by Leicester footballer Jamie Vardy’s wife has opened up about her wild childhood as a Jehovah’s Witness
The wife of Leicester footballer Jamie Vardy, Rebecca in an interview he gave, he spoke in detail about the difficult childhood years he experienced as a witness Jehovah.
THE 41 years Today Rebecca Vardy who has five children with her husband previously revealed that 12 her years was systematically sexually abused.
As he says he didn’t live as a child anniversary THE Christmas, he didn’t watch TV and books were censored. They also told her that if she did any mischief o God they would be furious with her. As a Jehovah’s Witness, he could not invite other children to play or sing with them at school. Classmates her.
His life and that of his extended family were ruled by omnipotent “elders” who had the right to control everything in their lives. The influence exercised by these men over the witnesses was so daunting that when the Rebecca told her mother she had been raped since she was 12, her parents killed her – fearing such revelation would bring shame to the family.
Speaking about his experience, he tells the dailymail: “I call it conversion. People are manipulated, they are brainwashed, it is a compulsive behavior that is passed down from generation to generation. When you’re in the middle of all this, it’s very hard to understand how unethical it all is. I spent my childhood in fear, I was told that we would die in Armageddon if we didn’t pray enough. I felt like I had to constantly strive for perfection so that God wouldn’t be angry with me.”
In the documentary of n Rebecca in the role of a journalist, he talks to former witnesses and gives even more details. “Jehovah’s Witnesses call someone who is not a witness a “person of the world”. I am the worst secular person because I had the courage – along with all the people who had the courage to tell me about my documentary – to denounce this religion and say that it is dangerous.
“You never know what goes on behind the closed doors of a house of witnesses”, he says first to continue to reveal their way of life: “I can’t describe to you how traumatic it was… At school we were taken out of class because we couldn’t sing the hymns or be present for any reference to religion, Christian beliefs. If it was someone’s birthday and everyone was singing “Happy Birthday”, we had to leave. It was humiliating. Degrading. Family life was also a minefield”
Elsewhere he continues: “When I got my period I was terrified and hid my underwear. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was disgusting, that I had done something wrong.”
And if someone swore on the TV, the screen would immediately go dark, with Rebecca thinking she “should pray more that night to appease God. Said: “When I hear things like that come out of my mouth today, I think, ‘what the hell.’ I don’t think you’ll ever get over it.”
At the age of 11, she felt that her family was completely under the control of the elders. Her mother suddenly left the Jehovah’s Witness community in their hometown of Norwich, taking Rebecca to live in Reading and then Oxfordshire.
Three decades later, Rebecca still doesn’t know exactly why her mother left their home, but she thinks it may be related. At some point, his mother came to excommunicate herself from the sect.
When they moved to Oxfordshire, Rebecca was abused for three years by a man known to the family but who was not a Jehovah’s Witness. She confided in her mother, who turned to a former Witness for guidance.
She says in the documentary: “What happened to me in my childhood still affects me every day. From the age of about 12, I was abused. And instead of supporting me, they blamed me, manipulated me telling me that going to the police wasn’t the best thing to do. I told my mother about the abuse I was going through and she cried. But he didn’t believe me. spoke to many members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses community. They told me that I had misinterpreted a loving touch. I knew not. I was fully aware of what was right and what was wrong. And they explained to me that I could possibly embarrass my family.”
Say that “basically manipulating her into thinking it wasn’t the best thing to do to go further and bring her to the police. The impact on me has been crazy.”
“I was just blaming myself. I felt like I wasn’t good enough, that I deserved it. It all comes back to that childhood pattern of striving for perfection.”
