Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [132]
Two months later, in June 2001, Greg Bashaw committed suicide.
When Nancy Many heard the news, she was devastated. She herself had left Scientology in 1996 after suffering a psychotic break; for twenty-five years she had served the church with dedication. Like Bashaw, Many had felt her "mind break" during an intensive period of security checking in Los Angeles; later, on a Burbank street, she experienced a full-blown mental breakdown for which she was briefly hospitalized and then sent home to undergo a modified "baby watch" under the care of her husband, Chris. During that period, the church had offered no practical assistance other than a recommendation that Many take vitamins and chloral hydrate, a medication that Lisa McPherson had also been given.
Many recalled the day that Bashaw phoned her after being given her name by a mutual friend. He was looking for support. "It was tremendously cathartic, I think, for both of us to talk about this," Many told me. "We spoke a lot about the similarities in what had happened to us, and how it felt to be dumped by Scientology after all these years. We had both given our lives to Scientology: we'd volunteered for them, had never given them any trouble, and then, the one time we both needed help, they were nowhere, just nowhere."
Many recalled that a month or so after her breakdown, which church officials referred to as her "period of stress," an OSA representative visited her at home to present her with some documents to sign, absolving Scientology of responsibility in her condition and affirming that Scientology "worked" and made people better. Laura Bashaw, Greg's widow, received a similar visit, and similar papers, after her husband died, Many said. "What they learned from Lisa McPherson, if anything, was to cover their asses."
Today, at Flag, Scientologists hoping to receive auditing are asked to sign several new waivers. One gives the church full legal control over the subject's auditing and other personal files, regardless of whether the person is alive or dead. Another form confirms the adherent's desire that in the "unlikely" instance that he or she is judged by others to be in need of psychiatric treatment, they be "helped exclusively through religious, spiritual means and not through any form of psychiatric treatment ... regardless of what any psychiatrist, medical person, designated member of the state, or family member may assert supposedly on my behalf."
One particularly notable passage in this latter form, often referred to by church critics as the "Lisa Clause," states this spiritual assistance might include the Introspection Rundown, "an intensive, rigorous Religious Service that includes being isolated from all sources of potential spiritual upset, including but not limited to family members, friends or others with whom I might normally interact." In addition the adherent agrees to "accept and assume all known and unknown risks ... and specifically absolve all persons and entities from all liabilities of any kind, without limitation, associated with my participation or their participation in my Introspection Rundown."
With that, the church protects itself from legal liability. But the church has never backed away from promoting Scientology as a cure for mental illness—indeed, even after Bashaw's suicide in 2001, as the McPherson family continued to press on with their civil lawsuit, a Scientology promotion bragged that "a Flag Ship Class XII [auditor] could turn a severe mental case from raving lunacy to not only sane but bright and normal in about 8 or 9 hours."
Many has since opened her home to Scientologists needing