The Dark Side of the Jehovah’s Witness World - Lacie Documentary

and he just undid my school trousers and started to abuse me and that was the only time he's ever spoken during the abuse and that was to ask me if it hurt to which I said yes and then he stopped and made me sit up and pray with him and he prayed to Jehovah to forgive both of us because we'd both done something wrong and it was from that point that I I knew I'd never be able to say anything I was born and raised a Jehovah's Witness and that was my normal so from the time I was probably in the womb I was read my book of Bible stories which had a lot of pictures that involved quite a lot of blood and Gaul so Kane killing Abel and things like that it was quite horrific and that was what how I was brought up I was brought up with the Bible I was brought up to believe and trust in Jehovah God and love him more than I love my own family and my own parents things like that um as a Jehovah's Witness we couldn't celebrate Christmas or Easter or birthdays and that was fine because I'd never done it I didn't feel I was missing out on much until children at school get to color in their Christmas trees or write birthday cards and twice a week my life revolved around going to a Kingdom Hall which is a bit like going to church and Tuesday evenings from 7 15 till about nine o'clock we would be at the Kingdom Hall and Sundays for a couple of hours and when I was younger probably up until about 13 there used to be a Thursday book group at our house as well and that involved more Bible study so it was quite intense growing up as a Jehovah's Witness you're sort of there's a lot of pressure on you in your life you're very controlled as a witness because you're told what you can do what you can't do how you behave in the Kingdom Hall as a child will reflect on your parents and they can be looked at negatively If you're sort of sat there drawing or coloring or not listening um so it was a very intense upbringing but because I didn't know any different that was my normal and so as a part of Jehovah's Witness um how when did and how did the abuse start so my mom and dad got divorced when I was about three or four years old and my mum remarried uh Elder called Clifford Whiteley when I was about six or seven and the earlier the first couple of years of that marriage were fine I think was abnormal um Cliff was seen as a very Pious man um it was deserved he was filled with holy spirit that just flowed out of him and every congregation in the West Midlands knew him and really loved him and looked to him as a very authoritative figure within the congregation that they could respect and love and his story of how he came into the religion people admired so he was a well-respected man so for Mom to marry him it was seemed like the perfect situation because he was a very spiritual man he will look after us and our spirituality was the most important thing that had to be looked after even more so than food and somewhere to sleep as long as you had a good spiritual relationship um it wasn't until I started getting older I guess and to an age where you almost start to develop so between from about the ages of 11 or 12 was when the abuse started so he hadn't done anything before there was no inclination that he was going to do anything before it just happened um I was always close with him and I loved him as a dad he was a good father figure up until that point and we went to his his daughter from a previous marriage had a party and we were invited and we got to stay over at a hotel and it was very exciting and the room we stayed in had a Maisonette so there was a bedroom on the top and then a sofa bed downstairs for me and my sister before we went to have go to the actual party I was too excited to sleep I'd already put on my new dress and I slept with him and Mom in their bed which wasn't an unusual thing to do we were a very sort of cuddly family and it was Mom in the bed him and then me on the end and I couldn't sleep I was too excited my mum was asleep he was not and that's when he just started to put his hand up my dress and that was the first time that he did anything and I just I didn't even know what to think it was because he's never done anything like that before that was just how it started so I was scared I wanted to wake my mom up I didn't know what to do it was all very confusing and after that that was how the abuse continued um for a while and I went on not saying anything because at that age it was just too you didn't really understand but you knew that it wasn't right and which meant it was wrong and therefore you felt equally culpable in whatever this wrongness was because it was happening to you that's how it felt for me and it carried on for a while and I never said anything he never said anything after the first time he abused me when we eventually went to the party he sort of grabbed my arm and said sorry and that was it he never spoke again until the last time the more graphic abuse happened when I'd come home from school and I lay on the sofa with my feet on his lap just talking about my day and he just undid my school trousers and started to abuse me and that was the only time he's ever spoken during the abuse and that was to ask me if it hurt to which I said yes and then he stopped and made me sit up and pray with him and he prayed to Jehovah to forgive both of us because we've both done something wrong and it was from that point that I I knew I'd never be able to say anything because I've made God really angry and I've done something horrible even though I didn't really understand what it was at the time and after that the more graphic abuse stopped but he still continued to growth me up until 2019. and 2019 was a pivotal year because that was when I finally spoke up about the abuse and that was to my oldest sister and my brother-in-law so I'd return from a two-month vacation abroad with a friend and I had the best time and it was the first time in my life at 21 that I saw what life could be like outside of the Jehovah's Witness community and that was mind-blowing that there was something more than knocking on doors and talking about Jehovah and telling people that you know that you need to change otherwise you will die Armageddon and thinking I was going to die Armageddon because I never felt good enough for Jehovah I never felt good enough within the organization um I was baptized from the age of 16 and that's a really serious commitment um and when I got baptized you have to do it in front of thousands of people and they make you stand up and they ask you two questions um and one of them involves do you understand that you are a part of the organization and it's very heavily based upon the organization and the governing body who are the the leaders in America more so than it is God so this dedication to the Jehovah's Witness religion is more so to the men running it than it is to Jehovah himself and this comes with very serious consequences so if you've sin which can be if you're smoking if you get drunk too often if you're having sex before you're married it can lead to your expulsion from the religion and that's known as disfellowshipping and you can only be disfellowshipped if you're baptized into it because you've dedicated your life so for to do that at 16 is very serious and at 16 you don't really understand you think you understand because you feel very mature and grown up and you want to make your parents proud so that was my reason for getting baptized there's a lot of pressure that comes into it from the congregation um my mom never really pushed me for it she doesn't really agree that you should get baptized young but my stepdad certainly did and a lot of other members of the congregation were pushing me towards baptism and I didn't really understand the severity of it at that age until I got older and had the natural inclinations to want to go out with friends and you want to have a drink and you just want to be a normal teenager enjoying your life none of which you can do because if you get caught or if the guilt eats away at you so much that you confess to the elders then that could be it you'll be cut off from your whole family from the whole community and that life you live in fear you live in fear and I think for most young people you just sort of accept that when what the witnesses teachers Armageddon comes that you'll just die and you just accept that but you carry on going through the motions because you don't want to upset your parents or members of the congregation so you just carry on it's a bit of a fast really so for this experience of me abroad it was okay wow maybe I won't die at Armageddon and because I don't actually really believe in it but you're almost too scared to think those thoughts because you're taught that God can read your thoughts and the devil can read your thoughts and you shouldn't pray out loud because the devil will listen to what you're saying and know your weaknesses and then pull you away from the organization so it was a very scary time so that fear lessened for me so when I returned and told my sister that I had the best time and all these amazing things happened and I met these wonderful people and I want to go back and life is now really exciting and they were so supportive and they said you know that's brilliant go back do it what's stopping you from going out there and doing what you want to do and I think it was almost an Escape Route for me because I thought about my mom I'm the youngest of five children I would be the last one to leave and then I said also there's cliff and I just started to cry and it's the sort of crying that you can't come back from it's not a few tears and oh I don't know why I'm crying it was Heavy sobbing and I couldn't talk and her initial thought was you're pregnant you're pregnant Aunt you just tell me you're pregnant and I sort of shook my head and is it about mom is it about Cliff to which I'm like nodding and has he done something again it's nodding and is it is he doing something to you now and it no and is it in your past yeah and that's how it came out to my family and that was very traumatic because that had been 10 years since the very graphic abuse happened up until that point I was still fighting him off of me when I was at home so if I'd come downstairs in the morning um or if I got ready for work or if I was going out knocking doors or anything and I would get dressed and come downstairs he would always hug me but it would always be from behind so that he could grope me and he would not get off and for a man that was well into his 60s he was very tall and very strong and it took a lot of effort and it wasn't it wasn't a once a day occurrence I had to fight him off multiple times a day and the way that it worked when people were around is he had a habit of poking me and my sister in our sides in front of other people so we'll be like oh get off cliff and that meant that when other people were in the house but not in the same room he could then still grope me and when I was yelling to get off people would just then assume that he was just irritating me by poking my sights because that's what he did in front of them so he was very manipulative in that way um that's how it all came out and then we had to tell my mom which was very difficult so she came round after work and I told her and the first thing she said was that she believed me which was something you don't really think about considering that people might not believe you when you finally do speak up about abuse and then she wanted to go and confront him but we didn't want her to go by herself to confront him so it was her decision to take to Elders from the congregation with her I don't know whether I can use their names if you want to crop it out you can so she decided to take the food in person so two Elders from my congregation who I'd known from when I was a child and yeah they know me my whole life I loved both of them I was very attached to both of them um yeah so they went with her and Cliff denied it initially until the next morning when my mom asked him again whether he abused me and he said yes but it was once and he was drunk and none of which was true but that's what he said or too much to drink he didn't want to say drunk because that's also seen as a sin so he said too much to drink and then he had to tell the elders by that point I couldn't be in Birmingham anymore it was I didn't want to see him again I didn't want to be in that house anymore so I stayed with my sister and my sister said I think you should report it to the police and I was very reluctant to do so so to live with him after everything had happened and to cope with what had happened and not saying anything my way of coping was to build him up as almost worship him in a way and think what an incredible man he was and how amazing he was and how spiritual he was and that was partly because growing up he isolated me from my mom and my sisters and my brother and I wasn't allowed any friends outside of the congregation and even people within the congregation because he was an elder he knew a lot of what the younger people were getting up to and so I'd be told to stay away from them so he cut me off from everybody in my life so that I just had him he made it me and him versus my mom and my other sister so I didn't have a very good relationship with them I only had a good relationship with him because he made it that way so I felt at the time that I didn't want to go to the police because it was almost I felt I still needed to protect him but my sister said that she could report it in on my behalf instead of me and that felt a bit better that he wasn't coming directly from me and I'm very very grateful to her for that I think I would have massively regretted not reporting him to the police and it was one of the best things that I ever did um was going ahead with that so the police got involved and I had to go and do a video interview going through the graphic details of what happened to me and the police officer DC Enzo who was in charge of my case had asked if he would have any trouble with the elders cooperating and my sister hasn't been in the religion for many many years and even she was up until this point was still very defensive of the organization she wouldn't have a bad word said against it at all so we both said no they'll support you whatever you need they will cooperate and he said that I've worked with religious groups before and that isn't the case but we were adamant that he will have all the support from the organization he doesn't need to worry and it wasn't long after that that I then realized the true colors of the Jehovah's Witness organization um there was a lot I didn't agree with when I was growing up some of the teachings didn't sit right with me I didn't like that women were not allowed any positions within the congregation and there were a lot of scriptures that were constantly mentioned about women being the weaker vessel and the Christ is head of the house and then it's man over woman and things like that I never really liked that and they backtracked a lot of their teachings so the first man Charles Tays Russell that started the organization from when he started it until now their Foundation of beliefs have changed so many times and it's put under the umbrella of new light that they've had new light into the scriptures and the the teachings that they previously held um were no longer true or found to be wrong and then they would change it but that never sat right with me either um I always thought I would wait until my parents died and then I would leave because though I don't have to break their hearts by leaving the organization so I knew it wasn't for me anyway but then it got worse it went beyond their teachings and then suddenly how they handle things as serious as child abuse and was a very big red flag for the whole organization and that's sort of what woke me up to knowing that there is absolutely no God behind this organization it is just men and it's the specific men in America representing um God as the governing body on Earth and it was horrific so my story goes that the elders had Cliff's confession and they had it documented on a written document that three Witnesses signed so Cliff had a meeting with three Elders in March to decide whether he was going to be kicked out of the organization because it wasn't an immediate he was going to be kicked out it had to be a decision made by three elders and this is called a Judicial committee and a Judicial committee happens when a serious sin has been committed again that goes back to smoking or if you've had sex and Cliff as an elder will have been part of many judicial committees because he was an elder for well over 20 years so he knows how he knows how they work and he knows the rules because all Elders have a guidebook and it's called Shepherd the flock of God and that's essentially where they get all their shepherding the congregation information from and how to deal with things that come up and there is a section in there about child abuse and the first thing that they're told to do is to contact headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses in London so the London Bethel Branch not go to the police but to contact the headquarters where there's a team of lawyers that they will need to talk to and Cliff had his judicial committee and in his document that the conversation they had with them went that he was asking to be disfellowshipped he was almost trying to be a martyr saying he should be disfellowship and this is where he said that he wasn't drunk but he'd had too much to drink which is completely bizarre because that's an abnormal emotion to have regardless of if you're drunk or a little bit tipsy nobody has the inclination to sexually abuse a child when they've had a drink it's just disgusting and this document that they had The Plea we told the police that they will have a document because that's how it works they keep on record all these conversations they have with members of the congregation especially when it comes to something as serious as a Judicial committee and the police got in touch with Dave Clifford and Rudy Dobson the elders to ask for the document and they wouldn't give it over and they're similar to the Catholic Church a bit like under a penitent oath they said that they couldn't hand it over and this is where everything went downhill because for a historic case of abuse it's not very often you can get a conviction so my case wasn't strong to start with and Cliff was giving no comment interviews to the police but we did have a confession that was signed by three people that we couldn't get and it took seven months of fighting to get that document and it had to be court ordered that they handed it over so before we got to that point I'd ask the elders to come and see me because I've known them my whole life I admired them both and I didn't understand why they were not going to help me so they came round they said a prayer they shared a scripture about slander and they said because Clifford told them in confidence about the abuse that it would be slanderous of him to tell the police and then they said the only other way they could come forward is if they stepped down from their position as Elders in the congregation and I didn't say anything because there's two of them I know them both they both don't need to step down it can just take one and they didn't look at me and they didn't say anything so I just I just went forward and said but but he's a pedophile and they just said yeah we know and they couldn't look at me I started crying I started screaming actually in fact and they were sat in front of me on the sofa and I was on the floor so I lent forward so far my head almost was touching the floor and I was screaming and crying and my sister was trying to comfort me and I don't really remember much else after that up until that point I can't remember what happened after I just remembered that yeah we know and the rest is almost black because I've already had so much pain and hurt and let down from them so then to hear that was it was getting re-traumatized again after everything that I'd gone through because I just didn't understand how they didn't want to help me or protect me instead they chose to protect a pedophile and that was heartbreaking because these are two men that I loved very much and they let me down big time and the whole organization lets down people like me over and over and over again and my story is one of thousands and mine isn't even the worst one that's out there why it's just a very small part of epidemic that's happening within the Jehovah's Witness organization because they choose to protect pedophiles and there's even a database that they have with a list of pedophiles going back 10 years and that is something that is being fought for at the moment to be handed over to the police because they're refused to hand it over at the moment and that's what really made me realize that yeah there's no God behind this organization this is wrong you need to protect children you can't treat people like this survivors of abuse don't deserve to be treated like this pedophiles do not deserve protecting

Channel: The Taboo Room With Aaron S

Views: 342,027

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Id: U97TDkyHtow

Length: 27min 8sec (1628 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 11 2022