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I was baptized into the Jehovah's Witness religion

when I was 15 years old,

and I never questioned it.

There were adults in the congregation

that knew about the abuse.

I went those elders...

I was putting my life on the line

because my mom found out that I told anyone about the abuse,

she would have killed me.

And his brother said, go home and obey your mother.

Think about the apostate-driven lies that Jehovah's organization

is permissive toward pedophiles.

I mean, that is ridiculous, isn't it?

I knew inside how wrong it felt,

I knew how sick I felt,

how could you not say something?

You're in a false religion, you're in a cult.

I feel like the religion preys on people

at their most vulnerable.

This organization is made to put people in a box,

make them fearful for their lives.

Maybe God is real, but it's not this.

So much hidden documentation of child abuse

that Watchtower does not want the public to know about.

I knew that this was not going to get out

unless someone did something about it.

The problem of sexual abuse

in the Jehovah's Witness organization

is much, much more significant

than in the Catholic Church.

Once you believe in something this strongly,

it could be anything... you'll do it.

I can't leave it alone!

I know what this organization is responsible for doing.

We're attempting to leave, but we're kind of encircled

at the moment.

We should do the right thing.

But they don't do the right thing.

I was a happy Witness for 43 years.

Ever since I was a child,

I've always been a proponent for justice.

And so I became a Witness because I thought this was just,

that the world would get better.

It was the atomic bomb age.

There was concentration camps.

I took those scriptures literally about

a paradise Earth that God would bring it back,

because I wanted all people to be treated justly.

Surely all of us are thrilld at the prospect

of surviving the end of this wicked world

and living on God's righteous new order.

What a grand future awaits u.

Jehovah's Witnesses think that the world is ending,

and so since everything in this world

is going to be basically

burned up at Armageddon,

the most important thing to do right now is to preach

so that you can teach it to others

and save yourself and save other people.

The thing that attracted me to the Watchtower Society

was that they taught that Armageddon was so close

that those who were living now would never have to die,

but that they could live forever.

The basic beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses,

that this world one day will come to an end

and God will bring in a paradise Earth.

Jehovah's Witnesses came along with a positive message,

I thought, from the Bible,

and that is what I wanted... to please God.

Jehovah's Witnesses feel that they have the truth.

I enjoyed being different to a certain degree.

I liked not being one of the masses

who weren't enlightened.

There was a certain allure to that,

feeling like I had the truth.

I felt that I had won the lottery.

I was born into the only true religion.

The Jehovah's Witness religion itself

was based upon the original work of Charles Russell

back in the 1800s.

Charles Taze Russell was a prolific writer

and a very good business man.

He was very much into the publishing

and selling of his books.

Charles Taze Russell had no intention

of starting a new religion.

The "Watch Tower" was basically the name of the journal.

He started the "Watch Tower" magazine in 1879,

so I don't know that you would call it a religion

from its outset.

Russell established a corporation,

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.

They saw the need to purchase their own printing equipment

and move to a place that was close

to the shipping lanes in the East River.

So Charles Russell

moved the organization to Brooklyn, New York.

The organization was expanding so rapidly

and it's interesting to look back

and see all of those videos of the printing presses

going back in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

The Jehovah's Witnesses started expanding outside of the US

and they continue to expand

until now there is well over 200 countries around the world.

In 1969, Watchtower purchased Squibb pharmaceutical buildings

at 2530 Columbia Heights,

and they turn them into the famous

Watchtower headquarters complex.

There is such an iconic image of the Watchtower

overlooking the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge.

They were so proud of the fact that they were in the middle

of the most important city in America.

My husband and I were invited

to be part of the headquarters staff of the Watchtower.

The Jehovah's Witnesses were going through a growth period.

There were 4,000 people in the complex

at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was transferred into the writing department.

The writing department generates all the articles that appear

and all of the organization's literature.

The October 8th, 1991 Awake! magazine

had an article about how to deal with victims of child abuse.

So there's eight million people all reading this,

and the article really opened a Pandora's box

for the Watchtower organization.

It received more response than almost any other article

in the history of the Watchtower.

And there was a windstorm

of remarks and statements and letters.

Around the world, Jehovah's Witnesses thought that

this article about child abuse

was a time to talk about their child abuse...

that, "this Jehovah's Witness molested me when I was a child."

I wanted to help to make this issue known

because the lives of children were at stake.

The Awake! editor and I

decided to put a package together

of material to show the Governing Body,

who were presiding elders, the immense problem,

and to prove to them that something had to be done.

The Governing Body are eight men,

they've come up through the ranks of Jehovah's Witnesses,

they claim to be anointed by God.

They're celebrities, I think, to a degree.

And they are the only individuals

on the face of the Earth who are spokespeople for God.

It took great faith to break free from the darkness

brought on by centuries of false religious practice.

You represent the most high God Jehovah,

and you also have to have conduct

that supports the fact that you do worship this true God.

There will be many others who will come back

who will have to abandon their former way of life.

I was thinking, as an example, a homosexual.

They're the conduit for the Almighty God

that you believe in and worship.

And so if you don't believe these people,

who are the spokespeople for God,

then you're disobeying God.

And that's actually what the Witnesses teach.

I just wanted to do my part to clean out known molesters,

because that's what the Bible says to do,

to put out the wicked man.

They couldn't agree on what to do about it,

and some said it was a fad.

If you were a woman and a mother,

and you learned what I did,

you would do the same thing.

You wouldn't rest at night.

But people don't say anything.

This is an organization that you don't march with signs

and say, "Remove them! Remove them!"

The dirty little secrets are well kept.

The first time we got a call was in 2010,

and he was a victim of a serial perpetrator here in San Diego.

We start to learn a little bit about Jehovah's Witnesses.

That's how it all got started.

This organization has allowed the sexual abuse of children

to fester within its ranks for decades.

I was very, very involved

with the Catholic priest abuse scandal

that swept the nation since The Boston Globe story

broke in 2002.

We did battle with the Catholic Church,

but at the end of the day,

they fessed up to the fact that they had a problem.

Not so with Jehovah's Witnesses.

The Jehovah's Witnesses continue to insist

they don't have a problem.

They would much rather

prove the... the accuser wrong

and cover up what happened,

because then you don't have

the problem of... of the organization looking bad.

They care about their reputation.

They don't want their names dragged through the mud.

Their way of dealing with it is to try to keep the lid on

as much as possible.

We were the first ones really to get to them with litigation.

We learned early in our litigation against them

that there was a call put out to all of the elders

of all of the congregations in the United States

in March of 1997.

Back when I was dealing with this, this is 1997,

an article came out in the Awake! magazine...

"Abhor What Is Wicked."

And in this article, the statement was made

that this organization would not appoint a known molester

to a position of authority.

That was great.

That was my moment of saying,

"Ah, five years I worked on this,

and they're doing something about it."

But what they didn't say in the article

is that they had been doing it

for probably four or five decades.

I wrote to the editor and he wrote me back a letter.

So I'm reading what he said there,

and I'm astounded.

And he said, "Thanks to our Legal Department,

we no longer will have more megabuck lawsuits."

Well, that was a shocker to me.

I didn't know they had megabuck lawsuits.

If I had to pay up megabuck money in a lawsuit,

I would certainly do something that that wouldn't happen again.

After all, this organization is supported by donations.

So donations were paying for

the megabuck lawsuit settlements.

At this point, Watchtower was becoming to understand that

they had a problem internally with child sexual abuse.

So in 1997, Watchtower sent a letter

to all 10,000 of its US congregations

with a questionnaire.

It said, if you suspect that you have a child predator

in your congregation,

please take this questionnaire,

fill out these questions.

Put it in this special blue envelope

and mail it back to Watchtower headquarters

and keep a copy of it in your file

in your Kingdom Hall,

When this letter to all elders

throughout the world came out,

it said that we would like

to know the names of known molesters.

So that made up a file.

That is how Watchtower inadvertently wound up

creating this massive database of child molesters.

That is the file

that the Watchtower has never made public,

and that is the file that the lawyers want.

We knew what the database contained

because of the March 1997 letter.

They emphasized the legal risk that they were facing

of having potentially known molesters

within the congregation.

So they were worried about their legal exposure.

I remember where I was standing at that moment

when I read that letter.

I said, enough, enough.

It was at that moment I left the religion.

For us to get to a tipping point

in the litigation against the Jehovah's Witnesses,

we need to get, first and foremost, these documents.

Once we start asking for these files,

they started coming up with all kinds of lies about,

"Well, we... we don't have them,

we'd have to go searching for them.

It would take 20 years of man hours to find these files,"

and all this nonsense.

Court ordered them to produce it.

They said, no, we're not doing it.

Not only did Jehovah's Witnesses

refuse to turn over the documents,

but they elected to pay a $4,000 per day fine

rather than to turn over those documents.

Ultimately, that $4,000 had accrued

to about $2 million.

They didn't produce the documents,

and what happened was they ended up settling that case.

I first found out about the Jehovah's Witnesses

as a potential reporting topic in January 2018.

I was contacted by a guy I know on Twitter

who was an ex-Jehovah's Witness,

and he had suggested there was some deep rooted problems

in the religion.

I would find if I talked to one abuse survivor,

they would put me in touch with another one and another one,

you know, and within the space of a few weeks,

I had, you know, more than a dozen ex-Witnesses

who were willing to tell me their experience.

This is really a worldwide problem.

Mark O'Donnell is one of the ex-Jehovah's Witnesses

that I came in contact with, I think pretty early on,

for the first story that we published.

What interested me about Mark

was that he was the first person apparently

to really get his hands on aspects of the database,

which nobody had ever managed to do before,

and that he was behind leaking some of these documents.

Mark is a very mild-mannered, soft-spoken,

intelligent, unassuming, unemotional guy.

Mark is the last guy on Earth

that you would think would be an activist,

and when you speak to Mark,

it takes a little while to understand

what's going on behind those glasses

and what's turning in that head.

As a child, I didn't feel that I needed to question

my faith because I believed what I was being taught.

My awakening came around the age of 46

when I began to peer into the outside world

and become a little bit more aware

of what was going on around me.

I just wanted to know truth.

I wanted to know what was real and what was not real.

And I began to realize that everything I had been taught

was false.

It was shocking to me that growing up

as one of Jehovah's Witnesses,

we believed in truth and honesty and transparency,

and yet Jehovah's Witnesses have done everything possible

to conceal these documents that would have helped the victims,

that would have exposed the problem.

Why?

Why would they do this?

What was it that they were hiding?

What was it that they didn't want the court to know?

What was it that they didn't want the attorneys to know?

I believe that now we're uncovering this

because it had been concealed for so many years,

that, like other movements, when one person comes forward,

then another person feels the strength to come forward,

to realize that there are individuals

who are inside the organization

who are waking up, who have questions.

They might be elders, they might be the circuit overseers,

they might be people who are just leaving the organization.

They are going to reveal a lot more

about what's really going on behind the scenes

in the Jehovah's Witness organization.

Finding out what was in the secret database of pedophiles

became the search for the Holy Grail.

I was born into this.

I feel as though I was brainwashed

being raised as a Jehovah's Witness.

I'm PIMO... "physically in, mentally out."

And basically what that means is I'm stuck in the organization,

but I made the conscious decision of saying,

okay, I don't believe this anymore.

Basically, I have days where I feel very anxious

because if I do get outed as somebody who doesn't believe,

then I may lose my family and everybody I love forever.

Because you can't say that you don't believe

and still have your family.

When I decided to uncover the truth about the organization

that I had spent my entire life as a part of,

I went online and I created the account

"John Redwood" on Facebook.

The reason for using an alias is because Jehovah's Witnesses

cannot simply leave the organization and speak out

or say anything critical of the organization

without fear of being disfellowshipped.

It's either, you're in, you're with us;

or you're not with us and you don't have your family.

That's how controlling this organization is.

And it's an incredibly powerful behavior control tactic

to say if you ever question the group

or break one of our rules,

you risk being expelled or excommunicated...

or "disfellowshipped" is the Watchtower term...

and then no one will be able to have a relationship with you

or even acknowledge you and talk with you.

When you're a part of a community as tight knit

as the Jehovah's Witnesses, where all of your friends,

most of their family is Witnesses,

disfellowshipping is very severe,

it can be like a death sentence.

I mean, people have killed themselves

due to being shunned in this way.

If you speak out against them,

if you point out the discrepancies in the religion,

then you're disfellowshipped.

And that's one of their tactics of control.

They do not tolerate dissents.

The 11th commandment of Jehovah's Witnesses

is "Thou shalt not go public." And I did.

Good evening; at some point it may stop

being news each time another person comes forward

to say they were sexually abused as a child

by a trusted religious figure.

This woman, Barbara Anderson, worked for a decade

inside Jehovah's Witness headquarters.

What she found, she says, sickened her.

The Watchtower Society didn't want to acknowledge

that these girls were telling the truth

because they were accusing elders of molesting them.

This is the story of Candace Conti,

a young woman stepping out of the shadows...

Go 'head and step forward.

To take on the all-male leadership

of a wealthy, secretive religion who she says

failed to protect her from a predatory pedophile.

Candace Conti was a young girl that was abused.

They didn't believe her. They did not believe her.

There had been lots of lawsuits previous to Candace Conti,

but they were all settled in quiet.

She was the first one to take Watchtower to court.

They made the mistake in the Candace Conti case

of going to trial and getting hammered by a jury

once how they handled these cases got exposed.

All right, sir, if you'll please raise your right hand.

When Candace and her attorney began conducting depositions

with local church leaders, known as elders,

they learned something astonishing.

Do you recall becoming aware at any time

of sexual abuse of a child

by Jonathan Kendrick.

Um... yes.

In the case of Conti,

crimes that were committed were known to

not only one elder, not two elders,

but entire bodies of elders in multiple congregations,

and they had been advised not to call the authorities,

which further endangered other victims.

I was disfellowshipped a week before "Dateline" aired.

My son went to the headquarters

and discussed my appearance on "Dateline."

He was told that, because your mother went forward,

thousands of people have left the organization,

and so she's responsible for their deaths at Armageddon.

If I'm supposed to be responsible

for thousands of people who left

because I spoke the truth to the public,

then they responsible for their policies

over what has happened to literally... literally...

tens of thousands and thousands of children!

They said that I was disfellowshipped

because I was a gross sinner.

I was a threat to the organization.

And so what do you do?

We have no family any longer.

We lost our son to the fact that he shuns us.

I know many people wonder

how in the world can you shun someone that you love?

How in the world would you shun your mother?

It is because you are told it's an act of love.

We found out that we have a granddaughter.

We don't know her name.

The shunning policy's torture.

Because you don't choose to be part of a religion,

you have to be punished like that?

One of the features of destructive cults

is information control.

Destructive cults leave out information,

they distort information, and they outright lie.

They find all of these ways to keep people in the dark.

The spread of rumors is like wildfire.

It is hard to control.

They were told, "Don't go on the Internet,

don't read worldly magazines or newspapers.

You can't trust the news.

You can't trust the media.

Don't speak to apostates."

I was very surprised to find that my pseudonym, John Redwood,

began to have more of a following

than I ever expected.

I began to investigate and to write,

and I realized that many people were relying on the information

that I was sharing with the public.

Jehovah's Witnesses define "apostate"

as someone who leaves Jehovah

and then becomes an enemy of Jehovah

by speaking out against the organization.

An apostate is the worst thing

you can be as a Jehovah's Witness,

and that's because an apostate is a threat.

Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world,

is making himself an enemy of God.

They will vanish like smoke.

Here's what Jehovah's promising.

Hey.

In 2016 was when I actually gave myself

the okay to look at other material besides material

that was published by the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And that's when I broke down.

It would have been expected of me

to run and tattle on my husband.

After Mark stopped going to meetings,

they would come to me and say, Mark's hiding a secret.

Mark must be cheating on you.

Mark must be doing drugs.

They encouraged me all the time to leave him.

So I would walk into Mark's office

and he would turn his monitor off.

He would flip his Kindle over.

You would go in the back yard to be on his phone or his laptop.

So then for a very short period of time,

I started to question, are they right?

Is he hiding something from me?

Mark was hiding something.

I didn't really know Mark,

and that made a small crack for me.

Every witnesses is taught that Armageddon can come in any day,

and if you are not fully in,

you're going to die with everyone else on the planet.

Even as a kid, that fear was put in me.

It doesn't matter how young you are,

if you don't follow Jehovah's Ways

based on what the Jehovah's Witnesses say,

you are going to die when Armageddon comes.

There will be a complete genocide,

seven billion, eight billion,

however many people there on the Earth,

they're dying at Armageddon.

Only Jehovah's Witnesses will be safe.

They have Armageddon hanging over the heads

of all its members.

If you are not with Jehovah,

you are with the world

and the world was going to end, and it's going to end soon.

They teach fear, they... they want you to be afraid.

Growing up, I was primed for fear.

If I heard, like, a thunderstorm,

my mind instantly would go to thinking it was Armageddon,

like, oh, shit, they were right.

It's terrifying, especially for a little child.

It's fire coming out of the sky.

People are just dying left and right.

It's just intense.

The end game in terms of the doctrine

and what they promise people for all of these years

of kind of compliance and being a Jehovah's Witness

is living forever in a paradise on Earth,

and it's called the new system.

I never questioned my faith

because I honestly wanted the new system to come.

I just needed to know that there was something better out there.

That was my drive.

If I can make it to the new system,

I can finally be happy.

Some of the most powerful images from my childhood,

aside from the very negative pictures of Armageddon,

would be the positive pictures, the contract.

Things that we wouldn't see now,

we would see in the new system of things,

and many people really bought into that

and they believe that this was the correct Bible teaching...

that Jehovah wanted people to be happy

and to live in paradise Earth.

♪ Paradise ♪

♪ All who bring joy, as we sing... ♪

When you're a Witness, you believe

that this life you're living now is just a life in waiting.

It's not the real life.

Everything is put off to future paradise.

You don't live in the present.

This isn't the real world.

So when that's the basis for your outlook on life,

it affects every decision you make.

Mark and I did not have children.

My main reason for not having children

was because I could have kids in the new system.

So what's the rush?

The life I was living now

was really a kind of a temporary life.

I just have to get through,

and then I can have the real life...

and they call it the real life.

At least I got my cats.

In November of 2013, Mark and I were on our way

to some friend's house for the weekend,

and he sat down and said, "I can't do this anymore."

And he at that point proceeded to let me know

that he just wasn't going to be a Witness anymore.

And of course, that was devastating to me.

Mark and I had been married 15 years,

and we never had a real honest conversation with each other

in 15 years...

I couldn't really tell him what I thought.

Mark Jeffrey O'Donnell,

in the presence of Jehovah God

and these witnesses, take Kimberly Ann Weber

to be your wedded wife, in accordance with divine law

as outlined in the holy scriptures

for Christian husbands for as long as you both may live.

I do.

I continued to go to meetings and preach.

Mark and I would walk at night, and we would talk.

For me, I wanted to know what was going on in Mark's head,

so I would ask him to just tell me

what he was thinking and feeling,

and that I understood... I wouldn't agree with it,

but I needed to know that;

I wanted to be supportive for him.

So he was very careful and very selective

of some things that he told me.

One thing that he mentioned to me

was the case about Candace Conti.

I went home and I looked up the court documents.

I was shocked... Candace Conti sued Watchtower over her abuse

and how it was mishandled by the elders

and not reported to the police.

And immediately that resonated with me.

That's my personal experience,

where I was told not to report to the police

for m-my abuse.

I was shocked to learn that

the "Two witness rule" was actually a policy

of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses.

That "Two witness rule" affected me personally,

it r-really ruined my life.

The "Two witness rule"

is really central doctrine

for the Jehovah's Witnesses.

The scriptures is ex... is very, very clear.

It says, "No single witness may convict another for any error

or any sin that he may commit."

It's very clear, isn't it?

There are a lot of people that have been sexually abused

and it's all been swept under the rug

because of the "Two witness rule."

You can't apply that rule to sexual assault.

You can't.

Where is there going to be two witnesses to such a crime?

My mother suffered from a personality disorder

which wasn't diagnosed till later in life.

She was extremely abusive.

She's not a very nice person.

So she was one of Jehovah's Witnesses,

and she would kind of use the Bible

as part of her abuse with us.

She would read scriptures to us about, you know,

make sure you obey your mother, and then she would beat us

and did certain, you know, awful things.

I have an older brother and older sister.

My mom would lock us in rooms,

she turned the... the door knob,

so the lock was on the outside so she could lock us for days

at a time in our... in our room,

with no access to the restroom.

You'd have to, you know, go out the window or use a litter box.

We would watch her drown, uh, kittens in front of us,

to kind of threatened us that if we spoke up about the abuse,

this is kind of what would happen to us.

Um, she would beat us.

Uh, she would starve us.

I was malnourished.

I was very skinny.

I was all skin and bones.

My clavicle was always sticking out.

I had dark circles under my eyes.

I was sexually abused as well by my mother.

My father worked different shifts at his job,

so there were times he worked 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.,

and so we were left alone with my mom.

She would make us lay in bed next to her

while she masturbated.

Twelve years old, went to an elder,

and I informed him about the serious abuse

that was going on in our home,

but because it was my word against my mother's word,

they would take no action.

I asked for help, they actually reasoned with me that

if I died at the hands of my mother,

which was a real possibility,

could she stop Jehovah from resurrecting me?

And of course, the logical answer was no.

And so instead of giving me any practical help,

even providing some food

or reporting to Child Protective Services,

I was sent back home to face this horrible, horrific abuse.

On top, I was told I couldn't report it

because, um, it would make the organization look bad.

The abuse was so bad that I actually remember

looking at my mom and thinking, if I just kill her right now,

or I kill myself, this would be over.

And, um...

She... Sorry.

I always have in my mind, um,

a picture of a little girl that I pushed down.

And so she's the one that was abused

and I had to separate myself.

If those brothers had helped me when I was 12...

I wouldn't have had to deal with what I dealt with.

If they had made one phone call to Child Protective Services.

She's still an active Witness.

She's around children.

I have nightmares,

my mom flushing kittens down the toilet,

or tying them up in a plastic bag

and listening to them cry and die in front of me.

She's a psychopath..

So you don't say anything.

I just put a smile on my face.

No one knew what was going on outside.

No one knew, and I knew the risk that I took.

I went to those elders... I was putting my life on the line

because if my mom found out that I told anyone about the abuse,

she would have killed me.

And those brothers said, go home and obey your mother.

She didn't talk about it until after I left the organization.

She didn't talk about the fact that the elders

had covered up specific allegations of abuse

and told her to leave the matter in Jehovah's hands.

Now it was personal.

I gave my life to this organization.

I turned down a full scholarship to an Ivy League school,

and I wanted to be a doctor.

And instead I turned that all down for an organization

that wouldn't protect me.

Being a Witness is an everyday commitment.

It's not enough to just believe

and then have a normal life outside of your belief system,

you are to spend hours in the ministry

going out, knocking on doors,

because that's how you demonstrate your faith to God.

You can't celebrate Christmas.

You can't go to a birthday party.

It's a really busy life.

You're spending the vast majority of your time

doing things that have to do with being a Witness.

And that was the price that you willingly paid for the truth.

They degrade colleges and universities.

They degrade professors.

You'll see that smattered

all over Jehovah's Witness literature,

their talks, their videos,

the dangers of higher education.

Higher education often instills a sense of superiority

and self-reliance

that is in direct opposition to the Christian personality.

We will not need doctors or lawyers after Armageddon,

but we will need carpenters and plumbers

and similar construction trades.

It requires faith to decline higher education

and have the confidence that our material needs will be

cared for by training in other fields.

We really believed.

We studied, we made sacrifices for this religion.

I served as a pioneer, which would mean

working as a volunteer full time.

The organization taught that we should either be pioneers,

meaning full-time ministry,

or we should be building kingdom halls,

we're going to Bethel to work

at the world headquarters complexes.

Every time that there was a crossroad,

I would give something up to continue

being a good Jehovah's Witness.

Once I left, I realized that

I was living under constant stress.

They teach you you're not good enough,

that you were born imperfect

and that you will never be perfect until the new system.

Let's remember these words and this counsel,

"When you have done all the things assigned to you,

say we are good for nothing, slaves.

What we have done is what we ought to have done."

I remember growing up

and hearing talks throughout my whole life,

"You are a good-for-nothing slave,"

and we would repeat that.

"We are good-for-nothing slaves."

We owe our lives to God because he created us.

Turning around and asking yourself,

can I... can I start over again?

Do I have the strength to do that... is a very scary thing.

From an early age,

you're raised with no self-esteem,

no self-awareness, no confidence.

I didn't have prom, I didn't have birthdays,

I didn't have dates, I didn't have college.

You feel like you're robbed.

Like someone stole something from you.

And you feel angry, and justifiably so.

My first memories as a child was being pushed in a stroller

and going door to door with my mother trying to recruit people.

This is my book bag that I would carry around with me

when I would go door to door, full time pioneering,

so it's just full time knocking on doors,

and trying to recruit people.

This brings back memories.

It all started with my mom.

We met a Jehovah's Witness,

and they showed her a couple of scriptures from the Bible

she'd never seen before.

So at the time she was pregnant with me,

I never had a father figure, she was mom and dad.

I was baptized, and in here...

I just found this shit, I still have the T-shirt

I was baptized in.

It was in San Francisco, at the Cow Palace,

with 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, like, watching.

I was hyped and had to wear the white shirt,

because that means you're starting new, it's fresh,

it's loose-fitting, it's modest.

My mom was excited.

Here's Kameron!

I remember, like, even walking into the heated pool,

something feeling like it left my body.

I felt like I was dirty and that was restarting,

so I felt clean again

and I felt something like a spirit had left my body.

Like, when I came out of the water,

I felt, you know, I had a second chance at life

because I was born a sinner.

But I also felt a lot more pressure

because you're basically marrying Jehovah God,

you're dedicated to him no matter what.

You're always under pressure to be perfect

and to set the right example and, you know,

every time it's not, it's... something's wrong with you.

I was like four or five.

And it was your classic, you know,

they're close to the family,

trusted member of the family, you're left alone.

I spent the night at his house,

and, um, he took advantage one night

and I knew I wanted to leave,

I just didn't know what to do because I was four years old.

He was 17, 18... so he's not super old,

but he was old enough to know that, like, that was not okay.

He said, "Yeah, don't talk about this, this is just between us."

My mom comes from abuse.

I guess I was saying some weird things,

and she's like, "Wait, what does that mean?

Tell me what happened."

And then she immediately, like, burst into tears

and set up a meeting with the elders.

She was taught to talk to them for direction for everything.

They told her the classics, like, don't talk about it,

we don't want to bring a reproach on Jehovah's name,

so we don't want to make the religion look bad.

It's in Jehovah's Hands, he'll fix it in the new system

when the world ends and everyone was not

a Jehovah's Witness will die.

And, uh, they just pretty much dismissed everything.

When I woke up, it was about a solid month of depression

and sadness and crying and panic and anxiety attacks...

found out everything I was taught was a lie.

Once someone starts learning about the group

and it kind of hits them that they've been in a cult,

there's a lot of trauma that can happen around that,

realizing that you've missed out on a lot of things in life,

lost milestones,

lost achievements and accomplishments.

It's very distressing.

Month later,

I... I had my little DSLR that I had saved up for

because I wanted to be a filmmaker,

and all of a sudden I was free to, like, chase that,

and I was like, I'm going to blog

'cause people need to know about this,

and I just want to help 10 people.

So that got me involved in activism with child abuse.

When I started, there was a handful of YouTubers

and there's a lot of Reddit posts,

but now there's tons of YouTubers.

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

I don't remember exactly when the abuse started.

Lots of people knew; nobody did anything about it.

No one called the police.

I myself have been through a ton of abuse.

It's their policies that's protecting pedophiles.

I went to the Internet

to search for Jehovah's Witness teachings,

and I saw that there were a lot of people

who came out as victims of child abuse in the organization.

I knew what child abuse was, but never in my life

had I imagined

that this was such a strong, ongoing issue.

I discovered that the Jehovah's Witnesses

were not giving their documents

about alleged abuse to the court.

They decided to keep this all hidden

somewhere in the Kingdom Hall,

and most members inside the organization

didn't even know it was occurring.

I think that 95% to 99% of active Jehovah's Witnesses

have no clue about the abuse that goes on.

If they were looking at it like this actually happened,

it would blow most people away.

I had a very good idea

of where these documents were kept.

I went back to the ,

I was hoping to have some kind of proof.

I knew that someone had to go into the kingdom halls

and get these documents.

I found this elder, I grew up with him,

I had a past history and relationship with him,

and I was hoping that this would trigger

something human to come out.

Should be some guys dressed kind of nice...

- Right there. - Right here?

Yeah, I think so.

I was hoping to have some kind of proof

and get a confession about my abuse.

And he said that he'd love to talk to me

about the depression that I was going through

and how I was feeling about my child abuse growing up.

I don't think anything has changed in the organization.

It is one of the most stubborn religious organizations

where they just throw children's lives away like it's nothing.

People need to know about this.

There's no protections in place for children,

and they're going to take the side of the abuser

because there's no eyewitness... so nothing's changed.

Hey, brothers and sisters, if you haven't seen

the "Going to a memorial as an apostate" video yet,

you should watch that.

Although the Governing Body tries to say

that people will lie about us on the Internet...

Be careful on the Internet.

We're just warning you,

that's all we can do is admonish.

Stick with what we have authorized.

You'll be safe.

There's no way that

this could all be lied about.

New sexual abuse allegations tonight

- against Jehovah's Witness. - The alleged victims' claims

- an elder... - Says she was molested

by a fellow church member.

A pattern of alleged child abuse.

The commission learned that of those hundreds of cases,

none... none... was reported to police.

At the time I was still a member of the Congregation.

This is what Jehovah, the God of Israel, says...

So everyone in the congregation saw me as a regular,

spiritually strong, trusted member...

Before he resurrects them, he's going to create

a perfect place for them, a paradise here on Earth.

But on the inside I had my doubts.

I was only going there to keep my family and friends.

My father was very high up.

He was a well respected member.

He had a lot of privilege and he pretty much

was the leader of our congregation.

He wanted myself to grow up and be the same way.

So he taught me a lot, and I found that growing up

I knew much more than the typical Witness

regarding what goes on behind the scenes.

My father taught me that when something occurred

inside the Kingdom Hall, that brother or sister

would meet with a couple of elders in a secret meeting.

It was just that person who had some problem

and two or three elders speaking with them.

A judicial committee is a group of three elders

in the congregation who will convene

for a series of private meetings

with someone who has committed a sin,

or to hear an accusation

they believe and they're trying to get to the bottom of it,

with the end goal of, do we have mercy on this person

or do we disfellowship them?

This would all be documented and filed away

and locked for no one to see except the elders.

I was curious as to

what is really hidden in the kingdom halls,

what's really locked away.

At that point, when Judas started getting curious,

we had been dating for about five or six years.

I felt the need to take action because we had the ability to.

We had a set of picks that we used,

some doors were very difficult to get open.

So in that instance, we would go to meetings during the day,

crack open one of the windows, and then come back later

at night and crawl through the windows.

I was paranoid the whole time.

Every small noise I heard,

I would pause.

Be quiet.

Then we can continue.

We went through all the files that we thought were suspicious.

We had little knives to cut open the files.

We had our glue sticks and then glue it back together

as if it were never opened.

I came across this big envelope

titled "Child Abuse, Do Not Destroy."

We found way more pedophile activity than we anticipated.

Hundreds of pages in just one congregation.

These were people I grew up with.

These are people I knew.

So it shocked me.

I could not believe what I was reading and how extensive,

how severe and how detailed these documents were.

It was horrifying.

Seeing the pedophiles not getting the consequences

they deserved infuriated me.

So that caused us to act and get as many files

as we could on them.

I felt that it was my responsibility

to get these documents and get them out to the public

and really show the true nature of the organization.

I ended up posting on an ex-JW page on the Internet

with one small letter that I found...

a sample, so to speak.

Once I posted that, I began to receive

a lot of messages.

One message that grabbed my attention

was from someone named John Redwood.

There is a subreddit group called ex-JW,

which has something like 55,000 members.

And an individual had posted some information that indicated

that he may have found some documents

inside of congregations

that dealt directly with child sexual abuse.

We gained each other's trust,

and I saw that we were fighting for the same cause.

I received an anonymous package of documents,

which was very extensive.

Many of the documents were handwritten notes.

They were notes from elders,

they were notes from the victims themselves

and from Watchtower's communication back and forth

to the congregations.

And I knew immediately that this was serious.

I really have evolved over the decades

as I've learned more and more about the Jehovah's Witnesses

to really think of them

as a more and more destructive cult.

The pedophilia, uh, predatory institution,

the shunning, uh, the fear of Armageddon.

How many people have been harmed by that institutional abuse?

For example, if you take the blood issue,

tens and tens of thousands of people have died

for not taking a blood transfusion.

People have died for no reason

based on an arbitrary misreading of the Torah.

Refusing blood transfusions

comes from a loosely interpreted scripture

in Acts where you are told not to eat blood.

And apparently that's the same as taking a blood transfusion,

I guess...

that's... that's how they see it anyway.

What does the Bible say about blood transfusions?

The Bible commands that we not ingest blood.

Note the following scriptures: Genesis 9:4.

God allowed Noah and his family to add animal flesh

to their diet after the flood,

but commanded them not to eat the blood.

People die for this all the time,

like, even children,

like, little babies die from it.

And nobody bats and eye...

in fact, people will usually,

like, put these people on a pedestal,

the people that die.

They're martyred.

That's something that I think is...

is hard for people to wrap their minds around

if they're not a part of the religion.

The seven year old boy facing

death because his parents' religious beliefs

prohibit blood transfusions.

Because both parents are Jehovah's Witnesses,

they do not want to see their baby girl get any foreign blood,

even if it is a matter of life and death.

It's thought the medical team wanted to carry out

a blood transfusion, but the family,

being Jehovah's Witnesses, refused.

Six hours later he died.

Jehovah's Witnesses are causing people to die

due to not taking blood transfusions,

that shouldn't be dead.

It's pretty nefarious.

I believe that God wanted us to be loyal

and not accept a blood transfusion

because the life was in the blood.

I never questioned any of that.

To me, it was always a matter of loyalty.

You can change people's thoughts

and get them to engage in behaviors that are

against self preservation.

And I think that's the scary thing.

And Witnesses do that really, really well.

Most people will do what they've been taught

is the right thing to do,

even if it means losing their life.

I had already started questioning the religion,

the cult.

And eventually I started to think maybe God is real,

but it's not this.

I don't know what I'm doing.

My mom was baptized when she was 12.

My mom was married when she was 14.

The elders sanctioned that, by the way...

they were the ones who told my grandmother to do that.

My grandma tried to make my mom live with my dad,

but my mom was a kid and she wanted to come back home,

and she did come back home.

Originally, I was raised by my mother.

I was living with her and my grandmother at the same time.

Hey, I'm over here, babe.

I was indoctrinated from, like, the womb on.

I was two years old

and I'm walking around quoting scripture.

I had questions my whole childhood,

and they never got answered.

Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness

and being part of the LGBT community was very stressful

and it was filled with a lot of self-hatred and repression.

Keep clean before Jehovah and enjoy his blessing.

The first way you can do this

is by avoiding tight-fitting clothes

that can identify you with homosexuality.

These clothes contribute to changing

people's opinion of homosexuality

because they come to see it as normal and acceptable.

I asked my grandmother, I remember,

"How do we know that we're the right religion?

How do we know it's not something else?"

And she would just tell me, "Because the Bible says so."

She would always give me answers like that,

that just weren't satisfying and didn't make sense.

My mom started to drink more in her early to mid 20s.

Work, work, work.

She started abusing painkillers.

When I was 17 years old,

my mom got very ill after a car accident

and she ended up in the hospital.

We didn't realize it at the time,

but she was suffering from a lot of organ damage

from chronic alcoholism.

All of her organs were failing.

They were telling us that she needed a blood transfusion.

My mom had brain swelling at the time,

so they said that she couldn't make the decision for herself.

They were leaving the choice up to my grandma.

I distinctly remember there being, um,

like a whole swarm of elders.

They were the Hospital Liaison Committee,

that's what they're called.

Serious medical situations are stressful,

and decisions often need to be made quickly,

including those involving blood.

The Hospital Liaison Committee arrangement provides comfort

and help at the right time.

They were there basically to make sure

that my grandmother made the "right" choice.

The Hospital Liaison Committees

have been a very powerful tool in the hand of Jehovah

to provide this support and strength

when the blood issue arises.

What a beautiful gift Jehovah has given his people

through the fine work of the Hospital Liaison Committees.

Truly, this has been a strengthening aid for us

to keep abstaining from blood.

Often these brothers coming, this committee,

to the bedside of a Jehovah's Witness

who is in distress or in a health situation,

it can turn into coercion,

like trying to convince a person

not to take blood that could save their life.

When a child or any family member

needs a blood transfusion and they can't do it,

you know, Jehovah's Witnesses will make sure

that they're always on the scene

reminding you of the reasons why you should obey these things

even though they're against human nature as a parent.

They would be in the waiting room.

They were in her room, they were surrounding her bed.

You know, just bunch of suits strongarming an old lady

into killing her daughter.

What did you buy this for, Mami?

My grandmother knew what she was supposed to do.

She was supposed to sacrifice her daughter

to the organization.

For hours and hours, different doctors came in

and they were trying to, like, tell her the mortal peril

she was putting my... my mother in

by allowing her to have this surgery

without any blood transfusion.

But still, even after all those hours of deliberation,

my grandmother, of course, said no blood

and signed off on the consent form,

and that was it.

She passed away.

When my mother died,

that was pretty much the last straw for me.

I had such a... such a hard time reconciling

how somebody could do that to their own child.

I took that as a sign, like,

my family means business about this religion,

like, they're willing to kill each other over this.

I'm going to go and try to talk to my grandmother

about what happened with my mother.

The last time I spoke to her was over a year ago.

I just want to understand why.

I'm on my way

to go and confront my grandmother.

It's been over a year since I've seen her,

and I'm really hoping that I can just have

at least a coherent conversation with her.

Oh, shit, that's my grandma's garage opening!

That's fantas... Oh, fuck!

We can do it, all right.

Hi.

- Hi. - Hi.

- Can I have a hug? - Huh?

Can I have a hug?

It's been like a year since I've seen you.

I'm sorry, I look... I just...

I just haven't seen you in forever.

There's always been some stuff I wanted to ask you, like...

about my mom.

When... when you had to make that choice,

- was it hard? - She chose.

And naturally I am happy.

- But it... it... - To make the right decision.

- It didn't hurt? - No.

It didn't hurt you to do that?

- No, honey... - Not at all?

That's what she wanted.

- She'll be resurrected. - Yeah, but she wasn't even

a practicing Jehovah's Witness at the time.

It doesn't matter. She make a good choice.

- And I'm so happy. - One more hug.

I'm sorry, I never get to see you anymore.

- Okay. Well... - I hope everything's okay.

- Remember, time is short... - Time is short.

And you can see your mom again

because she is going to be resurrected.

It's upsetting that a group would control people this way.

So once it kind of hits them,

it's going through the process of saying,

"I'm still here, I'm still alive,

and I'm going to make the most of this."

It becomes very important to speak up

and everyone finds their own way to do that.

A lot of Jehovah's Witnesses, when you leave,

people are empowered now to say, hey, this happened to me

and I'm going to speak up about it because it was wrong.

And I don't want it to happen to somebody else.

I've always wanted to crash Kingdom Halls,

I've always wanted to go in there

and say something to them.

I can't help but think about all the people

that are still stuck in the cult.

I'm planting some kind of a seed.

I just want them to hear some of what I'm saying.

They don't have to hear everything,

just enough to make them think,

"Is that something that's worth looking into?"

Jehovah, our Heavenly Father, I come to you in prayer

and ask that you please forgive us

for your ever changing blood doctrine,

which has caused so many needless deaths...

- No, no, no, no, no... - Including that of my mother,

Elizabeth van Hassel!

- Please sit down... - My mother died...

- Please step down. - My mother died from the bu...

the blood doctor, her name is Elizabeth van Hassel.

She was only 32 years old when she passed away.

- You have a choice, you either... - My mother, my... my mother died

because... because her mother... actually, her mother made

the choice for her not to... for her not to have blood.

Not only that, but there are people that you are shunning...

- Right now, get off right now. - And they are

- committing suicide... - Get off.

Please don't shun your family members!

Please, I beg you, do not shun your family members,

we love you, we care about you,

we don't want... we don't want you to shun us.

We care about you.

Also...

- Sir, sir... - Do you know...

Let go of you, sir, you cannot be touching me.

Do you practice...

You're a Jehovah's Witness, that is against the law.

I really want people to look at my videos

and I want them to see an example of what they can do.

I want them to see a human being suffering

because it's very real and it happens all the time.

I want them to see...

hell...

in a human...

And see what that does to somebody.

Jehovah Witnesses are continuing a more

than month-long convention at the Santander Arena.

It's expected to draw more than 25,000 Jehovah Witnesses

from 218 congregations in Pennsylvania.

Right when the convention was starting on Sunday morning,

I was unattended, and I just went on the ex-JW Reddit page,

and I just made a post that said they were checking lapel badges

and making sure that no protesters got inside

and started talking to people.

Thirty minutes into the Sunday convention,

I see a comment from John Redwood.

My abuser's rights were protected and I was silenced.

My four year old daughter was the molested

by teenage boy in the Kingdom Hall.

It was very important to us as parents of a survivor

of child sex abuse to let other parents know

that there are abusers in the organization.

These elders who sit here on these judicial committees

who know of some of this stuff,

say at conventions and across the stage at congregations

that we abstain from this type of stuff.

Report it to the police, not to the elders.

It's okay. It's okay to read.

Thanks, guys. Good morning.

Their stock response is that Jehovah's Witnesses

abhor child abuse...

and they are correct.

They do abhor child abuse, that's not the issue.

The issue is how do they handle a child abuse allegation?

So here we have a group of elders

that are debriefing a victim who has said

that there were multiple men sexually assaulting her,

going all the way back to when she was four years of age.

"How old were you when this happened?"

Answer, "Four years old." "Did he do anything

of a sexual nature, like touch your private parts?"

Answer, "Yes." Can you tell us

who was in the room?" Answer...

who was convicted of raping his half sister

a blond man was there, a red haired man with a red beard

and who is the main perpetrator

in the Palmer Leaks case.

These documents represent the fact

that there was an internal investigation at great depth

into the crimes committed by this perpetrator

and other perpetrators who were also Jehovah's Witnesses.

The package of documents from Judas

contained multiple cases of child sexual abuse,

none of which were ever turned over to the police

by the congregation elders.

There was one case in particular

called the Palmer Leaks,

and this involved the Palmer congregation in Massachusetts.

What we discover is that the two daughters of this man,

who was an elder for some period of time,

had been viciously and severely abused by their father.

I knew that Palmer congregation is just one congregation.

I also knew that there were hundreds,

maybe tens of thousands of cases that were not released.

And this was just one case... a sample, so to speak.

I had no choice but to do something about it.

If I didn't speak up,

then this information would be buried forever.

When the Palmer Leaks came out, it was a big story.

It was picked up by media all over the world.

The documents were incendiary because these were essentially

the first time that copies of database documents

were seen by the public.

By any estimation, there are

tens of thousands of people named in the database.

This was just a sample of what people imagined

could be in the database.

The reason why I think they're so adamant

in protecting these files is because they must have

a concern with what these files are going to tell the world

about their organization

and how they don't protect children,

and instead protect these pedophiles...

and their "brand," if you will.

Watchtower has sued the organization

who was actually hosting the documents.

But as a result of the release of those documents

to not only the public, but to the police,

there is now an investigation by the police.

What it boils down to is people seeing first hand

a serious, serious problem

that is not otherwise ever going to be addressed

by this large institution that's behind it.

I am on a mission... I haven't seen or talked to my mother

maybe three or four times in the last three or four years.

We set up a loose time and a loose date for us

to meet up for coffee on the weekend; she disappears.

I just... I just don't hear from her.

She wasn't there, and I end up finding out why,

because she knew I would be there,

it would be too painful for her to see.

Instead, I ran into one of my abusers.

I didn't see him until the very end.

I just remember feeling, like, really angry and just upset.

It infuriated me because...

You know, this guy...

who fucked up my childhood...

I kept thinking about, like,

"What about the next kid," you know?

Ended up finding out something happened

and I couldn't be there to protect him.

You know, I couldn't be there to...

protect my family.

I just felt, like, useless and powerless because...

That's how the system is built, it's for these child abusers

to get away with this shit.

Watchtower's legal department looks for a loophole

in how to escape mandatory reporting...

because most states have mandatory reporting.

The Jehovah's Witnesses argue that all of this information,

by their religious tenets,

are... is to be kept confidential

no matter who gets to see it.

They tell the elders, you have no obligation to report.

That's their loophole that they made and they stuck to.

They want to manage their own judicial process,

which includes child abuse, and because of that,

we have this conflict between church and state.

I think they've become much more entrenched,

they've become much more defiant.

They have done very little to improve the risk factors

that would lead up to child sexual abuse.

After the Atlantic article came out,

the very next day,

two elders from our local congregation

made multiple attempts to reach us.

It was obvious they were trying to bully us

and to hold us accountable for speaking out.

My article for The Atlantic was a larger look

at the Jehovah's Witness organization,

at the religion,

at their child sexual abuse issues,

and it was also a profile of Mark O'Donnell.

The Atlantic article was released March 22nd, 2019,

and exactly one day later,

there were two elders that came to our front door.

The two elders that had come to my home

were elders that we were very familiar with.

In fact, the first elder was the elder

who conducted our marriage ceremony

and now he's at our door and we were not there.

Within a few weeks, we had received two certified letters,

one to Kimmy, one addressed to me,

and those letters were basically demanding

that we come to a judicial hearing

at the Perry Hall Kingdom Hall

on the charge of causing divisions.

They felt that we were somehow disrupting the congregation

or causing divisions.

I knew that they were seeking our disfellowshipping.

I really didn't care as much as I did care about the effect

that it had on my elderly mother.

She is a faithful Witness and she has a very strong belief

in the Bible and the resurrection.

She doesn't have any other children.

So we are the only family that she has.

It would really hurt her to know

that her only son has been disfellowshipped

and can no longer speak to any Witnesses whatsoever.

As mentioned, we do have quite a few announcements,

so please bear with me.

First, this is to inform the congregation

that Mark O'Donnell is no longer

one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

And this is to inform the congregation

that Kimberly O'Donnell is no longer

one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

I'm not a fool, I know that the organization

goes after whistleblowers... it has for decades.

Anyone who speaks out against the organization

or its policies, they will be disfellowshipped.

I really feel that the timing of our disfellowshipping

says a lot about this organization,

the fact that we would speak our truth

and tell our story in The Atlantic

and we were disfellowshipped,

It says a lot about the lengths

that the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses

will go to,

to chase down a whistleblower.

Mark has absolutely had a huge impact

and is likely to...

I think... I think Mark is at the very beginning

of what he's doing; I think

in the next 10 to 20 years,

we're going to see the real breadth of impact

that Mark is going to have.

We'll continue to do what we can

to bring about transparency

and bring about change

and to be... be here to support people as they leave.

We had been married 15 years

before we really opened up to one another.

You can leave and be happy.

And I'm happy.

I'm still terrified of what my family is going to say,

because, you know, I crash all those halls and everything

and I go out and I protest and everything,

but I didn't really fully understand myself

until actually just recently.

I'm finally out as being a man,

I can't believe it took that long,

like, I still can't believe it took that long.

So, yeah, my family would not be very pleased

if they knew that not only am I trans, but I'm also gay.

I think that'll shut the door forever.

It feels terrible, feels awful to know that the mother

that is supposed to love you

doesn't want to see you because you changed your beliefs.

I don't know if I'll have a relationship with my mom again.

It's been years.

That's probably my biggest fear is, um,

her passing away

and me finding out months or years later.

I wish that she could be a part of my life,

I wish that she could, you know,

see the production company I'm doing,

and even see the activism and see how good it is.

I wish she could see the good things.

Here we go!

All right. Second or first?

After we left the organization,

it was nice to just exist as Mark and Kimmy

and figure out who we were and what we liked

and... and find that... that connection.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You're at base, Kimmy.

Am I up?

- Probably not. - It's supposed to rain, I think?

- My legs hurt. - Tomorrow it's supposed to rain.

You can be friends with non-Witnesses

and they're not going to rob you or rape you.

There we go, there we go!

Great, great, great, great!

News alert... according to their terminology

and their doctrine,

Mark and I will not be part of the new system.

Come on, Mark! Get ready to run!

Nice shot, nice shot!

We will be, um...

killed here at Armageddon

if we don't die before then.

We've had our final judgment.

Yeah... Yeah.

But we do have freedom.

Freedom of thought, freedom to do what we want.

Right, so no longer living this temporary life,

we're having fun, we're enjoying ourselves, we have,

you know, real relationships.

So now we're living.

Until a watchtower accepts that this is not

strictly a moral failing,

that there is a psychological problem

and that these people need help, they need medical attention,

they need to be reported to the authorities...

this is going to continue to happen.

I think if... if developments keep coming at the pace

and rate that they have so far,

within a few years' time we'll be looking at,

you know, one of the largest cover ups

of religious institutionalized sexual abuse

that anyone has ever heard of.

If they had reported it immediately to the authorities,

it would have prevented other children from getting molested.

I have publicly made this statement since 2002,

that it is not just a sin,

it's a crime,

and you report crime to the authorities.

The organization has changed over time.

They've been forced to: they predicted the end of

the world, and the end of the world hasn't come.

So they... they've changed.

They can change.

But so far, they've shown no appetite

to change in these areas.

The scriptures are very clear:

before a judicial committee can be convened,

there has to be a confession or two witnesses,

so we will never

change our scriptural position on that subject.

And we get rid of all drafts.

We... we no longer keep drafts.

So once we've finalized our document,

we clean out all the drafts.

And the reason is, is because there's many comments

that are sometimes made on drafts.

Those are the ones that get us in trouble.

Well, we know that the scene of this world is changing

and we know Satan's coming after us.

And he's going to go for us legally.

I want to be whoever I want to be,

and that's why I left.

Better your life, better yourself

without that organization.

This is a brand new world for me and my family,

but it's exciting.

I couldn't be happier now

to be able to share my story and my trip with you.

The world needs to see that

the Jehovah's Witnesses do not give a shit.

I hope that it helps somebody out there,

that it touches some person who is still stuck in the cold.

There's so much to do in this world.

It's a much bigger place

than the Witnesses make to seem to be,

and a much more loving place.

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