Transcript of Part One

Ed: My name's Ed Hattaway and this is my wife, Tera. And what we're going to do is…we're making this video so that we can tell you a little bit about our story with the Church of Scientology. Specifically, with Flag Service Organization and the L Rundowns that I did. And so, this story is about what happened to us as a result of doing those processes and being involved in the Church of Scientology. Right now, we are not involved with the Church of Scientology and probably, as we speak, we are being declared suppressive people. We certainly will be after doing this video. But our intention is just to tell you the truth about what happened to us and what our lives have turned out to be after doing those rundowns and getting involved with the Church and, you know, the high priced services that they offer. So, we're going to start by telling you how we got involved in Scientology. But before we get into some of the other information. I'm going to go ahead and give you my e-mail address so that any of you who would like to get in touch with me can send an e-mail to me. This is the address: Dochat@Lycos.com. And anytime you would like to send me an e-mail with any type of question or any kind of comment, whether it's a criticism or some help that you might need, I will be more than glad to respond to you, usually on the same day. Tera, tell them a little bit about how you got involved in the Church and then I'll get into my story a little bit.

Tera: Well, it was basically shortly after high school. I had moved to Dallas, Texas and a book seller sold me a book. I read it and then I was interested in finding out more about it. So I went to the local mission there in Dallas. So, basically I was public for close to a year and then staff for six to seven years. And then the Sea Org for a couple of years, with Flag. It was called the Flag Bureau back then- Middle management. So, basically I had been very well connected and I also worked with the WISE Group as a supervisor in the course room. So, I would say pretty much, since '76, it is now the year 2001, and we pretty much disconnected (to Ed) five years ago?

Ed: Yeah, for the most part.

Tera: So…

Ed: As a matter of fact, this is today's paper so that you can see the date. It is actually Sunday, February 11, 2001. Just for the record.

Ed: Now, how I came into Scientology was I was about a third year chiropractic student in the Atlanta area. And one of my mentors at the time had become involved with the Church of Scientology and he shortly thereafter disconnected. I think he got declared suppressive. But what happened was he turned me on to the management technology and that was really what interested me because I wanted to become successful quickly after I got out of school. And I knew that anything I could do learn more about business was probably going to help me. So, he introduced me to L. Ron Hubbard's management technology. And so I became very interested in that and I connected with some people who were part of Dr. David Singer's consulting group. And that's how I became connected into Scientology and I got very interested in the management technologies. I read Dianetics. Got interested in auditing. I went down to the local mission and started getting some auditing. And I was regged for the Purification Rundown, which I did. And I did have some wins with that. I had some wins with my Dianetics auditing and with some of my other earlier auditing. And then Tera and I met through a mutual friend. She was a course supervisor at a WISE Group and WISE, for those who are uninitiated, is the part of Scientology that helps businessmen and promotes itself to business people, particularly doctors and dentists, chiropractors, to help them put in the L. Ron Hubbard management technology. But one of their key stats is the number of people, number of WISE members or doctors who they are able to get into Scientology services. So, I met with my wife…I met my wife there as a course supervisor. And we shortly thereafter got married. And we got together with some common goals. We wanted to progress up the bridge-up the Scientology Grade Chart. And we wanted to get trained and we wanted to receive those services all the way up.

Tera: And even open up a mission.

Ed: Oh yeah. We had goals. Right. Big goals of ours were to promote Scientology. And, you know, when I first entered into Scientology, I had some very specific goals that I had set for myself. I wanted to be successful in business as a chiropractor and the reason for wanting that success was to be able to provide a lifestyle for my family, which would include some free time to have with them-vacations, owning a home and not having financial problems-those were the goals that I had set forth at that time. But what happened to us as a result of being involved in Scientology is that those goals began to change. And it became the game of moving up the bridge at any cost and promoting Scientology to others at virtually any cost as well. So, we lost, somewhere along the line, what our goals actually were. But to get right into the crux of this story, things in Scientology were actually okay at the local level. We had lots of friends at the local org. There was not a lot of high pressure at our local mission or local org. And we really generally enjoyed that environment. The problems began when we went to the Flag Service Organization and that was back in…we started with Flag in, like, 1990, 1991. And so our first services at Flag were for the special rundowns. One of them, I think, was the Prosperity Rundown that I did. My wife did…Tera, you did something there?
Tera: We did the Prosperity Rundown. _____________ Rundown. Just a number of them that were being promoted heavily at the time that they were released…the Knowledge Rundown.

Ed: Right. Yeah and there were several of those special rundowns that we did. That was really our seg-way into the Flag Service Organization. And our business was beginning to pick up. We had been in practice for about four years, four to five years at the time and had started to accumulate some money. We had begun paying down a lot of our debts. We had purchased a home. We had a nice home on three acres, prime real estate in Douglas County. And things were looking really good. We had all of our equipment in our practice paid for. We had a very successful thriving practice at the time. A lot of income coming in. And we had just really started our family. We had two young children at the time. And, you know, we lived a lifestyle that wasn't excessive at all. We simply put a lot of the money we had into the Church of Scientology. And that was going along with the goals that I mentioned earlier. So, when 1994 rolled around, we were just about out of debt. We had some student loans left over and that was about it. Our home was our only real big debt. And so, we decided we wanted to go to Flag. And the goal was for me to go ahead and go through some of the lower OT levels, up to, like, OT4. So, I had begun sending money to Flag for that purpose. And plans begin to go into the works about how I was going to stay down there and my business was going to run with me being away. And so we had some of our local Scientology friends, who were also chiropractors, who came to fill in our practice and help out during that time. But to put everything together, I got regged to go ahead and borrow money. I had all the equipment that I had paid for, my x-ray machine, my tables in my office and other things. I went ahead and leased-I did a lease buy back of about $17,000. I also borrowed about $10,000 on some of my father's property. I took out a second mortgage on our home, maxed out about, oh, four credit cards and put together a little over $50,000 to go down to Flag, all of which was borrowed except for the money I had sent. I had sent about $10,000 to Flag that I had flowed over the past several months before that. So, here we were…

Tera: I want to iterate something on that. The fact that he went and borrowed like that but we did because we went into agreement on borrowing that much money. There are all kinds of financial policies that the Church has on how you handle your finances. And basically, the biggest violation of the policy is that you shouldn't be borrowing money to pay bills or to get what you want to get. You should pay with the money you have. You make the money, then you spend it, which makes total sense and which is how we were operating before. Borrowing was an agreement that we went into with the Church's way of regging, their technique was to disagree with the physical universe. Because things will come out a lot bigger, a lot better, we would be much more prosperous than the amount that we were going into hock for to do these services. So, we went into agreement with disagreeing with the physical universe. And, however, the physical universe did not agree with us. So, Ed will tell you about that.
Ed: Well, what happened was that I did the services. Well, actually I went to Flag. I was supposed to stay down for about four to six weeks. That was the estimated time that it was going to take me to get through my OT preps and my solo and to get onto the actual levels. And I understood that even if I didn't get through that six weeks, I could come back and finish some of the different levels if I needed to. Well, as it turned out, I stayed at Flag for about two weeks and started seeing my stats really crashing in the office. And that wasn't really a surprise to me from me being away from the office, the practice was me. And these other doctors-even though they were great doctors-they really could not appeal to my patients on such a short time span. So, I didn't not expect that to happen. But I had to make a decision on what was I going to do. Because I knew I couldn't stay at Flag very long. And so, I started getting regged on the L Rundowns, L11 and L12. L11 the New Life Rundown and L12 the OT Executive Rundown, I think is what it's called. And I had friends who had done these processes and done these things and they seemed to like them and you know, some of them seemed to do okay with them. Others, who knows, you know, they weren't doing as well but it was very promoted that these L Rundowns were the thing to do to help boom your stats- Boom your production, increase your income exponentially. That was the whole promotion that we had heard over the years. And you know, the doctors from the WISE line are prime candidates for these L Rundowns. So, being that I had a limited amount of time and I had limited resources and I wanted to get the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, so I could really get production going. Again, the whole purpose being to increase my stats, my production, my sphere of influence so that we could do more bridge, have more time, have more money and be able to do our OT levels. That was the whole goal. So, I started the L Rundowns, started L 11, got through it. I was feeling pretty good, stats crashing all over the place at home but I knew I was only going to be there for a fine item at a time and that I could get back and turn the thing around. That was the plan. So, I go through L 11 and got through L 12. And what occurred was at that point, you know, it was time to go home. So, I felt great. I thought, "I'm going to get in there and I'm going to crank this thing up." So, I went into the office and started plugging away, doing what I had been doing for years. And, you know, this time, it didn't come around. In fact, it started to really go bad. It was…people weren't responding. People weren't returning back to us, our office. Because of the huge financial pressures we put ourselves under began to create pressure for the people in it; staff, patients, ourselves. I expected that after the L Rundowns, I would be more OT, more stable. I would be happier. As it turned out, my wife can tell you how I was. I had my new life.

Tera: Well, actually, when he came back, he seemed more stressed. And I was thinking, well, it's because of the tensions in the office and he needs to address that. And then he'll be able to experience his wins from the L's and let me know more about it. Because actually he couldn't even go into telling me any wins, really, other than it was…there really wasn't much communication he could give me on the L's.

Ed: Now, mind you, we had just spent over $50,000!

Tera: Right. If you can't even share a win and he wasn't sure. He, you know, he wasn't sure and he figured…he actually, I remember him telling me, give him a couple days and maybe the wins will then come to him or he'll realize something. So, anyway, so I figured, well, he's stressed out because of the situation. He's been gone for a couple weeks. The office stats are down. He'll get it turned back around as he has in the past when he has left to go to Flag and do services because that was something that we were pretty much used to happening when he would go to Flag. However, this time, the stats weren't turning around. He was more stressed and it got to the point where he seemed more solid. And it got to the point where I didn't want him home anymore because he would bring the whole family down tone. We would be having fun. I was keeping two other kids at home along with my three and we would just be having a great time, begin up tone, just the kids and I. As soon as he would get home from the office, you would just see this black mass around him. And I literally could get a knife and cut it. It was so thick that I just could not stand to have in my space. So I would actually get the kids all ready and in bed a little early before he would get home so that they wouldn't have to experience his solid seriousness. And the kids didn't really know him that much for, I'd say, that period of time because we didn't like him (laughs) to be honest with you. He was no fun. He was a total drag. And I was…he would go back for reviews…

Ed: Yeah, well, I knew that something was wrong obviously.

Tera: Yeah. There was…you know, it was obviously, there was something not right here.

Ed: So, I went back for reviews and I went back to Flag three or four times in the next, probably, two or three months. And we couldn't afford to do that! But it was sort of like we were trying to catch the holes in a sinking ship to make this thing work, you know? I knew that, and when Tera would ask me what my wins were, I would say something, like, you know, "I'm not really sure."

Tera: He couldn't even give me any!

Ed: "I could tell you that I feel different. That's for sure. But I can't really tell you exactly what my wins are right now because I don't really have anything to compare it to. I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, I'm looking for a result here." So, you know, here we were, I was running back and forth to Flag, doing reviews, doing review after review.

Tera: That we would pay for by the way.

Ed: Yeah. Well, you know, some of them were on the L's account but then I had to go get some cramming. And I finally was at Flag and I had actually CSW'ed to have a cramming session with somebody to just get my life together. And during the session, it was just funny. I had the realization that, you know, I just looked at the cramming officer and I said, you know, "I've just got to ask this question. Why am I doing this?" And he says, "Well," he thought I meant why are we doing the cramming session, and he said, "Well, we're doing it to clear up any misunderstoods and what not." And I said, "No. I don't mean that. I mean, why am I doing this? Why am I doing Scientology??? I can't figure out why I'm doing it anymore! It obviously isn't helping me. I'm not making any headway in life. As a matter of fact, I'm digging my grave financially. I've mortgaged my family's future." And, you know, he gave me some issues to read and things that were perhaps what a good Scientologist's reasons should be. And I read them and I thought, "Well, yeah, being OT would be nice. But in the meantime, you know, I've got to get on with life here. So what came of all that was I just resolve that, you know, this Scientology stuff isn't really going to solve my problems. It's not going to help me solve my problems. There must be something else. This was the rationale and the mindset-there must be something else down the road that I need to handle. Maybe the next thing will just open this whole abundance of OT abilities that are lying dormant within me.

Tera: That, by the way, seemed to be a standard operating procedure, really in the way we were thinking on a lot of things. We would hope to gain certain things by doing this course or this level. It wasn't gotten and we'd go, "Well, maybe it's because we'll hit the right thing on this level," or "it's something we're not confronting yet and it's not at the right level for us to confront yet." You know, we were always rationalizing the fact that we weren't getting the amount of gains that we expected. And, to be honest with you, even with the local organization here with the Church, there seemed to be an air of being very happy all the time and nobody could really communicate that you really fucked up or that you really didn't get any wins. Because it wasn't really safe enough to communicate that because everybody is really supposed to be happy and everybody is really supposed to be doing great. Because, after all, this is Scientology and it just seemed like such a farce. It was like a game of pretend to a degree.

Ed: Yeah, and another thing was that you couldn't discuss your case with other people. It was off policy…

Tera: Or disagreements.

Ed: Right. Or things, issues that you had…

Tera: Or you would be written up or reported.

Ed: Right. Not okay to say that. Not okay to talk about, you know…You could talk about your wins but you couldn't talk about your dissatisfaction or your lack of results. Just not okay. And, you know, at the time, it was rationalized in our minds. Maybe this is something we shouldn't do because it might enturbulate somebody or it might make them have a hidden standard or something. There was always rationalization. But the truth of the matter is, in hindsight, we can now see that the reason for that was that, you know, there is censorship of what's said. And there's a lot of control on the communication lines. And that sort of brings us up to…well, we had an incident too where we were actually…after the fact, we were still connected to our local org. We didn't go to Flag anymore, mind you, but we went to our local org, which, where I had had some wins in life. And I had no beef against that group. They had really tried to help me and, in many ways, they had. We went back to our local church and stayed on course. And we got, because of our financial problems, we began to, you know, do other things. I went into multilevel marketing, for one thing. I thought, "My gosh, I've got to do something else to make some income here." And so, the person who was running this multilevel marketing activity was a guy who had invented a memory program-a personal development program. And as a result of his connection to that and our connection to him, we were declared enemies of the Church of Scientology by the continental East US. We were declared enemies and told we couldn't do any further services until we stopped being a part of this multilevel marketing group. All of that, by the way, came off of a Scientology policy directive, which we later found out is an illegal policy.

Tera: It's called an SPD.

Ed: Yeah. It's called an SPD. It's an illegal church policy. It's not authorized by L. Ron Hubbard. And so, that made us kind of go, "Well, the hell with it. We're just going to lay low. We don't have the money to do the stuff anyway. Let's just," you know, "work our business, get our life together, pay off all these horrendous debts and maybe we'll come back." Our intention was to come back at some point.

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