pineapple
Silver Meritorious Patron
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 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.
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.