Hi Es,
Yes, I was an elder ... and under my main screen name "Amaing" I posted my "Justice" series where I detail about 15 different judicial cases (names and places changed to protect the innocent). My posts have been pulled down for a time, but will eventually be restored.
I dont know how much more clearer I have to make it to them.
When I was Congregation Secretary a young women, who I knew from birth, wrote me a letter to DA herself. Earlier another elder and myself had met with her and her parents - at her request. She did not want to remain a JW, but her parents talked her into talking with us. She requested me because she felt more comfortable talking with me.
We thought she was going through a difficult time emotionally. At the time she was 18 and I think she had just graduated from High School. We could not seem to get her to say why she did not want to remain a JW, but it seemed to have something to do with her relationship with her non-JW boyfriend. We tried to get her to take her steps slowly, and not quit the JWs, but also not remain active. We were trying to be kind in that recommending inactivity would allow her to shed some burden without being shunned. yes, our recommendation was unconventional, but until the late 1980s, elders had more latitude to use their own judgment.
A month or so later she ended up writing a letter to me disassociating herself. I should have let it drop right there and just announce her request. But somehow, I still felt she was just upset and maybe we could meet and see if we could talk her out of leaving the organization. I was friends with her parents as well, and worried for them.
So, the same elder and me went to the house where she had moved (boyfriend's parents I think) and tried to visit with her. She was not there, or at least that is what we were told. The non-JW people she was staying with scolded us strongly for stopping by in an attempt to see her. They threatened legal action. In all honesty, they need not be so mean, as were only were trying to find the young women.
Anyway, I detail the rest of the story in the Justice series. The point is, the elders use to want to keep JWs in the organization. They use to try harder to find ways to work with people to get them to stay. But since the big apostasy boom starting in the late 1980s (post Ray Franz syndrome) the Sociaty has cracked down with a hard line, in almost a gleeful attitude to find ways to nail those they suspect of apostasy. That is why I suggested that the real motives the elders were seeking a meeting with you, is because nowadays they see everyone who is not attending meetings as potential apostates.
That is how they treatd me in the end. The Society's legal department became involved when I was finally forcibly disassociated in 1995. I had left in the spring of 1992, but they would not let the matter alone, and I would not keep my mouth shut. A bad mixture.
You can read my entire exit story at: http://www.exjws.net/pioneers/partintro.htm It is about 60 pages, but broken up into 18 chapters of about 3 or 4 pages each. I am planning one or two more chapters, but I have to wait for certain issues to be completed.
Jim W.