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Church of Scientology sends AIDS patient to chiropractor for treatment.

Zhongjianren

Patron with Honors
Church of Scientology sends Freewinds AIDS patient to chiropractor for treatment.

Freewinds: Off purpose, off course
http://www.scientology-cult.com/bill-straass/479-freewinds-off-purpose-off-course.html

Freewinds: off purpose, off course

Sunday, 21 August 2011 10:48

I first met Bill Straass in 1984 when I joined staff at the FSO. Bill helped run the largest NOTs HGCs on the planet. I ran the Solo - OT III line, so I saw a lot of Bill and he was a great friend. In 1989, Bill joined Freewinds Crew to become the Mechanics Chief. Bill was in the ship org and was in charge of all things mechanical and kept the Engine Room running and the Freewinds afloat. - Thoughtful

bill-straass-at-freewinds-1991.jpg

Bill Straass, Steve Davis, Scott Campbell and K.G. Beall in 1991 on board the Freewinds following a promotion ceremony.


Freewinds: Off purpose, off course

I was in the SO for 23 years, first at FSO and then as the Mechanics Chief Freewinds. I received a bad blood transfusion in 1989 when the ship was in Curacao. This was not spotted until 13 years later in 2002, as the fatigue got worse and worse. By that point, I was more than half dead and was finally diagnosed with AIDS.

Although they knew what was happening, ship personnel did not inform me of the situation nor the reason behind my rapidly declining health. I was simply called up to the Medical Liaison office with the Captain and Chief Officer there, and told that I was going for further testing to see Dr Denk in LA. To make matters worse, Captain Napier told me not to tell my wife that I was going because "You know how women can be about things like this." I thought WTF? I'm going to go to my cabin now and pack in front of her and then disappear in the morning without telling her? I objected and the Captain said “OK, tell her."

So, in May, 2002 I arrived in LA to see Dr Gene Denk, “for further testing.” When I walked into his office he took one look at me and a shadow passed by his face. “They didn’t tell you, did they?” he asked.

“Tell me what?” was my reply.

Dr Denk told me I needed to go to the AIDS clinic in LA. However, the Freewinds sent me instead to a chiropractor in Sacramento who was not even a licensed medical doctor. The is the equivalent of being sentenced to death. This chiropractor advised me not to take the standard medical treatment as it was “worse than HIV."

For the next 6 months, even while I was dying, my wife was held prisoner on the ship. She was told by Captain Mike Napier that I “would be dead soon” so she should just end cycle on me. She petitioned ED INT for a 1 year LOA to handle my situation, my thoughts being that we would both return when I was better. The petition was approved (She sent me a copy with ED INT's signature on it.) The reply of the Chief Engineer to her was "I DON'T CARE IF YOU HAVE AN APPROVED PETITION FROM COB, THE CAPTAIN WILL NEVER LET YOU GO. I thought WTF? THe ship won't take an order in writing from COB?

Thanks to their brutal opinion of staff members who had dedicated their lives to helping others, that statement became a self-fulfilling prophecy. She finally got off the ship when it was almost too late.

(Speaking of attitude, it was just part of the same suppressive attitude dramatized by the CO CMO Ship who ordered a shipmate of mine to “Get some thugs together and beat up staff members.” We always thought that that was completely off the rails. But now it seems pretty clear where such ideas were coming from — directly from the top, as in David Miscavige.

Some readers may wonder why I didn’t follow Dr. Denk’s recommendations in the first place. The reason is simple, Sea Org members do not choose their own medical treatment. They have a billion-year contract so death is expected anyway and after 21 years Leave of Absence the idea is to return to duty.

My Fitness Board originally reflected that exact sentiment. It stated that I was granted an extended leave of absence and was to return to duty “as soon as possible next lifetime.” I was told this by the person who wrote the issue. However, someone — probably IJC — removed the “next lifetime” part. In other words they were okay with me dying as long as I agreed to come back later. It was the easiest LOA I received in the SO.

The worst thing about it was not what happened to me. I was willing to die to clear the planet, as is everyone who signs a billion year contract. I lied to protect the church from it’s crimes. My wife called me daily, begging me to do something to get her out of there as she was taking abuse because she would not just let me die as ordered. I went to LA and talked to IJC several times and wrote reports. I even asked the Port Captain Ludwig Alpers if the plan was to hold her there until I was dead. He did not give me an answer but said that he would get back to me. I never heard back from him.

I called him but the receptionist on the Ship had orders not to connect me with anyone aboard except the Chief Officer who never gave me any data, saying it had nothing to do with him. The worst thing about it is that these actions are being committed in the name of LRH who was totally against such actions. This is as cynical as the sign at the gates of the death camp at Aushwitz, which read “And work will set you free.”
bill-strauss-and-scott-campbell.jpg

Bill Straass and Scott Campbell wrangling a 2-ton crank shaft into the Freewind.

I received a brief review at AOLA at my own expense but they didn’t really want to hear the truth. The MAA made my wife and myself sign agreements that we would not say anything negative about the Sea Org, AOLA or the Freewinds or we would be slapped with a non-enturbulation order.

I was under no ethics action, yet I was told that I could not go to the HGC but would have to wait to be called for session in Dept 3.

I had to push through my own Fitness Board as — why waste the effort on a corpse? During this time I went to talk to IJC in LA as my wife was still being held against her will on the ship.

When the Findings were written they stated that I was ineligible for SO membership "solely for medical reasons" ( I had already spent over half of this lifetime in the SO; a little late to decide that I didn't qualify, and my stats were up for many years.

As an aside, I often did Quartermaster duty at the gangway as well as my own post. For several months around 1998 I was surprised to see that the QM desk had been turned around so the the QM, instead of facing outward to observe external threats to the ship, now faced inward. Obviously, the real threats were now considered to be people on the ship who wanted to leave at any cost, not the anyone who wanted to sneak on board. It had been re-designed obviously to keep people from escaping from the ship.

My last auditor on the ship was Joan Heller. In the last session she got a read on PTP and steered me to the statement that I was dying.

After I was so weak I could not stand up or put my clothes on and was hallucinating (I told my wife that K.G. Beall (a junior of mine on the ship. We called him K.G. Beall because before the fall of the USSR, KGB agents accompanied the Russian ships which were being worked on in the Curacao dry dock and one of the machinists in the dry dock told us that Mr Beall watched them even more closely than the Russians) had brought me an airplane engine to overhaul and I needed to get working on it. My wife told me that she was afraid to go to the store for fear that I would be gone (dead) when she got back. She asked me to give her a little warning before I went so she could be there when I died. I told her that it would be over in about 3 weeks. This was not the answer she was hoping to hear. However in 3 weeks I no longer recognized her. I woke up one morning in horror because I didn't know who this woman was that was in bed with me. I still remembered the SO, and that one would be shot for “out 2D.” I nervously asked her if she was my wife and she said yes.

She called her sister, who is a doctor in San Francisco and she told her to take me to the Emergency Room at UCSD hospital. I finally received the (lethal according to the chiropractor that the ship had sent me to) treatment for HIV and recovered quickly. I have been fine since.


For 10 years I sometimes joked to my shipmates that the only way off the ship was “in a box.”

My personal view is that one would be better off dead than to ask to leave. The few staff who did successfully "route out" from the Freewinds went through hell. One took two years to get off of the ship. He was threatened with SP declare, etc.

It must be quite an embarrassment to the Captain Mike Napier of the Freewinds to admit that he told my wife that I was going to die and used that to justify holding her there against her will while I was dying. My wife told me that the Captain’s main complaint was that she "split his EC,” meaning that half of his Executive Council said that she should be allowed to go and half said that she should be held there at all cost.

Napier gave it his best shot and failed. So there is nothing else they can do to me.

He actually was right about some things. He knew that I would die before I allowed any harm to come to the ship or Scn. My father could not understand why a loving wife would stay on the ship and leave her husband to die and stated that she must be being held against her will in which case he would call the FBI. Knowing that I would be declared and my wife would get into much trouble if he did so, I lied, telling him that she she was free to leave but wanted to stay and turn over her post. It was only when I repeated this in session that OSA managed to get her off the ship. Had they not done so when they did I would not be writing this post as I would certainly have been dead.

Joan Heller (my last auditor on the Freewinds) now audits for AOLA. One day I happened to run into her in the elevator at AOLA . She walked in and seeing me did a double take… like she’d seen a ghost. I said, “I guess you didn’t expect to see me again.”

“No, I really didn’t,” was her reply.

Bill Straass
Former Mechanics Chief Freewindss
 
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Zhongjianren

Patron with Honors
Also, how does one go from being in the FSO and helping "run the largest NOTs HGCs on the planet" to being "Mechanics Chief Freewinds?"
.
 

Smilla

Ordinary Human
He was lucky to escape with his life. If he'd followed their advice, he'd have ended up dead, as I suspect many have. Practicing medicine without a licence? No problem.
 
Question: "Also, how does one go from being in the FSO and helping "run the largest NOTs HGCs on the planet" to being "Mechanics Chief Freewinds?"

Answer: It's an insane system with systemically defective "management" that ROUTINELY harms it's members.

To Bill Straass and family, please consider getting a good attorney and suing the COS, for nearly accomplishing a medically negligent homicide. Yours would not have been the first! :no:

I do heartily wish your Father had not talked with you about it but just had gone ahead and contacted the FBI with his suspicions, your wife might have been freed much earlier, for being a PR liability to COS. We're at a point where trying to reason with the COS cult leaders and executives to follow the law and behave ethically is useless. They have demonstrated over and over again a "depraved indifference" to the human lives entrusted to their care, especially folks who are physically handicapped or medically fragile. Ethics need to be put in on them from outside agencies. If anyone reading this thinks that a loved one of theirs may be suffering at the hand of these cultists, please contact the authorities wherever you are and wherever they are, and try to rescue them (even when they are so deluded they don't recognize that they need to be rescued from a group which routinely harms it's members). At least get a record of the complaint lodged and start a paper trail of the suspected crimes.

This is one of the worst stories of systematic abuse by the cult of COS that I have heard, but I have to say, sadly, I am not shocked by it.

It is just more of the same ruthless behavior that Scientologists have always inflicted on each other, and anyone else they perceive to be in their way, in the name of what is the greatest good for the most number of dynamics, for their group to survive. To hell with individual life, liberty, family, health and happiness.

For anyone who may be affected by HIV (which is all of us, really), please get tested, know your status and practice safe sex, don't share needles, etc... Being found to be HIV positive is not the death sentence it was once, current medical treatment is effective in helping people who are HIV positive to live a good quality of life, and help is available for people without medical insurance. In California, dial 211 for information or referrals to helpful resources.

Lurkers, blow now! If you think that you and your family won't be mistreated in this way if anything happens to you, you are sadly mistaken!
 
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freethinker

Sponsor
Scientology - The group that's out to save the world will cut your lifeline and push you under so they can go off and save the world.
 

Feral

Rogue male
Of all of the stories,this one best captures what is most wrong with Hubbard's paradigm and the Sea Org.

It is a very disturbing story and is repeated one way or another over and over.

Reading it was like being kicked in the guts.
 

Karen#1

Gold Meritorious Patron
Another Freewinds story

Scott Campbell's images have been posted above 2x in the opening post and I wanted to add some blurbs to what occurred to him.

Freewinds is registered in Panama and on the high seas maybe out of the jurisdiction of many Law Enforcement agencies.

There are numerous horror stories which leak from Freewinds from time to time. I have a few of them. I did want to add a little on Scott Campbell.

1)
Scott was one of the original FREEWINDS crew.
He served 15 years on Freewinds as a Sea Org member.

Here is a little excerpt he posted on another blog ~~

Quote:
Ask anyone who knows me and was there , I was literally driven to the absolute depths of insanity with Black Dianetics while in the Sea Org. Some of the acts perpetrated on me while in this state were to literally provoke me to commit suicide by the most profoundly heinous means, including a prolonged administration of a deep narcosynthesis drug and another drug that causes retrograde amnesia, both prescribed by scientologist doctors (one of whom did her residency in a psych ward) – all the while with auditors performing actual Black Dianetics processes on me. The Implant/Cave-in to commit suicide was then further facilitated by Sea Org members physically taking me to a place in the dead of night where I could have easily jumped to my death and ended it all, TWICE – with no one the wiser – yet I did not.
Unquote
++++++
Another Scott Campbell QUOTE:
During the time of my “incarceration” (after routing out of the Sea Org mind you) the first two people assigned to watch me were both Martial Arts experts and Sea Org Members. For any perceived untoward behavior on my part, I was rewarded by one or both of them with painful blows, painful submission holds or even being rendered unconscious by suffocation or choking. They nearly killed me a couple of times, one time so harrowing and on the very edge of death that it raised my necessity level to move the entire machinery of the Sea Org from what was being done to getting those guys out of there and getting a standard PAB 6 handling.

Immediately afterward, . One of those guys became COB’s personal bodyguard, the other one left the S.O. not long after.

End of quote.

+++++++++
Scott was fed Chloral hydrate mixed with valium daily.
He told me that with Internet research he found out that the cocktail of these 2 daily over an extended period of time when he was drugged on FREEWINDS could have caused him Brain Damage and /or extensive amnesia.

Scott is my neighbor in Southern California and is doing well in life now with his ever loyal wonderful wife ~~ we met up at the recent Indie Re-union and shared ~~ he looked so good, so this does have a happy ending.:):):)
 

jenni with an eye

Silver Meritorious Patron
It is good to know of the happy ending...but :omg: the fact that he had to endure that treatment is simply disgusting.

I have to say it....
:scnsucks::scnsucks::scnsucks::scnsucks::scnsucks:
 

Zhongjianren

Patron with Honors
Re: Another Freewinds story

Scott Campbell's images have been posted above 2x in the opening post and I wanted to add some blurbs to what occurred to him.

Freewinds is registered in Panama and on the high seas maybe out of the jurisdiction of many Law Enforcement agencies.

There are numerous horror stories which leak from Freewinds from time to time. I have a few of them. I did want to add a little on Scott Campbell.

1)
Scott was one of the original FREEWINDS crew.
He served 15 years on Freewinds as a Sea Org member.

Here is a little excerpt he posted on another blog ~~

Quote:
Ask anyone who knows me and was there , I was literally driven to the absolute depths of insanity with Black Dianetics while in the Sea Org. Some of the acts perpetrated on me while in this state were to literally provoke me to commit suicide by the most profoundly heinous means, including a prolonged administration of a deep narcosynthesis drug and another drug that causes retrograde amnesia, both prescribed by scientologist doctors (one of whom did her residency in a psych ward) – all the while with auditors performing actual Black Dianetics processes on me. The Implant/Cave-in to commit suicide was then further facilitated by Sea Org members physically taking me to a place in the dead of night where I could have easily jumped to my death and ended it all, TWICE – with no one the wiser – yet I did not.
Unquote
++++++
Another Scott Campbell QUOTE:
During the time of my “incarceration” (after routing out of the Sea Org mind you) the first two people assigned to watch me were both Martial Arts experts and Sea Org Members. For any perceived untoward behavior on my part, I was rewarded by one or both of them with painful blows, painful submission holds or even being rendered unconscious by suffocation or choking. They nearly killed me a couple of times, one time so harrowing and on the very edge of death that it raised my necessity level to move the entire machinery of the Sea Org from what was being done to getting those guys out of there and getting a standard PAB 6 handling.

Immediately afterward, . One of those guys became COB’s personal bodyguard, the other one left the S.O. not long after.

End of quote.

+++++++++
Scott was fed Chloral hydrate mixed with valium daily.
He told me that with Internet research he found out that the cocktail of these 2 daily over an extended period of time when he was drugged on FREEWINDS could have caused him Brain Damage and /or extensive amnesia.

Scott is my neighbor in Southern California and is doing well in life now with his ever loyal wonderful wife ~~ we met up at the recent Indie Re-union and shared ~~ he looked so good, so this does have a happy ending.:):):)

Can you provide the blog link? Thanks.

/
 

zenman

Patron
what a story, there crazier then i imagined, someone have bill get in touch with lawerence wright, this should be in his new book, bill if your out there contact me
 

Smurf

Gold Meritorious SP
To Bill Straass and family, please consider getting a good attorney and suing the COS, for nearly accomplishing a medically negligent homicide. Yours would not have been the first!

That is not realistic unless Bill & his family have hundreds of thousands of dollars to fork out in advance legal fees & court costs. They are not going to find an attorney willing to take on the cult on contingency. Plus, a lawsuit would allow the cult, in discovery, to access every medical record there is on Bill and use it however they saw fit.
 

Karen#1

Gold Meritorious Patron
Freewinds horror Story #3

Re: Colm McLaughlin HELD AGAINST WILL ON FREEWINDS (KIDNAP)
Sunday, 27 February 2011 20:19
0digg
FBI TAKE NOTE: Another damning eyewitness account of kidnapping and human trafficking by David Miscavige, Captain Mike Napier, Lurie Belotte and Sue Price. ~ Thoughtful
The Prisonwinds
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE HUSBAND OF THE PRESIDENT OF IASA WHEN SHE WAS TAKEN OUT?

Some may wonder whatever happened to Colm McLaughlin. Some may never have heard of Colm…. Colm is the husband of Janet Mc Laughlin, (Janet Light) the Ex-President of the IASA. He was posted as the Finance Director IASA when Janet was President. Colm was taken out by DM at the same time as his wife Janet, as well as all of the then Execs of IASA. Karleen Desimone, Nina Light, Melissa Deness, Lise Cohee etc…

In late 2006, around October to be more precise, Janet McLaughlin, the then President IASA was taken off post by David Miscavige as well as all of the other IASA Execs. Janet went to Int to be “handled” as well as Lise Cohee and a few others that stayed in LA. Colm, her husband was sent to the Ship with Karleen Desimone, Melissa Deness, Nina Light, Callie Lekas, Bart Vanloocke. All of IASA was taken off post and sent to the Engine Room, they were put under Capt Mike Napier who was running the Org. Lurie Belotte and Sue Price also jumped on them like vultures. All of IASA had to write all reports on Janet and any other “out ethics” they had observed in IASA. Most of IASA on the Ship went back on post after about a week but were still being run by Mike Napier, they were ALL put through the Truth Rundown to “handle” any “black PR” bad thoughts or opinions they had mainly on DM and of course… Tom Cruise. The people I named above were not so lucky, they were put in the engine room for about 6 months full time to work except for when they went in session on their Truth Rundown’s. They were being run by Lurie Belotte and Sue Price who would get copies of reports that were written on them on a daily basis after their sessions. Another Freewinds staff member named Stefane Kundert who had previously been in IASA also ended up in the engine room with the rest of the IASA execs simply because he wrote a report on the Capt for being prevented from getting married… writing a report on Capt Napier was a big no no so off he went to the Engine Room with the rest of them and in he went for the Truth Rundown. He was mid his Objective processing but that didn’t matter.

After about 6 months of auditing and being in the Engine Room Karleen was posted as a Cabin Cleaner, Nina as the busser in the Public Restaurant, Callie as the Public Restaurant dishwasher, Melissa as the crew Pot Washer and Colm as a Wiper in the Engine Room. Now there is one thing about Colm and that is that he did not crack no matter what Lurie and Sue said to him. He was a real problem and they just labelled him crazy and suppressive because he would not submit to their suppression. He was told that he needed to divorce his wife as she was a Suppressive Person, he was pressured to send her divorce papers but he would not yield, she was his wife and he was going to stick with her. He also did not agree to the way he and the rest of IASA had been handled and was not going to change his mind about that no matter how much Truth Rundown they dished out and how much they tried to suppress, oppress and brainwash him, he was not going to give.

Colm had a hard time being sessionable on quite a few occasions as he was not getting enough sleep. Lurie’s solution was to have his auditor give him ethics interviews where the auditor would interrogate him and get mad at him. On a couple of occasions she even hit the table with her fist to try get him to spit his crimes. It even got to the point where Lurie walked into the room in the middle of the ethics interview and was yelling at him as well… so there he was getting yelled at by his auditor Lurie, the RTC Rep. Colm felt this was off the rails and made it known. Lurie was trying to convince Colm that what she had done was right… she didn’t get very far. Colm wanted a Comm Ev to review his handling. Lurie Belotte and Sue Price already had it figured out… if he got a Comm Ev he would get declared. You see they believed themselves to be above the law and they decided what would happen to a person before the Comm Ev went through. They had already done it on several other staff members so the Comm Ev would just be paper work and a means for them to hide behind making it look like the people doing the Comm Ev’s had come to the decisions that were issued.

In early 2008 I guess Colm had had enough of this treatment, he was posted in the Engine Room and had been there for over a year now, ( not a very nice place to work to say the least), so Colm decided to take off. He escaped off the Ship when food was being brought on the Ship, this was in the middle of dry dock and there were a lot of locals working on the Ship at this time, unfortunately for Colm he did not get past the Dock, he was caught by security and put up a real fight! Colm was literally man handled onto the Diana, a small Sailing Boat owned by the Freewinds and that would be his home for the next couple of months, of course under full time watch. The dock workers obviously noticed the commotion and when inquiring into what was going on they were skilfully told that Colm was drunk and this is why he was handled in this manner. Not very good public relations for the Ship as you are not allowed to get drunk in this environment and the workers made it known that this was not ok… of course they were handled by the Port Capt and told that this would not happen again, little did they know that Colm was not drunk at all, in fact he was 100% sober but the Port Capt couldn’t very well tell them the truth… Colm was being held prisoner on the Ship against his will!

Now you may wonder why Colm stayed on the Diana instead of going back to the Ship. Well, he took off right before Maiden Voyage when DM came on Board and Lurie and Sue decided that it would be better to keep Colm away from the “wonderful” DM, so Colm stayed on the Diana until DM left the Ship at which point a bunch of Engineer’s and Security Guards were sent in the early crack of dawn to the Diana and escorted Colm back on Board the Freewinds, his new prison. And of course it was done in the early crack of dawn when no one was there to witness their criminality.

Colm was then posted in the Decks Division where he still works today… As far as I know he still disagrees and still loves his wife and plans on staying faithful to her. She of course would be kept in the dark on all of this. So for anyone reading this who knows or can contact Janet… please let her know…..

From the Engine Room
Valeska Guider

http://www.scientology-cult.com/re-colm-mclaughlin.html
 

Karen#1

Gold Meritorious Patron
Media on Freewinds Horror Stories

what a story, there crazier then i imagined, someone have bill get in touch with lawrence wright, this should be in his new book, bill if your out there contact me


No worries:):):):):):)
 
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