RECOVERING FROM RELIGION

An increasing number of Australian women are finding the courage to speak out about their experiences of abuse and indoctrination within controlling religious organisations. And thanks to a new diagnosis defining religious trauma, their pain is finally being recognised and supported, writes Amy Fallon

- Amy Fallon

On a cool winter’s morning in 2015, Amy Whitby’s life fell apart when her mother, Theresa Clare, rushed into her bedroom at their Brisbane home. “We aren’t the only ones,” whispered her stunned mother.

Flashbacks of the sexual, physical and emotional abuse that Whitby allegedly endured at age 11 by a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the apocalyptic faith she’d been brought up with since the age of three, came rushing back to her.

Clare, a Jehovah’s Witness since a teenager, had read an online news story about an inquiry into the religion, whose eight million members around the world believe the only way to avoid the imminent apocalypse is to follow the organisation’s strict rules. The news report stated that the inquiry – part of the groundbreaking Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse – was investigating allegations of child abuse involving 1006 members of the organisation since 1950, all of which had been dealt with internally and never reported to police.

“I looked at Mama and said, ‘It wasn’t just us,’” Whitby recalls. “All this time, we believed that we were the only ones they’d treated badly.”

While Clare had complained internally about the alleged abuse her daughter had suffered in 1991, she was told she was mentally ill and was shunned for speaking out.

The investigation bombshell was a turning point for Whitby and Clare, who finally left the Jehovah’s Witnesses that same year, in 2015.