Benen says ‘I know if I don’t get this out of my head it will destroy me … I just had to tell someone’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Benen was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness. This isolated him at school and made him a target for bullying.
It also made him vulnerable to grooming and sexual abuse by two much older men.
Benen explains that he and his siblings ‘didn’t do things other kids were doing’. They could not attend assemblies and RE lessons at school, and being the oldest, he was expected to speak up and defend his religion.
His parents didn’t want him to play football, or join the Scouts, but he was allowed to join a Red Cross youth group when he was 11. An adult member, Bob, who led some activities, offered to show the youngsters how to make some equipment.
But when the time came, Bob said he could only teach one boy at a time, and Benen found himself alone with the man in his home. Bob, who was in his 60s, would collect Benen from home, and in this way he befriended Benen’s parents. He would take Benen to eat in a cafe. Benen says ‘I could have whatever I wanted, this was cool, mum and dad were always struggling for money and I didn’t like to ask for treats’.
Over the following weeks, Bob and Benen worked on their project in the man’s garage. He remembers this as a happy time; Bob empathised with him about being bullied; he said that becoming fit was a way to deal with this and suggested that he could train Benen in body-building.
Benen’s parents agreed to this, and before long he was going to Bob’s house several days a week after school. After training, Bob gave him snacks and pocket money.
Bob then began attending the Kingdom Hall – the Jehovah’s Witness place of worship. Here he made friends with an elder and invited him to his house when Benen was there. The two men manipulated Benen into looking at pornographic magazines, then confronted him about this, suggesting that they might have to tell his father.
Benen says ‘I felt so guilty and scared and I was so worried he would tell my dad’.
The grooming by the two men escalated. They began to ask Benen about his sexual feelings and suggested he was gay. This confused and terrified him even more. They told him it would be a sin if he was gay, but added that ‘Jehovah would understand and make things OK’.
They gave him wine to drink, telling him it was fine because Jesus turned water into wine. They showed him a pornographic film, and Bob sexually abused him while the other man watched. Benen remembers that the other man ‘said it was ok because Bob was now a Jehovah’s Witness and could be trusted to help me to learn and not be gay’.
Bob took Benen home, telling him that if Benen’s father found out he was gay it would ‘kill him’, so it was essential he should keep attending daily body-building sessions. Terrified, Benen obeyed and during these visits he was made to drink alcohol and watch porn films.
Bob began photographing Benen, getting him to undress and ‘show off his muscles’. Other men started coming to the house to take photographs of him, and one day Bob took Benen to a house in the country where there were other boys present, and many photographs were taken.
Benen says one of the worst things was being taken by Bob for days out. He recalls Bob would ‘go on about sexual stuff in the car and then say I had made him aroused and should relieve him’.
Bob arranged for Benen to have a penfriend in Europe, and accompanied him on a trip to the penfriend’s house.
The penfriend’s family became so suspicious of Bob’s behaviour with Benen that they called Benen’s parents. Bob sexually abused Benen on the journey back.
When Benen arrived home, his parents said they wanted the ‘close relationship’ with Bob to end. They also told him he didn’t have to attend the Kingdom Hall any more, and they themselves stopped going.
Benen says that he did once try to talk to the Jehovah’s Witnesses about what was happening, but he knew he would not be believed. He is not sure if his father knew for certain that he was being abused, but he hopes he didn’t.
Benen believes organisations should be extremely careful to not allow individual children to be isolated with one adult. He would like to see the two-witness rule in the Jehovah’s Witness faith changed so that children are believed more readily.
There have been long-lasting impacts on Benen from the abuse. He says he drinks too much, which causes problems with his family. He finds it hard to show affection and he can be triggered by references on television to abuse.
He has never had any therapeutic help; he says ‘I am too scared’. But he adds that he might seek help after coming to the Truth Project – he feels he should do this for the sake of his family.