Tell us about the rape & pedophilia incident...when you have time.
Jeesh! You guys like the dirt eh?
Don't blame you. After a lifetime of being told how good we JW's were and how rotten "worldly" people are, getting into the inner circle was a less than reassuring jolt back into reality. When I was a teenager I would scoff at the idea the two faced dub teenagers being paraded on the platform as examples were any better than me and my witness friends or those at school. When I met a nice elder who took me under his wing I fell into the religion, got baptized and put my doubts aside until many years later.
My wife's cousin all of a sudden left her husband, moved out on her own and stopped going to the meetings. My wife heard some gossip about it which included fornication with a man from work and asked me what I thought. By that time, (mid 90's) I told her not to believe anything the dubs said as our own experience showed them to highly unreliable relating stories truthfully. So she called her cousin up and asked if they could go to lunch. She was reserved and didn't want to burden her cousin with her issues and assured her she had done nothing to end her marriage, she just needed to work some things out before her and her husband could live under the same roof. A month or two later she was DF'd by announcement and we lost contact because of moving to the DR and she slipped into a whole.
Upon returning and settling back in Canada my wife pined away for her cousin. They were very close as children before they both married. We did not live too far from them when they were still together and did quite a bit together with them socially. Sensing my wife wanted to reconnect, I went looking for her and got a message to her to call my wife. She reluctantly called at first and when she was sure she wasn't going to get a lecture about the Trufe, they finally reconnected. That is when we learned about what happened. This woman was molested by the PO in the congregation she grew up in and that her father was also an elder in. Although not really an uncle, this sicko who obviously liked kids, ingratiated himself into families and insisted the kids call him uncle Larry. My wife's cousins, 2 boys and 2 girls were all likely molested by this guy. The boys have all gone kinda loopy and refuse to talk about it.
Anyway, she and her sister were molested from a very young age 6-8 and on up into the early teens. On her wedding day, this creep came into where she was putting on her gown, asked the bridesmaids to leave them alone, and said she looked beautiful and especially her nice big boobs and squeezed them through the gown and commented that the groom "was lucky to be getting those". Although it stunned her, we have to realize that victims rarely see the evil in the perpetrator but rather choose to blame themselves for the abuse. She went forward with her day and tried to put "uncle Larry" and her past well out of her mind.
Years later she could not suppress the depressing feelings she had that were affecting her marriage, so she came forward and confronted the elders with what had happened. There was denial, family pressure to just forget about it etc. Even from her own husband. Imagine this woman's mother told her she was "overreacting to a little affection" from Larry. This "affection" included fondling her vagina and digital penetration on dozens of occasions, she was also forced to watch him jerk off. There are things I don't believe she ever told us, but one thing is for sure she was no stranger to mail genitalia on her wedding day. So think of how crushing it must have been to hear her mother (who may have been molested herself by same guy) speak about it as if it was nothing. Thankfully there was a few good guys (in a limited way) on the body (one of them was my accountant who confirmed the abuse) and a committee was convened and his response to her testimony was, "I don't recall doing any of that but if she says I did then it must have happened". (perhaps that made him feel he was being a gentleman about it) He was df'd and after 3 months applied for reinstatement and was back in after 5 months. It was confirmed to me that the congregation had received a few letters from African congregations with some allegations of inappropriate touching while "Uncle Larry" was there as a missionary many years prior. That of course was all swept under the carpet by the committee as unsubstantiated single witnesses. The same would have happened to the JC meeting above, but he admitted in a round about way to his guilt. What facilitated the above "admission" was the threat to bring her younger sister in for questioning.
She had never before told my wife what happened even when my wife went out to have lunch with her that time mentioned above. That was because she was threatened that if she talked about it she would likely find herself DF'd for slander. As mentioned earlier, slander is a word JW's and people in general throw around when trying to keep a lid on a scandal, however something is slander only if it is untrue.
Although she did get some closure, what ultimately affected her marriage was how quickly everyone got back to normal. Even her husband could be seen at the meetings after Larry got reinstated, laughing and back slapping or talking about the hockey game. So even though she got some closure to what happened, the way everyone acted afterwards opened up the same issues plus a few more. Now talks about dressing immodestly and flaunting our "means of life" seemed to her as if it was directed at her, or that she was to blame for what Larry did or didn't do. Knowing the dubs the way I do, it is hard not to empathize that this is exactly what was being done and implied by the others.
It so happens that my brother and his wife moved into that same congregation where Uncle Larry was. After years of shunning me, I got a call from my brother one day. He missed me and couldn't believe i was an apostate and half the things he was hearing about me. He had gone through a rough time himself in the Org, but was still hanging on. As we talked I mentioned the pedophile in his hall and he was floored. One of his friends was an elder and he asked him if it was true which he confirmed with a stern warning. 1 month later my brother and his whole family had left the witnesses and have never looked back.
To illustrate how irresponsible and deceptive these elders can be in handling situations like this, my brothers wife had heard about Uncle Larry being df'd as she was in the hall when it happened. Due to the short time he was out and the buzz leaking through the elders wives the last thing they all thought was that Uncle Larry had been molesting this girl for years. The hubbub was that he did something inappropriate (like squeeze her breast through her gown on her wedding day) and dfing was only to teach him a lesson and serve as a warning to keep clean.
You can see how the Watchtower trains people in their "employ" to be deceptive and tricky with their half truths and lies. It amazes me now when I see attacks against us Apostates for telling half truths and lies. They have it totally backwards.
I have talked to my "cousin in law" many times about suing the WT as this man was an elder (PO in fact) who was appointed by the society. But she is reluctant to live through that or further distance herself from the family (who have nothing to do with her anyway). She is doing ok but has not got professional help which she desperately needs.
What is truly sad is that this is not the only case I know of, but given the tight lipped secretive ways of dubs and especially JC's, the congregations are likely riddled with numerous stories like this of people living silently in pain, guilt and feelings of utter worthlessness. We don't know the half of what goes on behind the closed doors in private homes of the "brothers" and least of all the judicial records of the congregations.
Frank75
