Chessa Manion insists she's not looking for revenge, or to spark an ugly confrontation, when she goes to Berks County, Pa., this weekend.
The plan that she and a group of former Jehovah's Witnesses have cobbled together is fairly simple: They'll gather in front of the Reading Santander Arena Sunday with signs and artwork, and try to catch the eyes of some current followers of the millenarian religion who will enter the building for a convention that's expected to draw thousands from Pennsylvania and Maryland congregations.
For some of the former Witnesses, it'll be a chance to share painful experiences that they tried to bury for years _ in Manion's case, the rape that she suffered as a 5-year-old at the hands of a teenage Witness in a small Illinois town in 1994. Others hope to encourage active Witnesses to question the organization's leaders, who have responded to a growing number of child sex abuse cases around the world with denials and instructions to destroy records that could be harmful in litigation.
"We just want to have an open dialogue," said Manion, 29, who now lives in Delaware and organized the protest.
Former Witnesses from 13 countries attended similar protests at a Jehovah's Witnesses convention this month in London after British authorities' received reports of more than 100 sexual assaults on children at numerous congregations. (The organization's officials have declined interview requests.)
Martin and Jennifer Haugh will be among those in attendance in Pennsylvania Sunday. The couple has become the most recognizable former Witnesses in the state since telling the Philadelphia and Daily News this year about the 2005 molestation of their daughter in a York County kingdom hall.
The Haughs said elders discouraged them from contacting police about their daughter's abuse, even they though they knew the identity of her alleged attacker, a relative named John Logan Haugh. (The 26-year-old was arrested in May, and charged with two counts of indecent assault on a minor. He's receiving therapy as part of a stipulated court agreement that was filed in York County this month.)
When the Haughs decided to leave the religion and seek justice for their daughter, they were shunned by their closest friends and family, some of whom even held a wake in their memory.
"I think many of us who have left have this feeling of, 'I have to do something, but what?'" Jennifer Haugh said.
Establishing a presence outside of a convention felt like a logical step, especially at a time when the general public has shown increased interest in religious sex-abuse scandals after a Pennsylvania grand jury report on decades of molestation in Catholic dioceses across the state.
Haugh knows that Witness leaders label people like her _ former followers who question some of the organization's rules, like one that requires sexual abuse survivors to produce two eyewitnesses to support their claims _ as "apostates," nonbelievers who can't be trusted.
"We're not going to be shouting and waving signs, because we're not going to feed into the apostate trope that we're all possessed by Satan," Haugh said. "We're going with the intention of trying to open some minds, and posing questions that someone could Google later."
