Videoland Documentary "Jehovah: Van God Los" Examines Life Inside the Dutch Jehovah's Witnesses

On 13 March 2024, the Dutch streaming service Videoland — the on-demand platform of broadcaster RTL — premiered "Jehovah: Van God Los," a three-part documentary series about life inside the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Netherlands. The series was a Videoland Original, built almost entirely on first-person testimony from people who had left the organization.

According to the producer NewBe and the broadcaster BNNVARA, the makers located 57 former Jehovah's Witnesses willing to describe their experiences, of whom 29 appear on screen. The filmmakers combined those interviews with personal audio recordings and home-video footage. The series was directed by Henk van der Aa and produced by NewBe for Videoland.

What the series examines

The documentary centers on several recurring subjects raised by the former members it interviews. Reviewers and the producer describe its main threads as: child sexual abuse within the community and how such reports are handled internally — including accounts that victims were discouraged from going to the police; disfellowshipping and shunning ("verstoting") and the resulting loss of contact with family who remain in the faith; the apocalyptic teaching that devotion to the organization is necessary to survive Armageddon; and the upbringing of children within the group.

The VPRO film platform Cinema.nl and moviemeter.nl both frame the series around these themes, drawn from the participants' own accounts rather than from an external investigation.

Reception

Dutch reviews were broadly positive about the strength of the testimonies while more mixed on the presentation. VPRO's Cinema.nl rated the series 4 out of 5, and BNNVARA's reviewer described the accounts as gripping. Several critics, including at serietotaal.nl, judged the ominous music and slow-motion styling unnecessary given the weight of the interviews themselves.

The organization's response

Asked to respond, the management of Jehovah's Witnesses said it could not assess the series because it had not watched it. In an English rendering circulated by the ex-Jehovah's-Witness advocacy site avoidjw.org, the statement read: "We have not seen the documentary. Logically, we cannot currently assess the extent to which the content is journalistically balanced, factual and objective." The original Dutch wording of that statement could not be confirmed against a mainstream outlet.

Background: the Utrecht abuse study

The series arrives against the backdrop of earlier official scrutiny in the Netherlands. A study of sexual abuse within the Dutch Jehovah's Witness community was carried out by Utrecht University, led by Prof. Kees van den Bos, and commissioned through the WODC, the research arm of the Ministry of Justice and Security. It followed a 2018 motion in the Tweede Kamer, the House of Representatives.

The report was published on 23 January 2020. According to NOS and the WODC, 751 people shared experiences through a contact point set up for the research; roughly 80 percent said they had reported abuse to congregation elders and about 30 percent to police, and respondents rated the elders' handling of their reports far lower than the police's. The report remained public after a legal challenge, Utrecht University said. The foundation Reclaimed Voices, which advocates for abuse victims within the Jehovah's Witness community, pressed for the research and was consulted by the researchers.

Titling of the series varies across outlets — "Jehovah: Van God Los" and "Jehova - Van God Los" both appear — while Videoland's own styling is "Jehovah - Van God Los."