Traumatised, brainwashed and controlled - that's how Ali Millar describes her childhood in the Jehovah's Witnesses. She reveals how she escaped and what happened next.
When people ask Ali Millar if she has seen her mother recently, she doesn't know how to respond. "I can't say I've lost her because the euphemism implies that she's dead," Millar, a 42-year-old mother of four, tells me. While her mother is very much alive, they no longer have a relationship and there is no word to adequately explain how or why. It is one of the reasons Millar has written her new book, about her experience growing up as a Jehovah's Witness — the group her mother joined when Millar was a few months old and remained so loyal to that it would lead her, 30 years later, to cut her daughter out of her life.
To most people the Jehovah's Witnesses are religious eccentrics, known for their rejection of Christmas, door-to-door preaching and warnings that the end of the world is nigh, but Millar knows first hand the damage they can do to people's lives. She wants her story to be a wake-up call to anyone who thinks the group is benign. "They control every aspect of people's lives," she says. "They strip you of your personhood. There is an acceptable way of dressing, of listening to music; they control the films and books you see. They control everything so you can't really understand the world outside." It took Millar 30 years to break free, though she has had to accept that her mother never will.
For Millar, the defining feature of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness was not the abstinence but the terror. "Everyone fixates on birthdays and Christmases [which believers do not celebrate] because from the outside that looks really cruel, but the worst thing for me was the constant state of fear."
Witnesses worship the Old Testament God, Jehovah. They believe Armageddon will take place at any moment, that it will be violent and terrible and only the truly faithful will survive. Children are taught that in the new system wild animals will be tame and they will be able to play with lions and tigers, but not before a total devastation is wreaked on mankind. Their literature is rich with imagery of fireballs raining down from the sky and birds picking at corpses. This was what Millar and her older sister, whom she calls Zoe in the book, grew up on. "There was a book I read at bedtime called My Book of Bible Stories, which had images of Noah's flood and people floating in the water, holding on to logs trying to escape," Millar recalls. She suffered from undiagnosed pain and sleep problems as a child. "When, from the age of two onwards, you are thinking that everything's going to end, it sends you into a state of constant fear, constant anxiety," she adds.
Even more traumatic was the thought of all the people she loved who would be left behind come the apocalypse. Her maternal grandparents had nothing to do with the organisation, which meant they were doomed. Millar's mother came from a middle-class family in Scotland; her mother was a doctor, her father a headmaster, but her conversion is a textbook case. She was raising her eldest daughter on her own when she met a charismatic doctor who would become Millar's father. She was pregnant with Millar when a pair of Witnesses knocked on her door. "My mum thought it was crazy," Millar says — but she took the magazines anyway. By the time they knocked again, two months later, the full story about the charismatic doctor had emerged. Not only was he already married, but he had multiple children by different women and had no plans to hang around.
The Witnesses offered Millar's mother security. "I think she liked the submission, giving over control. She obviously felt her life hadn't worked out well. So she just relinquished it." At what point the brainwashing kicked in Millar still doesn't really know, but there is no doubt in her mind that what she experienced was like a cult. Friendships and ties with the outside world were discouraged. There was fierce competition within the community over who could be more devout, more puritanical in their rejection of the outside. Once you were in, everything else was squeezed out. Bible study took place for hours every weekday evening, with pre-study at friends' houses. "The Thursday meeting went on for two hours in the evening. As a kid, I'd be getting home at nine or half nine." They got Fridays off, but there was ministry [a service] for most of Saturday and Sunday. "I got ill a lot. I would cry a lot and looking back I was suffering from complete exhaustion."
The organisation is heavily patriarchal — decisions are made by panels of male elders. Millar's mother, a single woman, had very little agency. As a convert, she was particularly eager to impress. "People who are third or fourth generation are actually a bit more relaxed about it, but she had the passion of a convert, she was determined, desperate to get it right," Millar says. Women in the community were discouraged from working, so money was always tight. Millar's family lived on benefits and fortunately for Millar her mother remained dependent on her parents, which meant she could never quite cut them out. Since leaving, Millar has spent a lot of time looking into the group's finances. In the past it worked as a large publishing empire: "You had to buy magazines from them, then you had to place the magazines with householders and ask them for a donation, which would then be returned to the church," she says. The organisation has evolved since then.
Today they have a slick online presence, a website with video sermons and even a children's programme called Caleb and Sophia, but most of their wealth is in property — the group has a huge portfolio of Kingdom Halls around the world, many built for free by volunteers. (In 2016 a group of investors led by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner bought the Witness headquarters in Brooklyn for US$340 million.) Members give money and legacy donations are encouraged. "They're a business," Millar says. In recent years there has been a wider reckoning about how the organisation manages cases of abuse and misconduct.
Earlier this year a former Jehovah's Witness gave evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse about the trauma she suffered at the hands of a paedophile called Peter Stewart, who was able to abuse at least three children in the mid-1980s onwards, in various congregations including Loughborough, after elders failed to report him to the police.
He was removed as a ministerial servant in 1990 but was allowed to stay in the community and retain various responsibilities because he told elders he had repented. Another of his victims has successfully sued the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, as the Jehovah's Witness organisation is called, for failing to protect her. The Jehovah's Witnesses say they have taken steps to address the issue of child abuse by providing guidance to members about the issue, as well as education. They highlight that they have a new child safeguarding policy, meaning that when they believe a child is in danger the police are informed.
However, Millar came frighteningly close to a similar experience. When she was in her early teens her mother had a relationship with another Witness, only to discover several months later that he had been abusing girls in a different community. He had been caught and "disfellowshipped" before being allowed to rejoin the group. "It was never framed as abuse, it was framed as the girls having led him on," Millar says. "No one warned my mother." Millar herself was never abused but for years wrestled with her lifestyle. She drank and put herself in dangerous situations, and by her mid-teens was severely anorexic. "I wasn't worried about my own mortality. I was worried my mum would find out and that I would have disappointed her. I think at the heart of it, that's why I stayed. I didn't want to lose her," she says.
What is also notable in the book is how medical professionals and authority figures tiptoed around the family's religious beliefs. Millar went to a mainstream school and had regular contact with doctors. At the age of 12, before an operation to remove her tonsils, she dutifully told a doctor under the watchful eyes of an elder that she would refuse a blood transfusion if one were necessary. Only one therapist touched on it, after she'd been hospitalised for anorexia in her teens.
"Looking back I think he probably knew the effect it was having, but I was so devout that I couldn't see it and was resistant to talking about it." This is another reason Millar has written the book, "so that external providers or social workers or therapists, psychiatrists, doctors, they actually understand what they're dealing with. I think they thought I was sort of in a church."
The self-destructive behaviour continued into her twenties even as she married within the church, had a child and appeared to have settled down. Marc, the name she gives her ex-husband, was a dutiful Witness who aspired to be an elder, but Millar consistently disappointed him with her inability to be truly pure. She began to live a double life, building an emotional bond with another man. The crime that ultimately led to her exit was a pedestrian one — aged 28, she got drunk and kissed a friend. Her husband summoned a panel of three elders to hear her crimes and pass judgment on whether or not she should be cast out. During the interrogation, she was also grilled about the intimate acts she engaged in with her husband before they were married. The panel told her she could stay, only for Marc to reject her for kissing the friend. She tried to carry on as normal, attending prayers and sitting on her own at the back, but it became clear that she was no longer welcome. So her escape was less of an epiphany and more of a slow, agonising ejection.
Within a year she'd started to build a life and an identity outside the group for the first time. She stayed in the flat where she had lived with Marc, they shared custody of their daughter and she started a creative writing course in Edinburgh. She met someone outside the church who worked in music, which had been her lifeline during her teens, and went on to have three more children with him. Today they live in London and the aspect of life she cherishes above all is her intellectual freedom. She rejects the tribal mentalities she sees in mothers' groups and anti-vax communities online.
"People think they'd never join a cult, but then you see what they're doing. I think we are living in much more culty times," she says. It was years before she felt able to talk about her past, such was the shame she felt about what she once believed.
It has also taken a long time to reconcile herself to the greatest loss of all: her mother. For a time they remained close, overlooking the fact that Millar was no longer attending meetings, until her new life became too hard to ignore. In 2014, when Millar was 34 and blogging about the Witnesses, her mother finally cut her off by an email, which Millar found cold and short. "The whole of our lives, our relationship has been provisional," says Millar, whose four children are now aged 19, 9, 8 and 5. "I think, 'How do you put that on your child?'"
Millar's absent father died last year and her mother has sent her a few messages about that, but she knows there is no real hope of reconciliation. Nor is she in touch with her sister, who remains a loyal Witness. Instead, she has found a community of others who, like her, managed to break free. Owing to the way the organisation is run, their stories are remarkably similar, which gives her a rare sense of shared experience. They have also suffered the trauma of leaving. Many find the process of being ostracised and trying to survive outside the group too difficult and return; Millar knows others who have taken their own lives.
Does she still harbour any hope that her mother might also break away from the Jehovah's Witnesses one day? "In many ways I hope she doesn't because the loss I experienced was significant and I was much younger and the religion had taken much less from me. She's got so little time ahead now. How would you start to deal with the anger and the grief?"
'So, you kissed another brother?'
Ali Millar recalls being grilled by a panel of elders after an extramarital liaison.
They knock on the door and I jump, even though I know they're coming. I open it and smile at the three elders on the doorstep. Brother Ardman comes in first; as he passes me, he stretches his damp hand to take mine. He grips it limply as he shakes it up and down. Brother Gillespie and Brother Heikkinen decide to leave their shoes on. I gesture them into the sitting room.
They sit on chairs, laid out in a row to face the sofa, when my husband, Marc, comes into the room. He shakes each of their hands. I sit, hoping I look repentant; I know they are looking at me, I can feel their eyes on my skin. Brother Ardman clears his throat. In a voice too bright and shrill I ask if anyone would like some cake. "We are not here for cake," Brother Ardman says. "Would you like to tell me why we're here?"
I can't tell them I'm not sure why they are here. Marc said it would be a good idea to ask them up — a clean slate, he'd called it, to tell them about what happened before we were married. It has been on his mind, he explains. I don't know if he's told them about my recent kiss with another brother.
"We did some things before we were married," I say at last, "some things we shouldn't." "Heavy petting," Marc says. "I'd call it heavy petting. I wanted to confess," he continues, "it's been such a burden to live with. I can't keep it to myself any more." He looks over to me, and I can see triumph in his eyes. "I felt terrible," I hear him say. "I know it's hard," Brother Ardman says to my husband, "and we admire you for telling us this. Your bravery is to be commended."
"How did you feel during the things you did?" Brother Ardman says, turning to me. "Did you get pleasure from it?" I don't want to answer. "I suppose so," I say. "It was OK." "Thank you," he says, and then, detective-like, he begins to take notes in his notebook, even though he didn't write anything down the whole time Marc was talking. I notice he was never asked about his "pleasure".
Just when I think they might be finished, Brother Heikkinen frowns and takes up the baton. "Where were his hands?" he asks. I swallow. "They were …" I worry my voice will crack. "…in my pants," I say. "Pants," Brother Heikkinen says. "By pants do you mean trousers or underwear?" "Underwear," I say quickly. "And your hands," he says, "where were they?" "In his underwear," I say. My chest feels heavy.
"Brother Gillespie, do you have anything to add?" asks Brother Heikkinen. "Yes, I'd like to know how pleasurable you found it, on a scale of one to five," he says. I don't know what to say. Too much pleasure and they'll hang me for it, too little and Marc will hang me for it. I go for the middle, knowing I can't win. "Three," I say.
"Right," Brother Gillespie says. "Good, thank you. How much did you try to persuade him to do it again?" he asks. I think about how it wasn't me who did the persuading. Not that they will believe me. "I don't know," I say, "once or twice." "Did he give in to you?" Brother Gillespie says. "Oh no," I say, "he stood firm in his resolve."
"Well, thank you," says Brother Gillespie. Brother Ardman looks up. "How did the guilt affect you?" he asks. "It made me lose a lot of weight," I say. "It was that that made my anorexia come back. The guilt was eating away at me." I am learning to play the game. "Of course," Brother Ardman says, "yes." It doesn't occur to me that this is an imposition, or that I don't need to answer their questions; to me this is part of a God-ordained process and Jehovah is peering into me as I answer, searching my heart. "Thank you," says Brother Ardman. "We've covered everything about you and your husband. Let's move on. I know you have more you need to tell us. Your husband has already spoken to me, but I need to hear it from you." I don't know what Marc has told them. "I kissed another brother," I say. "We didn't mean to, but we did."
I look at my husband, his red face glowing. "Would it be possible for him to leave the room?" I say. "It's not fair for him to have to listen." Brother Ardman shakes his head. "He's your husband, and as the head of the family he needs to be here. It's his right to listen; please continue."
"It's like I said," I say, "we were in a club, we were on the dancefloor and then, well." I shrug, hoping that will say enough. "Ah," says Brother Heikkinen, suddenly alert, "a club. And did you pay to get in?" I nod. "Yes, we paid," I say. I know this will get me in more trouble. He makes more notes. "So, you kissed another brother. Can you tell us who it was?" "It was Alex," I say. "It was only once." "We aren't really concerned with how many times," Brother Ardman says. "We need to know what happened and how much you enjoyed it."
I think I'm going to fall over, even though I'm sitting down. They ask where his hands were and for how long. I try to say I'm not exactly sure of the specifics of what happened. There is no way I can explain that it's hazy and difficult to remember without sounding like I'm trying to get off the hook. There isn't anything I can do to absolve myself.
This is the only way out of my marriage, to confess to something I'm not sure about. I can't tell them how unhappy I've been for years, they wouldn't see that as reason enough to leave, so this all has to be my fault and mine only. As they're asking questions, I can see Marc out of the corner of my eye. It's impossible not to be worried about what might happen after they leave.
I keep my eyes fixed on the elders. I try to forget Marc's there, but his presence is too large, his anger is too big. "And have you and your husband had sex since you told him?" Brother Ardman asks. "No," I say, "no, we haven't." My husband clenches his fists. I sit back. I hope they're finished. "Please remember Jehovah is watching," Brother Ardman says. "I know," I say. "If you could leave the room now," Brother Ardman says, "we need to talk to your husband."
Just after 11pm my husband returns. "They've made their minds up about you." His face is blank, I can't tell which way things have gone. The elders watch me as I come into the room. "Let us pray again," Brother Ardman says. "Dear Jehovah," Brother Ardman begins, "we pray now for your divine guidance and blessing to determine our sister's guilt and repentance from her sins. We pray that you guide us to arrive at the right decision and we pray that our sister will accept your loving discipline. In Jesus's name, amen."
I look up. "Have you repented of your sins?" Brother Gillespie asks. "Yes," I say, "I'm sorry." "What exactly are you repenting of?" Brother Ardman says. I know this is a trick question, just as I know everything hinges on my answer. "I'm sorry I hurt my husband," I say, "but I'm sorrier I brought reproach on Jehovah's name." I hope I've remembered it correctly: God above everyone else. "What do you plan to do to show your repentance?" Brother Ardman asks. "I'll listen to Jehovah's instruction. I'll study more. I'll focus on re-establishing my relationship with Jehovah. And I'll listen to your instruction too," I say.
Brother Ardman's face remains impassive, then he frowns as he tells me that it hurts Jehovah's heart to see a marriage fail. He asks if I'm prepared to make mine work. I didn't expect this. I feel as if their hands are round my neck. I feel as if I'm submerged and am drowning. I feel as if the water is not water, but steel, and not steel but concrete blocks in my lungs, pulling and keeping me under. I know I can't live with Marc any more. I know I can't keep raising my daughter Imogen in this damaging religion. And yet. I don't know how to escape from either without losing everything. I am trapped.
Extracted from The Last Days: A Memoir of Faith, Desire and Freedom by Ali Millar.
Written by: Rosie Kinchen
© The Times of London
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