Family forced disconnection: A wound Scientology won’t stop pouring salt into

[Sunny Pereira and her brother]

Sunny Pereira is back with another gut-wrenching Scientology experience for us. But also, don’t miss out as she’s blogging on her own now at her own Substack. Check it out!

Sometime late last year I received a text message from my older brother. He was asking me if I knew a woman named Sandi from my days in the Sea Org. I wasn’t sure who it was but I was curious what this was all about.

He called me and went on to explain that this woman named Sandi was reaching out to him for our mother. This is so Scientological that it’s not even suspicious. Of course, here was a stranger trying to reach him about our mom.

He has not heard from our mom for more than 10 years. He had to chose between me and my mom ten years ago, and because he chose to stay in touch with me, a declared SP, she disconnected from him.

My brother, who also was born into Scientology, called the bizarre text messages from Sandi “shady as fuck,” but at the same time, it made him very anxious and upset.

Sandi had only sent out a few messages with the intent to confirm that she had the right phone number, then she stopped texting for several days.

My brother, becoming more and more anxious about what this could be, started calling every 15 minutes to the phone number that he had for our mother. Every time he would get the receptionist who said that his mom was “in the middle of something and would call him back.”

This went on for days, with my brother going through every possible emotion. I tried to keep him calm.

Sandi, after confirming it was him, stopped messaging him for several days. I too wondered what it was about.

We both thought that it had to be that our mom was deathly ill or dying and they wanted my brother to know.

Or they were trying to get him back into Scientology. Neither one of us really had any idea, but it I had to do everything I could to keep my brother calm.

This entire situation, from beginning to end, was very, very traumatic for him.

We both had a tough upbringing in the Sea Org. We both have the same feelings about our mom and her complete lack of parenting while we were being raised in Scientology. To tell the truth, he raised me much more than she did.

Finally Sandi texted again that she had been on course — for days? weird — and she was sorry she did not respond earlier.

Sandi asked my brother to stop calling into the org and that everything would work out, but to be patient. My brother still had not heard from our mom, and so he asked for a photo of her as proof of life. Sandi responded saying that she wanted to make sure that he was willing to take a call from her, then she would arrange the call. He said he would.

He figured that call would be coming right away, but it ended up taking several more days.

Can you imagine being in this situation? You have not heard from your mom for a decade and some random stranger is reaching out telling you not to call the org and that everything will work out? What in the world was going on here?

Was she wanting to leave? Was she sick? Was she trying to recover him into Scientology? Was she trying to pull him away from me, the Suppressive?

Neither of us had any idea.

When she finally called him, everything became crystal clear.

At first she did a “good roads, good weather,” which is just Scientology lingo for how they talk to people who are antagonistic to them or Scientology. Ugh. Nobody is interested in hearing that crap.

Anyway, we knew that she had recently gotten an inheritance, because her father, our grandfather, had passed away leaving her with some money.

What did she want? She wanted to tell my brother that the way that we were raised was not according to the concepts of L. Ron Hubbard, because the books were incorrectly printed with errors and typos.

When my brother told me this I wanted to scream. Five decades later she is still so blind to what she has done to us. She blames it on typos in Hubbard’s writing. I could throw up for a year hearing that.

She reached out to him because she wanted to gift him all of the new materials, which had been printed correctly and had the right Hubbard tech.

My brother only agreed because he thought maybe he could slowly work to get her out, if she would stay in touch with him. He thought he was just getting a box with a few things in it. A few days later he received a huge amount of boxes, full of LRH books and CD’s.

Yuck, double yuck. Now they sit in his storage shed out back and every time I visit him he asks me to take them.

Maybe we could burn them. Thousands of dollars worth of books she “gifted” him, up in flames. Come to think of it, I may run that by him again.

Since then she sent him a Christmas card. “She signed it. No other message. What a bitch. Would have been less insulting to get nothing from her.” I agree.

After that, she disconnected from him once again.

I can’t help but wonder if someone found out she had received an inheritance and, taking advantage of a 75-year-old woman, got her to spend it buying books for everyone and anyone. I am certain she spent all of it donating books to libraries, my brother, and god knows where else.

I think that the best thing to happen to my brother and me was disconnecting from Scientology and from a parent who has done everything to make our life hell. Both made us stronger, much stronger than ever.

— Sunny Pereira

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