Bill & Julia Blackmore

Bill & Julia Blackmore

26 Bridge Street

Penistone Sheffield

South Yorkshire S36 6AJ

Tel 01226 762660 Fax 761386

6 June 2000

01904 426712

FAO: The Appeal Committee

Tony Evans, Bev Gibbons, Robert Strickland

C/o Tony Evans

6 Asquith Avenue

York

YO31 0PZ

Dear Tony,

Re: Judicial Appeal Hearing

Thank you for your letter dated the 1st June confirming receipt of our letters. You said a ‘more detailed reply’ was being prepared. We were keenly looking forward to this because we hoped that there might at last be a serious attempt to deal with matters properly. We then received your letter of 3rd June. We were immediately encouraged to find out that you have each read all the correspondence that has been generated so far.

Then it took a nosedive.

Your appeal for our confidence and trust was based on nothing other than your own claims to “experience”. Nothing else. However, there is no substance in this. With respect, you are all ‘unknowns’ to us. We know nothing of your tenure of service, your qualifications, or your experience. You are silent on this. You refer to a variety of “assignments”, but don’t give any details. We haven’t a clue whether your collective experience has any relevance at all in our case. It may - it may not. We asked you for personal details so that we could make our own enquiries. We asked because we wanted to come to a valued judgement of our own. However, we can’t conclude anything without information. Now we’re at this stage we’re not prepared to take things on face value any more – not when the stakes are so high, and the previous trio of elders botched things up so monumentally.

You state that we “will be treated with the same respect, dignity, and justice that each member of the committee expects to receive.” Again, we don’t know you. We don’t know what you personally might expect in the way of respect, dignity, and justice. We’re not in a position to make a valued judgement on that. We can only tell you what our expectations were - and the reality of what we actually experienced…!!

What did we expect?

That the Bible would be respected as the ultimate basis for making decisions. We expected that all the witnesses involved would be dignified by allowing them to be questioned, or at least heard. We expected that the judicial committee would practice justice by honouring the promises they made to us. We expected that the issues we were told we could raise would be raised at some point in our discussions. We expected that justice would call for all the facts to be gathered before any conclusions were arrived at, or any decisions made.

We expected that the Society would dignify our letters with answers of substance rather than simply brush them off with a bland and cursory stock letter. We expected that scriptural principles would be dignified by allowing them to take precedence over vague and indeterminate “association rules”. We expected that members of the committee would respect our confidentiality rather than recklessly breaking confidence, thereby setting off a whole series of malicious rumours. We expected that the statements made by Society spokesmen about us might have been more than undignified rhetoric. We expected that someone, somewhere, sometime would actually sit down with us to discuss what was at the heart of what troubled us.

We could go on. The list is almost endless. Unfortunately, all these expectations were unfulfilled.

You continue in your letter by stating that we have “no reason to doubt your integrity.” Forgive us for reacting to this comment with incredulity. We can’t believe that anyone could read our correspondence and then make a statement like this…!! With all due respect, we have every reason to doubt your integrity, and we expressed as clearly as we could our reasons for this. However, since you have collectively missed the point we will re-state our position for you. Hopefully this will clarify the reasons for our lack of confidence.

Our first-hand experience of the ‘judicial process’ has given us the basis for our suspicions and misgivings. Regardless of what they write, or what their spokesmen say, we know that the Society is pulling the strings directly in our case. Elders on the committees have told us this, and we have it from other reliable and independent sources. That being the case we suspect that you are simply “Yes Men” pulled in for a specific purpose. We think you are there to simply go through the motions - to give a sort of perceived credibility to what is in reality a predetermined outcome.

We believe the Society wants rid of us because we’re asking (or attempting to ask) embarrassing questions. If allowed an airing these questions in themselves will start skeletons rattling and will make people think. They wish to avoid this at all costs. In an attempt to prevent it we have been made the subjects of a show-trial, which is increasingly displaying all the characteristics and hallmarks of a pantomime. We suspect this charade is being played out merely for the benefit of the “rank and file” in the congregations. They can be shown the elders diligently at work sweeping the congregation clean, etc.

The simple truth is that Penistone elders laid down guidelines for us after we had stopped attending meetings. They said they had no problem with us telling people why we’d stopped going if we were approached and asked…!! We stuck to this - and the elders know it…!!

Being blunt about it, we know we are now viewed as dangerous. Reports across the region of individuals and families who have stopped associating are somehow ‘credited’ to us. Out of fear and self-protection the Society wants us officially labelled as ‘apostate’ as soon as legalistically possible. It is vital to them that we are disfellowshipped without having any of the issues sounded at all. Once this is done our name and reputation will stink in the Witness community. We’ll be denigrated and besmirched by JW’s everywhere, and they will be forced to shun us in accord with Society policy. If they don’t - they’ll be threatened with precisely the same treatment. The moral pressure to conform is big medicine, and most can’t take the sort of stigmatisation that results from disfellowshipping. So the pressure usually works!

We hope these observations will leave you in no doubt as to the reasons for our lack of confidence.

At this juncture may we refer to the comments in your final paragraph where you say that you “hope this clarifies the relevant questions from your letters.”

What? Is this some kind of sick joke? Will you please re-read our letters and your replies? You haven’t addressed any of our questions. Not a single one…!! We can’t think you were serious when you wrote that sentence, or are we missing something? You refer to relevant questions. All our questions are relevant. We wouldn’t have raised them if they weren’t. In fact, their relevance is all the more acute when we consider the consequences to our family and friends once an announcement of our disfellowshipping is made!

You state earlier that we can be confident that “if serious wrongdoing on the part of any dedicated, baptised member of the congregation comes to light, it will be handled in the appropriate manner.” We have absolutely no confidence in this statement whatsoever. What we have seen of the implementation of the ‘judicial process’ in our case so far borders on the criminal, and we use that word advisedly. To tell us to “not concern ourselves further with this issue” is cold comfort indeed. We have attempted to be completely open and honest throughout this affair and we are being castigated for it. It seems that others can play verbal gymnastics with the truth, but because of prominence or position it is swept under the carpet. This is shameful and wrong.

Can none of you see that fundamental truth and freedom of conscience is at stake here – those are the big issues. If they aren’t, why has no one the resolve and fortitude to grasp the nettle on this? Why will nobody look at a single question that has troubled us? Can’t you see that it is a disgrace that sincere, God-fearing people like us can be brought to this point without a single prime issue having ever been addressed? (Read the 15 Feb 2000 Watchtower article about Cyril Lucaris.)

Why is everyone afraid to allow themselves to ask the simple question - Why?

Don’t conclude from any of these comments, or from our other letters, that we have become cynical. We haven’t. We have been forced into becoming realists, though. Also, the Society and you men are forcing us into circumstances that are becoming increasingly distressing. We won’t buckle under the pressure and walk away from this though – not with our name and reputation at stake.

No, we’re not cynical - but we are saddened. Saddened because almost everything we held dear has proven to be nothing more than a clever counterfeit. Paying lip service to the ‘truth’ is no substitute for the real thing!

May we conclude by stating that the 26th July is the most convenient of the dates you suggest. However, since you seemed to overlook the final comments in our last letter we remind you, and emphasise that this date cannot be confirmed until we get a detailed reply to the questions we have asked! When we get this we can determine our general course of action, and specifically address the issue of whom we will bring in as witnesses.

Once again we await your response.

Yours sincerely,

Bill & Julia Blackmore

CC.  Newman & Bond (Solicitors)

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