Thanks for sharing this Karen. In Feb 1984 I told the ethics officer of Special Unit (Marion Pauw now - spelling?) that I was taking my wife and then 1 year old daughter and leaving staff. I told her we would not be separated nor would we be punished or do any deck work or conditions but I would agree to stay and let them sec check me as part of routing out.
She panicked and had Marty Rathbun join her in trying to talk me out of leaving. Marty said we were out ethics for wanting to leave and needed to do the RPF. I said that we would be leaving immediately if they tried anything but sec checks.
They panicked and agreed.
Gelda Mithoff was brought from Int HQ and sec checked me for 6 or more hours a day for what might have been a month. A few years later I found out from Geoff Shervelle who later blew that a bunch of them were meeting nightly and reading and laughing at what was covered in my sec checks and would make up a list of more questions to ask me the next day. Some church huh?
Every imaginable thing was asked of a sexual nature or anything else they wanted to dreg up.
They also were panicked as I was leaving after having just spearheaded the entire new corporate reorganization. I knew why it was done, what it was covering up, the fraud, etc. I also knew of David Miscavige's direct involvement in same despite his later perjuring himself in courts denying it. They were especially concerned as I was the one who got Miscavige's approval of the new corporate structures and was there in the early years of Miscavige covertly and brutally controlling it. Many of the sec check questions were to see if I planned on telling the FBI, IRS or other government agencies of the fraud and abuse at the top of organized scientology and the lies hidden by corporate veils.
Geoff Shervelle would later tell me that he blew and would not do the sec checks like I did as he saw what was happening with mine and he would never go through with it. I put up with it as I was still a believer in LRH and scientology at the time but just hated the abuses. (Like an "Indee" but from some 27 years ago). I also was especially willing to go through it to protect my family and my connection with them.
Finally after a month or so, I was "allowed" to leave and my wife, baby and I went to live for a year with my parents in Pennsylvania.
Within 1-2 weeks of our leaving I get a call from Dan Feeley, who had worked under me in special unit handling corporate matters. Dan said I was urgently needed in a couple of days at such and such a time to be on a conference call with attorney Elwood Rickless having to do with some urgent corporate matters. He got me to agree that I would be home at my parent's house at a given time the following Saturday to recieve the call.
I bought it but when I went into the house (from working earlier) I find RTC sec checker Hans Zuli (-spelling?) sitting in the living room chatting with my father.
Hans asked me to find him a motel and told me they flew him across country to sec check me. The cover story of the legal conference call was just to ensure I would show up. Again I allowed myself to be sec checked by Hans in the motel room for long hours over several days all because I was still a "true believer" and I wanted to protect my family.
They were panicked that I might have gone to the police, IRS, FBI etc. and told them the truth about Miscavige controlling things or how the entire corporate structure of organized scientology existed to mask Miscavige's (and earlier LRH's) controls of same and to hide money from the likes of the IRS and potential litigants. Hour after hour I got questions of if I 'talked", would I "talk" and if I even thought of "talking".
After satisfying him I would not talk, he left.
Within two months I got a call from Mike Rinder who begged me to go back to Los Angeles at the church's expense to help them prepare writings about the legal relationships between Hubbard and organized scientology. Again, I bought a lie.
Although I did sit with Mike and write some things, the real purpose was more sec checks about whether I had talked, or planned to talk. Also included a form of auditing that tended to spin me and cause great confusion. That took up most of my time.
Then about a year after I left I got recruited to work at a software company in New Hampshire called "RealWorld". Lots of old scientologist friends there and I got a great job as their VP Legal, then VP Sales, then CEO and President. I got back onto "the bridge" and ended up pouring some $400,000 into organized scientology as part of RealWorld and only later did I find out that OSA had asked key people at RealWorld to hire me, to help me get back into scientology as again they were concerned that I would go to the authorities with what I knew if I had time to decompress.
Now I had many more sec checks at Flag, which I was now paying for, some of which again asked if I planned on going to authorities and the like.
Finally the last sec check I had was years later (maybe 10 years ago) where they flew an OSA sec checker named Joan from LA to New Hampshire and I agreed to let her sec check me. Again questions, even all these years later, included trying to find out if I went to authorities or were planning on doing so.
I did not talk all those years because I believed in covering up for LRH and his image in part by covering up for corporate scientology and especially because my daughter and wife were still "in" and I did not want to lose connection with them.
It took me a looooooooong time to decompress enough to realize how wrong I was in not speaking out earlier. I started reading through the internet and found all kinds of lies from Miscavige for which I had first had information. Also lies they told the IRS as part of getting all those tax exempt letters in 1993.
I regret that it took that long for me to decompress and how it had to come in so many stages. So believe me Karen I understand how it can take so long for many others to go through similiar things.
I have since done everything I can to speak out the truth partly while some of the current Indees were in and trying to stop me from doing so.
I have gone to the IRS, FBI as well as prosecutors and other government officials in quite a number of countries as well as book writers, journalists and more. I have helped a lot of people decompress and in some cases to find their voices.
I forgive all others who wronged me to the extent that they are still not doing the same things to others today. This includes Marty for trying to get me onto the horrid RPF. Mike Rinder and Dan Feeley for lying to me so that I could be sec checked in an attempt to cover up fraud and Geoff Shervelle for joining the "boys club" in the special unit each night to laugh at what was happening in my sec checks and to design further awful and improper questions all in an effort to "DA" me and to cover up fraud and abuse. I am most glad that some of them are also now speaking out.
And I hope that others who have been hurt can find it in their hearts to forgive me for helping set up those many corporate veils and all that religious cloaking that has been used by the likes of David Miscavige to so hurt others.
I never intended to see my work end up helping crazy people like Miscavige abuse others. But then I suspect that most scientologists in or Indee or EXes never intended to hurt others either.
You are pointing out many important things in this thread Karen that alert the world of the horrid abuses within organized scientology. What little I have added to this thread I hope helps say that these sort of abuses have been going on for decades and it has been being covered up from the IRS, FBI and other authorities for decades as well.
<3
Larry
SME
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http://larrybren.blogspot.com/