EDIT: Everyone seems to be taking me the wrong way here. I have no problem with anyone voluntarily choosing to cut someone off, that of course is a perfectly reasonable and legal right. Choosing to stop talking to someone is absolutely fine. Being forced by a church to stop talking to someone who you'd otherwise like to talk to is not.
Original post:
Most people know of Jehovah's Witnesses as the seemingly harmless people who knock at your door and try to give you a magazine every now and then.
What outsiders often don't know it that the religion is actually an incredibly high control group, with the leadership dictating much of the adherents daily life, and they try to exert control over people even after they leave the faith.
Let me introduce you to "disfellowshipping". Basically, disfellowshipping is a program of enforced shunning. You can be disfellowshipped for any number of "sins" (from sexual contact, to drinking, to charging too much for a bride price), or for voluntarily leaving the religion, for example when you realise that the faith is in fact not true - that Armageddon isn't coming tomorrow and God isn't about to slaughter 8 billion people.
And I mean enforced shunning. Jehovah's Witnesses are prohibited from even speaking with a disfellowshipped person (and this includes people who's only "sin" is to voluntarily leave the religion). Even family. The only exception is if a minor child is disfellowshipped while living with parents, or in the case of a family emergency (ie, you're allowed to phone a disfellowshipped person and tell them their mother has died). The shunning is enforced until once returns to the faith and spends 6-12 months proving their repentance before they're again allowed to speak with anyone. Yes, they literally must attend the church for 6-12 months in complete silence, without as much as a hello to any other members.
Anyone caught in contact with a disfellowshipped person is liable to be disfellowshipped themselves.
Most JWs are raised in the religion, and are strongly discouraged from forming bonds with anyone outside the faith, even with non-believing family. This means that often one's entire social network, literally everyone they know, is a JW.
So leaving the faith comes with the punishment of losing literally every person you've ever known. Your parents, your siblings, your best friends since childhood. It drives many to suicide.
There are around 60,000 JWs in Australia, and on average 1% might be disfellowshipped every year. That means that every day 1 or 2 people are literally cut off from everything. 1 or 2 Australians receive punishment from a church daily for the "crime" of realising the faith isn't true.
How is this happening in Australia?
