Long time Church policies state that it is supreme in adjudicating disagreements among its members. Yet it has a proven track to exclusively rule with the individual who most closely align with it short term financial gain, no matter how amoral its diregard for those who have been wronged.
The penalty for any Scientologist seeking legal relief agaisnt another is
1- The automatic shunning of wife, children, parents, any associates and friends (lest they wish to share the same fate)
2- Public expulsion and humiliation, typically with slanderous generalities and fabrications, often disseminated where it will cause the maximum amount of embarassment.
3- Being branded as as a psychopath
4- Persecution by becoming the target of Hatred by zealot members who take all currently Church pronouncements as if they were divinely inspired.
5- Becoming an open target to the practice of the infamous FAIR GAME (policy cancelled only for PR purposes, but very much applied to high profile targets in current practice)
6- Official condemnation by curses of eternal damnation (Scientologese jargon actual means the same)
Authors of scams
are typically given free rein to operate within the Church as
long as they contribute to the filling of Church coffers (War chest in the Church lingo)
until the day when they eventually lead to the creation a legal
problem of the type of magnitude that induces legislation seeking to get Scientology banned in that country. Once this occurs, the Church will inevitably plead its innocence
and vigorously place itself on the long list of their victim, quietly
disregarding the fact that it profited obscene amounts of money from them.
I have personally met thousands of individuals on both sides of the
fence in and out of the Church of Scientology.
As long as Scientology's name was kept out of the newspapers or absent from
legislators agendas, the Church would turn the cold shoulder to the
hundreds of desperate pleas by those who claimed they had been fleeced by con men
and had now become destitute. Being now useless to
them, (downstat in Scientology jargon), the Church would discard them just like a worn out doll, should the victims of schemes and defaulting loans ever revolt against the Church sanctiomonious rulings or vocalize disparaging statements agaisnt against their agressors because they were "Scientologists in Good standing". Hundreds, possibly thousands of members have been expelled that way since in the last 25 years.
Over my two decades at Flag (the highest center in Scientology, located
in Clearwater, Florida), I was called to obtain the written (and
therefore entirely actionable) confessions of the perpetrators (and
more sadly, provide counselling to address the upset and
despondency from its victims) for dozens upon dozens of scams,
swindles, pyramid or ponzi schemes and other empty promises and
fraudulent loans.
For years I wrote reports on the perpetrators of such scams, appalled that they would be granted immunity by a Church I came to see every day as more corrupt. Nothing
came out of it, except for my being listed as a "trouble maker" and
eventually marked for "orderly disposal".
Some of the victims of those schemes became dangerously despondent and
found themselves destitute. In extreme cases,
suicides
or
murderous
rages
were the final result.
One of the most touching stories documenting such abuses to be posted
on the Internet is "Albert Jaquier,
Diary of a dying scientologist". I personally knew Albert quite well.
Based on my first hand experience with Albert, I can state that his
story as compelling as it was is merely the tip of a monstruous and
most pernicious iceberg. I know first hand dozens of stories equally
devastating (see the link for a more detailed account)
I feel no compunction to withold any of this data, because in each case
prior to the the travesty of a confessional that I was ordered to
give on behalf of the Church of Scientology each parishioner was told at the beginning
that "This is not auditing (Scientology word for
counselling) and that everything revealed would be written up in
triplicate and forwarded to a number of lay people and to the Church
Intelligence agency, where privacy concerns are officially acknowledged
as entirely irrelevant by long standing policy.
In every case, I was under the obligation to write a full and detailed
report of the transgressions revealed to me by the parishioners, as
well as any hearsay involving others, so that the Church could use it
for its own lay purposes. When I eventually objected that covertly
using Confession as a double standard to extort blackmail materials
from its parishioners and publicly revealing their details for personal gain was morally
objectionable, I found myself threatened by expulsion and blackmail. I
eventually felt utter contempt for a Church acting that way, especially
in the light that it has always insisted in the court and legal system
that all such confessions are "priest-penitent
privileged" and has the folders containing such "confessions" so
stamped. A number of disenchanted Scientology celebrities are currently
being kept at bay through the "intelligence" so gathered through such
chicanery. Without doubt the same fate awaits any current Church
celebrity should they one day decide to defect.
It is my view that the amount of money that was lost by well meaning
individuals through questionable schemes between 1980 and 1992 (the
years I was the foremost and most succesful counsellor within the Church) to be well in excess of 100 millions
American dollars.
In most cases the sole beneficiaries were the Church of Scientology and
International Association of Scientologists, who blissfully received
the millions of dollars funelled through the amoral schemes.
In the worst cases suicides were even directly linked when such schemes
failed. In 1996 Scientology was almost banned in France as a result.The
story of people I personally know who found themselves facing shattered
lives, financial ruin and who left Scientology as a result could fill
up a very large book. I also know equally well the unholy story and
details of those who defrauded them.
Best Regards
Pierre Ethier
