First a few important points. Here's the link to the website featuring the JW court documents DVD: www.watchtowerdocuments.com. Let's keep passing that on.
Second: The subject of getting this into hands of the national press has been handled, and if everyone could leave it at that for the time being, we'll inform you on here what to look for in the next week or so, hopefully. Good things are happening!
Third: Here is the original thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/139789/1.ashx, but it's so long I wanted to post this info in a new thread so it wouldn't get lost.
Barbara has given me the OK to share an experience from the end of her commentary on the WTS trial documents that really was the "straw that broke the camel's back" for her in deciding that the WTS was NOT God's organization. It was at a time when the Service Department had so badly mishandled the sexual abuse issues for so many years that all abuse correspondence was being routed through the Society's legal department at Bethel. Barbara had been a confidante of Bethel heavy Harry Peloyan for some time, and he had shared with her many of the problems Bethel was facing in the matter. Interestingly, what Peloyan saw as changes to resolve the problems with WTS pedophile issues, Barbara saw in quite a different way. Here are her comments on a letter she received from Peloyan:
Within a few weeks, I received a letter from Harry that changed the direction of my life. He acknowledged the January 1, 1997 Watchtower on the view of child molesters by the Witnesses was like a breath of fresh air, but the change came “after more than 5 years of blood, sweat, and tears.” I’ll paraphrase the rest of his letter.
Harry could not understand how some people at headquarters could have been so ignorant (or worse), and why some fought against publishing anything on the subject. He commended Watchtower’s Legal Department’s help to set the record straight. If Watchtower had continued on their blind course, he said there would have been “moremegabuck lawsuits” [italics mine], and if any elder protected molesters, the Society would not protect them.
However, Harry’s concluding thought was so extraordinary that it literally caused me to have to sit down to calm myself when he wondered who would answer for Witness children’s lives ruined by “baptized Witness molesters” because of the past five years of inaction by those who had the power to change things. Harry added that his conscience was clear because of his efforts to bring about change.
It was then that I realized, without a shadow of a doubt, that the men I personally knew and had respected, those who were in positions of authority over the lives of six million people, were responsible for more kids being raped, sodomized and brutalized because of their inaction during the previous five years. Because of the work I had done in the Writing Department to inform the Governing Body of the sexual child abuse problems within the Witness organization, there was no excuse for this inaction. To my way of thinking, their ethics and morals were so compromised that I could no longer in good conscience remain in association with the group. It didn’t take long for me to realize the next point—God was not with these people—so I called it quits.
S4