Avoidjw.org

08/18/2026

Article: **"Eternal Happiness? Protesters Challenge Jehovah’s Witness Shunning"**
This is an eye-opener.

Outside a 2026 international Jehovah’s Witness convention "Eternal Happiness" in Utrecht, activists who go by ‘Moedig Vooruit’ (Courageously Forward) stood silently and peacefully with messages challenging shunning, their main sign reading "Eternal Happiness? Not when you shun people.”
Organizers say the day included Jehovah's Witnesses attempting to block their banners, police intervention, emotional encounters, a physical altercation and active Witnesses who stopped to read, photograph, and even discuss their messages.
Interviewed was: Eydie Visser

Please follow the AvoidJW Page to see updates on life stories, breaking news and deep dives into Watchtowers Teachings.
Read what happened in Utrecht:
https://avoidjw.org/life-stories/eternal-happiness-protest-peaceful-convention-utrecht/

A peaceful protest outside the 2026 international convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Utrecht was met with attempts to block their banners, loud counteractions, police intervention, and an alleged physical confrontation involving a 16-year-old protester.

08/07/2026

The ExJW community has been hit incredibly hard. Three former Jehovah’s Witnesses across the U.S. have reportedly taken their own lives in just the past two weeks. There has been a high, unknown amount who have before, and sadly, there will be more after.

Please, check on each other.

Leaving a high-control religion isn’t just walking away from a belief system. For many it means untangling an entire identity, grieving relationships, rebuilding a worldview, learning to trust yourself again, and figuring out who you are when fear and control are no longer making the decisions. Deprogramming is a journey. Healing is a journey. And neither one has a deadline.

You don’t have to have the perfect words to reach out to someone. Send the text. Make the call. Invite them for coffee. Sit with them. Listen without trying to fix them.

And please be kind to one another. We never fully know what someone is carrying behind a profile picture, a joke, an angry post, or even silence.

There is room in this community for angst.
There is room for grief.
There is room for questioning.
There is room for rebuilding.
There is room for joy again.
Most importantly, there needs to be room for each other.

We escaped a system that taught us conditional love. Let’s not recreate that outside of it.

Check on your ExJW friends today.

Be kind. Stay connected. Keep healing.

07/30/2026

Back in 2017, the Australian Royal Commission forced millions of people to confront something many of us had been trying to say for years: the problems inside Jehovah's Witnesses weren't just about a few bad individuals. They were about a system.

This week, Victoria's Parliament released its report on coercion and harm in high-control groups. You can find their video and their part 2, regarding the Survivors voices here:
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/cofg-reports
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/4a250f/contentassets/8458b0ad53864c209a79b6536f9c3ee0/lalsic-60-03-volume-2-in-their-words---coercion-and-harm-in-high-control-groups.pdf

Reading through it describes the patterns so many former Jehovah's Witnesses know all too well: fear, isolation, shunning, control, loss of identity, and being taught that questioning authority is the real danger, not abuse itself. The inquiry included submissions from former Jehovah's Witnesses, but the survivor stories in the published report are anonymized and generally do not identify which high-control group each individual came from.

The report doesn't ask, "What do they believe?" It asks, "How are people treated?" - We need more of this.
For years, former Witnesses have been told they were bitter, lying, or simply "spiritually weak." Yet governments around the world are increasingly recognizing that coercive control isn't limited to abusive relationships, it can exist inside organizations too. This inquiry focuses on behavior, not belief, because harm is harm regardless of who causes it.

The ARC opened the door by exposing failures in child abuse handling. This report widens the conversation. It acknowledges that psychological control, family separation, fear, and manipulation deserve attention too.

Survivors have been saying this for decades.

Maybe now, more people are finally listening.

06/30/2026

Article: 'The Buried Pyramid: Watch Towers forgotten Past'
DID YOU KNOW?

Read the full article with photos here:
https://avoidjw.org/history/pyramid-watchtower-russell-rutherford-history/
For over 100 years, a massive, pink granite pyramid stood in the Watch Tower Society's own burial grounds beside Charles Taze Russell's grave. Most Jehovah's Witnesses have never heard of it.

Official Bible Student convention reports proudly published photographs and drawings of the pyramid, yet today you won't find those images, an explanation of the pyramid's purpose, or mention of the time capsule on JW.org.

Even fewer know that:

Charles Taze Russell personally approved the pyramid as "the most fitting emblem for an enduring monument." He even picked it out in his favorite color, pink. The pyramid itself displayed the Cross and Crown, inscriptions such as "Dead with Christ" and "Risen with Christ," and served as the centerpiece of the Society's burial grounds.

It also contained a sealed time capsule filled with Studies in the Scriptures, Watch Tower literature, photographs of Russell, and the Society's charter, intended to be opened by future generations.

Months before his death, after a serious illness, Russell reorganized the Society, wrote personal letters to every Bethel department, appointed an editorial committee, completed new prefaces to Studies in the Scriptures, and reportedly said of the proposed Seventh Volume: "Someone else can write that."

In his will, Russell specifically asked that The Watch Tower be governed by a five-member editorial committee, that articles remain anonymous, and that no single individual control the publication.

After standing for more than a century, the monument was vandalized in 2021 and later removed.

History isn't just found in old books. Sometimes it's carved in stone.

Read the full story, complete with original Watch Tower documents, photographs, and historical sources:

🔗 https://avoidjw.org/history/pyramid-watchtower-russell-rutherford-history/

Please follow our page for more leaks, updates, uncovered history and personal stories - Exposing truth to Watchtowers Teachings.

Modern Watch Tower publications dismiss pyramidology as a human invention & a deception. Most have never been told that their own organization once taught the exact opposite.

06/23/2026

Article 6/23/2026: A newly filed lawsuit in New York alleges that a Jehovah’s Witness elder sexually abused a minor girl for years, including during multiple trips to the religion’s former world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.

Thank you to Watching Watchtower on youtube for publishing this news on their channel.
Summons and Complaint:
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=7XuUoH19mtfv29zkDch5XA%3D%3D

Please follow our page to see more breaking news and updates.

https://avoidjw.org/news/lawsuit-alleges-abuse-brooklyn-bethel-sa-elder/

A Jehovah's Witness elder sexually abused a minor girl for years, including during multiple trips to the religion's former world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.

06/16/2026

This is a 1993 Memo regarding CSA reporting in the Organization.
If you go to the last page, last question, #9, you'll see this:

"How many elders felt that the victim was somewhat at fault or willingly participated in the acts?"
Let that sink in.

This wasn't a question being asked of a criminal investigator. It wasn't being asked by a trained child psychologist. It was being asked within a religious organization's internal process for handling allegations of child sexual abuse.

Why was "victim responsibility" even part of the equation when discussing a child?

A child cannot consent to abuse. A child is not responsible for being groomed, manipulated, threatened, or exploited. Yet this form explicitly asks elders to evaluate whether the victim was "somewhat at fault." That is just like questioning if the child was a willing participant (Which the Organization has also asked in other reports).

Think about the message that sends to survivors. Think about how many of these forms were filled out. How many children were silences depending on how this memo presented.
This isn't victim protection. It's victim scrutiny.
Every survivor who has ever been told they "allowed it," "encouraged it," or "should have stopped it" knows exactly how damaging that mindset can be. The fact that such a question appeared on an official form should disturb anyone who believes children deserve to be protected, believed, and supported.

Children are never responsible for their abuse. Full stop.

Read it again and ask yourself: Why was this question there at all?
Follow our AvoidJW Page for more updates on Organizational process, breaking news and leaks.

06/04/2026

**BREAKING** + Trigger Warning: The EPSTEIN FILES: Newly released House Oversight interview records reveal that Jeffrey Epstein associate Sarah Kellen testified she was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, married young, was later disfellowshipped, and experienced shunning from family and friends before becoming involved in the circles that ultimately led her to Epstein. She says, quoted "Understanding who I was before meeting Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell will help explain why I was the perfect target for them."

The testimony appears in a May 21, 2026 congressional interview referenced in today’s DOJ referral letter from the House Oversight Committee.

Kellen describes a pattern familiar to many former Jehovah’s Witnesses: isolation after shunning, loss of support networks, and vulnerability during a major life transition.

This raises important questions about how high-control religious environments can leave people isolated and susceptible to exploitation after leaving. Our hearts go out to Sarah, seeing how she was also groomed at the age of 13 in the Jehovah's Witness Organization.
Below are screenshots from the transcript, which you can also find here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nPDWYcqxugpod1-b98xuayS-RkUtrcyS/view?pli=1
https://oversight.house.gov/?s=Sarah+Kellen+
Source: House Oversight Committee interview of Sarah Kellen (May 21, 2026) and June 4, 2026 DOJ referral letter.

05/23/2026

Did you know - This document, dated October 1, 2012, says that “The branch office, not the local elders, determines whether a man who SA children will officially be considered a ‘predator.’”
The same policy instructed elders to contact headquarters for “theocratic direction” in childP cases and discussed quietly warning parents instead of openly informing congregations.

No mention of protecting future victims through transparency.
No emphasis on reporting to law enforcement.

Just internal control, confidential handling, and reputation management.
Children deserve safeguarding, and this is NOT the way. This is one of the rules that created a safety blanket for predators in this Organization.

05/21/2026

Did you know - A 1992 internal Watchtower letter advised elders they had:
“no obligation to reveal information ... to the authorities” after learning a congregation member may have committed serious crimes before baptism, including possible murder.
Instead, elders were instructed to:
treat the information as “strictly confidential,” investigate quietly,
and avoid unnecessary disclosure.
Yet, since he smoked ma*****na after baptism, an "investigation" was opened.
This letter is already swimming around the internet, but its a good reminder on the institutional preference for internal handling over outside reporting, including CSA.

05/20/2026

AvoidJW Article: Watchtower rewrote history, the Internet Remembered.
Written doctrine can be blurry. FAQs can be revised. Terms can be swapped. “Disfellowshipped” can become “removed.” “Shunning” can become “limiting association.” “Cutting off family” can become “respecting Bible principles.” But video is different. A video shows the emotional mechanism. It shows the daughter rejecting the mother’s call. It shows parents choosing organizational loyalty over family contact. It shows governing body members and convention speakers telling millions of Witnesses how to think, feel, and behave. That is why deleted videos matter. Their removals came amid growing scrutiny in countries such as Norway, Japan, and Denmark, and that no formal announcement explained the deletions.

Watchtower may soften its language, repackage shunning, and quietly remove old videos, but it cannot erase the teachings it broadcast to millions.