When Disfellowshipping extends outside the KH; shunning that never ends

by Layla33 11 Replies latest jw friends

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  Layla33

  I was talking about this the other day to a friend that is an attorney for abused children and we started discussing strange family practices and how they affect children. It was during that conversation that I remembered something I hadn't thought about in years - when I was 12 years old my step-father and mother tried to practice a form of shunning (disfellowshipping) in the family. Of course it wasn't my mother's idea, it was my neurotic mentally deranged stepfather that decided because my mother and I had disagreed about something in a silly judicial meeting, that I was to be shunned from the family. My crime: I refused to lie for my mom during the meeting, so when we got home my step father announced that I was disfellowshipped from the family. I was not to eat with my family, I was to come home do my homework and stay in my room. This went on for exactly six months. Now, no one in my extended family thought this was right. In fact, my grandfather who was a PO at the time (of another congregation), wanted to bring my step-father in to a committee meeting because he considered it abuse. My father never followed it, grandparents, even my brothers never followed it - we all realized that my step-father was a sick deranged man.

  But it got me to thinking, has anyone ever experienced this disturbing trend outside of the JW religion, not read or enforced by the KH itself, but because of your own families? I believe this to be a practice of child abuse, which was the catalyst for the conversation with my good friend. Anyway, I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had to deal with this.
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  donny

  Unless things have changed, I don't believe the Society supports personal disfellowshipping. Back when I was in the org, my ex-wife would not speak to her disfellowshipped dad after he was reinstated. She would not even allow him to see his grandkids. When I brought this up to the elders, they told her that she could not personally disfellowship someone regardless of her feelings toward them. Needless to say, it did not result in much change in her behavior as she believed the elders of his congregation made a serious error in reinstating him.
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  Wordly Andre

  I am disfellowshipping my cat from the family he threw up on the carpet uggg
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  BabaYaga

  Yuck, Layla, this makes me sad. I'm sorry you had this happen to you.
  
  Love,
  Baba.
  
  edited to say: In my horror at what happened to you, I forgot to mention how interesting and bizarre I think it is that your PO grandfather considered it abuse... I wonder if he considered it abuse whenever he sat on the judge jury executioner committee meetings for those he disfellowshipped?
  
  Truly odd.
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  Nosferatu

  Six months? I could see a JW doing this to their kid for an hour just to teach them what being disfellowshipped is like, but six months? That's awful.
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  wednesday

  Jws used to do what they call personal marking. It is more or less DF'ing. They can decide to mark someone and thereby exclude them. It may not be DF but the effects are the same.

  There were always the spiritually weak who were marked and this was supposed to I guess encourage them ?

  I have seen this kind of behavior among jws for many years. It is most commonly done to family members. Your family members can be your worst enemies.

  also, I have heard people say they did not care if someone was reinstated, they did not have to talk to them or have anything to do with them.

  People do personal Df'ing all the time.

  I am terribly sorry for what happened to you. That is horrible abuse and indeed your step father was deranged.
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  WTWizard

  I basically disfellowshipped the witless congregation. I haven't been to a boasting session or out in field circus since mid 2005, and even that was dummy or token service. And they are not getting reinstated--I know of no one left within my "allowed" group that would be worth going back for.
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  Dorktacular

  Layla, what your stepdad did to you technically wasn't the JW's fault. He's just a sick bastard and he should be "disfellowshipped" from the family, and possibly the planet.
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  Awakened at Gilead

  That is a sad story... traumatic to experience at that age.

  While the WT does not teach such a practice, the fact that they teach DFing and shunning sets a precedent that can send the wrong message to extremists like your Step-father.

  I'm glad to see that you seem to have overcome the negative effects that your JW family has wrought upon you.
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  Lizmarie

  First of all your mother shouldn't of asked you to lie for her, you parents should have known better it says in the bible that liers will not inherit gods kingdom so you were just doing what was right. For your step father to do that to you was not on.......For your family not to talk to you that must of been really hard for you, sometimrs people do things that don't make any sense but at the end of the day that is there problem and not yours.