I can speak from experience having lived thru all of this as a child. Myself and my brother DID report the abuse. Nothing was ever done. The pedophile was allowed to stay in the congregation and abuse others. I even went to the elders to report about another brother that was touching me inappropriately when i was younger. He is still an elder. He is well known in our area. There exact words to me were" get on with your life and let Jehovah handle the matter". The society wants to distance itself by saying it " does not and never has taken children, young people or vulnerable adults into care". There so many things wrong with that statement i wouldnt know where to start but i will say this. The last time i attended the kingdom hall i sat beside a convicted pedophile. He was on our states sex offender registry. He spent time in prison for molesting an 11 year old girl. I hope divine justice will be swift and brutal.
Also, I want you to know, that had I been in your congregation and knew about your situation, I would have fought on your behalf that you got justice.
I have been personally involved in two of such cases:
The first was my own sister-in-law that my husband's "best friend" since youth violated. She was home alone at her parent's house when she was 16 years old and he came over and asked her if she knew how to use a tampon. She said no. They ended up in the bathroom with her putting one up inside of her. She stopped going to the KH. She finally came forward years later.
My husband's family was very weak spiritually and had been friends with this brother's family for two decades and that family had helped them into the truth. So they told her to forgive him and even still let him come over to the house. My sister-in-law left the house and has been living on the streets doing drugs ever since. We don't even know if she's alive.
The brother was privately reproved (he has two kids) and cannot serve in any special capacity. That said, he has never apologized to her or to us and we cut him off.
The elder who presided over his judicial committee was a former Bethelite and later on, his own adopted son ended up murdering a newly baptized brother by meeting him the parking lot of a grocery store and beating him with a bat until he was unrecognizable. The young brother died three days later. Evidently, both of these brothers had had a love interest in the same young sister and were fighting over it. The attorney that the family hired to represent their son's defense, was Leslie Abramson, of the Menendez trial fame.
Their son got prison time, but the father and mother still got a part on the district convention program. It makes me sick to my stomach.
The second one was a sister in an area where I used to live who's father had been molesting her older sister and incesting her from the age of 5 until 15. She is now a drug dealer.
The father used to line all the kids up when they were little and wave a gun at them and ask: "Which one of you a I going to shoot today?"
Another time, he put my friend at age 3 into a turkey pan and threatened to put her into a heated over while the others watched.
We had gone to a 12-step group together where she had shared her story for the first time. I asked her if she had ever told the elders and she said no. I told her she needed to go to the elders with what he had done.
As it happened, the PO at the time happened to be a former Gilead missionary and also a good friend of her fathers. He felt like her father was like a 2nd father to him. That elder told her she needed to forgive him. When her father and mother changed congregations because they were embarrassed, one of the elders announced to the congregation that they were moving and asked everyone to clap to send them off with well wishes.
At the new hall, her father would pass out candy to the children there. I ended up calling the branch and she ended up calling the branch because we didn't have a CO at the time due to circumstances causing him to leave the road, and a brother at the branch told her she would have to forgive him and cited the account about Manasseh.
She called me one day and said that she was sitting on her couch with a knife to her throat contemplating suicide.
Finally, a District Overseer got involved and told her elders that they needed to apologize to her and said that the father had to pay for her therapy. When I was lamenting to one of her new elders about what she had gone through while working door to door out in service, he told me about a judicial committee involving a woman who had been raped by her dentist who had given her Flunitrazepam, also known as Rohypnol, which is a date-rape drug, and she got disfellowshipped after she got pregnant because she couldn't prove that she had been raped.
Somehow it all came out later, perhaps with DNA testing of the baby and the dentist, and she got reinstated.
True justice will not occur until Armageddon and beyond. But in the meantime, our dear brothers and sisters such as yourself deserve all the love and support and validation that they deserve. I just want you to know that I would have fought for you for whatever that's worth.
I had gone with the second sister to a SIA (Survivors of Incest) 12 step group and they have literature online that you might find healing.
Survivors of IncestAnonymous for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse OUR MISSION FIND A MEETING You Are Not Alone We welcome you to the internet presence of the Survivors of Incest Anonymous World Service Office. This site is intended to be a resource to survivors of childhood sexual abuse who...
siawso.org
www.rnz.co.nz
