OKLAHOMA
Reveal – The Center for Investigative Reporting
By Trey Bundy / July 30, 2015
Early this morning, Debbie McDaniel stepped out into her backyard to find her patio, windows, doors and furniture tagged with ominous warnings written in black marker.
McDaniel was just hours away from being the face of a Reveal investigation showing how Jehovah’s Witnesses hide sexual abuse from law enforcement agencies and banish those who speak up about it.
On one stretch of concrete, a vandal wrote, “Watchtower Knows All,” a possible reference to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, the parent corporation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, McDaniel said. Two of the messages included the initials JW’s, which she suspects were meant to stand for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Also written on the patio: “We’ll be watching you in Mexico too.” McDaniel had planned a trip to Mexico this weekend but is now thinking of canceling it.
“They wrote on my bedroom door window, 6 feet from where I was sleeping, ‘JW’s for the final win,’ ” said McDaniel, who grew up in McAlester, Oklahoma, and says she was abused as a child by an elder in her congregation. Since she was expelled three years ago, she said, she has been shunned by her family and harassed by the Witnesses in the form of anonymous threats and hate letters.
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