I Found Out My JW Mother Passed Away
I wrote this when I found out on Mother’s Day.
My mother, Brenda Ray Bowen, has died. I wish I could say today, but I just found out from my niece, who is not a Jehovah’s Witness, that she died on April 19. She informed me that all the family items, pictures, memories, heirlooms, and personal items had apparently been sold or hauled to the dump. The house was put on the market on May 8, and it is already under contract to be sold.
Why is this happening?
My mother was a Jehovah’s Witness for almost seventy years of her life. She was loyal, served as a pioneer, attended meetings regularly, and supported her Elder husband until his death in 2010. Me, as her son, was something she was always proud of, one being the informative and entertaining ways I gave sermons at JW events. Part of her resume was my service at Bethel, regular pioneering, teaching schools, and the various administrative roles I performed within the organization as a faithful member. She would often share with others my accomplishments as a proud mother. As with most happy stories, they do not always have happy endings.
In my service as an Elder for the organization, I discovered a problem in which child molestation was being supported and covered up within the organization. For me personally, I was devastated; I felt like a fool. In addition, tremendous guilt for being part of a system that hurt kids. As a child, my mother taught me to stand for what is right until the death. In the first grade, I was taught that it was idol worship to salute the flag. My mother told me, “If the police come and hold a gun to your head, stand firm for Jehovah. If they kill you, you will wake up in paradise.” For me as a six year old, it was a terrifying first day, as I expect the police to arrive, especially with all the nasty looks from other kids.
So you see, standing for what was right was not an option, it was a matter of life and death. As an Elder in the organization, I continued that role at great cost. In fact, in 1992, I was removed as an Elder for not approving the appointment of an Elder, who was later proven to be a child molester. I fought my way back and two years to the day was reappointed as an Elder, much to the joy of my mother. She told me how proud she was of me staying loyal to Jehovah.
I would often plan interactions to bring family together for a meal and just try to be family. Yet that was all soon to end in the year 2000. An Elder in my congregation was molesting a child. When I tried to have him reported, I was told to “leave it in Jehovah’s hands…”.
I became that six year old little boy again. I was terrified, as I knew what would happen if I did not obey my instructions from the organization. I would be murdered. Not in a physical sense, but in every other way. I wrote a letter of resignation from being an Elder and explained why I could no longer support an administration that willfully hurt kids. I recall as clearly as yesterday, the moment I dropped it in the mail. One part of me wanted to take an axe and rip open the mail box and get my letter back, but the mother trained six year old stood firm.
I of course informed my parents, and close friends all who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. You see, everyone outside of JWs is considered part of Satan’s World and be avoided as “bad associations”, so I had no one, outside of the organization to turn to. When I did not obey the organization, and reported the child molester to authorities, I was deemed an apostate, which in their vernacular is considered an “agent of Satan”. Every JW who worked for me in my company quit overnight. They went to my customers and lied about me. All the JWs that bought product from me stopped overnight. A special talk was given at my Kingdom Hall in which I was called a liar and members were told to go door to door and tell people I am a liar. Yes, I was being murdered from everything I had ever known, but they were not done yet. They went to my mom and dad. The organization’s home office profiled me in a video recording lasting six hours to find if I had done anything the organization could use against me. They got my father to call me a liar, then made a PR video that was distributed to media in four states. The video showed my mother and dad faithfully going to meetings and singing Kingdom songs at the end, to basically show their disapproval of their son. Reporters were so appalled at how a religion would use a mother and a father against a son that they actually sent me their copies of the PR video.
So I lost my mom and dad as well as about twenty JW family members in a shunning death of sorts. How? I was murdered in their hearts, I no longer existed as a son or relative to them. You might say I took the bullet, not to my head, but instead, to my heart.
My children grew up not knowing their grandparents because their apostate dad stood up for what was morally right and reported child molesters. On August 15, 2002, I was formally “Disfellowshipped”(expelled) for reporting JW child molesters, forming a non-profit (silentlambs.org) to allow victims to tell their stories to let others know they were not alone. While giving tens of thousands of JW molestation survivors support and reporting over 1,000 JW molesters, my mother and father shunned my family and stayed loyal to those that hurt kids.
How do you process that?
When my dad died in 2010, my mother did not call. I was informed by a non-JW family member. Today, of all ironies, on Mother’s Day 2026, my niece informs me, my mom is dead, almost thirty days after the fact.
Me, my sister, and mother at my father’s funeral
Why?
Jehovah’s Witnesses have a Legal Department of over twenty five attorneys who have taken a vow of poverty, to help steal the inheritances of elderly members. They work like a well oiled machine. They pressure elderly ones with the assurance if they donate their estate they will surely have a golden ticket to paradise. When my mom died, they went through the house and immediately collected anything of value to sell. What is left, which would have been precious to the family, is hauled off to the dump. Then the house is put on the market to be sold within two weeks, before the family has any time to react and the inheritance is absconded to the home office in New York.
The price for doing what is right was very high. My murder is complete; they have nothing left to take from me or my children, any more.
Mom, I hope you find peace for the seventy years of your proven loyalty. It cost you your daughter, who committed suicide, your son, and your grandchildren, who get to remember you as someone who gave them nothing in your later years, not even a pittance of an inheritance.
Is that what it takes to please Jehovah?
Is that what “Jehovah’s organization” requires to make it to paradise?
Mom, if you are now aware of the hurt and pain caused to those you brought into this world, I have to wonder now, if you think it was worth it. I could have loved you and shared our lives, but instead your love for the organization rejected any of the love I could have had for you.
That little boy’s love was abandoned, because you trained him to take the bullet and you decided to make the choice of Jehovah’s organization over your own flesh and blood.