Read the original story here.
One obvious ethical issue is that the church acts as if they own Crest, when they obviously do not. It doesn’t matter what religion or ethnicity you are. We as people are all equal. The church degraded her as a person. If it wasn’t for her almost killing herself, she would most likely still be there suffering every day and being treated as if she was a slave. No one deserves to be punished for liking a person of the same sex. In fact, it is a civil right to express yourself in any way you want. The church treated the people put in these rehabilitation camps as if they were lowly slaves to do as the church wished. In the article, Nora Crest tells us that the only way she could get out of the camp is if she went in front of a committee and told them that she is a worthless piece of trash that could never do any good. I do not believe that any one deserves to be treated as if they are worthless, besides who are the people of the church to tell anyone what they are worth? We are people of a free country. If we do not wish to abide by the rules of a religion then we can stop practicing that religion. This is a personal decision, not one for a church to make. I respect authority but authority should be questioned when it affects our civil rights or causes us pain. After she was released for attempting suicide, she still suffered as it still caused her pain. It took her five years for her to build the courage to tell her own mother what happened to her. This article raises serious ethical questions about the church’s program to correct what they believed was a problem. This program consisted of the people in it sleeping in bunk beds stacked up three beds high. They also had to do 80 hours of hard labor a week. It is stated in the article that the environment was very harsh, where a bunch of people would just stand around and judge you or make sure you did not step out of line. If you did step out of line, the church would have about a dozen people beat you. Nora suffered from a herniated disk from these very harsh beatings. Sadly, that was still not enough for the church to let her go. The church believed she still had more she needed to endure. Not only does this kind of experience leave emotional damage, there is also a substantial amount of physical damage that needed to be addressed. This lady was very strong. We all have a breaking point and her’s was her attempted suicide. You truly have to break a person’s spirt for them to want death. Her breaking point was three years of beatings.
In conclusion, the church of scientology was extremely ethically wrong for beating, degrading, and punishing this lady for being herself. The church had no power or authority to do what they did to Nora Crest. I hope this article doesn’t continue to go unnoticed by media and does get acknowledged so that no one ever has to experience what she had to experience.