Prehistoric Aggression: More Reasons Katie Holmes Was Smart to Avoid Scientology Marriage Counseling
Categories: Scientology, Sunday Funnies
 |
| "In all the planets in all the eons of the universe, you walk into mine." |
After news broke that Katie Holmes was divorcing Tom Cruise, various news outlets relied on Scientology PR to give the impression that, as ABC put it, "the church concentrates on improving couples' relationships through therapy." That sounded warm and fuzzy, but then we showed how Scientology's marriage counseling actually works by going right to the source: the actual counseling instructions laid down by church founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The Times today is publishing a story that hints at those instructions without, for some reason, quoting Hubbard and explaining that the ritual involves an auditor asking only two questions: in Katie Holmes' case, she would be asked, "What have you done to Tom?" and "What have you withheld from Tom?" repeatedly. For hours. At nearly $6,000 per 12.5-hour "intensive."
We can't imagine why the Times is leaving out that detail in what is otherwise a very good piece. But we're going to advance the story anyway: it turns out Scientology marriage counseling is weirder than even we let on!
We had assumed, based on what we were told about the Scientology movie, The Married Couple, that the subjects of this counseling would be interrogated until they gave up secrets like infidelity or stealing that had been going on in their relationship, um, you know, like here on this planet.
But we plum forgot that these are folks who believe that Scientology's "tech" allows them to investigate the experiences down their "whole track" of existence, which can be millions of years in their past!
As ex-Scientologist Patty Moher put it in our comments Wednesday: "I'm not surprised Scientology didn't use my marriage counseling data against me. After all, it would have been kind of weird for them to discuss my past life indiscretions where I killed my husband during an intergalactic battle! The delusion ran really deep."
We confirmed with an expert on Scientology technical processes, Claire Headley, that "whole track" experiences could definitely come up in the marriage counseling process -- even for a "pre-clear" like Katie Holmes. (Although Tom, as an OT VII, might have some interference from his body thetans, which is indicated in the policy under "OTs.")
Last night, I talked to Matt Plahuta, a Colorado resident, who went through Scientology marriage counseling about 20 years ago, when his wife at the time went whole track and turned the process into space opera.
He confirmed that the counseling consisted of being asked over and over, "What have you done to [spouse's name]?"
The point is to pry out of you secrets that you've been holding back.
"The auditor is supposed to keep the person focused in current time," he says. "The auditor in our case tried, but my wife kept going whole track."
She was describing something she had done to him in previous eons. "It really was her recollection of doing something to me back then," he says.
"I was sitting there thinking, this is fucked."
Matt said he rarely saw Scientology's marriage counseling ever do anyone any good. "It didn't ever work. It didn't help our marriage...Scientology says they have the answers to everything. They promote how they can fix marriages. But it's not that great. Divorce is really common in Scientology," he says. Even with his wife going whole track, they eventually divorced.
Today he's married to someone else, Cindy Plahuta, who went through her own ordeal with Scientology marriage counseling.
I told her I was interested in what her sessions were like, but admitted that I felt like it might be an intrusion.
"In Scientology you have no private life," she said with a laugh. "You really don't. It's all out there." As one spouse and then another are asked to spill their secrets over and over again, anything they say is written down and recorded in their files.
"The first time I did it with my ex-husband, it was pretty fast, and I just wanted to get it over with," she says. "We got to do it under 'chaplain rates,' which was about $200. The second time it was excruciating. We paid the intensive rate -- $7,800 for 12.5 hours."
And for that money? "They ask you the same question, over and over," she says. "We got done with this back and forth thing, and then we got sent to the chaplain. [Scientology's version of a sort of small claims court.] It is so unbelievable what you have to do to get a divorce through the Church of Scientology. If you don't go through the church you're threatened with being declared a suppressive person," (Scientology's version of excommunication).
Cindy wanted nothing to do with that process, and filed for divorce in the courts instead. "I was kind of done. I didn't want to go to the church. I had gone to my parents house in the middle of Florida," she says. "But I started getting phone calls there. They had tracked me down...they left messages on my parents' phone. It got to the point that it was so embarrassing."
She relented, and agreed to go through Scientology's version of divorce. "I was a resident of California, where I should have got 50 percent of everything. Instead, I had to agree to what my husband wanted, and I got nothing. I did it just to get him to stop pushing and creating pressure on me through the church. It was two or three years of utter harassment."
After that experience, she met and married Matt, and then the two of them began having doubts about the church itself. After Cindy read the 2009 Tampa Bay Times expose, "The Truth Rundown," she began contacting the former church executives who had spoken out in it. Matt joined her in pulling away from the church more and more.
They paid a heavy price for that decision: each of them has grown daughters who disconnected from them and no longer have any contact with them because of their decision to leave the church.
Cindy also has a son, but he stood by his mother. "My son was disillusioned with Scientology for ten years," she says. "He's done."
But then she tried to talk to her daughter about pulling out. "I told her what I was seeing. I took her to lunch and told her what I'd been reading. She said, 'Mom, that's just unbelievable.' She went home to California, and the next day I had an e-mail from the DSA of Orange County," she says, referring to a local official there.
"She turned me in."
She gets emotional telling me the story, and I can understand why.
"I was so close to her, you have no idea. We look alike, we talk alike," Cindy says.
For a year, she says, the two of them were able to stay in touch as long as Cindy agreed not to say anything negative about the church. "OK, I can do that, I told her. We did that for a year. But then about a year ago, she told me that I needed to call the ethics officer at Flag," she says, referring to Scientology's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, Florida. Cindy refused, and offered to talk about it when she flew to Orange County, California the next week to see her daughter perform in a ballet.
"The next day she e-mailed me, and said don't come. I haven't heard from her since."
Her daughter is 35.
Well, I know this piece started out as a lighthearted look at Scientology's bizarre marriage counseling, but it turned into yet another heartbreaking story of disconnection. It's funny how often that seems to happen.
OK, class, we'll rely on our illustrious commenting community to lighten the mood and come up with the sorts of whole track secrets Tom and Katie might have been keeping from each other until they underwent the penetrating process of infallible Hubbard tech. "What have you done to Tom, Katie? What have you withheld from Katie, Tom?"
See also:
What Katie is saving Suri from: Scientology interrogation of kids
Scientology's new defections: Hubbard's granddaughter and Miscavige's dad
Scientology's disgrace: our open letter to Tom Cruise
Scientology crumbling: An entire mission defects as a group
No memorial service for Scientology president's son? "Despicable."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shelly's Just Working Hard
This is David Miscavige's weekend: he's the leader of a sprawling, billion-dollar organization that is dedicated to providing for his every whim, he's throwing a party for himself that is being attended by wealthy and celebrity Scientologists from around the globe, and it's all happening on the 440-foot, private cruise ship the Freewinds, which is docked in St. Kitts in the Caribbean.
OK, maybe it's a bit sweltering down there right now, but the annual "Maiden Voyage" celebration happening on the barge has got to be off the hook, just like parties we've seen there in the past.
If Miscavige knows one thing, it's how to party. But for some reason, he never brings along his wife Shelly.
On Thursday, we wrote what we know about the mystery of Michelle "Shelly" Barnett, who suddenly vanished from Scientology's international base east of Los Angeles about five years ago. Before that, she was known as a hard-as-nails executive who was her husband's gung-ho partner running the church. But after being seen at her father's funeral in August, 2007, ex-Scientologists say she was suddenly nowhere to be seen. She didn't go to the big events that David Miscavige throws about five times a year, she wasn't seen around Int Base, and she just didn't seem to be a part of her husband's life anymore. As we explained, workers at Int Base like John Brousseau had reason to believe that she had been shipped up to an extremely secretive, lightly populated mountain compound that Scientology operates near Lake Arrowhead, California and is the headquarters for its strangest division, the Church of Spiritual Technology.
Now that Scientology news is suddenly the stuff of front pages, more and more news organizations are asking what church observers have been asking for years: Where's Shelly?
That prompted this response from the church, the first official word anyone has heard about the woman in five years: "She is not missing. Any reports that she is missing are false . . . Mrs. Miscavige has been working non-stop in the Church, as she always has," USmagazine was told.
Sure, Shelly's working away diligently in the isolation at CST headquarters, one assumes. I mean, it's not like she has an interest to join the party on the boat in the Caribbean, right? Or dress up with the rest of the folks for the Birthday Event, or an IAS gala?
Apparently, she's just not a party girl.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scientology Sunday Funnies!
Just about every day, we receive the latest wacky and tacky fundraising mailers put out by Scientology orgs around the world. Thank you, tipsters, for forwarding them to us! On Sundays, we love to reveal them to you.
We're foregoing the usual fundraising mailers for reasons that should be obvious. This week, our tipsters sent us a couple of images that we just had to share with you. I don't have credit information for them, so if you were responsible for creating these masterpieces, please e-mail me.
 |
 |
And from screenwriter Mark Olmsted (@MarquisMarq), there's this hilarious use of the (not-that-again!) Hitler meme...
No comments:
Post a Comment