The Aftermath Foundation: Ex-Scientologists Setting an Example for other Ex-Cultists

A few ex-scientologists who were featured on Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath have set up a foundation to raise funds for the work they were already doing to help Sea Organization members (the equivalent of priests and monks) to escape the cult.  For those in the main facilities, life is extremely circumscribed:  they have no access to the internet or libraries, many have no high school diplomas (or have even gone to high school), they live and eat communally, and they are paid a very tiny stipend as "religious volunteers."  They have almost no ability to live on the outside.  Most don't even have driver's licenses, and their passports are held by their organization.  Many younger members are the children of Sea Org members and so have no contacts on the outside, and they have been forced to "disconnect" (shun or cease all contact) with anybody who has left or spoken against the organization.

To complicate things, those at the secretive compound near Hemet, California, are kept behind locked gates and fences topped with razor wire, and they risk being chased down and retrieved if they leave without permission ("blow").   One of the stories featured in the Aftermath series described the  harrowing escapes of Mark Headley and his wife Claire.  (Headley expands on this in his book, Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology).

Many ex-members worked under the radar for years helping people with the practicalities of starting a new life from scratch:  escaping, taking a bus or plane to a safe space with family or an ex-member, getting a social security card, driver's license, passport, GED, job, and eventually an apartment.  Their network was informal, much like the networks that helped Jews escape Nazis or enslaved American Blacks escape to freedom.  It's difficult, scary, and expensive work, all paid out of pocket.

The Aftermath Foundation formalized the work in 2017, naming the new organization after the TV series. The main focus is raising money for the many expenses incurred when people leave.  Their website has a link for people to apply for aid, expanding the reach of the group beyond the friends-network that's been operating since the 1960s.  They also maintain a database of people willing to help.  Can you pick people up from the airport?  Give someone a job?  Leave Aftermath Foundation cards at a Scientology facility? Offer someone a place to stay?  Let them know!

Their latest effort was quashed by Scientology within three days!  They collaborated with a distraught father who has been trying for years to contact his children to post contact information on a billboard within sight of the Hollywood building where members and potential members could see it.  Clear Channel Communications, owner of the billboard, removed the billboard after being pressured by Scientology.  Their official statement on Facebook reads in part: 

In December 2023, we approached former Scientologist Phil Jones because of his successful 2016 Call Me billboard campaign that exposed Scientology’s destructive practice of “disconnection”, which tears families apart. Disconnection is the forced separation of a current Scientologist from anyone (including immediate family) who has been declared an enemy of Scientology.

Phil and his wife, Willie, suffered through disconnection when their adult children, Mike and Emily Jones, refused to communicate with them in any way after being ordered to cut off all contact by Scientology. Phil Jones joined the board of The Aftermath Foundation in March 2024.

We located the perfect billboard site close to and visible from Scientology’s buildings in Los Angeles and signed a one-year contract with Clear Channel Outdoor, including the First Right of Refusal at the end of the contract term. We developed a simple billboard design with our message and established a toll-free 24/7 helpline: 888-FREE-002.

The billboard was installed on March 11, 2024 at 9:00 AM.

Initially, Clear Channel Outdoor was very supportive of our campaign. The manager told us that their office staff thought we were doing a great thing.

By 10:00 AM, Scientology had erected a cherry picker in front of the billboard, intending to block our toll-free helpline from the view of their members. By that afternoon, they had also erected a scissor lift.

The next day, March 12, we were contacted by our Clear Channel Outdoor account representative, who told us they were under extreme pressure to remove the billboard and relocate it because Scientology claimed the message was “controversial”.

Today, Clear Channel Outdoor removed the billboard. We learned of this news when a supporter sent us a photo; we did not receive a notification from Clear Channel Outdoor in advance.

The Foundation's "Survivor Stories" page shows the lengths they are willing to go to help others.  One touching story was turned into a film and shared on several YouTube channels.  Serge Obelenskey was ejected from Scientology after an accident destroyed his hands.  With nowhere to go, he become a beggar on Hollywood streets known as "No-Hands Man" until a social worker and the Aftermath Foundation helped him move forward with his life.

Warren Jeffs's imprisoned Mormons and the Amish who want a life on the outside need help just as much as Scientology's slave laborers. I hope they're able to find that help.

"Ungodly Discipline" on CNN

As if we needed more reasons to hate nutty Christians, they have created cults and cultish beliefs that permit or even encourage gross forms of child abuse.  This isn't the "child abuse" that some of the "New Atheists" talk about, in which children are infected with scary images of hell.  This is systematic beatings, slavery, and psychological abuse by supposed religionists.  CNN's Anderson Cooper's special, "Ungodly Discipline," seems to have been inspired by the tragic story of a girl who was killed by parents influenced by the crazyass book, To Train up a Child.

The show was on earlier today and I was semi-shocked to find that a  horribly abusive "school" is in Indiana.  (Of course nothing would shock me about Indiana after living here for three years).  The place is called Hephzibah House, and it calls itself a "school" for teenage girls.  Some of these girls are coming out about their experiences here:  http://survivorstatements.webs.com/home.htm  I could only stomach reading a few of these stories, and they seem to report the same type of mistreatment, so I decided not to subject myself to it.

The main themes:

• The goal of the school is to "break the will" of the girl
• New girls are forced to have amateur pelvic exams
• Girls who don't finish their repulsive meal will have it served to them again, cold, in addition to their next meal
• If a girl throws up her meal, she will be forced to eat her vomit
• Girls' communication with family is extremely limited, and all communications are monitored
• Girls are used as slave labor for hours a day, including cleaning and renovating homes of the church's pastor and his friends
• Beatings were frequent and random, and left bloody welts on the backside
• Girls who failed to live up to the "standards" could be isolated from all other residents except the staff member they're "shadowing."  They even have to sleep with this staff member while on this punishment.
• The girls have to go to the bathroom on a schedule, and yet they are forced to drink large quantities of water.  If their bladders can't obey this commandment, they are forced to wear diapers
• Escape is impossible.  They are imprisoned by high privacy fences and watched closely.

The school and the author of the heinous book are members of the oxymoronic network of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches.  They believe in "spiritual spanking," but it's hard to believe any child feels more spiritual after hours of spanking.

The guy who runs this school for teenage girls also runs a "college" that offers "degrees."  Notice that most of the faculty are graduates of that same college?   Doesn't that say something about the place?  Who would send their kid to that kind of place?  What is wrong with Indiana parents?   This subculture is pervasive and just plain creepy.  They are worse than anything that's been proven to be going on in Islamist or Catholic schools, including terroristic rhetoric and pedophilia.

Well... after learning about all this I'm even more ashamed to live in Indiana.  I lived in Texas for seven years and never saw anything this creepy.  (The Branch Davidians were before my time there - and they were non-Texans)  What's even worse than these places doing what they do and people believing this nonsense is that the authorities have turned a blind eye to it.  The child protective services peeps say they would need to have a current resident make a complaint, but the current residents are not allowed to communicate with the outside except through monitored phone calls to their family and mail that the prison school redacts with black magic marker.  WTF? How can this happen in America?

A survivor of a similar church set up a website here:  http://www.freedomfromabuse.net/

Kind of makes me wonder what other horrors Christians are perpetrating on helpless children.   I'd be tempted to say "God help them," but clearly God hasn't been any help to the victims of his followers.  I hope the Anderson Cooper exposé lights a fire under the authorities here.