An Open Letter to the Church of Scientology

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Derek Bloch. I was raised as a member of your organization from a very young age. I joined the Sea Org at age 15, and left shortly after my 18th birthday. I was sentenced to spend my 18th birthday cut off from contact with my parents while working in the basement tunnels underneath L. Ron Hubbard Way in Hollywood, CA.

The world has become aware of your antics in recent years. Your credibility has been ruined and your church is slowly falling to pieces. The final blow will come when someone finally challenges the tax exempt status of your empire of extortion and you lose it. The current leader of your organization has not only condoned, but perpetuated and himself committed the abuse of members at all levels of your organization.

I think the world as a whole understands that life can be difficult and that we all look for an escape. This is the purpose of entertainment --a very prolific market these days. However, the danger of escaping from life comes when it is not a momentary escape, but essentially a permanent detachment from real life as a whole. This is Scientology, for every single person involved.

Auditing is only a way for you to submerge yourself into your imagination and pretend that the world you see around you is an illusion while your imagination is real. Everyone has various reasons for finding such an escape liberating, and even addicting. The founder of your religion knew exactly what he was doing. He used your own mind against you to collect embarrassing truths and incriminating evidence to extort you and anyone else that has been touched by Scientology.

In the meantime, there are people like me, who didn't fit into the fold. I refused to accept that Scientology was the truth, and that the "past lives" that I was audited through as a child were real. I decided that I wanted to move on with my life and for that I was shunned by my family. It has been just over a year since I have spoken to them.

I am angry, and possibly even a little hateful for the turn of events which has severed me from my family. The programming they received while under the control of your organization has destroyed the bond I had with my mother, father, brother and sister. In turn, my parents severed their ties with their brothers and sisters and parents.

The bond between mother and child is supposed to be one of the strongest bonds in nature. Scientology is capable of not only weakening that bond, but destroying it entirely. I cannot imagine for a moment what else besides a cult like Scientology would be capable of such an evil act.

Like other cults, your cult encourages bigotry and gives members a feeling of superiority over the rest of society. My parents believe that by refusing to speak to me in the name of your organization that they are actually doing me a favor. They are blinded by the enhanced ego your cult programming has instilled in them. The same ego that Tom Cruise demonstrates when he feels he can advise people on seeking proper mental health care.

There are no words to express the abuse I suffered at the hands of every member of the Sea Organization during my three years there. I was a child and I did not deserve to be treated that way. I was coerced, against my own protests, to leave my family and fly 3,000 miles away, to the state of Florida, at the age of 16. I did not want to be so far from them, but if I had not agreed I would have had to endure confessionals at the hands of one of your "Ethics Officers".

Ethics officers are the epitome of psychological torture. As a child who was hiding his homosexuality from his parents, I suffered greatly at the hands of your evil organization. I spent all those years seeking to hide it as long as I could, until finally, while at your organization in Clearwater, FL I could no longer.

After being discovered I was harassed endlessly. I was threatened with the loss of my family, which, at such a young age, would have been devastating. I was made to feel evil for daring to have homosexual urges. It wasn't until long after I overcame my suicidal urges as a young man and started to build a life outside of Scientology that I would find that my homosexuality is not a character flaw.

However the confessionals I endured at age 17, which delved deep into my psyche to uncover all of my homosexual acts and fantasies as a young boy and which I confessed to someone easily two and a half times my age, drove me to the brink of self-destruction. The damage which has been done to me has caused me unimaginable pain and discomfort throughout my life.

I am lucky to have been able to hold a steady job or two and maintain my personal relationships with my friends throughout this time.

Luck is on your side that I do not possess the resources and have probably passed the statue of limitations to file a lawsuit against you, however I still have the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which allows me to speak about my experiences inside of your insidious organization. It sickens me that you are capable of shielding your criminal empire with something which was intended for the greater good.

I have been watching the media and the end of your days is coming. Your group is growing ever smaller and your power is ever-weakening. You continue to claim that you are expanding in size and at some point that illusion is going to come crashing down on you. Your abuse must come to an end, most importantly the abuse of children. It disgusts me the way you treat children: you deny them their childhood and threaten them with the loss of their families. They live in a culture of fear, and are forced into a state of constant anxiety.

Until the first time I took prescribed medications, I had no idea what normality was. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I didn't have to be in constant angst and worried about things out of my control.

My question to you is: Is living in your fantasy world of spaceships and Xenu really worth what you are doing to the people around you? Hubbard is no longer running the empire. It is running on its own. You are doing this to yourselves because of your false belief in the words of a sociopath who has been dead as long as I have been alive.

Is your mission of world domination really worth what you are doing to all these children? Ruining their lives one-by-one. Denying them proper education and ruining their family bonds.

Think about your ethics practices which involve intense invasion of privacy and Draconian control mechanisms. Do you really want to propagate these on a worldwide scale? Do you really want to live your life in constant fear of being found guilty of being human?

You believe you are better than the rest of us, when the truth really is that our species is evolving and people like you, with your hate and bigotry are holding us back.

I will find great pleasure in watching the criminal acts of your organization being exposed in the worldwide media. I will find great pleasure in collapse of your organization.

None of it will reduce the pain I have suffered at the hands of your organization.

Scientology is evil.

Sincerely,

Derek Bloch