Let's Talk About Sects8 Apr 2025

Children in Scientology with Mirriam Francis

In the wake of updates to Child Safety Standards emerging from Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Mirriam Francis wrote to Victoria’s Commission for Children and Young People outlining the ways in which she sees Scientology teachings and practices to be violating these standards. While concepts of religious freedom and choice can muddy the waters of certain discussions around coercive organisations, Mirriam sees the regulations and laws to protect children as a key lens through which such practices need to be viewed and pursued. She speaks from personal experience that spans three countries.

Links:

Child Safe Standards — Commission for Children and Young People Victoria (you can raise a concern here); Queensland Family & Child Commission (you can raise a concern here)
Child Safe Scheme — NSW Office of the Children's Guardian (you can raise a concern here)
Australian Child Safe Standards – A State By State Guide 2024 — Safe Space Legal
Rage Against the Dark Arts — Mirriam Francis' Substack
Thetans in Young Bodies — Season 2, Episode 1 of Leah Remini's Scientology and the Aftermath in which Mirriam Francis features
Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology — by Kevin Victor Anderson, Q.C., the State of Victoria, Australia, 1965
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma — by Bessel van der Kolk, Penguin, 2015
Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice — by Judith Lewis Herman, Basic Books, 2023
Dianetics excerpt re: 7-year-old child responding to kiss from adult male
A Children of God message to members mentioning their "friends in Scientology"
Introduction to Scientology Ethics High Crimes

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