Lloyd Evans is premiering a new film today, Reclaimed Voices: Abuse Survivors Speak Out, and we were lucky enough to get a sneak peak at some of it. As usual, Lloyd’s production qualities are first rate, and the subject matter is stunning.
We’ve taken a short excerpt from his introduction to give you a sense of what this important new film is about…
Jehovah’s Witnesses. A religion many associate with those people who distribute literature on street corners and visit their homes unexpectedly on a Saturday morning. But despite their mostly harmless reputation, the Witnesses are facing increasing scrutiny over their leadership’s widespread cover-up of child sexual abuse.
As Watchtower continues to resist calls for reform despite growing pressure, yet more victims are finding the courage to come forward and tell their stories. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the Netherlands, where an organization named Reclaimed Voices began work in August 2017 and already claims to have nearly 300 stories of abuse from Dutch Jehovah’s Witness congregations.
That Reclaimed Voices has been so prolific in raising awareness in such a short period of time is itself a huge accomplishment. But what has impressed me more than anything is their success in capturing the attention of the Dutch government. Anxious to learn the secret of Reclaimed Voices’ success, I’ve driven the 800 miles to the Netherlands from my home in Croatia to find out more…
——————–
Posted by Tony Ortega on March 10, 2019 at 17:30
E-mail tips and story ideas to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.
Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He’s written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology’s harassment of Paulette Cooper titled ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely,’ and more recently a compilation of his stories, ‘Battlefield Scientology.’ He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world, as well as other subjects such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. You can reach him by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you’d like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.)
