Flavio, A Stolen Son – by Renata Lugli

Blogger’s introductory note:  The following is a mother’s account of the attempted destruction of her family.  I cross flowed much of what Renata relates.   It is very timely in that one year ago – almost to the day – on the eve of Christmas 2009 David Miscavige’s anti-Marty mission invaded the Lugli’s home attempting to recruit Claudio and Renata to team up to ambush their son Tiziano – and failing that attempting to get the parents to disconnect from their son.  Almost a year later, their other son Flavio was sent into their home as a missionaire working for the same Miscavige mission, spying and attempting to get his parents to disown and disconnect from Tiziano.  That they kept their equillibrium through all this doing everything in their power to keep the family together speaks volumes as to their character.  Regardless of the outcome, one things is certain, they survived this ordeal with their integrity not only intact but strengthened.

I would like to tell my personal experience in Scientology from a mother’s viewpoint, which is my main beingness, regarding my two sons, Flavio and Tiziano. What I had to live through myself with regards to what has happened to them, was the main reason for our departure from the Church, besides all other facts that we included in our Resignation Letter -(https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/claudio-and-renata-lugli-are-free/.)

Flavio and Tiziano were born in 1977 and ‘78, and my husband and I were both in the Sea Org at that time, we joined in ’74 and left in ’82. During that time one could still have kids in the Sea Org, and regardless of the amount of work that was absorbing our lives, I have always tried to give my sons all of my attention and communication, trying to give them, to the best of my abilities, an ethical education and a spiritual growth towards their self-determinism and mental sanity.

Flavio always demonstrated to be very loving and caring towards his father and I. As a child his extreme kindness and pureness of heart, coupled with a big urge in helping others was clearly visible. His decision to join the Sea Org was of no surprise to us, in fact we hoped for it at the time, knowing that it completely aligned with his urge toward helping others. We were joyful when we found out he had signed his one billion year contract, because we thought the Sea Org to be the most sane place to be on planet earth.

I was there at Flag in ’97 as I was about to start my Solo Nots Certainty as a public Scientologist, when Flavio came over to give me the news he had activated his SO contract. The way he said it left me in a state of disbelief, and that moment was terribly painful to the degree that still to day 13 years later I can vividly see that scene. Flavio looked at me condescendingly, his eyes were expressing complete resentment toward me, as if all of a sudden I became his biggest enemy. He was completely changed, the situation was incomprehensible and for me, a complete shock.

The last time we said bye to one another we were in complete harmony! What could have happened in these few hours?

 

I was trying to fill the vacuum thinking that his reaction was caused by an hypothetical wrong handling, maybe some incompetent gave him a PTS interview and indicated to him that I was his Suppressive terminal. Or he might have gotten the beginning of an indoctrination, from some high roller exec with his posh uniform, which told him Tone 40 to cut his umbilical cord to his family so that he could align with the standards of CMO FSO. Or they might have had him sign a pile of confidentiality agreements so that anything he will have said would have been a violation of highly confidential subjects. My mind was fishing for a rational reason, but to no avail.

I remained at Flag at the time, and it took me a whole year to finish the Solo Nots Certainty. It was a horrible year for me, with sleepless nights, an avalanche of wrong indications and wrong C/Ses. Flavio never called me throughout that year and in that entire time I only saw him for maybe 40 minutes, even though we were living only a few blocks from each other. I then decided to “end cycle” on this, telling myself that Flavio will eventually see the mistake he had made and then everything would come back to normal.

How wrong I was…!!!

I think I had committed a big mistake by not dealing with it more aggressively at the time, so that he would have eventually told me what really went down. But there is a reason for this, thanks to all of the repetitive errors of my Case programming, I was completely introverted, PTS, my anchor points were all squashed in and my beingness shrank. These were all errors that have been accumulated starting from ’87, real GAEs, perpetrated by alleged Class XIIs and incompetent C/Sing – which had nothing to do with me, as if he was C/Sing somebody else’s folder.

In 2005, after 18 years in borderline hell and almost as a miracle, I was able to handle this situation with my auditor Cristina, for whom I am still grateful to this day. I took back my once lost life, and at this point I was able to clearly see what situation had developed with Flavio.

Right after this de-PTSness, I tried talking to my son on three occasions, but it seemed impossible: he would get restimulated to the point of becoming ill, he would become so overwhelmed despite the fact that my approaches were really delicate on him.

Only now I am able to understand what really happened: Flavio had certainly received an heavy SRA from HCO CMO (Severe Reality Adjustment – a technique elaborated at a certain point in the SO, by which an individual gets overwhelmed by several people yelling at him, insulting him, etc. with the end result of having shoved in an idea to make him behave in a certain way) and this acted as a real IMPLANT on him.

Throughout his 13 years in the SO, the only relationship we had was “social”. He would call every once in a while and would be extremely brief. His communication was full of good roads fair weather, as if he was always handling an alleged PTS situation on our part, or there were PR phone calls where he would inform us about how everything was amazing at FLAG. These were a few minutes long, stolen time between a short meal, always with the prefix “I don’t have time right now”, “I have muster”, “I gotta do the roll call”, “I have to go handle…” – and every time I asked him anything, the most common answer was “I can’t tell you, it’s confidential”. Especially on this “I can’t tell you” part, LRH says something that is very frightening to me:

“The simplest and most common implant – and its lightest but not least deadly form – is the command to withhold. Implants could be said to be methods of preventing knowledge or communication.” HCOB 11 Apr 82 – Sec Checking Implants

But for us, the most painful thing, was not the very brief phone calls, but that tone of unexpressed resentment that you could sense every time he would speak to us. We understood that that trust, that love and appreciation that he had always treasured for us, had crumbled – and we had to learn how to live with it for 13 long years.

In an effort to alleviate this pain, we were hoping that with time Flavio was going to be able to realize what caused his departure from his own parents, but we were completely unaware on how the Sea Org had completely transformed since the time we had lived it (and on this part alone we could say so much…).

Many times Flavio got sick, one of which was really severe. His health was getting so precarious since he joined, all the time friends would come back from Flag telling us how Flavio was spending sleepless nights, especially during the infamous and unchecked fund raising for the Basics, and the never ending IAS regging. I don’t’ know if many of you know this, but every FLAG staff has a weekly regging quota that has to be met, no matter what, and until he or she reaches it, they cannot go to bed.

If we were to give you details, it would take a book to express what me and my husband went through in these years, but we are more and more convinced that in these 13 years, Flavio had received so much mental conditioning, and not only directed towards us, that we utterly believe that his mind had been stolen by his “church”, the same church that had STOLEN OUR SON.

The events surrounding Flavio that follow, cross with what was happening to his brother Tiziano.

Tiziano attested to Clear in 1990 at Flag. In 2001 he went back to the base for his OT Preps and they put him back on the CCRD to verify its validity. He re-attested in a new unit of time Clear (actually a state called The State Of Clear – CERTIFIED). In ’08 he went back at Flag to end cycle on his Preps and route onto his OT Levels, but he got hit with an R-Factor that he is not Clear – unfortunately this is pretty much in fashion these days. I’m not going to explain the details of this event, for he wrote a great account on all that happened on his post (https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/tiziano-lugli-breaks-free/), but I’d like to add what me and Claudio had to go through for the next year and a half because of this.

We knew that what Tiziano was going thorough was extremely delicate, so about 2 or 3 times a day while at Flag, we would talk to him, and he would tell us what was happening. We were always confident that the truth would give good indicators, and that Tiziano would never oppose to the truth, no matter what that was. But as time passed, so was any progress on this cycle, until it just got stuck; even though Tiziano did more than could be expected, and we were witnesses of all this as it was occurring. Sec Checks were the only auditing action he was permitted to do, as we know being the number one auditing action ordered by C/Ses at Flag, and YES, Tiziano had to be REFORMED, he had to stop giving FSO penalty stats by giving Red Tags repeatedly at the examiner. Nothing came from Claudio writing a detailed KR to RTC Int in order to debug the situation. We were all beyond overwhelmed by now, especially since we knew that Tiziano did the impossible, not only financially, to try to get onto his OT Levels, and endured beyond any limit of toleration.

We could hear him distraught, as he was confessing to us that he saw his Bridge shutting in front of his eyes, for he would have never compromised his certainty on being Clear and he would have never been put on Dianetics.

After all this he decided to be done with these evaluations and handlings, and got the hell out of Flag with very bad indicators, telling everyone to go screw themselves, and once back in LA he requested his folders to be sent to Senior C/S Int.

In the meantime Tiziano and Jamie’s wedding date arrived, and we all decide to take a brake from all this and go celebrate this event in great harmony.

And here Flavio comes back into the scene in 2009.

After pulling many strings we were able to get him to participate to the wedding. As soon as he arrived, he urged us to go read the Freedom Mag, in answer to what was happening in Clearwater with what the SP Times had published. It was pretty logical for us to then go look at what the SP Times actually wrote to fully understand the situation. Once we looked at the content and watched every Video online, we told Flavio that if the data that is being exposed were true, we all would find ourselves in a huge mess!

Back at Flag Flavio reported on everything that is nowadays considered the biggest crime that a Scientologist could do: GO ON THE INTERNET.

Right after, Marion Pow and Mike Sutter, showed up in front of our store in Brescia ITALY, all the way from Los Angeles. These are two people that work directly for COB – their purpose was to try to have us – two sinners – redeem ourselves, by first of all expressing their disapproval for the fact that we had looked on the Internet and we got all of the “entheta”. They tried to obliterate the image of the “Number One SP Marty Rathbun” with a huge Dead Agent pack, since he was considered to be “the WHO” of the whole situation.

Our answer to this was that due to our current case condition and having achieved a state whereby NO ONE can tell us what to do or not to do, we didn’t need anyone’s approval regarding the decisions we take. We took the time to instead press on the fact that our sons, for one reason or another, have been completely messed up by the church. And knowing their authority we requested immediate actions: for Flavio to make sure his health condition would go back to at least normal, and that whatever the absurdity that went down with Tiziano was, would once and for all get handled.

The whole back and forth – merry go round – lasted till 4AM. And do you know with which sentence did Marion ended the conversation? The same one she used to begin: “but why did you guys go on the Internet?”

Meanwhile in LA, where Tiziano and Jamie live, the resignation letter of the renowned and Oscar winning director Paul Haggis hit the news. Tiziano wanted to look deeper into it, landed onto Marty’s Blog. The rest is pretty much known. Tiziano and Jamie got on a plane and go to Texas.

Marion Paow, Mike Sutter and this time along with a third guy, Hansuili Stahli, showed up at our door steps in Italy in the middle of the night. They immediately informed Claudio that Tiziano and Jamie were just with Marty in Texas, and that the situation got out of their control, that his folders where look at by Ray Mithoff, and that Tiziano was absolutely NOT CLEAR, but that without any doubt Marty told him he was.

Right after popping out Marty’s SP Declare, now 20 pages long, they started telling Claudio what an incredibly out ethics person our son was, and they wanted to show him Tiziano’s crimes contained in his Folders that they brought along.

This is classical OSA operation: DEFAMATION.

I was already in bed that night, so I didn’t have to receive that entheta impact, as my husband did through that nasty request. Claudio refused categorically to look into Tiziano’s folders, telling them that he didn’t have any interest in knowing any content of it for it is CONFIDENTIAL, and that it would have certainly not changed the opinion we had of our son, because for us he’s always been an open book.

When Claudio told me all about the meeting, I expressed the desire to not see them for the entire time they spent in Italy – from the 23^rd to the 31^st of December.

I found their approach to be beyond anti-spiritual, I did not want to have anything to do with such people that didn’t even take any responsibility for what FSO had caused Tiziano, letting him leave completely BIs. But here they stood, with their weapons ready to shoot at him and us as well if we didn’t reform. They asked Claudio what kind of a behavior would he be having with Tiziano, in the event that he wouldn’t repent and reform by doing the A to E steps – hence doing a subtle introduction to the subject of disconnection. Knowing exactly where they were going to go with this, and before they asked for a formal disconnection agreement, he told them that we would have NEVER and NEVER will disconnect from our son.

They left soon after, but that was only the beginning. As a matter of fact, the subject of disconnection, was once again brought up by his brother Flavio, an act that was gruesome to say the least.

We got a phone call from Flavio inviting us to have a video conference via Skype, a planned meeting a day in advance. We talked to him that night on the phone for about an hour and on Skype the next day for two and a half hours, and the theme of the conversation was only one: convincing us to disconnect from Tiziano, a discussion he had been taking from several angles. It was pretty hard for us watching this family massacre as it was about to unfold: using our son Flavio to convince us to shoot at his brother Tiziano. Claudio and I found each other in an atmosphere that resembled a gangster movie more then an ecclesiastical scenario, with no respect whatsoever to unbreakable family ties.

Flavio was reading us aloud exerts form the HCOB PTS and Disconnection, the same one that the so called liar Tommy Davis was claiming didn’t exist in front of millions of viewers on CNN. Our efforts in trying to explain that LRH cancelled it long ago were in vain. As soon as the intimidation tactic failed to get anywhere with us, including telling us the consequences we would be facing in the event we would not disconnect with Tiziano, plan B from OSA came into play: MORE DEFAMATION.

I can only tell you that as soon as Flavio started shooting defamation bullets against his brother, I started screaming like a mad woman until I literally lost my voice. I screamed about FSO, having ruined both of my children, I screamed at him for making me pass 13 years of pain and sorrow as I was noticing his progressive derangement since he joined the SO, I screamed about FSO asking me to destroy my own family with disconnection. At this point Flavio got silent, and changed tactic, going full on good roads and fair weather. I mean they all got silent, was OSA thinking we were the dumbest, stupidest folks on earth? They thought we didn’t know they were behind the computer directing every move Flavio was making? Who knows why the line would suddenly drop and be back only a few minutes later… They didn’t however make Flavio disconnect from us. I guess they thought it would be more detrimental to do so, as well as we had not been declared yet, they actually started having him act “really nice”.

Because we didn’t disconnect from Tiziano and we went on the Internet, OSA was  monitoring us from 360 degrees. Here is the rundown:

–       Sending over to our shop about a dozen OTVIIIs, and another dozen calling us over the phone.

–       When we would cross the path with other Scientologists in town they would change their way as not to bump into us. (apparently the ones who were not briefed to do OSA’s bidding, were instructed to stay away from us so as not to become educated.)

–       After 5 years of not hearing from my auditor at Flag, I all of a sudden get a phone call from her.

–       An OSA bot named Gloria, that works for them as an auditor, came to my shop trying to handle me into going in session with her.

–       Numerous times I’ve noticed being followed by PIs and others using Cell Phones to record my conversations.

–       A dear friend of ours was barred from talking to us, because we were on OSA INT lines.

–       Flavio was being used to monitor us: it was very evident, although he kept trying to be as normal as he could, and his communications was carefully planned, but you can’t fool a mother!

But now it all starts to get juicier! Flavio has recently come to Italy because his grandma (my mother) was dying and had expressed her desire to see him after so many years and to finally meet his wife.

Once in Italy we were noticing Flavio to be spying on us. He was looking at my cell phone, Claudio’s phone, the home phone, both of the house computers, and was asking his father if he was still going on the Internet. All of this thinking that we wouldn’t notice him doing it. He’s very naïve, at times I would get a call and he would try to check caller’s ID of people calling me, I really started to get upset at this point, not at him necessarily, but at those terminals that forced Flavio to do this kind of a job, completely in opposition to his beingness…and he obviously got caught doing it, which was another BIG mistake for OSA.

Besides what could have been the reasons they gave Flavio to coax him into becoming a rat, I was sure that he didn’t feel any good about doing what he was doing to his parents, hence his continual Missed Withholdy face.

At a certain point Flavio asked me some very personal question that denoted parts of my PC Folder were given to him, I realized the defamation tactic had been played on myself. That was IT! I was furious, because the evil that I had been perceiving, coupled with the clear vision of what grim last resource had been used by OSA, made me decide…It’s OVER! I’m gonna depart from all this evil.

So we decided to tell Flavio WHO his FRIENDS were.

We were completely done playing a game that lasted a whole year full of third party that had only as its purpose to destroy our family.

But by his many reactions: “I can’t be listening to this…” – “don’t tell me anything…” – “I’m not interested…”, it was evident that his thoughts were blocked.

His ability to decide and analyze was reduced to ZERO.

He had been programmed to such a degree that he would reject anything that would have not been aligned to that programming.

He left to Flag the next day.

Here ends my story of Flavio, a stolen son.

It does not end however, the pain and the rage of the betrayed trust that still lingers inside of us.

RENATA LUGLI