Ex Scientolgist Speaks About His Autistic Daughter And Life In The Church With Her
This personal story is really touching and provides an insight into the Church Of Scientology and how they treat children with brain damage. The story is fair and honest and also gives some answers to all of the speculation that has been brewing over the past few days. It's long, and there are some Scientology terms you may not understand, but it is worth the read. It came from a private area of an ex-Scientology Message Board.
I've kept out of this discussion for a while, not because I don't have anything to add or that I lack experience, in fact quite the opposite. I've had too much painful experience on this subject to tolerate some of the commentary.
Most of you know that my wife and I have a handicapped child, with a similar but more extreme spectrum than Jett. this has caused us to become quite informed in the matters of workable approaches to such disabilities.
We are also very successful in liberating people from the cofs, in fact we have personally gotten between 20 and 30 people out. Some still adhere to the tenets of the tech some have taken all the LRH books to the tip.
It is odd to me that despite this experience I have not been able to add to this thread. In fact we did try and gave up in the face of determined bigotry and ignorant recriminations.
I will have another try. But have to say personally I have found that the Travoltas loss has hit us hard. Their experience resonated against our own in a very big way. I feel for them in this circumstance.
When our kid was found to be autistic, epileptic, spastic and more, the feeling of failure as an OT was immense. The understanding of the true causes of the condition within the cult was practically zero.
Scientologists have trouble grasping the concept of brain injuries, they simply do not accept the function of the brain, it is quite bizarre.
Special kids need special love and you tend to poor the coals on your natural love for them, who knows, all that extra love might just get them through it. I can see that in the Travoltas, unfortunately I can see that JT may have denied Jett was autistic, to himself as well. I
can imagine why given the nature of Scn. The stigma is awful in a group that thinks all illness is a product of PTSness and that the spirit can heal the body. Autistic kids are seen a degraded beings and their parents "pulled it in" in a witch pit like that.
In all of this I suspect the worst and most damning aspect is the cults lack of understanding of brain injury, that attaches stigma to a true crisis and bars the way to workable (NON SCN) rehabilitation. It also closes the door to the group showing and having compassion for
the people affected, it is a very great pity. No one should be in a position that they need to claim that their autistic or intellectually impaired kid has some other Syndrome there really is no shame to it in a decent and caring environment.
My wife called me from Flag a few years ago and told me that Kelly and Jett were there, she could see his problem and we discussed a ruse that could lead Kelly to originate communication to my wife, we couldn't just walk up and talk to them, scn handlers would have sent
her to ethics, it is not an egalitarian culture. The ruse worked and thus opened the door to Mrs Feral recommending the Doman institute, we hoped to lead them to giving Jett the best help that we knew of.
Unfortunately some dimwits in the tech area of the cult branded the education part of the treatment "implanting" because it taught via the use of flash cards. Well, our kid was reading at around two or three years old through this " implanting' method. It goes to show how
little understanding of their own subject they had. Our attempt to help him was sabotaged and so was his later opportunity to communicate via written symbols or typing in assisted "facilitation". Jett like our kid could not speak at that time, I don't know if he ever did
later but I doubt it.
When I was told that my daughter was hopelessly brain injured all my tomorrows turned black. I was dying inside and stayed that way for years. I wanted to die and hoped for the opportunity, I was in hell, but like the Travoltas I'm sure, I would have given my life to stop
any more harm coming to my child. So you can imagine my reaction to seeing various members talking about giving them a slap on the face or rubbing salt into the wound. Losing a child is about the most painful thing that could happen to most people, if you have not had children
it would be hard to imagine the horror of seeing them harmed.
One couple who I helped liberate from the cult lost two children due to the churches negligence and disregard for safety. If I had gone about communicating to them the way some have communicated to or at the Travoltas I wouldn't have gotten them out, but instead I would
have branded all critics of the cult morons and SPs through my actions, it would have cemented them in. Further, any one who thinks the end (of liberating the Travoltas) justifies the means is thinking pretty much along the lines that the cofs does, "well it's OK to cave
them in as only we can save them" or "the method doesn't matter as long as we get them out of the cult" Such thinking makes a good scilon.
On another issue attacking Scn for the boy not being on anti seizure meds is faulty on two fronts. Firstly, it looks as though he may have been on them, we were never stopped or discouraged from using them by scn. We did however choose not to because they do not stop seizures,
they reduce the intensity and frequency. In fact each child in our class at the institute who was on meds still had seizures. They also have devastating side effects which were in opposition to our goals of brain rehabilitation that we were pursuing on the Doman program. I
would only use them if the safety aspect of not using them was greater than the harm that they are known to do to normal brain function was the lesser of the two evils. That harm, by the way is temporary apart from the fact that coming off them is dicey as they form dependency,
seizures can be very violent as someone weans off them, but there are many successes where the person stopped having seizures altogether once weaned.
Scientologists are not forbidden to take such Meds. Tory had to come off them to be able to audit, they simply would not allow someone to audit on mind altering drugs. The method of weaning Tory used was probably cold turkey, this is very dangerous. Other than being drug
free during auditing there is no mandate on them to my knowledge. They are not deemed to be a psych drug by the church, if they had have been Tory would have been ineligible for all Scn services just for having a past history of them.
Autism, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, spasticity and epilepsy are in most cases a product of brain injury. Sometimes they are caused due to inadequate structure due to other reasons too, but mostly not.
In the case of seizures, (epilepsy,) it is an indication of cortical damage, the seizure is a product of improper cell respiration, a lack of oxygen. Dr Temple Fay did some really ground breaking work in this area and it has made a lot of difference in the management of seizures. You can cause a seizure in a well (not brain injured) person if you lock them up somewhere that they run out of oxygen. In brain injured kids apart from poor cell respiration they are uniformly not
very rhythmic in their breathing, with long pauses in the middle of what should be an uninterrupted breath. They are chronically short of oxygen.
Anti seizure meds work, when they do, by reducing the brains demand for oxygen, they shut down or reduce brain function. Can you see why we have steered away from them?, the Travoltas may have done the same. I can only speculate.
