The Story Begins

It had been so many years since I had seen my daughter briefly on Glebe Point Road in the Glebe suburb of Sydney. She was tall and full breasted. Her stylish blonde hair cascaded around a stunningly attractive face. She was a woman. The last time I saw her she was a child in 6th class. She spoke with the confidence of a 21 year old and it was a bit of a jolt for me to realise she was only 15.

It was a Sunday and she was walking to the Scientology headquarters to do what she was taught was her duty. She was wearing the uniform of the Sea Organisation.

 

The truth was far removed from the picture presented by Janine in the courtroom.

I had only recently met a woman, Cleo, through artist friends of mine. She was very attractive indeed, and I was a single Father. After a couple of meetings she asked me to help her as she was having a hard time with some counselling she was receiving from another ex-scientologist.

This didn't seem such an unusual request, but within a few set-up sessions I discovered she had not revealed to me or anyone she was using hard drugs. I had not known that when I met her and "my friends" didn't tell me either. When I had drawn attention to her very unusual behaviour, she had used the "line of bull" of her being an "artist" ... a little eccentric... with a taste for "alcohol".

Fat chance I had of having a relationship with her with all the mess in her life, so I allowed myself to help this very attractive poor little rich girl get her life in order and get off "the booze". It was her non-standard response to a couple of sessions that had me probing deeper to discover she was in fact a junkie.

Well we parted company within a week of my having met her, as I was not equipped to help her and her continuing drug use. I knew she was too much for me.

During the first few days of meeting her I had simply stayed over night in her section of the very large warehouse style apartment complex with my 5 year old daughter. It had been too late to return home that rainy evening. Both Claire and I had been enjoying the company of other artists in the unusual residence during the afternoon and evening.

It was from these details Claire's mother had grilled a preferred story out of a 6 or 7 year old Claire, that I was subjected to the courtroom fiasco.

Recently, I found that Claire had felt very responsible for having communicated any of this at all, and it had effected her for many years, believing she had betrayed her Father. No wonder it was so easy to convince her that I had abandoned her.

The incident that brought this custody and access nightmare to the courtroom...

 

- I -

About 12 months after our final relationship-breakdown, Claire's mother and I were at least cooperating in sharing time with Claire. As Janine had a waitressing job, I was useful to her as I was always available and willing to have Claire whenever she needed. Her new boyfriend, who I later found had been seeing her for some time, (something she has never admitted), a Chef at a main hotel in the city where she used to work during the last year of our relationship, took her to Canada and USA for a 3 to 6  month holiday... Disneyland etc. (Yes he "had money") and Claire stayed in Australia with me.... to my delight.

During this time I was maintaining a mini nursery of Boston ferns and other plants I had tried to turn into a profitable operation during the last turbulent months with Janine.

The half-hour drive in my not so good Toyota van from Bondi Junction to Mona Vale to water the plants was a 2 to 3 times a week obligation. The costs of up-keeping this was mostly fuel and oil costs. The van had developed a bad oil leak and I couldn't afford to fix it and I couldn't afford not to be mobile.

Claire continued to go to the same school which was a half hour trip twice a day (of course) and manning my little plant shop in a side-street in Paddington while the stress of playing the Janine and the "church" versus me game was going on, was a bit of a push up hill.

The shop was just starting to become viable when Janine left for overseas, and suddenly the council mysteriously change the traffic flow so that I virtually had no passing trade. The shop died and as I depended on it for income, I was back on the dole... But I had to maintain the "nursery" and keep the leaking tank of a van afloat. Eventually the cost of oil was around 4 litres every two days. It was ridiculous.

When Janine returned from overseas, we continued our co-parenting working arrangement.

- II -

One day, Janine and I were with some friends at a public rally in the Domain Park out front of the Sydney Art Gallery. I was playing with Claire and she was having a wail of a time with her roller skates she always wore all over the city.

Two Guardian Office staff were sitting on the lawn in the crowd. They saw how happy Claire was, and how close we were. Their expressions, whisperings and noddings were easy to read as I suddenly realised what they were going to get up to.

A couple of days later it happened.

I would like to reflect on a few points here........... the constant 3rd partying from Sea Org Members- (I was an ex-member since 1972), the deliberate manipulation of Janine through her case, (the details of which I have decided not to list here, though I have been given every provocation to do so), the farce of a "Chaplain's Court" hearing which should have helped us, and for which I had to honour of paying $20.00. Instead of "wearing his hat", the "chaplain" called Peter practically undressed Janine in front of me, went into deep sympathy with her point of view departing from standard procedure completely. (eg: Letting her get away with not writing up her O/Ws, whereas I did and had to and they were passed to Janine who then had enough motivators to send her type III) ......my protests had me in Ethics Office for more suppression and "discipline".... We had finally been driven completely apart. She didn't have the sense to "see what they were up to", nor the integrity a wife and mother needs to survive such EVIL. I believe it was only my "people-skill" that saved the situation from deteriorating sooner than it did. Feeling quite alone and a continuous target from the 3rd party negative propaganda flowing around over a long period, I had to be very skilful at keeping my sanity, as well as my temper. We had been managing to share time and responsibilities over Claire for more than a year, though it had been quite a strain for me, as most separated fathers will understand. The "legal ball was in Janine's court", as the NSW Laws relating to ex-nuptial children denied me any rights, and with the Guardian Office advising her, she suddenly denied me any access to Claire at all. Thus I had to take the matter to the Children's Court. This idyllic little scene witnessed by the GO members was the inspiration they needed to finally do their dirty work.

So Claire was suddenly snatched away from me on instructions from the Guardian Office of the Sydney Scientology organisation, and I was verbally labelled as a Suppressive Person by the GO though I never received any declare order or saw anything of it on paper.

I had dared to question what was going on with upper management etc, and this was the way they got at me.

About a year later I received an order declaring me  PTS Type 1.

Quite frankly, I thought it was the height of rudeness and supreme arrogance on the part of anyone from the organisation to assume they had any right to interfere with my personal life or my spiritual goals and allegiances; to "deny me my Bridge" especially after I was driven to be virtually a non member by that time anyhow.

I had been effectively "out of the church" since Claire was 6 in 1983, when quite a number of events caused me to finally leave the Church in disgust and fear for Claire's future.

I had refused to "rejoin the Church" after much pressure, emotional blackmail and an already destroyed relationship with Janine. Of course I didn't trust them any more. There was too many things wrong that would never be corrected, and I wanted out.

The "Creed of the Church" was about as forgotten as it could be.

For a long time I was coping with Janine's personality and church influences, fairly successfully, regarding the care and sharing of Claire.. until "the day of the Triffids" .. er Guardian's Office plot.

So I fretted without my little girl for over 18 months before I could get the matter to court.

We were a unit

More Photos of the time

I had not seen Claire even for one cuddle in all that time, and she had not seen me, though I had not been out of her sight more than a few hours since she was born before she was stolen from me. We were "a unit". The "Church" knew this and plotted the most evil act of separate us.

But I didn't heel. I didn't compromise my integrity though they tried to break me with this evil.

I had been told by Janine, acting as a "Scientologist", that if I didn't rejoin the "Church", I would never see my daughter again.

Almost words of prophecy.... Claire reported to me in 1997, that she was in a coma for 3 months at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, following her collapse from the overwork in the Sea Org and following the chemotherapy treatment for so called Leukemia,  that resulted in her suffering two strokes.

Little wonder I would never want to rejoin such a vicious, group of soul destroyers posing as "planet-savers" in the name of Religion.

Why would I want to be part of the most soul-less and love-less "religions" the world has seen since the "Catholic" Inquisition?!

But now in 1997 it was her 20th birthday
October 3rd, 1997.

It was time for me to try once again to wish her happy birthday with a phone-call to the Scientology headquarters, in the hope that someone might pass on a message as they had not done for so many many long years.

Continue.......