When the stripper walked in and performed a lap dance on one of the most respected, admired and trusted S.O. execs, I knew there was something very wrong.

Norman Starkey looked embarrassed, but tried to be a good sport. After all the grinding lasted just a minute and – hey – what are Bullbait TRs for. It was his birthday and the room was full of “friends”, or at least so he thought.  

Mr. Starkey goes way back, being one of the first Sea Org Officers, working with LRH on the Apollo, a famous drummer in the Apollo Stars and doing some of the most sensitive LRH missions over the years. No doubt he had gotten many personal birthday presents from LRH over the years, but this type – a stripper performing a lap dance on him -- was certainly a first and most definitely not something that LRH had arranged.

In fact, back on the Apollo, the next step after receiving such a lap dance would have been the RPF or the beach no doubt. But this was 1984 and LRH was off the lines busy with writing the Mission Earth series and working on the upper OT levels. He thought his tech, his legacy and the churches he helped to build in the course of a lifetime were in good hands.  Little did he know how dirty one particular set of hands had become, devilishly busy undermining the Sea Org’s finest OTs.

On that day, in 1984, most of us sat there stunned, red faced and with our jaws dropping.  It was the last thing we had expected. Being part of this degrading scene, even just as spectators, made us squirm hoping it was all just a bad dream, one that could be reviewed with an auditor in the next session in confidence.

But not all present were flabbergasted. There was Marion Meisler, now Marion Pouw, who was clearly proud of herself for having pulled it off, able to report another “Done Sir” to dm (d. miscavige). (And no wonder then that she is one of the few who have survived under the little man to this date.) Two or three other close confidants of his were also standing in the doorway grinning.

And one of dm’s attorneys had fun fondling the ladies naked breast, as she made her way out of the conference room to go and collect her check for a job “well performed”.

And then there was the mastermind behind it all, dm himself. He was in stitches – bending over laughing, proud of his own genius to always come up with stunts that no one would expect.

"The joker is advertising his symptoms. He is also advertising an area of the org where there is enturbulation and down statistics as well as staff members being victimized." - LRH

And yes this kind of a stunt none of us had ever expected. The little man had taken us by surprise once again and repulsively so. We sat there staring, forced to gaze at this disgusting spectacle, watching in disbelief.

What world had we entered, when would we wake up from this unreality? But it was reality, reality in a new “brave” world being created by dm. It took many of us, like myself, years to wake up to what we all had become party to.

It was July 1984 -- LRH was under heavy attack by the Department of Justice, which was conspiring with private attorneys in order to destroy LRH through the court system. The IRS was gaining ground on their eternal war to wipe us out, since they were still feeding off the crimes committed by the Guardian Office execs, so well documented in their G.O. files, which were all taken during the raids in 76.  Mayo was on a roll trying to create schism. The Mission Holder Network was in shambles and the Finance Police had managed to destroy the financial reserves of most orgs and missions. Criminal and tax investigations had to be dealt with in other parts of the world – Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, England, to name a few.

So yes, we were stunned.  We had the defense of the tech, the protection of LRH on our minds, when we were sitting there in the conference room on Sunset Boulevard where Special Project and ASI were housed then. We all had given up so much in our calling to protect what we all knew was the true knowledge of man’s spiritual nature. The end of the search mankind had been engaged in for so long. The path that would make the creation of real peace on earth and true freedom possible.

So yes, dm had us surprised. We did not expect a stripper (or was it a hooker?) at our high level legal meeting. Most of us had spent years if not decades learning the Ethics principles and Moral Codes of LRH. We had been working hard at perfecting our own application of them, some of us having spent months on the “decks” or the Rehabilitation Project Force for offenses much smaller than what we were witnessing here and were forced to be party to. In the end none of us spoke up, we all tried to be good sports and get on with the more important business in front of us – developing effective strategies against world wide attacks to wipe out Scientology and destroy LRH in the process.

By not speaking up and not walking out of the room we had become part of the incident, we had been subverted. Our silence and inaction was testimony to our corruptibility and gave power to a new “morale” code, which, unbeknownst to us then, was to be implanted subtly at first but then more and more forcefully and overtly over the years.

As a result I said nothing, a decade after the stripper Implant, when dm told me to “get my ethics in” and minutes later a Sea Org Officer whom I had respected highly up to then for his on-sourceness violently slammed me against a wall with my shirt ripping. My once firm resolution to stand up to suppression, internally or externally, and to put honesty and my own perception of things above others’ views had all but disappeared.

Later that day, spinning and busy writing up “overts and withholds”, I somehow managed to convince myself that lots of OWs must be there, that I was responsible for the condition I found myself in. Why else would I upset and outrage a Sea Org officer to the point where he would physically attack me -- surely the cause must be me. The degrade that had started when I did not object to the Stripper Implant had taken its toll. My personal integrity was in shambles and so I did not dare to do the right thing – walk out right there and then and blow the whistle.  

My first dynamic goals to proudly stand up for the tech and practice KSW without compromise had been denigrated to: Don’t be a troublemaker.

But lies just do not as-is. No matter how many overts and withholds one dreams up and how many evil purposes one digs up and invents in order to make the attacker of one’s self-determinism right, the charge just does not blow.

Sometimes pressure builds up for years. We all put up with it at first, knowing we are dealing with whole track issues, so who knows what else is sitting there waiting to be uncovered that will then as-is the pressure. But truth is a funny thing. It really is the “Exact, time, place, form, and event” that creates the as-isness. When a problem does not resolve – and in my case that continuing build up of the pressure did become a growing problem – then there is a lie. So first you search every corner of your mind for every sign of an overt and false purpose. And, as in my case, you do this some times for 15 years and more. Then, since the pressure is still there, you decide to go your own way, grant beingness and decide that “we just have to agree to disagree”. But then the pressure keeps coming back. It starts building again. It forces you to keep looking and searching for the real source of the problem, the real lie one is holding onto.

And one day you are looking at that first crack, that first seed of doubt, that first alarm bell which went off in your head and which you did not listen to. What you then perceived as a frightening crack that might lead to mental hell if heeded -- since it is a crack in the wall of “command intention” you had so religious enforced for so long --- now turns out to be a crack where sunshine is peeking through. With distance, time having passed and in the light of a new day self-determinism is asserting itself once again and the clarity of perception returns. And, it turns out, there is sunshine, the light of truth, shining through behind the implanted darkness that one false perceived earlier.

Well, now looking back, that first crack that unheeded alarm bell for me was that stripper walking into my Church in 1984 and giving a veteran Church leader a lap dance.

It was watching this little guy, who was meant to be our spiritual leader and the embodiment of KSW, bent over laughing as our attorney fondled the strippers breasts, engaging in one of man’s oldest degrades of women.

And the 2nd crack --- well that would be when that Sea Org Officer who was “putting ethics in” on me dm style – a violent smash against a wall. Oh yes – that guy too survived under dm and to this date is one of his loyal enforcers.

Truth and theta really are timeless. Eventually it all comes out and with the as-isness comes the relief of the pressure.

A bright new day for me

The pressure is gone

Thanks for listening to

A Friend of Ron