Mistreatment and exploitation of children among the Jehovah’s Witness community is abhorrent.

There are many J-Dub children who, like apostate Shayne, are born into the community thus grow up with Jehovah’s methods instilled in the lifestyle they are taught to follow; then there are other kids who, through manipulation or similar underhanded practises, are brought into the congregation much later in their lives.

Fortunately, Jehovah’s Witness elders abhor sexual abuse, so that’s some peace of mind for adolescent newcomers.

Of course, for those children who had never known any different, there was nothing unusual about spending a day at school avoiding/being avoided by the worldly kids then coming home and grabbing your Watch Tower leaflet in preparation for getting out onto the street for an afternoon of ‘service’ (tireless door-knocking with the intention of proselytising worldly folk).

Growing up amid Jehovah’s congregation, while a child will be aware that worldly kids do celebrate birthdays and Christmases yet they don’t, what may be unknown to the J-Dub kids is the fact that, among the worldly populous, there are in fact no grownups who will ever encourage a child to donate their money to a higher power they have never even met – in this case, the Jehovah’s Witness Governing Body – be it their pocket-money or maybe their ice-cream money, J-Dub kids are coerced to give their own money to a cause that, realistically, they are too young to even understand which, in the real world, would be considered an astonishing form of abuse.

J-Dub children probably do not consider it exploitative to be sent to school, their brains freshly washed with delusions of Jehovah’s purpose-built ‘paradise’ for them and their fellow adherents to spend eternity, then to spend a portion of that day doing God’s work, hoping to convert similarly weak-minded children to their way of perceiving Jehovah and the world He created.

A grown man found to be grooming school children, for the purpose of later controlling their thoughts and convincing them to act in a particular way, without question would be deemed a predator; Jehovah’s Witness kids, under instruction of their adult parents, do just this – often using animated J-Dub skits to entice these worldly children into their ploy and begin the brainwashing process.

J-Dub children are probably not aware that the doctrines they have been taught to embrace, to cherish and to hold true, are all essentially a lie.

As in Shayne’s experience, it is not until later in life – once a person’s brain has developed the ability to experience doubt, once that mind has developed the strength to think for itself and challenge those things around it which might seem unreal – that a Jehovah’s Witness adherent may begin to realise the life they have been living is a sham.

For J-Dub children, born into the congregation or otherwise, the indoctrination process is a cruel form of manipulation; instructing one’s own children how to behave is one thing but, for an unknown entity to enforce in children what to believe, is quite another.

Religion is a belief system built on control; strong-minded leaders controlling weak-minded followers, convincing them to behave in a prescribed manner, persuading them to believe in prescribed doctrines, befuddling the weaker into working and providing for the stronger – this is the premise of religion.

Worshipping an otherworldly entity under the presumption that He will provide for you a paradise akin to a fairy tale does very much sound like a kids’ story; make-believe notwithstanding, children have no place in any indoctrination process.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are raping the minds of our youngsters and it needs to stop.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Chale Minder

Photography by Therapist Fir Yoo