Chamber and committees

Petitioner Submission of 29 November 2021

PE1905/B: Public Inquiry into the response of religious organisations to allegations of child sexual abuse since 1950

To all at the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee and the Scottish Government.

Further to my petition “PE1905: Public Inquiry into the response of religious organisations to allegations of child sexual abuse since 1950” I am adding additional information which I think will be useful for you. This is from my own personal experience and the experiences of many others who signed my petition here in Scotland. I can only speak from the experience I had within the Jehovah’s Witnesses and cannot vouch for other religious organisations as I do not have that experience or knowledge. I am blowing the whistle on this organisation for the protection of children within the organisation and out with it. One thing my government need to understand is, being a Jehovah’s Witness is not just a label and going to church every Sunday or every few months for major religious festivities. When you become a Jehovah’s Witnesses, you embody a lifestyle that ultimately crushes people.

I appeared anonymously in the programme BBC Panorama Suffer the little children aired in July 2002.

In terms of this high coercive control organisation that I was raised in here in Scotland, my view is that leaders of this organisation, will not tell governmental authorities, (Police and Child Protection Services) of child abuse allegations unless they are required by law to do so. My view is that they have their own ‘kangaroo courts’ if you will, currently operating within Scotland.

One of the controls this organisation uses is a technique called shunning or as they define it, disfellowshipping. To understand that control, imagine for a moment during your whole childhood you only know this organisation. You have a hope of everlasting life playing with Tigers who are not going to eat you because they have become vegetarian. Your only friends are those within the organisation. Children, although some attend public school are forbidden to form any meaningful friendships within their classes as those in their classes are not members of the organisation. You are told that you will not need those friendships because they will be killed by God at Armageddon, a fiery doomsday scenario that is depicted in many of the organisation’s picture books aimed at children. You are forbidden to join the brownies, girls’ scouts, BB’s, after school clubs, birthday’s, Christmas parties, Halloween parties, Easter egg hunts, fireworks night, to vote, to drink alcohol when you become older, to smoke (really not a bad thing) to take blood when you have had a life-threatening emergency (that’s a shortlist of a much larger list of controls) even being homosexual is forbidden. People within the organisation are encouraged to spy on you and tell the leadership of any sins you may have committed which can result in being disfellowshipped. The control is so great that you even tell on yourself to the leadership eventually. When you leave this organisation, you don’t leave because you want to abandon friends, you leave because you have had enough of the way you have been treated. You leave to find freedom. You are consequently shunned. Members of the organisation will cross the street if they see you, they will not associate with you on social media because they are required not to down to the policies and procedures set out by the Governing Body. They use fear to keep a grip on their members, and they use hope as their dangling carrot. Some have sadly committed suicide.

Further to this, there is a psychological element on the members of this organisation. The rank-and-file membership, the lowly sheep will always approach the leaders of each congregation where there is a problem. They believe that the governments, the police (Gog of Magog) are in control of the devil. However, there is something in their scriptures that can be used to ensure that they do report crimes to the police. It’s at Romans chapter 13.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses UK headquarters is currently based in Chelmsford, Essex, which oversees all of the UK congregations. They have been investigated by both the Charity Commission in England and Wales and by the more recent damning Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). From their findings, they found Jehovah’s Witnesses to be negligent when dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse. The main headquarters where the Governing Body of 8 men, who create policies and procedures for everyone globally, who are members of this organisation to follow, reside in America, in upstate New York. Their most recent policy on child protection is in my view, not fit for purpose. They will only report to the authorities when they are mandated by law in each country to do so. Furthermore, there may need to be a law in place to punish those who do not report child abuse to the authorities. However, when you are under coercive control to do as the leaders of an organisation tell you, then I cannot hold a single individual to account and therefore would hold the organisation, the main leadership to account for this heinous act of silencing survivors of child sexual abuse and silencing their lower-level management. Something needs to be done. The strategic management of this organisation (The Governing Body) in my opinion need to be targeted as the main proprietors of such policies.

My fight for this is strong. However, I have taken steps to better my own life after a time of severe mental health disabilities such as PTSD since leaving this organisation and have returned to college. I am currently studying HND Administration with IT in the hopes of finally having that education that was cruelly ripped from me. This is another of the organisation’s policies that seek to obfuscate their members from attaining a higher education even ostracising them from their communities should they dare to try and better themselves.