Are They Still In?

Wondering About Old Sea Org Staff

This post is in response to the February 27, 2025 Poll. Be sure to get your votes in on the March 6, 2025 Poll.

On December 19, 1975, I wrote a letter to my family from Los Angeles. It was on ASHO letterhead, as were most of the letters I wrote to anyone during that time. It counted as a statistic for letters out. And I got it mailed free. This sounds like a great thing, but it wasn’t all it was stacked up to be. This was a control mechanism. This was supposed to be the only time we wrote letters home. We were not supposed to send letters to anyone except through the internal Org mail while we were on staff in Sea Org.

And, we were not allowed to seal our outgoing mail. We were told when we started staff that all letters were inspected before they were mailed. This was supposed to be a precaution to make sure that we were not telling anyone “on the outside” confidential material. This also meant that we were aware that if we had any complaints, we were going to get caught if we said anything to our parents.

Letters to anyone not in Scientology were always supposed to be “good roads, fair weather” type letters and that’s all. We were expressly forbidden from discussing any bumps in the road on our Scientology journey. In all the letters I wrote home to my family, even after I was mailing them myself and they were not being inspected, I kept up the charade. I was a good brainwashed robot.

But, amazingly in December, 1975, when I was still fairly new, I wrote a letter that actually said the names of the other new recruits that sat at the same table as me when I was eating in the galley while we were training. That letter made it to my parents uncensored. I saw later letters I sent than that had words censored out of them, but here entire names stayed. Someone was sleeping on the job that day.

After reading these names, I wondered how many of these people managed to escape. I searched Scientology Completions for each one as a starting point.

Fran didn’t appear once under her maiden name and I don’t know of any married name. I searched her name plus Scientology, no luck. I hope that means she flew away fast.

Dean was next. He too didn’t appear on the list or in a search although he did appear on a prominent LDS site. I remember from a conversation in the galley that he had been promised he would be able to attend his LDS church meetings every Sunday after he joined Sea Org. I thought, even as new as I was back then, “this guy isn’t going to last.”

Volker went clear before I did, but there are no other Scientology completions for him. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything because all the Sea Org training doesn’t count and a lot of things aren’t in the database. I have seen someone named Walter Volker Busse commenting on several anti-Scientology sites. I do not know if that is him.

Joe is not listed in completions, but I know he stayed in and went to Gold Base and made films. I do not know if he stayed there. I hope he managed to escape by now.

Mark is probably still in, he is not on the completions at all, and probably not in Sea Org. I found a comment of his on a substack article from November, 2024. He compared what the man said to Scientology’s “Science of Survival.”

Brad not on completions list. No knowledge of where he is, ditto Neil.

Dan doesn’t show up anywhere after his clear number.

John went clear around the time I did. He also had a Life repair. Since then he had not had any scientology services. There is a website that says he died but doesn’t give any information.

In other words, I don’t know about most of them. However, it does appear from a cursory search that Scientology has an abysmal record of hanging onto Sea Org Members. If my very unscientific very incomplete search is anywhere near correct, all 10 of the new recruits from my table at the galley are no longer Sea Org members, or possibly one remains.

If there is anyone who knows something else about any of these people, please let me know.

And yes, in case you were wondering, they also opened and read our incoming mail as well.