Haydn James: Everyone Else Is To Blame

Haydn James

The recent interview with anti-Scientologist Haydn James, his wife Lucy and daughter Katrina was more befitting an episode of the Jerry Springer show than a network “news” broadcast. 

Shedding a river of crocodile tears, the James family recounted imaginary and ludicrous abuses they claim they suffered while Church staff members—so outlandish that at one point in the interview, the reporter said: “Do you realize how insane this all sounds?” 

It was insane because the James family—with their tears flowing as if on cue—were carefully and calculatingly lying.

Omitting that as early as four years ago (after the Church helped get James and his wife a job) they had taken up with a small cult of disaffected former Church members turned anti-Scientologists, the couple and their daughter left out four key points.

Here are the lies that the James family told during an interview, followed by the facts that detail what really happened:

LIE #1: Lucy James claimed the Church ordered her to terminate a pregnancy.

FACT: The Church would never do such a thing. Such decisions are highly personal and the Church leaves it to the individuals. At the time of Lucy’s pregnancy, the Church’s policy was to transfer Sea Org members who became pregnant to less demanding jobs. Haydn and Lucy James were assigned to a Scientology Church in Birmingham, England, where they eventually raised their daughter from a later pregnancy. Lucy was never told to terminate her first pregnancy or any other.

According to a sworn affidavit Lucy wrote when transitioning out of the Sea Organization in 2006, she said:

In 1986 my husband and I had unprotected sex for two months. I became pregnant and then I decided to terminate the pregnancy and my husband took me to a medical clinic for the procedure. Although I realized that over the years I had blamed others for my situation, in actual fact the decision to terminate the pregnancy had been entirely my own and I had not received any input from anyone else at the Church one way or the other. In fact, I did not really even discuss it with my husband very much as I made the decision to terminate the pregnancy and that’s what I did. When I became pregnant in 1991, I wanted the child, so my husband and I had our daughter.

LIE #2: Lucy and Haydn James claim they decided to leave the Church’s religious order, the Sea Organization, because when they were assigned to posts in Los Angeles they were not allowed to see their daughter Katrina.

FACT: The James family left the Sea Organization after Katrina expressed a desire to attend school in England. It is blatantly false that Sea Organization parents are prohibited from seeing their children under any circumstance.

Lucy’s sister stated:

I am truly shocked by the false picture they [Haydn and Lucy James] are now trying to portray, as I was in contact with them—particularly Lucy—during their time in the Sea Organization. I also took care of Katrina briefly when she left the Sea Organization and before her parents left and helped her parents find work after they left.

I understand that Haydn and Lucy James have complained that there were restrictions on communicating with Katrina. I know of no instance of Katrina not being allowed to see her parents or talk to them while she was in the Sea Org or afterwards. Neither Katrina nor her parents ever complained to me that there was any problem. In fact, during the time Katrina lived with me in Sacramento she was in regular phone communication with her parents. They wrote letters to each other and her parents sent her an allowance to spend as she wished.

…I never heard her [Katrina] complain about not being able to see her parents, but I did hear a lot about how much she missed England.

LIE #3: The family claimed that when they left Scientology, their family, under Church orders, “disconnected” from them.

FACT: The Church never interferes or inserts itself into the private affairs of family members, nor tells anyone to “disconnect” from anyone. That is a private, family decision as witnessed by the following sworn statement from Lucy James’ sister and a Scientologist:

At some point a number of years ago, I heard from Lucy that she had been fired from her job…I tried to get her to communicate about it to other people who I thought could help her, but she said no and then she dropped out of communication with me and I left it at that. I later heard that she and her husband had been excommunicated from our Church, and as she had already disconnected from me I did not attempt to get back into communication with her.

After stating that it was Lucy who chose to “disconnect” from her, the sister, Kathy, went on to say:

I was told that my sister and her husband are claiming that I was forced to disconnect from them due to their actions against my Church. In actual fact, my husband Thomas and I chose not to be in touch with my sister and her husband because we do not agree with what they are doing. It is completely a matter of choice for us, not anything the Church has ‘forced’ or asked us to do.

Meanwhile, Lucy’s other sister, Susan, in a sworn affidavit, tells how Lucy disconnected from her, in a most literal sense:

When Lucy returned to the U.S. from England, I approached her on several occasions with the intention of getting to know her better and getting close in order to restore our relationship which had grown more distant in her absence. Each time I tried to re-establish our relationship, Lucy brushed me off and would not allow me to really enter into any meaningful conversation. As one example of that, when we all met at our dad’s place after her return to the U.S., she brushed me off and would not really talk to me.

…I telephoned her and told her about a new publishing release of the basic books of Scientology. I put her on hold for a few moments and when I returned to continue our telephone conversation, I found that she had hung up on me. This was the last time that we spoke, because she would never pick up the telephone when I called back.

LIE #4: Haydn James said during the broadcast that a representative of the Church’s ecclesiastical leader came to Birmingham, England, where he was posted, to summon James and his family to Los Angeles.

FACT: Haydn James is well aware that Sea Organization members, as reflected in Church policy for more than 40 years, are posted to Churches in different states or countries where they gain valuable experience and can return to active Sea Org duty. The policy, instituted by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, is called the Veterans Return Program. James, as part of this program, was posted back to Los Angeles by the executive in charge of England’s Scientology Personnel Department. To say that the ecclesiastical leader of the religion sent a representative to “get” James is analogous to saying that the Pope sent one of his Cardinals in charge of international clergy to a small township to move a parish priest to a higher church. It is not true.

Besides these falsehoods stated by Haydn and Lucy James, and the media’s complicity in portraying the family as “victims,” the truth is that Haydn and his wife are bitter anti-Scientologists who turned against their family and their former Church and attacked their religion after which the Church was forced to excommunicate them.

The factual story of the James family includes:

  • Haydn’s apparent addiction to gambling, which led him to neglect his Church duties and lose money he appropriated from a Church payroll.
  • His hair-trigger temper that would erupt into rage, causing him to verbally abuse Church staff.
  • The James family's attempt to extort $350,000 from the ecclesiastical leader of the Church—for a non-Church-related matter. 
  • When working for a dentist, James' joining up with a group of former Church members who now attack the Church and corroborate each other’s falsehoods for the media.

Here is the real story of Haydn James and his family who, having disavowed their faith and refusing to move on with their lives, now attack the Church for their own twisted revenge.

Attacks on coworkers, emotional blowups, gambling and making a fast buck—even through an apparent extortion threat—make anti-Scientologist Haydn James a perfect candidate for the posse of lunatics.

Like his peers, Haydn is an anti-social individual who hates most people and exhibits traits that make him right at home with the posse’s two charter members, Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun. Today, Haydn spins stories on demand to denigrate his former religion.

Documents:

- Declaration of SW (PDF)
- Declaration of KD (PDF)
- Letter of KD to NBC's Rock Center, 12 January 2013 (PDF)