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Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath 2


DaisyD

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The new season starts tonight.  I wonder what they will have to say about the JWs.

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I was just coming here to post about the Jehovah's Witness two-hour special. It starts in about 15 minutes here, on A&E. I know people who have been hurt by the JW org. Leah fell a tad short of calling them a cult, but they are. Totally brainwashed.

https://tonyortega.org/2018/11/13/shifting-gears-leah-remini-talks-about-tonights-two-hour-special-on-jehovahs-witnesses/

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I’m watching it. I’m finding the exmembers quite engaging and articulate. The poor guy who showed up at his brother’s wedding was heartbreaking.

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30 minutes ago, AliceInFundyland said:

The poor guy who showed up at his brother’s wedding was heartbreaking.

I saw that part. I felt really bad for that guy. I have this episode on my DVR. I’ll watch it later. 

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This whole show is heartbreaking.  The suicides.  The kids who died after refusing blood transfusions.  The difficulty of confronting abusers due to the "two-witness" rule

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The mom giving her daughter up for adoption so she will be saved...then she is molested. The family with two suicides...I cried. Horrible, horrible experiences. Heartbreaking. No love at all. Those men on the governing body are reprehensible. This show just scraped the surface of abuses perpetrated by the organization leaders and members. Kudos to Leah, this show was powerful, the parallels to the Scientology policy of disconnection was apparent. Cults are so destructive.

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Yes. The medical shit is damned disturbing. Why? Just why?

I should mention this elsewhere but I’m thinking on it here. I finished Catherine Oxenberg’s book about her experience with NXVIM. Her daughter, India rose to a rather prominent position within the group. She was helpful in their downfall. Her insights are fascinating. She’s quite familiar with woo, Rather self-aware. Wry. Smart.

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I’m watching the Jehovah Witness special. It’s so heart breaking. I feel so bad for the people in the special were raised the way they were. 

Watching more. These stories are so heart breaking. I mean being unable to express how they are feeling and getting help because it would look weird. 

Edited by Jana814
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This is such a weird cult. Not using the "spreading the joy" techniques Scientology uses, they seem very, VERY closed off to outsiders, unless they're knocking on your door.

It's weird beyond belief. 

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I watched the special this morning. I'm very conflicted about one thing. I was kind of hoping that Leah would make specific parallels about JW and Scientology, to show that they're more similar than people think but I also liked that she let JW speak for itself. The people on the show were very articulate and presented themselves very well. I didn't realize how common suicide was in JW. Everything was just so heartbreaking. Hopefully the special helped a lot of people.

 

I was on Twitter and some guy, clearly a JW member, kept saying how the show was shit because there were no active members interviewed. A bunch of people proceeded to tell him that no active member was allowed to be interviewed. He just kept going on and on. Really strange behavior.

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Riding my bike home from the gym, I came upon a guy unloading stuff from the back of a van.  No big deal; I assumed maybe it was someone doing elder care or similar.  As I rode around the van, I saw that it had a big "Scientology Rescue Vehicle" sign on the driver's side door. 

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Mr Kool was raised in a JW home. They converted when he was 5 and all of a sudden no more Christmas or birthdays. He f’ing hated it, his Dad only sipped the Koolaid but his Mom swallowed the whole vat.  Mr Kool fought against it his whole growing up thank goodness. His mother referred to him as a child of Satan.  It messed up the entire family, extended too.  Cults are the true children of Satan.

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I cant watch it here, but did they mention that they also discourage higher education, art and anything that could possibly interfere with your time to the church and knocking on doors? In only a few cases such as celebrities that draw positive attention to the church, music, art and sports are not encouraged unless your the Jacksons, Price or good at tennis like the Williams sisters. My friend who got sucked in, largely gave up all her artistic pursuits except the one sge makes direct money from. :(

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42 minutes ago, tankgirl said:

I cant watch it here, but did they mention that they also discourage higher education, art and anything that could possibly interfere with your time to the church and knocking on doors? In only a few cases such as celebrities that draw positive attention to the church, music, art and sports are not encouraged unless your the Jacksons, Price or good at tennis like the Williams sisters. My friend who got sucked in, largely gave up all her artistic pursuits except the one sge makes direct money from. :(

Yes they made a special point of saying that children are never allowed to do sports or participate in after school activities. They touched on how isolating it is to not be included in anything. One of the panelists said he ran for school president( and won). I think he said it was like 3rd grade and he was told off by his mother because it was 'politics' and they don't do politics either.  Higher education is extremely discouraged. They said that there's no point in being a doctor because it's not a useful skill in the rapture. They were encouraged to do trades. 

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1 hour ago, OyToTheVey said:

Yes they made a special point of saying that children are never allowed to do sports or participate in after school activities. They touched on how isolating it is to not be included in anything. One of the panelists said he ran for school president( and won). I think he said it was like 3rd grade and he was told off by his mother because it was 'politics' and they don't do politics either.  Higher education is extremely discouraged. They said that there's no point in being a doctor because it's not a useful skill in the rapture. They were encouraged to do trades. 

So glad they touched on this, it breaks my heart. Thank goodness in my friends case her children were already in or finishing school when she joined and neither looks to have joined either. But she joined in with her parents and sibling. The big issue is they raised my friend and siblings in a few cults,  I just can't believe she got drug back in after so many years.

To add, all of the above people have been in less then 10 years, they were involved with totally other cults in the past :(

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On 11/3/2018 at 2:38 AM, Ozlsn said:

I watched Louis Theroux's "My Scientology Movie" last night and found myself unexpectedly in sympathy with Marty Rathburn. I also came away with the really strong impression that one reason Rathburn went back in was that movie - which is kind of sad if true. The scenes near the end when they recreated the abuse in the Hole (which has to have been triggering), then he walked out into a trio of abusive Scientologists who made veiled threats about his son, followed by him somewhat incoherently trying to explain the level of stress to Theroux who turned around and said "well you did it to other people, so..." All I could think was "really bad timing there Theroux "- no matter what he did previously he was obviously really upset and stressed at that time, and that entire question just felt like a really low blow to me. If they had asked him that at a different time, yeah it's a fair question - but at that time, to me, it came across as borderline abusive. Rathburn in Going Clear, and even in quieter moments in this movie, came across to me as someone who was struggling to reconcile what he had done and believed with his self-view - much more than Mike Rinder who seems to have been able to separate his previous self and beliefs from where he is now.  (Rinder also has the advantage of not having done as many really crappy things to people as Rathburn as far as I can tell.) 

Anyway I came away much less surprised that he returned - it is after all one way to make the abuse stop and return to everything being far more black and white than outside the cult. Also came away thinking that Rathburn really, really needed a good debriefing therapist. I hope if he does break with them again he finds one.

One big difference between Rinder and Rathburn; Rinder seems to have figured out that Scientology beliefs and auditing are bunk.  Marty Rathburn is a true believer in LRon and the Bridge.  Rathburn was discredited, put in the Hole, forced out (blew), and then forced in again, by Miscavige.   However, even when he blew Rathbun was still practicing Scientology except outside the "Church."  He was a "squirrel" or apostate in Scientology terms.  His true belief in Scientology probably made him easier to manipulate.

On 11/13/2018 at 11:06 PM, AliceInFundyland said:

I should mention this elsewhere but I’m thinking on it here. I finished Catherine Oxenberg’s book about her experience with NXVIM. Her daughter, India rose to a rather prominent position within the group. She was helpful in their downfall. Her insights are fascinating. She’s quite familiar with woo, Rather self-aware. Wry. Smart.

Adding book to reading list.

16 hours ago, OyToTheVey said:

Yes they made a special point of saying that children are never allowed to do sports or participate in after school activities. They touched on how isolating it is to not be included in anything. One of the panelists said he ran for school president( and won). I think he said it was like 3rd grade and he was told off by his mother because it was 'politics' and they don't do politics either.  Higher education is extremely discouraged. They said that there's no point in being a doctor because it's not a useful skill in the rapture. They were encouraged to do trades. 

We used to have many JWs knocking at our door around here.  "Spring has sprung, the grass is ris, I wonder where the JWs is."

One of the things the children are forced to do, instead of normal school activities, is log door-knocking activities after school and at weekends. And they start them young.

I used to be polite but very firm with the adult JWs who knocked.  Apparently too polite, because apparently they decided we were a safe place to train the kids.  Two adults would park at the end of the driveway and send a couple of very young teens to the front door (about 50 yards but I'm bad at estimating distance).  The second time it happened I marched the kids back to the car and told the adults that I was not going to be rude to children.  However, I considered what they were doing child endangerment and they were to stop doing that at once.  Strangely, they never came back.  

15 hours ago, tankgirl said:

To add, all of the above people have been in less then 10 years, they were involved with totally other cults in the past :(

That does not surprise me.  Sadly.

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50 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

 

I used to be polite but very firm with the adult JWs who knocked.  Apparently too polite, because apparently they decided we were a safe place to train the kids.  Two adults would park at the end of the driveway and send a couple of very young teens to the front door (about 50 yards but I'm bad at estimating distance).  The second time it happened I marched the kids back to the car and told the adults that I was not going to be rude to children.  However, I considered what they were doing child endangerment and they were to stop doing that at once.  Strangely, they never came back.  

 

I had JW teenagers once. It was like 8am on a saturday. Wasn't even my apartment. I was apartment sitting for my aunt and uncle. I actually told them that soliciting was a crime and if they came back again I would call the cops for disturbance of peace. I'm typically an ok morning person but wow they really must have pissed me off that morning.

I've had a few run ins with them. 

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When ex and I lived in one of our early apartments, we heard a buzz. We knew it wasn't my mom, since she normally called before coming over, and his mom was a piece of work, so thankfully she never came over.

Well, they must have buzzed a neighbor, and he let them in without thinking. The neighbor was directly across from us, and I looked through the peephole to see JWs trying to recruit this poor man still early on a Saturday morning.

The JWs also banked at the local bank in town where I worked for a while. I had to deal with the treasuer coming in to make deposits and such, but I always got the impression from him I was "unclean" or something.  Unlike other religions that try to build you up, I feel like this one really attracts folks who have a sense of self-loathing. 

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@Palimpsest it’s a good read. Catherine had been into all the things one could be possibly be into from a spiritual growth perspectIve. Then she went to the entry level seminar for this with India, thinking they could do it together. What followed is a classic separation story. In all the activities and groups they were isolated. She was married to Casper van Dien. He also partook. Somewhere in there the marriage faltered. She became disillusioned. India grew more enamored. She also had money......

Catherine went to Rick Ross. She did quite a bit. She went various law enforcement. Unfortunately, India doesn’t quite seem to be undone.

And then we should revive that thread.

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23 hours ago, OyToTheVey said:

Higher education is extremely discouraged.

Mr. SB was a JW in the 70s, and was told to refuse a full-ride college scholarship, which he did. The world was supposed to be ending in 1975, so the borg told its members not to do anything that looked like it was investing in "this system of things". However, that didn't stop the Watchtower org from purchasing property in Brooklyn and other parts of NY that were recently sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Hypocrisy much?  JWs have no problem using lawyers, doctors, and other professionals, so just how are these professions supposed to be filled if no one acquires a higher education? I knew another man whose mother would not acknowledge his existence when he was disfellowshipped, after they had been very close. It hurt him to his core and did nothing to draw him back in, it made him hate the organization and Jehovah. The brainwashing is very powerful in this doomsday cult,  which is devoid of emotion or joy.

I give a firm but polite "not interested" if caught.

Edited by SilverBeach
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6 hours ago, OyToTheVey said:

I actually told them that soliciting was a crime and if they came back again I would call the cops for disturbance of peace. I'm typically an ok morning person but wow they really must have pissed me off that morning.

Yeah.  I called the non-emergency police line on my adults escorting teen JWs situation.  The dispatcher told me that religious and political soliciting was not against the law.  This may just be my town's by-laws - but according to my town religious solicitors are immune from No Trespass signs too.

I waxed eloquent about the extreme youth of the solicitors and got vocal about child endangerment. They said they would check it out.  I think they did because I saw a cop car go past 5 minutes later.  Whether the cops followed up or not, it scared them off.  I made sure the adult JWs saw me take a long look at their licence plate.  Had I been more prepared I would have ostentatiously taken a pic of them and the car with my phone.

58 minutes ago, AliceInFundyland said:

And then we should revive that thread.

Yes, we should!

 

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After watching the show, I think my response to door knockers is just going to be "I'm way too much of a smart ass for your church". 

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@Palimpsest,  I've heard the same thing about No Solicitation signs: political and religious canvassing are not subject to No Solicitation signs.  When I'm out canvassing for candidates or for the League of Conservation Voters, I do heed No Trespassing signs though.  Considering that when our group from the county Democratic Party was once met at the door by a guy brandishing a gun who told us he'd shoot if we set foot on his lawn again, I tend to be cautious.  This was in 2008 and we were canvassing for Obama.

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I'm a bit warped with JWs.  I either don't answer the door at all, or if I have time free, I offer them water and try to talk enough and ask questions to keep them so long they don't have time to talk to my neighbors.  I know I'm not going to fall for it,  I think they figured it out though.

I had one person who came back a third time and I finally tried "sharing" some Chick Tracks with them (again see the warped part) - because I find it fun to fake proselytize back,and I pick up Chick Tracks whenever I see them and have a stash because I think they are so awful. 

They don't come to our neighborhood anymore even though there is a kingdom hall about .25 miles away.

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