After the GAT scientology was becoming much more intense as an activity, I was holding the OT committee chairman job, as the proper chairman was on his "refresher". The committee was organising an old timers event at a function center out side the church, in fact it was at the city zoo, they were very excited because they felt they were going to get some old dianeticists and scientologists from the '60s to come. They had been blown for years, mostly they did not like the SO and the way scientology was run nowadays. I got to the AO to start the meeting and it was Elaine's first day on post. I was summoned by her master at arms to see her. I met with her and she laid down the law. I was told we could have the event at the AO or not at all. I thought it was an odd approach as we used to completely fund all of our activities, so I told her that the guys had put a lot into it and they would not like it being canceled. She tells me; "if they don't like it they can see me", "OK" I says and I slump down to the meeting to break their hearts.
They weren't happy, and I conveyed what she said. At the end of the meeting I was again summoned....She starts telling me how things are going to change etc., I butt in and tell her what happened and that I said they could talk to her. She dances around in a circle and says "maybe" she dosen't want to talk to them......I decide on the spot that she is a very dangerous person....it was funny 'cos I just tuned out from what she was saying from that point, I remember seeing her lips move but no sonic. In the next few seconds I decided that the project I would replace the zoo one with would be the setting up of a "Narconon set up committee" and I was going to be on it once it was created. Those of you who know scientology lines know that Narconon is not under the AO, so it was my escape from the lunatic dancing round in self important circles in front of me. Undeterred she sent about ten faxes to my work the next day, when I got to the office there was a panoply of orders waiting for me...UH! I read them and answered as glibly as I possibly could, stone walling her without a hint of defiance, I signed them "The temporary OT committee chairman". This is taken from a trouble area questionnaire, written by Hubbard, it is assessed on the meter and one of the questions to correct an area not functioning well is; "Is your post temporary?" as it was a known "why" for poor post performance and because it was not easily remedied she never bothered me again.
We did a fund raiser for Narconon, and when the real chairman, Dave Gibbons came back from his "refresher" I transferred myself. I held a weekly meeting on Tuesday nights. I was pleased to see that a couple of OT ambassadors were coming, as well as the CO ABLE, that means the Commanding Officer of Association for Better Living and Education, (someone loves acronyms). After a couple of weeks the CO explains I have to be an ABLE advisory board member, this means nothing, it was a ruse to get a one time donation of about $5,000 from either generous or self important people, it was targeted at both, and you got your picture in the ABLE news letter as a "board member". NO, I say I am not interested, I am annoyed as I see all of his interest in what we were doing was based on a desire to lift money from me, not get drug rehab tech readily available. I did my block a bit and told him not to be so predatory. He told me that I can't come to the meeting any more as it was for ABLE board members only, (bullshit, they came to my meeting). But "fine" I say "I will be having the Narconon meeting Wednesdays from now on", none of those guys ever came, and the Tuesday meetings evaporated, LOL. But within a couple of months we had an ED recruited to run narconon and we helped him to get it set up.
The funny thing about church finances, the scientology schools, narconons, WISE, crimonons, way to happiness campaigns are all funded and manned by the public. If you look around in scientology at anything happening it is, as far as I have ever known been funded and set up by the public, then taken over by the SO because it was not up to scratch or out tech or "flapped" or something. So when we did a fund raiser to get a narconon going the CO ABLE put his hand out for 10% of what we raised......excuse me? I tell him no, you can't have 10%, you are getting a NN . It did not make me popular but I did not care, so far all he had done was ask for money.
If the church management gets it's public to do all the funding and the fund raising and starting of activities, apart from a money collection point, what are they for?
So, back to Elaines reign of terror. She began driving recruitment for the SO, and they were targeting young people, second generation scientologists, usually at the age they would leave school, 16 to 19 yo, sometimes younger and the SO recruiters were heavy handed. One particular incident some SO members were trying to get a kid to sign a contract, they were out at his place, there was a baby sitter there, not for the recruit but his younger siblings, the SO recruiters were so aggressive that the baby sitter nearly called the police, and in fact threatened to. I believe a door was kicked in at that incident by the recruiter. They were also running rough shod over parental concerns, I know of one couple that was deadfiled because they would not cooperate with the recruitment of their children. Yet another couple who were my dear friends, and field auditors were having their only son recruited, they had gone to the AO to pick him up after course at 10pm, he was in a recruitment interview, at about 2am after being denied access to their son, as well as being lied to, the parents became a bit hysterical, and demanded to see him. They were treated like enemies of the group and "handled" by the ethics department the next day. They were both told that they needed to do an HCO sec check and were given an estimate of $30,000 that they had to come up with for the privilege. It was at this time I wrote a huge report to international management, I was able to cite seventeen horror stories involving the recruitment of kids and the total disregard of the families they were in. Later when Elaine was RPFed I kidded myself that it was because I and obviously many others had done the courageous thing and written up the local insanity to Int.
Around this time, mid '90s there were a lot of "mandatory briefings" for the field, particularly the OTs. I had gone to many, I had felt obliged, when you are on OT VII they sort of have you by the short and curlies, with a sec check always just ahead of you, a timely KR waiting for you at flag could prompt many more additional probing questions. So potentially a lack of attendance could be painful. They were usually attempts to press gang the public into unpaid work or donating money for a project that was on a program that came from Int. They were routinely horrible, regularly the doors would be locked until the SO running the event got what they wanted. Often I would leave feeling bludgeoned and made to feel guilty and wrong for having money I was not giving to the church, or in the case of activities that I was not putting my whole energy behind the cause. I came to personally define "mandatory briefing" as; "A briefing with no other redeeming feature." After a while it was enough for me to hear that an event was mandatory for me to mentally mark it ;"avoid at all cost"
Another thing happened at this time that should have served as a red flag, my wife and I were at an event, in the front.."Patron" seating, she was eight months pregnant and the sound was way too loud for her, she told me the baby was doing somersaults, she was a little distressed and uncomfortable. So we got up and went out, we saw some friends in the lobby and chatted for a bit, then left. I got a call at work from the "Deputy Commanding Officer for Delivery and Exchange" a few days later, she demanded to know why we had left, I explained, she said," but you were outside talking", "Yeah I know, we were comfortable out side" I said, She replies; "well you can explain it to the ethics officer, now that we have the GAT no outpoint like this gets missed "........"Hmmm. Fuck it then" I thought silently to my self. That was 11 years ago I have only gone to about 3 events since.