Kim, you mentioned in one of your first comments a distrust of Mark O'Donnell. This isn't the first time you've brought this up. Will you elaborate, please?
In one of the WTIF episodes make explained a fairly simple legal term to me. At the time I found it odd as I would have thought it reasonable to assume that I knew this so I couldn’t understand why Mark was explaining it to me.
Behind the scenes Mark and I have had “difficult interactions” regarding the JW Watch website and the writing team. Mark berated the efforts of three of the new writers in the team, complained that their work wasn’t up to the standard of his work (not his exact words but my summary of his opinion) and prevented a lot of information being shared with the community.
it is my opinion that Mark’s interest is in his promotion, not the promotion of information being shared. Mark hampered the opportunity for people hearing many views and opinions, information from many sources and a variety of topics.
I find this extremely disingenuous. Why do we need a few controlling information and being the spokespersons? He likes to get information out to the community, which is great, but why does he restrict others from getting information out too?
Mark has a terrible habit of downplaying or rubbish if the efforts of others in their activism. Kim and Mikey are a classic example of this. They posted a congregation letter once (my memory is vague of what correspondence it was) and Mark felt the need to berate them about their efforts by making a comment to the effect that it was “old news” and “irrelevant”. Why do that? So many new people enter the community and probably didn’t see it. What’s the harm in getting the information out again?
in more recent times, I have found Marks comments in his statement about Lloyd to be irresponsible. How can he issue a statement which includes (amongst other things) his confirmation that the CSA allegations against lloyd are false. How does he know this? How do any of us know this?
The fact is there was an allegation, it was reported to the police and they will decide whether lloyd has a case to answer. It is not for the “men in charge” to tell the congregation (or anyone for that matter) what is fact. As an advocate, and someone who has high regard in the community I found his statement to be irresponsible.
And why did Mark need to include me in his statement? Was it not to publicly admonish me? Why would he do that?
From my observations and experiences, Mark is all about Mark. Controlling the flow of information and monopolizing segments of the community is wrong. Feeding information to people rather than empowering them to be independent researchers and thinkers is wrong. Mark has never once (to my knowledge) ever explained to people his exact role in these court cases. He has never once (to my knowledge) ever explained to people where he gets legal documents from and that they can find these documents themselves without having to wait for Mark to feed them the information.
I do not trust a man, or woman for that matter, who’s interests are in self promotion and self importance.
These are my experiences and opinions because I was asked. I respect that many will disagree with me and that’s their right.