My first year in Ireland was one of the hardest and most enjoyable years of my life.
Within two days of moving to Ireland, my Father suffered a severe brain haemorrhage, and had to be rushed to hospital. The survival rate for this condition is very low. For a number of weeks he was on the critical list and could have died at any moment. Until this point I had viewed my Mother as sometimes weak and unable to be strong. I was wrong. I have nothing but respect for my Mother now, and the strength she showed in those months was incredible. She daily faced the prospect of loosing her husband and still managed to smile, and tell her now three sons that it would all be ok. I only hope that if life throws something like that at me, I can show the guts that she did!
I don’t recall the local congregation helping us, but this is likely due to being so caught up in my own emotions and not noticing, as opposed to any lack of love from the Brothers and Sisters – many of whom were genuinely nice people.
I didn’t see my father for the next month as he was in intensive care, when I finally did see him; he had tubes coming out of his skull to drain fluid and looked like a skeleton. This sight has given me a mild phobia of hospitals to this day. He was on the mend though – our family is made of tough stuff and it’s hard to knock us down.
While he was recovering in hospital, I met a local JW girl whom I almost immediately fell in love with, and it was mutual. We spent the long summer exploring our feelings, kissing, holding each other, and talking for hours and hours. Neither of us were particularly spiritual at this point but I think with my Dad in hospital no one wanted to criticise my Mother for not putting a stop to this friendship. Lack of guts on the part of the elders as opposed to love!
With a girlfriend my confidence grew and when I started school at the end of summer I was feeling nearly human again. My school was a boy’s only catholic boarding school; however I was a day student. It was a hard place ran by priests, and in those days, only 17 years ago, if you were bad, you got hit. This must read like I was forever being physically abused, however no lasting damage was done, and I won’t treat my kids the same. Those were less enlightened years – and I deserved almost all of what I got.
The congregation was very small compared to the UK, and was in a small room behind a pub and next to a gambling shop which stank of alcohol, cigarettes, and vomit. The place was tatty, and so were the members. Ireland at this stage was a quite poor country and was rapidly trying to catch up with the rest of Europe. Many of the brothers like us were English blow-ins, unlike my father however they didn’t have good jobs and it’s my suspicion that many of them ran from England because of problems with their old congregations. At least that’s how I explain 50% of them being sociopathic.
After a few months my Father was well enough to return home, but he was not the same man (he did eventually return to normal), he saw this as a second chance at serving Jehovah and was full of righteous zeal. I didn’t know who this man was in the house with me.
As I turned 14, myself and my girlfriend split up, I was devastated and withdrew into myself once more. I also am ashamed to say that I came to hate her for the pain she caused me. This shame is all the greater as in subsequent years the story of her family life was revealed, the sexual, physical, and metal abuse she endured was severe. The elders led by one particularly evil man, treated her and her family in an obscene and unscriptural manner. In the next chapters I will tell the full story of this shocking and disgusting abuse of power.
The first year in school passed relatively quickly and easily, although all that was about to change.
In the next chapter I will tell of my quickening fall from grace despite getting baptised, my problems with school, and the systematic abuse of a family by the body of elders. I’ll also explain why more than 70% of the ‘young ones’ left the congregation…….