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When I walked away from the Watchtower in 1974-75, I walked away as a personal failure. I had just seen the prophesy of 1975 being set up to be swept under the rug. I had just witnessed the total denial of the 1975 teaching by a Watchtower district servant at the spring Sioux Falls circuit assembly.
I had just been "counseled" by an elder about the "theocratic look" . . . I wasn't wearing a complete costume to the group meetings . . . I had left my neck tie at home in the closet. I had just been belly pushed away from a perfectly okay candy vending machine with a hand lettered, scotch taped, "Out Of Order" sign on it at a Watchtower district assembly in Bismarck ND, by two adolescent Watchtower convention cops (attendants) while my three year old son stood by watching with a roll of Rainbow Life-Savers in his hand and a tear in his eye. I walked away from the Watchtower thinking I was the failure because I could no longer accept the way I was treated, nor could I accept the gossip, slander, child beating, and lies. The Watchtower fear indoctrination worked very well on me at home, in school, and at the group meetings. I was full. I was full of fear and guilt I couldn't hold anymore. When I left the group activities, I walked away with my head down. I was very afraid, lonely, and angry at myself for not being able to simply follow directions, not think, and complete a few short years in "Jehovah's organization" before Armageddon. I was sure I had been abandoned by God. I knew I was not good enough to be part of "His organization" and I was doomed to die at Armageddon, which I believed was coming shortly. When I left the Watchtower, I was working with my dad to make money to feed my family. My second son had just been born. Delores had refused the organ transplant and blood treatment like the Watchtower asked and had been in her grave almost 4 years. I had just turned thirty years old. I worked extra hours on the job to try to complete the promised work the Witnesses did not do when they left a job undone to attend a group meeting or to go out door to door, recruiting new group members and raising funds for the group leaders. To live with the tremendous inner conflict that resulted when I quit group activities I tried to close the door on my JW experience. Putting the Watchtower experience way down in my gut and not looking at it was my plan. However, the Watchtower did not rest easy in my gut. I had been indoctrinated with the Watchtower doctrines as my core beliefs, and I ran my life on a series of lies that I had accepted as true, because they had been presented to me for acceptance by my parents, my church leaders, and reinforced by my Watchtower friends and school teachers. Everyone in my life was either involved in indoctrinating me with Watchtower doctrine or reinforcing what I had already been taught by the Watchtower group members. I tried to run my life with the core beliefs from the Watchtower and It was not working at all. I was liking people I was supposed to hate. I was angry at people who supposedly were God's appointed leaders, "Princes on Earth." My family was in turmoil. My relationships with my parents and family members were strained and conditional. The Jehovah's Witnesses relative's relationship with me was conditional, based on how well I was conforming to the Watchtower leaders model, and I was not at all conforming. I was treated like an outcast in the extended family, at work, and eventually in my own home. I was not aware of Ray Franz leaving Bethel and the subsequent attempt to isolate and silence him, nor was I aware of the September 15, 1981 Watchtower that required shunning of those who left the group voluntarily. I took the rejection of me by my parents and relatives personally. There was only one book written by a former Witness when I left in 1974 - 75, and I did not know how to get it. There were no groups made up of former Jehovah's Witnesses that I was aware of, and no former Witnesses that I knew of to talk to around here. I very well would not have talked to them anyway because I was still a Witness mentally. In my mind the Watchtower organization was not at fault, but I was. Plus, I and anybody else who could not live up to the requirements to the organization (i.e. God's requirements) was faulty and doomed to eternal destruction by God. It was not until 1991 that I was introduced to the concept that my history with the Jehovah's Witnesses had anything to do with my living problems. In 1992 and 1993 I stumbled upon and read the book by Ray Franz, Crisis of Conscience. That led me to other books and eventually to meeting many of the writers of the books. Early in 1995 did an in-depth search into the methods and messages used on me by the Watchtower. What I found shocked me, and motivated me to try to be available as a resource to other victims of the Watchtower. Today, based on my experience, the Watchtower is nothing that I can turn my back on, nor do I wish to. I tried to do that and it did not work for me. I did much harm as a Jehovah's Witness, and later as a believing walkaway. I get a phone call or letter every day from a Watchtower victim. Many Watchtower victims are searching for answers and a friendly listener to their story who understands. The Watchtower disfellowships, according to their published records, something like fifty thousand a year (one percent). We are aware of at least that many if not more, who walk-away. All are hurt, lonely, afraid, and shunned by all their Witness "friends" and family. When Witnesses start to question the Watchtower organization, I have found, they usually do this from a distance and as anonymously as possible. I am currently in communication with a number of Jehovah's Witnesses who are seeking answers and are reaching out "long distance".
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