"Alberta man brings protest to Georgetown"

Quotes

http://www.northpeel.com/br/gi/news/story/2270645p-2631778c.html

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Wednesday, October 13th, 2004
Alberta man brings protest to Georgetown
LISA TALLYN, Staff Writer
Toting signs emblazoned with "Stop Killing Children" and "Watch Tower Protects Pedophiles", approximately 20 people protested at the Jehovah's Witnesses Canadian headquarters in Georgetown Saturday afternoon.

Calgary resident Lawrence Hughes, a former Jehovah's Witness, organized the two-hour protest "to educate the public and protect children," he said.

Hughes fought hard and convinced the Alberta government in 2002 to force his 16-year-old daughter Bethany, who had acute myeloid leukemia, to undergo blood transfusions against her will and the will of her mother.

In August, Hughes launched a $1 million lawsuit against the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Canada that claims Jehovah's Witness members used the fear of damnation to convince Bethany not to have blood transfusions. It also claims that influence exerted by Jehovah's Witnesses on Bethany and her mother led to the girl's death in 2002.

Mark Ruge, director of public information at the Canadian headquarters for Jehovah's Witnesses on Hwy. 7, said yesterday the organization has not yet been served with Hughes' suit.

Hughes said he organized the protest for three reasons. The first one being the Watch Tower Society (WTS) refuses to report known pedophiles to police, he said.

"If a victim of sexual abuse reports the crime to the authorities, the WTS disfellowships the victim, has the victim shunned by the congregation members and has their legal department defend the known pedophile in court," said Hughes in a media release.

Ruge said Hughes "can say whatever he wants," but there was no truth to his claims.

"We're not those kind of people," said Ruge.

Hughes said they were also protesting because "the WTS forces members of the church to slave full time all their life in their factories and are not paid anything."

He added when the workers get old they are "thrown out onto the street without any money or belongings and are not even eligible to collect Canada Pension...a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

Ruge called that claim, "outrageous."

"If this is slavery, boy, it's pretty nice," said Ruge.

He said they provide good working conditions at the Watch Tower Society and many Jehovah's Witnesses continue to work there when they are older.

He added they have a section in one of their residence buildings where the older people receive care and are well looked after.

Another reason for the protest according to Hughes is because "the WTS is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children," and has been giving out "bad medical advice to its members concerning vaccinations, organ transplants, blood transfusions and alternative medicine" for hundreds of years.

Ruge called those claims, "absurd" and "ridiculous."
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Quotes

It is good to see at least the local Georgetown paper covering the story.

RunningMan

Ruge sounds like a very amateur PR man. His choice of words and expressions appear unprofessional. He did everything except call Lawrence a poo-poo head.

Quotes

It would be great if we had an opportunity to debate (either live or in a newspaper interview) this guy. Armed with the damning quotes at http://quotes.watchtower.ca/ you would be able to slice and dice his (rather simple) "no that's not true" defence.

You could wrap it up by showing how he wasn't telling a lie, but rather was apparently committing spiritual warfare and that the moderator and/or readers did not have a "right to truthful information".

I swear, by their own words they will be hung for all the world to see.

~Quotes, of the "Scholarly Executioner" class

Quotes

As the allegation of Watchtower leaving old-timers out-to-dry, Ruge said it was "outrageous".

It would have been nice to, at that point in the interview, introduce him to fjtoth (who posts on this board), who was there with us, and who was totally LEFT OUT IN THE COLD when he was at the age that most people should be enjoying a peaceful retirement. The story is even worse than this in parts, but I will let fjt decide how much of his story he want's to share in this forum.

He is now working 6 & 7 days per week, just to make ends meet and pay off debt.

Ruge: you might actually believe the claim is "outrageous"; I think fjtoth would say that the way WT left him is the true outrage!!! So I suppose we can agree that this situation is indeed outrageous.

~Quotes, of the "Hoping Canada Pension Plan Laws catch up to Watchtower, retroactively" class

Beans

As we know the Watchtower will NEVER ever send a representative to a debate or live TV broadcast, they would get slaughtered. People know to much and the general public realizes that this cult is whacked and will side with the opposition over the Watchtower.

The average XJW has more scriptural knowledge to prove any WT claim!

DaCheech

What happened to the "good old days" when they would challenge others to a public debate!

Quotes

What happend is: they got their ass kicked too many times.

Of course, they would never admit defeat, since they simply "refuse to believe" anything bad about the Borg.

But, they realized that the information at debates "might confuse newly interested and the general public" so they don't do it anymore. Of course, this excuse is another way of saying: Our cult, like most, has a "graduated indoctrination process" and if someone gets exposed to a higher level of indoctrination before we have thoroughly washed their brains at the lower, or entry, levels, then the scam that is our cult is revealed, warts and all.

~Quotes, of the "Indoctrinate THIS" class

fjtoth

I will let fjt decide how much of his story he want's to share in this forum.

Don't anyone think that I'm complaining about my lot in life. When I was being interviewed by CBC Newsworld, I only mentioned the small amount of my pension because I was asked. My concern is for the many elderly who lack the health and vitality that I enjoy. I know a few JWs who were basically forgotten by their congregations and the Society when they reached old age and could no longer make it to meetings and into field service, even though they spent most of their lives in "the full-time ministry." I live each day at a time, enjoying almost every minute of it. I've got a job that gives me a decent living, and I'm content with that.

By the way, my mother is 90 years old today, and I can't phone her even to wish her a happy birthday. If she recognized my voice, she'd hang up for fear of being destroyed at Armageddon. Worse, she fears being abandoned by Jehovah and becoming a principal target of Satan's attacks without any divine protection. Only an ugly religion devoid of Christianity would turn a hospitable and caring mother into a frazzled fear-stricken woman who lives in dread of her son whose only crime, as far as she knows, is that he experienced doubts about the family religion and then walked out on it.

Scully

DaCheech:

What happened to the "good old days" when they would challenge others to a public debate!

What happened was that the WTS clamped down on "publicly refuting untruths". Here's a direct quote regarding news reports about negative publicity toward JWs, from the talk Beware the Voice of Strangers, summer 2003 District Conventions:

we don't want to be personally refuting these untruths unless Jehovah's Organization assigns us to do that publicly. Now when we talk to people in our ministry and elsewhere and they bring up points about what they have heard or read, sure, then we can present the truth to them. But we don't want to be doing that publicly, because that very often just leads to worse reports about us.

(You can find the transcript of the talk on Quotes' website.)

Love, Scully

"Alberta man brings protest to Georgetown"

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