Joe Sleighman was a DO in Western Australia (WA), or maybe had just left WA (in Australia, not Washington state), when he departed the JWs. I understood him to have just stopped attending and to have 'gone apostate', but never got the full details. I really liked Joe. That was mid 1990s.
As I remember it, he was the first of three consecutive overseers to go from the same circut (Joe being the DO for that circut) in Perth, WA. I won't introduce anyone else's full name, but Alan H and Phil T were the COs who were subsequently DFd. I never knew what happened to Alan, but he and his wife seemed good company. They had a flash car (a gold Holden Calais I think it was) and he and his brother, so the story went, had made some money in business before both went onto the circut. I remember having lunch with Joe and Alan and their wives about that time. None of them wanted to talk JW stuff, and Joe spent most of his lunch reading The Australian (the local serious broardsheet. I reckoned that was cool).
The next one was Phil T from Queensland. He was a great guy, and looked just like Dr Phil. He had some marital issues and ended up DF as a result, but so far as I know he remained loyal.
The next CO they sent in was a corporate arsehole who made Ghengis Khan look soft and indulgent. They also had Carl O, ex-bethel, as a substitute inbetween times. He was never fun. Before them there was an old guy who just kept saying things like 'and where were you in 1952?'. He was a bit dottty, I think.
I spent a horrid overnight at bethel about the same time. It was truly awful. It set me as much on the path to apostacy as anything else. Dozens of married couples on construction sharing this space about the size of two basketball courts with sheets draped over a frame between them for 'privacy'. People wandering about like zombies who had been alive before they went. Spooky magazine art paintings on the walls. Mission brown everything. Bizzare breakfast chatter and frightening 'morning worship'. All the usual stuff in God's house.
The bright spot was a dude in a room by himself with a computer on the internet (it was new at the time) near the printing room. He had this great clip off CNN he just kept watching over and over. He may have been on the way to madness, or apostacy, but he seemed a bright light in a crazy place.
