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Scientology still driving away talented people and ripping apart their families

 
In March Leah Remini announced that a couple that she had a family connection with were making public their departure from Scientology.

Julian and Katherine Wain, Leah said, had “disconnected from us all when we left Scientology (per Scientology’s teachings). It took over 6 years, but they finally left Scientology and reconnected with us.”

Julian and Katherine each made their own announcements on Instagram with the photo you see above.

“This decision was not easily arrived at. And, in fact, took several years of deep reflection and communication with one another. It was hard, scary and at times unbelievable. Then, as a family, we decided that this is what is best for us,” Julian wrote.

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“We had countless hours of talking, working through our thoughts, ideas, and decisions. We had to take into consideration the repercussions of our decisions. Knowing that we will lose family and friends is not something we took lightly and is truly hurtful,” Katherine said at her account.

We reached out to them that day and heard back almost immediately from Julian. He said that he was interested in talking with us to help us understand what was going on, but he wanted to wait. We understood. And now, several months later, we’ve had a chance to talk with Julian to learn more about their remarkable story.

The first thing we wanted to understand, we told Julian in our conversation yesterday, was the precise connection that he and Katherine have to Leah.

“My wife’s brother William Kilmartin was married to Leah’s sister Shannon,” Julian explained.

Ah, William Kilmartin! We remember his appearing in Leah’s family reality show It’s All Relative, which preceded her A&E series Scientology and the Aftermath.

You probably remember: Kilmartin and Shannon filed for divorce in 2016, but then Leah’s parents legally adopted him after he’d been abandoned by his own family after he had left Scientology.

 

[A photo Leah posted to Instagram, showing Willam Kilmartin at the adoption with Leah’s mother Vicki Marshall holding the certificate]

Last August, Kilmartin remarried, and not only were Leah and her parents there, but so was Shannon, showing support for her ex-husband and his new wife.

Talk about a family that stands on love over disconnection, wow.

Anyway, Julian and Katherine made their announcement about leaving Scientology in March, so last August when Katherine’s brother William had that wedding, the Wains didn’t go.

“Katherine wanted to go. But we hadn’t left Scientology yet. I knew what a fiasco it would be with my mother and brother if we went to the wedding. So I asked Katherine not to go. Today, I realize what a horrible decision that was,” Julian says.

“What a regret to have,” he adds, shaking his head. “To let some blowhard group tell you that you can’t hang out with the people that you love.”

Julian explained that Katherine had grown up in the church and “she’s related to half of Scientology,” he laughs. (Melinda Brownstone is her half-sister, for example.) Julian himself had come in through the Delphian School, Scientology’s boarding school in Sheridan, Oregon.

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“My mom was a serial cultist. She went from one cult to another. Eventually she was involved with the Chico mission. She was worried the public school was going to put her two sons on psychiatric drugs, so she moved us to the Delphian.”

Julian was 11. “Delphian is really a day care so parents can be full-time Scientologists,” he says. “By the time you finish there, you’re practically a pre-cadet in the Sea Org.”

For five years he was a boarding student at Delphian before he completed his final two years of high school at a related Scientology school, Delphi Academy in Los Angeles. By the time he finished school, he says, he was fully conditioned as a Scientologist. “I ate it up,” he says. “I would have protected the church over anything.”

His mother joined the Sea Org for a while, and Julian eventually went on staff at the Los Angeles Org. But during his tenure on staff, from late 2005 to early 2009, he began to have prohibited thoughts.

“Somewhere along the line I started to drift away from it. I almost got declared four times while on staff. I was no longer the poster boy for Scientology,” he says.

But by then, he was involved with another staffer at the org, Katherine Kilmartin. “When I came back from Flag training we started dating,” he says.

By 2009, they were ready for a change, and they moved to Oregon, where they remain to this day.

In fact, they live in McMinnville, where the recent city council election garnered a lot of attention.

After we revealed in a news story here at the Bunker that Brittany Ruiz, who was running for city council, had at one time been a Sea Org official and the Executive Director of the Advanced Organization of Los Angeles, and that she and her husband Javier Ruiz had connections to some remarkable and troubling Scientology stories including Leah Remini’s defection, a local newspaper in the area, the News-Register, referred to our story as it brought up Ruiz’s Sea Org past.

It also quoted Julian.

One former Scientologist, Julian Berceli-Wain of McMinnville, said he has concerns about Ruiz’s connections with Scientology and its requirements to raise money and spread its doctrine. He said he has known both her and her husband for more than 20 years.

“I was in that cult. I was raised in it. I escaped from it and now I’m a free thinker,” Berceli-Wain said. “It’s a multi-billion-dollar organization that’s fronted as a religion. It tries to put its fingertips into anything it can.”

Berceli-Wain, who attended the Delphian School in Sheridan, which is affiliated with Scientology, said he knows and loves Ruiz and her family, but does not believe she can successfully serve as a city councilor. He expressed concern about her ability to serve the community without bias because of what he described as church doctrine opposed to mental health professionals, psychiatry, vaccinations and modern medicine.

“The greatest danger in having her as a public servant is that she views the community’s needs through Scientology,” he said. “She is not an evil person, but she is misled by her beliefs.”

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We were stunned that Julian turned out to be in McMinnville and has known Brittany and Javier Ruiz for so long.

“I’m super close with them. We’ve known them both forever,” he says. But he knew that he’d have to say something publicly. Because he’s likely been declared by the church since making his public announcement, Brittany would not be able to see him, a constituent, if she were elected, and he believed that disqualified her. So he approached the News-Register, and he believes the story had a significant impact. (Leah also tweeted about Ruiz and her candidacy, which made news.)

Brittany Ruiz lost the election by a sizable margin.

Since making their announcement in March, Julian and Katherine have each had family and friends disconnect from them. It’s been hard on them, but they knew it would be a consequence of coming forward.

The day before they made their Instagram postings, Julian told his mother Susan and older brother Joseph the news that he and his wife were breaking from the church.

“My brother is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, but when I told him I was leaving Scientology, I saw him throw that indoctrination at me,” he says. “I told him all the things I’d seen. I’ve seen horrendous things. At the Delphian and in Los Angeles I’ve seen horrific abuse of children. We knew lots of people leave and never say anything. But we didn’t want to experience that. I was ready to be declared and blacklisted.”

He told his brother that after they made their announcement he’d probably be pulled in and interrogated about it.

“Both my mother and my brother said, why don’t you be quiet about it? No, I’m not going to just be quiet,” he says. “I hadn’t done a lot of homework. I hadn’t seen the Aftermath or Going Clear, but I was angry at the how my wife was being treated by her own family. I didn’t know how brainwashed I really was until I watched my brother repeat the things Scientology wanted him to say. Scripted lines coming out of his mouth that we’d heard in Scientology videos. He was like a zombie. With no emotion. That’s what Scientology does to you,” Julian says.

Almost immediately after their public announcement and Leah’s posting, the stream of mail they were receiving from Scientology suddenly dried up.

“I must be declared, I realized.”

It hasn’t prevented the Wains from thriving. Julian works for Nike in Beaverton, and is working at home during the lockdown. He and Katherine have two young boys. Neither of them are Scientologists, he points out with a chuckle.

We talked with him about the presence of Scientologists and ex-Scientologists from Los Angeles in Oregon (which, if you know something about the relationship between Los Angeles and Oregon, is not really a surprise).

Julian says there is a strong connection in McMinnville to Delphian, not only because former students have settled in the area.

“Delphian has a bus route that picks up kids in McMinnville. I’ve thought of putting up a billboard on the road between Delphian and McMinnville. ‘Thinking about leaving Scientology?’ It’s the only road that connects them,” he says.

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We think it’s a swell idea.

 
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Source Code

“Actually, you can exteriorize a dog. You can process them. It’s very peculiar, but you can. They exteriorize as a mass. Did you ever run a preclear who exteriorized with a theta body? Hm? Well, you will someday. You will say, ‘Be three feet back of your head,’ and the fellow is there in a black shape with claws, or something of the sort. And then you have to exteriorize him from that black shape. Well, you’re already into the field of demonology when you say ‘Be three feet back of your head’ and you’ve got something which is a black energy mass which the individual conceives himself to be. You can’t see him. He’s invisible to you with your naked eye. But he’s not invisible to you with your theta vision. You can be 18 feet back of your head, leaning up against the molding strip, something like that; you say to this fellow, ‘Be three feet back of your head,’ and you’re looking at a demon….I’ve exteriorized a dog, much to his surprise. And pushed him back in again. Something on the basis of reaching in, grabbing hold of him as a theta body, pulling him out, and pushing him back in again. I’ve also exteriorized a coyote the same way. Coyote body lay there deader than a mackerel, while this process was going on. He’d been in full flight, and I reached from three feet back of his head and pulled him out of his body. All right. This may sound like a fairy tale to somebody who’s nailed down very solidly in Dianetics and is practicing man for the betterment of man. In Scientology we’re not very much interested in the betterment or the worsenment, and that is something which people have not yet completely isolated or noticed, and I haven’t mentioned very much in the field of Scientology. Get the idea? Scientology is an understanding of. That’s not necessarily a betterment of. You follow me?” — L. Ron Hubbard, November 11, 1954

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“It is clear that the ‘experts’ and ‘insiders’ on the secrets of this planet don’t have a f***** clue of what the real traps are in the Matrix that makes this a prison planet. Only those doing the Scientology advanced levels would know the most invidious traps of the R6 implant and could do something about it. And of course, only they can control, manage and govern the implanted R6 population here. The idea that advanced level Scientologists manage the planet was LRH’s idea. Either they do that or this rock in space will keep on being a ‘caveman’s paradise’.”

 
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Past is Prologue

1996: Andreas Heldal-Lund received a visit from Scientologists in connection with his Norwegian NOTs archive. “Today, two persons rang my doorbell. They asked to talk to me, I answered by asking who they were. They said they came from The Church of Scientology. I did not let them in but stood in the door asking what they wanted. My summary of the debate that followed is this: ‘Clam A: You are in the possession copyrighted material. If you do not delete them and hand over any hard copies you may have, we will sue both you and your ISP.’ ‘Me: These documents are public available on the net and can be ordered from Riksdagen i Sverige. I can see no reason for me to either hand anything to you or remove anything from my home page’.”

 

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Random Howdy

“Sunny is definitely Bunker Hall of Fame material after this. As long as she doesn’t get caught doing ‘roids or shooting an associate down the road from her house, she’s a first ballot shoo-in.”

 
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Masterson’s demurrer denied Oct 19, arraignment delayed to Jan 6.
Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay’s sentencing delayed for ‘Fatico’ hearing in January.
Hanan and Rizza Islam and other family members, Medi-Cal fraud: Next pretrial conference set for Jan 12 in Los Angeles

Civil litigation:
Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Oral arguments were heard on July 30 at the Eleventh Circuit
Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Petition for a writ of mandate denied Oct 22 by Cal 2nd Appellate District.
Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Nov 6, motions to compel arbitration, awaiting ruling; Jan 29, Masterson’s request to stay discovery pending the criminal case
Matt and Kathy Feschbach tax debt: Eleventh Circuit ruled on Sept 9 that Feshbachs can’t discharge IRS debt in bankruptcy. Oct 19: Feshbachs still considering further appellate relief.
Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Second amended complaint filed, trial set for Nov 9, 2021.
Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: Trial concluded, awaiting verdict.

Concluded litigation:
Dennis Nobbe, Medicare fraud, PPP loan fraud: Charged July 29. Bond revoked Sep 14. Nobbe dead, Sep 14.
Jane Doe v. Scientology (in Miami): Jane Doe dismissed the lawsuit on May 15 after the Clearwater Police dropped their criminal investigation of her allegations.

 
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SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks

The Australian Seven News network cancelled a 10-part investigation of Scientology and its history of dirty tricks. Read the transcripts of the episodes and judge for yourself why Tom Cruise and Tommy Davis might not have wanted viewers to see this hard-hitting series by journalist Bryan Seymour.

SCIENTOLOGY: FAIR GAME

After the success of their double-Emmy-winning, three-season A&E series ‘Scientology and the Aftermath,’ Leah Remini and Mike Rinder continue the conversation on their podcast, ‘Scientology: Fair Game.’ We’ve created a landing page where you can hear all of the episodes so far.

LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH

An episode-by-episode guide to Leah Remini’s three-season, double-Emmy winning series that changed everything for Scientology watching. Originally aired from 2016 to 2019 on the A&E network, and coming November 1 to Netflix.

SCIENTOLOGY’S CELEBRITIES, from A to Z

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

 
Other links: Scientology’s Ideal Orgs, from one end of the planet to the other. Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society. Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in a weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Scientology snags an elected official (and JAG!) for its Central Ohio ‘Ideal Org’ ceremony
[TWO years ago] Michigan Catholic couple appears to open a Scientology drug rehab without a permit
[THREE years ago] ‘Scientology is dying’: John Brousseau on the decline of Int Base and fate of Shelly Miscavige
[FOUR years ago] Leonard Cohen: This awful year strikes again with the loss of a transcendent genius
[FIVE years ago] Under oath, Narconon official lets slip that drug rehab organized just like Scientology
[SIX years ago] Kim Poff fired by Oklahoma agency after stories (including ours) described Scientology dispute
[SEVEN years ago] SCIENTOLOGY SUPER POWER COUNTDOWN: Six Days to Blast-Off!
[EIGHT years ago] Scientology Sunday Funnies: Tom Cruise’s Son Connor Fights the North Koreans!

 
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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 2,117 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 2,621 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 2,141 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 1,161 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 1,052 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 4,359 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 2,227 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 3,001 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 3,805 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 3,121 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 11,687 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 7,606 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 3,774 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 3,355 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 3,616 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 2,654 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 2,367 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 1,892 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 247 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 1,422 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 5,973 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 3,122 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 3,442 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 8,297 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 3,416 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 1,772 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 6,075 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 2,181 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 2,583 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 2,455 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 2,038 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 2,533 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 2,787 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 13,896 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on November 11, 2020 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2019 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2019), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 14 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele

 

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