The
Jean-Luc Barbier Affair
Foreword
The story of Jean-Luc
Barbier is without a doubt the ultimate cause célèbre among the various tales and
scandals that involve the Church of Scientology in Switzerland.
In 1989 Jean-Luc Barbier
moved through the Upper Levels of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida, until his
progress came to an unceremonious halt after he adamantly refused membership in
WISE , a Scientology affiliation seeking to run each business owned by Scientologists as if it were franchises and which exact a 15% commission of the business income. His subsequent demands for
refund of Scientology service were met by 10 years of stalling tactics from the Church. When the monies were finally paid, the Church publicly labeled him as psychotic, but Jean-Luc Barbier won a court case against the Church for slander in late 2006.
I have read numerous
documents published by Mr. Barbier on the Internet and I can testify that
according to my experiences and personal observations all the declarations that
he has made concerning his experiences with the Church of Scientology between 1989 and 1990, are entirely accurate.
I know this for a fact,
because I was not only there, but I was also his auditor. (An auditor is a Scientology practitioner or
therapist)
An affair that turned sour
I first met Jean-Luc Barbier at Scientology's most advanced Center
located in Clearwater, Florida, in early spring of 1989. Because I spoke French and
was one of the qualified auditors to provide upper Level counseling that he would
soon require, I started upon a program of sessions with Jean-Luc.
I do not believe I am
revealing any personal secrets of Jean-Luc if I state that he had always
appeared to me to be "normal” and “balanced". I also liked him. According to Scientology's own criteria and
in sharp contrast to the outrageous statements made by official spoke-persons
of the Church of Scientology, he had to be in good mental condition, in good spirits and most certainly not mentally sick, in order to be
invited to do Scientology's Upper Levels. The
adjudication of the mental state and hence preparedness for the Scientology
Upper Levels is never granted by the auditor, but rather by a group of "Case Supervisors",
who are viewed as the most technically advanced individuals in a Scientology
organization. Unanimously and according to their own criteria, in 1989 Scientology Case Supervisors declared Jean-Luc
Barbier to be "mentally healthy".
Things moved along, at least
according to my perception at the time, in a rather normal fashion until the
moment when a number of Church salesmen, called registrars in Scientology lingo, prompted by a demonic fervor to increase the Church’s already significant
wealth, put considerable pressure to extort from its parishioners, including
Jean-Luc, the greatest possible amount of money they would be able to squeeze,
stopping just short of beggaring them. The extraction of large sums of money from its adherents, frequently described as bilking, is a routine procedure undertaken by the Church of Scientology. Experienced and ruthless salesmen are used to subject those perceived as potential income donors to the
strongest of sales pressure tactics until they eventually crack and empty their
bank accounts, or they borrow up to the limits of their credit availability, and even beyond, through a number of devious schemes.
Having had to deal over and over with
the upsets and nightmarish wake that follows such unethical behavior, I frequently wrote it up, hoping that something would eventually get done about it,
but it nothing ever. I eventually reached the conclusion that the entire infrastructure
of the Church of Scientology is based on greed rather
than serving others.
Toward the end of his
trip, Jean-Luc was deeply perturbed. The
reason seemed amply clear to me: he had been pointlessly threatened by arcane
curses and eternal damnation by labeling him as a Suppressive Person, and was repeatedly accused of selfishness and egotism because he had challenged the idea of cleaning up all of his bank accounts in the Church's favor.
To the degree that my limited
means allowed, I sought to comfort Jean-Luc, but merely seeking to handle an upset without addressing its underlying cause, obviously could not lead to any
significant relief. In actual practice, the Church of Scientology
currently considers itself to be not only a true jewel but also the only organization in the entire universe, capable of saving or rehabilitating
Mankind.
Imbued with such beliefs, the official representatives of the Church of Scientology, a good number of whom I have personally known for years, feel
completely offended at the mere suggestion that the Church of Scientology
should ever redress the slightest wrong it may have caused or make any apologies, no matter how vile the treatments it may have inflicted upon those now
seeking justice.
Upon return to his native
Switzerland, Jean-Luc evidently came to his senses and became seriously
disillusioned with the Church of Scientology
Whenever the Church is confronted by disgruntled customers or legal threats, the Church of Scientology adopts the “Safe Solution” that both the Church of Scientology and L. Ron
Hubbard are infallible. Consequently, it will always retroactively deem any unpleasant outcome to be the product of “irresponsible”
and unauthorized action by members who had nothing but malice on their minds. In other words they
make a profuse use of scapegoats. These
scapegoats are evidently never among who continue to cram more and more funds
into their already brimming coffers. One of the notable exceptions occurred when the fundraisers created havoc of such magnitude that calls were
made by Governments to put a cap on Scientology activities. Such
happened in Sweden in 1986 and in France in 1987.
In the case of Jean-Luc
Barbier, I was made the scapegoat in 1989. As described above, the current philosophy of the Church
of Scientology is that L.Ron Hubbard and the Church he created are infallible. A blind faith in that
infallibility leads to the unavoidable conclusion that for any non-optimum
result on a person they process, both the auditor and the case supervisor have
deliberately sabotaged the individual case through a combination of
recklessness and malice. Any objection to the effect that the auditor and Case Supervisor
have nothing to gain and everything to loose by acting in such a maliciously is countered by the explanation that non-optimum results actually prove that the case Supervisor has an evil streak and that the auditor has been busily making false session reports.
The Scientology Justice System
The Justice system in Scientology, as it is being
currently practiced in the Church
of Scientology, not only
presumes guilt by the accused, but views any pleas of “not-guilty as
"evidence of guilt and of non-responsibility". This doctrine is based on the aberrant notion
that since people are entirely responsible for their condition, they are also responsible for any mishap that ever happens to them. Hence because this means that everything is their
fault, anyone daring to reject the "Scientology Justice System" or
denounce the Church of Scientology or those
that extort funds in its name is guilty of the most heinous of crimes and worst
possible calumny. This is actually the
required frame of mind of those who must operate as representatives of the Church of Scientology. Anyone operating on different premises would be ineligible to represent the position of the Church.
The current Scientology
Justice concept of Jurisprudence is deeply anchored in concepts and ideas that
have fallen out of use in the Western World since the Middle Ages and the days
of the Inquisition. According to those
barbaric concepts, any irreverence or disagreement with the doctrine that is
judged a priori to be orthodox by the inquisitor (the Ethics Officer or its
delegates in Scientology lingo), is an automatic demonstration of guilt. The heretic so found is liable to the most excruciating of punishments. A rebellion
against the Inquisitor (or his Superiors) is perceived as the ultimate
blasphemy. Depending upon the disposition of those called to punish the guilty, cruelty and sadism may be used. Therefore should come as no great revelation to say that in 1989, I was made entirely responsible
for what happened to Jean-Luc Barbier and the entire wake that followed the
inept handlings done by the Office of Special Affairs.
For weeks, I was
subjected to tortuous and cruel punishments with the view of humiliating me rather for the purpose of extracting from me even more than the 80 to 90
hours of work I was already subjected to every week for less than $30 pay.
Naturally those who abused Jean-Luc and treated him like dirt, were rewarded promotions and large bonuses later that year. To my
knowledge, they are still doing the same thing have the same job.
Three years later it was
my turn to leave the Church of Scientology for good. By then I was acknowledged as the top Class XII auditor which is not as grandiose an accomplishment as it sounds, because over thirty Class XIIs had already left, including all the most experienced. I was the best that remained. Class XII is the most advanced
training level in Scientology. I had reached a level such that there was nobody left in the entire Church that could still teach me anything about Scientology. Anyone else had been conveniently been removed by the leadership.
Ultimately faced with the
entire knowledge of what is Scientology and what it is not, I was finally able to see everything that was good with it as well as everything that evil.
Epilogue
I have fully turned the page to a very successful and rewarding life since those horrible days in the Church of Scientology. I remain a firm believer in the development and evolution of self and one's intellectual abilities. I view ultimate enlightenment and awareness as only achievable in the presence of honesty, integrity and respect for others. I now see an insurmountable chasm separating the philosophy originally proposed by Scientology in 1952 and its current application by extremists or organizations which have vested servitude and control of others as part of their agenda.
I feel no bitterness
about my twenty years as a staff member in the Church of Scientology. I still have fond memories
of Jean-Luc Barbier. Sometimes, I hope that
he feels the same. Because I know the
details of a many abominations that occurred in the Church and most of them with
the sanction of its leadership, I will always view the Church of Scientology as one the vilest organizations existing on this planet.
Trained as Class XII
auditor by the Church of Scientology
Class XII
Copyright © 2007 by Pierre Ethier.