snare&racket

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Posts by snare&racket

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  15

  Child abuse a sin not a crime to JW's

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this australian investigation is astounding to watch.. the elders clearly don't see child abuse as criminal, if a jw confessed to murder, the police would immediately be called.

  yet child rape is a spiritual issue..... ridiculous.. this is what happens when 7 window cleaners lead a bunch of dangerously loyal, ignorant middle aged men ...... in managing 7 million people..

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  snare&racket

  Just finished watching them all......

  I'm astounded and ashamed.
• 
  15

  Child abuse a sin not a crime to JW's

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this australian investigation is astounding to watch.. the elders clearly don't see child abuse as criminal, if a jw confessed to murder, the police would immediately be called.

  yet child rape is a spiritual issue..... ridiculous.. this is what happens when 7 window cleaners lead a bunch of dangerously loyal, ignorant middle aged men ...... in managing 7 million people..

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  snare&racket

  This Australian investigation is astounding to watch.

  The elders clearly don't see child abuse as criminal, if a JW confessed to murder, the police would immediately be called. Yet child rape is a spiritual issue..... Ridiculous.

  This is what happens when 7 window cleaners lead a bunch of dangerously loyal, ignorant middle aged men ...... In managing 7 million people.
• 
  40

  Is the two-witness rule really unreasonable?

  by stillin in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i'm picturing a situation in which a savvy 12 year old doesn't like the house rules that mom's new husband has put into place.

  or something along that line.

  i can certainly agree that protection of children is paramount, but who protects the real victim in those cases?

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  snare&racket

  I'm amazed an adult with intelligence is asking this.
• 
  18

  Gay times at Brooklyn Bethel

  by oppostate in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  leo greenlees and percy chapman have been exposed as practicing a gay lifestyle while serving at the world head quarters of the watchtower religion.. in this photo greenlees is at the left with glen how to his right and then nathan knorr who has chapman to his right.

  i've seen this photo before many times.

  it's in jim pentons book, but i never noticed greenlees left hand is holding how's right at his bottocks.. quite the gay times at bethel i'd say.. .

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  snare&racket

  Bearing in mind homosexuality is normal, it shouldn't be a surprise. I don't like it when homosexuality in the JW's is treated like a dirty secret.

  It was a world when nature was denied in exchange for loyalty to 7 men we would never even meet,

  Homosexuality at bethel doubtless happened and happens at the same rate non married heterosexual sex did/does also.

  Dont get me wrong, I don't detect and homophobia in your posts, but I think we need to treat it with less finger pointing and ooooooh's and aaaaaah's.

  if they did have consensual sex, good on them! Go for it you beautiful gay dudes!

  ...,you can see why they claimed I was gay when I left,,,,, but In reality I just get annoyed at anything that artificially separates one human from another, be it race, colour, culture, style, class, wealth, education or sexual preference.

  Homosexuality in the Jw's is NOT a dirty secret, it's normal behaviour, let's treat it like it, especially when the organisation has some horrendous dirty secrets that are life shattering, illegal, immoral and evidence of their core values,

  
  

  
  
• 
  22

  Sad about the past

  by Gorbatchov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  today i feel deep sad memories in my brain.. visiting bookstudy with my parents, doing my best giving answers at 7 years old.. doing fieldservice every weekend and on an evening.. i could write so much story's about it.. we believed from our hart and listened to what the organisation told us.. it makes me sad, what a scam it became.. today i can't stand it.. i can cry about it.

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  gorby.

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  snare&racket

  It's natural to feel stung having been conned. It's natural to feel pain after such loss. It's natural to want to cry when realising we experienced what most thankfully will not, but leaves us asking why?

  But Gorby my pal, my buddy, my man.... We got out. That, statistically makes us some lucky mother-duckers...

  Quacking hell, it doesn't erase what we had to endure, but it makes us the right side of the fence...TODAY.

  Gorby I have these days too, I feel for you as they are not pleasant. But by far, the average day is us getting up, going to work, getting on with life, forgetting the chains that once tied us down,

  Constant studying of shallow, ignorant, controlling literature.

  Years of repetitive meetings with developments and no intellectual or spiritual satisfaction,

  No free thought, heart or mind.

  No right to ask, question and never, never, never allowed to doubt.

  A lifetime of blunted emotions and biological wants, the ignoring of nature.

  The shunning and heartless punishment for nothing more than normality.

  Hours, days, months, years going door to door with a very defensive version of our beliefs, sanitised for public consumption.

  It was decades of dark turmoil, ignorance and hunger for a refreshing source of information, answers and logic. It was decades of emotional torture. It was decades of unnatural, unhealthy, dictatorial, unquestionable loyalty to an ORGANISATION.

  It's normal to look back and feel pain for all this, it's normal to look back and think of the good times and good people we miss.

  Whether this comforts or pains you Gorby, the religion we were in simply no longer exists. New name, new leaders, new doctrines, new hopes, Jesus Christ on a bike they even have a new bible!

  We value you here Gorby, we are glad to have you as one of us, we are lucky.

  We here at this site and sites like it, are the emergency crew escorting and embracing those leaving a burning down. toxic, dangerous, building. A building rife with unnatural control, financial greed, prophetic failures, rampant paedophilia, and oxygen sucking doctrines and beliefs.

  They and we need you here, doing what you do..... We all need each other here doing this,
• 
  25

  New BBC article on JW abuse

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  is religion doing enough to root out abuse?.

  he would go upstairs, on the premise that he was saying a prayer with his niece, then sexually abuse her.

  mark sewell was sentenced to 14 years in prisonafterwards, the elders told her that as it was only her account against that of sewell, nothing more could be done.

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  snare&racket

  www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33609927

  Is religion doing enough to root out abuse?

  He would go upstairs, on the premise that he was saying a prayer with his niece, then sexually abuse her.

  Now in her 30s, Karen wasn't understood when she first told her parents what her uncle, Mark Sewell, was doing.

  Sewell was also the son of a trusted older member of the local Jehovah's Witnesses congregation, known as an elder.

  Christian churches, as well as other religions, have faced claims of child abuse.

  But what is striking about the Jehovah's Witnesses is their explicit policy of dealing with abuse in-house.

  Because of their practice of following the Bible literally, they insist there must be two witnesses to a crime, often not the case in child abuse cases.

  However, in Karen's case a second witness did come forward: Wendy, a family friend and fellow member of the Barry congregation in south Wales. She had been raped by the same man.

  When she reported the crime to elders, Wendy was made to describe it in minute detail to a group of older men.

  Later, she had to give her account again in the same room as Sewell.

  Afterwards, the elders told her that as it was only her account against that of Sewell, nothing more could be done.

  This bringing together of the accused and the accuser in a "judicial committee" is a common feature of Jehovah's Witnesses' justice.

  Karen, still a teenager at the time, was put through the process.

  Reluctance to co-operate

  The elders also ruled that their separate accusations didn't constitute the required two witnesses.

  Despite a pattern of predatory sexual behaviour, it took more than two decades to bring Wendy and Karen's abuser to justice.

  He is now serving a 14-year prison sentence.

  His punishment from the Jehovah's Witnesses? There wasn't one.

  Even when the case came to court, the organisation was reluctant to co-operate.

  Karen's father, John Viney, who was also an elder in the Barry congregation, says that elders who knew of Sewell's conduct and were asked to give statements or evidence in court did not want to get involved.

  In a programme for Radio 4's The Report, we have identified this lack of co-operation in several other similar cases.

  Confidential documents from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Britain - the official name for the Jehovah's Witnesses - that we have seen are explicit about the best way to deal with such matters being within the congregation.

  Nowhere in the hundreds of pages we have seen are elders told that they must go to the police, even if the perpetrator confesses, unless state or national law makes it mandatory to report such allegations.

  The Jehovah's Witnesses' UK leadership declined to talk to us for the programme.

  In a statement, they said they were appealing against a recent High Court rulingin the UK that awarded substantial damages against the organisation for failing to protect a child from sexual abuse by a paedophile.

  Their statement also insists that the organisation does take child abuse extremely seriously.

  Karen Morgan and Wendy are now pursuing a civil claim against the organisation, hoping that further financial penalty may force the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses to change its policies.

  For both of them, what made it even harder was the sense that belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses was part of an all-encompassing lifestyle, with members encouraged to socialise and marry within the group.

  The organisation has some eight million members around the world, but as Karen found to her cost, those who decide to have a boyfriend or girlfriend who is not a member may find themselves "disfellowshipped" or shunned.

  Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only religious organisation to try to deal with allegations of sexual abuse in-house.

  Growing awareness

  For many decades, that was the preferred method of the Roman Catholic Church, which has since reformed its child safeguarding policies following numerous court cases in the US and Europe against priests for the sexual abuse of children.

  Other churches have also tightened up their child safeguarding policies, with the Methodist Church conducting its own recent inquiry into abuse allegations dating back to 1950.

  That inquiry has led to calls for the Church of England to hold a fresh internal inquiry of its own, separately from the overarching national public inquiry that has just begun, and from the investigation it published in 2010, which critics termed inadequate.

  However, it is the more closed religious communities and new religious movements where it remains hardest for the victims of such abuse to speak out and gain access to secular justice, although awareness of the issue is growing.

  Only this month, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish scholar from Manchester - who fled to Israel after he was exposed as a paedophile - was jailed for 13 years.

  Karen Morgan said the church offered no help when she reported the abuse

  From when Karen Morgan was 12, until she was well into her teens, she was sexually abused by her uncle - a ministerial servant with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

  He would go upstairs, on the premise that he was saying a prayer with his niece, then sexually abuse her.

  Now in her 30s, Karen wasn't understood when she first told her parents what her uncle, Mark Sewell, was doing.

  Sewell was also the son of a trusted older member of the local Jehovah's Witnesses congregation, known as an elder.

  Christian churches, as well as other religions, have faced claims of child abuse.

  But what is striking about the Jehovah's Witnesses is their explicit policy of dealing with abuse in-house.

  Because of their practice of following the Bible literally, they insist there must be two witnesses to a crime, often not the case in child abuse cases.

  However, in Karen's case a second witness did come forward: Wendy, a family friend and fellow member of the Barry congregation in south Wales. She had been raped by the same man.

  When she reported the crime to elders, Wendy was made to describe it in minute detail to a group of older men.

  Later, she had to give her account again in the same room as Sewell.

  Mark Sewell was sentenced to 14 years in prison

  Afterwards, the elders told her that as it was only her account against that of Sewell, nothing more could be done.

  This bringing together of the accused and the accuser in a "judicial committee" is a common feature of Jehovah's Witnesses' justice.

  Karen, still a teenager at the time, was put through the process.

  Reluctance to co-operate

  The elders also ruled that their separate accusations didn't constitute the required two witnesses.

  Despite a pattern of predatory sexual behaviour, it took more than two decades to bring Wendy and Karen's abuser to justice.

  He is now serving a 14-year prison sentence.

  His punishment from the Jehovah's Witnesses? There wasn't one.

  Even when the case came to court, the organisation was reluctant to co-operate.

  Karen's father, John Viney, who was also an elder in the Barry congregation, says that elders who knew of Sewell's conduct and were asked to give statements or evidence in court did not want to get involved.

  In a programme for Radio 4's The Report, we have identified this lack of co-operation in several other similar cases.

  Confidential documents from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Britain - the official name for the Jehovah's Witnesses - that we have seen are explicit about the best way to deal with such matters being within the congregation.

  Nowhere in the hundreds of pages we have seen are elders told that they must go to the police, even if the perpetrator confesses, unless state or national law makes it mandatory to report such allegations.

  Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has urged Jews to report cases of child abuse

  The Jehovah's Witnesses' UK leadership declined to talk to us for the programme.

  In a statement, they said they were appealing against a recent High Court rulingin the UK that awarded substantial damages against the organisation for failing to protect a child from sexual abuse by a paedophile.

  Their statement also insists that the organisation does take child abuse extremely seriously.

  Karen Morgan and Wendy are now pursuing a civil claim against the organisation, hoping that further financial penalty may force the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses to change its policies.

  For both of them, what made it even harder was the sense that belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses was part of an all-encompassing lifestyle, with members encouraged to socialise and marry within the group.

  The organisation has some eight million members around the world, but as Karen found to her cost, those who decide to have a boyfriend or girlfriend who is not a member may find themselves "disfellowshipped" or shunned.

  Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only religious organisation to try to deal with allegations of sexual abuse in-house.

  Growing awareness

  For many decades, that was the preferred method of the Roman Catholic Church, which has since reformed its child safeguarding policies following numerous court cases in the US and Europe against priests for the sexual abuse of children.

  Other churches have also tightened up their child safeguarding policies, with the Methodist Church conducting its own recent inquiry into abuse allegations dating back to 1950.

  That inquiry has led to calls for the Church of England to hold a fresh internal inquiry of its own, separately from the overarching national public inquiry that has just begun, and from the investigation it published in 2010, which critics termed inadequate.

  However, it is the more closed religious communities and new religious movements where it remains hardest for the victims of such abuse to speak out and gain access to secular justice, although awareness of the issue is growing.

  Only this month, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish scholar from Manchester - who fled to Israel after he was exposed as a paedophile - was jailed for 13 years.

  Lowell Goddard chairs a national independent inquiry into child sexual abuse

  Todros Grynhaus was deported by the Israeli authorities to face justice in the UK, with his conviction for sex offences against girls leading to a change in attitudes in the Haredi Jewish community.

  The case prompted the UK's Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, to urge members to report child sex abuse.

  The court had heard that both women who testified against Grynhaus in the case had been "ostracised" by their community as a result of speaking out about their ordeal.

  For young Muslim girls, the price of speaking out about child sexual abuse can also be high, with many reluctant to report such abuse because of the fear that it would bring shame on them and their family.

  Sexual and physical abuse at Islamic religious schools, known as madrassas, has also resulted in some prosecutions in recent years, although often victims still hesitate to come forward with such allegations.

  Many religious organisations will find themselves being closely scrutinised in the national independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, chaired by New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard.

  The survivors of such abuse hope that the inquiry will prove itself truly independent, and help ensure that abusers will not be able to rely on their own congregations or religious leaders to protect them - whatever their faith.

  

  Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse:

  The Inquiry will investigate a wide range of institutions including:

  Local authorities

  The police

  The Crown Prosecution Service

  The Immigration Service

  The BBC

  The armed forces

  Schools

  Hospitals

  Children's homes

  Churches, mosques and other religious organisations

  Charities and voluntary organisations

  Full details of the inquiry

  
  

  JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org JW.org
• 
  24

  BURNING AMBITION by Jehovah's Witness YOUTH: "I want to clean toilets in Bethel for the rest of my life."

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  as i have written previously, i crashed a discussion between a young j-dub and his baptist workmate who were having.

  a religious debate outside starbucks.

  this was months ago.

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  snare&racket

  I'll never forget my grandparents (non jw) face as I described my newly assigned privelage, of working for free in a factory for the JW's. I was bewildered as to why they seemed so disappointed. Now it makes perfect sense and I appreciate their honesty, it reinforced the feelings of time wasted when I was weighing up leaving WT.

  Leaving WT is a combination of doubts and questions and a mosaic of emotions, all these little experiences help. My grandparents saw my potential, when I didn't. I was so happy to go give my life to a factory. Even my JW pals thought I was nuts,

  Ambition is a dirty word to WT, the reality is it is a healthy, human motivator. The irony is, you will never see so much ambition in the JW's than in Bethel....
• 
  28

  Did you know WTBTS applied for Holocaust compensation?

  by umbertoecho in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  did you know that the wtbts applied for these compensation funds?

  i had no idea and if this has already been addressed then so be it.

  i find it interesting due to the fact that so much is made of the jws being in camps during ww2 and nothing else is expressed about the other millions who died in these camps.

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  snare&racket

  I researched this not long after and if you look at the literature, this was around the time they apologised for anti-Semitic language in attempting to communicate with the NAZI regime.
• 
  3

  did you ever go to bethel either in the us or the uk what was it like there ?

  by pepperheart in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  hi have you ever worked at bethel either in the us or the uk what was it like there ?

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  snare&racket

  UK from 99-00 and it was eye opening.

  it was just a factory, with stringent rules, with people scurrying for authority. Lots of policing, lots of snitching, lots of affairs and drinking.

  It was no spiritual haven, likewise it was no conspirital Area 51, it was JUST a factory run by a cult that cared A LOT about how much you cost them. I was 'told off' as I had my window open whilst the heating was on, in winter. As a 20 year old working there for FREE it was a surprise.

  worst thing I saw: sisters clean the toilets of the accommodation with.... Toothbrushes.

  best thing I saw: the matrix on my pal's TV with 5.1 surround sound.
• 
  14

  Jw's featured in the mags who later left?

  by purrpurr in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i was just wondering if any of those jw's who got their story told or featured as "a fine example" in the publications, if they ever left the org later?

  i mean i know regular jw's would probably never hear about it but i thought maybe you guys might?

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  snare&racket

  Can think of a couple,

  Ray Franz: gov body member

  Babara Anderson: writing dept