DECLARATION OF TERA HATTAWAY

12 April 2001


DECLARATION OF TERA HATTAWAY


I, Tera Hattaway, declare as follows:

1. I am over 18 years of age.

2. The statements herein are of my own personal knowledge and if called upon as
a witness, I can testify competently thereto.

3. When I was involved with the Church of Scientology in Dallas Texas, I had a
boyfriend of many months prior to joining staff.    This was in 1978.  Within
several weeks of being on staff I was pressured by the Executive Director at
that time, Melanie Stokes, to leave my boyfriend since he wasn’t a staff member.
She basically spoke very belittling of him and made him out to be a “bad hat”
for not joining staff.   All this, despite the fact that he was actively taking
services and contributing substantially to the church and was in good standing.

4. Within a month or so of joining staff I discovered that I was pregnant.  At
the time I was approximately 22 years old, upset and uncertain as to how to
handle this.  I was afraid and needed someone to turn to so I confided in
Melanie, thinking I needed to let my ex-boyfriend know, as I truly did love him
very much and we did have intentions to marry in the future.

5. Melanie’s very strong advice and pressure was to abort the baby.  She had
gone on to say that at this point in my life it is better to do the greatest
good for all.  That spending my life “clearing the planet” which means basically
to get the planet saved from insanity, would be the greatest good, in other
words, a far more noble endeavor than leaving staff to raise a child.

6. She went on to tell me that the spirit doesn’t enter the baby’s body until
the baby is born. She made the point that all I would be “killing” is a piece of
meat essentially.   We discussed this for a couple of days and she showed me
definitions in the L. Ron Hubbard Technical Dictionary to persuade me to have an
ABORTION.

7. I made the decision to go through with the abortion, even though I was raised
in a Catholic home where abortion was never an option.  I can remember the state
of mind I was in at the time; I was completely shut-off emotionally.  I felt
numb through the entire procedure of going to the clinic and getting the
abortion procedure done.  I detached myself completely from the responsibility
that I was about to kill a living human being so I could be on staff and do
scientology.  The Executive Director of the Org, my direct senior had convinced
me, that this fetus was lifeless, therefore it was ok to kill it, so I could
help Ron save the planet.  As though it were a mole or something I was removing.
I felt no remorse after the ordeal, which is very, very unlike my true nature.

8. I want to mention here that Melanie, the E.D., was also trapped in the
bizarre beliefs, falsehoods, hypocrisy and lies of the Church of Scientology and
that I don’t see her as a bad person today. During that period I witnessed
first-hand the same pressure given to others, especially when married couples on
staff wanted to have children.  It was looked down on as not productive for the
group, or the greatest good, etc.

9. The irony that I see in this is that in many of LRH’s writings he would say
that one should flourish within all dynamics  (scopes or areas of life).  He
states that children are our future and that sane relationships and rearing of
children are very important to man’s survival (an obvious point).  Yet, I felt
and knew that for some reason this did not apply to staff members of the church
of scientology.

10. Here’s another example of how relationships and the rearing of children was
not considered valuable to the church: When I was on staff in L.A. with the
middle management of the church in 1984, I observed first hand many married
couples and families on staff with children being split up to live in different
locations because they were “needed” in a different org or were sent out on
missions across the country, sometimes indefinitely.  I was the director of
communications at that time relaying dispatches, mail, etc.  The Inspector
General at the time was and still is David Miscavaige.

11 A lot of the children were kept at the Cadet Estates Org near Sunset Blvd.
behind the Celebrity Center.  I was posted to work there for a couple of months
in order to recruit nannies for the facility.

12 The children were kept in rooms according to age groups.  One room had
infants as young as a couple weeks up to several months of age.  Then there was
the toddler’s room and so on.   The building and all the furniture, desks,
tables, etc. seemed very old and shoddy.  There were about 2 or 3 rooms with
babies in cribs stretching from wall to wall and only one nanny in the room. 
There was a ratio of about 8 to 10 babies per nanny.  There was one nanny who
was always complaining that she had too many toddlers to handle; she would have
about 10 to 15 small babies to care for by herself.

13 The parents (staff members of the church) would drop the kids off early in
the morning, at about 6:00 am, and would pick them up between 10:00 and midnight
on a regular basis.  The majority of the kids were dressed in old, worn-out,
filthy, tattered clothing and most were left with us largely unkempt and
disheveled.  It was like the children were taken home out of obligation only and
dropped off in the morning for us to care for and clean up.

14 The playground was all dirt and no lawn.  I don’t even remember the kids
having any type of jungle gym, slide or swings to play on.  The rooms had
disgusting, huge roaches everywhere and the older kids would be put to work
cleaning the place up.  It was a humiliating  and vile place for anyone to live
in, much less young children.

15 The kids were all placed on statistics even the infants.  The amount of
movement that the babies made was their stat.  If they lifted their heads or
could turn their heads while in the crib by themselves, their stats were
considered up.  Records were kept on this.

16 The parents were supposed to be taking a bus to this facility which was about
10 miles or so from the main buildings that they worked at, for one hour per day
to visit their babies.  Some parents showed up, lots didn’t.

17 The children were instructed to write-up their parents if they didn’t come to
visit that day.

18 From what I saw, these kids were being raised as “little soldiers” and being
prepared to become future workers for the church of scientology.  There were at
that time, young teenagers who were already working at the main base filing,
running errands, cleaning the buildings, doing garden and grounds work.  They
were even working in the kitchen helping cook as well as doing dishes for the
hundreds of staff who would eat in the galley. I observed this on a daily basis.

19 When I was with the cadet org I had to listen to LRH on at least 4 reel to
reel tapes on the subject of children.  LRH mentions, in so many ways, that
children are best raised in a 3rd dynamic (group) and not in a 2nd  dynamic
(family).   That the 2nd is too restimulating and aberrated.

20 These tapes also mentioned that every child is a “big being” who is just
going through the growth period from a small body to a large one once again, as
had been done hundreds or thousands of lifetimes.  He spoke of how in-between
lives we all receive “implants” (unconscious messages, memories, etc,) and have
a continuous case of amnesia from one lifetime to the next.  He was bringing
this up to make a point on how confused and disoriented the “being” will feel
for the first couple of years of life.

21 In one of his tapes, he mentions just letting a baby or kid “cry it out” when
upset.  Unfortunately, I saw a lot of this “crying it out” when the kids were
dropped off at the facility or when they just needed someone to give them a hug.
There was no sympathy given, as LRH described sympathy as “low toned”. There
just were never enough grown-ups to go around to give these kids love, affection
and the true nurturing that a child deserves and has a right to have.

22 As a matter of fact, it was considered “down stat” (very bad behavior) for
the children to cry or be upset for what I knew and felt to be a reasonable
emotion, given the circumstances, such as no parents to be there for their first
words, or their first steps, or no hug or kiss for the little boo boos they get.
No parent to show off to or to share a normal life with.  They didn’t even know
what a normal life was.

23 These kids were taught that the outside world is the enemy.  That the outside
world is very insane and people outside of Scientology were not to be trusted. 
The people of the outside world are referred to as WOG’s (a derogatory word used
by Hubbard to describe an average human being).

24 The children studied and learned all of LRH’s technology.  Basically, going
to regular public school, high school and college was discouraged.  The children
were taught that if you became a trained scientologist you wouldn’t need any
other education.

25 These children are raised to believe that there sole duty in life is to serve
the Church for the greatest good in order to save the planet; they were
indoctrinated to be willing to do or experience whatever it takes to get the job
done.  Whether one of their parents lives in a different state or continent, or
whether they didn’t get to see their parents for several months,  these messages
of being tough to “help save the planet” were continuously being put forward in
the form of policies and directives to “handle” them.

26 Not only was this brainwashing done to the children but to me as well.  A
sense of urgency was always being generated by the executives and all seniors of
the Church as though “things have to get done NOW before it’s too late”.

27 On a final note, I entered the church of scientology shortly after leaving
high school.  It was my first time away from home.  I was young and
impressionable, to say the least.  I feel that this was taken full advantage of
by the church of scientology management that I worked for.  It was like they
wanted to keep me ignorant.  For instance, my seniors one-for-one discouraged me
from having any connection with the outside world; I was discouraged from
watching TV,  reading the newspaper or even a novel!    We were all, the
children and me, disconnected from the world outside of scientology.  I frankly
could not have told you who the president was at that time of my life!
Total pages: ______ 
Executed in Douglasville, Georgia this 12th of April 2001.

________________________________________ 
Tera Y. Hattaway

BEFORE ME, the undersigned authority, personally appeared TERA Y. HATTAWAY, who
presented ______________________________ as identification and who did take an
oath and said the foregoing statements are true and correct.




_________________________________________                       SEAL
Notary Public


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