Ex-members Tell Of Brainwash, Control By Jehovah’s Witnesses

Russia’s Supreme Court has heard the testimony of
four former members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
who said they were subjected to ‘total control’ by
the organisation and brainwashed against
receiving higher education or starting a family. According to TASS, witness Natalia Koretskaya
from St. Petersburg told the court she had been a
member of that organisation from 1995 to 2009 and
had realised over this period that the organisation’s
members “were living under full and total control
of the [Jehovah’s Witnesses] Administrative Centre” “The heads of the Jehovah’s Witnesses formally
watch canonical compliance with the norms but in
real fact the talk is about total control of an
individual’s personal life – his intimate life,
education and work,” Koretskaya said. In response to the court’s request to give the facts
of such control, Koretskaya said she had been
expelled from the religious organisation and its
members had been banned to communicate with
her after she had started close but officially
unregistered relationship with a man. “Therefore, a person turns out to be expelled into
the outer world, in which he has already forgotten
how to live over the years of his stay in the
organisation,” Koretskaya said. The Justice Ministry’s second witness, Pavel
Zverev, told the court he became a member of the
Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of 16 and had not
received higher education on persuasion of the
organisation’s heads. “It is accepted in the organisation that receiving
higher education is useless if this is not in the
organisation’s interests. As a result of such
persuasion, I remained without education and I’m
suffering from that in my life,” said Zverev who
had worked as a volunteer for two years in the organisation’s Administrative Centre in the capacity
of a cook. The other two witnesses also said they had
suffered from the religious organisation’s excessive
control of their private life and from the ban to
communicate with its other members after quitting
it, as well as from depression and alcoholism. Witness Nina Petrova from Volgograd said that on
persuasion of her spiritual mentors she did not
marry and did not start a family. “They convinced me that a family was not needed
as the doomsday was close at hand. And when I
realised that this was a delusion, it was late,”
Petrova said, adding that she had stayed in the
organisation for 28 years. For their part, representatives of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses said the witnesses had been prepared in
advance for their testimony in the court. “We see that the witnesses are giving testimony
based on written materials, repeating the
arguments of the so-called sectological literature.
Some of them are mentioned in public sources as
activists of the movements that are struggling with
the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” a lawyer for the defendants said. At its next hearing on April 19, the court is
expected to study the written materials of the case
and may hear the parties’ oral statements. In its lawsuit to outlaw the Jehovah’s Witnesses,
the Justice Ministry pointed to various violations in
the organisation’s activities revealed during a
surprise inspection, including breaches of the Law
on Counteracting Extremist Activities. The ministry has asked the court to declare the
organisation and its 395 local branches as
extremists, ban their activity and seize property. For its part, the organization’s press service told
TASS that they were alarmed by the decision,
since it could affect 175,000 active believers. The
Jehovah’s Witnesses spokesman Ivan Bilenko said
the organization was prepared to press for its
rights in any courts. The Jehovah’s Witnesses is an international
religious organisation that supports offbeat views
on the essence of the Christian faith and provides
special interpretations of many commonly
accepted notions. In Russia, it had 21 local organisations but three of
them were eliminated for extremism.