Tape 3, August 25, 1998

Lawrence Wollersheim and Jesse Prince

L:	4,5,6,7,8,9. Today is the 25th of August. This is Lawrence Wollersheim with Jesse Prince . We're discussing his years in Scientology. Jesse is probably the highest-ranking person to leave Scientology; at one time you were second in command of all of Scientology. As I mention every day, Jesse is all you remember, as factually as possible, the names of people that were involved in these situations and nothing more, nothing less. If you don't know about it, you don't know. What we were doing yesterday is we were going through the suicide list, and we were up to some of these here. If you could start with the one that we left off and just start talking about them.
J:	I think we ended up on John Peterson. We spoke about BB Mauer. Then about the of case auditing, I added a person named Diane Morrison.
L:	Tell us what end of case auditing is and Diane Morrison.
J:	End of case auditing basically is when the person is told by an official in Scientology, a high level therapist, or case supervisor that there is nothing more that they can do to physically live and they need to just let go of the body and die. That's what it is. I did a whole post [on the Internet] on this Diane Morrison, I went into great detail about it. I don't think there's anything more to add to that.
L:	Can you summarize.
J:	I'll just say the event. I'll just say what happened. This is a staff member that had been on staff for at least 10 years. She was a very healthy woman, kind of a California girl type of person, always was very healthy. She married a fellow named Shawn Morrison, who was the port captain at Gilman Hot Springs, which is basically a public relations position for the surrounding locals. At any rate, this woman ended up having cancer, and it was, you know, Scientology doesn't believe in chemotherapy or anything like that. They actually have policy letters against gamma rays, this is a severely antiquated idea, they don't move with modern technology. So, this woman was encouraged to not get the standard treatment available to cure cancer.
L:	Do you think financial considerations were any part of it?
J:	Probably the very first. I say that, I know that's an opinion, but I know that every person that gets pregnant at Gilman Hot Springs are sent to the city of Riverside, or California to stand in a welfare line to get an abortion paid for. They are told to give, there's a little pack that they read so that they know to disassociate themselves from Scientology and the Sea Org as much as possible, so that it's not known where they're coming from. They give as little information as possible to receive an abortion. They won't even pay for the abortions of the women, even though they enforce them medically. They don't spend a lot of money on the staff members.
L:	Do you mean that there is a written pack of materials in Scientology that they give to the staff members to go have their medical services paid for by the state?
J:	Right.
L:	And in this pack it tells them to hide their association with Scientology, to defraud the government out of medical costs that should be paid by this organizations that's bringing in hundreds of millions a year, and has these staff members that it should be taking care of their medical care as part of their overall care?
J:	Right.
L:	Has this been a long-term practice of Scientology?
J:	Yes it has. Even for a toothache sometimes you have to wait for weeks to get a mere $50 to go and get some dental work, or $150. Very often staff suffer in pain. I know it happened to me, I had an abscessed tooth, I had to wait about 2 weeks to have money to be able to go to a dentist, just to get that taken care of. Suffering with medical illness is a common thing for a staff member in Scientology. They have their policies, called CSW, Completed Staff Work, where the person has to do all of this research and everything about their illness or whatever they need with quotes, etc. on and on before money consideration will be given to them to treat a medical situation. However, sometimes a person is just so besides themselves in pain, or just simply depressed, or no will to pursue the arduous course just to get some medical treatment that they'll often go neglected, and a more serious situation will develop. That is the normal procedure for medical attention to staff members in the Sea Org.
L:	Would it be fair to say that over the years, like Scientology claims it has 13,000 staff members worldwide. Do they do this in other countries as well, use the government welfare systems to pay medical bills? Do you have any knowledge about that?
J:	I have noted they do it in Copenhagen, I'm not sure they do it in England, but I know they do it in Copenhagen.
L:	Is it possible, over 40 years, with all of these staff members going to get Medicare or welfare, to cover medical costs, that we could be talking about thousands of dollars of fraud on the government welfare.
J:	Hundreds of thousands of dollars of fraud.
L:	Possibly even millions over 40 years, with 13,000.
J:	Yeah, yes.
L:	You were saying earlier that you thought the main reason that Scientology denied medical care was because of its cost.
J:	Financial cost.
L:	So chemotherapy could run $10,000, the chance of a staff member getting $10,000 for medical care was about - Is there much of a chance that they would ever see that kind of money?
J:	Never. Never, never, never. I have never seen that amount of money. As a matter of fact, I had to have an operation when I was there, and fortunately I was in a high position. It still took me a month, I had a deviated septum, which I was very vulnerable to allergies and things, and I actually had to have an operation to have my nose re-broken and re-set. It cost I think $4,000 and it took me about 2 months to get the money. And that's extremely fast, and that is like the exception, simply because I was in a high position.
L:	You were second in command of Scientology.
J:	Right, and it still took me 2 months. Had it been anyone else, it would never be a point of consideration, just like no. Live with it.
L:	So, this woman was denied cancer treatment.
J:	There are two names I have to bring up here. Megan Sheilds and Gene Dink. For the Los Angeles area, these were the two Scientology doctors, and they would follow Scientology implicitly, in denying medical treatment to staff members. This Diane Morrison was seeing Megan Shields, and also Dr. Dink was associated with it. She was given this end of cycle, where she was basically told by the doctors that she was riddled by cancer, after running to Mexico and doing some hocus pocus stuff for whatever, getting some kind of cancer treatment. She went down there a couple of times, that there was nothing she could do, and she was going to die. She needed to this end of cycle. The woman ended up not dying from the cancer itself, but she died from starving herself to death. They watched her, and I seen her turn to skin and bones, and then, they didn't want her to die at Golden Era. They forced this guy, Shawn Morrison, to take Diane Morrison to his mother's house where she was placed underneath an air conditioner. She died within a couple of days, from starvation.
L:	So here they have a long term staff member who's given them 10 years of their life, and they didn't even want the person to die on the grounds of the church because -
J:	It would raise suspicion.
L:	It would raise suspicion. Would it be legitimate suspicion?
J:	Of course, they sat and told the person to die and watched her kill herself with stony faces and told her she was doing the right thing.
L:	This Gene Dink and Megan Shields, were they aware of the fraud on the welfare department? Did they ever participate or have any knowledge of sending people to the welfare, or sending people to Medicare to deny they were associated with Scientology to receive free treatment?
J:	I have no direct knowledge of that, but I do believe that could be the case. I have no direct knowledge, and I'll just say that.
L:	Were these doctors, were they following the medical guidelines of their profession when they told this person that they had to get ready to die, or were they following possibly directions from Scientology?
J:	Directions from Scientology.
L:	Who was giving them orders?
J:	Probably the case supervisors, which probably - Ray Mithoff or some other person like that was over this Diane Morrison, as a case handler.