Going on the Offensive against Watchtower - William Bowen

In 2000, William Bowen was a Jehovah's Witness elder in Western Kentucky. Going through his congregation's files, he found that a fellow elder had confessed to molesting a child. For almost a year he worked through every proper channel. When nothing changed, he resigned, went to the police, and founded Silent Lambs. He lost his family and every friend he had.

He went on to fight Watchtower in the newspapers, on network television, in Brooklyn, and before the French parliament. His account below is in his own words.

A Third-Generation Witness Raised to Fix Congregations

I was a third-generation Jehovah's Witness. My father was a substitute circuit overseer and an assembly overseer. He gave parts at district conventions and held about every privilege you could have. We moved to where the need was great six different times and founded congregations. We were like troubleshooters for the organization. Our family would go into a troubled area, my sister and I would work with the young people, and together we were a double-edged weapon for straightening out problems.

Take West Plains, Missouri. The presiding overseer had a heart attack while driving a bush hog, fell off the tractor, and was killed. That left one newly appointed elder, so the circuit overseer asked my father to move up and take leadership. We pulled up stakes in southern Arkansas and moved there, then brought in people we knew from across the country to stabilize the congregation. By the time we were done there were five elders. My sister and I were both pioneering, and we got others to pioneer too.

In other places the brothers were conservative and didn't want to build a new Kingdom Hall, so my father was moved in to set everything right, build the hall, and get everybody on the same page. We did that more than once, pushing whatever the circuit overseer's agenda was. My father was basically the hitman who made it happen. That caused controversy. Some people loved him and some didn't, and that came with the job.

Bethel, Pioneering, and Life at the Top

Growing up, I did every job in the organization: microphones, sound, the literature counter, territory, accounts, maintenance. I gave my first public talk at 17. I became a ministerial servant and went to Bethel from 1977 to 1979. Ray Franz was there, along with a lot of the old-timers like the Schroeders, and I was personal friends with a lot of Governing Body members. I was there when the Family Life book and the Bible Story book were being made. We were sworn to secrecy in the factory because those books were going to be major teaching tools.

I left Bethel in 1979 to help my family through a financial crisis and started pioneering. I went to one of the first pioneer schools, with people who had been pioneering for 30 years. When my father did substitute circuit work, my sister and I went along to encourage the young people to pioneer. I put together a slide presentation on life at Bethel and gave it in probably 30 congregations across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.

I'm not trying to brag, but we were like celebrities. We made everything go. We were at the top, and that's the only way I can put it. Plenty of people hung around the organization without really wanting to be there. We were the ones who got everyone to do more.

At the same time I was always a rebel. I told young people you could have fun in the organization and didn't have to be conservative. We took people to movies and threw '50s parties to make life more livable. That made us very popular.

Guilt Behind the Public Image

I was a company man. I believed the first girl I kissed would be the girl I married, and that I would be a virgin when I married. I married at 25. The first woman I kissed was the woman I married, and we were both virgins. Not many people can claim that.

That wasn't because I didn't have a sex drive. I had a huge one, and the only way I dealt with it was masturbation. I prayed tens of thousands of times for Jehovah to forgive me. I saw myself as less than, someone who would be destroyed at Armageddon because I wasn't good enough. All my pioneering and helping others was a way of letting Jehovah know I was at least trying. I carried a tremendous sense of guilt, a sense of being a bad person inside, while in public we proclaimed the glory of Jehovah and his organization and pushed everyone to do more. I encouraged many people to pioneer and many to go to Bethel.

Appointed an Elder at 27

After I married I moved back to Arkansas and served as a ministerial servant. I was appointed an elder at 27, which was unusual back then. Usually nobody looked at you for elder until you were 30 or older.

Here's how it happened. I moved to a congregation that had never finished its quick-build Kingdom Hall. The elders were busy with business and corporate America. They had the money but not the time, so they handed it to me. I organized the congregation, we finished the hall, and that gave them a good enough opinion of me to appoint me.

I served in that congregation with my father, and by the end there were 11 elders. I rose to presiding overseer, the role they now call the COBE. At the same time I managed an insurance agency, hiring people, firing them, and training them to sell. I wore a suit seven days a week. I was living two lives.

Sales was what I had been trained for all my life. My first door was filmed on 8-millimeter when I was 5 years old. I believed that if I didn't knock on that door and offer the Watchtower, Jehovah would kill me the next week. The magazines went for 25 cents each back then, and the money you collected in service had to match up when you turned it in.

The Special Committee That Took Five Months

That congregation had a lot of trouble. I probably sat on close to 100 judicial committees there. Three of the cases were so complicated that the Service Department had no direction for them, and the Governing Body had to meet and write a directive telling us how to proceed. A letter from the Governing Body arrives in a windowed envelope, and it's as if it came from the Lord on high.

During that time, we declined to recommend an elder who was moving to a congregation about 30 miles away. He had some serious character problems that I won't go into. He was friends with a circuit overseer who had been giving him money on the side and other perks. When he got to the new congregation, the circuit overseer wanted to use him as an elder anyway. We wrote back: no, do not use him as an elder.

I ran that congregation the way I ran the agency, by the numbers. Sunday meeting attendance usually ran around 100%, Thursday in the 90s, and book study, always the weakest, in the 80s. I pushed our numbers to 100% on everything. Field service averaged 11 hours per publisher. I believed the congregation was where it needed to be spiritually, and we had rolled up our sleeves and worked through all the judicial problems.

Then the circuit overseer recommended a special committee. That happens when an elder who wasn't recommended challenges it. The committee normally takes about two weeks to review the qualifications and decide who was right.

All three men on that committee were enemies of my family. The chairman had tried to get my father to co-sign a loan. When my father found out the man was committing fraud with that loan, he refused, which put the man in a financial bind. The second man's daughter and son-in-law had worked for my parents' Rug Doctor business. They were goofing off, didn't show up after being told to, and were fired. They tried to collect unemployment from the state of Missouri, my parents appealed, and my parents won. That happened two weeks before this man was appointed to the committee. The third man would do whatever the other two said.

I called the Service Department and said, "Brothers, this is a hanging. These guys are going to crucify me." I'll never forget the answer: "Well, Brother Bowen, you just need to trust in Jehovah." I said, "Okay, brother. I'm going to trust in Jehovah. Let's see what happens."

The two-week review took five months of meetings, every night. They went after me in every way possible and finally removed me as an elder. The charge was being self-willed. Everything I did was for the brothers and sisters. Four of the leading elders, one of them a former missionary whose father was a circuit overseer, wrote letters saying there was no reason on earth to remove me and that I had been an asset to the congregation.

The night it happened, they took all the elders into the back room while I sat outside alone. They told them that anyone who spoke up for me would be removed too. When the decision was announced, I turned to those 11 elders and said, "Brothers, none of you will stand up for me?" They all just hung their heads.

Betrayal, Depression, and a Gun

That was a turning point. Before then, handling judicial matters, I thought I could shoot fire from my fingertips and Jehovah would make it happen. At that meeting I learned it had nothing to do with Jehovah's spirit. It was just the organization and these men.

The congregation was in shock. I went from presiding overseer to not even having a part on the service meeting. People assumed I had committed some sin, but I hadn't even been reproved. If I said anything, it would make things worse because then I was a rebel. I knew how to play the game, so I kept my mouth shut and fell into the darkest depression of my life. This was everything I had worked for, I had done the job, and I got kicked for it.

I had a half-million-dollar life insurance policy, and I came to believe I was better off dead, because at least my wife would have the money. I couldn't work or function. It wasn't losing the position. It was the betrayal by men I would have taken a bullet for. I would gladly have been deleted as an elder fighting for them to the death, and they wouldn't lift a finger for me. I couldn't grasp that, and it hurt me deeply.

I had the gun in my mouth. My wife was pregnant with what turned out to be my son. I kept telling myself, "Real men stick around." My son kept me alive. I didn't want him brought into this world without knowing his father, and I'm thankful to him for that to this day.

Reappointed and Suddenly Given More Privileges

I moved to Seattle. Rug Doctor had been founded by a man named Bill Kent and was largely run by Jehovah's Witnesses until his disfellowshipped brother Roger took over and got rid of the Witnesses across the country. My parents were some of the last to go. Bill Kent started a new company, Carpet Express, and I became vice president, placing rental machines in stores and chains. The men I had loved and trusted sent me to Seattle with a lousy letter, when that was the least they could have done for me.

I kept my head down. They brought me back as a ministerial servant, and two years to the day I was reappointed as an elder. I no longer trusted the organization, but I believed good men could make a difference, and that as an elder I could help the friends more than as a disgruntled grunt in the background.

The organization sees men like me as having taken a licking and kept on ticking with their mouths shut. The very next year I had a part at the district convention. I taught the elders' school and the pioneer school. Suddenly I had more privileges than ever, because they saw me as a company man who would do whatever he was told.

The 1995 Generation Change

What really broke the dam for me came in 1995, about a year after I was reappointed, when the Watchtower article came out on the generation.

Back in 1990, when my dad and I were both elders, I called him and said, "Dad, they're going to have to back off this generation. They're going to have to admit they lied to us." If you were a Witness in the '80s, they couldn't finish a sentence without saying the generation would not pass away. I lived my life in five-year increments. I married my wife thinking she wasn't perfect, but within five years she'd be the perfect wife in paradise. We had a baby in 1987, and I figured she'd never start school because Armageddon would come first. By 1990 I was asking what was going on.

My dad told me that if they did that, he'd quit, because it would mean they had lied. In 1995 the Watchtower came out and I called him: "They did it. They said the generation would not pass away. Now they're saying it will. They lied to us." He said we needed to trust in Jehovah, that they were imperfect men, and so on.

In my mind, these men didn't know what they were doing. The first thing I did was get the dental work I had been putting off: a tooth pulled, a bridge, some teeth crowned. From then on I saw the dentist regularly. I bought health insurance, because I realized this was never going to happen. But I still believed that as an elder I could make a difference.

Voting, the Proclaimers Book, and Rutherford

I moved to a small congregation in Kentucky. They offered me presiding overseer, and believe me, I knew what that job was. A newer elder had been there about a year, so I told them to make him PO and let me be secretary. The secretary is the man behind the curtain with access to everything, and I liked that. I advised the PO on what to do.

In November 1998, a Question From Readers basically said it was okay to vote. Another WTF moment. At Bethel I learned to always read the magazines, because whatever is in them is the latest thing on the Governing Body's mind. I read every Watchtower cover to cover. Back then 90% of Witnesses didn't read the magazines, and when I brought something up they'd say, "What? I don't know nothing about that." The voting article said a woman could vote if her husband told her to. I thought, what is going on?

I also read the Proclaimers book, and it made me question the organization more than anything else. Read how they describe Rutherford taking over. That man stole the organization from Russell's people through a legal issue, ran it nothing like they wanted, and threw them out on the street. Beth Sarim was the biggest joke on the face of the earth. Then came "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" in 1925. He made a complete fool of himself. Reading it in their own book, I thought: this shows they did not have direction from God.

The 1999 Blood Policy That Broke Me

In 1999 the circuit overseer read a letter at an elders' meeting saying that taking blood was no longer a disfellowshipping offense. I nearly fell out of my chair. Commit fornication, become an alcoholic, cause divisions, and you're out. But blood, the thing Acts lists alongside idolatry, was no longer disfellowshipping?

Under the new arrangement, if you took blood and said, "Oops, I screwed up," it was handled like joining the military. An elder would be removed for six months, and the same applied if you let your children have blood. If you said you liked blood and would take it whenever you wanted, there was no committee. You were automatically disassociated.

Theologically, that blew my mind. If you could take that approach on blood, why not on everything? Say you're sorry about fornication and you can't be an elder or pioneer for six months. Say you love fornication and you're disassociated. That throws the whole judicial concept out the window. Why hold judicial meetings at all?

Walking out of that meeting, I thought about my son, who was eight. If he were dying and I gave him blood, all I had to do was say I was sorry and I'd keep my son. If I refused and he died, I'd get to stay an elder.

I tore up my blood card and threw it away. I refused to sign anyone's blood card as an elder. When asked, I'd say, "Sorry, can't do it tonight, let Brother So-and-so do it." I would not support that doctrine. It showed me how fabricated everything was.

I told my wife I'd give the organization one more year, and if they didn't get it together I was out. She freaked out. Her dad was an elder and a lifelong pioneer, and she thought I'd gone crazy. She wasn't seeing what I was seeing inside. I knew I wasn't a weaker man. I was a better man, and I wanted to leave on my own terms.

Finding a Confessed Child Molester in the Congregation Files

As secretary, I went through the files and found that a fellow elder was a confessed child molester who had never been reported. There were three elders on the body besides me. At the next elders' meeting I took out the 1997 letter, which says you're supposed to write to the Society, read it, and asked, "Brothers, is there any reason we would need to report anyone serving here?" They all said they knew nothing, including the molester and the man who had chaired his committee.

It wasn't my first rodeo, so I knew I needed backing before I pushed. I waited for the circuit overseer's visit. He hated me because I wasn't a pushover and told him honestly what I thought. Still, he took the information. I had the documents from the file, so there was no question what I was talking about. He confronted them and they had to admit it.

Instead of acting, he said, "We'll send this to New York." That was in May. New York took until August to respond, and then appointed me to chair a committee to investigate and write a report. I asked for the COBEs from two other congregations, more experienced elders I knew, to serve with me, so I'd have two strong men instead of the liars. The third elder had been reappointed about six months earlier and didn't know what was going on.

Interviewing the Victim

We did something the original committee never did. We interviewed the victim. Her memory of what happened was very different from what he had told the first committee. He had said it was one time. She said it was more than a dozen.

Without going into detail, it sickened me. I started researching child abuse, and when I learned the symptoms and how it devastates people, it cut me to the quick. I could see at least six or seven children in my congregation who had been around this man and were showing those symptoms: night terrors, bedwetting, anxiety. Red flags went up everywhere.

I was determined to nail him. I set up four tiers of questions, building to the strongest evidence, and gave him every opportunity to lie his way out. He did. Like most pedophiles, he said, "My mind just went black. I can't remember." He lied through the first level, then the second. At the third level I had the document describing the one time. Before showing it, I asked him to tell us about the one time he remembered. The incident he described was different from the one in the document. When he finished, I said, "Interesting. That was one time. But look here, here's another time. So that's two times." He said, "Oh, yeah, I guess it was two times."

By the rules I lived by, lying to a judicial committee is automatic disfellowshipping, because you've lied before Jehovah. The two COBEs and I wrote a 15-page report detailing what the victim said and how he had lied to the committee. We made no recommendation. I truly wanted the Service Department to step up and do the right thing, and I was giving them that chance.

The Form Letter: "Remove Him as an Elder and Don't Tell Anyone"

The letter we got back was a form letter. I know because one of the COBEs on my committee had just received the identical letter about a pedophile in his own congregation. He laid them side by side, and the only difference was the name. I would never have known that if I hadn't asked for him to serve. Most people never would.

The letter said:

remove him as an elder and don't tell anyone and if you ever want to use him again, call us first.

That was it. His removal was announced, and he told everyone he was tired, under stress, and needed time off. People hugged him and patted him on the back. It made me want to throw up.

"Leave It in Jehovah's Hands"

Two months later, the victim we had interviewed wrote to me identifying physical evidence that he was molesting another child. I called the Service Department, and this time I recorded the call. I read them the letter, and I was passed to what I believe was the legal department. The brother said:

Well, brother Bowen, you just ask him about it. If he says no, you need to leave it in Jehovah's hands.

That's when I was fully broken. I realized I was part of an administration that willfully hurts children and protects child molesters.

Resigning Because I Was a Better Man

People who are disfellowshipped are told they weren't good enough, that they were broken and bad, and that's why they have to go. I wanted to resign as an elder, but not as a weak, bad, or broken man. I wanted to resign because I was a better man who couldn't be part of an administration that hurt kids and created silent lambs. That term came to me when I got stuck and had to write. I wrote a piece called "The Day the Lambs Roared," about a valley of lambs too afraid of their evil shepherds to make a sound, and how they found their voice.

My resignation letter said, in elder terms, that I couldn't be part of what they were doing. It said they were creating silent lambs, they were hurting kids, and they had to do something about it. It was a plea to do better.

I mailed it on the 1st of December. Once it dropped into that box, part of me wanted to take an axe to the box and get it back, because I knew that letter was my whole life and every friend I had ever had. I had been rejected once before, when I was removed as an elder, and I knew what being a pariah felt like. Maybe that was training for this.

I heard nothing until the end of the month, when the circuit overseer who disliked me came for his visit. I was COBE by then. We went through the records and recommendations, and I went out in service with him. I treated him well. I took him out to eat and put $100 in his pocket, all the things you do. At Friday night's elders' meeting, after everything else, he said, "Oh yes, Brother Bowen, accept your resignation."

That was a message. Nobody said Brother Bowen had a point or that they would do better, and no one tried to correct me with scripture or save me as an elder. It said get out, and if you say anything, we'll throw you out.

Going on Offense: Five Letters, No Police

One thing I learned from judicial matters is that the organization is strongest on offense. When they're poking you in the chest, you're on defense: terrified, rattled, trying to figure out what to say. That's right where they want you. So I decided to beat them at their own game. I was going on offense, and they could play defense.

As secretary, I went back and copied every body of elders letter in the congregation's files, going back to the 1970s, and pulled out every letter on child abuse. I was still trying to prove the organization right. All I wanted was to see where it said to call the police. There were five letters on child abuse from 1989 through the '90s. Not one said to call the police.

So I searched the Watchtower CD for "child abuse police" and "child abuse authorities." Zero results. I couldn't believe it. I thought we reported. I thought we took care of this. You report a thief to the police, but not someone who hurts kids? I was shocked at how naive I had been, and that filled me with anger.

I went to the newspaper first and then to television. I laid those letters out on the table, with that elder's name on them, for the interview. I wanted Watchtower to know I was poking them in the chest: go ahead, call me a liar. They did. J.R. Brown said they were one of the best religions on earth at dealing with child abuse. I have all those press releases, and most are posted on the Silent Lambs website.

I kept attending the Kingdom Hall, as did my family. I hadn't done anything wrong, and I wanted to show I wasn't ashamed. I sat in the front, second row, with a big elder's bag. A substitute circuit overseer got on the stage one Thursday night and said:

The person that went to the media has spoken against Jehovah. All these things he said are not true and we want you to go door to door and tell the public what a lie this is.

I recorded that talk, and a transcript is on the website.

The Media War and the Smear Tape

Next came a front-page article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the biggest newspaper in Kentucky, four pages long, with one of my former elder friends from Arkansas confirming that it was a problem and that I was telling the truth. That edition sold out. I was on offense, and they had to respond.

They made a PR videotape and sent it to media in four states. The organization flew a film crew to my parents, and my father was still an elder. They set up cameras and lights in the living room and interviewed my parents for six hours. The interview was a profile of me, hunting for any weakness. Had I ever been before a judicial committee? Done anything illegal? Drunk too much, used marijuana, smoked, bought a lottery ticket? Every detail you could imagine.

What made it onto the tape was my father saying his son just wasn't telling the truth. The only negative thing they found about me was that my mother caught me masturbating when I was 15, and they actually gave that to the media as evidence of a flaw in my character. That's how desperate they were to smear me, and it told me I had them on the ropes.

The tape also featured a man named Earl Norman, a multimillionaire who had been appointed an elder about six months before it was made. He said:

Well, my 30 years I've never heard of one single case of child abuse.

Thirty years of what? He'd been an elder for six months. The tape is posted on YouTube, and I think the world should see how the organization protects abusers and punishes people who speak out. It ends with my parents in the Kingdom Hall singing Kingdom songs, to show they were against me. My parents were well rewarded with privileges. A first cousin who had been like a brother to me turned on me too, became the city overseer, and had privileges heaped on him for turning his back on a good man.

"We Call New York"

Television stations started calling me, and I sent victims to them. The organization was denying everything, so I told the reporters to hear what the victims had to say. They sent in horrendous stories.

Channel 8 News in Paducah, Kentucky, got the Watchtower tape and interviewed the city overseer, a bald man named Tom from Ohio whose hands shook when he was nervous. They asked him what he did when he got a report of child abuse. Holding his Bible in a shaking hand, he said:

Well, uh, we call New York.

That was exactly what I had been saying. You don't call the police. You call New York.

At first the station wouldn't air the Witness tape. Two or three reporters told me they had never seen anyone pit a father against his son and called it dirty. So the Witnesses went on offense and sent more than 800 calls to the station demanding they run the tape. The station finally agreed to do a story. The Witnesses thought they would be vindicated. A friend's daughter, who was a Witness, told him, "Dad, watch the news Friday night. You're going to see the real truth about the child abuse issue."

I have the original recording. The reporter held up the tape and said Jehovah's Witnesses had sent it to give their side, that Bowen says they don't call the authorities, and then ran the city overseer saying, "We call New York." He said the tape claimed there was no problem and no victims, yet the station had received emails from victims. He read about four of those stories aloud. One described an elder with his hand inside an 8-year-old's panties. Another said the writer was told they would be disfellowshipped for calling the police. The reporter concluded that the organization said it had done nothing wrong, while people like Mr. Bowen said there apparently was a problem in this religion.

Picture the egg on the face of every Witness with a Bible study. My buddy called and said, "Bill, you knocked them down."

That aired Friday. I usually attended Thursdays, but I decided to go Sunday. Normally the hall is full of talk and laughter. When I walked in, there was silence. So I said, "Hey, brothers and sisters, did y'all see the news Friday night? The truth came out about the abuse issue. Wasn't that a great report?" They looked away.

They'll say Satan drove the whole thing to bring reproach on Jehovah's name. In reality they brought reproach on their own name. I never challenged the organization's doctrine through Silent Lambs, and I never said the organization needed to stop. All I said was that they had a bad policy that was hurting their children, and they needed a better policy to protect them.

The 1994 Report the Governing Body Threw Away

In the early '90s, an Awake! article about repressed memories ran with a picture of a little girl looking in a mirror. It brought in a flood of letters from victims, so many that the Writing Department researched abuse and gave the Governing Body a 50-page report in 1994. It said three things needed to happen:

1. All allegations of abuse should be immediately reported to the police for proper investigation.
2. Pedophiles should not be allowed to go door to door and offer Bible studies to the unknowing public.
3. Men who have hurt children should never hold any position in the organization.

How many children could have been spared if they had done those things then? The Governing Body threw that report in the trash. They waited until 1995 to give lip service to a policy saying they would never appoint molesters, and then wrote a letter saying that if you had a molester serving as an elder, let them know and they'd figure out what to do. They lied to their members. They also said pedophiles could be readjusted by spending more time in field service. In other words, send them door to door. I documented cases through Silent Lambs of pedophiles who started Bible studies and molested children on those studies.

Why I Kept Going to Meetings

People ask why I kept attending. I was on offense. If I stopped going, I'd hand them the offense. I sat on the front row with a tape recorder they could see. If someone got up and talked about apostates speaking against the organization, I'd smile and turn on my recorder.

I showed up for field service. When I walked into the service meeting, the brother stopped it, went to the back, and called New York, and it took them 30 minutes to get him back up front. He put me in a car group by myself with no territory. I said I wanted to work with the brothers, and they said nobody wanted to work with me. I raised my hand to comment, and they wouldn't call on me. When I asked the elders why, since I'd never been before a judicial committee, they said they'd just missed my hand. So I raised it 30 times, the only hand up on the front row, until finally someone said, "Oh, Brother So-and-so." That was offense.

When I left, I pulled all of our records, my wife's and mine: publisher cards, school records, everything. There was no record we existed in that congregation, and they can't disfellowship you without a record.

Starting Silent Lambs With Two Elders' Books

Two elders had died or resigned, so I had two extra copies of the elders' book. Back then Watchtower would chase you to the ends of the earth with attorneys if you published an elders' book or a body of elders letter online. They were very hard to get. I sold those two books on eBay for $750 and used the money to start the Silent Lambs website in February, after writing "The Day the Lambs Roared."

Watchtower was saying there were no victims, that it was all made up by a couple of crazy people trying to make them look bad. So I gave the lambs a place where victims could tell their stories anonymously. I used only initials and removed anything that could identify them, so the public, the organization, and the brothers and sisters could see who the liars were. There are now over a thousand stories on the Abused Lambs page.

A few months later I added a Battered Lambs page, because so many women and children were being beaten. The organization had published an Awake! about battered women, and its answer for sisters being beaten, especially by unbelieving husbands, was to be a better, more submissive wife, so that maybe after 30 years of beatings he'd become a brother. That was the most offensive advice anyone could give a battered woman: keep taking it until he kills you or becomes a Witness. There are several hundred battered lamb stories on the site now.

Then I had the recording of the Service Department telling me to leave it in Jehovah's hands. J.R. Brown went on and said, word for word:

We would never tell anyone not to report abuse.

I had it on tape. That tape got me Dateline.

Dateline, 9/11, and Standing Alone

They flew me to New York for 48 hours. We worked on that broadcast for over a year. I probably sent them a thousand victims. They had so much material I thought it would be a five-part documentary. The day before it was set to air, 9/11 happened.

Meanwhile I was taking a beating from ex-JWs saying I had nothing and was making it up. People like James Penton and Ray Franz were hammering us, saying it was no worse than anywhere else. When Christianity Today ran an article about the abuse problem, Franz said:

it's no worse than mainstream religion. In my 40 years as a witness, I never saw one single case of child abuse.

He wasn't helping. He hurt us when we were trying to give victims a voice, and it infuriated me. Where were the ex-JWs? In a lot of ways I was standing alone with only the victims behind me. I had to be their voice.

Dateline was postponed almost a year and set to air May 28, 2002. In the meantime the forums were saying it would never air and I didn't know what I was talking about. I held the line.

That February, Dateline asked to interview J.R. Brown at Bethel about the abuse issue. Watchtower wrote a letter, which is on the website, declining:

we really can't do an interview because we do not want to be adversarial with our brothers and sisters. We want to be united and we prefer to to care for these things in the privacy of the congregation.

Their way of caring for it privately was to send committees out to disfellowship everyone on the program, so they could call them all apostates whom no one should watch.

The Judicial Committee That Didn't Show Up

My judicial meeting was set for May 27, the day before Dateline aired. The two-witness rule cuts both ways. Two witnesses can convict you, and two witnesses can exonerate you. I put the word out asking for eyewitnesses to testify that what I'd been saying was true and factual, and that there was no reason for a committee to meet with me for telling the truth.

I had chaired the committee that built that Kingdom Hall, run the quick-build trucking department, and bought the land it stood on. Beside it was a strip of land, owned by the man I'd bought from, running between a cemetery and the hall's parking lot. We had agreed to maintain it in exchange for using it. I asked him whether we could use it for an event about child abuse, and he said yes. It was his property, not the Kingdom Hall's.

I lived a mile from the hall on the main road, and Witnesses driving by would lay on their horns to show how angry they were at me for reporting child abuse. On the day, I put up an awning and hung a big white sheet with a Silent Lambs message written on it in black letters. About 60 people came. The New York Times, a local television station, and the BBC were there, so there were a couple of camera crews and reporters. As an extra touch, we set luminaries around the Kingdom Hall bearing the names of people who wanted to be there but couldn't, as further witnesses.

When the appointed time came, the committee didn't show up. I'm one of the few people whose judicial committee was too scared to attend. I was on offense, poking them in the chest: show up and hear 60 witnesses say I'm telling the truth.

We took pictures standing at the Kingdom Hall door, and I wrote them a letter. I said I had been there for my meeting, they hadn't come, and my witnesses had traveled at great expense to testify for me. If they wanted another meeting, they could write a check to Silent Lambs to cover the witnesses' costs of coming back. That seemed fair to me. It threw them for a loop, and they didn't know what to do.

Charging the Governing Body

Technically, I was still an elder. I know the rules. A disfellowshipping doesn't take effect until it's announced, and an accepted resignation doesn't take effect until it's announced. They were so afraid of me that they never announced it. As far as I was concerned I was still an elder, and I said so publicly when I spoke about child abuse, which helped with the media.

Then it occurred to me: if an elder knows of sin and doesn't report it, he shares in the sin. Remember the articles about not sharing in the sins of others? So I sent a certified letter to the Service Department. As an elder in good standing, I said, I could no longer share in the sin. I had to report wrongdoing by the Governing Body. I brought three scriptural charges, including loose conduct and causing divisions. I asked that an impartial committee be appointed within the Service Department. I said I would bring more than a hundred eyewitnesses to the Governing Body's crimes against children, and I asked that spiritually qualified men hear our testimony and decide the Governing Body's judicial fate.

Isn't that theocratic? Isn't that what a good man would do? When Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, he was standing up for what was right.

That was one poke too hard. They threw the rules out the window and disfellowshipped me in absentia a month later. I never got to testify.

Disfellowshipped for Telling the Truth

I appealed and met with the appeal committee. I asked what I had done wrong as an elder. They said my reporting child abuse had disturbed the brothers and sisters, and that disturbing the brothers and sisters was grounds for disfellowshipping. I said, "Wait a minute. I'm being disfellowshipped for telling the truth?" They said, "Yep, that's basically it."

A lot of people call that a badge of honor. Jesus was killed for telling the truth, and the apostles were persecuted and killed for it. I'm proud to wear it. That's why I can never be reinstated. The only thing I'd accept is an apology and a rescinding of my disfellowshipping, because I didn't do anything wrong. I told the truth. I wasn't defective or broken. I stood up for what was right.

I kept attending meetings for six months, until they put the pedophile back on the stage. Dateline was still filming, and that night I was wired with a pack under my coat that weighed about 40 pounds, plus a camera recording, so they could document how people shunned me. After he took the stage, I went up to three elders standing out front and told them, "It offends me and it offends the victim that you would put this man back on the stage. How dare you?" One of them said, "Well, I guess the most offended people take offense, don't they?"

If I hadn't been wearing that camera, I would have hit him. Did he think the molester had more rights than the victim? Say what you want about me, but to insult the victim that way? I couldn't go to meetings after that. If I stayed, I was going to end up in jail.

Announcing My Own Disfellowshipping

They disfellowshipped me on my birthday, August 15. On August 7, while I was still an elder in good standing, the New York Times ran a three-quarter-page article, with photographs of two victims, about how people are disfellowshipped for trying to report child abuse. When you deal with the media you're always fighting for credibility, but once the New York Times does an article about you, you're the real deal. I used that article from then on. For Watchtower, it was a torpedo through the midship.

That Thursday night I brought a reporter to the meeting so it would be on the record. The announcement usually comes at the break between the school and the service meeting. They were too scared to make it. I walked out with the reporter and said, "They didn't make the announcement." Then I decided I wasn't letting them off the hook.

I sat down, wrote out my own announcement, went back in, and took my second-row seat. At the next break between parts, I stood, turned to the congregation, and said: "Brothers and sisters, tonight I was going to be disfellowshipped. The reason I'm being disfellowshipped is because I reported the problem of child abuse in the organization." The whole congregation looked at me in panic. I said, "Now I'm being silenced like tens of thousands of victims within the organization, because they don't want to hear it."

Right then the brother on the stage said, "William Bowen has been disfellowshipped." I turned around, said, "You got it," and walked out. My wife took a picture of me making the announcement. In a sense, I disfellowshipped myself.

That's my lesson for anyone dealing with the organization: put them on defense and they'll wilt like the bullies they are.

The Silent Lambs March on Brooklyn

In my letter charging the Governing Body, I had told them I would bring more than 100 eyewitnesses on September 27, which gave them plenty of time to prepare. About 125 to 130 people came. A friend, a former Witness and abuse survivor who worked at the United Nations for the United Arab Emirates and knew New York, got us a permit to march down Columbia Heights from the park to number 25, where the Service Department was, with a police escort. I bought everyone white Silent Lambs march T-shirts. It was an army of victims in white, saying no more silent lambs, the lambs roar.

It wasn't a protest. These were eyewitnesses testifying to the Governing Body's crimes against children, under the theocratic arrangement the organization itself teaches: if any member is charged with sin, bring it forward and it will be heard, because no one is above the law. A big part of it ended up on CBC's The Fifth Estate. It was the biggest group that had ever come to the organization's door, and they were terrified.

I had people bring stuffed lambs for those who couldn't come, to leave on the front doorstep. When we got to 25 Columbia Heights, they locked the doors. Some lambs were placed there, and then Watchtower came out and said that if we placed any more, they'd charge us with littering. Across from the main door was a park with a big chain-link fence, so we put the lambs in the fence, more than 700 of them. The police didn't say a word. They were disgusted.

The opening video on the Silent Lambs website is from that day. A WB11 News report by Mary Murphy described dozens of women and men who said they had been abused by elders marching to the world headquarters with toy lambs, "a symbol of innocence lost." A mother said one elder, told her husband had molested their daughter, replied, "Well, maybe you're not touching your husband enough." A young New Jersey woman said her own grandfather abused her when "I was in diapers." Erica Garza, whose rapist was convicted in California, said she was shunned "only because I wanted to go to the police."

In the report, I spoke about the database:

There's a database that they maintain on child molesters that are reported within the church. Most of these people by and large are never reported to the police.

When marchers tried to deliver their lambs, church members escorted us through the gates to meet the Governing Body's public information officer. Asked whether they encourage parents or the child to go to the police, he answered:

Of course. If a state requires it, then we even let them know that the Bible shows the civil authorities have a definite responsibility that God permits.

Asked whether they try to suppress information, he said:

Not at all. In fact, we just recently sent a letter to all congregations advising them that parents have the right to go to civil authorities and to report child abuse

and that such people

are not marked. They are not shunned.

In the same report, one marcher said she had been shunned by her own son. A boy from Arizona, flown in with money donated by survivors, said a Witness abused him when he was six: "He just told us that we couldn't say anything."

They wouldn't hear the victims or the eyewitnesses, many of whom were still Witnesses in good standing. That showed the Governing Body put itself above the very law it enforced on children. Even a hundred eyewitnesses couldn't bring them to justice. Over the years, at least half a dozen people who were at Bethel then, some in very high positions, have told me that day shook them badly and was one of the reasons they left.

Taking the Message Around the World

After that we did Panorama on the BBC, The Fifth Estate aired, and we did the Sunday program in Australia. I did a series of interviews in Japan. I testified before the parliament in France, where a major French newspaper ran an article calling me Watchtower's boogeyman because they were so afraid of me. In Bulgaria, the branch committee called me in for an interview about child abuse, and I testified before the commission there.

Silent Lambs now holds more than 10,000 pages of information and legal documents tracing what they have done. None of it is made up. It documents their behavior, their punishment of victims, and the injustices they've committed again and again. These men aren't stupid or ignorant. They are willfully continuing a policy. To this day they don't report molesters to the police immediately, they still send pedophiles door to door, and they still appoint pedophiles to positions.

If the organization had told me, "Brother Bowen, you're on the right track, we're going to make this right," if they had sent out a video apologizing for how they handled child abuse and set up a victims' fund in each Kingdom Hall instead of a Kingdom Hall fund, I'd probably still be an elder. They did the opposite in every way. That shows they are corrupt, egregious men who know what they're doing and keep doing it, because it's about power and money.

What It Cost Me

My mother died in April. I wasn't told until the middle of May, after the organization had already sold the house, thrown away the family heirlooms, and taken everything as a donation.

My sister killed herself trying to get reinstated. The elders in her own congregation had recommended her reinstatement, but because she was in another congregation's area, a committee 300 miles away had to decide, and they turned her down. It cost them nothing. It crushed her.

I have lived this every way you can. I come across strong, but I'm not angry anymore. If anything, I'm sad for the victims, and sad that the organization chose not to care for the flock. They could do better. They drove away so many good men who could have helped them, and kept the subservient sycophants who will bury the bodies wherever they're told.

I'm Not Against Jehovah's Witnesses

Silent Lambs is neutral on doctrine and belief. We just want to protect kids and give victims a voice. In May 2001 we filed the first lawsuits against the organization, and I worked with law firms around the world on the first documents about how to sue it. In 2007 I founded JW Child Custody to help people with divorce, custody, and other legal matters involving Witnesses. We've helped hundreds, if not thousands, of children have a normal life. I don't brag about it online or make videos about it. I work behind the scenes: walk quietly and carry a big stick.

The organization fears me because I tell the truth. We have nothing to fear from them, because all they have is lies. They tell lies, believe lies, cover for lies, and teach their members to lie. The people in charge are terrible people, and their actions hurt their own members.

But I'm not against Jehovah's Witnesses. I've helped a lot of people leave, and many later called me angry. In so many words they said, "I had certainty in the organization, and you took it away. Now what?" They needed a cult to keep them happy. For some people, leaving isn't the best thing. Even my sister was better off in than out. Many just end up in another cult, selling flowers on a street corner.

One thing I learned from my 15 years among the elite is that when I left the organization, I never wanted to be anybody's messiah, tell anyone what to believe, or judge anyone's beliefs. Join a little church, or stay a Witness. I can talk the lingo. If your whole family is in and you're trying to protect your child, I'll tell you how to avoid being disfellowshipped and stay in. I've helped eight people get reinstated in the last three years. Did they believe? No. Maybe there was an estate, or they wanted to see their grandkids or their parents. They had their reasons. I have a surefire plan to get someone back in within 90 days. You just play the game. Everyone has to make their own choices.

The Frankenstein They Created

When I was 6 and starting first grade, my mother told me that if they made me salute the flag and the police came in and held a gun to my head, I should take the bullet and I'd wake up in paradise. On my first day I was terrified. When they started the flag salute I felt my hand going up, then stopped, because I thought the police were coming.

That taught me as a child to stand up for what was right to the death. From the age of 6 I was ready to die for what I believed. When I left the organization, I left as a better man, ready to die for that belief. I don't tolerate pedophiles inside the organization or outside it, and that includes ex-JWs who are pedophiles or who support them. That has cost me donations and more over the years, but standing up for what's right is all I know.

I am the Frankenstein they created, because I will never stop standing up for what is right. If they don't like it, they'll have to kill me, because that's the only way they'll end it.

Will They Ever Change the Two-Witness Rule?

In a word, no.

Witnesses obstruct police investigations of child abuse because they send elders in to tell the pedophile what the child said. Any investigator will tell you not to tell the suspect what the child is going to say. Police want to interrogate him and get him to trip himself up. The elders should stay out completely until the police finish, and then do what they want with him. Getting involved at the start and telling each side what the other said is obstruction of justice. They do it willfully, in every single investigation, and they know what they're doing.

The Pedophile Database: Over 23,700

After I got out, I remembered that I had reported two elders and a ministerial servant for the pedophile database, and I raised it publicly. I asked for confirmation from inside the organization, and three people confirmed there was a database. Each gave me a different number, all above 23,700. When I went public, the Society said there was no database, which was a lie. Later they said the number wasn't meaningful. If you have an actual number, share it.

That figure covered only the United States, Canada, and Europe, not South America, Africa, or anywhere else. And these weren't accusations. They were confessed or convicted pedophiles. It works out conservatively to one pedophile for every two congregations. If you want to know how many confirmed pedophiles are in a country, divide its congregations by two. Think about how much abuse that implies.

That's why I adopted an expression from Norman Hovind of Norway, who wrote a paper in 1994 warning that if nothing was done, they were creating a "pedophile paradise." Witnesses find that offensive, but it's true. If I were a pedophile, I'd want to be a Witness, because I'd have every protection, including their lawyers. I've sat in court while men from the Society in expensive suits sat behind a pedophile in an orange jumpsuit, defending his religious right to the anonymity of records that kept him from being convicted of molesting his stepdaughter after he molested his daughter. If that isn't a pedophile paradise, what is?

Shunning Is Their Big Stick

About four years ago I wrote a piece on reform. If the organization wanted to get rid of activists like me, all it had to do was end disfellowshipping. Make it a disassociation offense and let people talk with family as long as they don't discuss religion.

They have done this before. Before 1987 there was the "disapproved associate" arrangement, a policy Ray Franz wrote, under which unbaptized children could be cast out for something like smoking a cigarette. Thousands of children were. In 1987, when I was serving as an elder, they sent a letter saying they had been sued over it and couldn't do it anymore. Those children became ordinary worldly people you could talk to. It didn't turn the organization upside down or let Satan's influence in. Everyone moved on. That's evidence they could drop shunning and judicial meetings right now and it wouldn't hurt anything.

Why don't they? Shunning is their club. It's the reason my mother gave her estate to Watchtower. They make a lot of money from inheritances, because older Witnesses want to punish their children for not serving Jehovah by leaving everything to Jehovah instead. And the organization wants parents to shun their kids until they get sick, then wants those same kids to show up, drive them to the doctor, and nurse them until they die, while it still collects the estate.

Witnesses are one of the wealthiest religions per capita in the world. From the property figures I've seen, I estimate their value at close to a trillion dollars. In 1995 they were collecting a billion dollars a year through the New York corporation, from about six million members back then. That's a cash cow, and it's reason enough to keep shunning going. If families talked again, grandma and grandpa might leave something to their kids and grandkids instead.

I hoped all their recent reforms meant they were moving toward ending shunning. Now I'm not so sure. They haven't even started on blood. They already allow transplants, and now red and white blood cells, so why not just allow whole blood? It makes no sense. It's a big issue in custody cases, where they would let children die rather than take a transfusion, and then publish articles about all the children who were martyred. That's bad management. They could do better.

The Price of Freedom

I'm not trying to save the organization. Some people are better off in, and some are better off out. But leaving the Witnesses costs a great deal. I lost over 40 family members and every friend I had known for 43 years. When you pay that much for your freedom, you value it, and you don't let anyone take it away, whether through their opinion or another cult.

I know my heart. I don't need anyone telling me to be good or be killed, or threatening me with eternity. I used to tell people that if, at the end, Jehovah offered me a choice between living forever with Jehovah's Witnesses or dying now, I'd say, "Jehovah, please kill me now." I couldn't stand living a thousand years under those rules. It's their thing, and good for them, but it isn't mine.

---

William Bowen has spent 25 years making sure victims are heard, through Silent Lambs and through his help for parents in custody disputes involving Jehovah's Witnesses. His story began with a form letter that told elders to say nothing and a phone call that told him to leave a child's abuse in Jehovah's hands. If you were ever told the same thing, you're not alone, and you don't have to stay silent.