I used to notice quite a lot of things as a kid. One of the first things that stuck in my mind relates to the Tuesday night book study which was held in Brother X's home. A couple who attended had a son who was only a year younger than me, so we are talking about 6 years old at the time. If that poor kid even moved his mum would take him out of the room for the inevitable 'chastisement'.
Everyone could hear him being slapped and his crying and pleading. I never forgot the look of horror on that kid's face when he knew it was time for the trip 'out of the room' and most of the time he was in tears before the inevitable discipline. I found that very upsetting.
It was something that people at the KH talked about but nobody did anything about it - everyone was too 'nice' and didn't want to be seen to be criticising their fellow brothers and sisters - especially as this was an upstanding JW family.
What really killed it for me in the end was the complete bare faced hypocrisy. If a new brother appeared who had a good job, and was fairly well off materially, then they would be magically catapulted up the ranks. They were allowed to acquire all these material things but I was not supposed to want to go to university, but it was ok for Brother Newbie to show off his new Beamer.
I also knew that most of the teens at the hall were living double lives just like me. There was no incentive to remain faithful - in fact some of these teenage JWs were a far worse influence than anything I had met in the ' world '.
At the end of the day I had too many questions and not enough answers.
FF