I think the origins of the Church's current formal or tacit policies on children can be traced back to LRH in general over the course of his lifetime but the major turning point was probably in 1976 with the PAC Cadet Org eval. This is covered extensively in several threads but I think the 1981 Eval is particularly interesting for the explicit way it portrays children more as property of the Church and parents as a kind of institutional opposition to Church interests. This is a common theme in LRH's correspondence regarding child care at Flag also. They were beginning to require that Sea Org staff CSW to have children under LRH and approval of course would have been based on stats, a review of ethics folders for transgressions vs commendations, value to the group, ie. cold calculating bean counting, etc. Banning children eventually was an inevitability. The cost, disruption to productivity and liability of supporting children in their early years before they could be put to work was just unacceptable to LRH. In 1976, LRH would be dead in 10 years and I think he was becoming aware of his own mortality. His window for amassing wealth and stamping his name in history was closing - children had to go. DM was in the CMO, working closely with LRH, already in 1976 and he would have been increasingly more familiar with this progression as Gale, and other Messengers around him and on R traffic that he would be managing for LRH as Messenger On Duty, tried to handle the deteriorating situation as best they could with limited resources, limited authority and resistance directly from LRH himself. We should not be surprised that he would emulate LRH's attitudes about this and take it to a whole new level as he was virtually raised with them.
What is astounding is how anyone could think that this was all DM's doing and LRH had nothing to do with it. The poor Scientology public can be so naive.
http://www.exscn.net/forum/threads/...tablishment-eval-how-kids-were-treated.35933/
Naive feels to me to be the wrong word, ignorant might be better, as I was a child and was unaware of this personally. I saw in the last couple years before LRH's death and it intensified shortly after DM seized power/came to power, there was a real crack down on children within the COS. I recall watching a snipit of a film of LRH saying children were of great value to the church and any religion in fact. Indoctorate them when they're young, this is how you grow the church, you instill the beliefs from birth and you're more likely to raise scientologists who live, eat and breathe scientology. Not sure when this was recorded, it was an old black and white film, and it was during one of the many COS gatherings I (as a child) got to attend. I had seen, probably starting in 1983, families disappearing overnight, they were there one day and gone the next, no goodbyes or anything. Nothing said about them, no explanations given, nothing, they were just gone. Then came 1988 when my mother was declared. The only warning we had was from my step-father at the time, he warned my mother DM was getting rid of families with more than 2 children. This is probably where the idea/thought/understanding that DM was the one behind it originated.
When he warned her, she went immediately into action, was able to get my step-father to take custody of my older sibling as they were already in the sea org, my younger siblings were given to their father leagally, and there I was. I came with her because although she didn't want to tare me away from the only world I had known, she could not find someone to take custody of me. I moved with my mom, and though I still have issues with how it happened, I lucked out. My mom found the love of her life, I had a Daddy who loved me so unconditionally and I can look back and see it was a blessing in disguise, but the hurt and such is still there around losing that world.
Again, not trying to argue anything here, but peice things together. There is what I know, from experiences and then there's what I feel, and some of it still hurts. I don't want to hurt anymore when I think about my siblings, I also don't want to detach from the love and memories. I don't want Scientology to be able to steal that away too.