The Yorkshire Ripper is now a Jehovah's Witness

Blogger is a mess.

Who cares if he joins a fictional church.

No heaven anyway.

Let's see how 'transformed' he is when he needs a life-saving blood transfusion.

When I was a kid we had a cook. A great cook. She was a Jehovah's Witness. One day she left. She and her family had to go to some mountaintop because the world was ending. She wanted us to go with her to be saved. We didn't go.

I hope she was saved. I still miss her stuffed peppers.

R3 do you remember what year that was?

The Jehova folks end the world fairly often.

i love little yorkies. they are the cutest doggies. i would send it back if it was a JW.

R4 probably 1962-3

R3 - I asked because I grew up in the cult and the big date when I was a kid was 1975. The JWs went batshit crazy. I remember stories of JWs going into insane levels of debt because they were convinced they'd never have to pay it off. They bought houses, RVs, boats, etc. I don't remember any of them heading to the hills though.

Thx.

What do Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Scientology have in common?

They're all American-made religions, created within the past hundred years, that now have global followers.

R9 that was supposed to say "past two hundred years."

One thing to be said for Yorkshire, the pudding is good.

There's been a lot of very bored homicidal maniacs sitting in UK prisons since they eliminated the death penalty.

That means he may be knocking on your door distributing JW literature and wanting to come inside for money and convert you to being a future member.

A criminal in prison turns to religion. What a shock. I've never heard of such a thing before. (Eyeroll) Yawn, this thread is boring.

I found the Lord too.

R8, I grew in JW too. When they finally did away with a certain end time date in the mid-1990's (because the generation of 1914 were dying off), that's when I stepped away for good. After this huge pronouncement, the older JWs and my mentors were gushing about how it made so much sense and how wonderful it was Jehovah imparted this wisdom to the Watchtower elders. I had been wavering in my faith anyway, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back. How convenient to change the doctrine as time was inevitably and rapidly going to show their long-held 1914 prophecy was a bunch of crap.

I've checked out a couple of the ex-JW sites over the years but generally I stay away. Only my brother and I were involved in JW--so making a break was a little easier as we did not lose family and non-JW friends. Still, I find some of the people on the ex-JW sites puzzling and after awhile, I can't read much more. These are the ones who either can't let go of JW or they latch on to some other religion. I'd think being in JW would be enough of a deterrent against any organized religion or spiritual organization. Perhaps, I'm too spiritless or faithless. The ones who can't let go--I understand, they probably have lost their family and social life. They probably don't care about the religion itself but want to end their social banishment. But the ones who jump into another religion and argue how right their new religions is--I can't wrap my head around that.

Oh, there's a 3rd group--the ones who still believe in JW doctrine but disagree with the local Kingdom Hall or Brooklyn leadership. Another group that makes me want to slap some sense into them. Just let go and step into the world already.

'sitting in UK prisons'

Sutcliffe's not in prison, R12, he's in Broadmoor, a maximum security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.

It has about 200 male patients / inmates , all of whom are severely mentally ill posing a high risk to others, most personality disordered, some psychopathic, most have been convicted of serious violent crime, some pled unfit to stand trial.

They have a problem with psychopaths when a detention period specified by the judge at their trial runs out, as a psychopath cannot legally be detained in a psychiatric facility past that point,even if the clinicians consider them to pose a high risk to others still, as they are not technically treatable and the purpose of detention under the Mental Health Act is treatment. So some psychopaths play nice on the ward till their parole hearing, and then get out, and then invariably commit crime again.

I have a friend who works near there. You can hear the klaxons blaring across the countryside when they do there regular 'escapee rehearsal'.

Sutcliffe was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, so they can hold him in Broadmoor forever, and they will.

^ their!

R16 I'm confused. You say that you grew up in JW but then in the next paragraph you state that only you and your brother were JW, thus implying that you got into it later in life and not because your family was in it.

Broadmoor was in the news recently due to the fact that the management made Jimmy Savile their 'entertainments officer' in the 80's. He had a flat on the premises and met with Sutcliffe who he referred to as a 'mate'.

The UK police actually questioned Savile over some of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Two of the victims' remains were found near his flat in the city of Leeds.

I read a quote form one of the Broadmoor management that said that some of the staff knew perfectly well that Savile himself was a psychopath and should have been an inmate, not a 'entertainment officer' but he had the backing of Margaret Thatcher and her then Home Secretary a Currie, so he had the run of then place.

R19, I grew up in it as I studied throughout childhood and was baptized right after high school. My mom was a recent immigrant in the US and when a JW came by, she thought it a good idea for us to study the bible with the him since we were latchkey kids and didn't have family around. She thought it would be a good way to keep us out of trouble and also to improve our English. She never once thought we would take the religious part to heart. I love my mom, but she was such a dumbass in so many ways. What did she think 8 and 9 year old kids studying the bible every week were going to do? We were lucky the JW guy wasn't a predator. In any case, she wasn't happy we became more and more immersed in JW. She was relieved when we both dropped out while we were in college.

By the way, I personally liked my JW friends and mentors. I was never abused or taken advantage of. All the JWs in my life were really good people with great intentions and good hearts. I just eventually had a fundamental disagreement with their world/life view.

That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!

When a certain publicly funded organization in NYC was told it was discriminatory and needed to hire more AAs, they hired all female JWs. They were excellent workers, snazzy dressers, always on time and hardly ever called in sick. They were like the AA version of Mormons, only better dressed.

I'm familiar with JWs, too. I'm from Central America, and when I was adopted to the US my English tutor was JW. I befriended her family and often went to their kingdom hall. I even studied the Bible with them as a teenager, but like R21 I wasn't fully sold... on any religion, for that matter.

Anyway, I just want to agree with R21 and R23 that the JW people I've known have been upstanding people. Always dressed/looking nice, very friendly, punctual people, who take their work (and their religion) seriously.

JW is often called a cult, but they're not really cultish, They do shun people (not permanently) if they feel they"ve done something bad/wrong and they do only intermarry within the religion, as well as not celebrating holidays/birthdays, but they're not kooky or murderous like the Jonestown or Davidians or Heaven's Gate people. From my experience, anyway.

The Kevin Costner film A PERFECT WORLD has his fugitive character abduct a JW boy, and they portray JW as wet blankets and sticks in the mud who don't do anything fun, like watch TV or go to amusement parks. In fact, I used to love to sleep over at my tutor's house because they had cable and a VCR, which my strict adoptive parents did not, and my tutor and her family often took me to the water/amusement park or the movie theater.

R23, like I said, the JWs I knew were good folks all around. They believed in paying their taxes to caesar as they say. That meant being law-abiding and socially responsible citizens. They did not want to reflect badly on the JW organization and the big J himself. I remember one Kingdom Hall talk when an elder lectured on tipping properly. It was a worldly practice but if JWs chose to eat out--then they should compensate the services of restaurant workers properly. I guess the talk was needed as maybe there were a few stingy JWs in the hall, ha. Of course, all these good JWs were looking forward to Judgment Day when Jesus Christ was going slaughter all the non-believers.

My JW teacher had zero career and material ambitions. He just wanted a job that took care of the essentials and didn't interfere with JW meetings and witnessing. JWs are good work colleagues. Sure they're not much fun when it comes to holiday and birthday parties, but they usually are diligent at jobs and they are apolitical. They won't pester you for company or friendship, as they just want to finish their work and go back to their closed JW lives. Obviously, it can be a bit awkward should they try to witness to you. But a firm word to them and they usually back off.

I'm not saying JWs are all nice, prim and proper. Every kingdom hall had their little scandals and such. And there were some characters and everyone had their annoying traits. And sadly there wer some truly awful people--the kiddie predators and such. I only learned about the latter after leaving JW. The biggest scandal in my KH was an elder's teenage son knocked up another another teen and a shotgun marriage ensued.

R23, yes, I agree, I've never been comfortable with describing JW as a cult. They are biblically-strict and lead very closed lives though. I'm not sure if there's a single label that fits JW. As they do have a few million followers around the world, I'm not sure fringe is the right word either. They are pacifist and apolitical so for example, while they are adamantly against homosexuality--they would never pick bash a homosexual like some redneck or backwater "Christian" would. And though JW may personally hold political views--they are strictly prohibited from participating in the politics. That means voting and participating in protests, etc. Either notice you never see or hear about an JW elder whenever there's a conclave of religious leaders at some event?

Ok, I'm done. It's been years since I've discussed anything JW. Enough of the data dump. Sorry folks, I know...get a blog.

I found your posts interesting actually.

[quote]they do shun people (not permanently) if they feel they"ve done something bad/wrong

Once shunned, always shunned. You have to come back to the fold for it to stop but if you stay away they never stop the shunning.

R29 my tutor's eldest teenage son was shunned (or disfellowshipped as they called it) for having premarital sex -- with a non-JW girl from school, to boot! He was eventually reinstated, but had to jump through hoops to get back into their good graces and after a considerable amount of time had passed.

His older sister and her boyfriend (who was also JW) were also disfellowshipped for a bit, too, years earlier. They had consummated their budding romance AND she got pregnant. They too were eventually reinstated.

They're all still JW to this day and raising their children as such.

I forgot to add that my tutor's oldest daughter and her baby daddy were given a shotgun wedding and still married 25 years later. They seem very happy, too, though the husband (who is a Sicilian sexy daddy) went through a sex addiction a few years back. He never cheated on her, but he became addicted to internet porn and had to meet with an Elder regularly for therapy.

The second child (a daughter) is no longer a JW. She actually left early on, over 20 years ago. She was teh black sheep/rebel of that family. While still in high school, she became involved with a non-JW a few years older, and at the first opportunity she ran off with him. They're still married to this day and she's raising her children secularly, and she still has contact with her family. They didn't cut ties with her.

The baby of the family just died this past March at age 33. Last May 2014 he was diagnosed with cancer, and he succumbed less than a year later.

Is JW mostly a religion of POC in the U.S.?

Wonder if Peter backed the right horse? I'm just watching "The Ripper" on Netflix and hopefully he's burning.