My stepping stones™ to total freedom from scientology

[Karakorum]

Eggs and bread for breakfast. Yay. Amazing. So cool. Hip. Hip. Hip. Hurr... hurr durr.



Sid and Jen are arguing because one took too much butter. Really, seriously that's what you guys are concerned with? Let me think... god I can't hear my thoughts over the sound of your natter! Stop your bitching!!!

Sid! Jen! Do you want to get in trouble?! Do you want me to write a KR?! Do you want me to fetch the nannies?! Do you want to get the same punishment that you got for asking about your mother?!

Silence. They have not seen their mom in months.

Damn, I said too much.


Jen is out of scientology, because her dad came and took her away. I later found out that there was a lawsuit over custody and her dad won. I have not found any trace of Sid, don't know if he is in or out.

I just totally forgot about this part when it came to Jen. But for some absurd reason, the memory came back to me now:


At the time I did not know that there was a lawsuit or anything regarding Jen's dad. But we knew in advance that he would come to take her away. So there was this moment in the evening when we were up - we were supposed to be all asleep, but Janette (the nanny) made me the guy who was supposed to be in charge of making sure all the kids had gone to bed.

So yeah, I just made everyone gather round late after dark to have our version of an AB family reunion to say goodbye to Jen. And I remember that I told Jen: "Now you have to be a bad girl when your dad comes. Otherwise he will want to keep you and you'll be stuck in the wog world with him. So you gotta be mean and nasty, then he'll bring you back."



Just wanted to put this little memory out here for people to read, to illustrate how we all were conditioned to be advocates for the CoS and how we saw the wog world. And keep in mind: I was NOT the deep-kool-aid-drinker there. I was prolly one of the least brainwashed kids.

 

[The_Fixer]

Well, yes and no. Really would depend on the case. Sometimes people hated being stuck in ethics admin limbo as much as we hated having these aged cases ruining our stats. In some cases people knew what was coming and they were just waiting for the axe to fall. But there were also investigations where we closed them by reaching a conclusion that the original accusation was groundless. Or it was a malicious reporter to begin with that tried to have someone framed for one way or the other.

So yeah... really would depend on the case. We tried to get to the bottom of things, to get to the truth. We believed that we are taking the guilty to task, while protecting the innocent from being framed or being mistakenly made to suffer consequences of things that they didn't do.

The system demanded ruthless, dispassionate investigators and the system itself was crooked to begin with. However we honestly tried to do the right thing and be the good cops. But we were in the wrong police force.


Well, there was 3 forms in which you could 'reject' a case so to speak. 3 separate statuses:

1. 'Closed'. This means we concluded the investigation and we felt we got to a conclusion, that there is nothing more to do. But closed does not necessarily mean that the accountable unit was found to be guilty. There were cases where we decided that nothing wrong had taken place. Or that the initial suspicions were justified at first, but after a very thorough investigation and sec-checking a lot of people the original suspicion didn't pan out.
2. 'Decommitted'. This means we decided the originating report (KR, TTSNB etc) was pretty much dev-t in its current state. That the information was too vague, or that critical data was missing (like date or names of people etc) or that for some other reason it was so to speak 'un-investigable' before being fixed.
In short it meant: "We will not do anything about it in its current form. Maybe we will investigate it you fix whatever is wrong with it and re-submit it as a new case".
3. 'Trashed'. We introduced it as a new status specifically to differentiate between malicious fake reports and those that were done in good will, just didn't pan out. If something was 'trashed' it means we believed it to be deliberate bs from the start. Enough trashed cases would get the malicious reporter having an inv case opened on them instead. Sometimes a single particularly egregious instance would alone make us open a case.
We didn't take kindly to people trying to frame others, trying to deceive us or waste our time. Malicious reporters did not have a fun time dealing with us, rest assured.

That reminds me of the old story about it not being a good idea to report people to the KGB back in the day. It was a pretty sure fired method of getting the KGB interested in you as well.

 

[The_Fixer]

It is easy because people inside are conditioned not to get attached to other people, just stay task-oriented and focus on work.

Again: A guy works side by side with you day in and day out for 10+ f-ing years and the very second that he's gone everyone just moves on and behaves like he never existed. People wouldn't even mention him in conversation.
They wouldn't even say: "Roger is gone, we need to get a new person here". They would say: "We need a new person, because there's a vacant post.". That's how extremely task-oriented people become inside. That's cult-insanity, I've never seen anything quite like it in the big world.

I see it on a semi-regular basis in some companies. The lower down on the totem pole a job is, the more you see people stabbing each other in the back to secure or advance their own positions.

The natural defensiveness of a number of highly insecure people in a workplace can turn the environment quite toxic. It isn't just a cult thing, but it is a very prevalent modus operandi within cults.

But your point here is apt. The ruthless pursuit of doing good for your cult reduces people to simple cogs in a machine with little real value other than that.

 

[The_Fixer]

I know the feeling. I had a family member outside that took me in and I could crash on the couch, 'decompress' for a bit, catch my balance and get my bearings before I dove into real life.

It really wasn't much objectively speaking now that I look back at it. But I really needed that small landing pad both psychologically and economically.

Defecting from the SO is like jumping off a moving train. First you need to build the courage to jump, but then more importantly you need to survive hitting the ground. Having family outside made it so much easier to make the jump.

I never had many friends as a rule. Most of the ones I did have I never saw if my car wasn't working or if they didn't need anything.

So I was kind of used to being isolated and figuring everything out for myself. When I left the cult, I was completely on my own. Things had changed and the people I once knew (even though I was in for less than 2 years) had moved on, or kept their distance knowing I was a part of scientology.

I was in a new town, new job, pretty much new everything and rather reluctant to say anything about even being in Scientology.

Stuck that job out for about 6 months and started hanging out with a girl from my old circles and she was going to Australia to work. My job was winding up within the next month or so (working on a hydroelectric dam project), so kind of tagged along with her. We were just friends, not romantically involved. Had to start off again in Brisbane with no job, two suitcases and $650 to my name.

Left Brisbane and moved to Sydney about 8 years ago. I'm plugging along, but doing ok.

All the better for being out of the cult. One thing I learned was that not saying anything about the cult was to my detriment. It also meant that I had learned very little about my experience and it always still had that little hold on me until about 10+ years ago when I discovered ESMB and discovered a lot of things.

That little hold is in the past now and I do share with others (including my boss) that I am an ex. Everyone is cool with it. It does kind of help that it was over 40 years ago now, so they all know it was some distant indiscretion.

It has been quite a lesson in the power of communication.