(POV is point of view)
The WTS should definitely be held responsible for what it does. However, I would like to point out that the analogy of corporate resposibility is a poor one from a legal standpoint, even though it may be appealing to many of us from an emotional viewpoint.
I would also like to note that I was also "raised in the Truth". Logically, this should be irrelevant, but oh, well.
Some posters on this thread seem to think that what is being advocated is letting the WTS have a free pass for whatever it has done. That's not correct for me personally by any means. The organization should be held accountable for its actions.
Others seem to think that the terms "victim" and "responsible" are being used as pejoratives, as negative judgements, or as criticisms. That's also not correct. They are free of moral or ethical judgement as I use them - however, I do believe that the responsible approach is much more empowering and effective than the victim approach.
Once I became an adult, I didn't think I needed to investigate the WTS. I didn't think I needed to find out what they really do, how they really run things, what the original biblical manuscripts really said. I didn't see any reason to check any of those things out. So what? Turns out I was wrong. I did have that responsibility, and by abdicating it, that responsibility did not magically transfer to the WTS - I was still delinquent in my responsibility as an adult. No one is assigned by the universe to come hold our hands and make sure we get across the street - whether we knew it or not, we were on our own. We got lied to - and, caveat emptor. I will freely stipulate that the WTS manipulates, influences, and pressures - that it is duplicitous, hypocritical, and often bluntly uncaring. They hold no monopoly in that regard. So's my mom.
For us to go through our lives believing that we were externally controlled against our will, that we were victims of some "brainwashing", such belief has a very corrosive side effect - we are always waiting for the next time someone tries to do that to us again. So, we will make it very hard for us to trust anyone or anything.
Unfortunately, this approach often gets in the way of something very useful - you discovering what emotional appeal the WTS held for you in the first place! Totally apart from the doctrine - the pretty pictures of a paradise earth, the idea that your dead relatives would be returned to you, etc., there was an emotional, gut-level appeal that the WTS held for each of us that ever believed it as adults. Only by identifying that appeal and consciously addressing it in a psychologially sound way will you have progressed past being vulnerable to these unconscious needs in the future. The reason we bought this "high-control" crap was because we got other benefits, paltry as they might seem to us now.
And FYI, I am not a libertarian in philosophy (I am politically a liberal Dem) so calling them names really doesn't muss my hair.
Peace, out.
