[2][3][4][5][6] The Church of Scientology has repeatedly denied that such a policy exists,[7][8][9] though as of February 2012[update] its website acknowledged the practice and described it as a human right.
[14] The "Code of Reform" introduced by Hubbard in 1968 discontinued fair game and security checks, and cancelled "disconnection as a relief to those suffering from familial suppression".
[15] However, although the words "fair game", "disconnection", and "security checking" were discontinued due to them causing bad public relations, the practices continued with alternate labels.
[16]: 188 When the New Zealand Government set up a Commission of Inquiry into Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to them saying that disconnection had been cancelled and that there was no intention to bring it back.
[17] In his book A Piece of Blue Sky, Jon Atack cites an internal document dated August 1982 that, he alleges, re-introduced the disconnection policy.
"[1]: 147 Disconnection was the subject of a 1970 court case in which the Church of Scientology unsuccessfully attempted to sue the Member of Parliament (MP) Geoffrey Johnson-Smith over negative comments he had made on BBC television.
The ensuing Dumbleton-Powles Report quoted from a number of disconnection letters and also reproduced some "Ethics Orders" which identified suppressive persons who were "not to be communicated with in any way".
[17] Teenage Scientologist Erin O'Donnell had written to her non-Scientologist aunt, "If you try to ring me I will not answer, I will not read any mail you send, and I refuse to have anything to do with you in any way whatsoever.
[16]: 35 In his 1984 High Court judgment, which considered many aspects of Scientology, English judge Justice Latey wrote that "many examples [of disconnection] have been given and proved in evidence."
In the other, a man writes to his business partner and former friend, "What you are now doing in setting yourself against the Church is not only very suppressive but also non-survival for you, your family and any group you are associated with.
[9] Also in 1984, The Mail on Sunday interviewed Gulliver Smithers, a former Scientologist who had left the group's base at Saint Hill Manor when he was 14 years old.
"[28] In a lengthy court case in the 1980s, ex-member Lawrence Wollersheim successfully argued that he had been coerced into disconnecting from his wife, parents, and other family members.
[11] In 1995, the UK local paper Kent Today talked to Pauline Day, whose Scientologist daughter Helen had sent a disconnection letter and then dropped all contact, even changing her phone number.
[29][30] A Buffalo News investigation in 2005 spoke to the sisters and brother of Fred Lennox, a Scientologist who, according to them, was being manipulated and exploited financially by the group.
The paper also quoted an internal so-called "Ethics Order" instructing him to "handle or disconnect" from his sister Tanya because of anti-Scientology comments she had made online.
[31] Ex-Scientologist Tory Christman told Rolling Stone magazine that her Scientologist husband and friends refused to talk to her after she left the Church.
[2] Another second-generation Scientologist, Astra Woodcraft, told ABC's Nightline that she had been forbidden any contact with her father once he left the Church and she was still a member.
[33] To make the television documentary Scientology and Me, the BBC Panorama team spoke to two mothers whose daughters had disconnected, one for nearly seven years.
[34] In 2009, a man named Shane Clark was about to be declared a suppressive person for being employed by Marc Headley, author of Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology.
Haggis wrote, "We all know this policy exists", and said his wife had been ordered to disconnect from her ex-Scientologist parents, "although it caused her terrible personal pain.
[3] Buffalo News consulted Stephen A. Kent of the University of Alberta, who said that hostility towards critics, including the member's own family, is an ingrained part of Scientology ethics and justice, according to which the survival of the Church is all-important.
[31] William S. Burroughs, who briefly dabbled with Scientology, wrote extensively about it during the late 1960s, weaving some of its jargon into his fictional works, as well as authoring nonfiction essays about it.