OK, lets do an abbreviated version - Entire family on father's side 100% full bore JW. One day my mother catches my dad with a 12yo girl, and we leave, not town, just there living with him. It's a small town of about 2000 people, so everyone knows everyone and everything. The the elders had several meetings with my mom to tell her what a mistake she was making and how she needs to go back. They pretty much don't have anything to do with me or my brother when we are with her, which is about 90% of the time, b/c my dad is busy with the 12yo. Even though we were living at times on peanut butter sandwitches and no heat in the winter no one bothered to check on us, and at the time, we were little kids and didn't know they should. They still had time for us when we were with our father until he was DF'ed about about 4 years (yes it took that long) later when he went to jail for 30 days for statuatory rape. All the time I got told about respecting everyone and how dare I question my father. BTW, didn't know all of this until about 2 months ago, which is what promted me to start looking around and made me realize maybe I wasn't the one in the wrong. My mother, not wanting to tell us things that would hurt us, never told us the elders (two of them our uncles) only came by to tell her how bad she was and that she needed to go back to her husband. About 6 years later my dad married the girl when she became pregnant, and about a month later he was reinstated. Don't ask me how and I don't expect anyone to understand, but I thought things were pretty normal. Time went on and eventually I moved in with my dad, and was babtized at 16 in 1989. During all of this I learned not to ask questions, especially when I asked about my father, because of course he was doing bad things all the time, but to trust in the society for everything and respect my father like I was supposed to. I had the huge network of "friends" stretching all over the place and was really involved and believed in the truth with all of me, at least I think I did.
I guess I always knew something wasn't right. I was married in 1993, married too young and into a family that wasn't liked that well. Like a lot of witnesses, I got married after dating only a few months. Over time as I had to move for work, etc, and I began to notice no one really ever checked on me. And after a while I began to notice a lot of things when I came back to my home town, things I guess I should have seen before, but like the frog in the pan analogy, I guess I was to close before. There was so much deceit and hypocrosy, I just faded away. Recently I made a friend that made me realize I needed to figure out who I am now.
Sorry if that's too long, I cut out as much as I could and still make some sense.