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Hahaha! Girl, you are so hilarious. I just love your wit!

“He had to reach up, standing on his tiptoes, wrap his left arm around and behind the wooden frame, in such a way that the gun would be facing his body when he pulled the trigger, with only a piece of wood in-between.

“That might have been okay“.

In what freakin’ way might that have been okay???? That’s like saying,

“He had to stand on one foot, tiptoe, on a rolling office chair, the other foot in a wheelbarrow full of gasoline, reaching up so high he needed to use a lit sparkler like a chopstick to trigger the nailgun, which was pointed directly at his tiny brain on the other side of a Publisher’s Clearinghouse envelope, after downing 4 shots of Macallan’s and steadying himself by grasping a frayed 50-year-old 220-volt line…

“…that might have been okay, BUT……..”

Someone pull that guy’s Nailgun Card.

These women were given an “out” when the investigators took ALL of the women and children out of the compound. The investigators eventually more or less “gave up” and all the women CHOSE to return to the compound & their “husband”.

The same as those born into similar religious affiliations, “Children Learn What They Live”…THIS way of life is ALL they know. They’ve had access to nothing else, limited schooling, no job experience other than child care, cooking/baking/sewing and housework. No access to television or the news of the day, controlled by the male head of household since birth they are also brainwashed into letting a man control their very existence including where and how they live, & the “favored wife” being treated much better than the other “wives”

These are “celestial/spiritual marriages”….there is but ONE possible legal marriage certificate so in reality they aren’t breaking a “bigamy law”. A few men went to prison for Food Stamp Fraud….but one has to think just how many FATHERS names are on the birth certificates of all the children they actually fathered?

A man’s name on a birth certificate legally means HE is responsible for supporting that child, so many children do not have their father’s name on their birth certificate. Add to that the number of children who MIGHT have been born “at home” though a mid wife & that birth not registered with the state.

One of the mysteries has been just how many babies did NOT survive & are buried in unmarked graves “somewhere” on the property…that will never be known.

Protected by a “controlled environment”….similar to FLDS who does NOT permit “outsider” a view on the inside. Even with the organization, seems like you have to be someone well insulated in order to be protected by them…..& as in Merriam’s own father, years went by before he was “kicked out”……sickening to say the least.

Absolutely John, if one chooses to forgive, that can happen, but to forget…that never happens. Some scars never heal, the memory can be triggered by something as “simple’ as a song, a color, a scent (cologne perhaps), a word, , someone who looks like the perpetrator. I’ve yet to met a sexually abused person who “forgot”.

One moves on in life & some with counseling some people will begin to heal, but the memory will always linger. Confronting the abuser to some gives them some peace of mind, because now they are adults & have no fear of the abuser, but that isn’t always the case. Deep inside themselves all the victim/survivor remembers is being a young small POWERLESS child unable to stop the sexual assault or to report it because the perpetrator made threats against the child or the child’s mother/father/family etc. .

Nowadays one can simply google the area you live in to find IF any sexual predators live in your surrounding area. I’ve done it myself & found no one living within several miles of my home. However, putting in another zip code brought up a good long list which was quite shocking.

Decades ago many people didn’t report being sexually abused as a child, their parents thought it was “too embarrassing” for everyone to know that the child had been “sexually assaulted”…others didn’t want to see “poor old Uncle Harry, Grandpa, Aunt Mildred, best friend etc in trouble for “touching the child” because that would split up the family into taking sides.

There are many agencies that will help survivors of sexual assault…RAINN is one of them, and the phone number to report sexual abuse is 1 800 4ACHILD…..

I am keeping you in my thoughts dear John

You have the meaning of ‘authority’, in the context of Milgram’s experiment, exactly right.

In the experiment, all it took for people to comply was an actor in a white coat to repeat stock phrases like, “the experiment requires that you continue”. No shouting in your face and no threats of serious consequences – people would have walked out at any time.

He was an authority figure whose power came from the mere fact that he was accepted to be someone who knew more than you did. People deferred to his judgement of the situation and entered what Milgram called ‘an agentic state’ – that is, they were not thinking for themselves, but acting as ‘agents’ of assumed authority.

” …find themselves acting in ways that are completely out of character”
(from your linked article “Obedience to Authority”)

That’s exactly it. I was acting out of character. Completely. Before I didn’t care about authorities. If you would have told me before that I ever would go into a highly authoritarian group like the Sea Org and would take all that shit, I would have rejected it as not being possible.
They creep into your mind – and this is trained; there are Hubbard references for the procedures.

Just to be clear: Their “air of authority” when I was sucked in was not like that of authoritarian Sea Orgers at all. It was regarding that they new so much more about life and the mind. Their authority is more like when you trust a therapist or a scholar.

I think that the social pressure and the practice of Scientology are far more important to the process of conversion than the book which, once sold, seems to be put aside. It’s a prop, that draws you into a closed social group.

I read the articles in “Astounding Science Fiction” (which I believe were the model for “The Original Thesis”) and found them to consist of questionable assertions, followed by handwaving ‘justifications’ that sometimes simply didn’t makes sense.

If you are place in the situation which you describe, I imagine it can be very easy to ignore the gobbledegook and concentrate on the assertions.

Your mention of the staff’s “air of authority” is interesting in the light of this experiment https://scicrit.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/understanding-the-scientology-mindset-pt-3-obedience-to-authority/

And would not have gone to a doctor, for advice…