Indiana Kingdom
Halls of Jehovah's
Witnesses in:
Halls of Jehovah's
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| Studies show us that the more sexually repressed the religion, the more child sexual abuse occurs among its members. Phillip Garrido, for example, who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard and held her as a sex slave for 18 years, was a Jehovah Witness minister. Police were only alerted when he tried to take the babies that he fathered with Jaycee onto a University campus to preach and distribute Watchtower magazines. Do you want these people on your private property, knocking on your door, talking to your children? |
| Even especially prominent JW Representatives, like Robert Edinger, of Bedford (Mitchell Kingdom Hall), for example, repeatedly intoxicated his son with alcohol at the age of 14 or younger, following years of stripping him and beating him. That son survived, however, earned a PHD in Religion at the University of Southern California, and is now fighting back, especially because my father is taking advantage of the fact that my mom has Alzheimer's and cannot express her wishes clearly. After a lifetime of being an attentive son to my mother, now, when she has Alzheimer's and can no longer defend her wishes, my father capitalizes on this and keeps me away from her, because I am not a JW. I have come to realize now, at the age of 54, that child abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses lasts a lifetime. And this web site represents the expression of a lot of hostility over a lot of stupidity of those in power in this organization with their proud egos, not even taking into consideration the consequences of these failed policies that tear families apart, if not sooner, then later. Many family members of JWs suffer, and we need solidarity in order to face these challenges. |
| Adult Survivors of Jehovah Witness Child Abuse |
| Jehovah Witnesses invade private property with no permission of any kind, by surprise, sometimes when you are not at home. Often, they solicit home bible studies with children. Sometimes, they come to visit when you are away from your home and unable to protect your family. They have all of Bloomington, Bedford, and Mitchell, Indiana mapped out into territories for door-to-door canvassing, hoping to be invited to a return visit. The law does nothing to stop this invasion of your private property, since it is considered to be within their 1st amendment rights to solicit our conversions. The only recourse that you have is to notify them that you do not want to be called on and then they will put you on their Do Not Call list. Inform them that Jehovah Witnesses are not allowed on your property. Only by having notified them will you be able to put legal force behind your no trespassing sign. We urge you to do this as soon as possible. Protect your children! Tell the Jehovah Witness representatives listed on the right, or the number in your local phone book, that under no circumstances do you want them to call at your home! |
| We, those of us who had this fearsome and violent ideology thrust upon us in our infancy, we are the principal victims of this fossilized, anachronistic, destructive, and dangerous philosophy of idolatry of self that the JWs try to force with violence upon silent lambs. The Jehovah's Witnesses organization is built on fear, not truth, fear of the almighty warrior god Jehovah, fear of the end of the world, fear of one's neighbors or classmates, or most of all, displeasing the elders, being spied upon, the threat of being outcast and unable to even socialize with one's own mother. Much worse, however, is that they go door-to-door trying to scare us, bothering us when we are trying to enjoy a family meal or getting ready for work. They want you to be afraid as well, so that you will donate to their cause. |
| If you do not like this page or think that it is inappropriate, please contact the following people. Bloomington: Martin Boling, 2506 S. Milton Drive, 47403 (812) 339-8638 (812) 332-6184 Bedford: Faith Spicer, 3609 River Bluff (812) 275-2987 Tell Faith How You Feel: Mitchell: Steven C. Steuer 245 Riverview Addition Bedford, IN 47421-8286 (812) 849-3739 Please leave message! |
| If you have any information about child sexual abuse among Jehovah Witnesses, it is your legal duty to report it to your local law enforcement agency. Please report it to us as well at: info@jwchildabuse.com |
| We are dedicated to helping protect Jehovah Witness children from sexual abuse and to fight against the cover up of sexual abuse. We are investigating a particularly egregious case that has been reported to us involving three local congregations of Jehovah Witnesses in Bloomington, Bedford, and Mitchell, Indiana. Please help to inform the ministers (elders) of these congregations that they have a legal duty to report child sexual abuse to local law enforcement agencies! |
| We wish to thank all of the Christian churches and other non-profit organizations in Indiana and elsewhere that are helping with our campaign. |
The Bossert Hotel has breathtaking views of the Lower Manhattan skyline.
Residents of the Bossert Hotel like Monica Grier, who were tenants when the Johovah's Witnesses bought it, have been allowed to stay.
But this hotel lobby is different. And not just because of its five glittering chandeliers or the three-story marblelike columns that trumpet an
earlier age.
Nobody pays a bill at the front desk.
In a city of $400-a-night hotel rooms, the Bossert Hotel, on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, may be the best deal. Provided the guest
is a Jehovah’s Witness.
Members in good standing of this religious group — those who have gone door to door proselytizing or have completed international
missionary work — are eligible for up to three nights of accommodations free of charge, three meals included, at a former high-society hot
spot.
“I can’t even believe it,” said Lori Jacobson, 47, from Simi Valley, Calif., looking up at the chandeliers on her first trip to New York with her
sons, 12 and 14. Her husband, Marc, was getting information for a Big Apple Bus tour.
The Jacobsons submitted an application a month ago to their local congregation, which everyone who wants to be a guest must do. Without
the Bossert, Ms. Jacobson said, “we would have never been able to do this with a family.”
Once considered the “Waldorf-Astoria of Brooklyn,” the 12-story classical-style hotel built in 1909 by Louis Bossert, a lumber magnate, has
a history that dovetails with the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own history in the area since that same year.
Today, many members come to tour the group’s world headquarters, near the Brooklyn Bridge. The hotel is one of the 34 properties that
the group’s business division — the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York — owns and meticulously maintains in Dumbo and in
Brooklyn Heights. The network of offices, parking lots and residences is worth an estimated $1 billion, according to local real estate brokers.
The Watchtower clock and sign adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge may be more recognizable than the Bossert, but the hotel — easy to walk
past on a busy shopping street — is a more subtle symbol of the modest, close-knit religious group and its future in a brownstone bastion.
After more than a century, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are likely to be headed out of Brooklyn, having bought a 253-acre plot for a new
headquarters in Warwick, N.Y., in Orange County, about 50 miles north of New York City. They have already moved their printing
operations to Wallkill, N.Y., farther north than Warwick (where 10,000 Bibles are produced a day), and their educational center to
Patterson, N.Y., about 65 miles north and west of the city. The Witnesses are proceeding through Warwick’s land-use process to build a
seven-building complex, and approval could come as early as next spring.
In preparation, the Witnesses are selling eight properties in Brooklyn Heights, including carriage houses and small apartment buildings. A
deal to turn the Bossert into dormitory housing and then condominiums — with R.A.L. Companies, which had bought another large Witness
property and turned it into condominiums, One Brooklyn Bridge Park — fell through in 2008.
“We are not actively marketing the property right now,” said Richard Devine, the chief spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The group took over the building in a state of disrepair in 1983, renovated it in 1988, and in summer 2010, turned it into a 224-room hotel.
Five residents who lived there before 1983 remain in their apartments, Mr. Devine said.
“We’re just extras,” said one of them, Monica Grier, 83, laughing.
Ms. Grier, originally from England, moved into the two-bedroom apartment on the 11th floor with her husband, George, in 1956. She is
grateful for the infusion of polite activity, recalling the female screams she heard when part of the building was a seedy single-room
occupancy hotel. Until last summer, the hallways were mostly silent except during the Witnesses’ special events.
When her husband died in 1988, she decided to stay. She first paid $300 in rent; now she pays $800. She said staff members treated her
well and had not tried to proselytize to her.
Daisy Diamontopulos, 80, who has lived on the 10th floor since 1965, said the same. “I am a Roman Catholic and that doesn’t bother them,”
she said. “I put my Christmas decorations on the wall. They come to my home, they invite us to theirs.”
Both she and Ms. Grier hope they will be able to stay through whatever incarnation is next for the Bossert.
Community leaders say there will be a discernible demographic effect once the 1,400 members living and working in Brooklyn, including the
20 or so who work at the Bossert, leave.
They have a light footprint. Members who work full time for the organization in Brooklyn are not allowed to have children or dogs or cars
with them because their work is all-encompassing.
And that policy could have an impact on the neighborhood when the Witnesses’ presence decreases and new residents move in.
“Right now, we don’t have the schools capacity to support an influx of residents with children,” Judy Stanton, the Brooklyn Heights
Association’s executive director, said. She added that she was concerned about upkeep since Watchtower society placed a premium on
maintenance, including the surrounding sidewalks and parks. The neighborhood, however, may become livelier, said Ms. Stanton, although
it is unlikely to resemble that of the Bossert’s golden age, in the first half the 20th century. Former presidents, mayors, governors and
debutantes flocked to the Hotel Bossert’s vaunted Marine Roof restaurant, designed to look like a two-tiered promenade deck of a ship.
They danced in the ballroom under the crystal chandeliers that now illuminate the inner lobby. The Brooklyn Dodgers celebrated there after
their only World Series victory, in 1955. The roof closed in 1949, and it had collapsed when the Witnesses took it over, transforming it into
unremarkable event space, though the sweeping views of Lower Manhattan were preserved. While most rooms are small and plain, the
lobby is fairly opulent. Of course, nothing in New York is truly free. Volunteer contributions sustain the organization, and that holds true at
the hotel, where, next to a stack of brochures in the lobby is a thin slot for donations. The Jacobson family contributed $300. Lisa Gibertini,
27, and her husband, Auston Gibertini, 29, were recently visiting from Portland, Ore., and had not decided on their gift amount. “We’re so
thankful to stay here,” Ms. Gibertini said. “You just want to give a donation.” Mr. Gibertini added, “If we didn’t, then it wouldn’t be ready for
the next person
Residents of the Bossert Hotel like Monica Grier, who were tenants when the Johovah's Witnesses bought it, have been allowed to stay.
But this hotel lobby is different. And not just because of its five glittering chandeliers or the three-story marblelike columns that trumpet an
earlier age.
Nobody pays a bill at the front desk.
In a city of $400-a-night hotel rooms, the Bossert Hotel, on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, may be the best deal. Provided the guest
is a Jehovah’s Witness.
Members in good standing of this religious group — those who have gone door to door proselytizing or have completed international
missionary work — are eligible for up to three nights of accommodations free of charge, three meals included, at a former high-society hot
spot.
“I can’t even believe it,” said Lori Jacobson, 47, from Simi Valley, Calif., looking up at the chandeliers on her first trip to New York with her
sons, 12 and 14. Her husband, Marc, was getting information for a Big Apple Bus tour.
The Jacobsons submitted an application a month ago to their local congregation, which everyone who wants to be a guest must do. Without
the Bossert, Ms. Jacobson said, “we would have never been able to do this with a family.”
Once considered the “Waldorf-Astoria of Brooklyn,” the 12-story classical-style hotel built in 1909 by Louis Bossert, a lumber magnate, has
a history that dovetails with the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own history in the area since that same year.
Today, many members come to tour the group’s world headquarters, near the Brooklyn Bridge. The hotel is one of the 34 properties that
the group’s business division — the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York — owns and meticulously maintains in Dumbo and in
Brooklyn Heights. The network of offices, parking lots and residences is worth an estimated $1 billion, according to local real estate brokers.
The Watchtower clock and sign adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge may be more recognizable than the Bossert, but the hotel — easy to walk
past on a busy shopping street — is a more subtle symbol of the modest, close-knit religious group and its future in a brownstone bastion.
After more than a century, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are likely to be headed out of Brooklyn, having bought a 253-acre plot for a new
headquarters in Warwick, N.Y., in Orange County, about 50 miles north of New York City. They have already moved their printing
operations to Wallkill, N.Y., farther north than Warwick (where 10,000 Bibles are produced a day), and their educational center to
Patterson, N.Y., about 65 miles north and west of the city. The Witnesses are proceeding through Warwick’s land-use process to build a
seven-building complex, and approval could come as early as next spring.
In preparation, the Witnesses are selling eight properties in Brooklyn Heights, including carriage houses and small apartment buildings. A
deal to turn the Bossert into dormitory housing and then condominiums — with R.A.L. Companies, which had bought another large Witness
property and turned it into condominiums, One Brooklyn Bridge Park — fell through in 2008.
“We are not actively marketing the property right now,” said Richard Devine, the chief spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The group took over the building in a state of disrepair in 1983, renovated it in 1988, and in summer 2010, turned it into a 224-room hotel.
Five residents who lived there before 1983 remain in their apartments, Mr. Devine said.
“We’re just extras,” said one of them, Monica Grier, 83, laughing.
Ms. Grier, originally from England, moved into the two-bedroom apartment on the 11th floor with her husband, George, in 1956. She is
grateful for the infusion of polite activity, recalling the female screams she heard when part of the building was a seedy single-room
occupancy hotel. Until last summer, the hallways were mostly silent except during the Witnesses’ special events.
When her husband died in 1988, she decided to stay. She first paid $300 in rent; now she pays $800. She said staff members treated her
well and had not tried to proselytize to her.
Daisy Diamontopulos, 80, who has lived on the 10th floor since 1965, said the same. “I am a Roman Catholic and that doesn’t bother them,”
she said. “I put my Christmas decorations on the wall. They come to my home, they invite us to theirs.”
Both she and Ms. Grier hope they will be able to stay through whatever incarnation is next for the Bossert.
Community leaders say there will be a discernible demographic effect once the 1,400 members living and working in Brooklyn, including the
20 or so who work at the Bossert, leave.
They have a light footprint. Members who work full time for the organization in Brooklyn are not allowed to have children or dogs or cars
with them because their work is all-encompassing.
And that policy could have an impact on the neighborhood when the Witnesses’ presence decreases and new residents move in.
“Right now, we don’t have the schools capacity to support an influx of residents with children,” Judy Stanton, the Brooklyn Heights
Association’s executive director, said. She added that she was concerned about upkeep since Watchtower society placed a premium on
maintenance, including the surrounding sidewalks and parks. The neighborhood, however, may become livelier, said Ms. Stanton, although
it is unlikely to resemble that of the Bossert’s golden age, in the first half the 20th century. Former presidents, mayors, governors and
debutantes flocked to the Hotel Bossert’s vaunted Marine Roof restaurant, designed to look like a two-tiered promenade deck of a ship.
They danced in the ballroom under the crystal chandeliers that now illuminate the inner lobby. The Brooklyn Dodgers celebrated there after
their only World Series victory, in 1955. The roof closed in 1949, and it had collapsed when the Witnesses took it over, transforming it into
unremarkable event space, though the sweeping views of Lower Manhattan were preserved. While most rooms are small and plain, the
lobby is fairly opulent. Of course, nothing in New York is truly free. Volunteer contributions sustain the organization, and that holds true at
the hotel, where, next to a stack of brochures in the lobby is a thin slot for donations. The Jacobson family contributed $300. Lisa Gibertini,
27, and her husband, Auston Gibertini, 29, were recently visiting from Portland, Ore., and had not decided on their gift amount. “We’re so
thankful to stay here,” Ms. Gibertini said. “You just want to give a donation.” Mr. Gibertini added, “If we didn’t, then it wouldn’t be ready for
the next person
| Dear Brother or Sister, If you have any comments or suggestions concerning this web site, please send them to Chuck Davis at Superior Small Engines, 8835 State Road 60 W, Mitchell, Indiana 47446-7547. Or please feel free to call Charles at 812-849-9944 if you think this site is inaccurate. Or if you would like to defend the Witnesses from these allegations, write to: Chuck@superiorsmallengines.com (Please witness to Chuck by email, let him know the truth about Jehovah's organization!) |