Ieva Brown An ex-Jehovah's Witness who felt "shunned" by her church after her divorce believes leaving her congregation was the best decision she's made. Ieva Brown, 41, joined the Jehovah's Witnesses - a Christian-based religious group - in 1996 at just 14 years old after attending a bible group in Latvia with a friend. After moving to England in 1999, Ieva joined a local group before marrying a non-believer - who then converted. But a decade later their marriage broke down. Ieva claims she felt "shunned" by her church community due to strict divorce beliefs. Feeling ''isolated and shamed'', Ieva says she became so stressed she was too unwell to leave the house and suffered exhaustion and anxiety.
Once you're baptised they put you in your place and now you have to behave and be a good Jehovah's Witness, otherwise you'll get kicked out.
My name is Ieva, I'm originally from Latvia. I was recruited as one of Jehovah's Witnesses at age of 14 and half and then 22 years later I left。
probably age seven or eight, when I was first told by somebody, do you know there's a God? I'm like, wow. I think there was sort of a euphoria when everything opened up after being banned, people flocked to churches, people were interested in even when these groups would knock on the door or give out their literature.
It was just, would you like Bible study? And I was 14 and half and we thought, well why not? I started studying the Bible with Witnesses in March 1996. There was this sense that Armageddon is coming any time soon.
Once you're baptised they put you in your place and now you have to behave and be a good Jehovah's Witness, otherwise you'll get kicked out and nobody will ever talk to you again.
I didn't really have any family apart from my mum, as my dad died when I was 10. So you have to kind of make friends among Jehovah's Witnesses. I was still at school so there were people I would talk to. When you told them you were one of Jehovah's Witnesses they were terrified and in that first year I got baptised, a 17 year old would refuse blood and the parents obviously refused it and she died because they couldn't give her a life-saving treatment.
And I think after that happened I didn't really advertise I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses at school because it was making my life difficult. I just sort of kept myself to myself.
I was told that Jehovah's Witnesses are not supposed to go out or marry anyone who's not a Jehovah's Witness and if you do it's classed as disobedience. You can't really choose who you fall in love with，so me and their grandson we sort of started seeing each other secretly.
I actually got engaged pretty quick and then it came out and I had people writing nasty letters to me from the English congregation and I got pulled up by the elders in Riga.It was like an interrogation for about two hours, they wanted to know every single detail.
Sat me down and put one of their videos on about Jehovah's Witnesses should not make friends with those who are not Jehovah's Witnesses and definitely not date them. It wasn't really their place it just something in me just did not want to go along with it and I just said well I'm going to think about it and obviously people stopped talking to me and avoided me because now I had a bad reputation for dating somebody who wasn't a Jehovah's Witness.
I want my children to have the freedom to do whatever they want. If they want to go to university, they go to university and that was another reason I just wanted them out of my life so that they can have a future.
I'm able to explore things in life that I couldn't before and for myself and my children. we really love our life now. I know I'm 42,but it's not too late to go back to university, you know something that I could have done when I was 18. Do your research, take your time, do not let anybody pressure you and decide what's best for you regardless of what people say.
Source Link：https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/im-an-ex-jehovahs-witness-i-felt-shunned-by-my-church-after-my-divorce-and-leaving-was-the/vi-BB1r2rZi#details
