Disconnection (Scientology)

For other uses, see Disconnection (Scientology) (disambiguation).

Disconnection is a practice in Scientology, in which a Scientologist severs all ties between themselves and friends, colleagues, or family members that are deemed to be antagonistic towards Scientology. The practice of disconnection is a form of religious shunning.

Disconnection has ended marriages and separated children from their parents.

Policy basis

Antagonists to the Church of Scientology are declared by the Church to be antisocial personalities, Potential Trouble Sources (PTS), or Suppressive Persons (SPs). The Church teaches that association with these people impedes a member's progress along the Bridge to Total Freedom.

In a Hubbard Communication Office Bulletin (the official policy of the Church of Scientology), L. Ron Hubbard sets out the doctrine that by being connected to Suppressive Persons, a Scientologist could become a Potential Trouble Source (PTS):

A Scientologist can become PTS by reason of being connected to someone that is antagonistic to Scientology or its tenets. In order to resolve the PTS condition, he either HANDLES the other person's antagonism (as covered in the materials on PTS handling) or, as a last resort when all attempts to handle have failed, he disconnects from the person. He is simply exercising his right to communicate or not to communicate with a particular person.

The bulletin states that failure to disconnect from a Suppressive must itself be labelled a Suppressive Act.

The policy was introduced in 1965 and revoked in 1968 before this 1983 re-introduction (Atack (1990, page 35)).

According to Church statements, disconnection is used as a "last resort", only to be employed if the persons antagonistic to Scientology do not cease their antagonism -- even after being provided with "true data" about Scientology, since it is taught that usually only people with false data are antagonistic to the Church.

A belief that disconnection was not being used as a last resort led a group of British Scientologists to resign from the Church in 1984, while keeping their allegiance to the beliefs of Scientology. They claimed that the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard "encourage the unity of the family" and therefore that the disconnection policy was "a misrepresentation or misapplication".

Disconnection in practice

In his 1984 High Court judgement, which considered many aspects of Scientology, Justice Latey wrote that "Very many examples [of disconnection] have been given and proved in evidence." As examples, he reproduced two disconnection letters. One is written by a Scientologist to his fiancée. In the other a man writes to his business partner and former friend, "What you are now doing in setting yourself against the Church is not only very suppressive but also non-survival for you, your family and any group you are associated with."

In 1966 UK newspaper the Daily Mail quoted a disconnection letter from Scientologist Karen Henslow to her mother:

"Dear Mother, I am hereby disconnecting from you because you are suppressive to me. You evaluate for me, invalidate me, interrupt me and remove all my gains. And you are destroying me.
"I [unreadable] from this time consider myself disconnected from you and I do not want to see you or hear from you again. From now you don't exist in my life."

The official New Zealand government report into the Church of Scientology (the Dumbleton-Fowles report) quoted from a number of disconnection letters. Teenage Scientologist Erin O'Donnell had written to her non-Scientologist aunt, "If you try to ring me I will not answer, I will not read any mail you send, and I refuse to have anything to do with you in any way whatsoever. All communication is cut completely."

The sociologist Roy Wallis found that at one point it was conventional to publish notices of disconnection in The Auditor, an internal Church of Scientology publication.

Vosper (1971, Plate 1) reproduces a "Declaration of Enemy" that was issued in response to his own violations of Scientology Ethics. It states, "Anyone connected to him is not to be processed or trained until he or she has disconnected from him in writing." Atack (1990, page 35) describes being ordered to disconnect from a friend in 1983, shortly after the policy was re-introduced.

In 1984, another investigation by the Daily Mail brought up further claims of disconnection, including a 13 year old boy who disconnected from his father and a woman who said her fiancé was forced to abandon her. The fiancé concerned claimed that "it was a personal decision" and a Church of Scientology spokesman was quoted denying that there is a policy to split up relationships.

Also in 1984, the Mail on Sunday interviewed Gulliver Smithers, a former Scientologist who had left the group's base at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead at age 14. Smithers claimed that disconnection was an everyday part of life in Saint Hill, "It goes round by word of mouth when someone is an outcast. He or she is just ignored and shunned. It was what we were brought up to do."

In a lengthy court case in the 1980s, ex-member Lawrence A. Wollersheim successfully claimed that he had been coerced into disconnecting from his wife, parents and other family members. Since the disconnection was not voluntary, it did not count as protected religious practice.

In 1995, the UK local paper Kent Today talked to Pauline Day, who claimed that her Scientologist daughter Helen had sent a disconnection letter and then changed her phone number and dropped all contact. A spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology denied that this decision had anything to do with the Church.

A Buffalo News investigation in 2005 spoke to the sisters and brother of Fred Lennox, a Scientologist who, they claimed, was being manipulated and exploited financially by the group. The paper also quoted an internal Ethics Order instructing him to "handle or disconnect" from his sister Tanya because of anti-Scientology comments she had made online. Lennox himself and Church of Scientology spokesmen denied the claims.

Ex-Scientologist Tory Christman claimed to Rolling Stone magazine that her Scientologist husband and friends refused to talk to her once she left the group.

In January 2008, Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of David Miscavige, made a number of allegations about the policy's effect on her family. She claimed that, once her parents left and she remained in the group, she had been forbidden to answer the telephone in case she spoke to them and that her parents only restored occasional access to her by threatening legal action.

Another second-generation Scientologist, Astra Woodcraft, claimed on Nightline that she had been forbidden any contact with her father once he left the Church and she was still a member. She used her weekly laundry time to secretly meet up with him.

The BBC television documentary Panorama spoke to two mothers whose daughters had disconnected; one for nearly seven years. Scans of other disconnection letters have been posted online

Comments on disconnection policy by religious scholars

The St. Petersburg Times consulted three religious scholars about disconnection in Scientology, two of whom had been recommended by the organisation itself. One, F. K. Flinn of Washington University in St. Louis, said that shunning practices such as disconnection are common to young religions. He drew parallels with the dis-fellowship practiced by Jehovah's Witnesses.

This view is not shared by all religious scholars. J. Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of American Religion claimed that disconnection goes much further than the policies of most modern religions. Newton Maloney of Fuller Theological Seminary also described the policy as "too extreme". The Buffalo News report consulted Stephen A. Kent of the University of Alberta, who said that hostility towards critics, including the member's own family, is an ingrained part of Scientology Ethics, according to which the survival of the Church is all-important.

Scientology "Disconnection" in popular culture

• William S. Burroughs, who briefly dabbled with Scientology, wrote extensively about it during the late 1960s, weaving some of its jargon into his fictional works, as well as authoring non-fiction essays about it. He uses the term "Disconnect" in a Scientological context in Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology and other works. In the end, however, he abandoned Scientology and publicly criticized it in an editorial for the Los Angeles Free Press in 1970. [1]

• Gary Numan wrote songs laced with Scientology references, such as Me! I Disconnect From You, Praying to the Aliens, and Only a Downstat, influenced directly by Burroughs' Scientology-based writings.

• On April 12, 2008, the leaderless group Anonymous, which is currently enacting Project Chanology, protested at Scientology centers around the world to raise awareness of this policy.

See also

• Scientology controversy
• Suppressive person

External links

• Scientologyhandbook.org on PTS handling
• Scientologytoday.org: "What is Disconnection?"
• Articles on disconnection
• Disconnection Hurts: a collection of interviews with people who have experienced disconnection