Former Jehovah's Witnesses are banding together to ease the pain of loneliness

A support group for the disowned


Maclean's

JULIA MCKINNELL

June 11, 2007


When Jehovah's Witness-raised Craig Danielson (not his real name) was 17 at a Toronto high school, he fell in love with a girl who was not a Jehovah's Witness. The fallout was severe but typical for church members who break consequential rules. "I got kicked out of the church, and my home. My parents changed the locks." His girlfriend's parents took him in for a while but, eventually, drained emotionally and financially, he called his parents who agreed to take him back on the grounds that he "repent, and convert back, and do a bunch of things to prove to them that I wanted to come back." He fell in line and married a Jehovah's Witness. He has two daughters, 6 and 16. Both his girls are Jehovah's Witnesses.

Danielson is 43 now, and works at one of the big banks in downtown Toronto. He broke with the church for good two years ago. "I couldn't take it or fake it anymore," he said recently at a Starbucks. Danielson is one of a growing number of ex-Jehovah's Witnesses who are banding together to talk about the trauma they've endured. "Probably the single most damaging thing we all need support for is the way our families treat us when we leave."

The idea to start an ex-Jehovah's Witness support group came to Danielson after he'd heard about a group in Manhattan who get together to do "fun things" like bowl and go to dinner. His first meeting in April was in the basement of a Toronto library. Two women showed up. Danielson suggested they meet the next time at a coffee shop, but neither is ready to whoop it up in public like the New York group for fear of bursting into tears.

The older of the two is very unhappy, says Danielson. "She lives alone. She admits she goes home from work, takes her anti-depression medication, watches TV, goes to bed, and that's her life." The younger of the two told Danielson she'd be curious to know what the suicide rate is of ex-Jehovah's Witnesses. "In extreme cases where you are totally alone, and the reason you're alone is that a group of people think you're evil, and it's reinforced when you see your mother, and she won't speak to you because you're evil, it f--ks you up," he said.

Danielson divorced the mother of his children, and remarried a non-Jehovah's Witness, but assimilating into society hasn't been easy.For one thing, he had never voted. Jehovah's Witnesses aren't allowed to vote. He had never celebrated Christmas or a birthday. "Wicked people celebrate birthdays," he was told in church. "In every office, somebody comes around with a card and says, 'Could you sign this for Joe?' " When Danielson was in the church, he told colleagues, "I can't. It's a birthday card. It's against my religion."

He is careful, however, not to position his support group as a "Witness-bashing" thing. "I just want to help people who have left. A lot of us appear normal but we're a little screwed up. We're all kind of damaged."

Thirty-five-year-old Lily Burgos runs the Manhattan group. In a year, membership has grown to 60 people, including some who are still in the church but who are investigating leaving. "When I was 25, I was like, I am done!" said Burgos. "I was angry for the first three years. They train you to be scared of the outside world: 'Look how bad it is, all these people on drugs, and illegitimate pregnancies and STDs, they live so lasciviously!' You have this in your head and stay because you're scared." Burgos advises anyone wanting to leave not to tell anyone in the church how they're feeling. "The first thing the minister is going to say is, 'You need to read your Bible, you need to pray.' "

These days, Danielson says it's "very weird" for him when Jehovah's Witnesses knock at his door. His parents took him door to door as an infant, and when he was 10, he was expected to do the talking to strangers. "I hated it," he says. "It wasn't shyness so much as I couldn't get over the notion I'm knocking on someone's door to tell them how to live their life. What business do I have doing that?" Now he says of the knocks at his door, "I always think ahead of time that I'll create a scene or throw something."

"Witnesses have territory maps," he explains. "On each territory there is a list of addresses that are 'Do not call.' Either the person is violently opposed and you'll get hurt, or they have asked, 'Do not call.' So that's what I've been thinking of doing the next time a Witness calls. I'm going to say, Please put me on the 'Do not call' list. See, it's my wife I have to hold back. She hates them."

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