I was raised as a JW. The type of family that went out in field service at least a couple Saturdays a month and never missed a meeting. We read the daily text in the morning before school and had a family study every Saturday to prepare for the Sunday Watchtower study. We had a library of bound volumes from every year of watchtower and awake (which was part of my undoing). My sister was a regular pioneer.

When I was 6, my parents took me to their homeland (Nigeria). Upon seeing the worldwide scale of JWs (this was 1994) I wanted to get baptized. My father balked at the idea, (my younger brother was never baptized) but my mother and other adults were so eager he was overruled. How can you be serving Jehovah to the fullest if you’re holding back those in your household who want to advance in Jehovah’s organization, ya know?

I was a gifted reader, raised as JW, listening to JW tapes every night, going to all the meetings and was already doing Bible Readings (#2 talks, I think they were called) so I was able to study and answer the requisite questions for baptism (to the delight of all the adults I knew). I was a cute articulate black kid in a small town (pop. 25k) in the midwestern US and people loved hearing my spiel. I had my regular return visits and was able to distribute so much literature and collect so many donations. I did a Bible reading at a circuit assembly when I was about 9. I did auxiliary pioneering in the summers off school and would work with ‘missionaries’ in rural ‘irregularly covered territories’. They gave me those ‘priviledges’ like holding the microphones during meetings for comments or running the sound. They had me giving the talks where you research and talk about a Bible character at the end of the TMS. I was deep in it.

When I was like 10 I got a paper route. It was near a small university so people were moving a lot. Somewhere along the way I figured out that the magazines wrapped in black plastic were usually Playboys. So I’d wait till I saw one in the mailbox for like a week then I’d swipe it. Eventually, I just used one of the inserts to get a $10 subscription mailed to a vacant house along my route. Not coincidentally, I also started picking up the New York Times daily when I delivered papers to the university’s library which opened me up to so much more information.

Well being a sheltered JW kid, I made stupid mistakes that were easily caught out. I brought the magazines home, I hid them under my bed and in the ceiling; real 90s sitcom level planning.

So obviously my parents found my stash. They beat the crap out of me (a situation which the elders were aware of and resulted in nothing more than some very pointed ‘shepherding calls’) yelled at me and then reported me to the elders.

So I was taken before a judicial committee, they asked me a whole bunch of questions about what I’d done like crazy detailed like whether I’d ejaculated using the pornography. The masturbation was a sin. They showed me the Young People Ask book and there was a An Awake around that time about the dangers of pornography so you can best believe that was emphasized at the family study and in the Judicial Committee. So then they would meet with me again and ask me (a 12-14 yo boy) if I’d stopped masturbating and stealing playboys so I lied. Which led to more judicial committees and now my parents (especially my mother) were looking for pornography AND lies. They were searching my laundry looking for ‘evidence’. Having my sister who was in college for IT come home to check my internet history. This cycle went on for years. All the while I would still go out in service, but my other priviledges were slowly stripped away.

I started noticing that information in the Watchtowers and Awakes was sometimes repeated word for word from articles decades before. But weren’t our brothers and sisters in Bethel busy providing us new material????

Eventually, because I didn’t stop masturbating and lying about it to the judicial committee; and was now branching out to other sins (like questioning Jehovah’s teachings and using the donation money I’d collect to buy food during field service or for other random shit like disc golf equipment) I was deemed unrepentant and they disfellowshipped me.

This was over 20 years ago. My dad died about 15 years ago. He would still talk to me and help me with life when I needed him.

I’m in constant contact with my younger brother.

My mother and sister still do not talk to me except when they absolutely must, like to tell me people I grew up with died or when we need to plan trips back to Africa or to invite me to the Memorial.