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By Joanna Foreman

Robert Crompton is a student of words, and a lover of reading them. In his new book, Pathways to Freedom, he uses a less-is-more technique with words, fully aware that his target audience, ex-JWs is, by this time, familiar with Jehovah’s Witness terminology. Devoid of those unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, his book contains less than one-third the number of words in an average novel. One of the most popular and prolific writers of our time, Elmore Leonard, said, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Robert Crompton skillfully leaves out the part that former JWs don’t need.

I open Crompton’s book and feel we are having a friendly conversation. Crompton slips easily from first-person to second-person narrative, asking the reader a question about their own experience, and going on to describe his, always mindful that his is not offered as the best way or only way. His humility emerges clearly when he terms himself a defector. How delightful that he uses the word defector, and not apostate, for himself and others who leave the sect. He selects other choice words such as home ground, transit zone, and Airportland, where you commit yourself to going ahead with your journey, “but you could go back if you really had to,” Crompton says, and then repeats: “Really had to.”

He continues in the next sentence, “But once you have checked your cases in at the baggage drop, and gone through passport control, that’s it. You are on your way. Leaving the Watchtower is very much like that kind of journey.” He then asks the reader, “What was the baggage drop/passport point for you out of the Watchtower?” He resumes by relating his own.

While describing his unhurried loss of interest in the religion, he states, “I was a bit of a contradiction as a Special Pioneer. On the one hand I was keen to put in impressively more hours than the quota. On the other hand, I was seduced by the Clydebank Library. What a wonderful place! I began to read avidly, particularly from their fine collection of books on psychology, philosophy and mathematical logic.” He admits that within less than a year from his first visit he felt more alive in a public library than in the Kingdom Hall.

Through in-depth reading, the author discovered a new way of seeing the world we live in. He finally reached the point where he could no longer identify as a JW, and he allowed himself to be disfellowshipped, with the full knowledge that his mother and sisters would have nothing more to do with him. That was a half-century ago.

He describes different possible routes from involvement with the Watchtower to eventual freedom, but warns that total freedom from the control which the Watchtower exerts over its members does not come immediately following our final exit from the Kingdom Hall. He offers solid examples of how and why this will happen, has happened to almost all of us as defectors. By now, I’ve assumed this label as my own, and I like it. He quotes activist Phoebe Willetts when she was released after six months of imprisonment: “I was frightened at coming out, standing there, wondering if I should be able to cross the road by myself.”

Crompton adds, “A picture of someone standing at the roadside unable to cross because there was no authority figure to give the instruction has stayed with me all these years.” Now, over two decades of my being free of JWs oversight, I can recall that same feeling at the beginning. Insecurity from having no idea what to do next was at a high level.

Crompton offers that we were taught that self-determination was sinful, but now we’ve been given the freedom that everybody else takes for granted. Depending upon how long we were a part of the cult, our core beliefs and behaviors were formed by the corporate entity of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Letting go to find freedom to think for ourselves can feel wrong. The author moves through the book with excellent suggestions and gives reasons for what happened to us on our own journeys.

It is his advice that a defector may well find help by seeking a therapist to work through specific issues. He concludes by offering an email address to contact him if we’d like. I was sad to see this book end, so I started over from the beginning. I highly recommend Pathways to Freedom to anyone who has left the sect, or is contemplating doing so.

Joanna Foreman, Biography: Joanna is a self-proclaimed know-it-all, a label she gladly accepted for the title of her memoir, her personal account of growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. She’d gaily waltzed through the hoops of her mother’s religion for half a century. When she left, the exit was abrupt, but nothing she hadn’t thought about for years. She hadn’t even thought of it as a cult until she was out of it. In fact, she hadn’t found it necessary to think as a Witness, letting the sect do all of her thinking for her.

Joanna made up for lost time to find the freedom of thinking for herself. She attended numerous Writing Workshops and has been published in a variety of literary venues. In addition to The Know-it-All Girl, she has written a collection of fictional ghost stories, and a novel, Riverwalk Chameleon. Her work can be found here: The Know-It-All Girl: Foreman, Joanna: 9781942166641: Amazon.com: Books

The issue of whether a person has consented to a particular action is a core part of our social relationships whether they are personal or group interactions. To participate in any social relationship a person must on some level consent to that participation. For consent to occur a person must know what it is they are consenting to and must have true freedom to say yes or no. Unless both of these criteria are present and valid true consent cannot occur.

For example, for a person to “consent” to joining a group they must be fully aware of the rules of the group. Non-disclosure of the rules before the consent is given would be fraudulent on the part of the group and would therefore make any implied “consent” invalid. This is true in all legal contracts whether written or verbal. Both parties must clearly have stated what they are consenting to before the contract is valid. Withholding information vital to the contract invalidates it. However, if all the articles of the contract are clearly spelled out and one party refuses to read the articles, often referred to as “the fine print,” then that refusal is taken that full acceptance of the contract is valid.

A point can be made about children and the issue of consent. In some cases, children can and do ‘consent” to certain relationships. A boy may get a job as a paperboy. He is instructed on the rules of the job and the compensation for his work. Many children fulfill this type of contract responsibly.

But in our society legal experts agree that children do not have a legal right to make certain contracts. Due to the lack of maturity and knowledge inherent in being a child, giving “consent” would not fulfill the two criteria required for that consent to be valid.

In regards to a child giving consent to joining a religion such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), as a full member, this issue becomes very important. Can children fulfill the conditions of full membership in the JWs?

Even if full disclosure was given to the adults who join the JWs (which they are not given), it is clear that children cannot. Children lack the information necessary to make an “informed” decision about the matter. They are ignorant about how adult contracts are made and enforced. More important, they are generally unaware of the social meanings of religious commitment. For example, they are unlikely to be aware of the rules and regulations surrounding religious expectations – what they are supposed to signify. They are uniformed and inexperienced about what criteria to use in judging the acceptability of any religion except the JWs. Children most often agree to certain behaviors out of fear or loyalty or a desire to please the adults in their lives or just to be one of the crowd. This would preclude the issue of freedom and therefore invalidate the contract. And finally, children have little way of knowing how other people will react to the experience they are about to undertake – what likely consequences it will have for them in the future.

In discussing the issue of consent, social psychologist David Finkelhor states, “For another thing, a child does not have the freedom to say yes or no. This is true in a legal sense and also in a psychological sense. In a legal sense, a child is under the authority of an adult and has no free will. In a more important psychological sense, children have a hard time saying “no” to adults, who control all kinds of resources that are essential to them. Food, money, freedom all lie in adult hands. In this sense, the child is like a prisoner who volunteers to be a research subject. The child has no freedom in which to consider the choice.” In a desire to please the adults around him or her, the child makes a decision based on wrong motives and inaccurate knowledge.

The basic proposition here is that child baptism is wrong because the fundamental conditions of consent cannot prevail in the relationship between a religion and a child. “It adds a moral dimension to the empirical one” (Finkelhor). Even if it could be shown that in many cases children were helped by religion affiliation, one could still argue that the baptism was wrong because children could not consent. The wrongness is not contingent upon the evidence of a positive or negative outcome.

Due in part to the emotions that religious affiliations create, we know that these relationships often come into conflict with other kinds of roles and social responsibilities. This conflict becomes apparent, for example, when Witnesses forbid certain social or scholastic activities with their peers.

Growing up in a Witness family brings a certain social stigma to a child. People in our society react with both alarm and prejudice toward a child who has been involved with the Witnesses even after the child grows up. This stigma may be unfair, but it does exist, and it is unfair of adults who wish it didn’t, to inflict such stigma on children, who cannot be fully cognizant of its existence. Finkelhor states, “To rear a child in a stigmatized status cannot be considered a crime in and of itself, or else we would have to support laws to make it a crime to bring up a child to believe in communism.” It is however, morally harmful to the child.

The reality is that few adults are fully informed of the rules and regulations until after they have been baptized. There is a clear set of rules for those who are not baptized and a much stricter set of rules for those who have been baptized. To allow a child to submit to this double-standard without a clear explanation of what that standard is would be fraudulent.

Children also would not be fully able to consent to such an issue because their minds are still developing. What a child wants at 10 or 11 is very different from what they want at 15 or 18. For a child to give consent at a younger age when his or her brain is not even developed enough to understand certain concepts, which can only occur at a later developmental stage, is absurd. To hold this child to his or her “consent” would be immoral.

The PIVOT of CONTROL is when it happens: When you go from an interested observer of a group with a so-called “no agenda” to being unduly influenced and manipulated. It only takes watching the first 5-minutes of this video to help you understand the concept.

After watching 5 minutes of the video, can you describe the moment, and dynamics, when one moves from being an observer of the Jehovah’s Witness experience to becoming a Jehovah’s Witness?

Skilled manipulators, be it a person or a pseudo-religious organization, know how to get people to do what they want them to do. One such manipulator made the following claim:

“Making people do what I want is the easiest thing in the world. All it takes is:
1) Make them think we have something special and everyone else is deluded; and/or
2) Make them think they are not doing enough; and/or
3) Threaten to take their family away.”

Do you know any person or group that uses any or all of these techniques to unduly influence people?