Crusaders: Ex Jehovah's Witnesses Speak Out

I was baptized into the Jehovah's Witness religion

when I was 15 years old,

and I never questioned it.

There were adults in the congregation

that knew about the abuse.

I went those elders...

I was putting my life on the line

because my mom found out that I told anyone about the abuse,

she would have killed me.

And his brother said, go home and obey your mother.

Think about the apostate-driven lies that Jehovah's organization

is permissive toward pedophiles.

I mean, that is ridiculous, isn't it?

I knew inside how wrong it felt,

I knew how sick I felt,

how could you not say something?

You're in a false religion, you're in a cult.

I feel like the religion preys on people

at their most vulnerable.

This organization is made to put people in a box,

make them fearful for their lives.

Maybe God is real, but it's not this.

So much hidden documentation of child abuse

that Watchtower does not want the public to know about.

I knew that this was not going to get out

unless someone did something about it.

The problem of sexual abuse

in the Jehovah's Witness organization

is much, much more significant

than in the Catholic Church.

Once you believe in something this strongly,

it could be anything... you'll do it.

I can't leave it alone!

I know what this organization is responsible for doing.

We're attempting to leave, but we're kind of encircled

at the moment.

We should do the right thing.

But they don't do the right thing.

I was a happy Witness for 43 years.

Ever since I was a child,

I've always been a proponent for justice.

And so I became a Witness because I thought this was just,

that the world would get better.

It was the atomic bomb age.

There was concentration camps.

I took those scriptures literally about

a paradise Earth that God would bring it back,

because I wanted all people to be treated justly.

Surely all of us are thrilld at the prospect

of surviving the end of this wicked world

and living on God's righteous new order.

What a grand future awaits u.

Jehovah's Witnesses think that the world is ending,

and so since everything in this world

is going to be basically

burned up at Armageddon,

the most important thing to do right now is to preach

so that you can teach it to others

and save yourself and save other people.

The thing that attracted me to the Watchtower Society

was that they taught that Armageddon was so close

that those who were living now would never have to die,

but that they could live forever.

The basic beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses,

that this world one day will come to an end

and God will bring in a paradise Earth.

Jehovah's Witnesses came along with a positive message,

I thought, from the Bible,

and that is what I wanted... to please God.

Jehovah's Witnesses feel that they have the truth.

I enjoyed being different to a certain degree.

I liked not being one of the masses

who weren't enlightened.

There was a certain allure to that,

feeling like I had the truth.

I felt that I had won the lottery.

I was born into the only true religion.

The Jehovah's Witness religion itself

was based upon the original work of Charles Russell

back in the 1800s.

Charles Taze Russell was a prolific writer

and a very good business man.

He was very much into the publishing

and selling of his books.

Charles Taze Russell had no intention

of starting a new religion.

The "Watch Tower" was basically the name of the journal.

He started the "Watch Tower" magazine in 1879,

so I don't know that you would call it a religion

from its outset.

Russell established a corporation,

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.

They saw the need to purchase their own printing equipment

and move to a place that was close

to the shipping lanes in the East River.

So Charles Russell

moved the organization to Brooklyn, New York.

The organization was expanding so rapidly

and it's interesting to look back

and see all of those videos of the printing presses

going back in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

The Jehovah's Witnesses started expanding outside of the US

and they continue to expand

until now there is well over 200 countries around the world.

In 1969, Watchtower purchased Squibb pharmaceutical buildings

at 2530 Columbia Heights,

and they turn them into the famous

Watchtower headquarters complex.

There is such an iconic image of the Watchtower

overlooking the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge.

They were so proud of the fact that they were in the middle

of the most important city in America.

My husband and I were invited

to be part of the headquarters staff of the Watchtower.

The Jehovah's Witnesses were going through a growth period.

There were 4,000 people in the complex

at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was transferred into the writing department.

The writing department generates all the articles that appear

and all of the organization's literature.

The October 8th, 1991 Awake! magazine

had an article about how to deal with victims of child abuse.

So there's eight million people all reading this,

and the article really opened a Pandora's box

for the Watchtower organization.

It received more response than almost any other article

in the history of the Watchtower.

And there was a windstorm

of remarks and statements and letters.

Around the world, Jehovah's Witnesses thought that

this article about child abuse

was a time to talk about their child abuse...

that, "this Jehovah's Witness molested me when I was a child."

I wanted to help to make this issue known

because the lives of children were at stake.

The Awake! editor and I

decided to put a package together

of material to show the Governing Body,

who were presiding elders, the immense problem,

and to prove to them that something had to be done.

The Governing Body are eight men,

they've come up through the ranks of Jehovah's Witnesses,

they claim to be anointed by God.

They're celebrities, I think, to a degree.

And they are the only individuals

on the face of the Earth who are spokespeople for God.

It took great faith to break free from the darkness

brought on by centuries of false religious practice.

You represent the most high God Jehovah,

and you also have to have conduct

that supports the fact that you do worship this true God.

There will be many others who will come back

who will have to abandon their former way of life.

I was thinking, as an example, a homosexual.

They're the conduit for the Almighty God

that you believe in and worship.

And so if you don't believe these people,

who are the spokespeople for God,

then you're disobeying God.

And that's actually what the Witnesses teach.

I just wanted to do my part to clean out known molesters,

because that's what the Bible says to do,

to put out the wicked man.

They couldn't agree on what to do about it,

and some said it was a fad.

If you were a woman and a mother,

and you learned what I did,

you would do the same thing.

You wouldn't rest at night.

But people don't say anything.

This is an organization that you don't march with signs

and say, "Remove them! Remove them!"

The dirty little secrets are well kept.

The first time we got a call was in 2010,

and he was a victim of a serial perpetrator here in San Diego.

We start to learn a little bit about Jehovah's Witnesses.

That's how it all got started.

This organization has allowed the sexual abuse of children

to fester within its ranks for decades.

I was very, very involved

with the Catholic priest abuse scandal

that swept the nation since The Boston Globe story

broke in 2002.

We did battle with the Catholic Church,

but at the end of the day,

they fessed up to the fact that they had a problem.

Not so with Jehovah's Witnesses.

The Jehovah's Witnesses continue to insist

they don't have a problem.

They would much rather

prove the... the accuser wrong

and cover up what happened,

because then you don't have

the problem of... of the organization looking bad.

They care about their reputation.

They don't want their names dragged through the mud.

Their way of dealing with it is to try to keep the lid on

as much as possible.

We were the first ones really to get to them with litigation.

We learned early in our litigation against them