Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:07 pm by leereyno
You can add me to the list.
My name is Lee Reynolds and I live in Phoenix, Arizona.
I became involved in the cult when I was but a young lad of 16 waaaay back in 1988. Been out of the cult since 1996.
Things were easier for me than for many here in that no one in my family was or is involved in the cult in any way and most of them were very suspicious of it. Being young and foolish, and more than a little naive, I didn't see the cult for the evil scam that it is at first. Later I thought that I could change it from the inside, which of course got me booted. Anyone who is in a cult but who does not have the cult IN them, is a threat to that cult, and is removed or eliminated. They don't like people who ask questions. They want their victims to be vapid and malleable, swallowing whatever line of bullshit they are fed, no matter how absurd.
They want willing slaves, not "I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you!"
Though I doubt that anyone here will remember me, I was out at PAC for about a year between 93 and 94. I was not in the SO. I was one of those people who got sent out for training and got "volunteered" to stick around and work on various things, the Audits Task Force in my case.
Cults like Scientology depend on anonymity in order to persist. The only people who join such cults are those who don't know anything about them. The more the public hears about the cult and learns bad things about it, the fewer people there will be for the cult to draw from.
I'd never heard of $cientology in 1988, but today it is a one-word punchline. This is why all of their new ads spend 29 seconds on vague feel-good messages and only show the $cientology brand at the very end. The cult has to hide its identity in these ads in order to get anyone to listen. That is a very encouraging thing.
So don't get down on the fact that most people who have been burned by the cult would rather just go away and put it all behind them. Life is too short to spend it reliving past tragedies and blunders. You can be sure that those former scilons have NOTHING good to say about the cult. I never pass up an opportunity to warn others about the dangers of this cult. I don't always tell them of my own past as a member, but I do lay out the facts for them. Websites like OC make that very easy.
Scientology: Proof that evil is not merely the absence of good.
