John was raised the youngest of seven children in a Jehovah Witness family in Ballina, County Mayo. “It is a sort of fundamentalist Christian sect, non-Trinitarian, quite sectarian,” John explains. From early childhood, he remembers attending meetings and doing bible study almost every day. He would go out on field service with his parents and siblings, knocking door-to-door, preaching their beliefs.
Until John was 16 he still believed in the Jehovah Witness doctrine. Then he began having doubts, in part related to his sexuality, but also to the doctrine itself.