Suzanne knew no one outside her foster parents’ church and could not report she was being abused
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Suzanne suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse when she was fostered by a couple who were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
She feels very strongly that the institution should not be allowed charitable status because of the way members are treated if they try to leave.
Suzanne was born into a large family. For a time she lived with her father who she later realised had mental health issues. She and one of her sisters were taken into care and sent to a children's home. She remembers a couple visiting the home who were looking for two girls.
Suzanne and her sister were sent to stay for weekends with the couple, who already had two adopted children, and then placed in their foster care.
She has since seen in her file that in the run-up to the fostering, her behaviour deteriorated. She did not want to live with the family because the adopted boy, who was several years older, had started to sexually abuse her. But no one asked her what was wrong.
Suzanne says the boy would coerce, blackmail and cajole her to go into his room. When she was about eight, she tried to report what was happening by saying she had been flashed at. The police drove her round the neighbourhood so she could show them where it happened, and she was unable to tell them she was being abused at home.
She adds that her foster mother ‘told them that I was attention-seeking and that I made up stories’, and later threatened that Suzanne’s younger sister would be sent away.
Suzanne recalls that social workers rarely visited and when they did, they spoke to her in front of her foster mother. Suzanne says ‘She was very good at getting people on her side; she was very manipulative’.
The foster family did not allow Suzanne to make friends outside the Jehovah’s Witness church. Her foster parents made snide remarks about Suzanne’s family and her culture, and told her that her parents did not love her.
Children had to stay still and quiet in church meetings, and if they misbehaved they were taken out and beaten. Suzanne describes how they were made to feel vulgar and dirty about their own bodies. She adds ‘They scare children into believing they will be the only ones to survive and that everyone else would die’.
She remained in the church until her mid-20s. She had to marry a Jehovah’s Witness and she was physically abused by her husband. After several attempts, she managed to leave. She was threatened by the Jehovah’s Witness elders that if she left, she would be taken to court, sectioned and would lose her children.
Some years later, Suzanne told her foster mother about the abuse. She said that Suzanne and her adopted brother were damaged children, and it was a way for them to ‘find love’.
Suzanne says that because of her childhood upbringing and experiences, she lost out on education, friendships and opportunities. ‘It would be nice to know who I could have become’ she says.
She thinks that the Jehovah Witness church should not have charitable status and she firmly believes that they should not be able to foster or adopt children. She says that many members are hurt and damaged by the control that is exerted over them. If they leave, they are shunned by the rest of the congregation. This is very traumatic because they lose everyone they have ever known.