Former Jehovah's Witness whose parents were SIBLINGS opens up about their twisted relationship - which saw them having SEVEN children together Vanessa, from Ohio, appeared on an episode of the We're All Insane podcast

Daily Mail/December 17, 2023

By Raven Saunt

A former Jehovah's Witness whose parents were siblings has opened up about their twisted relationship, which saw them having seven children together.

Vanessa, from northeast Ohio, appeared on a recent episode of the We're All Insane podcast alongside host Devorah Roloff.

The 46-year-old explained how she was 'one of seven children born to a brother and sister' - a fact she found out aged nine.

She said: 'I was in third grade. I didn't really understand whether that was right or wrong. I didn't know. My grandmother was happy that her children found somebody to love and it just kind of became normal.'

One of the couple's sons died at just three months old of walking pneumonia, but within a year they welcomed a fifth child.

Vanessa said the congregation advised her mom not to have any more kids at the risk of getting shunned - but she ignored their warnings.

Her parents welcomed their sixth child in 1989, when her mom was 40 years old, but the boy suffered a series of health issues from birth.

'There was a problem with him. Apparently he did not have a properly structured urinary system and he had a dead kidney...,' Vanessa detailed.

'He ended up living through everything. He had three surgeries [before he was six months old] and the dead kidney was removed. They were able to fix everything.'

Two of her siblings were also born with crossed eyes, which were successfully corrected, as she asserted: 'Other than that none of us kids really had any serious issues.'

Vanessa explained that despite her advancing years, her mom still 'wanted more babies.'

'My dad wasn't living there anymore so she was just going out in the evening to his apartment for the sole purpose of having a seventh child,' she said.

But after giving birth again despite the warnings she was forced to move congregations to avoid being shunned from the religion.

'She then, at 42 years old, wanted to try for an eighth baby but her brother said no. He was done,' she said.

Vanessa concluded: 'So my mother was pregnant by her brother a total of nine times - seven live births and two miscarriages - and still got to be a Jehovah Witness in good standing.'

But Vanessa explained: 'She wasn't that motherly. I honestly don't know why she wanted so many children.

'There came a point where I thought the whole thing just became a little like a fetish to her because she liked talking about her love for her brother....

'By the time I was about fourth grade I knew how my dad performed in bed, I knew what kind of size he was, my mother liked talking about what she did with her brother even to children.'

Delving deeper into what it was like being raised as a member of the religion, Vanessa said: 'There's no holidays. There's no Mother's Day, no Father's Day, no Fourth of July.

'They're allowed to celebrate their anniversary and the memorial of Jesus' death. Those are their only things they are allowed to celebrate.'

She continued: 'You have to go to Kingdom Hall meetings three days a week and then they want you to preach - I think at least 10 hours a month you are supposed to go knock on doors.

'We weren't really allowed to have friends outside of the religion but I didn't really have friends in the religion either.'

She said people got shunned for 'smoking cigarettes and gambling' - among other things - before revealing that she 'didn't get any education after seventh grade.'

'I was grieving my education. I loved school. And now I'm home 24/7. Basically I'm just at home taking care of the babies and that's about it,' Vanessa said.

'I was being forced only to have Jehovah Witness friends but at a point they don't want to be my friend.

'I'm not working towards baptism. I'm a teenager who does not believe in any of it so some of their parents don't want them to hang around me.'

It was around this time that a 21-year-old man, who was part of the congregation, 'started taking an interest' in the then 13-year-old Vanessa.

'I felt I was grown in my head anyway... so I kind of soaked it all in. This guy wanted my attention. He liked me and at that time I didn't see anything wrong with it,' she said.

She candidly continued: 'Nobody said anything there like that it was wrong or anything.

'[One woman who was a Jehovah Witness] walked up on him actually with his hand in my pants - I'm a kid, he's a man - and she didn't kick him out, didn't report him, didn't call the police.'

Vanessa said that the older man was eventually brought in for a judicial hearing, but no action was taken, adding: 'In my mind, I thought he was my boyfriend so I was happy they didn't punish him.

'I was kind of happy the elders didn't do what they were supposed to do and didn't have him arrested or anything because I got to be with him longer - which now sounds pretty messed up.'

But eventually Vanessa, then aged 15, started getting 'really fed up' of the abuse from her mother and the older man - before making a drastic decision in February 1993.

'I just decided I'm not going to be here anymore one way or another,' she said.

'I decided one night either I'm running away or I'm going take my life and didn't know which because I have a bunch of siblings and I love them a lot so I didn't know what to do.'

Vanessa ultimately decided to run away which she described as a very difficult decision: 'My baby brothers were only two and three years old at that time so that was hard on me because I can't take them.

'I'm holding them in my arms before I went out crying and I'm like I don't want to leave them because I know they're going to get abused but I couldn't stay.

'Even though I was thinking suicidal things I didn't want to die. If I stayed I'm going to die because I can't do it so I had to leave the babies.'

She later was told about her mother's reaction to her being a runaway: 'She just acted like she she didn't care, like she didn't love [me] at all, she was just mad.

'She wasn't worried. She was mad that [I] embarrassed her, not worried that [I] was safe.'

Asked if she thinks that Jehovah's Witnesses covered issues up, Vanessa said: 'With my family they did....

'They brushed off the relationship I had with that grown man there and then they brushed off my brother when he reported child abuse.'

Having run away with a Jehovah Witness from another congregation, who was two years her senior, the pair married and she fell pregnant - all within two months of leaving.

Vanessa welcomed two more children by the time she was 20 years old and is now also a grandmother.

She explained that in the years that followed she battled a sex addiction, adding: 'I guess a lot of people coming out of that cult end up repressed or probably like me not knowing what to do about sex at all.

'I didn't realize until recently that I actually had my mother's rage. She raged at everybody because of her childhood pain and I was using sex to not feel my rage.

'I couldn't heal, I kept making bad decisions, I didn't even know I was that furious. I had to feel something - something strong - so that's what I did.'

Vanessa concluded: 'It's only been probably the last five years that I actually like who I am.'

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