January 4, 2017

ABC 20/20
New York, N.Y. 10023

Dear Mr. Harris,

My name is Tad Reeves, and I’m a Scientologist. I’m a systems engineer for a major internet service provider, am a father of 3, and am the editor of the scientologyparent.com website.

I found out that your network has decided to air yet another anti-Scientology piece, and I’m not only outraged, you’ve made me – for the first time ever – genuinely concerned for the safety of my family because of the hate and marginalization you’re looking to engender upon my family and specifically my children.

I run a website about Scientology and parenting. If you google for Scientology and parenting, it’s the first thing that comes up. It’s pretty obvious to the laziest and most incompetent researcher possible. I have interviews from dozens of Scientologist parents of what it’s like not only growing up in a Scientology family, but also what we actually do, how it is children are introduced to Scientology, how it is we apply our own religion in the household, etc.

But you probably never saw my site, as you don’t care about what Scientologists actually do, and you never did.

You’re trying to create hate. But since you’re going to tune me out and just say I’m being bitter, let me put this in other terms so you can see just how vindictive and insidious your “investigative journalism” is:

What if you decided to do an “investigative report” on “Jewish family life”? But then, as opposed to talking to actual Jewish families, you only talked to former Jews, specifically those who were thrown out of their congregations for illegal activity, and who now specialize in and make their livings from doing paid anti-Semitic media appearances. Let’s say you also then characterized anyone saying anything good about Jews or Jewish life as being “totally brainwashed.” How well would such a program be received? Would you have second thoughts about attacking Jews, or are they “minority enough” for you to be a safe target?

Or let’s say you decided to do an “investigative report” on “the real story of what working at Google is like.” But then you only talked to a handful of people who were, each and every one, fired from Google for either total incompetence or gross violations of company policy, and all of whom make a living now only from their media appearances where they denounce Google. Suppose you also had current Google employees and representatives who were lining up, eager to tell their story about what it’s like at the company, but you then label them all as “biased” and anyone telling a favorable story about work at Google as being “obviously brainwashed.”

Or how about if you “investigated” what it’s “really like” at Yale University, because you “heard it was bad.” So you interview only students who had been kicked out of Yale for unacceptable behavior or bad grades, and specifically avoid speaking with any current students, successful graduates, or current faculty—labeling such as “biased” and “brainwashed by the school.”

This is the same as what you are doing to my religion. You are preying on the fact that my religion is a minority religion and poorly understood by the general public, by making it much more poorly understood.

You are very methodically trying to marginalize and justify ill treatment of any current Scientologists by insinuating that anyone speaking positively about Scientology is only doing so because of some unnamed, undefined magical mind control technique. Like somehow when you walk into a Scientology church, some guy sneaks up to you and touches the Scepter of Loki to your chest and you magically have to like Scientology until you do a sufficient quantity of outright theft, unethical behavior and sexual misconduct that you’re finally able to “think clearly” and “speak truthfully” about the church. Your reasoning is INSANE.

You are giving a platform to people who specialize in untruthful revisionist history, and whose lies are so easily disproven by the most casual research.

I’ve been a Scientologist for over 30 years, and I grew up in a Scientology family. My parents didn’t smoke and didn’t drink except for maybe at New Years.

My sister and I grew up understanding that being happy in life meant living life morally and responsibly. Our moral code, which I’m sure you know is The Way to Happiness, teaches that one take care of oneself and others, that one doesn’t take drugs, doesn’t take alcohol to excess, that one isn’t promiscuous and one seeks to live with the truth. We were also taught, always, to live with personal integrity, and that our own ability to look and decide for ourselves was among the most important things in life period.

I decided for myself that I wanted to be a Scientologist. It’s not something every kid does in a Scientology family, but I sure did. I took courses at my local church which taught me to be a better and more effective student, a better and more effective communicator, and how to be a more ethical and responsible member of society.

My sister and I have never taken any street drugs in our lives, and both got married in our early 20s to spouses that we are still with. We don’t drink, we don’t watch TV (which I’m sure you’d classify as criminal behavior), and I spend as much time as I possibly can outdoors exploring the world with my kids.

In a climate such as the one we have today where we, as a society, struggle with teen drug addiction, with violence, with promiscuity and a general lack of morality, I was so glad to grow up in the family that I did and that I was given the opportunities I was given.

Why would you attack a religion that is so obviously dedicated to making moral, drug-free, ethical members of society?

For my own children, I want them to grow up to be powerfully independent thinkers, to be able to evaluate information for themselves, and to be moral, ethical individuals of great personal integrity who are able to choose and be successful in whatever endeavor they undertake.

But I will do everything in my power to ensure that they are not bullied, harassed and marginalized for their religious beliefs, or the religious background of their parents.