Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the two biggest things—well, maybe there were more than two—were helplessness and feeling trapped. There was no way out. There was nobody to go to for help. Knowing that there might have been agencies out there that could have helped me might have lessened the reluctanc

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, when I was 12 I watched the police officers pull my father out of the house and put him in a cruiser. He was arrested. When it's wrong, it's wrong. When you know that you have certain rights and certain protections.... I think a lot of people will be very hesitant, but wh

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's certainly a huge factor. That was the only community I knew. It might make me more hesitant.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When I was 12, I walked into a police station and reported my father for sexually abusing me. That gave me a lot of power to know that I had rights and that what was being done to me was wrong. If at 17 I had known that this was against the law, I might have done the same thing t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The Witnesses are actually moving more and more toward home-schooling their kids. Personally, I think this is very dangerous, because the children are totally secluded from the outside community. The Witnesses aren't alone in doing this. To have a requirement that once or twice a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's very monitored. More and more, kids do have cellphones and access to computers, but as a whole the rules for the Witnesses are that you are not allowed to be surfing the Internet to find whatever information you want. The websites you are allowed to go to are very limited. T

Citizenship and Immigration committee  All right. I don't know, really; maybe an assessment beforehand by social services, to make sure that this is something the child wants, might be beneficial.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our organization is an educational one that wants to address five basic human rights issues. The first is the lack of post-secondary education for young Jehovah's Witnesses. The second is the domestic violence that they do not report. They encourage the women to stay with their a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I had known that what my mother was doing was against the law, I might have felt more able to say no. It would have given me an out to say, “But you can't do this. It's against the law.” It's not that Witnesses really pay much attention to the law when they want something, but

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My name is Lee Marsh. I am 62 years old, and until recently I carried a family secret for 45 years. In 1970 my mother arranged for me to marry a man I did not want to marry. I recently spoke about this to Maclean's magazine, which is how I was found and invited to come here. W