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scooterstory

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Finishing up on staff

I’d been dumped with the Qual Sec post earlier in the year as the then-Qual Sec had been “promoted” quite some time after his senior had left staff as she just couldn’t cope anymore and her contract expired. I fought it half-heartedly but gave up and accepted it as inevitable. It had meant I had to go to all the BS meetings that executives went to and I had to stay back and arrive early to do so but usually I just ran my own schedule as much as I could. But since I’d been getting sick so often (usually just too exhausted to move but that just didn’t communicate to executives chasing stats) it was decided in July 2000 that someone else needed to be put on the job as I was “obviously too PTS” to be an exec, especially on such an important post as qual Sec. I was overjoyed – I was being replaced with someone else just a few months before my contract was up and that meant I just had to stay there getting the new Qual sec on post long enough so that I didn’t get put onto any other post and I could walk out the door as I wouldn’t be held to stay “until a replacement is found,” which is what I’d seen happen time and time again when my friends had tried to leave staff. A little bit of joy crept back into being on staff again – I had a plan to escape that was looking good.


In late July we got a reply from ED Int saying that he’d ordered that our request be granted and that we were to let him know how it was going. And he wished us both well for the future. In early August the B of I was held and I was interviewed one night by two SO members from CLO. Michael Gordon from OSA was the chairman of this board and he asked me lots of question to do with MY responsibility for this whole mess and I was getting a bit peeved at his insistence that somehow I was being irresponsible for wanting an invest when obviously I’d “pulled it in” per all these references he kept wanting me to look at. I also couldn’t understand why there were only two people on the Board when it states plainly that there must be a minimum of three – he told me that the other member was too busy on post to come just now but would be part of the Board regardless.

Eventually I thought I got him to see my point of view on it and he and the other member went off to interview the ED. I eagerly awaited the Findings and Recommendations of the Board as I thought they would tell the correct story to the staff at least. I was stunned when they came out – the whole reason per this Board was “unhandled PTSness” – mine and the kid with a broken arm and it was all Qual’s fault. And who was currently in charge of Qual? Me.

The previous Qual Sec was also livid as he could plainly recall having done PTS handlings on both of us prior to the accident and he combed the folders and got the data. Caz and I immediately requested a Review Board as was our right but that seemed to sink out of sight immediately. But we both vowed to keep going up the Org Board until something happened on it.

I’d managed to get some work with a mate who seemed to be employing me because he liked having me around as much as anything else. It kept us afloat for a while but then that ran out and money got tight until Caz got a job working for the same people I’d been working for. Only his wife hated me a fair bit and had tried to talk Caz out of marrying me. A few months later, she sacked Caz because Caz wrote up the illegalities of this business to the church, like no valid licence to carry out roofing work. I was outraged but not surprised.

Caz had finally gotten onto her Purif and I was busy spending time with James at home and just going onto post at night. There was little money coming in but I didn’t mind too much as at least Caz was finally getting some ‘enhancement” and she’d never been able to get the time before to get her Purif done. She finished it after a month.

We lived very close to the Olympics site in Sydney’s inner west and it had been where I took the dog and James for bike rides but now it was all being shut down for “security purposes.” Our bank had been shut too as it was on the site of an electricity station and they now had security guards at the front gate. Once the Games themselves started the traffic around us got atrocious. The bonus was my relatives who’d been lucky enough to get tickets to events could come park in our place and then walk to their venues so I got to see a few of my family over the time they were on.

I registered for unemployment benefits as staff pay was hitting new lows and I only had a month or two to go. Caz wanted me to get work but I was just too damn tired to really bother and I was about to leave something that had taken up half my life to date and I really had no other career path mapped out. I had no idea what was going to happen and I was just hoping that somehow it would all turn out fine and I could “make it go right” in true Scientology fashion. I was sure all my training would help me handle any job I took on but I didn’t know how I could sell myself to any future employer – I’d been employed by the Church for the last twenty years or more and only held other jobs for short periods of time to get enough money to live on. Not much of a CV.

Then a Scientologist offered me a day job with her cleaning company. I jumped at the chance and rode my bicycle to the office for a week or so before I was given the use of a company car. I was still nominally on staff but turning up just to help Vivian, the new Qual Sec. she had little idea of what to do but was young and eager and I didn’t want to squash her with the truth so I did what I could to help her into the position.

Just before my contract ran out I sent a communication to the Personnel Dept telling them that I would stay on for so many days after the official end of my contract but then I would be leaving. I’d never heard of this being done before and usually t would have been a red flag to the bull that is the exec structure but the org at that time was in turmoil and I was more than happy to take advantage of this.

The person over the personnel dept was herself trying to leave staff – she was Andrew the C/S’s fiancé and had been getting a hard time from the ED ever since they had announced their engagement. They were also my son’s god-parents – we’d had his Naming Ceremony near the Olympics at a park just a month or two earlier. So they were both copping it big-time and I could now see why I had copped it so much from the ED. I’d confessed to an Ethics Officer many years prior that I’d caught myself falling for her but she wasn’t my type – in fact I’d usually found her repulsive and I told him this. I was asking for his help to get myself sorted out over this. He’d apparently (so I was told much later) gone and told her this and I’d become her Number One target until Andrew had dropped her cold when he came back from training. And the ED was also trying to leave staff at this time too – but I didn’t know this.

Anyway the day came and I said goodbye and walked out that door with the last of my things and didn’t go back in that door for several months, when I went back and claimed some fishtanks that no-one was doing anything with. I slept in late the first day “free” then went to a barbeque with some old friends and then slept all day the next day. It was a strange feeling – it was like I’d lost something but I didn’t feel free, just relieved. After all the people I’d watched over the years go through hell to get off staff if they tried to do it the way the church wanted them to, I just walked out painlessly. Even I couldn’t believe it had happened so well.
 
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FoTi

Crusader
Scooter, you are an amazing guy with an amazing story.

May you and your family have a happy life from now on. You sure deserve it.
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
An added bit just for OSA

Just to clarify the nuttiness that were the “events” that staff had to cope with:

In Sydney the first “event” happened in 1983 under the Reign of Terror that Matt Henderson ran.

Staff were ordered to get so many people each to the event and had to call in for this at all hours of the day and night.

It was to be the first (but not the last) time that public Scientologists would be harassed by barrages of phone calls from different staff members to get them to do the same thing. Previously it would usually be only a few staff would be doing the “call-in” for the whole org and I had been one of them as Course Admin – I chased students who had blown and had a reasonable success rate in getting them back.

Now it was ALL staff who had to drop their jobs for at least ½ hour a day to get onto the phones and call in lists of people to see “a very important event with some representatives from International Management who were coming to Sydney for this one occasion” or some such. It was bedlam.

It also meant that ALL staff were suddenly being made to attend these same events – in the past there had been Hubbard’s birthday, Auditors Day and the Christmas Party and maybe a New Year’s party too. I sometimes went but had usually gone home or gone out somewhere instead.

Now it was MANDATORY. And then there was the “drilling” beforehand where all staff were given specific jobs for before and after events and had to “drill” these several times through – usually one afternoon before the event then just before the event as well. It meant the org basically closed at Saturday lunchtime with only a skeleton crew left to actually do what we were all supposed to be doing anyway.
This was a few auditors and someone to examine their pcs and one or maybe two course sups and that was all. Apart from someone on the front desk.

Then the event had to be dismantled afterwards and all the materials (desks, chairs, materials on sale, posters etc. etc.) had to be gotten back to the org somehow. And that meant some staff were up until 3 or 4 am minimally doing this.

Then came an “Open House” the next day where all staff (Day and Foundation) had to be there to handle the “floods” of people who had been at the event the night before and were supposed to all turn up at the org the next day for a workshop or an interview or something that would get some money from them or maybe they were supposed to bring some friends in and introduce them to the marvels of Scientology.

This all started usually six weeks before the event itself was to be held with the call-in starting and all staff supposed to start calling people to “confirm” public for the event. And then the lists of names were all collected in one place and discussed at endless meetings with executives as to how this or that person should be handled to arrive.

Then there would be “re-confirming” those who’d have said they’d come to make sure they were actually coming – this was usually most of the calling done in the last week.

And all the time, the executives would be chasing targets of number of people that had been sent down from International Management as to how many people were supposed to be gotten to this particular event. These numbers were broken down into how many had to be gotten each night in the lead-up to an event. And these targets HAD to be met or staff were made to stay back until they were met. If they weren’t met, it was because the staff doing the call-in were either not using enough intention or the staff were out-Ethics. No exceptions. It didn’t matter what the “public” thought of being dragged along to be sold the “newest and greatest” that were constantly being “released” at each event. They didn’t know any better we were told – staff knew and needed to make sure the public were gotten to get their materials/courses/ whatever the latest “magic bullet that would boom Scientology and explained all previous problems with Scientology” and of course it was the staff’s job to see all public were “connected up to Source.” That is, they were in the org regularly studying or getting auditing. If they weren’t, it was the staffs’ fault for not getting them there.

Now for most of the time I was on staff, part of the orders were that a top-quality hotel or conference venue was hired for the night to stage the event in. the fact that this may mean the orgs didn’t have any money left over to pay staff or bills because of the costs involved in doing this was immaterial – queries sent up to management about this received the written equivalent of a scream back. So my org staggered along broke much of the time trying to pay back what the last event had cost and we’d usually just catch up when the next one arrived. I hated them for what they did to the orderly business of my work. It was like they were there just to make life hell for all of us.

It was at the preparatory drilling for one event in 1996 or 1997 that I was a spectator to the most amazing conversation I’d ever heard in my time – the two EDs of the Sydney orgs were calmly discussing a man who was on OT VII yet was regularly having sex with one of his daughters. I had to get some info from one of them and had to wait until they’d finished before I could butt in.

So here I was standing there with a few other staff hearing how this guy had been carrying on with his daughter for quite some time and neither of them apparently wanted to stop this and the wife’s position on all this was unknown and the daughter was working as a topless waitress and wasn’t about to stop that as she made lots of money from tips and had apparently been propositioned by several customers and maybe given one a hand-job but that wasn’t confirmed. And how it could be expected that she’d soon be having sex with these customers for money as that was what most of the other waitresses there did. Why this was being discussed in public in the first place was mind-boggling to say the least. It was so surreal I could barely believe what I was hearing.

The guy was later jailed for his behaviour but only after he fell out with the church and began to get critical of Scientology – then he was put in to the authorities and that was the end of him for a few years. But at this time no-one would have dreamt of handing him over for it. He was a Scientologist and on OT VII.
 

I told you I was trouble

Suspended animation
Just to clarify the nuttiness that were the “events” that staff had to cope with:

snipped ...

It was at the preparatory drilling for one event in 1996 or 1997 that I was a spectator to the most amazing conversation I’d ever heard in my time the two EDs of the Sydney orgs were calmly discussing a man who was on OT VII yet was regularly having sex with one of his daughters. I had to get some info from one of them and had to wait until they’d finished before I could butt in.

The guy was later jailed for his behaviour but only after he fell out with the church and began to get critical of Scientology – then he was put in to the authorities and that was the end of him for a few years. But at this time no-one would have dreamt of handing him over for it. He was a Scientologist and on OT VII.


:omg: :omg: :omg: :omg: :omg:

The expression 'degraded being' was never more apt, I find it almost unbelievable that they didn't hand him over ... but I suppose it may have affected the income or scio PR or something important like that.

:whistling:

So, he is an EX scio now then ... I wonder if he is online ..

:nervous:
 

Carmel

Crusader
Holy moly Scoots!

It's kinda hard to believe, but then, given the two women who held those positions, and other Execs around at the time, then I can kinda believe it - Talk about blinded and off the bloody wall!

I know that ya would have been between a rock and a hard place back then, in regards as to what to do, and/or which way to turn - You're putting it all on the table now though (in more ways than one :coolwink: ) - Good on you! :thumbsup:
 

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
I wrote several KRs on that scene and as far as I know no action was taken based on those reports. I couldn't believe that this guy was allowed onto and remained on OT7.

I was having a fit about it and finally realised that nothing was going to be done. I spoke with the AO C/S about it and he was the one who got the investigation that led to a Declare rolling. The interesting thing is that Asshole was declared for "out-tech", not for his gross sexual behaviour.

They covered it up until it couldn't be hidden any longer and finally expelled him. Most scn'ists who only saw his Goldenrod still believe this guy was expelled for out-tech. (Needless to say, he *was* grossly out-tech as well as being a grossly disgusting paedophile.)
 

Ted

Gold Meritorious Patron
YIKES!

[...]

It was at the preparatory drilling for one event in 1996 or 1997 that I was a spectator to the most amazing conversation I’d ever heard in my time – the two EDs of the Sydney orgs were calmly discussing a man who was on OT VII yet was regularly having sex with one of his daughters. I had to get some info from one of them and had to wait until they’d finished before I could butt in.

So here I was standing there with a few other staff hearing how this guy had been carrying on with his daughter for quite some time and neither of them apparently wanted to stop this and the wife’s position on all this was unknown and the daughter was working as a topless waitress and wasn’t about to stop that as she made lots of money from tips and had apparently been propositioned by several customers and maybe given one a hand-job but that wasn’t confirmed. And how it could be expected that she’d soon be having sex with these customers for money as that was what most of the other waitresses there did. Why this was being discussed in public in the first place was mind-boggling to say the least. It was so surreal I could barely believe what I was hearing.

The guy was later jailed for his behaviour but only after he fell out with the church and began to get critical of Scientology – then he was put in to the authorities and that was the end of him for a few years. But at this time no-one would have dreamt of handing him over for it. He was a Scientologist and on OT VII.


No doubt, organized scientology is Bizarro-World, but this above is WAY OVER THE TOP!
 

Magoo

Gold Meritorious Patron
Scooter,

Good God, what a nightmare! I am sooooo very sorry for your tremendous
loss, combined with the horrific "Handlings" of what you thought was your
"Church".

Almost daily I have conversations with people re Scientology, people who
were "in", and we end up saying, after discussing certain abuses: Can you believe we're even having this conversation?

I'm very thankful you have shared your story, and hopefully you have
found some relief, even if minor, in others understanding all you've gone through.

My blessings and love
to you, and your family and friends.

Tory/Magoo
 

justaguy

Patron Meritorious
Hey,

I'm sure you're very very busy now and you've given us a lot in this thread - I'm very grateful for that. But part of me has been selfishly going "I wish scooter would post about..." so I'll just out with it.

So, if you feel like it, if you could continue your story, I would surely be all ears. I'm especially interested in your time at narconon.

If not, thanks for what you've posted. It's more than anyone could have asked for and I've gotten a lot out of reading it.
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Just an added snippet for you from 1999/2000. Not sure exactly when it occurred but I remembered this a few days ago and have been meaning to post it since.

The ED called me downstairs one Saturday and gave me an emergency purchase order to give some cash (I think nearly $100) some guy who’d just walked in the door and spoke to her. I was stunned at first then went and chatted to this guy myself. He’d been to the hospital with his child and wife and now needed to get home again somehow and his Dad had told him to ask a church for help in such situations. He lived hours out of Sydney and had little money so went looking for a church. And found us open. The ED (bless her) immediately decided to help once she established him as genuine. And I and the rest of the needed execs followed her lead. It was one of the nicest gestures I ever saw a scientologist do – give money to a person in genuine need.

For Justaguy (and most everyone else) - I do want to get on with the story but I'm not sure I'll have time between now and Xmas. But I'll try :D
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Finally Off Staff

So I just settled into the workaday world that everyone I knew who wasn’t on staff did. I had no reason to go to the org as I had no courses paid for. So I just worked and then went home every night. Sometimes I worked nights but now I got paid real money for it. And I almost always had weekends off. It was strange at first to have all this “free time” on my hands after years of a strictly hand-to-mouth and never-really-enough-time-for-sleep existence.

I soon had the use of a company station wagon in exchange for my doing some night work and that meant I could drive places just for pleasure. There was a waterside park close to work that I went to for walks and I began to drive down there for bike rides with the dogs. I was even taking our neighbour’s dog with me some weekend mornings. We’d all pile into the work station wagon and the three dogs would be scrambling around the back in excitement. Then it would be a mad dash around the harbour and dodge trees and down through some mangrove swamp before coming back alongside some horse paddocks and putting the dogs back into the wagon and my bike onto the roof racks for the trip home.

We went to my brother’s for Christmas that year. For the first time in a long time I took a holiday and didn’t have to worry about paying someone to do my job while I was gone. And I got holiday pay too. I was still a little in shock at how easy life was outside of staff – I’d been pretty much locked into that life for over twenty years. It was like I’d finished a long prison sentence and was having trouble adjusting to my new-found freedom.

In the New Year I went into the org one night just to help out Viv with some stuff and it was actually quite fun – especially knowing I could walk out at any time if I wanted to. She was suffering badly and she apparently didn’t stay on staff much longer after that – I was told her and her boyfriend just didn’t turn up one night and that was it..

A family member was having marital troubles so my wife got the couple to agree to try Scientology marriage handling – I would be the one doing the actual auditing so we got them to see the film on it first. It was a joke.

First of all the org didn’t have the movie so they had to go to the AO. Then there were all these hoops that had to be jumped through to get to see it there. Caz lost the better part of the day getting this couple to see a movie that barely lasted thirty minutes. The constant hold-ups did nothing to impress this couple about Scientology and they never did get the counselling from me.

Caz had bought an old car and we used to go for occasional Sunday drives in it out of Sydney. One day we were going along a road we’d never been down before and we saw a “Narconon – 2 k.s” sign so we turned around and went and looked.

We drove into a run-down place in a lovely bush setting and stopped at the first set of buildings as there was a boom gate across the road. A young teenager came out and asked who we were so we told him. He said he’d get someone to come up from elsewhere to escort us around the property and then began complaining to me about how he’d been left here by himself and everybody else had gone off for the day. He was a Scientology kid and obviously way out of his depth here n the middle of nowhere surrounded by drug addicts.

Eventually an obviously gay girl came up and pleasantly took us around and showed us where everything was. The place was a shambles but the people there seemed quite happy and there were trees and wildlife everywhere. I even found a clump of wild orchids growing beside the road and took a few pieces home to grow. When our guide found out I was a trained C/S she tried to talk me into working there but I wasn’t interested – I had a paying job and a life now and I wasn’t interested in going back into the life I’d left.

A few weeks later I got hauled into the AO and was regged for my next services – problem was I had no money. Somehow I came up with enough to do a new version of the PTS/SP course “that everybody had to do.” I managed to get it at half-price but I really didn’t want to do this course for the third time. But I wouldn’t be allowed to do any other services until I’d done it so we got the money and I was taken to the courseroom and then I left not to return for a long time.

Caz was looking at opening her own childcare centre and we got a loan approved and a place to renovate with business partners and it was all very exciting. We had done a whole bunch of sums and we could make some real money if we did this right – and it looked easy. Caz was pregnant and we were sure the newborn would be Lauren coming back so life was looking very good. I’d joined the local orchid society and went to their monthly meetings and had been working on getting back a collection. The only downside was we were living right next door to where the Sydney Olympics would be held – and local areas were already being closed off due to “security reasons” – we could no longer go to our local bank as it was inside the grounds of a power substation and had to be closed for the duration.

But then our daughter Kirsty Ann arrived and life became hectic again with a new-born. But it felt that we were complete as a family again, and a lot of old pain just vanished.

Then I got called into the org to see a Sea Org mission that was supposedly doing a series of surveys on why the Key to Life had failed and they wanted my info.. I unsuspectingly went in to see them only to find it was a full-on recruit mission and I would be sent to Ethics if I didn’t agree to go back on staff. After taking a battering for a long time I told them that my wife would have to be closed and left it at that – I couldn’t see that she would agree at all. My years on staff had left me with a cowardice when it came to confrontations with sea Org members that I still couldn’t conquer even after leaving.

So they got Caz in and somehow got her to agree to get me back on staff into full-time training for the day Org. I was trapped. I quit my job as Caz was sure that she could support me with the money we would make through the Centre and the mission had her convinced that I wouldn’t be happy doing anything other than staff because it’s all I’d done for so long and since I’d left I’d done nothing etc etc.

So I got dragged in to another recruit event at the CLO where a whole bunch of people (including my ex-ED, now a public helping recruit people for staff) had gathered. I got up and said how wonderful it was to be back on staff again and I’d actually convinced myself it would be. I don’t think they got anyone else to join up.

So for the next few weeks I did nothing but work on getting the centre ready to be opened. Caz and I virtually lived there, with me often at home with James at night while she stayed there with Kirsty and came home very late. I tried to get my job back from my boss at the cleaning company but she told me I needed to be back on staff. There was no way out. I went to the org and got officially routed onto course then went home and a few days later had to call my dad and ask him to cover the rent for us as we were broke. We now had the centre opened but at the wrong time of the year and all the leaflets in letterboxes we did late at night got us few kids enrolled and we weren’t making any money. But the future looked OK if we could hang in until the New Year when enrollments traditionally would happen. In the meantime we had no money and no regular income source. And a large bank loan to pay. But years of being on staff had taught me how to live on virtually nothing so we struggled on through it.

Caz had been roped into a fight that was going on between the local Scientology school and a group of parents. The school had decided to close down their pre-school care as it was too expensive and they didn’t want to get subsidized help from the government as that would mean that “psychs” would inspect the premises and make them run on a “psych-based” program. As she’d just successfully gotten her preschool through all those hoops without too much bother she couldn’t see the school’s problem – after all, if staff members could get their kids looked after all day for $10 instead of $60 or more like they were currently being asked to pay, wouldn’t that be a good thing? This was what the parents group had been fighting for and the school and their Sea Org masters were against it. It was so insane that I found myself soon roped into it too and providing the LRH policy back-up for the newly-founded “Pre-School Committee.”

Unfortunately our relations with our business partners began to sour and I had to get work just to keep us going. I found some casual delivery work and quickly stopped going into the org for study. I never quite made it onto staff and I was relived that I got out of that without any contract breakage involved – I completed no courses in my time there so I had no bill to pay.
 

I told you I was trouble

Suspended animation
Thanks for doing this Scoots ... I share your love of nature and I know how hard it would have been for you not to have had the time to indulge it for all those years.

Time spent doing the things you really want to do with the people you want to be with is so precious.

:tumbleweed:
 

sallydannce

Gold Meritorious Patron
Thanks for doing this Scoots ... I share your love of nature and I know how hard it would have been for you not to have had the time to indulge it for all those years.

Time spent doing the things you really want to do with the people you want to be with is so precious.

:tumbleweed:

Me too! I also have a strong connection with nature. When I am unable to spend time with nature, a part of me seems to wilt.

Thanks for continuing to share your story Scooter. It is really appreciated. :yes:
 
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