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Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Scientology Fair Game. Hi, Mikey.

Hi, Lily.

Today, we have another wonderful guest, Phil Jones and Highfill EYLEA.

This is great. They have me on my mind.

It's absolutely our pleasure and so glad to to talk to you. So, yeah.

You know, Phil, we really wanted to be able to tell your story in the aftermath, but for various technical reasons, we could not do so.

I realized that you probably would have needed another five years to cover everyone in that show anyway. So that's the thing.

It's like we we wanted to tell every story, every story we found important and worth telling. We just didn't have enough time to do it.

And like I said, we weren't the the final say of of every decision that was made on the aftermath.

So and, you know, I'm sure that it's going to come up in the course of this discussion.

But we are very well aware that you were involved with another production about Scientology at that time that was even being done by A&E and Valdon connected called the disconnected.

Yeah. Yeah, right. And and that was something that Leah and I fought about for a long time to try to get that show to air. We were accused of trying to stop it. We were the exact opposite. Yeah, we tried to get involved and, you know, talking to Jamie DeWolf, we tried to get the show to air between season one and season two of the aftermath. And then we tried to host it.

We wanted to host showing the show and talking and having all of you there in studio talking about the show. But we it wasn't done by the production company that did our show. So then we tried to call that production company to see if they could work with the production company that we were working with and partner up with us so that we can get that show seen. But we were obviously unsuccessful. Yeah, I mean, my understanding, from what I was told, shows that saw it and then felt and for whatever reason, a network can do that.

So I mean, they own the show. So, yes, I know that was the other thing.

We tried to get back the show to help the the other production company try to help them to get the show back from any so that maybe we could all go, huh?

Maybe one day they'll leak the show.

Yeah, no, it's it's something that, you know, we thought would would be important for the viewers to see, especially especially when we season one was so based and disconnection to see you guys actually making attempts, you know, because how many times have been asked this, Phil, you and your wife really, you know, why don't you just go and knock on the door of the Church of Scientology to try to see your son or daughter? And, you know, you actually saw it.

You actually saw it being done. And it's it's not these moments that you think everybody that, you know, first of all, this is private property. You can't just walk up to a Church of Scientology. And, Mike, certainly there's footage of you trying to see your son, Ben, who you were told had cancer.

And thankfully, he is OK today. But that's not through communication between you and your son, because your son won't talk to you because you're a suppressive person. But when you went, there is footage of you and Marty Rathbun, who is now back into the Church of Scientology, everybody knocking on the door of the Fort Harrison asking to see your son. And then the Clearwater police were called and you were asked to leave the premises. And that's what happened in the disconnected show that we saw.

We saw, what was it, six episodes or eight episodes of you guys and different families, sons and daughters of parents who were still in Scientology, walking up to them saying, I would like to talk to you and the responses, I'm not allowed to talk to you. You need to get yourself handled. Go talk to the international justice justice chief, which is the guy who is in charge of saying yea or nay to you, talking to your family member or friend who has left Scientology.

And you need to get yourself handled. And that's it.

There's no big there's no big, I don't know happening that people think is going to happen. And you can't just simply go knock on the door of the Church of Scientology.

They will call the police and you'll be asked to leave even individuals, my brother live locally. I haven't seen them. I ran into him a few weeks back. First time I'd seen him in probably eight, ten years. He's a hardcore psychologist. He worked for the for years with the U.S. Office of Special Affairs. And I tried to talk to the one with a little coffee. Mean he just wouldn't have it. Just go go get yourself handled.

Meaning, you know, all the things that I'm not going to go do, which means what he's referring to.

What he's saying is feel that you need to go back to the Church of Scientology and and and then recant everything that you said about the Church of Scientology and then pay for Scientology again. So start from the bottom of the Scientology Bridge, which, you know, takes a lifetime to get to and, you know, five hundred thousand dollars or three hundred thousand dollars and do the bridge all over again and denounce everything and everyone that has befriended you since leaving Scientology and recant everything you said, say that you were lying, saying that you were psychotic.

And that's how your brother is implying you guys could have a relationship.

Yeah. The bottom line, though, was he didn't want have anything to do with it. In his mind, it was just he knew that that was not going to happen. So it was just, you know, get lost kind of thing. I mean, they could have just as well said, you know, go. Right, right. You're almost kind of do right.

And that is basically what happens when you try to approach your son or daughter or a loved one or a friend in Scientology. They just say you need to get yourself handled. I can't talk to you. OK, so, Phyllis, get into your story. You got you got into Scientology in nineteen sixty nine and you met your wife Willie at the Toronto Church of Scientology, right.

I lived in a small town outside of Toronto. I was in high school and there were a couple of Scientologists who came to our small town to a Narconon lecture. The timing on that was so. It was amazing that I actually ended up going to that seminar, we were coming out of the hockey rink with some friends watching a hockey game, and one of my friends saw this notice on the bulletin board outside and it was freezing cold. I just wanted to go home and it was about this lecture.

And he said, oh, let's go to it. And we talked us all into it. We went there was the next night and they were talking stuff that I just didn't understand in the lecture. But afterward they had food. I was in high school, teenage kids food. OK, I'll stay. And so they kind of talked me into Scientology at the time. Something they said. Clicked and I ended up getting in and then do you remember what it was?

You know, it goes back a little farther. That for me, my dad, when I was probably six years old, maybe seven or maybe even younger, he ended up getting into a cult, a Hindu cult. So there was kind of this thing throughout my life, I was kind of always it was kind of an empty spot that I was trying to fill with looking for different sort of spiritual things. And I kept reading books and they weren't fitting.

So when I when I talk to these psychologists, one guy said something about the bridge and step by step by step and OK, well, that's what I need to step by step, because none of these books were really showing me how I can get any advance. But somehow I believe these guys and I ended up getting in. And once you start and you start doing teachers training routines and all those drills and stuff, very hypnotic. And it's very it's like sort of a sneaky thing where you, you know, before you know it, you're in.

Right. Right. So that's kind of how I ended up getting started in it. And and then a few years later, I had joined staff in Toronto and really who my wife, who was from Winnipeg, was down in Toronto. She had come down and she had joined staff as well. So we met we got together and been together ever since. And then you raise your kid, you move to Clearwater. Well, initially we moved out west from Toronto, we moved to Calgary for two and a half years.

Now, we we've done this a few times over over our lives where we kind of move away from Scientology. We were in Calgary for almost three years. We never touch Scientology. When we were there, there was an org out there, never went there, never before us. And we kind of always kept getting pulled back in by my sister, who was also a Scientologist. OK, we went back to Toronto then and then in in the and then during that time in the eighties, we met it.

We ended up applying for getting a green card to move to the States. So we moved to Clearwater. My wife and I, we had three kids at the time. So we all know it's Clearwater and and lived there for about twenty five years. And and since we were away from my sister, who was always the push for us being on the bridge when we were in Toronto, that 10 years in the eighties is when I get off four.

And really anyway, we move to Clara, what do we still had it in our heads that we were Scientologists, but in that entire time we hardly did anything at all, never did anything at Flag. I had some auditing paid for at Saint Hill and in the UK from back in the eighties. So we flew over partly for the vacation of it. I got a little bit of auditing over there and then we went back to Clearwater again. There's no bridge at all, but all our kids ended up going in the Scientology schools, the true school that's turned into a Delfi.

So they grew up in Scientology schools, in the Scientology environment. All our friends were Scientologists. All right. Of course it was. Kind of a breeding ground for for Scientologists a little bit, having our kids grow up in it, but, well, actually didn't do much in Scientology, but you weren't.

But you weren't anti Scientology were still you know, you guys are in our heads.

We considered we were Scientologists, of course, and that was that. We just weren't really active in it. Right. Right, right.

I just want to make a comment, Phil, because you bring up something really interesting about the Delfi schools and these Scientology Scientology schools or Scientologist owned or Scientology oriented schools.

They absolutely are recruiting ground for the sea organization.

In fact, inside the United States these days, they are virtually the only source of recruits for the sea organization.

They are they are raising children to become. Full time Scientologists, and though they dispute that and Scientology says over and over all know they've got nothing. They're secular. They don't have anything to do with this. The truth of the matter is Scientology, Sea Org recruiters go to these schools and recruit those kids when they're 14, 15, 16 to join the sea organization. And it is their most successful avenue of getting anybody out of them that they only really get people from from Eastern Europe and South America with the promise of a job, a roof and food, if they will come to the United States and join the Sea Org.

That's exactly right. Our daughter at 14 wanted to go on the Sea Org, and she was still in school. We refused. We actually thought having the kids in the Sea Org the whole way when our daughter was 16, we were told I mean, we have a lot of lives that Scientology gives you about what you know. Oh, yeah. You'll see them every day and finish their education and all that. Emily went in at flag and then we have two sons.

Our oldest son was a musician. He plays guitar and he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a music career. But out there, I mean, he still was a Scientologist and he was ruthlessly chased by recruiters. And he would call me up every month or so and say, well, Orange County or wants me to join staff. And I would talk and then he go all the valley or we don't have. I said no. And then finally one day he got the celebrity center and they promised him he could do music.

And so we end up joining the Sea Org and going and joining a celebrity center in Los Angeles. Our other son and I had I mean, have you been at least four or five times? I have talked him out of joining staff elsewhere. The day that our oldest son joined staff at Celebrity Center, our youngest son was there, also sitting at the recruiter's desk. Called me up and said, you know, I'm not sure I said, get on a bus, go to the airport, I'll have a ticket waiting for you to come home.

So he was the only one who didn't end up joining the Seahawk and that we managed to keep out of it. And because of that, we have five grandkids.

Oh, yeah, we're happy. Yeah, I know that makes you emotional. Is it because of that? Well, I don't want to I don't want to guess.

But why why is this making you emotional.

You know. Dismissing the other two, yes. I understand this is the part that. That people don't really get these are your children and this is a church. That is separating and destroying families. And the effects that it has is just. I just think this is the part that's people who are in cults get it, people who have been shunned get it, people who shunned, others get it and who have seen the light. I get it, but it's it's it's still your children are still your children.

But Scientology doesn't believe in this. They don't believe that these are your children. I mean, how how can you explain it best for you?

I mean, they just kind of. We're all well at that base.

I mean, it's it's the fundamental principle of Scientology that the Earth, Faten, spiritual being, not a body, that your body comes and goes, that your parents and siblings and whatever, a sort of happenstance and next lifetime you'll have different ones. So it's kind of what's the big deal?

Right. And I've even seen letters from parents saying, you know, I have to disconnect from you. Hopefully I'll see you next lifetime. Love, Mom. Like, it's literally like that, right?

Yeah. And and you're taught that these these feelings or emotions are inappropriate and not important in the overall scheme of things to the well being of Scientology and thus the well-being of planet Earth and in the sea.

You're right that it becomes a distraction. Your family is a distraction from the work that you're doing for Scientology. And that's why the kids, during all that time they were in this yard, even before they were disconnected, we barely saw them. If we didn't fly from Florida to L.A. to see our kids, they never would come visit us the odd time our daughter would be in and in Clearwater for some reason, whatever. But then we might see her for 20 minutes.

But they would never come to visit. They just weren't allowed to go.

No, because it's not important to say like it to say to somebody, you're senior in this, you or I need to go see my dad and mom for the holidays. I'd be like, are you out of your fucking mind? You're on post. That's what they say. Get your shit on like you're on post. Don't be an idiot.

It's actually. Yeah, it's not even it's not even that your senior tells you that you're not allowed to. They may do. But the truth of the matter is a good Sea Org member views life that way. It's not that someone tells them that they're not allowed to. They will never ask because they know that that's wrong. Leah, do you know when my my mother had a car accident and killed my father, literally two oh, by the way, killed my father and called me up from the hospital in Australia.

I didn't go. I stayed on post, it was more important to be on post than to go help go attend the funeral of my father and help my mother, who was severely injured herself in hospital and being investigated for manslaughter.

And I I'll go, and what was your thought, Mike, you were like, what were you thinking? What like that'll be taken care of? It's not really like in the overall scheme of things, this is not that important. Like, I'll get over it. You know, it's just a body like all of the considerations. And I didn't ask for time and someone said, no, you can't go. Yeah, I just never it never crossed my mind that that's what I would do.

And that is the mindset that is that people find very, very difficult to comprehend, that this is how people who are in the Sea Org in particular see the world, and it's why it's so difficult to even get their attention. It's why I can show up at the Fort Harrison and my son refuses to even come to the door to see me or the same thing with Phil and Willy and their children. I mean, we haven't even gotten to the disconnection stories yet, but it's pretty obvious that two of his children refused to talk to his to their parents.

And it's not even that someone is stopping them. They are stopping themselves. And that's what makes it so hard to deal with.

Right. That's a great point, Mike. It's a great point.

OK, so in 2009, you and Willie were living in Florida right at this aget, I find this so it's so easy because here you are, a dedicated Scientologist, but somewhere in you feel you're like, I don't want my kids to join the Sea Org, even though at this time you are believing in Scientology.

You're not you're not not you're not doing Scientology, but you're still considering yourself a Scientologist. You're sending your kids to school, to Scientology school, all your business, the Scientologists, all your friends are Scientologists. So you're still a Scientologist.

But and so here it is in 2009, you're in Florida and you happen to go to a 7-Eleven where you see the same stuff to the same one.

Mike probably knows that it's on North Keene there in Palm Harbor. And I stopped in there once in a while for a coffee on the way home. And just inside the door there was the newspaper rack and big headlines, a Scientology headline. And Willie and I've been kind of drifting off a little bit anyway. We were still in it in our heads, but we were kind of like not we didn't want to really do anything anymore on it. I, I desperately wanted to read that newspaper, but I looked around the store and there were a couple other people there.

I thought, you know, if there's a Scientologist in here, they're going to write me up, send a note to flag and I'll be in deep trouble with Scientology. So I got my coffee, I went straight home and I got on the Internet to find the article online. And I came across the truth rundown, which was done by the St. Pete Times. And I just spent two days going through, looking at reading stuff, going through the videos.

And I, I was just floored. I and what I, I mean, I was kind of getting more and more out of my head when I came across that Jason Beghe video where he says, show me a motherfucking clear that clicked for me. I go, you know what? That's why I got in. When I first read in Dianetics, I read the original book I read was Dianetics Evolution Science. But he talks about what a clear is and.

That's what got me in the eye. Now, that's that's a that's a major point on the Scientology bridge, everyone. That's like a that's like a milestone moment, like where you reach like the first kind of like what? How would you explain the clear, Mike? Like it is the first like I don't know. I guess it's the first major accomplishment in Scientology, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, well, it was it was Hubbard's original accomplishment to be attained by everyone with which was to remove the reactive mind and the effects of their reactive mind in this magnificent state of Cleare was where you would have no unwanted emotions, no unwanted psychosomatic illnesses, no nothing. Basically, you'd just be like the perfect, perfect person. But I think so.

Well, the parts that got to me mostly were the two things. One is that that hurt her. The book, a clear, would have a perfect memory, right. And perfect eyesight. Now, I was a teenager and I was in high school wearing glasses. I thought, this is terrible. And, you know, I didn't want to wear glasses anymore. So that was a huge thing for me right there. And then the perfect memory and then, you know, teenager difficulty talking to girls.

So, you know, I thought, well, all the rest of it's going to be good. So but all of those abilities that he described in the book for a clear I had never seen anyone have any of that ever in the 40 years that I was in Scientology. And why you go that long and you sort of go because it's all sort of the next thing. Oh, the narrator will handle.

But that's what I was going to say. Like, unclear what to write. Well, lately it's not. Right. Right, right. Right.

So so when Jason Week said that I go, you know what? I have never seen any of that that I read in the book that got me in in the first place. Right. And so right there, it was like a switch. And I was done with Scientology. And so I had to get Willie to do the same. So I kind of fed it to a little more slowly. But so it took a few months for her. But finally there was a point where she was just done with it as well.

And we were all out in our heads, which meant that we no longer considered ourselves Scientologists. We no longer believed any of the. Well, you color philosophy or whatever, but we never we knew that it was all a lie. But the problem was we had family, friends, business, all our lives were intertwined with Scientology completely, and so we knew we couldn't say anything we had to do was called under the radar, which means we sort of played along.

We just like, oh, yeah, we're still in. And we would still go to, you know, events sometimes not very often events, but you go and hang out with friends. Business contacts were all really was working for a Scientologist. I was I had some local contracts I was doing. So we kept it under wraps for several years. Yeah. But during that time, I guess a year or so later around that time, there was a lot of pressure through Facebook for people having certain friends, anybody who'd sort of left Scientology, if you had them on your friends list, they'd go, you got to, you know, take them off your friends list.

You. Oh, I know.

I was getting called by Celebrity Center going, hey, you know, you're you're connected to this person on Facebook. I was like, I don't know. The last time I was on Facebook, I don't even know how to log in. But what what do you like? They were literally employees of Scientology. You were literally scouring people's Facebook pages and seeing if you were connected to anybody who was no longer in good standing with Scientology. Right. So they were.

So your sister was that was the person who was tracking my Facebook friends list was my sister. She's eight. And she's also worked for the DSA also office for years, years. And if she was one of the original people in the original anti Scientology group, I can't remember the name of it. It was like a forum years ago and she would go into Scientology. Yes, that's the one. That's the one. Yeah. She was one of the original trolls on that.

And she's she's done all sorts of stuff for against protesters. Anyway, she'd been tracking my Facebook friends list and every once in a while she said, you need to take this person off. And I didn't want to. We were under the radar. I didn't want to argue it. And so I would just remove people once in a while. And then after a while, it just got tiring. And she said, well, you need to take this person off.

I said, I told my sister. I said, look what? You can't tell me who I can be friends with these people. We've known them for twenty years. It's a family we've known for that long. And just because they got out doesn't matter. And I said, aside from that, I have I've talked to maybe once in the last five, ten years, she wouldn't leave it. So anyway, so one day we got a phone call that she had flown down from Canada to Clearwater.

I wanted to get together and it was like, oh, well, you know, she was there for something else, but really and I suspected that she was there to kind of chase us down and find out what we're doing and whatnot. So anyway, we had moved and I hadn't given anyone our new address because we didn't want Scientology to keep knocking on our door. Anyway, it went on for a week. My sister was sort of chasing after us.

And so finally I said, well, I said, look, let's just go have a coffee with her, meet in a coffee shop. If it if it turns out like it's not going to be just social family. I said I didn't want to be that guy. Oh, not getting together with family. Right. Right. And so anyway, so we we drove up to Clearwater and met at the Starbucks downtown Clearwater. Anyway, we sat down with my sister and started off just oh, how's your son?

How is it that a family in this and that didn't take long where she got into it? What about this person on your face? What about this and what are you doing? And then I said, no, let's let's keep this social. And I tried to steer it away. I did. I managed to do that about two or three times and then she just wouldn't let it go. So I said, look, if you want to discuss this, let's go outside.

I don't want to do this in the coffee shop. So. Oh, actually, before that, when we walked in the coffee shop, there was some of our friends, Scientologists, and these are like some 088. There was a group of five people there that when we walked in, I go, this is Friday morning, and I go, why are they here? They're supposed to be all at work. And I went up to them and I said hello to them.

I gave them a hug and said I looked over at my sister to introduce them. And my sister had a look of shock on her face. And I realized later this was her backup. These people were her backup in case the thing went south, that she had some support. So.

And what was she trying to get you to? What was she trying to get you to do to go into flag to get handled? Oh, OK.

So they knew that at this point you were what was Scientologists call disaffected where you write that we were possibly drifting off of and that they wanted us to go in and see the ethics officer? OK, so anyway, when when we were walking outside, they had walked outside the coffee shop and they were standing outside in the street and they had this sort of really nervous look on their faces as we walked by and I said hi. And it's just seem weird to me.

Anyway, it didn't dawn on me till later that they were her backup. So we were walking down the street. My sister was ahead of us. And we got down towards the corner and I said, well, I said, this is not going to go well, let's just go home. So I said to my sister, I said, we're just going to go. And we turned around, walked back to the car. My sister started laying into us and said, look, you've got to get into, like, now or you'll lose your kids everything.

And I said, what do you what if you go in there, you report us and we and that happened.

She kept saying, you're going to lose your family, you can lose your family or they know it's OK. Anyway, we left, she must have gone straight to flag because overnight. Everyone disconnected, so they must have been calling people. By the next day, I know, I'm sorry, no, don't please don't apologize, Psychologize.

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OK, so we're supposed to be sticking to the script, but we ain't because this is not what we do is figure out the Daniel and it's A.J. Hey. And we're given a whole bunch of good, bad advice and a lot of bad reading, trying to teach you how to say when, how and how much. Yes. Now, that doesn't always have to apply to your sex life, lady. It can absolutely apply to your career unless your sex life is your career.

And in this danger, Wolf, we're talking about a whole lot of sex. I love the say and a then love the money in relationship if we're going to work on it.

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Look, Phil, this I understand how difficult it is to bring these things up again and and Leon and I always feel a little bad about sort of putting people in the position of having to relive these horrendously painful experiences and watching you go through it is not a wonderful thing. On the other hand, it it is how people understand. Just how perniciously evil the activities of Scientology are when they see the personal devastating impact that their actions have on the lives of good people, and it happens over and over and over.

And I know that you didn't just say it, but how bizarre is it that your sister, your sister is saying to you you're going to lose your family and she's the one that actually takes the act that causes that to happen by going back to Oza and telling them he's not cooperating?

She could have bullshitted she could have gone and told them nothing. She could have done nothing but no responsibility, because that's what Scientologists do. That's how Scientologists view the world. This is I'm doing the right thing.

And it wasn't just her telling Oza. They must have literally been on the phones from that point on because everyone we knew disconnected business. I went to see a friend of mine who owns a Scientology business, Scientology Scientologist owns a business because I had done work for him before and I was looking to get more work from him and. He must have heard I went in to talk to him and he said and first thing he said to me says, if you're not in good standing with Scientology, you can't do work for me.

And that was it, end of end of that, you know, so. And this is this is, again, the actions of an organization calling itself a church, right?

Yeah, I got pro family church, right, exactly where the grass, the great proponents of family and how wonderful, how important family is.

Oh my God, we love families.

Right. Right. And it's just it's it's so which is why I get so enraged over it. I mean, you know, I. You guys heard about the anyway, and I'm not going to go into that, but yes, OK, so so you get disconnected from from everybody in your life basically overnight, business associates, friends, family, just that's it.

They just stop talking to you.

Yeah. So at that point, I had a friend in Vegas who used to be in Florida, not a Scientologist, ever been a Scientologist. And so I had contacted him and he had some work. So we moved to Vegas, partly because we had two of our kids in the Sea Org.

And I thought, well, we can at least be close enough to try to contact them right in L.A. because they were in the Sea Org in L.A., they were in the Sea Org in L.A., both of them.

Our daughter was at Assai author services for a long time. She had worked actually on David Miscavige staff. And then she ended up in author services, which is the fiction book section of Scientology, and our son was still at celebrity centers, but both of them in L.A. So, you know, it was only four or four and a half hour drive from Vegas. So we we could, you know, go there regularly and try to see them. During that time we were in Vegas, we were contacted by the, you know, this TV show who they were doing this documentary, and they wanted to just follow us and and film us while we were making our attempts to contact the kids.

Now, what were your attempts to see the kids in L.A.? Well, at that point, it wasn't that much. We had gone to a celebrity center and I mean, like you were saying earlier, knocking on their doors. And they wouldn't even let us on the property. They wouldn't let us call them if I had called so many times. Sometimes we would park near a celebrity center across the street in the supermarket parking lot, and then they'd have their security people coming around and taking pictures of our license plate and stuff like that.

So we just weren't getting anywhere by doing that. So it would give me.

But just so our listeners know, you can call Celebrity Center and say hi, I'd like to speak to such and such. They say hold. You know who's calling? You say who it is, they'd say, hold on. And then they would make contact. I mean, what would happen?

No, they would either say he's not available or they put you on hold and leave you on hold forever because they knew because they knew your name is your name on some kind of list or.

I don't know where they.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Leah. Yeah, Bill. Even I even tried calling under fake names from different phone numbers.

But that might explain how this how it happens because we don't know, because we're not you know, we weren't OZO or Sea Org member. So what would happen, Mike?

Well, first of all, any phone call, if you have a source of trouble like Phil and Willy and their children in the sea organization Emilian Mike, and they are known for attempting to contact their children. Unreal.

I mean, how dare they?

Yeah, they go ahead to the receptionist at Celebrity Center and the receptionist at Office Services is instructed that calls from Phil and Willy that come in to be put on hold and left on hold, or they had to be put on hold and come back like three minutes later if they're still there and say, sorry, the person is unavailable.

And that if anybody at all calls for either Emily or Mike is not a known person that is not identifiable by their voice and who they are, where they're calling from, that those calls are not to be put through under any circumstance. It doesn't matter who it is, send it to voicemail. They can leave a voicemail message and then we'll get back to them.

OK, so you are making those attempts, right?

And we weren't getting anywhere, so I thought, let's take it a step up. And so one day I put together a missing persons poster for our on our son missing last time. We hadn't seen him for some years. And in our minds, I thought, you know what, he's missing. We have no idea whether he's even alive. They wouldn't tell us Scientology, even if he had been an accident, if they would not let us know.

Right. So we printed up a whole bunch of these posters and we went out. We drove to L.A. and we went around Celebrity Center and we talked to people. And in the shops, the restaurants across the street, we posted the our missing person posters on the on the street posts celebrity center had. There are people out there shortly after us, right after actually taking them down. But, you know, and we had the film crew with us at the time.

They were following us around and filming it. But anyway, we did that. And, you know, that was I think that was one of our first main attempts. And then after that, a little while later, we went to do a to the LAPD to have a welfare check done on our son, the Hollywood division there. Yeah, Celebrity Center.

And we went in there and talked to one of the officers at the desk. And here's an interesting point. When when we talked to him somehow in the conversation that came up about who else to talk to, and they were like a Family Services Adult Family Services thing that was mentioned in this conversation. It's something we never pursued. But later, Scientology put on there. They have a hate web page up on Willie and I. They had put it on there that we had gone to this.

So they must have gotten the information from. The LAPD somehow and and thought we did go and do that, even though we didn't. That's a shock. Anyway, they did send two officers out to Celebrity Center and said, just go over there and meet them. So we went back to those. It's going to be a tough one. They went back. They are. We went back. We met them. There are two officers and they went in to talk to the security guys.

And they came back about 10 minutes later and said, OK, we talk to your son is OK.

So. Anyway, I said, that's not good enough, you have to see it right? So anyway, so they went back, they talked, they were there for an easy 20 minutes talking, and they and they finally came back and said, OK, they gave us an address where he said it. It's not on.

Can I interrupt you for a minute? So you went to the Hollywood Police Department, the LAPD Hollywood division. You said, I'd like you to do a welfare check on my son. They go there they go. He's fine.

You're like, wait, but you actually have to see him. So they didn't even so they went there and talked to their buddies over there who are in the security of Scientology security guards.

Right. And I think that they do have a lot of allies there. But I have to say that these two officers, they did go a step beyond well, I nelsonville after you had to tell them, can you actually go please?

See my son, don't take their word for it. But anyway, go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, well, they got an address from the Scientology security guys and they said, well, wait here. So we waited on the sidewalk near Celebrity Center and they went off. I got a phone call about 20 minutes later and they were the one officer. He was a little irritated because Scientology had given them a fake address. So they didn't know what to do, they were going to go back to the station and anyway, the guy was the officer was really nice and he started asking me questions about our son, Mike, and his wife and her family name and her her.

Anyway, I said to her parent, I gave a parent's name. Somehow they were able to track down our son's wife's father, who happened to be in the hospital. How he did that, I don't know. But anyway, so they and he said so we tracked down where you were going to go over there and see if he knows where our son Mike is. So they went there and our son Mike was there apparently surrounded by Scientology security.

So they either while we were there, sent him out there with security or security, went there in the meantime, knowing that we were looking for him. So the officer gave him the phone. His phone and said, talk to your dad. That's amazing. It is so, yes, I got this call and it was our son, Mike and I first time at hearing it here, I heard his voice in a few years. I was so excited and I said, Mike, you know, look, let's you know, let's just sit down and talk.

Let's get together. And he just said. I never want to talk to you again. And I know that's conditioning, but it was it was the toughest thing, I was just devastated. So anyway, after that call, I was ready to give up. I said, well, I I'm done. And we started walking back to the car, and as we were walking past the main door of the celebrity center, I looked over and there was one security guy who was actually the whole time he was one of the main guys that was there.

And he was a bit of a prick and he was laughing at us. And I just got really mad and I said, you're laughing with families break getting broken up by Scientology, I said, and no matter what I said, he just kept laughing. I just got more and more angry. And I said, look, we're going to be back. And I said, we're going to be back bigger. I said, we're going to be back bigger.

And so we left. And at the time I had no idea what to do. But we came up with the idea after that about doing the billboards. Well, hang on before we get to that. So at least you knew that your son was alive and he was at least when he was alive. And I heard exactly. And, you know, I and I do want to say this just just to tell everybody that I am a fan of the brave war.

I mean, I am a supporter of the police. I do not want to give anybody the idea that I'm antipolice. I am not Scientology is, but I am not. I am pro police. And I, I they put their lives on the line for us every day and I couldn't imagine what they have to put up with and risking their lives for people they don't know. I consider them brave men and women.

Yeah, I should I knew there was one other thing, but the security guys we knew one of them from I'd known his mother from back in Toronto days. I'd rented a room from her back in nineteen seventy three and I knew his sister who is out and she lives in, in British Columbia. In Canada. And I asked this because this young guy that we knew, his family, his mother. And because his mother had talked to his the daughter for like twenty seven years or something because disconnection.

So I asked I asked this young guy whose name I said, how's your sister? So I don't have a sister. Wow, man, that was pretty heavy and I and I just kept on said, have your mom call your sister, have your mom call your sister. So anyway, one of the one other point that when we were standing there after the police had come back and they were briefing us. We were standing on the sidewalk and that security guy, the guy had he had come up right behind me to hear what we were saying, and finally the officer looked at him and told him to back off.

But he was trying to hear everything we were saying. Right. He had no backup on that. But anyway, so I know I had to push those two officers a little bit, but really, they did go out of their way in the end. I know that that the the LAPD in the Hollywood division, they they I mean, they leaked the information on the family services conversation we had, obviously, anyway. So after that, we we started doing the billboards and we I had a friend never been.

And he is a graphic artist and he did the design for us. He came up with the message to my loved one in Scientology, call me a brilliant message and the design of the billboard and hit all the faces on there of a whole bunch of people that had suffered from disconnection. The only real change that I'd had to make was to blur them. So we didn't have to go to each one of them to get permission to have their faces up their butt.

And then we contacted a media company in L.A..

And signed a contract to put the billboard up near the Scientology complex, the big blue buildings, the one down fountain and sunset, I remember.

Yeah, I was down that area. I can't remember which corner it was on. But anyway, we had a contract signed. We paid them a deposit and everything, and the artwork was done, printed everything was ready to go. And then day before we got a call or cancel your contract. So why was that gotten to them and pressured them to to I guess they I don't know what they threaten them with or coerce them, but they just would not budge.

They were not. What company was that? That was out front media when we started with. Right. So then we went to I guess they're not so out front are they. Go ahead.

They were very out front about it. And then we went to a company called Regency and same thing. We gave them a deposit. We had the it was all printed. This billboard was on Hollywood Boulevard like a half a block from author services where our daughter worked.

And that's that's off of Lybrel, right, Mike and Hollywood Boulevard? Yeah. Basically, just a little bit down. It's actually orange. I think it's orange and and Hollywood and Hollywood Boulevard. Yeah, right.

That court I mean, you could you could stand in front of a billboard and you could see author services just half a block away behind all the services. David Miscavige has a residence. I don't know how much he lived there, but that was his residence. So, yeah, it was ready to go.

Mike, is that really is that where he lives? David Miscavige right there at Asai? Well, it was you know, I don't know where he lives now. He may he moves around a lot because he's so scared of being served with the legal process. So he's probably got a bunch of safe houses that he hangs out and now, OK.

I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, and it could happen here, and boy, it does seem to be happening here. I'm going to guess most of the people listening to this are deeply concerned with what they saw happen in Washington, D.C. on January 6th. And I'm here to tell you, it was a fascist insurrection, an attempt by fascists to take over our democracy. And it didn't happen in a historical vacuum. There have been numerous attempts, many of them successful by fascist movements, to take over democracies over the last century in order to protect yourself, in order to protect your family and your very freedom, you need to understand this history and the history of the different antifascist movements that have fought, sometimes successfully, often unsuccessfully, to stop the same things from happening in their own countries.

The knowledge of this history is important, and it's maybe the only thing that can save us. So if you were as concerned as I am, listened to behind the insurrections on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, Lancaster, South Carolina is in the middle of not much like growing up nearby.

I knew it as the hometown of a black man named Jim Duncan, who became a Super Bowl hero. The birth. Now, my new podcast, Return Man.

I'll discover that his death still makes no sense at all.

The story was that my brother went into the police station, took a gun off a police officer and shot himself in the head. Most people don't believe that. For the past three years at the Rockville Herald, I've looked back at a story that's timelier than ever, breaking down.

So have you got some time to talk about race, the mental state of the person and a child that was scared to death to say. Listen to return man on the I Heart radio at Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. If you took away the date and time, could you imagine that happening today? Yes, you can. Anyway, same thing happened day before I got a phone call sorry, contract canceled. They gave us our deposit back and and that was it.

So then we went to a company called Lahmar. Unreal.

So so so far to two huge. Yeah.

And Ryvita companies are refusing to do business with one of the girls that worked there who I had originally talked to there. She said that apparently Scientology had, in addition to, I guess, threatening them and offered to buy up all of their billboard space, which would be millions of dollars in the entire area. And this is expensive billboard space. These are like four or five thousand dollars a month billboards and more. And they have a lot of billboards in that area.

So.

Well, don't you know that the IRS granted Scientology tax exemption so they have millions of dollars to buy up billboards with because that is the purpose of having a tax exemption. Is it true?

That's true, yeah.

Anyway, Lamar Lamar was really good. I told him right off the bat what had happened with the other two. And he said, look, we'll stand by the right.

And what's the name of that company? Lamar L. Lamar. Yeah. And they were really good. The guy actually who I dealt with, he was actually excited about it. He said, this is my first billboard that I can get my, you know, most of its advertising. He says this is a cause. And I really like you know, he was really nice. The guy's awesome. Yeah. And so we set up there was a billboard on I think was on Glendale, right near Dodger Stadium.

Lots of traffic. I think I looked it up as to how many how much traffic, like a million people a week or something go by there. Right. So we had the billboard set up to go and we kind of announced it a little bit that we were going to do a gathering there, a little announcement. And so we invited a few people by and we got there and there was a ton of press. I'm not even sure how they all knew it, but there was half a dozen or a dozen cameras.

There was Inside Edition. There was The Today Show who filmed us there. And then we did a whole what they call, I guess, those scrum. They call those things where people were firing questions at us and we were answering questions. And any way that went on for half an hour, an hour with the press. And then we went over to Good Morning America studios and they interviewed us there. And anyway, during the time we had the billboard up, we got calls regularly, I mean, we were interviewed the did a thing and even in Spanish in South America, we did live Australian Morning Show where they set up a studio in Vegas that we went to.

And they they interviewed us live by satellite for the Australian show. There were newspapers, I think, daily with that tabloid in the UK, The Daily Mirror. The Daily Mail. Daily Mirror.

Mirror. Right. Oh, OK. Anyway, just international press everywhere, like some foreign press. I mean, we were getting press all over the world for for a billboard, of all things. And the billboard.

I just want to be clear. So the billboard just was a general thing that you are hoping that Sea Org members and disconnected families would see and just they would there wasn't a number to call. It was just a message to them to call your family.

Right. It just said, yeah. So it wasn't to my loved one in Scientology. Call me, because at first the whole thing we were doing was so that we could contact the kids. But as we went along, we kept coming across all these people who had been forced to disconnect from their families who were in Scientology. And there were so many of them. It just unbelievable to us. So it was kind of a sort of more of a cause to try to help all these families reconnect.

So we set up a website and we had the website address on the billboard as well, and a contact form on there so people could write in to us at least. And and we had some information on sort of what Scientology said about disconnection and what the actual situation was about.

Just it could be because Scientology still maintains that that's not a thing. Yeah, I know. I will say it's a disconnection practice. They say, well, we don't have a disconnection policy, but I say I always call it a practice because they practice disconnection. I don't care whether they have a policy on it or not.

Well, they do. They do have a policy, though. Yeah. But even if they don't, whatever they say, I just say you have a disconnection practice because there are thousands of them. Right. So anyway, so then what we did is we set up another billboard we wanted to do in Clearwater. Because a number of people who were had families disconnected had contacted us and a lot of people contributed to the billboard as well, a lot of them were disconnected.

There was a 13 year old girl who donated that she hadn't seen her sister in four years. Anyway, so we went to Clearwater, we drove out because we didn't want to fly because Scientology tracks Airline and a friend of ours who was an X and he protested recently, had a restraining order put on him so he couldn't go near it. But the thing is, we didn't want that to happen to us so that we couldn't go around flying while we were there.

So we drove. When we got there, we noticed there was a car following us. So I knew the area like the back of my hand because we'd lived there for twenty five years. So I lost these guys because we were going to meet the film crew. And so I figured, why don't the kids following us over there? So anyway, so we we did the launch for the billboard. We had a bit of a crowd there and it was a little ways from the church because there aren't really any billboards around Flag right on Fort Harrison or anywhere.

But it was mainly to get the message out in the area to you know, we had a little bit of press there less than we did in L.A., but it was out there. And the funny thing is that what after our billboard went down, Scientology immediately moved in and put one of their billboards up on the same spot. And I guess for whatever reason, they just couldn't couldn't handle it, that we had put our message on that billboard.

They wanted to get their message up there after it. So anyway, and then after that, we did another billboard in L.A., nearby there, the Scientology Media Productions building in in California and Los Angeles. And that was the after that that was the last billboard we did. And then what was their success to this billboard? I mean, it did bring a lot of awareness to disconnection and it which is amazing.

I mean, you know, one thing we did get out of it was we got a huge amount of press. Like I said, we had international press. We were on the Today show. We were on Good Morning America. We had we got the message out there of disconnection. Yeah. About disconnection and the pain it causes. Yeah. And we did have some people contact us and let us know that because of the billboard, they did have some contact from their families.

So amazing. We did. You know, we don't we didn't hear all of it because I don't know if everyone knew how to get a hold of us personally, but we did hear from some. So it did make some difference in that. But I think the thing is that it brought the awareness up of Scientology disconnection, so. You know, hopefully that made a difference, made a huge difference, like like, listen, bringing bringing attention to these and putting a face and a heart to this and how it affects families.

You're just one out of thousands of families who are crying for their sons and daughters, for their mothers and fathers. I mean, like I said at the beginning of this, Mike and I saw the footage of the disconnected seeing and I would call them kids. I'd say, I can't believe these kids. It's so horrible.

But, you know, these are grown men and women who are trying to see their their mothers and fathers. Right. But I still see them as I couldn't imagine a mother or a father turning away their son or daughter because of a belief system and that that that will lead them to nowhere.

This is a bridge that I know I don't get it. I mean, we got we got turned in because we wouldn't disconnect from friends, friends we hadn't talked to very much in a decade, but I just refused to go along with it. Family. I don't get how people can disconnect. Right. Just a little aside and hear from a more recent thing on the disconnection. We moved to Canada here just under two years ago. And when we when I first changed our phone number, my cell number to a Canadian number, literally within the first few weeks, only a few people had that number and people I knew close that wouldn't or weren't going to hand it out.

I got a call from on that number from the Toronto or that my number had been put into their computer database. How I don't know, eh, how they got the number B that they called me, not even knowing that we were declared that we were out, whatever. I had a message on my voicemail. So anyway, I didn't think much of it, but a little while later, I got a call from Saint Hill Scientology organization Saint Hill in the U.K. and I happened to have a little recorder on my desk.

So I recorded the call from this guy in the U.K., a Sea Org member in in the U.K. who wanted me to do the purification Scientology purification rundown and get up back online. So I engaged the guy in a conversation. I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to talk to the guy and not tell him I'm out or anything like that. And so we talked. I said, oh, yeah, I was out there and in the in the eighties and I was back there in the late 90s and so-and-so still there and done it anyway.

And then towards the end of the conversation I brought up disconnection and I mentioned that I said, look, there are thousands of families and that Scientology is forced to disconnect. And this Sea Org member, Scientology Sea Org member said to me that they're considered collateral damage in Scientology's quest to clear the planet collateral damage. And I said, that's say, you kidding me? You consider them collateral damage. Families broken up. He said, yes, they're collateral damage in our quest to clear the planet.

So that's the viewpoint of Scientologists that are in Scientology about the families. They don't care, like Mike was saying before, they don't really care about the families, but they just consider it collateral damage in their their and their view on clearing the planet as it's more important than anything else at all. It's above the law. It's above families. It's above anything they will do. They will stomp on anything in order to pursue their goals. Exactly, yes, and what does it mean to clear the planet, if somebody could say that in layman's terms?

Because we see when we still get asked that, what is the Scientology's mission to clear the planet? What does that mean, Mike?

It means basically to get everybody to become a Scientologist and practice and go through the auditing the Hubbard laid out in order to remove your reactive mind.

Well, I usually say I just usually the simple answer I give is clearing a planet means making 80 percent of the world's a Scientologist would accomplish their goal. That would yes. Yeah, 80 percent. There are a little ways away from that little bit, imagine how bad that would be. Just imagine how bad that would be. If you look at any of these Scientology organizations and how poorly they treat their staff, the sewer people, how poorly they treat them, how ineffective their management technology is, in spite of what they say, the whole world would be a mess.

It would be people would be just under this horrible control all the time. It would be a horrible thing. And they think it be good. But you just look at what they've got in their organizations right now, and it would not be a pretty picture to have a clear plan.

Well, they're not going to ever achieve that, but they're going to keep selling that. They're going to keep destroying people's lives. They're going to keep taking people's money.

They're going to keep selling selling people that without Scientology, the world's will. Just what I mean, what might the world is what without Scientology? It's. In their mind, the world is is doomed, doomed? Yes, like literally doomed to an eternity of blackness.

That's true. That's exactly what that's exactly what they think.

Listen, I just want to end this off with something that I know and feel probably isn't willing to to go into this himself. But it speaks to your integrity and your wife's integrity that I know that in the end, Scientology used the one thing against you or tried to use the one thing against you to to coerce you into stopping what you were doing with the billboards and the media.

They had Emily call you, right? They did.

And we were. That was when we were on our way to Clearwater. We were in a hotel and the phone rang and it was Emily. And again, we hadn't heard from her in a few years. And we could kind of tell from the way she was talking, pausing that there were people in the room coaching her. But basically she said that she wanted us to drop the TV show, stop to not do the billboard and stop criticizing Scientology.

And I told her I said I'll and and that that in exchange for that, you would be able to communicate with your children.

Right. She said if you want a relationship with your kids, you have to do those three things. And I said, I'm willing to do all three of those things. I said, I'll right away, I'll do immediately all three of those things. I said, all I ask is you do one thing for me, and that is end the disconnection practice for all the thousands of families that have put Scientology is forced to disconnect. I had to do it that way for a couple of reasons.

One is we'd had so much support, partly for the for the billboard. People chipped in. The support was unbelievable. And for me to kind of go, oh, well, as long as we get our kids back, who cares about everyone? I wouldn't be able to face myself. And the other thing is, you can't trust Scientology. If I dropped all those things and said, OK, great, now it can have a relationship with the kids, they go, oh, yeah, but first you have to do this and then you have to pay for this auditing and you have to tell us every person you spoke to about everything, about anything.

And and I mean, it would just it would never I would never end.

Right. It was never it wasn't it wasn't going to be true. Yes.

No, Scientology would never honor their end of the bargain at all, period. So so I had I mean, I anyway, the conversation started to get a little more escalated. You know, she was sort to say, no, this is between just us. And I said it's not really it's it's it's you know, there's a lot of people out there that, you know, anyway, as it escalated a bit kind of midway when she was talking, her phone got cut off.

And I'm pretty sure that because it wasn't going anywhere, somebody just hung it up for her. So and that was the end of that. Call me. Anyway, the next morning we proceeded on to Clearwater.

But and that was the last time you heard from your daughter and you haven't heard from. I should have I shouldn't even say this. I do have like an inside line that I do get a little bit of information on the kids, very, very sparse. But at least we know the kids are alive and and where they are and stuff like that. But I'm sure that someone now is going to be scrambling to find out who at NASA is feeding us information.

But anyway, they've got they've got real problems with that film because there are people all over the place that do that. Yeah, all over the place.

And they they are trying to plug leaks everywhere and they are very unsuccessful at doing so.

And I just want to reiterate that I have enormous respect for you and will as you did, and that you stood firm and you could have taken the easy way of going, OK, I get to talk to Emily and Mike and whatever all the lie, they this they do that. But that's what I set out to do, was to accomplish that.

And you didn't. And there are there are a lot of people who've made deals with the devils, with signed deals with the devil, with Scientology.

And I don't appreciate them.

And I just want to recognize you because I appreciate enormously the fact that you did not appreciate that my life, both you and your wife are all that you have done.

Yes. You guys to I mean, you guys are really I I admire everything you guys have done and everything you're doing and and anything any time you guys need. If there's anything I can do to help you, let me know and I'll be there.

Thank you. Film and the same goes to you and your wife from us. For sure. Thank you for everything that you've done and, you know, for those of you out there who are disconnected from your or shunning your. Your family members, I just hope you hear one father's pain and pick up the phone. Life is too short, there is no belief system that should keep you from. Loving the people that you should be loving and being connected to the people that you should be connected to.

I'm not talking about toxic, horrible people and acting up.

I mean, I'm not talking about that, talking about families who are relatively sane. And, you know, you're abiding by a system that you believe will get you something in the spiritual world you have to think about today. And you're not talking to or shunning family and friends for something that is not there for you and will not be there for you should come with some judgment.

And you should think about that if you're a spiritual person in any way.

Anyway, thank you so much, Phil. And to your wife, Willie.

And I wish I could ease your pain, but you're not alone.

We're here and you've helped a lot of people and helped a lot of people. And thank you for.

Yes. Thank you, guys, and thank you for listening until next time.

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