I wanted to stay out of this thread because I figured it would degenerate into a slanging match between Debbie-lovers and Debbie-haters and I'm neither (seriously
)
But it's Saturday morning and I'm avoiding doing something strenuous for a little while longer so I've just read the last few pages of this thread.
I dunno if anyone's stated this somewhere but, as much as I like the guy, Mike Rinder's piece smacks of "an acceptable truth" to me. I know possibly more than most here about what happened (yes, all those "need to knows" stuff) and there's bits that probably will never see the light of day in the story.
Debbie and Wayne never personally harmed me. She was my Interne Sup for over a year at FSO. Wayne was then a FSO Div 6er still married happily to his then-wife. I audited him as part of my Cl IV Interneship. I also met him later many times when he was transferred to AOSH ANZO as the Flag reg there - a man whose marriage eventually floundered and he didn't know what to do about it. And the "on-Source solutions" were no help at all for him.
I liked them both as people. I saw Debbie much later very briefly during her Capt. FSO years but never interacted with her then. She wasn't the same fresh-out-of-the-RPF person I'd met when she took over the Interneship from Shaun Quirino. The tough but funny woman doing a shitty job in the insanity that is FSO. A survivor.
Unless the cult falls and Miscavige loses everything, we'll never know the full details of what happened here. Debbie was very sick at the time, the cult were making her life a bigger misery than it already was and I believe she was incredibly brave to put herself through what she did. I do know it took a heavy toll on her and Wayne. To settle would have been a huge relief. Even if it were without the rumoured large payment.
Could I do what she has
APPARENTLY done and take the money and run? No. Not if I'd left that many bodies behind me like Maria Pia Gardini. But I didn't finish growing up in the CMO, hit the RPF and get labelled a "Tiger" and have to fight my way back into "The Most Ethical Group in the Universe Ever."
The story I know paints Debbie in a much better light - but it's not mine to tell. Someone who was still very much enthralled to the cult but trying to do the right thing and "Strike a blow against the enemies of the group blah blah blah."
Someone who was trying to do that isn't yet up to being able to look at the past horrors - in my experience, they're still very, VERY angry and reacting like Hubbard would under attack.
I've no idea how well her and Wayne have moved on from that - I'm guessing (and hoping) a lot.
I just hope she's found something good like Chris Sheldon's You-Tube channel and learned to think critically and pull herself out of the Hubbardspew we were all infested with.