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Bent Corydon talks about "L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman"

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
I don't have a horse in this "race", but I just want to say that I don't find fault with Calimule dredging up despicable abuses of the public by Riverside staff and perhaps Bent himself.

Marty and Mike were railed against for years here for not revealing "all". Why should Bent get a pass?

I also think Cali's main point that not all missions were as "successful" as Riverside, because they lacked some of the "hard sell" (bank loan fraud?), has a kernel of truth.

Speaking of loan frauds, I'm reminded of the crazy credit card scam in Sweden (where Scientologists were co-signing each other's credit card applications).

When Scientology finds a weakness, it crashes right through the door and consumes all.
It isn't that he brought it up -- I know it happened -- it was the insinuating way he attacked Bent's character, and then when I questioned him about it, the flood of invective that came out. And the contention that Bent should have let CoS have the building that Bent himself paid for is ridiculous.

I was worked over by a Riverside reg once myself -- although I was staff. They must have been struggling for GI that week. I'd like to say that I stood him off by sheer strength of character, but that wouldn't be true. If I'd had any money, he'd have gotten it. I just didn't have any to give him. (I had no credit cards. I was young. It was the 1970's.) So I know how they could put the screws to you.

I have no objection to people discussing the abuses at R'side or elsewhere. What upset me were the claims that 1) Bent was a person of poor character 2) That he compared unfavorably to some "better caliber" of mission holder, none of whom have written a book exposing scn or spoken out against it 3) That Bent should have let CoS take the building he had paid for and fixed up, because "there was always the understanding that missions would eventually become orgs" (paraphrase).

In between replying to CaliMule's posts on this thread, I read some of his other posts, which I've mostly passed over before now as tl;dr. Try reading some of these, and see what impression you get. He tries to bludgeon you with his literary brilliance while dropping little hints and insinuations. Everything is full of twists and turns and qualifications. There is at least one very direct attack on anti-scngsts. I consider myself very tolerant of other viewpoints, but from what I've seen of @CaliMule, the guy is bad news.
 

Veda

Sponsor
It isn't that he brought it up -- I know it happened -- it was the insinuating way he attacked Bent's character, and then when I questioned him about it, the flood of invective that came out. And the contention that Bent should have let CoS have the building that Bent himself paid for is ridiculous.

I was worked over by a Riverside reg once myself -- although I was staff. They must have been struggling for GI that week. I'd like to say that I stood him off by sheer strength of character, but that wouldn't be true. If I'd had any money, he'd have gotten it. I just didn't have any to give him. (I had no credit cards. I was young. It was the 1970's.) So I know how they could put the screws to you.

I have no objection to people discussing the abuses at R'side or elsewhere. What upset me were the claims that 1) Bent was a person of poor character 2) That he compared unfavorably to some "better caliber" of mission holder, none of whom have written a book exposing scn or spoken out against it 3) That Bent should have let CoS take the building he had paid for and fixed up, because "there was always the understanding that missions would eventually become orgs" (paraphrase).

In between replying to CaliMule's posts on this thread, I read some of his other posts, which I've mostly passed over before now as tl;dr. Try reading some of these, and see what impression you get. He tries to bludgeon you with his literary brilliance while dropping little hints and insinuations. Everything is full of twists and turns and qualifications. There is at least one very direct attack on anti-scngsts. I consider myself very tolerant of other viewpoints, but from what I've seen of @CaliMule, the guy is bad news.

Tried accessing CaliMule's posts and, apparently, they're inaccessible, at least to me. "This member limits who may view his profile."

All I can see is that during late October of last year CaliMule appeared.

HC19Event-e1546138896912.jpg

Did this annoy someone?, or was it something more recent such as being photographed with Homer Schomer, Bill Franks, Tony Ortega, etc.?, or something else?
 

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
Tried accessing CaliMule's posts and, apparently, they're inaccessible, at least to me. "This member limits who may view his profile."
Use the search box on the upper right. Leave the first box blank and type the name in the second box. (If it tries to automatically insert a comma after the name, delete the comma.)
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
3) That Bent should have let CoS take the building he had paid for and fixed up, because "there was always the understanding that missions would eventually become orgs" (paraphrase).
Then again, how did Bent get the money to pay for the buildings? By squeezing the cash out of Scientologists by whatever means necessary.
 

pineapple

Silver Meritorious Patron
Then again, how did Bent get the money to pay for the buildings? By squeezing the cash out of Scientologists by whatever means necessary.
True. But why should Bent give the building to the cult which encouraged this behavior, leaving himself impoverished and the cult victorious?
 

Veda

Sponsor
Then again, how did Bent get the money to pay for the buildings? By squeezing the cash out of Scientologists by whatever means necessary.
Have you listened to the Bob Mongiello video? Does he sound like someone who would have engaged in horrendous abuses?

At least listen to 21:16 - 22: 22 of the below video about the first Riverside Mission at Mulberry and Kane Street:


Do you really believe that that mission made its money with which to buy the Riverside Mission by "squeezing the cash out of Scientologists by any means necessary" ?

Don't allow yourself to be a "useful idiot" for CaliMule's "Dead Agent" style hit piece.
 

JustSheila

Crusader
Remember though, he's a second generation victim of the cult.
Or so he says. He is also a grown man or woman who enjoys sharing sexually perverted thoughts about underage minors on public forums - and deviant posts and actions of that nature have nothing to do with any claimed Scientology history he may or may not have. That makes him a creep, simple as that.

Some other things I remember about Riverside Mission:

The Riverside Mission had quite a lot of money on account at AOLA at one time, in the neighborhood of $30,000-$50,000 or so. They sent between 6 to 15 staff to AOLA for OT levels with those monies on account. I'm sorry I don't remember the names or the exact number of staff more specifically. Michael Silverman was the reg. Once the original monies were used and those staff were completed, the mission stopped making advance payments. The money was used.

Riverside public preferred the Riverside Mission to the Riverside org. I asked a few why (We were always trying to strike up conversations with public in AOLA Treasury, hoping to get a book sale or whatever...) and was told it was bigger, busier and more fun. Also that it had more auditors and a good courseroom.

Some of the Riverside public started at Riverside org then went to the mission, but most did not.

I'm not going to comment on whether Bent Corydon was a good or bad person. He wrote a great book and hung onto what he owned and stood up to a lot of unfair pressure to do that and that means a lot in my book. Bent also paid for a few staff to get through their OT levels, though, and ran the place well enough that most locals preferred the mission to the org.

He was also never accused of any sexual misconduct that I ever heard about, and I would have heard about it.

The USGO story is that there was some legal "flap" that apparently started out small but COS blew it up to some huge legal thing to protect its brand or to keep COS out of the papers or some such and took over the handling and botched the case. Apparently it went on for years, too. I don't remember what it was about. There may have been more than one case. COS has a way of racking up huge legal bills with the "attack everyone who doesn't think you're the shit" policies and they still do this. It's always been the way and at the time, USGO managed to clear out all the Sea Org org's individual reserves on legal bills (i.e., Flag Service Org reserves and AOLA Reserves) which have not existed since.

There were other Sea Org missions to Riverside Mission besides the legal ones, though. Missions to "get ethics in," "put a head on a pike," etc., yadda yadda.

My only memories of Bent Corydon are as I've described. He rarely paid on the USGO bills. Maybe he paid a few thousand the first one or two times I called to try to collect, because at first he was friendlier. After that, he refused and he had plenty to say to me about USGO and COS at the time, too, which is the version of the legal flap above that I heard from Bent. That was memorable to me because at the time, pretty much nobody talked to or about the GO that way; they were too terrified to say anything negative out loud. Whatever else others might say about Bent Corydon, he had genuine courage and held his ground like nobody I'd ever seen before then.

After Bent stopped paying USGO, B1 (Val Lisa) tried sending people there personally to collect money. I don't remember if they got more payments out of him or not.

I have no idea whether he paid cash for his Mission building or had a mortgage. That was before my time and not something that was mentioned in his USGO Debtor folder.
 
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