Is Scientology breaking the law?

Allegations of child neglect by Scientology

Excerpted from http://www.scientology-lies.com/re.cgi?http://www.inx.de/~tilman/mystory/applied.html . Please see that page for the full text.

Emphasis added in red . Editorial comments, when added, are in purple .


Applied Scholastics: A testimony from inside

Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 12:09:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: "M. Council" <[email protected]>

The following is a statement in a letter dated 6/95, from a person who wishes to remain anonymous who now lives in Florida. Posted with permission.

SOME NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED BY THE POSTER.

My experience with Scientology was mostly through one of their Applied Scholastics schools. I was looking for something other than the public school system and found an Applied Scholastics school that claimed to be non-denominational, a sane environemnt, and an individual self-paced academic program for the student. I was told that it was based on the breakthrough study technology of the great "educator" L. Ron Hubbard. I didn't really know anything about LRH being the founder of Scientology at the time, and once I found out, I didn't know anything about Scientology anyway except for the fact that John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise and other "successful" Hollywood actors were members.

Not every kid there was a scientologist; many were not. You could really tell the difference betweent the scientology kids and the others, though. The Scientology kids were hungry, dirty, scabies, "pathetic", inadequate clothing, etc. HRS ((Health and Rehabilitative Services, an agency looking for neglected children)) had checked into some of the children.

 

The claim that the school was non-denominational was a bold-faced lie. Everything was Scientology. Knowledge reports were kept on students, Q & A upon admissions which were kept in files and used to smear students who "blew", stat charts, study courses and the comm course (which being under the Tax Exempt umbrella makes them "religious" courses), ethics policies, success stories, Friday graduation and wins sharing and applause, etc., etc.

I don't know if any of you were in any part of an org where you had to report to LA on the org's stats each Thursday, but if you were I'm sure you saw how stats can be "inflated" and manipulated. These are the same stats Applied Scholastics uses to advertise how wonderful they are.

There are stats for student points that each student has to keep for each day. Also there were different stats for courses completed by each of the students that week as well. You understand the different conditions Power, Affluence, Liability, etc., I hope. These are determined by the weekly graphing of your stats. The school I worked at manipulated these by inflating student points. They would take students off of the courses they really needed to get a standard academic education, such as math, history, etc. which take a lot of work and time to get the course completions. Then they would be put on some really educationally benign program of drawing a picture, calling each picture an art course, counting it as a completion, plus taking the points for it. If they were far behind the previous weeks completions and points, all of the students would draw several pictures, taking an art "completion" for each one and the points that go with it. Also, they would be given silly drills to do that they could complete rapidly and do them over and over and over and take 75 points each time the drill was done and that brought up the student points rapidly. That way going by how many points the studnets were completing each week made it seem like they were doing a lot of work, but the thing is, it was quantity work and NOT quality work. All of these many completions and student points looked really great on paper. My, how much work it appeared the students were doing. HA!! Of course the work was useless as far as what really needed to be done for the students legitimate high school studies.

Since I only worked at the one Scientology Applied Scholastics school I can't say if my experience was typical or isolated. I can say that we regularly had L.A. telling us what to do, and that they were always checking up on us. When some representatives came from Clearwater to evaluate the school, their main concern was that there wasn't a picture or a bust of LRH in reception, and that there should have had more CoS materials on display. So now I ask you, does that say to you what their main priority was?

 

Yes, they do use E-Meters at those schools! Just not on wog kids; when they are used, they are not called e-meters [which allows them to deny it without losing conscience]. They're called "learning accelerators."

Yes, you do have to write success stories or you won't pass the class!

KRs: Admissions form had no tests, no academic questions. It read like a sec check! and the answers were kept in the file. All learning disabilities are really M/Us ((misunderstood words)) anyway, according to ((name of the directress deleted)). Eventually, says my source, a few kids rightfully removed the KR's from their KR file. When they were led to write KR's they did not realize these would be kept on file for permanant reference. They also removed KR's from their friends KR files as well. When a few left the school they were Fair Gamed. My source was outraged by this, and it was part of her decision to leave the school.

Concerned citizens [e.g., former students, parents of same, etc.] are all frightened of the threats that were made to them. No one has spoken out.

This page was last updated on May 8, 1999.