ashitaka writes:
in the 20 years I was in, I never had one experience.
I have one experience that stands out. I never really talked about it until after leaving the JWs, though. I just didn't want the attention it might have drawn.
When I was in Grade 6, Mrs. C. was the math teacher for my class. The following year, she was our homeroom teacher. She hated the Witnesses, and made no secret of it. Whenever a JW related issue came up, she made a point of doing her level best to humiliate me in front of the whole class, and while I never shed a tear in her class, there were days that I would go home bawling because of her abuse. If my classmates were observing someone's birthday and I declined to participate, she would dump my desk's contents onto the floor and make me clean it all up. If we were in assembly and had to sing "O Canada!" she would not let me be excused, so I would have to sit quietly as my parents expected, but Mrs. C. would march up behind me and grab the hair at the nape of my neck and pull me to my feet. It was a weekly event, these assemblies, and no matter how I tried to get my parents to help me, they said it was 'Satan testing me' or 'persecution for being one of God's people'.
After a few months of this weekly torture (she could force me to stand but she could not force me to sing!), a few of my classmates told me that they didn't like what Mrs. C. did to me and they had an idea to make her stop, but they wouldn't tell me what it was. I told them that I didn't want them getting in trouble because of me, and that if what they were planning to do would get them in trouble, then not to do it.
The Friday morning assembly convened, and when the instruction came to stand for "O Canada!", as usual, I remained seated. I felt the familiar painful yank on the hair at the nape of my neck as Mrs. C. hauled me to my feet and held me there. Then, one by one, my classmates looked over at me and sat down. When the anthem was finished and the Lord's Prayer had been said the teacher dragged me to the Principal's Office and accused me of instigating the protest that my classmates had engineered on my behalf. The Principal asked the teacher what I had done to "make" them sit down during the anthem, and the teacher claimed that my sitting quietly was disruptive to the class and made the rest of the class follow suit. Then the Principal asked for my side of the story. I said how I had instructions from my parents to either be excused from the opening exercises at assembly or to remain quietly seated during the anthem and prayer, and that was the expectation of JW children. I said how I had asked to be excused, but was not given permission by Mrs. C. and that when I tried to sit quietly, she pulled my hair to make me stand up. The Principal looked at the back of my neck and it was red and swollen and there was a patch of hair missing. The Principal asked me to go out of her office and wait in the chairs, that she wanted to talk to Mrs. C. privately.
Several minutes went by... it seemed like hours in 'kid time'.... and then the teacher left, giving me the dirtiest look she could muster. The Principal took her place for the next two weeks. Turns out Mrs. C. got herself suspended for what she had done to me, and if it hadn't been for the solidarity that my classmates showed on my behalf, the abuse would have continued for several more months until school let out for the summer. Mrs. C. never bothered me again about anything, especially anything that was JW-related.
Love, Scully
In the desert things find a way to survive. Secrets are like this too. They work their way up through the sands of deception so men can know them. - The X Files
