To Karin Pouw, PR Hack for the Church of Scientology

Joe Childs and Tom Tobin of the St Petersburg Times have published another set of articles and videos exposing the criminality and abuse of the Church of Scientology called "The Money Machine".

Karin Pouw is a PR hack for the Church of Scientology International, who lies to the world about Scientologists not being pressured to go into debt. This is a report I wrote in 1999, while still a Scientologist, about my experiences at the Advanced Organization of Los Angeles - 12 years ago.

I left Scientology and started warning people about it within a year after this report was written because it had become clear to me that Scientology was incorrigibly criminal and abusive and that something must be done. I have continued to warn the public about Scientology, and your organization has continued its criminal and abusive practices.

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25 November 1999

RTC Reports Officer

Ethics Section AOLA

Qual AOLA

Deanna FCS AOLA

Tim Edwards  AOLA

Alanzo

Solo Certainty Student

Things That Shouldn't Be

1.     Pressuring Scientologists to squirrel the application of standard finance policy to their lives

2.     Routing a student off course when no policy had been violated, and while the tech was going in.

Since two weeks before my annual IAS membership expired, the FCS AOLA has been working with me to renew my membership. Deanna began by asking me to put my membership on a credit card and going into debt for it. I told her that I have gotten myself $36,000 in debt and that this is a severely out-ethics scene for me. I explained over multiple conversations, adding up to many hours, that I had been applying ethics to this and reading LRH Finance policy to turn this scene around.

I had not been applying standard admin for so long in this area that it now threatened my progress on the Bridge and has even gotten me close to bankruptcy. I told her that, instead of pressuring me into going further into debt, that I needed her help me to apply standard finance policy and to FP for this membership so that I could both apply policy and get my membership paid for.

I arranged to pay $50 every week toward my membership. Each time I paid my check to Deanna, she told me that I just needed to get my membership now and to put it on a credit card. She accused me of being ARC broken with the IAS. She repeatedly said that I "could do better than this", that I was "selling my self short" by not just going into debt and paying for it now. She said that I was "not some low havingness person with no money" but that "I could do it". One time she (good-naturedly, and with good humor) put her hands around my neck to act like she was strangling me in frustration, saying "Don’t sell yourself short like this!" as I paid my FPed amount.

When my membership finally expired, Deanna told me that I couldn’t be on course without being an IAS member. Having studied the policies on membership very thoroughly, and being an Ethics Specialist, I knew this was untrue and asked her to show me the reference. She could not show me any reference. I began to feel like I was attending course "despite not being an IAS member" - something no where in policy and not any kind of a standard for ethical behavior of a student.

I continued to make payments and Deanna continued to accept them. One night, on Tuesday, the 16^th of November, I received a message from Deanna that she wanted to speak to me before course. My next payment was due, so I had planned to see her anyway to make my payment. I went in to the Atrium and sat down with her. Deanna's demeanor had totally changed. She puffed out her shoulders and got up right in my face and said that she had attended an IAS briefing and that she had decided that "this was total bullshit" and that I was going to pay right now. I told her that I would make my payment, but that, as we had discussed for over a month now, I was applying standard finance policy and that I would not go any further into debt for this or anything else.

This actually became a firefight. I set out my check card to make my payment and she refused it, saying that wouldn't accept any more of my payments. I told her that I had done a lot of conditions on this, and that it was abundantly clear to me that people who pressure me to go into debt and off finance policy are not my friends. There are plenty of references on this, not the least of which is 18 February 1982 CHANGING WORKABLE FINANCE SYSTEMS.

She, again, said that I shouldn’t be on course without my membership paid for. I got up to get away from her and make the payment to Tim Edwards. Then I saw that it was three minutes to course time and so I turned around to go upstairs and Deanna was there. She took me by the hand and tried to" 8C" me to Ethics. I told her that I was going to course, so she rode the elevator with me. She accused me of "using policy to stop", even though there was no stop as I had been making payments all along and would have made one to her had she not refused it.

I walked in just before roll call and Deanna stood outside. After roll, as I began getting set up for course, I saw Deanna come into the course room and start whispering into the supervisor's ear. Then, later, I saw Deanna come back into the course room and place a piece of paper into the Sup's inbox. It was extremely distracting but I continued on with my drill anyway.

Five minutes later, the Supervisor Joey Chait, came up to me during a drill with an ethics routing form and told me that I was being taken off course and routed to ethics. I took it and went downstairs to ethics. The KR was stapled shut to the RF. (I personally did not receive a copy and still do not have one. It should be available in my EO  file.)

The ethics officer unstapled the KR and showed it to me and had me explain what happened. The KR said that I had told Deanna that anyone who tried to force me to go into debt was not a friend on of mine. It said further that this was "enemy line" and that "the string should be pulled".

I explained the situation that had just occurred with Deanna and asked to see any policy that I had been violating. I was fully willing to look at any overt that I might be committing that I'm not seeing. He said he couldn't think of a  policy I might be violating, and didn’t mention any overt that I might be committing. He sent me to go see the video of the latest IAS event. I was taken off course at 8pm and sat and watched the video until 10pm. Then I went to Tim Edwards and paid the $50 payment I had always intended to pay.

On the following Saturday, my twin offered to lend me the money so that I could pay for my membership and I would pay her back on the same FP schedule that I would be paying the IAS. I accepted this and my membership is now paid, and I am, once again, in debt for it.

I write this because the pressure that was used to get me to quit applying standard LRH finance policy was tremendous, even threatening my progress on the Bridge by verbally stating a fictitious policy that "students shouldn’t be on course without their IAS memberships in force" and threatening to try to take me off course, despite no policy regarding this at all.

I also write this because the KR that Deanna wrote was not filed in my ethics file, per the policies on the matter, with me receiving a copy,  but was used to actually take me off course in an emergency manner and being made to explain a KR which showed no evidence of a crime or even an off-policy action. This is actually a non-standard handling of ethics reports.

HCOPL 1 MAY 1965 STAFF MEMBER REPORTS states, "The most serious reports, which are the only ones taken up at once, are technical alter-is, noncompliance, any false reports, false attestations, no-reports, misdemeanors, crimes and high crimes. The others are left to accumulate (except in Emergency when all reports on that portion or org are taken up at once)."

HCOPL 17 MARCH 1965 RIGHTS OF A STAFF MEMBER, STUDENTS AND PRECLEARS TO JUSTICE, states, "There are no student rules and regulations except the Justice Codes. All others are abolished…"

This is true,

Alanzo

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