I thought I would share an experience from the congregation I was assosiated with in Utah. About 17 years ago I caught my 15-year-old stepson molesting my 3-year-old daughter. Of course, the first action taken was to call the elders. A couple of the kind brothers showed up and asked a lot of questions about the incident and they decided that the best action would be that he would not be allowed around young children at the Hall any longer. The general tone from one of the elders was that perhaps he molested her because he was forbidden by his father to masturbate, essentially blaming us for the act. Since this instruction came from WT teachings, I was livid. There was no comfort given and no mention was made about reporting it to the authorities. They felt they had handled it and my role was to work on forgiveness towards the boy and keep a better eye on things at home. I might mention that in this area, the elders were even more opinionated than the norm and treated people on the whole, very badly with little recourse.
I refused to allow the boy to live in our house any longer and insisted on going to the police along with taking my daughter to a doctor for an examination. The examination showed that this was not an isolated incident but had been going on for some time. Utah was pretty backwards at the time and during the first meeting, even the police chief suggested to me that perhaps the boy needed a hug from his mom after undergoing such an ordeal and feeling so bad. I was not real receptive to that invitation and stood my ground and said I wanted him out of my home, no matter what it took. Long story short, he was placed in a foster home and we paid child support for the next couple of years as he bounced from one home to another and in and out of juvenile detention for a variety of things. As a side note, in spite of the minimal amount of counseling he had while in State custody, to this day he still shows no remorse for his actions and blames his dad for not allowing him to masturbate. I wonder where he got that idea....
In the meantime, I fell into my first JW bout of deep depression and could not figure out how to forgive him for the act, especially after finding out he had also been abusing our 5-year-old daughter. I was continually made to feel like I was weak spiritually because I was unable to forgive him for what he did. I felt like a very bad person. The rogue elders continued to treat the 'flock' very harshly and when the CO came for his next visit, many members, my husband and I included, went to him with complaints of harsh treatment over a multitude of incidents. There was a lot of nodding of the head and pseudo-empathy, but nothing ever came of it.
Over a year went by and we tried again with the next CO. This one took notice and the next thing we knew, a special committee was formed by elders from all over the state. Secret meetings and interviews were held for weeks. It was the most exciting event I ever saw in all my years as a JW. There was an elder body of about 10-12 and all were removed except 1-2, along with several of the MS. They actually had to import some elders from other places and brought in an old time special pioneer to serve as the new PO. Of course it wasn't long before the new PO brought his own set of partialities and prejudices, but that's another story.
A couple of years later, we found out that 2 of our sons and a nephew were being abused by an MS in our congregation that we thought was a close family friend. Yeah, too close. My husband was an elder then and took the brother to the other elders. He was removed from being an MS and that was the extent of it. I still beat myself up for not reporting it to the police but was convinced by the elders that it was best handled internally; assured that it would not happen again. I feel like such a fool now, and now that my sons are grown they rightly feel resentment towards the JWs for handling things like that eternally. I shudder to think how many more young boys that man molested.
It's been almost 7 years since I first started to fade and I keep asking myself why I can't let go of all this and heal. I can't help but wonder if it's even possible. I know that KHs across the country are full of stories like this and it just makes me sick. I wish that I could just let go.....