Remember Dateline?? (page 3)

avishai

The program was downplayed by some other jw's saying: "they were apostates in that program anyway"...or " Jehovah will take care of the matter".

Who's to say he is'nt? Maybe he likes dateline.

FirstInLine

Dein Anglisch ist ausgezeischnet, GermanJW

Mulan

My JW mother watched it and thought it was "about time". She also felt that "Jehovah was directing this to get the abuse situation taken care of".

Joyzabel

wow, interesting, Mulan.

Thanks everyone.

I'm trying to get a concensis of what the prevailing attitude was among JWs when Dateline aired.

Very interesting.

Joy

acsot

This may seem weird but the Dateline program was the "AHA" moment for me to the the Watchtower Society being full of sh&t, and I didn't even see the program.

A dub here at work told me briefly about it; she seemed rather upset by it, but it was more to the effect of "a few elders messed things up and it gave Jehovah's organisation a bad name".

At that moment I knew that the problem was a systemic failure on the part of the WTS, and that they could in no way be serving God.

I knew elders who would have acted the same way, blame the victims and protect the perpetrators of the crimes, even though I knew of no specific cases to which I could point.

And for some reason I knew the program was true, the victims were right, and the WTS was wrong.

I logged onto NBC's website, got the link to the SilentLambs' website, and from there arrived here.

So thanks to the courage of those victims and to the Dateline show, I'm free of the Borg. Without even watching the show.

This was around the same time I stopped attending meetings. An Bethel elder called me and I mentioned the Dateline story as one of my concerns. He said the reports coming in at Bethel were very positive and it gave them an opportunity to give a "good witness" in the Field.

family_man

The first site I showed my wife was the silent lambs site. It was this and all the cover by the various news orgs - including DATELINE, that helped her realized the WTS is a deceiver...She didn't even have to see the actual show ...

The talk seemed to sweep the WTBS responsibility to this issue under the rug! After all: you need a 2 person rule to turn in a pedophile (that's what the Bible says)

Code blue, Sorry. Does the bible really say this or is this a joke gone over my head? If so what passage is this in?

THanks,

FM

joe_from_kokomo

I could never forget this program. We taped it off satellite and watched it several times. Then a few weeks later one of the Governing Body members came to the Ass. Hall in Daytona and did a final closing address about it. I cornered him afterward. It was my first posting here. Soon afterward, we left this bunch of lying hypocrits.

Want some interesting reading? check out my first posting on this exact topic here. It is a true account told by a novice soon-to-be-considered-apostate JW:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/44396/623163/post.ashx#623163

flower

i got typical responses from a room of jw's i brought it up to shortly after it aired. pretty much they said that they were all just bitter former witnesses and out to slander the organization. no one i talked to believed a word of the program.

dothemath

Many in our congregation watched it............it obviously had quite an impact. But what was the "Christian" response? We were villified at our next assembly for even talking about the program.........the DO and CO mentioned apostates repeatedly, and included lots of warnings throughout the day.

I'm glad I watched it.........the witness leaders are so quick to criticize other religions, but not willing to examine any issues themselves.

If this hadn't been made public........how many more people could easily be victimized?

Remember Dateline??