I had become increasingly uneasy about your and Ben's apparently deepening commitment to Scientology, but the serious shortcomings in your educations were my only concrete complaint. In fact, you were both bright, energetic, and helpful, and I was pleased to participate in your journeys toward adulthood. Our times together, though not entirely without difficulties, were very special.

I can't tell you exactly how or when, but I had somehow been made aware that my continuing to spend time with you and Ben would be impeded if I were to express doubts about, or criticism of, Scientology in the presence of either or both of you. Maybe I had become aware by then of the Scientology policy that demands a Scientologist "disconnect" from family and friends who are critical of it. I was reminded of earlier times, when your mother's hackles would rise at the merest hint of criticism.

I should explain here that doubt and criticism are very much parts of my life; they are some of the tools I use for making decisions, from purchases to politics and beyond. How I longed to explain such things to you two! But, in balance, I felt I could be a more effective force in your lives if we continued to spend time together. I decided not to rock the boat, but to maintain my role as your personal guide to life outside Scientology in the hope that you would begin, at some future time, to ask your own questions.

By this time, I had established a routine for taking extended trips to warmer places during winters. Typically, I would remain in Colorado until after your Christmas visit, then leave within a week of your departure. The earliest of those trips had been to Mexico, but I had recently dicovered, and fallen in love with, Guatemala.

What a wonderful country Guatemala is! Particularly in the highlands, it is incredibly scenic, has a very mild climate, and is home to some of the most tranquil, friendly people I have ever encountered. The textiles they weave are unique and beautiful; most serve as clothing. Costumes, usually very colorful, are different from one town to the next

From my earliest times there, I had entertained fantasies about sharing some of my favorite people and places in Guatemala with you and Ben. As 1991 slipped into history, my business was thriving, so I could easily afford the cost of such a trip. I asked each of you whether you were interested in coming to Guatemala for our winter visit.

Each of you was agreeable but not quite enthusiastic. That was good enough for me; unless I missed my guess, your enthusiasm would manifest after you arrived. I began to make the arrangements.

Talking with some of my family about our plans, I learned my brother Jim, his wife Kay, and their daughter Jennifer were interested in joining us. Of course, I encouraged them, and they made reservations to fly into Guatemala city on December 26, Ben's birthday, the same day you were to arrive there.

I bought bicycles for you and Ben, put them alongside my own on the roof of my car, and undertook the long drive. After four days on the road, I stopped in a Mexican town where I had friends and could spend a few days recuperating, relaxing, and preparing for the last leg of the journey. I arrived in Panajachel, on the shore of beautiful, volcano-rimmed Lake Atitlan in Guatemala's central highlands, a few days before Christmas.

I had arranged with a good friend, a retired Canadian who lives in Panajachel, to house-sit for him while he spent some time in Canada. His house is spacious and has the "luxuries" (like hot running water and flush toilets, for example) to which we North Americans are accustomed. I felt very lucky to have the use of it. Within a few days, I had established myself there in comfort.

I met you and Ben on the afternoon of the 26th and took you to a wonderful Argentinian restaurant in Guatemala City to celebrate his birthday. We later returned to the airport and met Jim, Kay, and Jennifer; then we drove to Panajachel.

We spent the first few days getting oriented. I took you and Ben on a bicycle tour of the town while Jim and his family went shopping for handicrafts. (Panajachel hosts many Noth American and European tourists, so handicrafts are readily available there.)

I showed you the partly-outdoor market where fresh fruits and vegetables are sold. We wandered among the vendors, buying supplies and admiring and buying some fruits you had never before seen. We each bought a coconut from the Coconut Man; he attacked each one with his machete, whacking away until he'd opened a hole in one end, into which he inserted a plastic straw before handing it to one of us. You expressed surprise that our coconuts were less mature than those marketed in the U.S. and are valued more for their liquid, with which they are full, than for their meat.

Within just a few days, you and Ben knew the town and the routines well enough to function, and you began to make friends among the local gringo children. Ben got into a basketball game with some native boys; I remember his expressions of frustration over the lack of rules under which they played.

Your mother had expressed some concerns for your safety and had asked that you remain in Ben's or my company at all times. We obeyed that rule for the first few days, then we discussed the situation and decided you were perfectly safe during daylight hours and could therfore be allowed to roam on your own, but we would certainly continue to obey the rule after dark.

After breakfast one morning, we six took a stroll around the town, admiring handicrafts and taking in the sights. We met Maria, whom I had known for several years, at the street-side stall where she sells hand-made, hand-embroidered clothing of high quality. A mother of five or six children, the youngest of whom was then about twelve, Maria is some inches shy of five feet tall. She lives in a town about an hour's drive from Panajachel. She speaks one of the approximately 26 Mayan dialects in use in Guatemala; like so many of the country's Indians, her Spanish is poor, and she knows not a word of English.

Maria was glad to see me and pleased to meet others of my family, but she was especially taken with you. Thus began a frienship that was to delight and puzzle me.

From that time on, if I needed to find you, Maria's stall was one of the first places I'd look. You would spend hours there. I'm sure Maria demonstrated some of her skills to you, and watched while you practiced them. But to this day I don't understand what you found so entertaining in her presence, particularly because the two of you had no language in common. With or without my understanding, you two quickly became buddies.

One day, all six of us took a drive part-way around Lake Atitlan to the village of San Antonio Palopo. As we got out of the car, I heard soft whistles passing from people nearby to others further away; I soon realized this was some sort of crude telegraph system. I suspect the message was, "Gringos in town! Sales opportunities!"

In fact, we had intended a sight-seeing excursion, but the locals thought we'd come to shop. As it turned out, they were right.

We soon found ourselves, all six, in the tiny adobe house of a woman who sold clothing. While the rest of us watched and took photos, she dressed you in the local costume. You were positively fetching in a long, blue, wrap-around skirt; red blouse; gold-colored glass beads; and fabric hair ornament. As I recall, we purchased the blouse.

New Year's Eve was a town-wide celebration. As is usual for such events in Latin America, fireworks are very much a part of the celebration. But I don't think I have ever seen them used as much as they were in Panajachel during our visit.

Having earlier equipped ourselves with a great number of firecrackers, we left the house after supper. For some hours, the explosions had been growing more frequent; by the time we joined in the fun, the noise was nearly continuous.

You undertook lighting and throwing firecrackers with such glee that it seemed as though a mischievous part of you had just been liberated. I well remember how you would laugh while throwing lit firecrackers under windows; then you'd holler, "Wake up!" and begin laughing again.

We walked through the town, enjoying the ruckus. You and Ben set off most of our fireworks. Near the town's center, he got into a battle with a couple of native kids in an alley; he managed to throw lit fireworks into the space between them and the entrance to the alley with such rapidity that he kept them pinned down for a while.

That night, in fact, that entire trip, epitomized one vital aspect of our time together: Your glee was the source of my own.

The next morning, the ground was so littered with firecracker remains that it looked as though it had snowed!

At Maria's invitation, we went to her home to visit her and three of her children. It took about an hour to drive to the town where she lives, Nahuala; when we arrived, there was an outdoor market and the town was bustling with people, most in the local costume. I swear they were all about the same height as Maria! A town full of miniature people! There were few, if any, gringos.

Maria received us graciously and introduced us to her children, Catarina, Julia, and Alejandro. The two women were in their late teens or early twenties; the boy was in his mid-teens. More courteous, mannerly young people I have never met.

The boy was wearing Western-style shirt and slacks, but all three women wore traditional clothing; indeed, I'm sure all three women made traditional clothing. When you expressed an interest in it, costumes began to appear. Before long, Maria's daughters were gleefully dressing a live doll: you.

So once again you were tricked out in native duds! This time, although the skirt was similar to that you'd donned in San Antonio, the blouse was of hand woven green material and was very finely embroidered, as was the multi-colored sash around your waist.

Since I had never seen green blouses worn by the women of Nahuala, I asked Maria whether it was a ceremonial garment; she said it was.

Photos taken by Kay on that wonderul afternoon prove my observation about miniature people. Of Maria and her children, only Catarina is your equal in height; you were ten at that time.

The home was primitive but functional. It was made of adobe, with a tin roof and wooden door; it appeared quite old. The cooking area was roofed over, enclosed by a fence of cut brush on two sides and one of the house's walls on a third; it was open on the fourth side. There was no running water on the property, but there was a public spigot a few feet from the gate.

Outside was what appeared to be a large oven. Made of adobe in a domed shape, it turned out to be a sweat bath. It must have been effective, because everyone in the family was clean, and Maria's skin always felt very soft.

When we said our farewells, we knew we had friends in Nahuala.

A few days later, the six of us took a boat ride across the lake, a distance of about ten miles, to the town of Santiago Atitlan. After spending a little time in the food market, we entered the church. You and I discovered an area on one wall where several dozen little paper crosses had been taped. Each bore a person's name and a date; they were clustered in three categories: killed, disappeared, and wounded.

I realized this was a memorial to local people who had suffered or died during the civil war that had devastated parts of Guatemala for over a decade, a war that was then ongoing. I had some information to share with you.

I explained the reasons for the war as I understood them, and I told you about some of its horrors, including the evening when many residents of Santiago Atitlan had marched to a nearby military base to protest outrages that had earlier been committed in the town by some soldiers. Frightened, the base commander had ordered some of his troops to fire on the villagers, killing and wounding many. Indeed, many of the paper crosses in the "killed" and "wounded" categories bore the same date.

We were the only ones in our party to have seen the little memorial, which had stopped us in our tracks. The others had moved on; we weren't to see them again for an hour or more.

When we left the church, you and I walked through the town and over a rise toward a small bay of the lake, and suddenly--it was Laundry Day!

Over the vast, grassy area that separated us from the bay were neatly laid to dry hundreds of the wildly colored garments and tapestries for which Guatemala is justly famous. Along the bayshore were many colorfully dressed local women, chattering and hand-washing their laundry. Coming and going were a number of women, many with large baskets of laundry balanced on their heads. We sat in the grass and admired that colorful, lively scene, while I took pictures.

Jim, Kay, and Jennifer stayed only two weeks. When we arrived at the airport to see them off, we were told it was too late for them to board their flight. Actually, we later decided, they probably could have boarded but for some ornery airline personnel.

We elected to remain together until the next flight. We found a restaurant where we could eat lunch and, to our surprise, it had cable television. We ate and visited while watching the Denver Broncos beat the Houston Oilers in a football play-off game!

The friend who had so graciously allowed me the use of his house was returning soon, and you and Ben had more than two weeks remaining in the country, so we needed a place to live. We set out on our bicycles to see what we could find.

Panajachel is divided by a river; on one side, the side where we'd been staying, are clustered the tourists and the businesses that cater to them. On the other side live the great majority of the town's large indigenous population. That's the side where rents are lower, and life is more tranquil there, and more interesting in many ways. It was there that we found a house to rent.

It was large, it was funky, and it smelled wonderful, because its former tenants had used one of the rooms for making the chocolate they sold for a living. It took some effort to make it work for us, but we were comfortably installed by the time my friend returned from Canada.

You and Ben had easily settled into routines for visiting, playing with friends, and running occasional errands. Your bikes were invaluable; on them, you could get to any place in town in a few minutes. I was impressed when Ben brought home a five gallon bottle of purified water on his.

We spent about a week in our new place before setting out on a trip, to the town of Nebaj. We visited my friends Catarina and Pedro, whom I had met a couple of years earlier, and we stayed in a dumpy hotel run by an extremely nice young couple who had a daughter who was about a year old. I still feel great pleasure when I look at the photos I took of you carrying her about in the native fashion, in a shawl tied to your body in such a way that she is suspended behind you. You and she look very happy.

Truth to tell, Nebaj is hardly a hot spot for entertainment. Although it was interesting to be away from the tourists, in a mountain town where the buildings are made of lumber and the smoke from morning fires pours out from beneath the houses' eaves to thicken and perfume the air, there wasn't much to do. After a couple of days, we returned to Panajachel.

As usual, our time together passed all too quickly.

On the day of your departure, you handed me a half-dozen hanks of embroidery thread and made me promise to deliver them to Maria. She needed thread of those colors, you explained, and you didn't have time to deliver them yourself.

We arrived in Guatemala City long before your plane was to depart and decided to go to a restaurant for lunch. You two decided you wanted pizza, despite my warning that Third World pizzas are often inferior to those in the U.S. We found a pizza joint that looked reasonable.

When we ordered, we naievely included sausage in the ingredients. Even I wasn't prepared for the result: On our pizza were slices of hot dogs! Never, before or since, have I been served hot dogs on a pizza.

You flew back to Florida and I stifled my loneliness and remained in Guatemala for another two months.

Your visitation with me continued uninterrupted after you moved to Florida. We had done some river trips by then, and it was obvious that you, in particular, were becoming very fond of white water rafting, so our plans increasingly included such trips.

By that time I had taken responsibility for arranging time with some of your mom's relatives in Western Colorado during our summer travels, because she had not returned there since moving to Los Angeles, years earlier. In particular, your Aunt Nancy and "Nana" Rosalie, your grandmother, appreciated our visits.

It was fun and easy to spend time with Nancy and her partner Mark, because we were always welcome in their home, and we always had fun together. But it was different with your grandmother and her husband.

In their house, though they always seemed glad to see us, I was never able to feel at ease; it was as though I were doing something wrong, but no one would tell me what it was. Not wanting to do anything to discourage your sharing time with your grandmother, I would just suffer quietly and await the time when we could leave. But you'd better believe, when one of you kids bathed there, I made damned sure the bathroom was left spotless!

This had gone on through about three visits with them when, while we were visiting Nancy and Mark, she asked you whether we were going to your grandmother's. "I don't know," you replied. "She's awfully hard on my dad." Bingo! I had scrupulously avoided saying a word to you about my difficulties with your "Nana," but you'd picked up on them for yourself. From that moment, I felt free of any obligation to spend time in her house, and I've felt grateful for your perception.

The last time you, Ben, and I saw Rosalie and her husband, they came to Nancy's house for an afternoon barbecue while we were visiting there: a big improvement over spending time at their house.

That happened during the summer of 1993, another time of adventuring and sharing among the three of us.

We started our adventures by driving to McElmo Canyon, southwest of Cortez, Colorado, to visit Scott and Rose and his children, Matt and Amber. It was not our first time there; you and Ben had earlier enjoyed spending time with Scott’s children.

That summer, we invited Matt and Amber on a little float trip. We secured some inner tubes, then we took two cars down McElmo Canyon to the San Juan River and followed it to the town of Montezuma Creek. There, we found a highway bridge where we could easily access the river, then we drove several miles downstream to a place where we could leave one of the cars near the river. We piled into the other car, drove back to the bridge, and set out to float downstream.

Amber was apprehensive about being in deep water, so you and I remained close to her until she felt more comfortable, while Ben and Matt frolicked at a distance from us. When we arrived at the take-out, we decided we’d enjoyed our float so much that we wanted to do it again, so we did. Ben especially appreciated that decision, because he got to drive one of the cars on the shuttle.

I don’t think any of us had any trouble falling asleep that night!

Later in our visit with those good people, you and Amber spent some time admiring her horse, of which she was very proud, and Ben and Matt got involved in tinkering with and riding a tiny motorbike.

From there, we went to the home of Nancy and Mark. In addition to sharing time with them, we used their place as a base from which to visit our numerous other friends on Redlands Mesa, and I was able to give Ben some driving lessons.

Those lessons resulted in a mishap. Ben was driving, I was in the passenger’s seat, and you were in the back seat when I told Ben to slow down so he could make a turn. Perhaps he didn’t realize how near the intersection was; certainly he thought he could make the turn at a higher speed than was possible. Whatever the reasons, the car skidded sideways into a ditch.

It was hardly a catastrophe, because our landing was gentle, no one was hurt, and damage to the car, which hadn’t been very pretty to begin with, was slight. I knew the problem had been miscommunication between me and Ben, and I deliberately manifested amusement and a lack of concern to minimize any feelings of guilt or wrongdoing on Ben’s part. I tried to drive the car back onto the road, but it was high-centered and wouldn’t budge.

Ben was a little shaken but otherwise fine; you, on the other hand, were crying. I asked why you were so upset, and you explained that in your environment in Clearwater, supervisors frequently reacted to mishaps with blame and intense anger, and you feared such a reaction from me. I assured you I felt none of that; on the contrary, all that had happened was our plans had been altered a bit, and no harm had been done as long as we all felt all right. Accidents happen, I continued, and it’s up to those of us to whom they happen to roll with the punches, keep our wits, and figure out how to mend whatever needs mending without doing further damage.

So it was almost a demonstration of those ideals when we walked the half-mile to the nearest house and phoned my friend Mike, who soon arrived with truck and tow chain. It took but a few minutes for us to extricate the car, and the incident became nothing more than a memory.

We had planned to return to Boulder at the height of the peach harvest in Western Colorado, and we could hardly leave that area without several boxes of delicious fruit. In order to determine where the best fruit was to be found, we spent parts of two days visiting orchards and packing houses to sample their harvests.

That was very pleasant. The people to whom we introduced ourselves were universally friendly and helpful, and we passed many pleasant hours walking through orchards, collecting samples, and gathering information about the different varieties and their characteristics. We carefully separated and labeled our samples.

Later, back at Nancy’s and Mark’s house, we passed out peaches, tasted them, and made notes. I admit I fully expected the differences to be subtle, but I was mistaken in that. All the fruit was good; most qualified as delicious. But the peaches from Antelope Hill, we agreed, were by far the tastiest of the lot.

So, the following morning, before we drove to Boulder, we went back to Antelope Hill, where they allow people to pick their own fruit. It took us about an hour to harvest four boxes of peaches so ripe that I feared they might suffer damage even in the five hours it would take to drive to Boulder.

The peaches arrived in good condition, and we spent the next couple of days distributing them among many friends and neighbors. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so welcome in so many homes as we were during those two days!

I must confess that I’ve never found a way to avoid wretched excess in the celebration of Christmas, and I feel relief as the holiday passes. However, our gift exchanges were generally characterized by the love and good taste with which we selected gifts. But Christmas was not the most memorable event of your winter visit in 1993.

Poor Ben, to have been born the day after Christmas! But that year, Linda, my girl-friend, found a way to make that a special day for all of us by arranging for a ride in a hot air balloon.

It was early on a Sunday morning, temperature about 15 degrees, when we arrived at the field east of Boulder where we met the balloonist and his wife. While we huddled and shivered, he used a gas-fired blower to fill his beautifully colored balloon. When he'd completed inflation and assembly, he signaled us aboard. Then, he fired the burners, and we began our ascent.

As we rose, so did the temperature. By the time we leveled out, at several thousand feet, it was quite comfortable.

Floating above farm country, with the Rockies for a backdrop, was serene and beautiful. Except for the occasional firing of the burners, it was silent. We watched as people below fetched in their newspapers and otherwise began their day; several of them failed to notice us.

The balloonist kept in contact with his wife by means of a two-way radio while she followed us in her van. When we came down, after a flight of about 45 minutes, she was nearby. They served us a lovely breakfast, but the cold prevented us from enjoying it as thoroughly as we might have otherwise.

That was also the time we had your and Ben's eyes tested and had you both fitted with glasses. I think you'd previously had glasses but had lost them or had stopped using them for some reason; in any event, you certainly needed them, as you'd been complaining of headaches when you read, and reading was important to you.

I was displeased by the failure of your mother to tend to such basic needs as your vision, and I wondered whether there were others of your needs that were not being met. You assured me that you received dental care and that the services of doctors were available to you.

Not long after your move to Florida., you and your mom began urging me to visit you there. I resisted the idea for a couple of years, but changed my mind quite suddenly after Ben's failure to visit during the summer of 1994.

A little background here: You had previously made me aware that both you and Ben needed to apply to your supervisors or to your teachers long in advance for permission to take time to visit me. I was uneasy about that, because I felt very strongly that no person or organization ought to have any authority over our visits other than your mother and myself, although your and Ben's inputs were welcome. In fact, I felt sure I could obtain court orders to prohibit the Sea Org from exercising authority in this area if that were to become necessary, but, having no fondness for judges and lawyers, I decided to play along and hope it didn't come to a show-down.

Another interesting thing had occurred. During my efforts to arrange an earlier visit, I had felt your mom had not handled her end as she'd ought, so I'd asked her to remove herself from the loop and leave me free to arrange the dates of future visitations with you and Ben directly. This was partly an experiment on my part; I'd seen some evidence to suggest she was abdicating some of her parental authority in favor of the Sea Org, and I wanted to see how she'd react to my suggestion. She agreed readily. My suspicions about just who had authority over your lives grew.

I had spoken with both you and Ben in the spring of 1994 to suggest some possible dates for your visit. We had agreed on some, and I had purchased the airline tickets and had them sent to you.

A few weeks before your arrival date, Ben phoned me to explain there had been a major upheaval in the "Ethics Office" where he worked, and he would have to delay his trip to Colorado because he had to stay to help repair the damage. I immediately smelled a rat; it seemed to me quite possible, if not likely, that the Sea Org had found a way to interfere with my time with Ben. We talked about his situation, and we agreed he would fly to Colorado a week later than originally planned. I changed his ticket.

You arrived without incident, and I recall commenting that, for a Florida girl, you weren’t very tan. You said you hadn’t spent much time outdoors recently.

We spent a week at home together. During the first couple of days, you seemed listless and uninterested in what was happening around you. You seemed unable to make simple decisions or to express preferences. Then, on the morning of our third day together, you came bounding up the stairs from your bedroom and announced, “I want pancakes for breakfast!” I felt great relief; “Welcome back,” I thought.

At the newly arranged time, I went to the airport to meet Ben, but he wasn't on the plane! In no way did he warn me he wasn't coming. He simply failed to show up! Needless to say, I was very upset.

I tried to phone Ben from the airport but couldn’t reach him, so I called your mom. She made excuses, and pointed out that, after all, Ben was 17, and in the manner of most people of that age, was experiencing a broadening of his interests, implying that visiting me might be slipping down his list of priorities. I acknowledged that might be so, but insisted there could be no excuse for the rudeness and lack of consideration with which he had treated me.

I suspected the explanation for Ben’s behavior might be found outside the area where Suzanne had suggested I look. Maybe our shared good times were becoming a threat to Ben's loyalty to Scientology. Maybe his superiors were trying to find a way to separate us, to minimize my influence over him, to maximize their own. I began thinking about a traveling to Florida.

Despite my many attempts to make arrangements, Ben did not visit that summer; in fact, he was not to visit me again until Christmas, 1995. By then, our circumstances had changed to such an extent that I sincerely believe he was ordered to visit me.

Your visit during that summer was mostly easy and uneventful. By then, you had become friends with Sarah, a neighbor of about your age, and you two soon became nearly inseparable during your time in Colorado, so we happily included Sarah in our plans.

The only real tension between us during that visit occurred when I invited you to consider moving in with me on a more permanent basis. You seemed seriously tempted by my proposition. When you phoned your mother, she said the decision was "up to you." But, in the flurry of phone calls between you and her that followed, she pulled some strings in such a way that you decided against accepting my offer, for she soon realized that, if you did indeed have the power to make that decision, you might just decide to move. In an attempt to enable you to see the questions more clearly, Linda, my sweetie, arranged for you to visit a professional counselor. Later, in a tearful session among you, me, and the counselor, you explained you didn't want to live with me, but it was hard for you to hurt my feelings by telling me that. The matter was thus settled, at least for the time being.

As I mentally reviewed that chain of events, I realized that the fantasy of your right to make an important decision had been preserved, in your perception, while the reality was you were free to choose as long as you made the decision your mother desired. What I couldn’t figure out was whether the manipulation to which you’d been subjected had its origins in Scientology practice, in Suzanne’s psyche, or both. I now suspect the answer is “both”; I know your mother didn’t want you to move, and I suspect she naturally used the techniques of manipulation that are the everyday stuff of Scientology to influence your decision. By then, it’s likely that Scientology’s practices had become so much a part of your life that manipulation must have seemed quite normal to you; indeed, you probably didn’t even know it was happening.

In the fall of 1994, Linda and I decided to visit you and Ben in Florida. Hoping you two could get some time off from your various duties, whatever they were, we announced our plans long in advance, because we wanted to spend a week with you both, traveling, exploring, visiting, and camping out.

Ben, in his Sea Org uniform, and you, in plain clothes, gave us the grand tour of the Fort Harrison (a former resort hotel, now "spiritual headquarters") and the Sand Castle (a former motel, now posh offices and quarters). Both facilities were clean and in good repair, generally pleasing to behold, if a bit on the gaudy side. Sea Org members, in their blue uniforms, scurried everywhere. The feeling was one of barely controlled chaos; it was not unlike scenes I had experienced at school plays and such.

After some urging we prevailed on Ben to show us where he lived: an apartment complex where he shared a suite with a number of others. It was a bit run-down, obviously not a beneficiary of the attention lavished on the buildings we'd toured earlier, but habitable.

Our tour of the Quality Inn (or “Q.I.”), yet another former motel where you and your mom lived, was impromptu and more interesting.

We visited there several times: first, just to see where you lived; second, to rearrange the load in the car for our camping trip; third, at the end of that trip, to tour your school and talk with its teacher.

The first time we went there, you showed us the room you shared with three other girls, and showed us the near-by room your mother shared with another woman and her baby. You proudly demonstrated your ability to get into your mother’s room via a window when the door was locked. I wondered why you, at the age of 12, didn’t live in the same room as your mother.

That place was bad. The building and grounds were obviously suffering from a lack of maintenance and repair. So were the children, as we were soon to see.

During our second visit, I reorganized the load in the car and eavesdropped while Linda visited with about eight kids, from about 6 to 11 years of age. They had apparently just been hanging around before we arrived; now, they were seeking Linda's attention.

They needed attention, physical and emotional, in the worst way. Not only were they dirty, with matted hair, and in need of changes of clothes; they also very much needed some adult affection.

Linda was eager to provide it. She sat in the car's front seat while a girl of about 8 sat on her lap, stroked her arm, and explained her parents had been bad, so they were in the R.P.F.* and were too busy and too tired to care for her. The other children surrounded the open car door, some talking, some quiet, some reaching out to touch Linda, all hungry for attention. This went on for about half an hour. Linda said afterward it was like relating with street urchins in a third-world city.

[*R.P.F.: Rehabilitation Project Force, a Scientology forced labor and concentration camp to which members who are guilty of, for example, poor job performance or inadequate recruiting efforts, are sent. Scientology’s most egregious violations of members’ civil rights are probably to be found in the R.P.F.]

You, of course, were older than any of those urchins. Presumably, at 13, you were old enough to be useful to the Sea Org and thus enjoyed some status in it. I tried to imagine you as one of those sad, lonely children, but my imagination was not equal to the task.

Although Ben's freedom to come on our little trip was in doubt until the last minute, the four of us left Clearwater that afternoon for a circular journey that included several state parks (including one we thought should be re-named for that venerable insect, the mosquito) and a visit to my father and his wife in Ft. Lauderdale.

My fondest memory of that outing was the canoe trip you, Ben, and I took up the Loxahatchee River. While Ben and I paddled through the mangroves and upstream into the woods, with ospreys by the hundreds flying about and perching in trees, you read to us from a book about mangrove swamps. Truly a marvelous time!

We returned to Clearwater late one afternoon, after a week of traveling through the state. I had wanted to see the school you were currently attending, and from which Ben had supposedly graduated. Ben thought he could arrange that.

People were dining in a cafeteria when we arrived, so we waited. I remember watching a boy doing stunts on his bicycle and thinking how dangerous that looked, because there was no unpaved area on the grounds of the Q.I.

After supper, Ben introduced us to Miss L., the teacher at the “Cadet School,” and we followed her to the two-room facility which appeared to have been a conference room when the Q.I. had been a motel.

Miss L., though courteous and accommodating, was obviously not well educated, judging from her use of the language. In fact, she revealed she had never attended college, but had been awarded a teaching certificate in Arizona, at a time when college was not a prerequisite for such certification. I surmised her certificate limited her to teaching kindergarten and (maybe) first grade. At the Cadet School, she taught kindergarten through twelfth grade.

She showed me the study areas and the collection of textbooks. Some of those were hand-me-downs from public schools; most of the others were written by L. Ron Hubbard and did not address academic subjects. She confirmed my suspicion that the Cadet School was not accredited.

Miss L. explained to me that she did not teach chemistry or physics, because the school had no Bunsen burners. I suspected that she didn't teach those subjects because she had not the slightest understanding of them. Also notable for their absence were computers and lab equipment of any sort.

As we neared the end of our tour, Miss L. showed me an area, on one wall, where about ten diplomas were on display. She explained that a student had to pass the G.E.D. examination in order to receive a diploma from the Cadet School. One of the diplomas on display was Ben's.

I knew Ben hadn't taken the G.E.D., and he was nearby, so I questioned him. Miss L. was very embarrassed when she had to admit Ben had not earned the diploma.

After our tour of the school, our business in Clearwater was finished. We bade you and Ben farewell, then we drove away from the Q.I. I pulled the car into the first available parking lot to compose myself, because I was somewhat shaken, not only by my recently acquired understanding of your "school," but also by the sum of my impressions about the environment in which you lived. I knew, in that instant, that I had to do something to get you out of that place.

Linda and I began sharing our perceptions and comparing our experiences. After we’d shed a few tears for those poor, sad children we’d seen at the Q.I., I composed myself, and we drove to the state park where we’d been camping to get a night’s sleep before beginning the long drive home.

When you first moved to Florida, you and Ben seemed happy and healthy; other than the serious matter that you were failing to receive the educations to which you were entitled, I could find no fault with the ways in which you were being raised.

In the intervening years, however, other problems had begun to appear; by the time our visit in Clearwater ended, it was obvious to me that you were in grave danger.

Your frightened reaction to our little auto accident I took seriously, particularly since your explanation strongly suggested you were in an environment in which fear was used to motivate you.

I also noted that your need for glasses had not been met in Clearwater, and wondered whether your dental and health needs were being addressed.

I had observed carefully as your mother had manipulated you when you suggested you might want to move to my home. Although it was certainly possible that any mother, Scientologist or not, might be moved to such tactics by the threat of having a minor child leave her home, the skill with which the appearance of your making the decision was preserved despite the arm-twisting to which you’d been subjected made me suspicious. I was beginning to learn that Scientology freely uses manipulation to alter people’s perceptions of reality, and those most affected by that manipulation are Scientologists. I was beginning to understand manipulation as a tool for forcing a Scientologist into a mold while maintaining the fantasy that she is making decisions “of her own free will.”

Then there was the huge issue around continuing visitation among the three of us. The implied threats that some attempt to interfere with our visitation would result if I were ever to speak ill of Scientology I found very worrisome; I was hardly proud of the fact that, so far, they were working.

In fact, the Sea Org already had the mechanism in place for such interference: your and Ben’s need for advance permission to be “off post” in order to leave Clearwater. I was pretty sure that was why Ben had abruptly stopped visiting: his permission to do so either hadn’t been granted or had been rescinded. I interpreted that as nothing less than the Sea Org’s insistence that he choose between his loyalty to the organization and his loyalty to me.

Your mother’s willingness to remove herself from the loop regarding arrangements for your visits completed that picture: I was left to make visitation arrangements directly with you and Ben and, therefore, indirectly with the Sea Org. In this very important area, at least, your mother had abdicated her parental responsibilities in favor of the Sea Org.

Your lack of animation during the first three days of your summer visit was a matter of some concern to me. Obviously, there could be many possible reasons why a girl of almost thirteen years might experience difficulties in the face of the adjustments necessary to change homes temporarily. But what I had learned about Scientology caused me to think it more likely that you had been subjected to some form of mental abuse before leaving Clearwater.

Of course, it was our visit to Clearwater that put the icing on the cake. We had seen two faces of the Sea Org: the glitzy, polished, uniformed headquarters, capable of being photographed and shown proudly to the public; and the wretched underside, where facilities were in disrepair and children were neglected, disrespected, and poorly educated. What sort of religion, I wondered, could so neglect its children?

There could be no doubt that gross misrepresentations, even lies, had been made to me concerning the well-being of my children. Obviously, it was time I began seeking explanations from sources other than your mother, sources outside Scientology. Something had to change; the way to begin was to try to understand what was happening and why.