by Witness 007 13 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
Yeah no "Sunday school" for our kids because it's too "christendom" for us, so our 5 year old's need to sit thru Watchtowers on Masturbation etc.
When they get bored or wriggle too much.....OUT TO THE LIBRARY!!!! Is it child abuse to force kids to sit thru an adult meeting for 2 hours...and beat them when they can't?
It's certainly not normal to expect a 5 yr old (or younger!) to sit through that crap. As for hitting the kid, yes, definitely abuse.
Hitting a child is abuse. There is a culture within the borg that seems to think it is acceptable.
This is something that makes me so angry!
We used to have the bookstudy at our house and there was a poor little boy always getting dragged downstairs because he couldn't sit still for the hour. The "please, no!" and eventual "smack" we would all hear was heartbreaking.
Children aren't allowed to be children in this religion.
Ive told this story before but what the heck. We attended a conversation in NOvia Scotia in the early 1960s. My younger sister was three years old. When I was young my mom would let me take a doll to the KH. The rules were no noise. Different brothers had different reactions to my Suzette. We just happened to sit next to a Bethelite who, for a JW, had his hands on his girlfriend. When a speaker made any point, he would take his hands off her to applaud with all his might. He was sort of a cheerleader for the section. We were all bored out of our minds. My sister gently brushed the chair in front of her with her feet. Just a tad beyond baby feet. The Bethelite removed his belt and handed it to my mom.
She was supposed to beat my sister into a coma. It was chilling. For a second, I thought my mom would turn on him and tell him off. No such luck. She took his belt and barely touched my little sister. If a 3 year had rapt attention, the child would need an exorcism.
I don't think Paul was the best example of a church leader. Of course, he thought it would end any second. Some leaders should have the experiencing of parenting children just to have a sense of what is normal and abnormal. Many things happened at KH that still chill me. To be fair, though, the Catholic kids got beat, too. The pre-Vatican II nuns were vicious.
don't get me going on this subject!
these WT leaders talk out of both asses.
and they're not investing in their future publishers (this kids are gonna grow up hating the place)
In my experience, the most intolerant elder did actually have two children himself. The elder who had no kids was totally tolerant of baby/little kid behavior. I think that elder with kids must have beaten his kids into submission early on, or they just were never inclined to be restless or disruptive. Those kids were already over age 10 before I started attending meetings.
When ever I see someone mean to a kid my first reaction is to be mean to the abuser and ask them how they like it now, I guess it is because I was abused by JW's that makes me like that, I don't know but I am glad that I have descovered that I can report them to child abuse / child protective, before I could get myself in real trouble.
Having to sit through any JW meeting is abuse, regardless of age. In the unlikely event I'm feeling socially masochistic anytime soon, that's the first place I can think of sending myself.
My sister had a girl out of weklock when she was young, and after she got reinstated, she started bringing her girl along. Now it might have been because of the fact of how she came into the world, or maybe not, but the PO's wife made a point of telling my sister on how to keep the girl quiet. Once when she was acting up, she came over and just reached out for the girl without even asking. Later we found out that she flicked her lip whenever she peeped up. Now that's one way to make certain a child hates meetings.
In reading several books about JW history, I found that Russell took more of a passive approach to children. Rutherford changed all of that and actively encouraged children to be brought to the Hall. That's where it all started - from a man who abandoned his faithful but ill wife and his son who didn't want anything to do with his religion.
flicking a kids lip? now I think that would make a kid mad... I remember a teacher in grade school flicked that center part of my ear when I was in the hall way, wow that made me mad. I did see someone smack a little girl's mouth during a meeting one time and I wanted to smack the girls mother after the meeting. I wish I knew to report things like that then because I would have. You could tell it made the girl mad and she was going to remember that she was hit on the mouth not what she was hit on the mouth for...
