From a series of articles from the St. Petersburg Times written in 1991, Sunday the 10th of November 1991 by Curtis Krueger:
[Picture / Caption: Kristi, left, and Beth Erlich grew up in
the Church of Scientology, but eventually left. In the top photo, taken
by their mother when Kristi and Beth were children, the two girls
perform TR-Zero, Scientology drill that calls for two people to stare at
each other "without any compulsions todo anything." The routine is
designed to improve communication skills.]
When Beth Erlich was 11, she signed her first contract.
A billion-year contract.
Beth didn't understand it too well. But her father had explained: If she signed the contract, she would help save the world.
"I thought that, of course I want to save the world."
The young girl had just pledged her life to Scientology.
The contract is a standard document whose unusual duration is not questioned in a church that believes in reincarnation.
For
the next several years, she grew up in Clearwater as a loyal
Scientologist. In her early teens, she said, she worked until 10:30
almost every night, including school nights. She said she didn't
complain when dinner was rice and beans, or when cockroaches scampered
across her room.
Now, eight years have passed since Beth last saw Clearwater. She has left the church.
But the nightmares haven't stopped.
Even
now, she sees Clearwater's Fort Harrison Hotel in a recurring dream.
Her former guardians appear. A sensation of pressure stifles her.
"I can't get out," Beth said recently. "I can't leave the Fort Harrison building. It's still making an impression."
"I'm still not over it," she said. "I'm still not. I still have nightmares."
Beth
and her sister, Kristi, grew up in the Church of Scientology. It was a
shattering experience that, in ways big and small, forced them apart
from their parents and each other. Critics of Scientology say their
story is not unusual In a church that demands total devotion, they say,
family life and children often come in second. So the story of Beth and
Kristi is the story of many of Scientology's children.
The
church labels its critics disgruntled former members and "hate vendors"
Actually, said church spokesman Richard Haworth, "Scientology helps
parents and children to improve their relationships with each other."
The two sisters shared a bedroom at their home in Los Angeles and rode their bikes to school together.
They called each other "Gold" and "Silver" because they were alike, but slightly different.
Beth
was brunet, Kristi blond. Beth was 9, Kristi 8. Even their Christmas
gifts were alike, but slightly different. They usually got the same gift
in different colors.
"People, when they talked about
Beth, they talked about me, too, and vice versa," Kristi remembers. "We
were kind of one person in a way: Beth-and-Kris."
But not for long.
* * *
Beth
and Kristi's parents, both Scientologists, had divorced in the early
1970s. The girls lived in California with their mother, who snapped a
photo of Beth and Kristi staring at each in a church training routine.
Their
father, Dennis Erlich, had left to join the staff at the church's
spiritual headquarters in Clearwater Florida. He was the "chief cramming
officer," a position he now describes as "the quality control engineer
at the brainwashing plant."
At the time, the job seemed
crucial. But Erlich missed his daughters. On visits to Los Angeles, he
urged the girls to move to Clearwater with him. Eventually, Beth agreed.
Beth moved to Clearwater in 1978, and missed Kristi immediately. The two girls, 9 and 10, became instant pen pals.
Beth learned quickly that her life had changed dramatically.
She
lived with her father and his new wife in a room "the size of a closet"
at the Fort Harrison Hotel, the biggest Scientology-owned building in
Clearwater.
That didn't last. Soon she moved in with
about 20 women church workers in a different room in the hotel.
The room
was bigger, but stuffed with bunks and dressers.
Next
she moved across town, to the "QI" — a former Quality Inn the
Scientologists had bought on U.S. 19, near East Bay Drive. Dennis Erlich
said it was not unusual for parents and children to live in different
rooms at the QI. That's just the way it was, he said.
Sometimes
Beth would return to discover she had been moved out of her room with
no warning. "We're talking, at like, 10:30 at night I would come home
and my stuff would be someplace else." She guesses she eventually was
moved as many as 20 times. Children, she said, were moved routinely to
make room for adult Scientologists.
During the day, Beth
attended a Scientology-affiliated school. She described it as a
go-at-your-own pace, choose-your-own-courses system.
One year, in eighth grade, she went to Oak Grove Middle School, a public school in Clearwater.
"We were such poor students," she said. "That's all I can remember, was how backward, how awful I felt."
Beth did love one thing about public school: the food.
"At the time, I was used to eating main dishes which were rice with something or beans with something."
Compared to the food served up at the QI for the Scientology staff, lunches and breakfasts at school were wonderful, she said.
"Oh wow, it was heaven," she said. "It was incredible. A square meal."
Why
would someone allow their child to live as Beth did? Scientologists,
particularly staff Scientologists, firmly believe they are saving the
world, former members say. Next to that grand purpose everything else is
secondary.
"Scientology comes first, and
everything else is off-purpose," said Vicki Aznaran, a former high
ranking Scientology official who is suing the church. "Parents who want
to spend time with their children are looked down on. It's not socially
acceptable."
Haworth responded: "True, parents (on
the church staff) do work longer hours because of their commitment to
the goals of the church, but they also have fashioned a system that
provides for families to live in a healthy environment despite the
demands on time."
Dennis Erlich was happy to have Beth by his side. And proud.
He
considered himself a superior parent. He had brought Beth to
Clearwater, where she could accomplish something truly important. Here,
she was helping church staff members who gave people Scientology
counseling and training.
The thought of preparing her for college and a career never crossed his mind.
"I
didn't want my daughter to be part of just normal society," he said. "I
wanted her to grow up to be, you know, like me. An auditor or a
cramming officer, or something worthwhile."
Beth accepted
the role. She took Scientology courses and after turning 11, signed the
billion-year contract to join the "Sea Org." The Sea Organization is a
group of highly committed staff members who do the church's business and
spiritual work.
Members generally work 12-hour days, six
or seven days a week and currently are paid about $30 per week. The
church gives them room and board.
Beth still went to
school during the day. But at night, she worked as a file clerk and at
other jobs, often alongside her father at the Fort Harrison. At her
request, she sometimes studied Scientology during work hours.
The
Scientology school never assigned homework, she said. "It was just
understood that when we left school, we left it and went to work." She
described a typical schedule:
Sunday: From 8 in the morning until 10:30 at night.
Monday through Friday: From after school until 10:30 p.m.
Saturday: Noon to 10:30 p.m. one week, off the next.
That
works out to about 50 hours of work a week, during school. In the
summer, Beth said she worked "full time." Other children worked similar
hours, she said.
"I never got a chance to just sit around."
On
her fortnightly days off, she liked to spend time with her dad. They
would sleep late, eat at a favorite deli, go to the beach and see a
movie.
Beth also got Scientology "auditing," in which she
was hooked up to a device called an "E-meter," similar to a lie
detector, and asked about things that troubled her.
The future looked clear.
"I
grew up thinking that I was going to become something in the church,"
Beth said. "I wasn't going to college, I wasn't going to learn a trade."
Despite
his pride, Dennis Erlich was a little worried. He knew the Church of
Scientology's environment was a harsh one — people always screamed at
each other, and important people got demoted and shamed at a moment's
notice.
So he decided to toughen her up. Once, when she
did something that irked him, he simply stopped talking to her for
several weeks. He didn't say a word — not even on her birthday.
The
ideal Scientology parent does not pamper a child. In fact, several
former members said Scientologists believe children are "adults in small
bodies" who shouldn't be ordered around.
"In
order to be a good Scientologist, " says former member Adeline
Dodd-Bova, 'you're allowing your child to be responsible for themselves.
I don't have to tell my 5-year-old son if he's hungry or not, he knows.
I don't have to make him dinner, he can go get food."
Scientology literature on children, like much of Hubbard's other writings, is subject to several interpretations.
The
following passage, for instance, from Hubbard's "How to Live With
Children, 2' could have come from Dr. Spock. "A good, stable adult with
love and tolerance in his heart is about the best therapy a child can
have."
Other passages sound more like what
Dodd-Bova was talking about. "Any law which applies to the behavior of
men and women applies to children." Or, "When you give a child
something, it's his. . . . So he tears up a shirt, wrecks his bed,
breaks his fire engine. It's none of your business."
As
Beth worked in the cloistered world of Scientology, Kristi's letters
from California provided a link to the outside. They told Beth which
bands were hot, what slang was in vogue.
But Kristi's letters weren't enough. Beth suffered bouts of depression because she missed her sister and mother.
This created a conflict.
"I
felt like I needed to be in the church because that was the right thing
to do," she said. "But then the little girl inside of me was saying, 'I
need to be with my mom.' "
She wished her mother would have told her to stay home in Los Angeles. That would have made it easier to leave.
But her mother never said a thing.
It wouldn't have been proper, family members said.
"That just wasn't part of Scientology," Kristi said.
"Part
of my mom was saying 'Beth is a being unto herself and she must make
her decisions and do her thing.' And the other half of her was saying
'wait a second, you're her mom, you love her, you want her to be with
you. And in a way, I think that's all it would have taken to get Beth to
stay . . . but that Scientology in my mom wouldn't allow her to express
her feelings about that."
Beth didn't learn until years later how her mother really felt.
"She was crying really the entire time that (Beth) was gone," Kristi said.
Kristi said her mother did not want to comment for this article.
* * *
Beth was allowed to visit her family in Los Angeles a couple of times a year.
Every
time Beth returned, "it was like lovers reuniting," Kristi recalls. "I
mean we practically, all of us kind of clung to each other the entire
time she was there."
Then depression would sink in.
"After the first couple days, I would just be totally just scared about the fact that I had to leave," Beth said.
"I
can remember them telling me, you know, 'You're here right now. You're
not leaving. There's no reason to feel like you're losing us, because
you're here, right here.' "
"And it didn't mean anything. I was a basket case."
* * *
Then one summer, things looked up.
When Beth was 13 and Kristi was 12, plans were made for Kristi to visit Clearwater.
Beth was ecstatic.
So was Kristi — until she saw the room she was going to share with Beth at the former Quality Inn.
"Oh
my god, I couldn't even believe that Beth lived in a place like that,"
Kristi said. "There were bugs everywhere. ... We were always scared of
having bugs run across our feet and face and stuff while we were
sleeping."
One night, while Beth was working, Kristi and
some other young people went to Clearwater Beach. An officer stopped
them, said they were out too late and called Scientology officials.
The decision was swift. Kristi's summer vacation was cut short. She immediately would be sent back to California.
Beth
found her sister crying in the Fort Harrison Hotel. Once again, Beth
was torn. She anguished over Kristi. But if she went to the airport to
see her sister off, it would look as if she condoned Kristi's mistake.
So she didn't go. "For me to go and show her any sympathy was a no-no."
Kristi was flown home without even a kiss from her father.
"I
cried the whole way home," Kristi said. "Basically, I just felt like
dirt. I felt like I had committed the biggest sin in my whole life, and
there was no way that I could possibly make amends. It was real, real
hard."
* * *
As Beth neared 15, she got tougher. She had suffered so many heart-wrenching emotions that she grew numb to them.
So she was surprisingly calm upon hearing some unexpected news:
Her
father was in trouble. He had been declared a "suppressive person" — an
enemy of Scientology — after pushing for improvements in staff
conditions and for refusing to be demoted.
"I was confused," she said. "The organization that my dad had wanted me to be a part of was now telling him to leave."
But
even though he was leaving, Dennis Erlich still believed Scientology
doctrine. Like his ex-wife, he would not urge his 14-year-old daughter
to leave Clearwater.
He told Beth she should make her own decision.
She stayed.
"She
had more allegiance to the cult than she did to me," Dennis Erlich
said. "And I can only say that that's my own doing. Because I was less a
father than I was a cult leader to her."
Beth said the
church designated a man and woman as her guardians, and she remained in
Clearwater, thousands of miles from her mother, father and sister.
Ray
Emmons is a former Clearwater police lieutenant who specialized in
Scientology affairs and sometimes interviewed people who wanted to leave
the church. He said he was surprised at the number of Scientologists
who wanted to leave family members behind. "Husbands and wives have been
split from each other, and kids have been split from parents," he said.
"Most
cases it was the parents that got disenchanted with Scientology, and
the child was not. So the parents would leave, and the child would not."
Within
a year, Beth had decided she wanted to leave. She was confused. She
told her superiors, and herself, that she wanted to move back to
California.
She requested a leave, which her Scientology
superiors approved in 1983. Her flight to her father's home in Colorado
was arranged.
But on the day of the flight, she was
called to the Fort Harrison to talk to the "ethics officer," who deals
with people who break Scientology rules. Her guardian was there. He
accused her of wanting to leave without coming back. "It was so awful,"
she said.
Three hours before the flight, they were still
debating the point. "I started feeling like, well, they're trying to
pressure me to not go."
Finally, she told her guardian, "Look, I'm leaving. I'm going now. Goodbye."
* * *
She
caught a Scientology bus from the Fort Harrison to the QI and picked up
her things. There, a Scientology shuttle bus was going to take her to
Tampa International Airport.
She stood outside the QI, waiting. Rain started to fall. An hour before her flight, no bus had shown up.
"I was frantic. I didn't know what to do."
Some
other Scientologists came by and mentioned they were going to the
airport. She asked for a ride. In the car, one of them turned around and
asked: "You do have clearance to leave, don't you?"
She said yes. It was true, but the ethics officer had made her feel as if it was not.
"I
felt as if I were escaping. I was escaping the pressure. . . . I was
escaping these people who were trying to guilt me into staying. And I
didn't have anybody. There was no one there who was trying to help me."
From Tampa, she flew to Colorado. She later returned to her mother and sister in Los Angeles.
* * *
Before long, all the Erlichs had left Scientology.
For
Kristi and her mom, the break centered on a dispute between her school,
which catered to Scientologists, and the church, Kristi said.
Kristi entered a public school in Glendale.
"It
was such a shock to me . . . my grades started going down, I became
uninterested in school. I actually left high school in the 11th grade
because I was really having a hard time adjusting."
After leaving, "I didn't have those stable things anymore."
One of those was the church's insistence on a drug-free environment.
"I
really kind of ended up on the streets for a while," Kristi said. She
"did a lot of drugs when I first left. . . . It was the only way that I
kind of felt okay about myself."
She said she realized she was in a rut, got some counseling and got herself together. Now 23, Kristi is a college student.
Dennis
Erlich, 44, regrets bringing his family into Scientology. He now
manages a small business in Los Angeles. On the side, he publishes a
newsletter for former Scientologists called The Informer. He recently wrote:
"I
don't know if anyone can comprehend the remorse I feel for subjecting
my children to this alienating, warped, repressive environment. I pray
our story serves as a warning: SCIENTOLOGY IS DANGEROUS TO THE HEALTH
AND SANITY OF YOUR CHILDREN!!"
"He's very remorseful," Beth said. "He's always saying how sorry he is."
Now 24, Beth is married and lives in California. She said she recently graduated from college with honors in graphic design.
When
she left Clearwater in 1983, she realized quickly she was never going
back to Scientology. But some of the doctrines are hard to shake.
Scientologists abhor psychiatry, for example, and it took Beth until
this summer to seek therapy, to deal with the pain of her unusual
childhood.
She said it has been hard to build a meaningful relationship with her father, but she is trying.
"It's not like life is normal. I really don't think it ever will be. That was a really powerful time."
The church responds to Erlich's Claims:
Scientology's Children-Introduction:
Members laud schooling,churches no-drug stance:
Saving the World:
What are church's beliefs?
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