Scamology wrote:

> The CofS is very totalitarian about disconnection. I met the son of
> Scientology staff in California. His name was Collen. He had a twin
> brother. He was in his twenties.
>
> He said he had a mother on staff at a church on the east coast. He said
> she went away to Florida to train for years when he was a teenager,
> leaving him, his brother and dad. She came back one weekend after 5
> years to get a divorce from his dad and left to train again.
>
> Scientology is so good at fixing marriages from what I've seen. Out of
> five couples I saw get marriage counselling at the CofS they all got
> divorced. That is a 100% failure rate. Take a look at the sweetness and
> light of their marriage counselling promo. They feed you a lie to get
> you to buy marriage counselling, the hope of saving it and ending the
> arguments. Then they rip your family apart financially.
>
> Collen said he and is brother were on staff, but he had left staff and
> been declared a suppressive persons (SP). Since then his mother has had
> nothing to do with him. No holiday cards. No birthday cards. Nothing.
>
> Is that the kind of church you want to be involved in when it comes to
> families? Are you ready to give up your possessions, family, job, and
> friends to be a Scientologist? You may not believe it but once you've
> been in Scientology for five years, your family, friends, and
> co-workers see you as distant and strange from being a Scientologist.
> It's a bubble like the 2006 Rolling Stone article describes.

Thanks for this post. But why not give the full names of these people? Why protect them? Exposure is really the best bet we have to stop this type of disregard of family fealty.

For instance, I'll give a couple of examples that I know of. First, there is a woman who I know very well named Tomi Mikkelson. We were very good friends at one time. Now that I'm declared I doubt she'd speak with me. Anyway, about 15 years ago she was a housewife with 3 young children -- 2 girls and a boy. Anyway, Tomi decided she wanted to join the Sea Org. Of course, even though this caused tremendous distress for her husband and her children, ASHO wanted her on staff and used 'ethics' handlings on her husband to get him to go along. For a short time I think her kids were in Sea Org child care (not too clear about this, though, as my memory is a bit foggy about the details) but after that Dwight (her husband) had the full responsibility for all 3 kids with hardly any help from Tomi. The people at ASHO kept supporting her decision and Dwight was threatened with being declared if he balked. He was not a happy camper.

Anyway, Tomi was on staff for a few years. Her boy, Kalen (?), (it's odd that your friend and my friend's son have the same name), the oldest of the 3 kids, ran into serious drug problems when he was in his early teen years.

Tomi eventually left the Sea Org. One of her daughters joined the Sea Org and was on staff at AOLA around 1999 or so. Not sure if she's still in.

Tomi and Dwight never got back together (as far as I know). Tomi married someone else and she's a real estate agent in the Silverlake area.

Tomi has always been a very light-hearted, friendly person. 'Uptone' from a Scientological point of view. I remember trying to dissuade her at the time from going into the Sea Org. I blame her less than the recruiters and other Sea Org members who were willing to disregard the welfare of those 3 kids just so that they could get more 'products' out. Didn't they realize how much bad PR they caused Scientology? Didn't they see that what they did probably would cause more harm than any production Tomi might have produced?

I'll give another very similar example. There was a handyman and construction worker named Alden Bliss who was married to another Scientologist. A very good looking, nice woman from Holland (I think -- from Europe, at any rate). They had 2 kids. She was recruited for the Sea Org and Alden was completely put in a kind of state of shock for a while. He had 2 young children to care for, he had to support them, also. He wound up in serious financial trouble. Anyway, his wife eventually left the Sea Org. She wasn't in as long as Tomi. Alden moved to the mid-west to be with his family. Not sure if he ever got back with his wife.

I have other examples. I'll relate them when I have the time.

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