This is certainly an interesting subject. I have always wondered about that myself as well.
I have been in the organization all my life and have certainly met many, many great and sincere people/Christians. Most of the members do retain a great amount of innate decency and common sense. Most members will trail along content and happy for years, and will be able to build their lives around this system, like people will around any human social system. But when things (people/families) fall out of line - fall into disgrace - start asking awkward questions - that is when people start to get hurt big time.
The organization isn't called the bOrg for nothing. The machine has left a trail of destruction and has destroyed many lives under the banner of love and truth. Unsuspecting weak ones who feel themselves protected by it, from time to time turn out to be ill prepared for its ugly consequences. They are the victims of it. They often tend to disappear out of sight as well and are shamed. "Spiritually weak ones are thus sifted".
A simple and verifiable example might well be the Malawi account from Ray Franz's Crisis of Conscience: many poor Africans were beaten, killed and raped as the "collateral damage" of a machine, yet this was considered to be a fair and reasonable price to pay - the account is liable to make you want to vomit. Yet the decisions involved were made by respected man in a calm and composed manner, with an outward appearance of moral authority.
It also reminds me of mechanisms observed in Nazi Germany. The famous philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote about these workings of evil and the paradoxes involved. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen also wrote about it in his "Hitler's Willing Executioners": How could German citizens of what could before 1870 be described as merely a "Kulturnation" - a nation unified only by culture - be party to such despicable consequences. During the Second World War, before the end of 1944, Bavarians lived decent, happy, loving, and proper village family lives. The Dutch people were opposed to the German invaders. But in the Netherlands for example, 110.000 Jews were quietly carted off to a horrible death, yet daily life went on as usual. I do not intend to judge here - if anyone dared to oppose, they were liable to the same fate. The point I'm trying to make is that everyday life went on as usual. The outward appearance of everyday life seemed normal under the circumstances.
In no way would I want to equate the WTS with the NSDAP. But it could serve to illustrate the evil, dehumanizing and damaging potential that can result from the greater good of an organization-machine that claims moral truth.
My childhood story could probably rank quite high on the "JW horror story" index. It involved suicide, death, alienation, utter despair, institutionalization and dehumanization. Yet my dad had been a respectable Presiding Overseer and my mother had been a respectable pioneer for many years during the poverty stricken years of the fifties. I have personally experienced how they were consumed by zealously serving in a religion that was able to make them sincerely believe that they would never die, yet, it turned out they were devoured by a machine that was able to contribute to their premature deaths. I have personally experienced the mechanism of keeping things behind closed doors - of keeping things quiet. The funny thing is that I was always defending the organization despite all this, and putting the blame fully on my parents. Only recently has the house of cards come tumbling down for me - and have things consequently begun falling in place. Only when I found out that the truth turned out to be a lie (inch measurements in a pyramid tunnel to justify calculating 1914 and the end of the world...?) was it that my perspective on what transpired was turned upside down. This organization tends to mess some of us up pretty badly