JWs challenge privacy

Judge orders stay - Jehovah's Witnesses won't have to turn over records to former members


Jon Manchester
Castanet
September 23, 2021

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has granted a stay of proceedings in a case in which the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Canada refused to turn over personal records to former Jehovah's Witnesses

Justice Janet Winteringham gave her decision in Vancouver on Monday.

It involves former members of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Coldstream and Grand Forks who wanted their personal records turned over to them after they left the church.

The congregations refused the requests, claiming the records were confidential and that compelling production violated their constitutional rights.

Church elders John Vabuolas and Paul Sidhu have proceedings underway before B.C.’s privacy commissioner on the matter, and Winteringham wrote in her decision that the court challenge versus B.C.'s attorney general be stayed pending the outcome of the privacy inquiries.

The judge also dismissed a constitutional challenge to the validity of the Personal Information Protection Act.

Vabuolas is an elder in the Grand Forks congregation, where Gabriel-Liberty Wall requested disclosure of his personal information in March 2020.

Wall was baptized in February 2012, moved to the Grand Forks congregation in 2014, and formally resigned from the church in 2017.

Sidhu is an elder in the Coldstream congregation, where Gregory Westgarde requested his records in October 2020.

About August 2009, Westgarde "made known to the elders he no longer wished to be known as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses."

Sidhu described Westgarde’s departure from the church as "unequivocal," despite a trio of elders offering spiritual guidance.

"Based on our internal canon law, a brief summary of this decision, our efforts, and (Mr. Westgarde’s) response was placed in a confidential file under lock and key," Sidhu wrote in a deposition.

According to the litigants, "As a part of their spiritual duties, elders may create records about their congregants, particularly as it relates to their religious standing as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The plaintiffs allege B.C.’s privacy legislation does not recognize or respect the confidentiality of these records created in relation to the elders’ spiritual duties and as such violates their constitutional rights."

The plaintiffs sought to stay the privacy inquiries and let the court decide the matter. The attorney general's ministry also sought a stay on a civil suit against it, pending the outcome of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner hearings.

The elders maintained that PIPA "violates their constitutional rights of religious freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of association because the legislation fails to protect confidential religious communications and records."

The judge determined church records regarding scriptural counsel, discipline and disfellowship are "central to the elders’ role with respect to the adjudication of 'religious membership,' an issue the Supreme Court of Canada has declared non-justiciable."

https://www.castanet.net/news/Vernon/346544/Judge-orders-stay-Jehovah-s-Witnesses-won-t-have-to-turn-over-records-to-former-members

CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/21/2020

Book Review, Siddha Yoga, NXIVM, Legal, Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati

Book Review: Daughters of the Goddess: The Women Saints of India by Joe Kelly

"The myths of India are rife with female goddesses both terrifying and placid. From the blood-filled mouth of Durga to the generous beneficence of Lakshmi, the varieties of religious experience are conveyed through graphic images. In Linda Johnsen's naïve treatise on women "saints" in India, we get a true believer's take on a few individuals who have become well known in today's spiritual marketplace. Goddess worship is embraced by many "New Age" Westerners as the cutting edge of millennial spirituality; yet, it often ignores the ancient traditions of the East. Those Westerners, both male and female, who idealize their teacher's status as divine risk getting caught up in a culture they neither understand nor have fully explored. It is often the exotic or eccentric that gets mistaken for the Divine."

Page Six: Allison Mack enjoys one of her last meals as a free woman ahead of prison stint

"Allison Mack is enjoying her last few days of freedom before she's expected to serve three years for her role in the Nxivm sex cult scandal.

"Smallville" actress Mack, 39, was snapped out and about with a new man in Long Beach, Calif. as they grabbed a bite to eat at Little Coyote Pizza Thursday.

The couple was spotted lunching, shopping and laughing while enjoying each other's company at the outdoor eatery.

Mack wore a sundress with black boots that covered her court-ordered ankle monitor while her unidentified beau kept it simple in a camel-colored shirt, black button-up and black jeans.

Back in June, Mack was sentenced to 36 months for serving as a Nxivm "slave master" that brainwashed women into becoming sex slaves for the group's twisted leader,  Keith Raniere.

"In the language of [the cult], you were a slave as well as a master … It is hard to determine an appropriate sentence for a perpetrator who is also her co-conspirator's victim," Brooklyn federal court Judge Nicholas Gaurafis told Mack during her sentencing.

NY Post: Nxivm co-founder Nancy Salzman slapped with 3 years in prison

"Nxivm's co-founder Nancy Salzman was hit with three and a half years in prison Wednesday for her unwavering support of sex cult leader Keith Raniere — and her vicious targeting of his enemies and critics.

Wearing a white blouse and black slacks, Salzman appeared in Brooklyn federal court and apologized for her senior role in the twisted group that drained its members of their cash and operated a secret sorority that groomed young women as sex slaves for Raniere.

But Salzman, 67, claimed she, too, was a victim of the sick Svengali, telling Judge Nicholas Garaufis she didn't deserve to go to prison.

But the jurist rejected her plea for leniency.

"You were Mr. Raniere's second-in-command and shared his power," railed Garaufis. "You enabled and facilitated Mr. Raniere's heinous crimes. In your 20 years at Nxivm, the door was always open but you never left."

Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

Salzman won't start serving her time until January 19 after undergoing an undisclosed medical procedure."

RNS: An American Jew turned Hindu holy woman tells her story

In September 1996, a young graduate student at Stanford University accompanied her seeker husband on a trip to the holy city of Rishikesh in India. A vegetarian who loved Indian food, she knew nothing about India or its central religious tradition: Hinduism. She had grown up Jewish.

Hot and sweaty from a day of travel and wanting to cool off by the banks of the Ganges, which Indians call Ganga, she walked down to the river to dip her toes in the water Hindus revere as a goddess.

What happened there — and at an ashram just a few feet away — was an intense spiritual experience, an awakening to the divine that changed her life forever.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, as she is now known (she does not reveal her given name), quit her Ph.D. program, divorced her husband and became a Hindu renunciate, someone who takes vows of chastity, simplicity and nonattachment.

Now she's written a memoir about her life — "Hollywood to the Himalayas: A Journey of Healing and Transformation" — in which she reveals a less than happy Los Angeles childhood of sexual abuse at the hands of her father followed by the eating disorder bulimia.

But most of the memoir is devoted to the 25 years she has spent at the Parmarth Niketan ashram in Rishikesh working alongside its president and spiritual leader, Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati.

There she helped edit The Encyclopedia of Hinduism, a multivolume compendium conceived by Chidanand Saraswati and written by a group of international scholars. But she has also devoted herself to seva, a Sanskrit word meaning "selfless service." Alongside her guru, the two have undertaken multiple humanitarian and environmental projects to alleviate poverty by installing toilets, building schools and health care clinics, and providing emergency relief after natural disasters. They also travel around the world to teach about Hinduism.

Religion News Service spoke to Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati while she is in the U.S. to care for her mother, who suffered a stroke, as well to promote the memoir."

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Basic Facts About the MISA Yoga

Cults-R-Us
September 17, 2021

​R. Kelly's Former Employees Testify About His Rules

 

BBC
September 15, 2021

A claim of a hostile work environment and strict rules for R. Kelly's girlfriends were topics of discussion at his trial on Tuesday.

Claire Hoffman On Belief, Meditation And Growing Up In 'Greetings From Utopia Park: Surviving A Transcendent Childhood'

Charity Nebbe, Lindsey Moon, Monica Starr

Iowa Public Radio

September 14, 2021

This transcript has been edited for clarity

Claire Hoffman is a journalist and author. She spent much of her childhood in Fairfield, Iowa, which is the focus of her first book, a memoir, published in 2016 “Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood.” Hoffman graduated from UC Santa Cruz, received a master's degree in religion from University of Chicago and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She now splits her time between California and Costa Rica.

Interview Highlights

On her mother meeting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

[My mother] was nineteen years old and she was at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She was waiting outside of an auditorium. She describes [Maharishi Mahesh Yogi] walking by and stopping to say hello to her and that connection, him looking into her eyes, as a profoundly spiritual experience. You know a sense of total love and acceptance that she felt in that moment and that sort of became the fire or engine that drove us to follow his teachings and move to Iowa.

On the catalyst for the move

My mom says that last year we were living in New York, my brother and I did not even see my father. He was living with us but he was out and drinking and partying so much at night that he was never around during the day. My mom was just kind of struggling to figure out what her next move would be and my dad had just completely gone off the deep end. One weekend our neighbors had invited us to go away, upstate for the weekend and when we came back, my dad had left a note and about $50 in cash on the table. He said that he was leaving and he had moved to California. We got evicted the next day. My mom was really in a tight spot. All the friends she had made in the TM movement were moving to Fairfield, Iowa and following Maharishi and she decided that was going to be the best thing for us.

On the animosity between townspeople and “guru” newcomers

In researching this book, I went back and looked at the archives of the Fairfield Ledger. You see this sense of outcry that Fairfield had been invaded. This was entirely localized in our kindergarten classroom. On my first day, kids asked me “are you a meditator and does your mother fly?” I said, yes, my mom is a meditator and we are here so she can learn how to fly. Flying was this yogic flying technique that Maharishi said would create world peace. Everything about me felt weird and strange. This was the third kindergarten I had gone to in a year. The food I ate, the clothes I wore, I was just an outsider. I had come from New York and then Florida. I completely understand the sense of confusion for the people who lived there to have all these people moving in from New York and California and Europe into their town with, at the time, pretty wacky beliefs. I think that trickled down to the kids.

On the changing vision of Maharishi

In 1977, Maharishi really changed the course of his movement. Before that, many people had learned transcendental meditation. That meant just twenty minutes of saying a mantra in the morning and twenty minutes of saying a mantra in the afternoon. It was a pretty simple and mainstream technique. Then, Maharishi came out with his advanced technique his TM-Sidhi program. Sidhi, loosely translated, means superpowers. The advertisements of the time said things like ‘the powers of invisibility, the strength of an elephant and the ability to fly.’ Flying was what he focused in on. He had a mathematical formula that showed if large groups of people practiced his yogic flying together, they would create world peace. It was based on that mathematical formula that he called the Maharishi effect, that he had people move to Fairfield. It was going to be these peace-creating groups, this sort of capital of his age of enlightenment. Being there with my mom, she really wanted to be doing more than this basic level intro TM. She really wanted to learn how to fly. It cost thousands of dollars. I think it might have been $3000 or $4000 then. It felt like everyone was doing it. They built two giant golden dome shaped buildings, a men's dome and a women's dome. People would go there for about two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening and practice yogic flying. Everything with Maharishi seemed to be expensive, but this was the most expensive. The logic given from Maharishi was that for Americans to value things they had to pay a lot of money for it.

On being a mother and how she views her mom’s choices now

It has been sort of an incredible experience writing the book and looking back now as a mother at the situation my mother was in. My memories of that time are sort of mixed, but my mom’s description of the excitement and the energy and the sense of purpose that she felt at that time was just so big, special and unique. I think that it is probably something that you hear from people who moved there at that time. I mean people felt fantastic. They were meditating four hours a day. They had this huge sense of purpose. It just felt like anything was possible. My mom grew up in a middle-class household and when she got to Fairfield, she didn’t have a lot of work opportunities. She ended up having to file for food stamps which was really humiliating for her. It felt strange to us as kids, because we had moved there and felt all the hope and energy and excitement but there was this other side to it which was standing on a precipice of something bad happening. After we’d gotten evicted in New York, we wondered if we were safe or secure. It was a strange combination of hope and danger.

On switching to the private school

Like with the flying program, an anonymous donor from the movement paid for my brother and I to go to the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment. I think it ended up being one of the many guys who was sort of in love with my mother. We were so jazzed to finally feel like we were a part of what was happening. At the new school, we started much later than the public school. We started at like 9:30 in the morning which was awesome. We would sing songs about Maharishi or his science of creative intelligence which was his life philosophy. We would do a group meditation together as kids. We all wore uniforms. It was very organized. The first class of the day was always Maharishi’s life philosophy of the science of creative intelligence where we would learn his theories of life and there were some basic principles and words that he felt were integral to understanding the world. From there we were meant to go into our regular subjects like math, science or spelling. As time went on, every class kind of became Maharishi’s philosophy class. It started to invade every subject. Even though we were doing math we would be talking about how we could see Maharishi’s principles in those math problems. We had a long lunch. At one point it was a two-hour lunch because Maharishi believed that we shouldn’t be stressed out and that it should be a relaxed experience. At the end of the day, we would end with meditation again and be on our way.

On pushing back against an escape narrative

I think a part of my motivation for writing this book as a journalist is that you see all these books out there, which totally understandably, are about people who grew up in these sort of fringe religious communities and they escape. They were a part of it and then to whatever degree they were deluded and then they come out and they see the light and they look back and see everything as horrible. Often times it is and I am not demeaning that experience, but for me that is not what my experience was like. It felt magical to believe everything that Maharishi taught and to be a part of a belief community where everyone shared this sense of purpose and belief that we were changing the world.

On when her beliefs as a child began to change

There was an external change. Maharishi was having more and more teachings come out. Everything seemed to have another layer of knowledge. At the same time, my dad came back into our life. He had completely disappeared. I didn’t talk to him for almost six years and he reappeared in our life when I was around 12 years old. He moved to Fairfield briefly and then moved to Iowa City. He was this sort of counter viewpoint to what was going on. He was sort of critical. My lightning bolt moment was when I was twelve years old. It was November 1989 and the school administrator called all the kids into this special assembly and there was a lot of excitement. Everyone gathered and the administrator is sitting on the stage and he is weeping tears of joy. He announces to all of us that because of our meditations, the Berlin Wall had been torn down. That we had torn it down. For me, I just knew it wasn’t true. I knew that my meditations had not been extra special or extra powerful. I did not believe it. I felt like we were taking credit for a world event that had absolutely nothing to do with us. After that, things started to look really differently for me.

On choosing meditation for herself

Part of this book is sort of about separating the past and the history and the dogma of the religion you grow up with and trying to find value in it and the things that mean something to you and for me that is meditation. It was always this gift for me and an ability to separate off from the chaos of the world around me and find peace and tranquility and really connect to myself. Over time so much got layered on top of that experience that I rejected it. By the time I was a teenager, I was not really meditating.

It is a work in progress. For me, my connection to TM is the ability to hold contradiction and have these two opposing ideas. I feel a lot of disappointment and sadness about Maharishi and the people who live there still who struggle to make ends meet because of the cost of his programs and yet I meditate every day, just once a day. It is something that feels very much my own and not a part of that. It is a quiet, personal experience. It is holding those two opposites, letting go of the part of me that is critical, cynical and judges the past of the movement and sort of staying connected to some sense of spirituality.

Lindsey Moon produced this interview for broadcast. Monica Starr adapted this interview for the Web.

https://www.iowapublicradio.org/arts-life/2021-09-14/claire-hoffman-on-belief-meditation-and-growing-up-in-greetings-from-utopia-park-surviving-a-transcendent-childhood

Jonathan Kay: Anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories aren't just killing people. They're tearing society apart

It’s ironic that the same miracle drugs that could allow us to defeat a plague have become the seed pathogen for a conspiracist outbreak

Jonathan Kay

NATIONAL POST
September 15, 2021

Over the summer, I visited places that lie on the two extreme ends of the COVID-19 vaccine-uptake spectrum.

In July, I found myself in Tennessee, where only 43 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated — just a single percentage point higher than the most vaccine-avoidant state in the union (North Dakota). Then, upon returning to Canada, I drove 17 hours from my home in Toronto to Prince Edward Island, a place where more than 80 per cent of residents are fully vaccinated. The data I’ve seen suggest that P.E.I. boasts the highest vaccination rate for any jurisdiction anywhere in North America.

In both places, I asked local residents to explain their outlier status. Among Tennesseans, the answers were predictable: Vaccine skepticism in the United States tracks conservative attitudes, and Tennessee is one of the most right-wing states in the union. This means that it’s a target-rich environment for fringe theories that cast big pharma, government officials and the mainstream media as malevolent conspirators seeking to oppress, harm, or even kill ordinary citizens with poisonous injections.

The situation in P.E.I. is a little harder to explain. The province is mostly rural, and a significant part of the population lives in small communities centred on such traditional industries as potato farming and fishing. And while P.E.I.’s island geography does make it easier to control access in and out (I had to show proof of vaccination on the island side of the Confederation Bridge), the politics of the place aren’t unusually progressive. And so it isn’t immediately clear to a visitor how this tiny island became a continent-wide vaccination leader. By way of comparison, Hawaii, America’s only island state, has a fully vaccinated rate of only 55 per cent.

The situation in P.E.I. is a little harder to explain

“This is a place where people tend to do what their neighbours do,” explained a local landscaper I spoke with after he’d recruited me to play Spikeball on Brackley Beach. “If everyone around you gets the shot, and you’re the only one at the diner or schoolyard or whatever who doesn’t, people look at you like, ‘Why not?’ ”

One of his beach buddies added that because P.E.I. is such a small place, many adult Islanders still live within easy driving distance of parents and grandparents, and so family visits tend to be frequent. “If you’re bringing the kids to see granddad on the farm every Sunday, it doesn’t matter if you want the vaccine for yourself. You do it for granddad. Or for your neighbour’s granddad. It’s kind of like a group decision, and you respect that.”

This kind of explanation, of which I heard several variations, made more sense to me once I learned about the history of P.E.I. The island is a conservative place, but in the traditional European sense of that word. For instance, it maintained its ban on alcohol until 1948, decades after prohibition was lifted in other parts of North America. (From the Italianate belvedere of his palace on Great George Street in Charlottetown, the local Catholic bishop would personally scan the port’s waters, looking for signs of bootleggers and rumrunners.) Times have changed, of course. But deference to authority and group consensus still seem to run fairly strong.

And so the question arises: What happens when someone decides to buck that consensus?

The full-time population of P.E.I. is only about 156,000. Yet it boasts two of the country’s best disc-golf courses. And it was on one of these, in the town of Kinkora (population 336), that I fell in for a few hours with a lifelong Islander from the Summerside area who told me in detail about how this kind of disagreement had blown up relations between the two wings of his family.

After skipping their big reunion in 2020, his family members had planned to have a big blowout in 2021, with invitations specifying that everyone should make sure to get double-vaccinated before attending. But things went off the rails when one of the patriarchs hit reply-all, sending everyone a long manifesto explaining that the COVID-19 threat is overblown and the vaccines will hurt you. Harsh words then flew, opening up a massive family rift.

The stakes were high because this wasn’t just the usual potluck bickering about who’s been promoted to coleslaw and who’s been downgraded to Jell-O. It was a group decision regarding compliance with a potentially life-or-death public-health measure.

Around this time of year, conspiracy theories tend to be on my mind — but they’re usually the type centred around the World Trade Center. Having written a book about 9/11 “Truthers” a decade ago, I get interviewed by other journalists about why, even all these years later, smart people continue to believe strange things about the origins of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

During my research, one thing that attracted my interest was the social dynamics that governed relationships among conspiracy theorists and their non-conspiracist companions. As I wrote in the book, Truther marriages tend to fall into one of two categories. Either the conspiracist belief system is something *shared* by husband and wife. Or, if only one of them believes in the conspiracy theory, there’s usually an understanding that, to protect the relationship, the believer avoids talking about the issue with the non-believing spouse. (I’m guessing that marriages between religious and non-religious partners follow a similar pattern.)

That kind of polite social arrangement is possible with 9/11 conspiracy theories because, as apocalyptic as those theories may be, the truth or falsity of the belief system doesn’t really have any effect on day-to-day life. Even if you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney conspired to bring down the World Trade Center with explosives as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, that doesn’t prevent you from working, attending school, going to church, playing sports, or hosting barbecues with people who understand that the 9/11 attacks were, in fact, the work of al-Qaida.

But by its nature, anti-vaxxer propaganda is a fundamentally different, and much more socially toxic, form of conspiracist ideology — because the actual *substance* of the underlying misinformation implicates itself directly in the way we physically interact with each other.

Anti-vaxxer propaganda is … much more socially toxic

The old dinner-party rule that allows people to get by amicably so long as they avoid talking about “religion and politics” doesn’t apply, because many of us won’t feel comfortable breaking bread with an unvaccinated conspiracy theorist in the first place. The same is true for workplaces. Most of us have no problem working cheek-by-jowl with people of different faiths or political creeds. But if your colleague’s conspiracy theories keep him from getting vaccinated, that’s a different story: He’s subjecting you to unnecessary medical risk every time he punches the clock.

While most classic Truther-style conspiracist movements are historically based ideologies that explain past evil and suffering, vaccine conspiracism is *forward* looking and explicitly political, because its adherents’ goal is to discourage or even disrupt ongoing medical interventions that address a current public-health crisis. And the effects are deadly. The state of Tennessee has been averaging about 50 daily COVID-19 deaths this month, more than double the total for all of Canada. In the Nashville area alone, where I was visiting, there were 17 deaths over a five-day period last week — 16 of them among unvaccinated individuals. This city of just 690,000 people has already lost more than 1,000 lives to COVID-19. Hawaii has lost more than 600 lives. In Prince Edward Island, the death toll has been zero.

The problem of declining social trust — one of the great engines of conspiracy theories — has been with us since the early Cold War period. But I’m not sure there’s been a better example (at least in my own lifetime) of how this kind of distrust can lead directly to widespread tragedy and social division. And that division will continue to grow because, again, this isn’t one of those issues that friends can politely ignore when they make small talk. The question of vaccination now hovers over literally every workplace, civic organization, social event and family gathering. And since it now looks like even vaccinated individuals will require booster shots, it won’t fully go away even when the numbers recede.

It’s darkly ironic that the same miracle drugs that could allow us to defeat a once-in-a-century plague have themselves become the seed pathogen for a conspiracist outbreak that’s not only undermining public-health policy, but even causing mobs of anti-vaxxers to assail politicians in public with epithets and gravel.

In some ways, we’ve become something like a giant family that can’t even agree on how to hold a summer reunion. To adapt the idiom of 9/11 Truthers: The virus itself isn’t destroying our political order. It’s an act of internal demolition.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jonathan-kay-anti-vaxxer-conspiracy-theories-arent-just-killing-people-theyre-tearing-society-apart

Church of Scientology defector is running for Clearwater City Council

Aaron Smith-Levin says he would encourage the IRS to review and revoke the church’s tax exemption.


Tracey McManus
Tampa Bay Times
September 14, 2021

CLEARWATER — Aaron Smith-Levin, a familiar figure in the world of Church of Scientology defectors, announced Tuesday he will run for City Council as someone who understands the church’s impact on Clearwater and will work to address it.

He said he will campaign for the city to push the IRS to review and revoke the church’s tax exemption.

His announcement follows the election last year of council member Mark Bunker, the first Clearwater candidate in recent history to advocate against allegations of abuse and fraud that have followed Scientology for decades. In one of his first actions in office, Bunker in May 2020 proposed the city should request that the FBI investigate Scientology for racketeering related to recent downtown property purchases made with $99 million in cash.

But none of Bunker’s four colleagues on the dais supported his idea. Smith-Levin said he doesn’t expect his election alone would provoke the IRS to act. But he said he would help break a pattern among local politicians who have for decades been reluctant to call for federal intervention in downtown Clearwater, Scientology’s international spiritual headquarters.

“If Clearwater’s own leadership isn’t loudly demanding that something be done, why would anyone higher up the food chain do anything about it?” Smith-Levin said Monday in a video on his YouTube channel. “The change in attitude has to start locally. Only then is there any chance of it working its way up to the county level, the state level, the federal level.”

Candidates for the March 15 election can formally file paperwork to raise money for their campaigns on Thursday, the official start of campaign season. Other candidates have discussed intentions to run for the two seats up for grabs, but Smith-Levin appears to be the first to make a formal announcement with his news release on Tuesday.

Smith-Levin said he is running for Seat 5, which will be vacated by council member Hoyt Hamilton due to term limits. Council member David Allbritton previously confirmed he intends to run for a second term in Seat 4, the other seat up for election. Residents city-wide can vote for the at-large seats.

Smith-Levin, 40, was raised in a Scientology family and at age 12 began working on the church’s public staff. At age 22 he joined the Sea Org, the church’s military-style workforce which requires members to sign billion-year contracts and pays less than $50 a week. He oversaw courses and counseling for parishioners before leaving in 2013.

Smith-Levin’s story was featured on the first season of the Emmy-award winning A&E series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, which detailed stories of alleged financial fraud, physical and sexual abuse, and family disconnection, Scientology’s policy of forced estrangement for members seen as violating church directives.

“Scientology is a criminal organization masquerading as a religion,” Smith-Levin said in his Monday video.

Scientology spokesman Ben Shaw did not immediately respond to a phone message or email for comment. But the church hosts a website that is critical of Smith-Levin, alleging he was kicked out of Scientology and calling him a “bitter, vindictive and at times violent man.”

Since leaving Scientology, Smith-Levin founded OTG Research Group, which conducts investment research for hedge funds.

Smith-Levin also serves as vice president of The Aftermath Foundation, which connects former Sea Org members with housing, work and other support upon leaving the church. In his advocacy, Smith-Levin works with Mike Rinder, who spent 25 years as a senior Scientology executive before defecting in 2007.

Smith-Levin said he is “not a single-issue candidate,” as he also wants to prioritize communication between neighborhood associations and the City Council, making permitting and business easier, and supporting the police and fire departments.

But nearly all of the 13 candidates who ran for three seats in the March 2020 election confirmed the top issue that citizens asked them about was what they were going to do about Scientology in the city.

Between 2017 and 2019, limited liability companies tied to Scientology bought 100 properties within walking distance of the downtown waterfront. More than half of those properties remain vacant and undeveloped at a time when city officials are attempting to revitalize downtown.

“When people are looking to fill these City Council seats, your position on the environment, on business, on traffic, on neighborhoods on downtown, everyone has more or less the same opinions, everyone knows the right answers to these questions,” Smith-Levin said.

“There is one issue that actually moves the needle on how Clearwater is perceived, and that’s what is it doing about Scientology.”

https://www.tampabay.com/news/clearwater/2021/09/14/church-of-scientology-defector-is-running-for-clearwater-city-council/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/17/2021 (Mindfulness, Meditation, Stress, Research, Collections (mindfulness, meditation, TM))

Mindfulness, Meditation, Stress, Research, Collections (mindfulness, meditation, TM)

Psyche: Meditation is like mountaineering: approach it with care

"Mindfulness meditation is routinely portrayed as a simple, happy, pleasant mind-hack that can help improve almost every aspect of our lives. Just a few minutes of mindfulness, on a few different occasions, is all it takes to reap the benefits of this life-changing practice. If anyone feels hesitant, we're reminded that it's just like fitness for the mind – and who wouldn't benefit from a little mental exercise?

Yet the way mindfulness meditation is commonly branded doesn't reflect the varieties of ways it's practised or its consequences. While it might be simple, at least in principle, it certainly isn't easy – as the so-called 'father of mindfulness', Jon Kabat-Zinn, has said repeatedly in his books and presentations. While it can lead to positive feelings or pleasant experiences, it can also cause discomfort. Sometimes meditation leads to new or worsened anxiety, depression or other mental illness. It's clear then that the answer to the question 'What's the worst that could happen?' is considerably more severe than most pundits would suggest. What's more, the ethics, values and assumptions behind the practice aren't always made clear. Thus, meditation is less like exercise in general than it is like mountain-climbing – something potentially strenuous that, depending on your objectives, you should approach with caution, training and an awareness of the risks."

BBC: How too much mindfulness can spike anxiety

"Stress, anxiety, productivity: mindfulness is often touted as a solution to nearly everything. But research shows that you can actually take meditation too far.

For around 20 years, I've struggled with periods of anxiety, and turned to mindfulness meditation as a means of quelling those feelings. At its best, the benefits would often perfectly match the hype. Focusing my attention on my breath or my body would calm my nagging internal voice, and I'd return to normal life feeling energised and invigorated.

Far too often, however, I'd end the session feeling much worse than when I began. Rather than relaxing, my heart would begin to accelerate, or my inner monologue would take a nasty turn, as unpleasant memories and feelings of failure and hopelessness flooded my mind. These events became so frequent that I now only use mindfulness occasionally.

I had assumed that I was just uniquely bad at taming my thoughts. Yet a growing body of research suggests that such stories may be surprisingly common, with one study from 2019 showing that at least 25% of regular meditators have experienced adverse events, from panic attacks and depression to an unsettling sense of "dissociation".

Given these reports, one researcher has even founded a non-profit organisation, Cheetah House, that offers support to 'meditators in distress'. "We had more that 20,000 people contact us in the year 2020," says Willoughby Britton, who is an assistant professor in psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University. "This is a big problem."

Berkeley News: Stressed to the max? Deep sleep can rewire the anxious brain

"When it comes to managing anxiety disorders, William Shakespeare's Macbeth had it right when he referred to sleep as the "balm of hurt minds." While a full night of slumber stabilizes emotions, a sleepless night can trigger up to a 30% rise in anxiety levels, according to new research from UC Berkeley.

Researchers have found that the type of sleep most apt to calm and reset the anxious brain is deep sleep, also known as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) slow-wave sleep, a state in which neural oscillations become highly synchronized, and heart rates and blood pressure drop.

"We have identified a new function of deep sleep, one that decreases anxiety overnight by reorganizing connections in the brain," said study senior author Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of neuroscience and psychology. "Deep sleep seems to be a natural anxiolytic (anxiety inhibitor), so long as we get it each and every night."

The findings, published today, Nov. 4, in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, provide one of the strongest neural links between sleep and anxiety to date. They also point to sleep as a natural, non-pharmaceutical remedy for anxiety disorders, which have been diagnosed in some 40 million American adults and are rising among children and teens.

"Our study strongly suggests that insufficient sleep amplifies levels of anxiety and, conversely, that deep sleep helps reduce such stress," said study lead author Eti Ben Simon, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley."

CultNEWS101: Mindfulness Collection  (42 Articles)

CultNEWS101: Meditation Collection (31 Articles)

CultNEWS101: Transcendental Meditation Collection (285 Articles)

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ICSA Monthly Mental Health Educational Series - 2021-2022

October 3, 2021 @ 3:00PM — December 19, 2021 @ 12:00PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Register

This overview presentation will introduce our monthly series of educational programs for our mental health community. Each month will feature a different clinician discussing some aspect of clinical work. Each presentation will serve as a stimulus for discussing clinical issues, which will take place during the following hour.

This series will occur as zoom meetings, which will allow attendees the ability to turn on/off their camera as well as on/off their mic to ask questions as they feel comfortable. The first half-hour of each presentation will be recorded and available on the ICSA YouTube Channel. The discussion portion will not be recorded.

To receive CE credits: You must be logged in during the live session to receive CE credit. Please check with your licensing board to see if you are eligible for CE credit. You will be asked to fill out a short anonymous survey after the program.

International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6893. ICSA is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Vaccine Resisters Seek Religious Exemptions. But What Counts as Religious?

Major denominations are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19, but individuals who object are citing their personal faith for support.

Ruth Graham
New York Times
September 11, 2021

When Crisann Holmes’s employer announced last month that it would require all employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by Nov. 1, she knew she had to find a way out.

She signed a petition to ask the company to relax its mandate. She joined an informal protest, skipping work with other dissenting employees at the mental health care system where she has worked for two years. And she attempted a solution that many across the country are now exploring: a religious exemption.

“My freedom and my children’s freedom and children’s children’s freedom are at stake,” said Ms. Holmes, who lives in Indiana. In August, she submitted an exemption request she wrote herself, bolstered by her own Bible study and language from sources online. Some vaccines were developed using fetal cell lines from aborted fetuses, she wrote, citing a remote connection to a practice she finds abhorrent. She quoted a passage from the New Testament: “Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit.”

Major religious traditions, denominations and institutions are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19. But as more employers across the country begin requiring Covid vaccinations for workers, they are butting up against the nation’s sizable population of vaccine holdouts who nonetheless see their resistance in religious terms — or at least see an opportunity. Vaccine-resistant workers are sharing tips online for requesting exemptions to the requirements on religious grounds; others are submitting letters from far-flung religious authorities who have advertised their willingness to help.

The conflict was picking up steam even before President Biden announced sweeping new workplace vaccine mandates on Thursday. The new orders will require the vast majority of federal workers and those who work for large private employers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. Overall, the mandates are expected to affect 100 million American workers.

U.S. businesses have spent the past 18 months dealing with a series of logistically and politically contentious challenges raised by the pandemic, including shutting down workplaces, requiring masks and reopening, combined with widespread labor shortages. The new battle over vaccine exemptions is especially fraught, pitting religious liberty concerns against the priority of maintaining a safe environment.

“How much can we ask? How far can we push? Do we have to accommodate this? Those are the questions employers are trying to figure out,” said Barbara Holland, an adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management. And: “How do I tease out who’s not telling the truth?”



Interest in religious exemptions is clearly rising. Mat Staver, the founder and chair of Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal organization, said his group had received more than 20,000 queries on religious exemptions in recent weeks.

Liberty Counsel filed suit on Friday against officials in New York over the state’s attempts to deny religious exemptions from its vaccination mandate for health care workers. “The consequences of these forced edicts are enormous,” Mr. Staver said, citing the possibility of labor shortages if health care workers quit or are fired en masse.

In New York City, where vaccines are required for public schoolteachers, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would recognize “narrow and specific grounds for religious exemption.”

In many communities, large public employers are already dealing with a surge in requests. In Tucson, Ariz., 291 workers requested religious exemptions after the city announced a vaccine mandate for its employees. The city assigned four administrators to sort through the requests. They have approved slightly more than half so far, and denied 15, with some requests for further information still pending, according to Ana Urquijo, the interim assistant city manager.

Some private employers are taking a hard line. On Wednesday, United Airlines told workers that those who receive religious exemptions will be placed on unpaid leave at least until new Covid safety and testing procedures are in place.

Exemption requests are testing the boundaries of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for employees who object to work requirements based on religious beliefs that are “sincerely held.”

To the benefit of objectors like Ms. Holmes, the provision defines “religion” broadly. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has specified that religious objections do not have to be recognized by an organized religion and can be beliefs that are new, uncommon or “seem illogical or unreasonable to others.”

They cannot, however, be based only on social or political beliefs. That means employers must try to distinguish between primarily political objections from people who may happen to be religious, and objections that are actually religious at their core.

For many skeptics, resistance tends to be based not on formal teachings from an established faith leader, but an ad hoc blend of online conspiracies and misinformation, conservative media and conversations with like-minded friends and family members.

“People who have already made up their minds are now looking for ways to continue to exempt themselves from the Covid vaccine,” said Joshua Williams, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado.

Mr. Williams’s prepandemic research into school immunization requirements suggests that most objections described as religious to vaccines are really a matter of personal — and secular — beliefs. After the state of Vermont removed its vaccine exemption for nonreligious personal beliefs in 2016, the proportion of kindergarten students with a religious exemption shot up from 0.5 percent to 3.7 percent, suggesting that most parents who took advantage of religious exemptions did so only when others were not available.

Apple, Microsoft, Tyson Foods and Disney are among the major private employers who announced this summer that they would require at least some of their workers to be vaccinated. Since the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine on Aug. 23, others are quickly following.

As mandates take effect and the Delta variant surges in many regions of the country, some former skeptics are submitting to shots. The Biden administration said that roughly 14 million people in the United States received their first shot in August, about 4 million more than in July.
Understand Vaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.

• Vaccine rules. On Aug. 23, the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and up, paving the way for an increase in mandates in both the public and private sectors. Private companies have been increasingly mandating vaccines for employees. Such mandates are legally allowed and have been upheld in court challenges.

• Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in indoor public places within areas experiencing outbreaks, a reversal of the guidance it offered in May. See where the C.D.C. guidance would apply, and where states have instituted their own mask policies. The battle over masks has become contentious in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.

• College and universities. More than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Almost all are in states that voted for President Biden.

• Schools. Both California and New York City have introduced vaccine mandates for education staff. A survey released in August found that many American parents of school-age children are opposed to mandated vaccines for students, but were more supportive of mask mandates for students, teachers and staff members who do not have their shots.

• Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and major health systems are requiring employees to get a Covid-19 vaccine, citing rising caseloads fueled by the Delta variant and stubbornly low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their work force.

• New York City. Proof of vaccination is required of workers and customers for indoor dining, gyms, performances and other indoor situations, although enforcement does not begin until Sept. 13. Teachers and other education workers in the city’s vast school system will need to have at least one vaccine dose by Sept. 27, without the option of weekly testing. City hospital workers must also get a vaccine or be subjected to weekly testing. Similar rules are in place for New York State employees.

• At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would seek to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops “no later” than the middle of September. President Biden announced that all civilian federal employees would have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel.

But among others, desperation to avoid the vaccines is rising. In Paducah, Ky., Drew Kirk and his wife, who he asked not to be named, were strategizing about how to use a religious exemption at the hospital she works for, which recently announced a vaccine mandate for employees.

“There are many reasons we don’t want to take it, and faith is one,” Mr. Kirk said. Their concerns include a perception that the vaccine was rushed, problems with what they have read about the vaccine’s remote connection to abortion and similarities to the biblical “mark of the beast,” a symbol associated with the Antichrist. They also are not overly worried about the virus itself.

Online, a loose web of largely independent faith leaders has volunteered to provide exemption letters to those who request them. An independent evangelist in Texas is offering letters online in exchange for a donation. In California, a megachurch pastor is offering a letter to anyone who checks a box confirming the person is a “practicing Evangelical that adheres to the religious and moral principles outlined in the Holy Bible.”

The letters aren’t necessary, experts say, but can help bolster claims that religious objections to the vaccine are sincere.

Other clergy have offered exemption letters to those in their own flocks, often emphasizing freedom of conscience rather than specific dangers of the vaccine itself.

In rural Hudson, Iowa, Sam Jones has informed his small congregation at Faith Baptist Church that he is willing to provide them with a four-paragraph letter stating that “a Christian has no responsibility to obey any government outside of the scope that has been designated by God.”

He said that he has signed about 30 letters so far and is aware of a handful of instances in which a member’s religious exemption was accepted by the employer.

In Indiana, Ms. Holmes’s wariness about the vaccine was reinforced by her own research. She tuned into a “health and freedom” conference hosted by an anti-vaccine podcast host, and downloaded materials from America’s Frontline Doctors, an organization that peddles false information about the vaccines and promotes as a treatment the livestock drug ivermectin, which the Food and Drug Administration has not approved for treating Covid and has warned can cause serious harm in large doses.

Threatened with a formal reprimand if she skipped work in protest, Ms. Holmes woke up in the middle of the night with a Bible verse from the book of 2 Timothy in her mind: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” She stayed home. (A spokeswoman for Centerstone, the mental health care system where she works, said the protest was small and that “a relatively small number” of its 4,000 employees in four states have requested religious or medical exemptions so far.)

A few weeks after she submitted her exemption request, her employer requested more information, sending her a form for a religious leader to fill out to back up her account of her beliefs. “I was livid,” she said. “Religion doesn’t require a leader.” But a pastor at her church, EUM Church in Greenville, Ohio, agreed to fill out the form.

Ms. Holmes is awaiting a final ruling from her employer. She is willing to lose her job if it comes to that. “If I don’t fight for my rights, who will?” she asked. “I know God’s got my back.”

Ruth Graham is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values. She previously reported on religion for Slate. @publicroad

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 12, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Shot Mandates Drive Holdouts To Cite Religion

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/11/us/covid-vaccine-religion-exemption.html

I Worked at a Labor Union. My Bosses Ran It Like a Cult.

They cared about workers—just not their own.

Ellen as Told to Michael Mechanic
Mother Jones
September 2021

One might hope and expect that a union, of all employers, would nurture a healthy workplace culture for its staff. But that’s not necessarily the case, as Ellen (a pseudonym) discovered after accepting a job with a California union during the late 1990s.

When I was in my late 20s, I took a research position with a local labor union. The union’s mission was to help low-wage service workers, including cleaners and food servers, organize for better working conditions and dignity on the job. The only problem was, our bosses didn’t care about the dignity of their own workers.

In some ways it was the best job I’ve ever had: meaningful, challenging, lots of great people. The union was badass. The workers we represented were loyal and devoted. They were militant when called upon to strike or boycott employers. Prevailing local wages and benefits for their jobs were among the best in the country. The union would run a precision operation of buses from job sites to the union hall for votes or grassroots mobilizations, with participation rates exceeding 90 percent. Our campaigns were no joke.

But the leadership ran the place like a cult. They separated us from our families and blurred the lines between work and not work.

Early on, I traveled out of state to meet other union staff and get trained. They inexplicably took me to a funeral. It was tragic. A researcher I didn’t yet know had lost a baby to sudden infant death syndrome. I found myself crying in church in front of an open casket—it was a Catholic service and the poor baby was in a frilly white gown. I was meeting new people while offering condolences. Then I was whisked back to the office to finish the work day. Talk about whiplash.

We union staffers were fully expected to sacrifice our personal lives and put in long hours to help the working class rise up.

I soon realized the trip was more than a one-off. We union staffers were fully expected to sacrifice our personal lives and put in long hours, including most nights and weekends, to help the working class rise up.

One time, after I called in sick, a supervisor still wanted me on a spontaneous conference call. That same guy called me at home months later to ask me to move to a less-union-friendly city to work on an organizing campaign. I had just bought a house with my boyfriend. The deep roots I was putting down allowed me to dodge that bullet. But this boss made clear I would have to work harder to be considered “down” for class struggle. I wasn’t worthy!

The sacrifices seemed reasonable at first to the naive younger me. I walked picket lines at lunch time and at night, and met with co-workers for strategy sessions or went door-knocking for political campaigns on weekends. We were expected to pay union dues to show solidarity with the workers, even though we weren’t technically members.

I was getting more accustomed to the union’s cultlike personality, but I was still taken aback when not one but two male staffers hit on me at work. One of them would softly chant under his breath, “You and me, you and me,” until I finally worked up the guts to tell him there was no “you” with me.

Later a married man with influence over my work awkwardly suggested that we have an affair. Really? We worked in a place dedicated to shifting the lopsided power dynamic between bosses and workers. But I knew that telling the leadership I was being propositioned by men who had already proved their worth to the cult would probably result in my having to leave the union. On top of my failure to match their devotion to the cause, this all happened more than 20 years before #MeToo. I politely declined his offer, which had made our work relationship unbearable, and kept working. But the shit really hit the fan when I decided to get married.

I was set to take a three-week honeymoon around the same time that a labor contract involving the largest employers in our sector was about to expire. My supervisor had approved my vacation request well in advance. But when the union president found out, he flipped. He called me into an empty office. He was agitated and said he wanted to block my honeymoon plans, but couldn’t do so in good conscience, given the prior approval. He said it was up to me to change my plans myself. Dumbass that I was, I agreed.

But my boyfriend saw the request as a litmus test for the rest of our lives together. He asked me not to delay our honeymoon for the union. I went back to the president and tearfully told him I couldn’t.

After this act of insubordination, I became the target of a subtle campaign to teach me that the union must come first. The president denied my request to leave the union hall—on a Saturday—to pick up my wedding shoes from a nearby shop. When I finished my assignment and left at the end of the day to run wedding errands, I was summoned and reprimanded for leaving before the rest of the staff had finished.

I pointed out that we didn’t normally need to be dismissed. The boss responded by criticizing me, but in a way designed to hurt a lefty do-gooder the most. He said that by questioning instructions and therefore implying that they weren’t clearly delivered, I was disrespecting a union leader whose first language was not English. I knew he was playing me, but I was still devastated.

I got married and enjoyed my honeymoon. Then I busted my ass for the contract campaign. I wanted to stay in the good fight, but my employer’s miserable work environment was too much. The final irony? The union staff actually had a staff union to which we also paid dues, but it did nothing to protect us. Not long after the contract was settled, I broke up with my job. But at least I’m still married.

This story is part of our Bad Bosses project, a reported collection of accounts from workers about their terrible bosses and the system that creates them. You can read more about the entire project and find every story here. Annotations—highlighted throughout—can be clicked for further context and comment from other parties. 
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/i-worked-at-a-labor-union-my-bosses-ran-it-like-a-cult/

Losing my religion: facing the trauma of leaving a faith

Amy Fallon
The Sydney Morning Herald
September 12, 2021

Sherrie D’Souza can still see the look on the faces of “friends” when she first encountered them in the street after abandoning the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017.

“The absolute disgust and utter disdain – sometimes even anger – said ‘how dare you leave’?” she remembers. Those who still believed would no longer speak to her for quitting the apocalyptic faith after four decades.

“Immediately my heart would start hammering and I would lose my breath and I would feel hot. It’s such a mix of emotions... I was angry at the narrative being told that I was wicked and evil when I had left because of the religion’s wickedness and evil.”

Four years after finally quitting the faith that “robbed” her of so many opportunities, a decision that she said led to family and friends shunning her, D’Souza is still rebuilding her life. But today the 46-year-old is spearheading the first Australian Recovering from Religion (RfR) support group, which allows those grappling with questions and doubts about believing to meet and express themselves in a safe space.

With the number of Australians who have no religion increasing to nearly a third in the 2016 census, and recent studies suggesting that the figure could be higher, similar organisations have appeared across the country in the past few years.

Some members, like D’Souza, identify as survivors of religious trauma syndrome (RTS), a term coined by US-based psychologist Dr Marlene Winell in 2011, although not featured in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS), considered the bible of psychiatry.

Caroline Winzenried, a psychotherapist based in Boronia, Victoria, is one of what’s thought to be a handful of counsellors in Australia treating patients struggling with the effects of indoctrination by high-control religions, whether they’ve quit their faith or still embrace it.

“It’s definitely a very real phenomenon,” she said. “We can’t say that all religion is making people suffer, but I think there are some teachings and practices in some that are really damaging.

“People with religious trauma sometimes present with anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), so they might get diagnosed with one of those.”

She added that religious trauma presents differently depending on the person, their background and experiences.

The formation of the Sydney-based Recovering from Religion (RfR) group nearly 18 months ago, operating under the auspices of the US-based non-profit established in 2009, was borne out of D’Souza’s own struggle to find help after she quit the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Raised by two followers the activist, who lives in Camden in south-western Sydney and works in healthcare, was the only Jehovah’s Witness among about 700 students at her school and was constantly teased.

“Saturday mornings when we went preaching door-to-door were an emotional rollercoaster of fear, anxiety and praise,” D’Souza says. “But I was indoctrinated to believe that I would live forever, in paradise, on Earth.”

She left school after year 10, never pursued university – which she says the church discourages – and began carrying out 90 hours a month of voluntary door knocking. In 1999 she married Sasha D’Souza, then a full-time volunteer. Although they wanted kids, they decided not to pursue IVF in case they had to destroy embryos later and go against the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Australia, the non-profit that governs them.

In 2012, her husband began to “wake up” to the religion, as D’Souza puts it, over what he viewed as inconsistencies in its teachings, culture and history. By 2015 he had left the Jehovah’s Witnesses. D’Souza quit the meetings but remained a believer until she read a 2016 report by The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which found that the Australian church failed to protect children in its care from sexual predators. It was the final straw.

“It was a very destabilising time, you lose your sense of identity,” says D’Souza, who no longer has any contact with her family. “You can’t describe it to those closest to you because they’re still in the religion.”

The couple were “disfellowshipped” in November 2019 after speaking out against the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Although she sought professional counselling beginning in 2017, D’Souza realised that there needed to be a way for ex-believers to share their stories. After hearing about RfR via a US-based friend, she decided to start a Sydney group. Today it has 252 members, with those who have been associated with Pentecostalism, the Anglican and Baptist churches and the Jehovah’s Witnesses dominating the group. There are also members with experiences of Catholicism, Mormonism, the Exclusive Brethren, the Mennonites, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and the Falun Gong movement.

Normally up to 26 members attend meetings – now held online due to COVID-19 – with up to four newcomers each time.

“The topics that come to the surface tend to be gender and sexual identity, raising children differently from how you were raised, fear of telling your family and spouses about your doubts, childhood indoctrination and early trauma,” says D’Souza.

There are plans for a Perth group. D’Souza says that the Australian branches may be used as a template for versions to be established in Ireland, New Zealand, Spain and other countries.

Dr Heidi Nicholl, the CEO of Humanists Australia (HA), a new Melbourne-based charity for those with a secular world view, says they are seeing a need for support for people who were or had been associated with religion. HA does not offer professional counselling, but she says that HA are hearing “every day directly from large - and increasing - numbers of people who have been actively traumatised by their years in [organised religion]“.

“The sort of ongoing ‘tough love’ that tries to force you to conform to church ideals can take a huge toll,” says Nicholl.

One HA member, Les Allan, has set up the Melbourne-based Ex-Religious Support Network (ESN). Allan, 65, who has been in the secular space for decades, says it is believed to be the first of its kind.

While it does not offer professional counselling, ESN has a strong relationship with Winzenried and a Facebook page with 233 members who can contact each other at any time about anything. A separate group with 184 people is for monthly gatherings, at the moment held online. Between June and July this year they had 30 new members, and Allan has been contacted by people expressing interest in setting up Perth and Queensland-based groups.

One member, Axel*, quit his Islamic faith of 31 years in April 2018.

“I gave ... so much of my life, to religion and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make sense of that.”

Sherrie D’Souza

“I had a major breakdown at the end of 2019. Religion was the cause and I’m struggling to find my identity at the moment,” he says. “I want to tell my family, but I just can’t because I know the effects it would have on me and them. It’s a struggle every day.”

Turning 40 this year made him confront even more missed chances to explore his career, hobbies, and travel.

“If I wasn’t constrained by the purity of religion, I would have dated and not rushed to marry,” he says.

They’re sentiments shared by D’Souza.

“Yes, I gave my life, so much of my life, to religion – and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make sense of that,” she said. “But I can do something with the life I have now.

“I have to help others to make sense of the madness and all of the things that I’ve lost.”

*Not his real name



https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/losing-my-religion-facing-the-trauma-of-leaving-a-faith-20210817-p58jht.html