While activity on this website has been a little slow over the past couple of months, all of us at AAWA have been very busy working in the background. As the cooler months approach in the Northern Hemisphere, you should see this site come alive with fresh new articles, features, and ideas.
That is not to say that we have done nothing while enjoying the sunshine. Here are some examples of what we have accomplished over the past 60 days:
AAWAke! Newsletter
This month you will notice several new things in the newsletter. There is a newly designed masthead that features our new name that is bold, appropriate, and definitely on the mark! We’ve chosen AAWAke!, a name recommended by many of our readers. It quickly became an instant favorite among our team members and the Advisory Board.
Becoming an adult and finding your own way can be difficult enough when you are a teenager. We’ve all been through that and know that the transition can be very stressful. “Growing up” is even more complicated if your family belongs to an extremely controlling religious group or cult.
Children of Jehovah’s Witnesses are often picked on by fellow classmates and bullies at school as well as facing occasional mistreatment by their teachers. Outsiders often have no idea how difficult life can be for young JWs.
The Watchtower has taught young Jehovah’s Witnesses to believe that abuse to be an example of the foretold “persecution” inflicted on faithful Christians as described in the Bible. Children are told that being able to accept and endure that abuse should be considered as their own “badge of honor.”
For other young JWs the reality of being forced to stand apart from their peer groups and not being allowed to engage in normal teen activities (like school sports, clubs, and class parties that their “worldly” classmates regularly enjoy) can be devastating.
AAWA’s new video is designed to help a wider audience understand how damaging the stress and mental anguish of living inside a controlling religion can be for young people at a critical point in their lives.
Share with your friends: http://youtu.be/r4_1sOqRJEI
Short link to this article: http://wp.me/p3rSMO-jh
As of Monday July 1, 2013 AAWA is introducing a new online support forum. The Forum will focus on recovery issues of Jehovah’s Witnesses who have already left or are considering leaving the organization. Moderators and active members will also respond to those looking for answers to their questions but feel they have no safe place to ask them.
Since we launched AAWA in April we have been giving our best efforts on our Facebook group pages that provide support to those who requesting our help. We’ve had a great start, but we soon realized the limitations of Facebook. Security on Facebook has been an issue since our first week online, forcing us to place our Support Group on a “secret” status which limited its visibility to the public. We also realized that the format of Facebook allows valuable information from prior discussion threads to disappear from view as they scroll down and off the page. For those two reasons – and other issues – we feel that Facebook does not work as well for us as we had hoped.
After much discussion and planning, we have chosen to open a new discussion forum as part of AAWA.co that is designed to meet our specific needs. This new forum offers desirable features unavailable on Facebook and will be accessible to anyone registered as a subscriber on our AAWA.co website.
When the formation of AAWA was first announced to the public less than three months ago, I thought it was a worthy goal to try to rally ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses to join together to wake up the world community to the damage caused by five Watchtower policies.
Since then hundreds of volunteers who agree have joined AAWA in that effort. However, we will still need to attract thousands more who are willing to help if we are going to meet that goal.
We must successfully convince the general public that Watchtower leaders need be held accountable for their harmful policies. To achieve that objective I believe AAWA needs to use a business model that is driven by well-informed volunteers through the use of a “bottom-up” organization, not a “top-down” hierarchy like the Watchtower. For that to happen, AAWA’s team leaders and Advisory Board members must have excellent listening skills – individuals who want to serve – not dictate.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have received global media attention for their child protection policies, which put children at risk and serve to protect pedophiles. It has been estimated that Watchtower policies are responsible for thousands of children being harmed. To protect these policies, and the image of the organization, Watchtower has been forced to pay out vast sums of money in settlements.
When a child reports a case of abuse, the correct response would be to report the accusation to the proper, trained authorities for them to investigate as a matter of urgency. However, the Watchtower instructs elders to handle such accusations internally wherever possible. There are several reasons behind this:
On May 30th, AAWA proudly launched its second major campaign aimed at raising awareness of damaging Watchtower policies. This time the psychologically abusive content in Watchtower literature, together with Watchtower’s continued mishandling of child sex abuse, is firmly under AAWA’s spotlight.
AAWA now has around 260 volunteers, and many of these have spent the past few weeks writing scripts, doing research, and gathering material that can help convey AAWA’s message both forcefully and accurately.
This latest campaign focuses on two videos. The first, shown below, focuses on the psychological abuse inflicted on Witness children. Many outside the Witness faith are completely unaware of the extent to which threatening words and images are frequently featured in Watchtower literature. Such material can have a lasting and harmful psychological impact on children – leading them to view the world around them, as well as non-Witness relatives, as being doomed to destruction.
It is hoped that the above information will draw much-needed attention to the damage that Watchtower is wreaking on young and impressionable minds.
The Watchtower instructs Jehovah’s Witnesses to disfellowship and shun members deemed “wicked.”
“Disfellowship: To “remove the wicked man” or woman from the congregation.” Watchtower 2011 Jul 15 p.23
“Thus ‘disfellowshiping’ is what Jehovah’s Witnesses appropriately call the expelling and subsequent shunning of such an unrepentant wrongdoer.” Watchtower;1981 Sep 15 p.22
Disfellowshipped members are judged to have unrepentantly committed any of a set of prescribed infringements, such as fornication or smoking. They might even be someone who merely disagrees with Watchtower doctrine openly.