Jenny Küttim was brainwashed by Jehovah's Witnesses - managed to leave the sect

Jenny Küttim was brainwashed by Jehovah’s Witnesses – She managed to leave the sect

At just six years old, Jenny Küttim was so radicalized in Jehovah’s Witnesses that she knocked on doors to recruit new members. After being hospitalized, her path out of the sect began in her early teens – and now the digging journalist is releasing a book about her upbringing and the secrets that Jehovah’s Witnesses want to silence. “When I look back on it now can see how small and brainwashed I was. I can get a stomach ache because no adult around me reacted”, she tells Femina.

Text AINO OXBLOD | Photo PRESS, PRIVATE.

Originally published in Swedish by Aino Oxblod on Femina.

In the spring of 2017, Jenny Küttim receives a box sent to her anonymously. She has previously been involved in exposing the scandals surrounding the Thomas Quick case together with Hannes Råstam, and is a prominent investigative reporter on SVT. But the contents of the box have connections to her past, and will not only make her write a book – it will make her open the door to her childhood, a door she closed a long time ago.

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As the sixth child in a sibling group of nine children, Jenny grows up in Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the strict view that the controlling cult is the only truth. From an early age she is fulfilled by her faith, and at only six years old she becomes an unbaptized preacher – one of the youngest in the country. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not baptized until adulthood*, but as a publisher, she may begin knocking on doors to spread the congregation’s message and try to recruit members.

When the journalist today thinks of her childhood, she is disappointed that no adult in her environment outside the sect reacted to how she behaved.

“When I look back on it now, I can see how small and brainwashed I was. I can get a stomach ache from the fact that no adult around me reacted. I was an odd child. That is why I want to make a book so that teachers and those in the social services can read it and gain perspective. You might think “it’s okay that they are odd, they are Jehovah’s”, there is an aspect of religious freedom and you do not dare to get involved, because everyone has the right to believe. When I was little and started painting the sun black for us to paint asagudar at school, then you should have reacted.”

 

Kenny Kittum as a three year old
Jenny as a three year old

The fear of the family

It’s not just that Jenny was part of a sect that made her a vulnerable child – inside the four walls of the home she and her siblings lived in fear of their alcoholic and increasingly violent father. Throughout her life, Jenny has learned that it is more important to love God than to love her family, but where is God when Jenny is sexually abused by her father, or when her older sister was threatened with being thrown into the river because she tried to alarm the misconduct within the family to people outside the congregation?

Despite the beatings and threats to her life, her big sister stands up, and the case is finally taken to court. The father is sentenced, but due to several previous suicide attempts, the punishment is a suspended sentence with demands for mental health care instead of imprisonment. Noomi moves to a family home, but the other children are allowed to stay at home with the still violent father.

“Now I understand how important it was that my sister went and reported it to the police, although I thought it was disgusting when I was little. I thought she was ruining our lives. She was so incredibly brave”, says Jenny Küttim.

Jenny Küttim is an experienced investigative journalist at SVT. Press image.
Jenny Küttim is an experienced investigative journalist at SVT. Press image.

It will be some time before the sister’s choice becomes clear to Jenny. At the age of 10-11, she is admitted to hospital – she has problems with urinating, but the doctors can not find any explanation for this. Because she has so many siblings that her parents have to take care of, Jenny’s mom and dad only come to the hospital when there are doctor calls. It will be the start of her journey out of the sect – for the first time in her life she will spend extensive time with people who are not Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“It was the first time I was separated and was away for a long time from them, and from the movement’s literature. I had to talk to ordinary people all the time, and was somehow free. I got to do what I wanted.”

Discovering the world outside of Jehovah

At the hospital, Jenny begins to read books that are not part of Jehovah’s literature, and a new world opens up for her. By reading Anne Frank’s diary, she realizes that the Holocaust was not primarily about Jehovah’s Witnesses, something she had heard throughout her upbringing.

“I had been told that we were the important ones, and that God intervened to save us, that that was why Hitler died. They had put the whole Holocaust in a sectarian drama. It was the same with the theory of evolution – you live in a pseudo-scientific bubble.”

When Jenny later returns home from the hospital to her dysfunctional family, she makes a demand on her mother – if she does not leave her husband, Jenny will take her younger siblings and move out on her own. But she still has no intention of leaving the religion, it’s just the violence and abuse Jenny wants to get away from.

However, the fact that the family is actually moving away from the father is what makes her open her eyes to how controlling the congregation is. As a single woman, Jenny’s mother is guarded by the congregation elders, and the destructive structures remain.

“My mother allowed my big brother to continue beating us as Dad had done, so the layer of honour and control remained. It made me realize that I could not remain in the church. I was 13 years old.”

If you choose to leave Jehovah’s Witnesses, you can expect the family left in the sect to turn their backs on you — even your parents. But since Jenny has not had time to be baptized, she is allowed to stay at home, and keep in touch with her family. Even her big sister has contact with her mother, as she also left unbaptized.

Jenny at 16 years of age
Jenny at 16 years of age

Releases the book she herself needed

On April 28, Jenny Küttim released her book The Bearers of Truth, in which she addresses both her own upbringing as well as major systematic problems within Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is a book she herself had to read when she was a child”, she says.

“If I had found a book that gave me a perspective on the closed environment, I would have been able to get out more easily. Many children who remain in the sect can choose to borrow it from the library. They are not allowed to read anything within the organization, and above all not to look at anything. The book lives a longer life than a TV documentary had done.”

The box sent to “journalist Jenny Küttim” contained hundreds of classified letters sent from Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Scandinavia offices to leaders in Swedish congregations. The source who sent the letters had violated all rules within Jehovah’s Witnesses in order for Jenny to expose the dangerous structures within the sect. But to be able to do that, the journalist had to come to terms with everything she thought she knew as a child.

“I realized that I grew up in a filter bubble, before the filter bubbles existed. It became very difficult. I was indoctrinated when I was little and affected by it, and now I would come back and check their lies. It was very heavy for me.”

The cover of Jenny Küttim's book The Truth Carriers.
The cover of Jenny Küttim's book The Truth Carriers.

Witnesses of abuse

In working on the book, she has interviewed over 200 people who have told of their own experiences of abuse and violence within Jehovah’s Witnesses. 79 people testify that they were sexually abused as children, and 40 of them share the same male perpetrator – a man who has been able to continue year after year within the sect.

“Of course there is no violence in every single Jehovah’s family, but it is a very controlled environment where you can get away with things, and there is never anyone who slows you down. As a child and woman, you should never question, says Jenny and continues:

“There are no degrees in hell, it is as bad to swear as to exploit children. It is very difficult to grow up in. As an adult, you can choose what you want to be a part of, but not as a child.”

Jenny’s family members have been offered to read the book in advance – some of her siblings have done so, others have not. But her mother has refused. Today, only the journalist’s parents and her eldest sister remain in Jehovah’s Witnesses, the rest have left.

“It is raw to come out as a sect child, but it is very important not to think that those who are within are stupid creatures. It is about group thinking mechanisms that anyone can get caught up in and be blinded by.”