I am Astra Woodcraf

Hi, my name is Astra Woodcraft and I am the 22 year old year old in the recent
SF Chronicle article.

I just wanted to let everyone know that they can write to me and ask me
questions if they like.

I would like to clarify one point. I was never a promiscuous petty thief as
Aron Mason of OSA International said  was. Aron was actually a good friend of
mine and it was  a bit upsetting when I heard he had said that, but then I knew
it was a typical church reaction and I had expected it.

I had tried majijuanna a couple of times, but I never got an reaction or
properly inhaled. That is the extend of my drug history. I was driven to this
small amount of drug use my my mother forcing Scientology on us and neglecting
and leaving us.

Scientology never saved me from a life of promiscuity and petty crime. I would
have turned out great without them. All they did was take my childhood.

I am now attending college while working part time and raising my daughter. I
have never been happier in my life than I am now.

I am Lawrence Woodcraft

From: lawriew@aol.com (LawrieW)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Date: 12 Feb 2001 20:53:14 GMT
Subject: Re: San Francisco Chronicle
Message-ID: <20010212155314.06596.00000714@ng-bk1.aol.com>

I'm the Lawrence Woodcraft referred to in the article and I would like to tell
you that I was "fair-gamed" by the Scientologists. Like an idiot I trusted my
two precious daughters to the church. I was promised that they would attend
school, work short hours, get time off etc. All lies. 

The reality was that Astra never got any kind of education (She is now in
college making up for lost time), was forbidden to see me as I'm ex Sea Org.
and was made to work all night on many occassions. She eventually became
suicidal and hatched a scheme of getting pregnant so she could get out and
"blew" to England. My other daughter was virtually held prisoner in Clearwater
by her mother and wasn't allowed to leave their cadet organization. Again, at
age 15 she hadn't been to school in 1 year and had even been made to operate
heavy machinery (jack hammer) She called me in tears and I flew to Florida and
collected her.

For being a caring father and trying to make up for past mistakes, the church
declared me a suppressive person. I am an architect in Los Angeles and as I had
been a Scientologist, I had a number of clients who were Scienos. The Church
wrote to them and told them to disconect from me. Like robots they haven't
spoken to me since, despite the fact that I had done a darn good job on their
architectural projects over a 4 year period. They tried to drive me into
bankrupcy but I just got new non-scieno clients. 

I used to be timid, and didn't want to go up against the Church, but I say that
this abuse has to stop. If you have a story, tell it. Let's swamp these bastard
child-abusers with the truth and put a stop to thier illegal activities.

I am Zoe Woodcraft

From: emma0484@aol.com (Emma0484)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Date: 19 Mar 2001 22:35:33 GMT
Subject: Cruel and Unusual Punishment in the S.O.
Message-ID: <20010319173533.10346.00001801@ng-fr1.aol.com>

   Because Sea Org (Scientology clergy) discipline is so complicated and full
of so many different rules, I thought I would just give a few examples of rules
which are rather extreme or wierd.

   If you get a sunburn which stops you from producing on post for any amount
of time, you are assigned Treason and have to work your way up the conditions,
through Liability (a lot of amends), etc.  This is actually in a Flag Order,
but I can't remember which one.

   If your dorm flunks its cleaning inspection for a few days, you are assigned
Pigs' Berthing.  This has different punishments in different orgs.  When I was
at the Int Ranch (6 yrs. old) we would have to sleep in a decrepit, rodent
infested building called the Big House.  At the Flag Cadet Org we would lose
free time and would have a big lock put on our door (so we were locked out)
until we agreed to clean up our room and do an ethics handling.

   We were not allowed to date at the Cadet Org, and if we did we were "pulled
in" to the Cadet Coordinator's office.  There he would explain to us that
clearing the planet and getting out training done were much more important than
dating, so it wasn't for the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.
 So couples would normally break up.

   If you pissed of any exec too much, they could've had you thrown overboard. 
On a ship this would of course mean that you were thrown off the side of the
ship (they would then retrieve you).  At the Cadet Org this meant that two (or
more) kids were ordered to grab you arms and legs and swing you into the pool. 
The whole org was gathered around to watch this.  The Div Six Secretary was
supposed to say something like "May you arise a better person."  One boy was
scared of water and wasn't too good at swimming, so when they tried to grab
him, he panicked and was running around the pool area, trying to open a gate. 
The gates were locked, but he eventually fought the MAAs until they just let
him go.

   If you get sick in the S.O. you are sent to ISO, which is basically a bare
room with mattresses on the floor for you to sleep on.  Because being sick is
supposed to be a sign of out ethics, you get less than standard treatment.  All
food is cold, and most of it has been sitting for hours, the ISO rooms
generally don't have air conditioning, and they smell of mold and barf.  They
have plenty of bugs.  And you are not supposed to do anything but sleep, get
Scientology assists, or read LRH books.  It is really a horrible experience,
which far outdoes being sick in the first place.

   At Flag you are supposed to treat the RTC Reps like royalty.  So when one
Outer Org Trainee bumped into an RTC Rep, he was assigned lower conditions,
with something like 30 hours of amends.  When I expressed surprise at this to
the SHSBC Course Admin, she told me that he deserved it as he had run into the
RTC Rep so hard that she had almost fallen over.  And just as a note, staff
think that RTC members are so highly trained that they can read people's minds.
 One staff member bumbled a job for an RTC Rep, so the RTC Rep announced, in
front of all of HCO, that he was a fag.  Everyone believed it too.

   All staff members are supposed to follow FO38, which is a set of rules laid
out in Flag Order 38.  It includes things like saying good morning, good
afternoon, or good evening to any staff member higher than you in the org,
getting out of the way in a hallway when higher staff are walking by, holding
open doors for any senior staff, and calling all seniors Mr.________, even if
they are female.

   All personal or business mail for staff is opened and read.  The contents
are then stapled to the envelope and put through the communication system to
the staff.

   Calling family often (once every few weeks) is frowned upon.  At the Cadet
Org the Cadet Coordinator or MAA would listen to our phone calls as the only
phone was in their office.  They put in a public phone for a while but then
disconnected it.
In LA, at the HGB where my sister worked, staff were not allowed to make calls
without an ethics terminal listening in.
  
    No staff can have TVs, computers with Internet access, or telephones in
their rooms.  Security actually go around the dorms and check to make sure the
staff are following this rule.

   As far as I know, all of this information is current.  I only blew Flag 12
months ago.  I'm sure that I'm missing much more, but this is all I could think
of at the moment.  I hope this gives you some idea of what being a Sea Org
member is like!

Zoe Woodcraft   

Zoe Woodcraft follow-up

From: emma0484@aol.com (Emma0484)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Date: 21 Mar 2001 00:29:14 GMT
Subject: Re: Cruel and Unusual Punishment in the S.O.
Message-ID: <20010320192914.09624.00000093@ng-bd1.aol.com>

   Yes, I have punished other cadets and Sea Org members.  I was an MAA for
precadets (around ages 6 - 10) at the Int Ranch, a Dir I & R, HAS, and LRH
Communicator at the Flag Cadet Org, and an EPF Esto on the Flag EPF.  So I've
written and approved courts of ethics and commitees of evidence.  I've also
assigned conditions, taken away free time, and conducted ethics handling,
including O/W write ups, on others.  I'm sure you can understand that I'm not
proud of this.  But the Cadet Orgs are supposed to run themselves (policies are
set in place for this) and so ethics personnel were posted.  A rather ruthless
attitude is cultivated in the children from an early age.

   During the '99 pickets we were told that the windows were covered to keep us
from reading any OT materials on your picket signs.  We weren't told that
hearing someone say Xenu would kill us, we just thought that it would ruin the
OT levels for us.  Running away from picketers and video cameras was kind of a
given, since we were quaking in our boots from the scary stories we were told
about SPs.  I personally never really had that much faith in the promised OT
abilities, as I knew plenty of OTs (my mother and grandmother included) with
lives messed up worse than mine.  I always thought that OT powers could only
work in certain conditions, when the OT was doing everything just right.

Zoe Woodcraft   

   

Disconnection, Lies and Video Tape

From: lawriew@aol.com (LawrieW)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Date: 13 Jun 2002 04:25:09 GMT
Subject: Disconnection, Lies and Video Tape
Message-ID: <20020613002509.10955.00000647@mb-fa.aol.com>

From LawrieW (Lawrence Woodcraft)

The originals of the videos that my daughters, Astra and Zoe, and I made for
the LMT are now with Scientology. This makes me want to puke.

These videos detail the horror that my two daughters were put through by
Scientology when they were members of the Sea Organization.

The price that they have paid for their honesty, and their desire to warn
others to avoid the unbelievable lies, manipulation and abuse they were
subjected to, is that they are now victims of the single most evil aspect of
Scientology, their policy of disconnection. 

Disconnection means that if you are a Scientologist who is connected to
someone who is critical of Scientology, has ever attacked Scientology, in a
newspaper, online or just verbally in some way, then you must never see or
speak to that person again, or you will be disconnected from. It doesn't
matter if this person is your child, spouse or friend. If you don't
disconnect, you will be disconnected from. This is all as per the written
policies of L. Ron Hubbard.

They are permanently disconnected from their mother Leslie Woodcraft (watched
Lisa Mcpherson, when she was being held against her will in Clearwater),
grandmother Daphne Farrow (in the Sea Org. at Flag and 80 years old so they
will never see her alive again, or even know when she dies), brother Matthew
Woodcraft (in the S.O. in LA).

In better days, Bob and Stacy invited us to speak at the Leo J Ryan
conference in Cleveland. I was staggered to discover that every cult
discussed, operates the policy of disconnection. The Moonies, Hari Krishna,
all of them. It is the basic element of control for these cults, as it homes
in on RAW HUMAN EMOTION. There is nothing more important than family, for
most normal people. Their WHOLE life is shaped by caring for their family.
That here in the USA, Scientology is allow to operate its pathetic policy of
disconnection to control and manipulate, is a DISGRACE. That it is recognized
as a religion is a pathetic disgrace.

Anyway, on mother's day my two daughter's were in a funk. They know that they
will never talk to their Mother, Grandmother or Brother again, they don't
even know how to contact them. They haven't seen them in nearly two years,
since the proverbial hit the fan. When they tried to call them at the Sea
Organizations where they work, their calls were not forwarded. They have long
since given up any attempt at getting through, as a waste of time.

Their last meeting with their mother was in LA in 2000. Janet Weiland (OSA
operative) showed up. They were trying to stop Astra doing the article for
the San Francisco Times. Janet Weiland made a pathetic statement that she was
trying to prevent the family from being broken up. We all got into a shouting
match at The House of Pies (a restaurant close to their complex) in LA.
Leslie promised Astra and Zoe that she would never disconnect from them and
her granddaughter Kate (now aged 3). Soon after, OSA must have realized that
we were in contact with the LMT. Leslie vanished from LA and Astra and Zoe
have never heard from her since

Their "crimes" are to have agreed to make the videos with the LMT, and a
couple of newspaper articles. Basically, they told the truth about their
gruesome experiences with the "Church." I can tell you that the effect on them
is devastating. Get them counseling, I hear you say. That will help, for
sure, but the fact must be faced, that they will never ever speak to Leslie,
Daphne and Matthew again, and that is devastating. In reality they are in
grieving mode, as their family members are now in effect DEAD. And how do
Leslie, Daphne and Matthew feel. They are being so totally controlled by the
Cult, who knows?

This emotion devastation is for what? If your country is at war or there are
terrorist attacks, sacrifices have to be made. But this disconnection policy
is being used to further a BULLSHIT SCIENCE FICTION CULT whose highest
intellectual achievement is their claim that we are all possessed by dead
space aliens.