I am new to this site, and have spent the past few hours reading many posts with great interest. I live in Australia, and left the "truth" and my husband for good at the end of 2004. We have two young children together. 3 years prior, I began studying at university and gained full-time employment. During this time I just "got over it", and really started to explore new ideas/perspectives and began to find the real me. However leaving was not easy. My husband (now x) and his mother, convinced me that I was "sinful", and that I could not really offer the children a "future" (in paradise of course). He actually would say to me repeatedly "you know this is right"...."you know that I am the better parent".... Emotionally it was the most difficult time in my life, and the most confusing. While I knew I wanted out big time, there was still that part of me that believed them (I am a bad, wicked person. They are more "spiritual". I am doing a very bad thing by leaving,, etc). I am so embarrassed to admit this now, but after years of emotional indoctrination I was in a very vulnerable position. My husband took the children and moved in with his mother. I was emotionally beat, weighed 42kg and was still working big hours to keep the house running on my own. Thankfully for me, my mother who had left the jw religion a couple of years earlier gave me a lot of support and was horrified that the kids were gone. To cut a long story short, we went to court and my ex got full custody of one of our children, while I got full custody of the other.
To look back at this time now just makes me sick. I came so close to losing both of my children because of my vulnerable mental state, and my actual belief at the time that I was "bad." I am so grateful for not losing both of my children, but do carry immense guilt for not having full custody of them both. Now that I am emotionally and mentally free of the religion and its scare tactics, I can't believe that I felt and believed all of that crap; to the point of nearly losing my children. Since this time I have heard of cases very similar to mine (worse actually).
One woman also decided to leave her husband, but unfortunately for her, all of her family and his were dubs. She went through the same emotional turmoil, and her husband ended up with full custody of all three of their children. Her ex husband and family also played on the fact that she was still emotionally vulnerable and capitalized on all of the usual dub self righteous talk and scare tactics. Now that she has also had time and distance from the jw's, she is grieving for the loss of her children, and feels unbearable guilt.
I also know of another "brother" who gained full custody of his son after the wife decided to leave jws. He even put his son on the platform at an assembly to boast how he ignores his mother's (and satan's of course) desperate attempts to keep him from attending the meetings. Apparently she bought him a new motor bike and wanted to spend time with him on the weekends, but this was twisted to sound like this evil mother was trying to lure him away from the organisation. Of course everyone sat in their seats and mindlessly clapped at the end of his presentation at the assembly......... makes me so mad now.
Anyway, all of this has made me wonder how many others this has happened to? It seems incomprehensible to me now that I could actually let those people keep me apart from my children; but it happened. It is only now that I can see that my emotional state was a manifestation of years of indoctrination and mind control.