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«MR. LeCHER:
In your outline you have "Scientology" — number three, "Scientology Policies and
Practices: Potential Trouble Source, PTS, and Disconnect," if one uniformly appeared, and, number two,
"policies applied to personal experience, divorce, husband — give children to husband."
Is that something that you could — that personally happened to you or is it a common policy?
MS. PETERSON:
That's something that was applied to me.
At one point, when I was in the Guardian's Office,
my husband wanted me to leave the Guardian's Office. He
did not want me to leave Scientology; he just simply
didn't want me to work so many hours and be away from
my children so much. And I was sort of undecided as to whether I should do that or not. He and I began having a lot of problems over it. I — basically, I just felt
that I didn't want him to push me into a decision. I
wanted to make it on my own. And it was causing some
problems. I was quite ill at the time. I was having stomach problems and various problems because of this
pressure.
I was sent to the United States Guardian's Office
in an attempt to do what they call handle it. And I
was given what they call a Chaplain's Court, basically, where a so-called minister of the Church comes and gives you counseling, marriage counseling. He — his name was
Paul, Paul Sheffield.
I was told at that time by Mr. Sheffield, at the
very beginning of the interview, that he basically didn't
care whether my husband and I stayed together. And the
purpose of the counseling was to keep me on staff because
I was needed very badly. He then wrote up a program of
how my husband and I were supposed to handle our differences.
And I was then called into the office and one of
my seniors, one of my bosses, told me that the problem
between my husband and I was becoming totally out of — totally out of control, totally out of hand, and that,
basically, he — what he wanted me to do and what I should do and what others had done was
to divorce my husband. And since I had two small children and I was — financially, I would have been unable to support them, I
should give them to my husband because he could support
the children and I could leave the children all day long. And that if I did not do that, that I was letting the whole organization down and that there would be ramifications.» |
