I have seen at least two other cases like this one, where they judge made them pay money for willfully refusing to release the documents.
jwundubbed
JoinedPosts by jwundubbed
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221
Judge sanctions WTS - $4k per day penalty for not producing sex abuse documents
by Simon injudge sanctions jehovah's witnesses.
imposes $4000-a-day penalty for not producing documents in sex-abuse case.
by dorian hargrove, june 24, 2016. a san diego superior court judge has ordered the church of jehovah's witnesses, also known as the watchtower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, to pay $4000 a day for every day that it fails to produce documents requested in a civil lawsuit brought by former parishioner, osbaldo padron, who claims a church elder sexually abused him when he was seven years old.. in a june 23 ruling, expected to be made final today, judge richard strauss admonished the church for willfully ignoring a court order to produce all documents associated with a 1997 body of elders letter that church leaders sent to parishes around the world in a quest to learn about sexual abuse of children by church leaders.. over the course of the past year, the watchtower society and its lawyers have fought hard to keep the letter confidential, claiming that turning over the documents would infringe on the privacy of those mentioned in the letter that were not associated with the case.. in march 2015, the church turned over a heavily redacted version of the letter.
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Nobody at work knows what JWs believe
by Athanasius inrecently susie, one of my co-workers mentioned that her husband's family were all jws.
the family converted after susie's husband left home, so he never joined the jws, nor does he intend to.
anyway another co-worker asked her: "what do the jws believe?".
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jwundubbed
I've been told that JWs....
1.) believe that Jesus will come back to earth to save humanity riding atop a green UFO, because he is the leader of the aliens as well as the ruler of the humans
2.) are not allowed to wear jewelry
3.) are afraid of blood
4.) don't celebrate holidays but seem pretty normal beyond that.... i.e. they don't know anything else about them
5.) are a break-off sect of Mormons
6.) are not allowed to wear make-up and the women aren't allowed to wear anything but dresses and skirts
7.) are not allowed to swim
8.) believe in the rapture
... to name a few
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Cart "Witnessing"
by Funchback inbesides being a waste of time for those doing it, and being an easy way for the society to inflate its reports of time spent in the ministry, cart witnessing is also taking up space.
i live in a hot city in brazil.
today, the jws decided to set up their cart in the shady spot of the bus stop, where people going to work have to wait for the bus.. ugh!.
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jwundubbed
Besides being a waste of time for those doing it, AND being an easy way for the Society to inflate its reports of time spent in the ministry, cart witnessing is also taking up space. I live in a hot city in Brazil. Today, the JWs decided to set up their cart in the shady spot of the bus stop, where people going to work have to wait for the bus.
You could call the transit company and complain. They are taking up valuable space. My sister and I called to complain where we are and we never see them anymore.
I have to ride past a cart on my bike every wednesday and the same old vinegar tits sister that persecuted me at the hall sits there pretending she doesn't see me. I thought of taking a longer alternative route, but then thought screw em I 'm not going to let them dictate my day.
You should wave and smile and let her know how happy you are. Let her day be ruined because you aren't a miserable being in the world.
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Using the depression card: Only when critical to family?
by JWdaughter ini just was reading a thread and it occurred to me that "using" depression as a way to deflect from wt obligations is a mistake.
it feeds their sense of superiority-because when you do finally leave or get kicked out, they will say how leaving jehovah ruins lives.
they won't do anything with you anymore in any case, but why feed their delusions?.
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jwundubbed
Most of the times that I have heard of using depression as a deflection it was used because the person had a sticky situation with the people who were in it. Mostly it seems to be used for people who are fading. Sure, life is great... but it isn't great right away. And if you have family that are still in it and you are trying to leave and still have a relationship then telling them you are too happy to do God's work won't make sense to them. God is happiness even when it feels like misery. If you are assuming that people won't have anything to do with you, then it makes sense to promote how happy you are. But if you are still trying to have a relationship with people, then it makes sense to meet those people on their level. Speak to them in words and ways that they understand. They will not understand that happiness can be real and true outside of the cult.
Your point about people who really are depressed being put in an awkward position is a good one. But how many people who are fading/leaving are not in some kind of depression as well? And it is a cult. There are no good answers. There are choices and few of them are good. No choice is ever going to be good for everyone when you are dealing with a cult. And realistically, you can't please everyone even in the best circumstances.
If telling people that you are too happy to be a JW is right for you, then you should definitely do that.
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Being a Socially Inept ex-JW
by LaurenM inso i'm absolutely clueless concerning relationships.
i had barely any friends at all growing up a jw kid & absolutely no interaction with "worldly" people or any guys whatsoever.
i have had a relationship of sorts with a guy for 4.5 months now, but i'm so clueless!
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jwundubbed
So, not only was I a born-in JW but my family moved almost every year and I was introverted to start with. Needless to say I was extremely socially awkward when I left about 20 years ago. For me, changing my natural personality was a matter of survival. I got to a point where it was either die or change, so I changed. The important part of that, for this conversation, is that I knew I had to become more extroverted and so I did some things to specifically break out of my shell. Most of what I did was small and might seem inconsequential but it all had an impact in changing my behaviors overall and in making me the person that I am today. People who know me today would never in a million years guess that I was ever introverted. I still feel that way inside, but on the outside I'm a confident outgoing kind of person. I'll share a few of my insights with you. Sometimes the little things help the most.
Physical
Handshakes: Many people shake hands when they first meet. What you look like is their first impression of you but how you shake their hand tells them what you are really like. If your handshake is weak or you use just a few fingers you often come across as creepy or someone to keep a distance from. If you squeeze too hard or shake to much then you are seen as aggressive. If you hold on too long then you are too dependent. So, offer your hand with confidence and hold it between you and the other person. Holding your hand too close to your own body looks like you don't really want to be shaking a person's hand and can give people the impression that you are timid. If someone has a disability in one hand try offering them your other hand (left to left, right to right) so that the handshake isn't so awkward for them or for you. This actually shows that you took the time to think of them and their needs. Take the other person's hand fully in your own, use a firm but not too strong hold, and shake 2-3 times. Then let go. When you have taken the time to learn how to give a good handshake, you will find that others who aren't as good at it really do give you a very strong impression of who they are and how you feel about them.
Hugs: There was a very distinct lack of physical touch in my family, and not just among the JWs. I started watching my family because I was a product of my family and a product of the JW indoctrination. The men in my family would do that manly handshake thing where they shake hands and put the other hand on the other person's arm. I once pointed out at a family reunion that I had never seen my father or uncles hug my grandfather. They hugged each other that day, both to prove me wrong to prove that hugs are fine. And then, they kept hugging each other at other times too. I started asking people if it was okay if I hugged them when we gave our goodbyes. It turns out that most people appreciate being asked because then people who like hugs can say yes, while others who don't like people invading their personal space can say no and offer a hand instead. Once you break that barrier, that iceway, it gets easier. People are friendlier. And according to a TV show with Stephen Fry hugs should be short, no longer than 3 seconds. Any longer is uncomfortable. There are exceptions to the 3 second rule, like when emotions are running high or when the two people hugging are really close. But generally speaking a hug should last only 3 seconds.
Emotional
Confidence: There is nothing sexier than confidence in a person, and nothing that will more quickly destroy a relationship than lack of confidence in a relationship. Your worry will divide your relationship if you let it. but also what you put out there is what you get back. If you put out worry and stress then the other person will react with worry and stress. If you put out your fears then the other person will react with fear. So try putting out a little confidence. Fake it till you make it. Smile. Before you are going to be with your partner take a moment to do the Superhero stance. I know this sounds stupid but it actually works. Stand with feet a hip apart and hands on hips... or stand with feet a hip apart and raise your hands in triumph. Then smile as if you never had a care in the world and you could do anything! You can do this before a job interview also. Studies have proven that you can build your own confidence by standing like you have confidence. It makes you feel like you are confident. Studies have also shown that the act of smiling makes you feel happy, the physicality of smiling actually releases a chemical in your brain that tells you that you are happy. Use this to your advantage.
Fighting the JW mind tricks: The JWs tell us that relationships in the world won't last and we take that fear into our worldly relationships. But you know my grandparents have been married for something like 60 years and they were never JWs. In fact, I never knew any JW marriages that lasted that long. It isn't just the JW teachings that you have to fight against. Every fairy tale and great romance is about finding 'The One'. But you never see what happily ever after actually looks like because it is a fairy tale. It is not a practical view of relationships. You can be happy ever afterwards but you will also have arguments and will have to work at your relationship and decide from time to time if you want to continue the relationship as you both grow and change as individuals. That isn't a one-time process. It is a process that happens over a lifetime, your lifetime. So, instead of feeding into the fear of what-ifs, just take it a day at a time. Take it one relationship problem at a time. Take it one relationship triumph at a time.
Communication & Trust: Beyond the reasoning against what we were taught, everyone has to learn how to have confidence in a relationship. You have to build trust in yourself, in your partner, and in your relationship. Sometimes you talk it out. You let the other person know where you are coming from, what your fears are and then you discuss together how to overcome your fears. Your partner isn't responsible for your fears but it can help to work through them together. This helps you bond as a couple. At some point, say if the relationship doesn't last, then you have to overcome your fears yourself. You can continue to go into relationships knowing that you have this fear and knowing it can destroy those relationships or you can get some help and figure out how to lose your fear. Relationships take work, time, effort, trust, and communication. Even then they don't always last because people change. Everyone, all over the world, struggles to find trust and to learn how to communicate. This is not just a problem because you were a JW, so don't let your fears from having been a JW overshadow the fact that you are a normal person in a normal relationship.
Movies/TV & Books: Movies and books are not often a good representation of the realities of relationships in the real world. Instead they are snapshots and include some really great information for the socially awkward. Dialogue is the most important part of any story and it is the hardest to write. You read a book and watch a movie and think, 'Yeah, but they have all their words scripted for them". Yeah, by some of the best observers of human interaction that there are. You can't write if it isn't out there. There are bad interactions, good interactions, and the best interactions. Ignore the cliches. Ignore the one-liners. Go for the meat of a dialogue. Want to know what to tell your kid about the birds and the bees? Look at all the examples and think about which one would work best for you. Then adapt it to suit who you are. You think he 'just isn't that into you'? Well, that movie wasn't one of my favorites either but there are parts that can be good information. Chick-flicks aren't the greatest point of view. They oversimplify everything and understate a whole lot. They create very stereotypical ideas about men and women, much of which is wrong in the modern world. But there are snippets at every movie (often when the music gets low and impactful while the actors are talking) that they say something important or handle a hard situation in a way that we can either admire or find distasteful. If you want to know how worldly people react, in general, watch TV, watch Movies, read books. It will give you a good general idea. From there, you decide how you want to be.
Practice Makes Perfect: You can do all these neat little tricks but at some point you just have to practice your social skills. So, join a group that meets for real. Go to a meetup just to meet people if your introductions are awkward. Join a group of people that meet about something that you are really interested in if you want to try to make friends or if you need to beef up your interaction skills. Watch people, but don't just watch people. Speak up. Don't worry about making mistakes. Mistakes are the best way to learn and there is a really important part of social skills in learning how to make mistakes. As JWs we had to be perfect all the time. But no one is perfect. Learning to not just learn from your mistakes but to have grace in making mistakes is so important when learning to be socially dexterous.
I hope that helps.
[Edited to rearrange content I had meant to arrange before submitting]
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Printing presses, bye... bye...
by sp74bb inbye... bye.... no more new printing presses for jw.org... the growth is so tremendous (irony...).. all printing work in europe will be arrange in the next month only in selters (germany), but no renovation or upgrading in printing presses is expected... it will be a full outsourcing :).
a worldly company axel s******* will be used.
this company is known to be printing bild newspaper... the interesting part of it is the logistics will be as well outsourced.
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jwundubbed
To be fair most newspapers and other companies that use printing presses are finding it far too expensive to actually use printing presses. Many printing press companies in the US have closed down and have been closing down for the past 10 years or so. There is a push to get newspapers online because the cost of actual printing is just too high and more and more people are looking for their information online.
This was bound to have an affect on the Watchtower publications at some point and with all the other costs the JWs are incurring it was never a question of 'if' the JWs would go paperless, but a question of 'when'.
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Need advice
by Drwho ini'm a middle aged man.
i dated a jw lady for 3 months ., we never had sex, just made out , half naked , well everything except underwear .
she has been a jw for 40 years ., was married to a jw but he committed adultery 13 years ago so they divorced .
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jwundubbed
but I dont think she will ever trust me more than the Watchtower . Im still trying to understand what exactly the Watchtower means to these people. is it their equivalent to lets say the Catholics Vatican ?
My paternal grandparents are Catholic. To them, the Vatican is the capital of their faith and the place where the person closest to God resides. To them God may be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit but the Pope and the Vatican are NOT God. To JWs the Watchtower is synonymous with the Governing Body which is synonymous with Jehovah God, the only real and true God. If A=B and B=C then A=C. So if the Watchtower = Governing Body and Governing Body = God then the Watchtower = God.
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Need advice
by Drwho ini'm a middle aged man.
i dated a jw lady for 3 months ., we never had sex, just made out , half naked , well everything except underwear .
she has been a jw for 40 years ., was married to a jw but he committed adultery 13 years ago so they divorced .
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jwundubbed
Dr. Who,
You were on another site and asked for the same advice and you got almost exactly the same advice there as people are giving you here. You keep, even in this very thread, asking for more advice. To me, that means that you aren't getting the answers that you want to hear. We can't give you what you want because we don't believe that it is possible or realistic. It may be time to face the possibility that you can't have what you want with this woman, that you can't fix her life or her, that it just can't be what you want it to be.
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Can you relate?
by TimeBandit ini used to try really hard to fit in when i was an active, true blue jw.
somehow it hardly ever paid off.
time after time i attempted to mingle and make jw friends.
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jwundubbed
I had been really close to these two kid when we were all in first grade. But then my family started moving back and forth and I didn't get to see them all the time while they got to totally grow up together. When I was in my teens I lived around them again and at first it was great. But after awhile I realized that they only called me when the numbers were off. You know, like a group had to have even numbers so one person wouldn't feel left out. But I always felt left out anyway. I got ignored a lot.
Somewhere in my late teens I got fed up. I gathered them all together and told them that if they couldn't be my real friend and treat me decently then I didn't want to pretend that we were friends. I wasn't shunning them, I just didn't want to play the game anymore. And after that things were better. I was alone for awhile, but eventually I started hanging out with people who really wanted to hang out with me and whom I really wanted to hang out with too. It was better. But I knew a lot of kids who didn't fit in and didn't have anyone else they could hang out with. Strangely enough most of the kids that didn't fit in well stuck it out while a lot of the more popular kids (who led double lives by the way) left the cult. Most of the privileged kids... kids of elders and kids of wealthy donators led double lives but stuck with the cult.
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Sometimes I feel like I Should Believe something...
by freemamaof3 inhas anyone else felt like they should believe something after leaving wt?
i am an agnostic atheist and its so so hard for me to believe in a god or higher power.
it just doesn't make sense.
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jwundubbed
"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something" - Bishop in Serenity to Mal.
Even believing that there is no God, or believing that you don't need to believe in God, or believing that you could never know if there really is a God is a belief in something. Just because you don't believe in an all powerful Supreme Being, it doesn't mean that you don't have any belief at all.
When I left I had severe PTSD which was most commonly triggered when I contemplated my own death. My attacks were so severe that the muscles all over my entire body would lock up essentially paralyzing me. That put me in both a physically vulnerable position and in a position where I was stuck inside my own head. Initially I learned how to deal with and lessen the physical symptoms of my panic. Long term however I needed to figure out what I believed because it was the not having any belief that really caused the panic.
First, I trusted my instincts. I knew that I believe in possibility and always have but that I also need evidence. The only time I felt like God was a real being was when someone described him as energy. Well, everything is possible with energy. Everything in the universe exists because of energy. Energy makes the possibility of beings with more intelligence and more capabilities than humans very possible. Aliens are possible, angels are possible, and even Gods are possible. Does that mean that I own my existence to some greater being? No. Does that mean that some greater being could have created everything including that which eventually evovled into us? Sure. But that also doesn't mean that I owe my life, my liberty, my mind, my allegience, nor anything else to any other being. You don't normally have children and then expect them to be your slaves for the rest of their lives. But, do I believe that a greater being than myself is responsible for creating me? I don't care. I have what I needed. I don't need to "know" anything. I need to believe. And I do believe in all the possibilities.
I still struggle with my fear of dying even though it does get better with time. A few months ago I realized that my biggest problem with this fear is that the JWs set me up with the unrealistic expectation of 'knowing' what happens when we die. That isn't something that anyone actually can know and it isn't something that I need to know in order to have a wonderful life in the here and now. If I am always focused on my future death then I am still stuck in the JW mindset. This can be applied to belief as well. We don't need to know, but maybe we do need to believe in something. It doesn't have to be what everyone else believes in. Just find what you believe in and take comfort from that belief, whatever it may be.