Candace Conti at Walnut Creek Meetup

Posted on August 5, 2012 by The Webmaster

Candace Conti and her attorney, Rick Simons, appeared at our Walnut Creek Meetup on July 14, 2012.

Holding nothing back, Candace shared her personal story as an active non-baptized Jehovah’s Witness child molested by a JW brother “in good standing.” When she approached the elders at her Kingdom Hall and asked them to do something to protect the other children at risk, they refused. They told her they had to follow the Watchtower Society’s guidelines when dealing with accused pedophiles. Those guidelines do more to protect and hide criminals than to provide safety and help to their victims.

Years later, she connected with attorney Rick Simons. Simons had direct experience dealing with child abuse cases and participated in many of the lawsuits filed against the Catholic Church. From the beginning Candace made it clear that she did not care about winning any monetary damages, but rather wanted to find an effective way of forcing the Watchtower to change its policies.

The videos below document their presentations. These video are all on YouTube and will soon be on Vimeo. Several other websites are giving them prime exposure including RandyTV.com (Randy Watters), Ex-JW.com (John Hoyle), and JWSurvey.org (John Cedars).

Please share these with everyone you know. Encourage them to pass them on to their friends as well. We want this message to go viral and eventually be seen by every current and former Jehovah’s Witness, their friends, and their family.

Do not worry that anything in the videos might be too personal or confidential. Everything Candace and Rick share with the audience is either included in the court case transcripts or is available on other public records (i.e., Megan’s Law Register). I’ve deleted a couple comments that might have been just a bit questionable (including one of my own).

Not only are these videos educational, but you will see that Candace and Mr. Simons are quite entertaining at times. Enjoy…

John

Candace Conti -1

Candace Conti -2

Candace Conti -3

Candace Conti -4

Rick Simons -1

Rick Simons -2

Rick Simons -3

Q&A -1

Q&A -2

Q&A -3

Q&A -4

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Mark’s 2011 Watchtower Memorial Experience

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Cynthia Hampton

How the Watchtower is changing focus:

The Memorial is one thing that Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate that has so much relevance and is even more inescapable now. It’s even more fated now than ever before. Why is this so?

“Mark,” a former JW from our Downey Ex-JW Meetup, received an invitation at his door three weeks before the Memorial.  When that Sunday evening April 17th approached, Mark decided that he would attend.  The event was held in a public school’s auditorium.

When he arrived, it was already crowded, ushers were directing everyone in.  He had to walk a distance from where he parked to get to the door.  When he arrived, it was very crowded with plenty of hustle and bustle.  As he walked toward the seats, he realized that no one has greeted him.  He found that very strange.  As he looked for a seat, he saw seats next to an older couple and he asked if there was a seat available, toward the back.  Still no one has greeted him.  He dressed business casual and brought his own Bible to make it obvious that he was a visitor.

What disturbed him was that song #8, “The Lord’s Evening Meal,” that he was formerly familiar with, is not the same melody anymore.  However, the most disturbing thing was that the song they used did not contain any words describing the symbolism of the bread and the wine.  The words of the new song seemed to water-down the very essence of why they were having this “Memorial.”  This new song, in Mark’s opinion, did not seem spiritually moving and was more like a “jingle” than a song of worship, and inappropriate for this occasion.

The talk was ordinary as it began, but Mark began to notice how the Watchtower spin focused mostly on who were the “heavenly class” rather than the Passover’s deliverance from bondage. They did use scripture to try to prove the Watchtower’s position on their belief.

Continue reading →

Posted in Memorials, Personal Testimonies | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Memorial section added

Posted on December 10, 2010 by The Webmaster

We’ve added a new section to the website that will contain remembrances of friends and family that have left us to go to their reward. There you will find recent articles first published here about Kim Roth and Steve McLain.

Our webmaster and fellow group member, John Hoyle, has also added a short article about Raymond Franz who passed away last May. It includes links to longer and more complete biographies of Mr. Franz and his history.

In the future, we will most likely publish any new memorials on our home page first and then move them over to be indexed on the larger Memorial section. Eventually we may also include brief biographies of other significant individuals who have been a part of the Watchtower Society or among its critics.

Posted in Memorials | Leave a comment

New website features announced

Posted on September 19, 2010 by The Webmaster

Link to Freeminds.org

We are pleased to announce that we are adding new features to our website that should be helpful to our members and visitors.

We are now providing an extensive list of quality links to helpful and friendly websites. Some of these recommended websites offer information resources and documentation. Others offer recovery services and support. A few go to Christian ministries or church websites for those of you who might like to rediscover Christianity and would like to find welcoming congregations to assist you.

You can find most links in the sidebar. We will eventually add an index page that lists even more sites for you to visit, plus brief descriptions of each site and its sources.

If you’ve found a quality website that promotes Christian values or provides helpful information in that would be of interest to former Jehovah’s Witnesses, please email your recommendation to Cynthia or refer to them in the comment form at the end of this article.

We also offer automated translation to our Spanish language readers. Just click on the second flag (Spain) and wait a second, and the page you are on will be translated for you.

Click Flag of Spain in sidebar to translate page into Spanish.

The translation will not be perfect, but it should help you understand the meaning and intent of the article.

Please let us know if we should add additional languages. We have several available to us, but translation puts a heavy burden on our website’s server so we must limit the selections somewhat. We are open to your suggestions.

Since this new version of our website has been online our readership has become worldwide and is expanding daily. We’re glad that our little group has generated so much interest from the outside world. More on this later…

Posted in Ex JWs of Los Angeles | 2 Comments