Simon, I don't know if you were a born-in JW or not.
I was born in, 3rd generation.
I don't doubt that there are many people who will blame all their woes on the WTS and some of those will of course be valid, but if we look at things objectively we have to also factor in the positives:
There will be people alive who wouldn't be without the religion because it provided the community or crutch they needed.
There will be people who didn't suffer from tainted blood transfusions.
There will be people who didn't die from drugs or aids or whatever.
The number of people in the general population who receive organ transplants is vanishingly small so the intersection of JWs needing them is likely infinitesimally tiny.
I watched the testimony of a young woman the other day (pioneer sister) who told the tale of what happened to her when she tried to leave the org. Her parents took her to therapist after therapist trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Finally they took her to a JW Psychiatrist who prescribed her powerful anti-schizophrenia medication
Anecdotes like this have me wondering the age of the girl and therefore whether it's poor life choices or bad parenting. The other examples sound like made-for-TV lives straight out of the Jerry Springer show. They are certainly not typical and nothing like the JWs I came across. They sound like inventions to push the "and then became a Christian" agenda. Do you really know them? What are their names, what cities do they live in? Or is it "I heard of someone once", because those things are rarely real - they are invented caricatures.
Yes, the WTS has some influence, but at some point people have to take personal responsibility for their decisions, including whether to allow someone else to make them.
I know some people don't like these kind of opinions, but "we have to blame the WTS for everything" is too simplistic, easy to debunk and then just makes all valid criticism look weak, like an obsessive ex trying to tell the world all manner of faults.
