JWs in the News: Convicted of whipping daughter to death
Items like these show the outer limits and effects of JW family involvement, which includes a rationalization of childbeating (from a common mistranslation and misapplication of a biblical verse that children will become “spoiled” if not physically beaten). Parents, who envision themselves in a power pyramid, will sometimes take out their frustrations on those with less power. It is a chain of domination and submission to authority. Here is one result.
Larry Slack has been convicted of flogging his 12-year old daughter to death with an electrical cord (as well as aggravated battery to a child in the beating of her brother).
All six children were beaten, but Slack was especially furious that the murder victim – tied to a bare metal futon frame and gagged – “wouldn’t take the beating quietly.”
Prosecutors have said the couple were strict Jehovah’s Witnesses who practiced corporal punishment.
Leon Slack said the electrical-cord beatings were routine:
You felt it not only in your back, but in the front of your chest,” Slack said. He then described the force his father used–like “you were hammering a nail into wood.”
The couple loved their children but did whip them as a form of discipline, just as their own parents had, Streff said.
Larry Slack worked as a Chicago Transit Authority machinist and Constance Slack worked as a nurse.
Constance Slack has already pleaded guilty.
In his videotaped statement to prosecutors played in court Thursday, the corpulent Slack said, “I bought [a knife] for the purposes of killing myself. I hid it under the fat folds of my stomach.”
Prosecutors called the suicide attempt “self-serving.”
As a parent, I finf that I do – from time to time, anyway – resort to giving my kids a smack on the bum for being naughty.
I see no problem with giving them a smack on the bum as we have done it for millions of years. As far as I know, society has not imploded n it’s self in the mean time, so I take that as evidence that corporal punishment does not hurt the child at all.
But this, this is just wrong. My Slack, to me, seemed that he must have enjoyed it too much and liked the inflicting of pain.
He is more than liely not in control of his own life and more than likely has a crappy job. He wants to be king of his own castle and inflicts pain on the vunerable to compensate.
My 2 cents worth anyway.
Jehovah’s Witnesses as a high control group (cult) are discouraged from seeking outside help from professional and self help groups.
The Kingdom Hall elders will direct members with ‘troubles’ to consult their Watchtower publications for counsel.
The Watchtower is produced,written by uneducated men with no practical or professional background.
What results from failed treatment is a lot of pent up surrogate/displacement rage ready to explode.–Danny Haszard Bangor Maine
Your kidding? You have turmoil in your life – and your to then consult a periodical magazine?
I just stare at the screen and blink in amazement. Seriously, if i’ve got the wrong end of the stick, please tell me – but did I get the above right?
Of couse i’m assuming ‘The Watchtwoer’ Is the same magazine I usually buy off them when they come to the door – I usually read them for a giggle then chuck away.
I’m also assuming that – from what my limited knowledge of the subject allows me – it comes out on a monthly or quarterly basis also.
But seriously, is that true?
Darkman – the occasional swat on the bum isn’t the standard treatment for children. Most JWs remember what happens in the back rooms of the Kingdom Hall to children who fidget and so on during the interminable 5 hours of weekly meetings, and the treatment at home can be much worse. Total control from top to bottom is the aim.
Danny is correct that members are encouraged to look through the Watchtower and Awake indices for officially-sanctioned answers to their problems. The elders will give answers too, but since questions and concerns are normally met with out-of-context and irrelevant biblical interpretations, if not outright callousness or even punitive action, many JWs hesitate to go to the elders with their problems. The elders, the ultimate local authorities, have no training whatsoever in any pastoral care issues, psychological issues, or really much of anything. They are only local parrots with too much power.
Moreover, all “worldly associations” and organizations are to be avoided when at all possible since JWs believe that all aspects of this “system of things” have been given over to and are controlled by Satan. That ban includes not only the government and police, but also any psychological advisor or therapist, any kind of youth group like the boy scouts… or even outside friends (strongly discouraged, although not forbidden).
If you have turmoil in your life, you turn to your brothers and sisters, the elders, and the back issues of the Watchtower and Awake. Yup. True. This may be one of the reasons that JWs are statistically more likely to have psychological problems.
By reading your blog, I understand that you were one a JW, so please, do not take what I am about to say in offence.
What I do not get is this – and it is not just JW issues but all religions that preach such, to me anyway, barbarity – why, when you seem like an intelligent woman, would you believe – or have faith at least – in something that you know is wrong?
What causes a rational thinking human being to start thinking irrationally like this? Is it because you have no more hope in life and the religion gives you a hope?
I know i’m just an ignorant Aussie, but for the life of me, I’ll never understand what makes an intelligent preson not question things around them.
I know fear would be a big part of it (NAZI Germany is one example), infact, that is the only reason I can see.
I think different people have different motivations for not questioning certain things – and of course we all have our “blind spots.” Even rationality can be irrational, as we saw in Germany – the argument was “rational” – if Jews and Gypsies and such are a cancer on humanity – economically and genetically – then why not exterminate them like cockroaches? The conveyer-belt industrial factory style was part of the horror – but one could say that it was very “rational.” People can use “rational” thought to justify all sorts of hate if they want to. I’ve recently discovered an example among my graduate school colleagues, and I’m still reeling from the shock (he made the news, even).
In my case, I was raised a JW – no choice about it at all. In addition, I felt at the time as though I were in possession of the truth about God and the world, and that my faith would be rewarded by life on a paradise earth. I was primed with arguments as to why holidays were wrong to celebrate, etc. I still agree with the JWs that saluting the flag isn’t an appropriate sort of thing at all, and that fighting in wars of aggression is just wrong, especially given that many on the other side are your religious brethren. In a certain sense, they have questioned certain things that others seem unable to question.
However, when you self-righteously believe that you are right and others are wrong, it’s an easy step to believing that you are good and others are evil. Then, others within the group are evil and must be punished and expelled. Then, everyone must be controlled. etc etc Your worldview is small, your paranoia is large – and of course we were all waiting for the end of the world anyway.
In the case of JWs, it was also a totalitarian structure – constant meetings with reinforcement of basic messages, reinforcement from all sides – peers and family and elders – the demonization of outsiders, and so on. But the main spine of the whole thing is the belief that a few guys in Brooklyn are God’s messengers, and that to question anything from them amounts to a wholesale rebellion against God.
A lot of it depends on one’s view of God, along with the arrogant idea that we can know what God would be about – really. The JWs aren’t the only organization that works this way. But it’s one of the least worked out versions because it doesn’t compensate for what it asks, except for the feeling of involvement with “the truth”. Their people are pretty disposable – they don’t care for the flock very well, and their numbers show it (not to mention the almost total lack of authentic spiritual insight).
As a result, many people are incredibly, viciously damaged by their mostly well-meaning family and former “friends.” The mindset can almost be said to have a self-destruct button for when people leave. But hey, they are a superrich corporation, and they have an amazing MLM scheme – all their salespeople work for free.
About the back rooms of JW kingdom halls…..I’ve seen more wooden spoons broken by parents spanking their kids in the bathroom than I care to remember. And yet my still devout mother swears that never happened. She says I’m imaging it.
But, I remember the letter from the “Society” (world headquarters) that said to stop taking children into the parking lots for spankings because neighbors would get the wrong idea.
I’m so glad I left before I had children!
I remember when they moved it indoors too.
In my house, it was more likely a belt than a spoon or switch. I remember my mom asking my dad to use his hand, so that he could feel how hard he was hitting, and he refused.
I don’t think they ever really considered all the effects of combining the biblical verses with the whipping…
FAlse Accusation
Ahh, “kaka” returns.
Where is the false accusation?
The conviction (not accusation, conviction) of the JW who whipped his daughter to death?
The way JWs were (and maybe still are) encouraged to beat their children? I’m speaking from my own experience. Are you saying that I’m lying about that?
Do you know what the Bible says about the last day regarding who Jesus christ will appoint over his belongings here on Earth? When Jesus christ can to inspect the activities of does who profess to be his followers he told only a small group and the with alll indication it’s piont to the then bible student who later become known today as the Jehovah’s witnesses. If you have doubt about this, then tell me with all sincerity who then it is. So why should you speak against them, if you have a problem with an individual who go against bible standard, why not face the individual, Nevertheless, there is nothing you as an individual, or group can do to stop the activities of the witnesses since ” WE HAVE THE HIGHEST BACKING” that from Jehovah God himself. So keep talking, We keep increasing in number day in, day out. My advice to you is settle your difference with your congrgation elders and with Jehovah so as to be among the survivor of the great day of Jehovah the Almighty, Get out of BABYLON THE GREAT befor it’s too late