TRANSCRIPT:
My name is Lasse Sihm Larsen. I have been a Scientologist for about forty years.
And when I started working at the Church of Scientology, I was, let’s say, a close colleague of Robert. Robert was friendly and pleasant, etc., but he was never someone you were truly close to. There was something indescribable about him.
And that can then...you fall for a person who is accommodating and happy, you could say. But he acted actually very cheerful.
The things he did later that impacted me were downright psychopathic—or at least malicious. Yes, psychopathic is the right word, because they were done under the pretense that everything was okay.
It was kind of funny with Robert because quite early on he told me how, before he became a Scientologist, he was a criminal. And he told me quite a bit about
how he shoplifted from stores and how he had figured out that you went in, took what you needed, then walked out past the checkout, greeted the staff on the way and left as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
But there wasn’t the slightest trace of regret in what he said. It was just what you do if you need to do it.
Robert also talked about being told he had to confront his past. Apparently, he had admitted that he had a complicated past. He had a program where the Church told him he could continue being part of it but only if he addressed his past.
Plus, he reported himself to the police and told them what he had done. Then he went to court where he received a conditional sentence if he did not relapse for a certain period.
To me, Robert was a fleeting presence. He was like a mayfly. And the things he says, as if he’s a specialist in the field, are absurd. He was a beginner—a complete novice. And the things he did were done in a terrible way.
For example, the way he put me down when he was in the HR department. I had some challenges I needed help with. And the result was that he crushed me, and I left feeling like I wasn’t worth anything and might as well just resign myself to my failures.
There are certain mistakes one might make as a beginner. It wasn’t beginner problems because you have to be evil to do some of the things Robert did.
He then started a printing business. I wasn’t entirely familiar with the details of his company but at one point during that period, I had a computer rental business. I always had a small farm of computers ready to be rented out. He asked me for help and I drove out to him one weekend with a handful of computers and some laser printers. So we had his computer and my two to three computers.
And then we printed, I believe it was, 16,000, 16,000 letters. I was not sure what the rules were but later I found out, as I understand it, if you produce some type of promotion in Denmark and send it from Denmark, then it’s subject to Danish postage rates. But if you produce it in a third-world country, where postage rates are much lower, if you have it produced there and sent out from that third-world country, then it’s legal to do it that way at a reduced price. But one of the requirements, as I understood it, is that it has to be produced in that country.
Meanwhile, I sat out in Østerbro with my computers and toner, toner powder, printing 16,000 letters that Robert flew to Africa and sent out from there. He didn’t say anything about that. But it was completely clear, that was how he operated. He did things and then had explanations to justify them. It was okay, at least he thought so himself. But it was blatantly criminal.
One of my friends...there was a well-known Scientologist who started a marketing firm in the mid to late 80s. They started producing market analyses where they interviewed a large number of people within a specific group and collected data about what they thought about products in the computer world.
And I worked on that for many years.
And Robert’s brother, he worked—Robert’s brother, Simon, worked at that marketing firm. He was a salesman. But later, I was told that Robert had talked to Simon and asked if there was something he had learned at the marketing firm that they could take and use and sell.
And then, what could be better than having Simon tell Robert about our market analyses and probably have some copies of them. And then they copied them.
And they copied them so thoroughly that they didn’t just make something similar, they made something that was 100% the same. What he did was, he went in and directly stole the product and sent it out.
And it ended up going to trial, and it was escalated to the High Court. And in the High Court, my boss, or the person I did the analyses for, got agreement from the judge that they were completely identical. So, that’s why the owner of the marketing firm agreed to a settlement, where she then received only a fifth of the money she had lost. And the result was that the company simply went bankrupt.
And that was, well, that was Robert’s doing. Robert caused the company to go bankrupt, no question about it. And I lost my good job because of it.
But looking back, he was just, well, he only had destruction in his repertoire. And you have to remember, Robert is a guy who has stolen from stores. He has done vandalism. He has committed burglary—he has a conviction for it. He has defrauded the Church. He has defrauded his best partner. Why do some psychopaths get away with it?
Looking back, it probably would have been best if he had just headed south instead.
