Members are gathering Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the group's 2019 convention - three days of music-video presentations, prayers, songs, addresses, symposiums, and dramatic readings from the Bible, according to the program for the event.Īs the convention commences, critics of Jehovah's Witnesses, including Hebert, are trying to speak out against the group's isolating cult-like practices, including shunning those who split from the group, and its history of covering up child sexual abuse. In fact, they were texting on Friday morning as Hebert's mother sat on a bus on her way to Chase Field in downtown Phoenix, where she would join 40,000 Jehovah's Witnesses from all over the globe. Hebert and her mother still talk, even though her mother has been reprimanded for doing so. 'It's a high-control organization,' Hebert said, a quality she attributed to 'some religions and some cults.' Hebert, who is now 32 and lives in north Phoenix, is not supposed to talk to current Jehovah's Witnesses, including her own mother, because of her status as an ex-Witness. 'There was never even a 'Let's see what we can do.' It was, 'What's wrong with you?''Įventually, Hebert's mother allowed her to stop attending meetings.

'There was no listening to me, no response,' Hebert said.

When Hebert's mother went to the elders of the congregation to tell them about the boy's threats, they didn't care. At the time, they were no more than 12 years old, she estimated. Hebert's mother initially refused to believe her, until she saw the boy 'doing things' to Hebert and other girls, Hebert recalled. She considers herself lucky, because those incidents helped her break free from a branch of the group in Wyoming, where they lived at the time. Monique Hebert left the Jehovah's Witnesses about two decades ago, after a boy in her congregation touched her repeatedly and threatened to rape her, she said.

List of jw public talk outlines