Scientology’s Dark Secrets
November 25th, 2009Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
SCIENTOLOGISTS lured Dean Detheridge off the street using their tried and tested technique of offering a personality test. He wasn’t much interested, but they were extremely skilled and persistent persuaders, and he found he couldn’t say no. Seven days later he was on staff in what turned out to be a very full-time job.
Although he rose to executive director of the Canberra branch, Detheridge was always below the poverty line. He worked 15-hour days for the Church of Scientology, plus another three hours in the early morning as a cleaner to feed his family. Days off were rare.
He told The Age how he learnt to lie, bully, intimidate and humiliate people and particularly to extort money in service of the church and its ostensible aim, the greatest good of the greatest number. Now he calls it ”a crock of shit”.
Detheridge lost 17 years to the church, under constant financial and emotional pressure. He did much of which he is now ashamed, and suffered much more. This week his story hit the headlines when Senator Nick Xenophon called for an inquiry into the church and tabled several letters from former members.
For decades the celebrity-recruiting group, granted legal status as a religion in Australia in 1983, has fought to preserve its secrets. These include a bizarre cosmology involving the galactic dictator Xenu dumping millions of corpses in volcanoes on Earth 75 million years ago and blowing them up with 17 hydrogen bombs (the last word in high-tech when L. Ron Hubbard founded the group in the 1950s).
In this schema, the souls, or ”thetans”, of the dead were contaminated and in turn contaminated humans, who can be cleansed only by Scientology. The process involves vitamins, E-meters and large sums of money.
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
BTW, “Bare-Faced Messiah” is a must-read.
I gotta say, is there a cooler name than Nick Xenophon?
“Nick Xenophon by day, SuperSenator by night!”