by AndersonsInfo 55 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
+++ to what Steve2 said above.
I would like to add that putting all that silly stuff about sitting in "the front pews", attending assembly in the hot sun, forced to clean Kingdom Halls, etc. etc. etc. just diminishes what could have been an important message:
The child abuse/molestation issue.
If that issue had been clearly and calmly set forward, this would have been a positive article for the childrens rights.
As it stands - it just comes across as an irrational rant.
I come from South Africa and was a child there in the fifties and sixties and can only say that my experience has not been remotely similar to that of the writer of this piece. Nor has this been the case of any Witnesses who I know closely. Having said that, I grew up in the white community and have no experience of what went on in the black congregations in apartheid South Africa so cannot be dogmatic about that. But I did have friends across the colour spectrum and have no reason to believe there was widespread abuse.
Additionally . . . prior to the mid eighties and in many cases well after 1990 . . . many white SA households were attended to by "domestic help" . . . unpaid live-in black workers, usually women. In many cases these too suffered abuse. Children did chores but were rewarded to distinguish them from the "help." For a child to be burdened with chores without reward was to consign them to the same status. It was like punishment. It's a cultural difference . . . and a debate in itself . . . but given here as an example of how descriptions may not fit gracefully in to our own cultural perception.
As regards the comment above that children were rewarded to distinguish them from the "help" and that to do chores without reward consigned them to the same status as a domestic servant is sheer nonsense. "Pocket money" for jobs done about the house was the norm, as I think it is in other countries, but it had nothing to do with distinguishing them from domestic servants. It is also nonsense that domestic servants were unpaid although there was certainly a disparity between the salaries of the domestic servants and those they worked for.
If we search hard enough, we can find examples of inexcusably atrocious parenting that shames the affiliated religious community - and I am not talking about child sexual abuse. I grew up in New Zealand in a small rural town in a close JW community and whilst I did not experience or hear of exploitative parenting among the many JWs with whom I rubbed shoulders, I knew of the dreadfully sad lives of local children being "raised" in the Exclusive Brethren community. You want to talk about meting out punishment to kids - look no further. Similarly, a childhood peer of mine whose mother belonged to the Seventh-Day Adventist church was sometimes left black and blue from her hitting him with a broom, belt or whatever she could lay her hands on. She tried to hit me on more than one occasion, accusing me of belonging to an evil cult and not ewanting me near her son. I am certain she was quite mad.
Also, as I disclosed earlier, I was sexually abused as a young child when I was going door to door distributing Awake! magazines in the late 1950s (yes back in those good old days when JW parents sent their hapless kids out on the door-to-door work alone). My abuser was a well regarded senior member of the Salvation Army. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that years later some of his other victims came forward and laid charges and he was publically shamed and sentenced to prison.
My story is as valid as the story told by the SA author - only I am not making sweeping claims about what the abuse "means" in terms of the wider church communities that I knew about - nor am I declaiming as the author does that there is a need to publicise the horrors far and wide, creating the impression that the different kinds of abuse (right down to not paying pocket money and getting the kids to do hard work) are endemic among the Exclusive Brethren and Seventh-Day Adventists.
Yet at the same time, as individuals come forth and disclose their experiences, there is no denying the validity of their individual experiences in and of themselves without resorting to hyperbole and inflated allegations about the prevalence of such shocking parenting and neglect in this or that religion.
Only came across this when I was searching for some other information. Perhaps the best thing would have been to seek out some south african ex jdubs on here to ask some questions.
I have worked on quickbuilds, I have worked on normal builds, I have gone out into what we called "unassigned territory" (rural preaching) I live here.
It doe sound rather sensationalised without much fact. The article may have been referring to the culture here. But to just believe without actually finding out the facts....well is the same as believing in the JW religion isn't it.
Barbara... have you heard anything more about this situation?
