He deserted with disabled wife. His son presumably had more scruples and remained with his mother. The comments he made around love, marriage & women in general lead me to believe he was a misogynist, at the Missouri convention citing women as "a rag and a bone and a Hank of hair"*
like the story that Rutherford became a Bible Student because he had been an encyclopaedia salesman himself and so felt he couldn’t turn them away the people at his door away when he was offered a set of Studies in the Scriptures.
It appears he was a sentimental misogynist. Figures. I've known a few men like that. Beat the living hell out of their wives in front of the kids, but weep like a baby if they hit a rabbit with their car.
*It's pretty well established he was having an affair with the dietician/masseuse he took everywhere on tour with (and brought to live in Bethel). The otherwise unqualified Berta Peale. The following is a quote from Leolaia regarding a pdf she created from a JWdotnet mega thread on the subject:
- JWD poster named larc (Carl Thornton) is the nephew of a woman named Berta Peale who was a close associate of JF Rutherford from 1937 to his death in 1942. (Verified by public records that show that the Berta who was an associate of Rutherford was indeed larc's aunt)
- Berta told larc's relatives regarding Rutherford: "He was like a husband to me in every way". (Unverified, but larc's wife also testifies to this)
- Rutherford was married and had a son, but he was separated from his wife. (Verified by public records, which show that Rutherford and his wife lived separately from the mid-1920s onward)
- larc reveals that Berta herself abandoned her husband of 15 years to go to Bethel in 1938. Her husband Alfred Peale, a resident of Ohio, filed for divorce on the grounds of abandonment, which was granted in 1940 (Berta's marriage to Alfred is verified with public records, larc had a copy of the paperwork from Alfred's filing)
- Berta was a friend of Rutherford's personal secretary Bonnie Boyd who travelled with Bonnie and Rutherford to Europe the summer before 1938. (Verified with actual ship records) Unlike nearly everyone else who came to Bethel, Berta started at the top.
- Berta lived thereafter with Rutherford as his personal dietician, despite not having any training in nutrition. Rutherford already had a qualified dietician at Bethel, yet Berta assumed this job quickly after arriving to Bethel in 1938 (Verified with data from the Moyle trial transcript and public records)
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/154191/rutherford-exposed-story-berta-bonnie-redux
