In New Jersey, Mrs. Bevins said, Ginger Griggs and Mr. Thomas won a private audience with Garry Griggs and asked him to authorize his daughter's marriage. After considering it overnight, however, he refused, she said.

Since Sunday, Mrs. Griggs and family members have been appealing for help from groups run by former Jehovah's Witnesses, experts on cults, and St. Lawrence County legal and social-service agencies.

Church teachings call for total social ostracism of "dissociated" or "disfellowshipped" members, Gail Griggs said, adding the rule is even enforced within families.

"I am dead in their eyes because I've turned my back on God," she said.

Mrs. Bevins said she had a conversation with her granddaughter from the doorstep outside the Fowler home of Jehovah's Witness Lorraine W. Taylor, where Ginger Griggs said she left home because her "spirituality was being weakened," according to Mrs. Bevins.

Reached Monday night, Mr. Taylor said he was "trying to stay clear of everything so I'm not accused of anything," but he declined to respond to the Griggs family's charges

Ginger Griggs and Ms. Taylor could not be reached for comment.



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JW Response: Man who killed parents "not, never has been" a Jehovah's Witness
Armenia Now/November 17, 2010
By Gayane Mkrtchyan

Armenia's Jehovah's Witness officials are vehemently protesting the linkage of a recent patricide in Armenia with the religious group after a barrage of criticism and disparaging reports were spread in the local media.
An Armenia representative of Jehovah's Witness - viewed skeptically as a cult or a sect, but themselves claiming to adhere truly to the Bible and best known for door-to-door proselytizing - has strongly denied that the 23-year-old man who killed his two parents in the town of Sevan on November 8 is or has ever been a member of the organization (which claims 10,500 members and 24,000 followers in Armenia).
The man, Arman Torosyan, allegedly said he committed the double murder "fulfilling the commandment of Jehovah."
The case - and especially the alleged link of the suspected criminal with Jehovah's Witnesses - caused an uproar in Armenia and was widely covered by the local media, with follow-up TV talk shows, teleconferences, press conferences of psychologists, sociologists, clergy and generally "people concerned about the influence of decadent cults" in Armenia staged in its wake.
ArmeniaNow also reported news on the suspected double murder that within a few days attracted scores of comments (critical or supportive of Jehovah's Witnesses). That report quickly became the most "read, commented or emailed" story on the current website, revealing the controversy that exists around the issue.
In a rare letter sent to Armenian media, and ArmeniaNow in particular, on Tuesday the Jehovah's Witnesses organization said the man suspected of murdering his parents "is not a Jehovah's Witness, has never been one and has nothing to do with Jehovah's Witnesses."
The letter signed by the head of the local JW Board Chairman H. Keshishyan further stresses that "Jehovah's Witnesses respect their parents, value life, therefore for them depriving another person of his or her life or commit suicide is an unacceptable idea. And they also respect other people's rights and dignity."
Soon after the reports came about the crime in Sevan Armenia's Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan urged media to stop presenting the suspect as a Jehovah's witness.
The Ombudsman's office said the details of the case would be clear only after the completion of the ongoing investigation.
Earlier, media picked up unverified claims and reports quoting Torosyan's neighbors as saying he was known as a "Jehovah's Witness" and constantly had quarrels with his parents - Khachik Torosyan, 64, and Marietta Torosyan, 57.
The letter disseminated by the Jehovah's Witnesses organization also particularly stresses that they are not a sect, but are "a Christian religious organization registered in the Republic of Armenia on the state level."
While the church is constitutionally separated from the state in Armenia, the country's Basic Law still recognizes the "exceptional role of the Armenian Apostolic Church as national Church in the Armenian people's spiritual life, development of national culture and preservation of national identity."
The Church, meanwhile, regards Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious groups registered in Armenia as sects.
Surb Hovhannes (St. John) Church priest Ter Shmavon Ghevondyan says in any country where there is a traditional church, other religious organizations are considered to be sects.
"A sect is a sect no matter how hard you try not to call it one. They act like petty looters during a disaster, looters who want to get as much as they can during the time of trouble," he says.
There are no verified data on the number of people who adhere to religious denominations other than Armenian Orthodox Christian in Armenia. Some sociologists in recent days have claimed the number of such people in Armenia could be as high as hundreds of thousands.

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JW Response: Man who killed parents "not, never has been" a Jehovah's Witness
Armenia Now/November 17, 2010
By Gayane Mkrtchyan

Armenia's Jehovah's Witness officials are vehemently protesting the linkage of a recent patricide in Armenia with the religious group after a barrage of criticism and disparaging reports were spread in the local media.
An Armenia representative of Jehovah's Witness - viewed skeptically as a cult or a sect, but themselves claiming to adhere truly to the Bible and best known for door-to-door proselytizing - has strongly denied that the 23-year-old man who killed his two parents in the town of Sevan on November 8 is or has ever been a member of the organization (which claims 10,500 members and 24,000 followers in Armenia).
The man, Arman Torosyan, allegedly said he committed the double murder "fulfilling the commandment of Jehovah."
The case - and especially the alleged link of the suspected criminal with Jehovah's Witnesses - caused an uproar in Armenia and was widely covered by the local media, with follow-up TV talk shows, teleconferences, press conferences of psychologists, sociologists, clergy and generally "people concerned about the influence of decadent cults" in Armenia staged in its wake.
ArmeniaNow also reported news on the suspected double murder that within a few days attracted scores of comments (critical or supportive of Jehovah's Witnesses). That report quickly became the most "read, commented or emailed" story on the current website, revealing the controversy that exists around the issue.
In a rare letter sent to Armenian media, and ArmeniaNow in particular, on Tuesday the Jehovah's Witnesses organization said the man suspected of murdering his parents "is not a Jehovah's Witness, has never been one and has nothing to do with Jehovah's Witnesses."
The letter signed by the head of the local JW Board Chairman H. Keshishyan further stresses that "Jehovah's Witnesses respect their parents, value life, therefore for them depriving another person of his or her life or commit suicide is an unacceptable idea. And they also respect other people's rights and dignity."
Soon after the reports came about the crime in Sevan Armenia's Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan urged media to stop presenting the suspect as a Jehovah's witness.
The Ombudsman's office said the details of the case would be clear only after the completion of the ongoing investigation.
Earlier, media picked up unverified claims and reports quoting Torosyan's neighbors as saying he was known as a "Jehovah's Witness" and constantly had quarrels with his parents - Khachik Torosyan, 64, and Marietta Torosyan, 57.
The letter disseminated by the Jehovah's Witnesses organization also particularly stresses that they are not a sect, but are "a Christian religious organization registered in the Republic of Armenia on the state level."
While the church is constitutionally separated from the state in Armenia, the country's Basic Law still recognizes the "exceptional role of the Armenian Apostolic Church as national Church in the Armenian people's spiritual life, development of national culture and preservation of national identity."
The Church, meanwhile, regards Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious groups registered in Armenia as sects.
Surb Hovhannes (St. John) Church priest Ter Shmavon Ghevondyan says in any country where there is a traditional church, other religious organizations are considered to be sects.
"A sect is a sect no matter how hard you try not to call it one. They act like petty looters during a disaster, looters who want to get as much as they can during the time of trouble," he says.
There are no verified data on the number of people who adhere to religious denominations other than Armenian Orthodox Christian in Armenia. Some sociologists in recent days have claimed the number of such people in Armenia could be as high as hundreds of thousands.

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Murder in God's Name: Son says he killed parents according to Jehovah's command
Armenia Now/November 11, 2010
By Gayane Mkrtchyan

The murder of two parents by their own son, who is a member of Jehovah's Witnesses sect, caused heated public discussions in Armenia.
Arman Torosyan, 23, killed his parents - 64-year-old Khachik Torosyan and 57-year-old Marietta Torosyan in their apartment in Sevan, as he says, "fulfilling the commandment of Jehovah."
A criminal case was filed according to the Article of the Criminal Code of Armenia ("murder of two or more people") in Sevan.
The murderer must undergo a psychiatric examination; meanwhile a new wave of complaints against sects and the negative impact of their activities upon people rose in Yerevan.
'Yerevan-Moscow-Tbilisi-Kiev' teleconference, held on Wednesday, discussed the issue of the real threats sects carry, and the means of struggle against them.
According to Alexander Amaryan, head of Center for Rehabilitation and Assistance to Victims of Destructive Cults, the number of people involved in sects in Armenia reaches 368,000.
"The main goal of sectarian organizations is the 'reprocessing' of people. There are no corresponding specialists in Armenia; there are no independent centers, which may carry out a struggle against preachers," Amaryan says.
Psychiatrist Aram Hovsepyan, technical coordinator of the Armenian Psychiatric Association, says that murder and suicide cases, committed under the influence of sects, increases (even though there are no official data).
"Such patients develop a kind of disorder of mental dependency upon other people," Hovsepyan says. "We have acute psychotic disorders, which lead people to unconscious aggressive actions."

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Murder in God's Name: Son says he killed parents according to Jehovah's command
Armenia Now/November 11, 2010
By Gayane Mkrtchyan

The murder of two parents by their own son, who is a member of Jehovah's Witnesses sect, caused heated public discussions in Armenia.
Arman Torosyan, 23, killed his parents - 64-year-old Khachik Torosyan and 57-year-old Marietta Torosyan in their apartment in Sevan, as he says, "fulfilling the commandment of Jehovah."
A criminal case was filed according to the Article of the Criminal Code of Armenia ("murder of two or more people") in Sevan.
The murderer must undergo a psychiatric examination; meanwhile a new wave of complaints against sects and the negative impact of their activities upon people rose in Yerevan.
'Yerevan-Moscow-Tbilisi-Kiev' teleconference, held on Wednesday, discussed the issue of the real threats sects carry, and the means of struggle against them.
According to Alexander Amaryan, head of Center for Rehabilitation and Assistance to Victims of Destructive Cults, the number of people involved in sects in Armenia reaches 368,000.
"The main goal of sectarian organizations is the 'reprocessing' of people. There are no corresponding specialists in Armenia; there are no independent centers, which may carry out a struggle against preachers," Amaryan says.
Psychiatrist Aram Hovsepyan, technical coordinator of the Armenian Psychiatric Association, says that murder and suicide cases, committed under the influence of sects, increases (even though there are no official data).
"Such patients develop a kind of disorder of mental dependency upon other people," Hovsepyan says. "We have acute psychotic disorders, which lead people to unconscious aggressive actions."

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.
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Awkward Armageddon: Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk Share
San Francisco Weekly/February 1, 2010
By Jonathan Kiefer

If Armageddon does come, God probably will smite Tony DuShane - and in the meantime, the worshippers in DuShane's family probably will shun him. That's because the San Francisco writer and radio host became a Jehovah's Witness at age 3, but later became "inactive" and has now written the definitive novel of the 1980s Bay Area horny, anxious, teenaged Jehovah's Witness experience.
To those of us not privileged with the power to smite or shun DuShane, the essence of his book might seem at first a touch parochial, but in fact Confessions of a Jesus Jerk trades in universal themes with grace and humor and great empathy. It is also, for now at least, the funniest and most charming novel of the 1980s Bay Area horny, anxious, teenaged Jehovah's Witness experience.
The title sets the tone, demonstrating right up front why DuShane's company will be more pleasant than that of an unwelcome visitor proselytizing in your doorway. His droll narrator and presumed avatar of his younger self is Gabe Dagsland, who is here to tell you that if you ever wondered whether high school might actually be easier with the certainty that the world will end before you graduate, the answer is "hell, no."
Gabe gets through his days, barely, by wondering with all seriousness whether he's for God or for Satan. He's just trying not to drown in a river of impure thoughts or succumb to the elder-implanted "condemnation entourage" he carries around in his mind. At school, he must constantly field questions, or take abuse, from his uneasy non-Witness classmates, the so-called "worldlies," then on weekends find himself in the strange position of praying he won't run into them while going door-to-door.
For various reasons, Gabe's parents aren't much help, and his Witness pals have problems of their own. He doesn't like the one girl who is interested in him, and can't even focus on which of six gazillion appetizing others he wants the most. Poor Gabe is so hormonally stoked that even Bugs Bunny in a dress will set him off. At least his worldly yet conflicted Uncle Jeff offers halfway decent advice, but of course some things are easier said than done, especially with God watching.
DuShane's potentially controversial content should not distract from his promise as a stylist. The blessing and curse of abundant single-sentence paragraphs is that they can seem like one-liners. The curse comes when the voice gets self-enchanted or intrusive, and taxes the reader's good graces. But DuShane doesn't have these problems. He has the blessing, which comes when an author channels his quick wit into the development of character, establishes a unity of tone, and moves his story forward swiftly. The one-liners here seem considered and correct, just right for delineating the urgent abbreviations of the adolescent mind. "We'd have candlelight dinners and sex," Gabe hopes on one occasion. "Jesus turned water into wine and an organization of Jehovah's Witnesses into borderline alcoholics," he observes on another. And when DuShane gets on a roll, which happens often, he's hilarious.
He makes short work of showing how religiosity can compound adolescent social and sexual frustrations instead of ameliorating them. But DuShane seems uninterested in the vengeance of retrospective judgment. Confessions of a Jesus Jerk is, after all, a familiar kind of coming-of-age tale. What makes it worth the risk of excommunication and smiting is the godly virtue of its message: that adolescence can be its own Armageddon, and that truth and compassion aren't mutually exclusive.

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 Print M Email
Awkward Armageddon: Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk Share
San Francisco Weekly/February 1, 2010
By Jonathan Kiefer

If Armageddon does come, God probably will smite Tony DuShane - and in the meantime, the worshippers in DuShane's family probably will shun him. That's because the San Francisco writer and radio host became a Jehovah's Witness at age 3, but later became "inactive" and has now written the definitive novel of the 1980s Bay Area horny, anxious, teenaged Jehovah's Witness experience.
To those of us not privileged with the power to smite or shun DuShane, the essence of his book might seem at first a touch parochial, but in fact Confessions of a Jesus Jerk trades in universal themes with grace and humor and great empathy. It is also, for now at least, the funniest and most charming novel of the 1980s Bay Area horny, anxious, teenaged Jehovah's Witness experience.
The title sets the tone, demonstrating right up front why DuShane's company will be more pleasant than that of an unwelcome visitor proselytizing in your doorway. His droll narrator and presumed avatar of his younger self is Gabe Dagsland, who is here to tell you that if you ever wondered whether high school might actually be easier with the certainty that the world will end before you graduate, the answer is "hell, no."
Gabe gets through his days, barely, by wondering with all seriousness whether he's for God or for Satan. He's just trying not to drown in a river of impure thoughts or succumb to the elder-implanted "condemnation entourage" he carries around in his mind. At school, he must constantly field questions, or take abuse, from his uneasy non-Witness classmates, the so-called "worldlies," then on weekends find himself in the strange position of praying he won't run into them while going door-to-door.
For various reasons, Gabe's parents aren't much help, and his Witness pals have problems of their own. He doesn't like the one girl who is interested in him, and can't even focus on which of six gazillion appetizing others he wants the most. Poor Gabe is so hormonally stoked that even Bugs Bunny in a dress will set him off. At least his worldly yet conflicted Uncle Jeff offers halfway decent advice, but of course some things are easier said than done, especially with God watching.
DuShane's potentially controversial content should not distract from his promise as a stylist. The blessing and curse of abundant single-sentence paragraphs is that they can seem like one-liners. The curse comes when the voice gets self-enchanted or intrusive, and taxes the reader's good graces. But DuShane doesn't have these problems. He has the blessing, which comes when an author channels his quick wit into the development of character, establishes a unity of tone, and moves his story forward swiftly. The one-liners here seem considered and correct, just right for delineating the urgent abbreviations of the adolescent mind. "We'd have candlelight dinners and sex," Gabe hopes on one occasion. "Jesus turned water into wine and an organization of Jehovah's Witnesses into borderline alcoholics," he observes on another. And when DuShane gets on a roll, which happens often, he's hilarious.
He makes short work of showing how religiosity can compound adolescent social and sexual frustrations instead of ameliorating them. But DuShane seems uninterested in the vengeance of retrospective judgment. Confessions of a Jesus Jerk is, after all, a familiar kind of coming-of-age tale. What makes it worth the risk of excommunication and smiting is the godly virtue of its message: that adolescence can be its own Armageddon, and that truth and compassion aren't mutually exclusive.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.
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Playful approach lightens account of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness
The Providence Journal/April 7, 2009
By Bryan Rourke

Kyria Abrahams, author of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, says her Jehovah's Witness religious instruction involved "more people directing me than a NASA shuttle launch."
What Kyria Abrahams says is serious, but how she says it is funny: I'm Perfect, You're Doomed.
The new memoir, published by Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster, looks back at the author's life growing up in Pawtucket, which gets a bit of razzing. But the bulk of the book is about being a Jehovah's Witness.
"People don't know anything about it," said Abrahams in an interview. "And what they know is wrong: ‘So, you can't drink tea, right?' No, that's Mormon. People didn't have information."
Abrahams, 35, now living in New York, decided to provide that information through a personal account, and a personal catharsis.
"The catharsis is in the book you don't see. When I started writing essays, they were vehement and angry. I got that out of my system. Then I could sit down and write the story in a way that people could actually enjoy reading."
The story is playfully and satirically told. It moves chronologically from when Abrahams is 8 and receiving religious instruction, which she notes sometimes involved "more people directing me than a NASA shuttle launch."
The story ends when she's 19, having left home, school and church, becoming an apostate - an anti-Jehovah's Witness whom Jehovah's Witnesses, by church tenet, are to avoid.
Abrahams says she wrote her book for two reasons: "To redeem myself for the things I had done. I wanted to explain to the world why"; and to help other Jehovah's Witnesses.
"If people are thinking about leaving but are afraid to leave, thinking their life would be hell ... yes, it would be hell for a little while. But I'm alive and standing and enjoying my life now."
Two weeks ago, Abrahams stood in the Borders book store at Providence Place. She gave a reading. And to her surprise, she says, her estranged mother showed up and told a store employee that what Abrahams reports in the book about her upbringing isn't true.
After the reading, Abrahams says, she and her mother spoke briefly.
"We hugged and that was it. She left."
Abrahams' mother did not respond to our phone message requesting comment.
The life of a Jehovah's Witness, Abrahams says, is one of isolation from society, with little contact and exposure to nonmembers. Abrahams, however, fondly remembers having one childhood friend who wasn't a Jehovah's Witness.
"Samantha was like a free HBO trial that the cable company forgot to shut off after a week," Abrahams writes. "My parents reserved the right to terminate her service without warning, so I had to enjoy her while she lasted."
Jehovah's Witnesses, according to Abrahams and the church Web site, don't participate in patriotism or nationalism, such as saluting a flag; they don't acknowledge secular holidays; and they don't accept blood transfusions.
What Jehovah's Witnesses do accept is the principle of proselytizing, a door-to-door campaign, which Abrahams says is not particularly fruitful.
"Sure, getting doors slammed in your face is a great adrenaline rush, but most people don't even open their doors wide enough to slam them," Abrahams writes. "Most often we'd see the rustle of a curtain."
In doing door-to-door proselytizing, Abrahams made some sociological observations of Rhode Island. Affluent towns, such as Lincoln, weren't so receptive to solicitations. "They had finished basements and therefore very little need for living eternally in paradise."
But in poor places, such as Central Falls, "residents were not blinded by satisfaction with their lives and actually wanted the world to change."
In her book, Abrahams talks about all kinds of characters she encountered as a Jehovah's Witness. There was the church member who ate several cloves of garlic a day.
"Like all factories, Sister Blanche belched. She became increasingly huffy with each passing eruption. ‘Ex-cuse me!' she'd exclaim indignantly, as if she'd had just about enough of these shenanigans."
And there was Abrahams' partner in door-to-door proselytizing who regularly and unpredictably vomited.
"My partner stood up, wiping her mouth. Then she lowered herself back into the foliage, leaving only the unmistakable sound of someone puking in an irate stranger's bushes."
Abrahams occasionally performs as a stand-up comic in New York. Initially she thought her Jehovah's Witness history would lend itself to that.
"Every time I tried to tell a joke, there was so much back story that people wouldn't get. A book is the only way to tell the story."
So three years ago, Abrahams began the process - finding an agent and a publisher, and doing the writing. Abrahams, who never graduated from high school, wrote in her free time from her job as a Web producer and editor.
"When I go to an interview, no one thinks I don't have a high school diploma. I don't mention it. So it's fine."
Abrahams says her strict and repressed life as a Jehovah's Witness took a toll on her, leading her to rebellion and depression, a suicide attempt and a mental breakdown, alcohol and drugs, and two early escapist marriages.
"Jehovah's Witnesses spend a lot of time explaining to people why they're not a cult," Abrahams says. "That should be a sign that they're a cult."

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Playful approach lightens account of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness
The Providence Journal/April 7, 2009
By Bryan Rourke

Kyria Abrahams, author of I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, says her Jehovah's Witness religious instruction involved "more people directing me than a NASA shuttle launch."
What Kyria Abrahams says is serious, but how she says it is funny: I'm Perfect, You're Doomed.
The new memoir, published by Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster, looks back at the author's life growing up in Pawtucket, which gets a bit of razzing. But the bulk of the book is about being a Jehovah's Witness.
"People don't know anything about it," said Abrahams in an interview. "And what they know is wrong: ‘So, you can't drink tea, right?' No, that's Mormon. People didn't have information."
Abrahams, 35, now living in New York, decided to provide that information through a personal account, and a personal catharsis.
"The catharsis is in the book you don't see. When I started writing essays, they were vehement and angry. I got that out of my system. Then I could sit down and write the story in a way that people could actually enjoy reading."
The story is playfully and satirically told. It moves chronologically from when Abrahams is 8 and receiving religious instruction, which she notes sometimes involved "more people directing me than a NASA shuttle launch."
The story ends when she's 19, having left home, school and church, becoming an apostate - an anti-Jehovah's Witness whom Jehovah's Witnesses, by church tenet, are to avoid.
Abrahams says she wrote her book for two reasons: "To redeem myself for the things I had done. I wanted to explain to the world why"; and to help other Jehovah's Witnesses.
"If people are thinking about leaving but are afraid to leave, thinking their life would be hell ... yes, it would be hell for a little while. But I'm alive and standing and enjoying my life now."
Two weeks ago, Abrahams stood in the Borders book store at Providence Place. She gave a reading. And to her surprise, she says, her estranged mother showed up and told a store employee that what Abrahams reports in the book about her upbringing isn't true.
After the reading, Abrahams says, she and her mother spoke briefly.
"We hugged and that was it. She left."
Abrahams' mother did not respond to our phone message requesting comment.
The life of a Jehovah's Witness, Abrahams says, is one of isolation from society, with little contact and exposure to nonmembers. Abrahams, however, fondly remembers having one childhood friend who wasn't a Jehovah's Witness.
"Samantha was like a free HBO trial that the cable company forgot to shut off after a week," Abrahams writes. "My parents reserved the right to terminate her service without warning, so I had to enjoy her while she lasted."
Jehovah's Witnesses, according to Abrahams and the church Web site, don't participate in patriotism or nationalism, such as saluting a flag; they don't acknowledge secular holidays; and they don't accept blood transfusions.
What Jehovah's Witnesses do accept is the principle of proselytizing, a door-to-door campaign, which Abrahams says is not particularly fruitful.
"Sure, getting doors slammed in your face is a great adrenaline rush, but most people don't even open their doors wide enough to slam them," Abrahams writes. "Most often we'd see the rustle of a curtain."
In doing door-to-door proselytizing, Abrahams made some sociological observations of Rhode Island. Affluent towns, such as Lincoln, weren't so receptive to solicitations. "They had finished basements and therefore very little need for living eternally in paradise."
But in poor places, such as Central Falls, "residents were not blinded by satisfaction with their lives and actually wanted the world to change."
In her book, Abrahams talks about all kinds of characters she encountered as a Jehovah's Witness. There was the church member who ate several cloves of garlic a day.
"Like all factories, Sister Blanche belched. She became increasingly huffy with each passing eruption. ‘Ex-cuse me!' she'd exclaim indignantly, as if she'd had just about enough of these shenanigans."
And there was Abrahams' partner in door-to-door proselytizing who regularly and unpredictably vomited.
"My partner stood up, wiping her mouth. Then she lowered herself back into the foliage, leaving only the unmistakable sound of someone puking in an irate stranger's bushes."
Abrahams occasionally performs as a stand-up comic in New York. Initially she thought her Jehovah's Witness history would lend itself to that.
"Every time I tried to tell a joke, there was so much back story that people wouldn't get. A book is the only way to tell the story."
So three years ago, Abrahams began the process - finding an agent and a publisher, and doing the writing. Abrahams, who never graduated from high school, wrote in her free time from her job as a Web producer and editor.
"When I go to an interview, no one thinks I don't have a high school diploma. I don't mention it. So it's fine."
Abrahams says her strict and repressed life as a Jehovah's Witness took a toll on her, leading her to rebellion and depression, a suicide attempt and a mental breakdown, alcohol and drugs, and two early escapist marriages.
"Jehovah's Witnesses spend a lot of time explaining to people why they're not a cult," Abrahams says. "That should be a sign that they're a cult."

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The End of the World Isn't Nigh
When People Leave the Closed World of the Jehovah's Witnesses, They are 'Disfellowshipped' and Rejected by their Closest Friends.
The Big Issue - UK/July 17, 2000
Sam Hart reports on life after faith
I have got to come to terms with the fact that I've abused my own children," says Bill, matter of factly. Bill Blackmore is a 56-year-old businessman. He has spent the most of his time on Earth waiting for it to be annihilated. Bill is a former Jehovah's Witness. He and his wife Julia have lost their faith. "I'd been having doubts for around 13 years but I was so indoctrinated I didn't leave," says Julia.
They are currently embroiled in a bizarre battle to disentangle themselves from the religion they say has controlled their lives for the last 38 years. The Blackmores have forgone birthdays and Christmases, avoided non-Witness friends, frowned on academic and career success and shut out independent thought. Their 23-year-old son Abel has attempted suicide. They say their former faith must take some of the blame. "It's an abusive system. You don't allow your children to have a normal life. They think the end of the world is coming," says Bill. "They are discouraged from having non-Witness friends and told they are different. If you don't fit the mould it can be hard. Abel didn't fit the mould so easily."
Bill and Julia aren't bitter - they just want out. But walking away is not that easy. The Blackmores are in the process of being expelled from the church and face a lifetime of rejection from the people they looked upon as their closest friends.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society that heads the church was formed in 1884. It promises a place in heaven for 144,000 elite, and paradise on earth for run-of-the-mill Witnesses, or 'The Other Sheep', as they are known. The end of the world has been well-and-truly nigh for more than 100 years. Key dates - like 1975, which was largely touted for the end of the world - have come and gone without so much as a sniff of Armageddon. The Watchtower claims it has never given a definite date for the world's demise. But people around in 1975 tell a different story. "We sold our house and Bill gave up his job because we were told we wouldn't need them," storms Julia. "How dare they claim they didn't say it."
Disobeying the rules results in expulsion - or 'disfellowshipping' as it is known. Wayward Witnesses, such as the Blackmores, are tried in kangaroo court hearings held by church elders. These can be used for any number of transgressions, from smoking to losing your faith. But the rules can change. The latest example being confusion over the permissibility of blood transfusions. Recent press reports claim that the Watchtower has done a U-turn over its ban on the procedure, angering many people whose loved ones have died through adherence to the religion's rules. But the Watchtower insists its stance remains consistent. A spokesman says: "You wouldn't be disfellowshipped if you had a transfusion, but you would be disassociating yourself by putting yourself outside god's law." The disfellowshipped have their names read out in Kingdom Halls (places of worship) and are shunned by other Witnesses, a practice that can have devastating effects. Those brought up in the faith often have no other friends or family to turn to.
"It is actually a very cruel process," says Doug Harris from Reach Out Trust, a Christian-based charity which has been monitoring Witness activity for the last 18 years. "Not only has your whole belief system crumbled, but you have no one to talk to about it. It turns husband against wife and stops grandparents from ever seeing their grandchildren." Shunning can be so serious that one woman took the Watchtower to court in America when none of her friends would speak to her. She lost the case when the court said intervention would be an infringement of religious freedom.
Although the Blackmores have not yet been formally disfellowshipped, they are feeling the effects already. "People who we looked on as our closest friends now have nothing to do with us. It's like the McCarthy trials in America. People thought they would be contaminated by even talking to communists. People believe they are giving up their chance of eternal life by talking to us." "My mates started calling me the Antichrist," says Bill's son Adam, 28, who was disfellowshipped last year for questioning the faith. "People who I thought were my friends wouldn't even look me in the eye. I came to the conclusion that maybe they weren't my real mates after all."
The family business has also collapsed as former friends now refuse to trade with them.
The Blackmores are unusual in that they are challenging the decision to start disfellowship procedures against them. "We have done nothing wrong. We have the right to believe what we believe without being shunned." But for many the strain is too much. One woman who was disfellowshipped for forming a relationship with a non-Witness told The Big Issue: "It was terrible. My own mother would not speak to me. When I got pregnant, I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand the thought of giving birth without her being there. I had to repent and go back."
Bill tells of another couple who were disfellowshipped for alleged immorality. "They came to Kingdom Hall three times a week for eight years. Everyone ignored them. No one would make eye contact but they just kept coming until the elders decided they were allowed back in again."
The Watchtower refutes any claims of cruelty. "We see ourselves as a family," says a spokesman. "We love one another. If a Witness was truly repentant it would give us great joy." They claim that disfellowshipping is a loving act and that religion needs discipline. They use the Bible to back up their claims: "Quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard." 1 Corinthians 5:11.
"It's very clever. They tell you you're elite and special and that's why other people don't like you," says one former Witness. "You're kept very busy with meetings and spreading the word so there's no time to think. Questioning the faith is a big taboo. In the end I decided I wanted a life with questions I couldn't answer rather than a life with questions I wasn't allowed to ask."
The Blackmores are still trying to fill the hole left by their religion. "When I look back," says Julia. "I just think, 'Where were our brains?'"
For support and information, see:
www.welcome.to/witnesscd, or http://members.xoom.com/ WitnessAidUK/index.html. Call The Reach Out Trust on 0208-332 7785, or see www.reachouttrust.org. The official Jehovah's Witness site is www.watchtower.org
Note: A few comments from Bill Blackmore on the above article in the interests of accuracy:
As with most media articles there are a couple of mistakes in the above. Bill is 52 years old. Abel is 28 years old. The Blackmore's loss of faith is not a loss of faith in God, the Bible, or Bible based Christianity, but in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society - the cult most people know as Jehovah's witnesses. The selling of their home and change of employment pre-1975 was not as a result of direct instructions given them by the Society. It was a response to the general expectations within the organisation at the time - expectations fuelled by the Society's literature and encouraged by its official representatives around the world. (July 30, 2000)

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.




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 Print M Email
The End of the World Isn't Nigh
When People Leave the Closed World of the Jehovah's Witnesses, They are 'Disfellowshipped' and Rejected by their Closest Friends.
The Big Issue - UK/July 17, 2000
Sam Hart reports on life after faith
I have got to come to terms with the fact that I've abused my own children," says Bill, matter of factly. Bill Blackmore is a 56-year-old businessman. He has spent the most of his time on Earth waiting for it to be annihilated. Bill is a former Jehovah's Witness. He and his wife Julia have lost their faith. "I'd been having doubts for around 13 years but I was so indoctrinated I didn't leave," says Julia.
They are currently embroiled in a bizarre battle to disentangle themselves from the religion they say has controlled their lives for the last 38 years. The Blackmores have forgone birthdays and Christmases, avoided non-Witness friends, frowned on academic and career success and shut out independent thought. Their 23-year-old son Abel has attempted suicide. They say their former faith must take some of the blame. "It's an abusive system. You don't allow your children to have a normal life. They think the end of the world is coming," says Bill. "They are discouraged from having non-Witness friends and told they are different. If you don't fit the mould it can be hard. Abel didn't fit the mould so easily."
Bill and Julia aren't bitter - they just want out. But walking away is not that easy. The Blackmores are in the process of being expelled from the church and face a lifetime of rejection from the people they looked upon as their closest friends.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society that heads the church was formed in 1884. It promises a place in heaven for 144,000 elite, and paradise on earth for run-of-the-mill Witnesses, or 'The Other Sheep', as they are known. The end of the world has been well-and-truly nigh for more than 100 years. Key dates - like 1975, which was largely touted for the end of the world - have come and gone without so much as a sniff of Armageddon. The Watchtower claims it has never given a definite date for the world's demise. But people around in 1975 tell a different story. "We sold our house and Bill gave up his job because we were told we wouldn't need them," storms Julia. "How dare they claim they didn't say it."
Disobeying the rules results in expulsion - or 'disfellowshipping' as it is known. Wayward Witnesses, such as the Blackmores, are tried in kangaroo court hearings held by church elders. These can be used for any number of transgressions, from smoking to losing your faith. But the rules can change. The latest example being confusion over the permissibility of blood transfusions. Recent press reports claim that the Watchtower has done a U-turn over its ban on the procedure, angering many people whose loved ones have died through adherence to the religion's rules. But the Watchtower insists its stance remains consistent. A spokesman says: "You wouldn't be disfellowshipped if you had a transfusion, but you would be disassociating yourself by putting yourself outside god's law." The disfellowshipped have their names read out in Kingdom Halls (places of worship) and are shunned by other Witnesses, a practice that can have devastating effects. Those brought up in the faith often have no other friends or family to turn to.
"It is actually a very cruel process," says Doug Harris from Reach Out Trust, a Christian-based charity which has been monitoring Witness activity for the last 18 years. "Not only has your whole belief system crumbled, but you have no one to talk to about it. It turns husband against wife and stops grandparents from ever seeing their grandchildren." Shunning can be so serious that one woman took the Watchtower to court in America when none of her friends would speak to her. She lost the case when the court said intervention would be an infringement of religious freedom.
Although the Blackmores have not yet been formally disfellowshipped, they are feeling the effects already. "People who we looked on as our closest friends now have nothing to do with us. It's like the McCarthy trials in America. People thought they would be contaminated by even talking to communists. People believe they are giving up their chance of eternal life by talking to us." "My mates started calling me the Antichrist," says Bill's son Adam, 28, who was disfellowshipped last year for questioning the faith. "People who I thought were my friends wouldn't even look me in the eye. I came to the conclusion that maybe they weren't my real mates after all."
The family business has also collapsed as former friends now refuse to trade with them.
The Blackmores are unusual in that they are challenging the decision to start disfellowship procedures against them. "We have done nothing wrong. We have the right to believe what we believe without being shunned." But for many the strain is too much. One woman who was disfellowshipped for forming a relationship with a non-Witness told The Big Issue: "It was terrible. My own mother would not speak to me. When I got pregnant, I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand the thought of giving birth without her being there. I had to repent and go back."
Bill tells of another couple who were disfellowshipped for alleged immorality. "They came to Kingdom Hall three times a week for eight years. Everyone ignored them. No one would make eye contact but they just kept coming until the elders decided they were allowed back in again."
The Watchtower refutes any claims of cruelty. "We see ourselves as a family," says a spokesman. "We love one another. If a Witness was truly repentant it would give us great joy." They claim that disfellowshipping is a loving act and that religion needs discipline. They use the Bible to back up their claims: "Quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard." 1 Corinthians 5:11.
"It's very clever. They tell you you're elite and special and that's why other people don't like you," says one former Witness. "You're kept very busy with meetings and spreading the word so there's no time to think. Questioning the faith is a big taboo. In the end I decided I wanted a life with questions I couldn't answer rather than a life with questions I wasn't allowed to ask."
The Blackmores are still trying to fill the hole left by their religion. "When I look back," says Julia. "I just think, 'Where were our brains?'"
For support and information, see:
www.welcome.to/witnesscd, or http://members.xoom.com/ WitnessAidUK/index.html. Call The Reach Out Trust on 0208-332 7785, or see www.reachouttrust.org. The official Jehovah's Witness site is www.watchtower.org
Note: A few comments from Bill Blackmore on the above article in the interests of accuracy:
As with most media articles there are a couple of mistakes in the above. Bill is 52 years old. Abel is 28 years old. The Blackmore's loss of faith is not a loss of faith in God, the Bible, or Bible based Christianity, but in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society - the cult most people know as Jehovah's witnesses. The selling of their home and change of employment pre-1975 was not as a result of direct instructions given them by the Society. It was a response to the general expectations within the organisation at the time - expectations fuelled by the Society's literature and encouraged by its official representatives around the world. (July 30, 2000)

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.




Abusive Controlling Relationships

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•General Information

•Search Tools

•"Bible"-Based

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Disclaimer
Copyright © 1999 - 2014 Cult Education Institute.


http://www.culteducation.com/group/1267-jehovah-s-witnesses/11516-the-end-of-the-world-isnt-nigh.html