Heart of Darkness

The Handling of Kyle Brennan

In the nineteen years since losing my son Kyle, I’ve never been able to understand the unfeeling behavior of Kyle’s father, Tom Brennan. His lack of caring, along with his seeming lack of emotion, went far beyond the boundaries of normalcy. In my opinion, the core of one’s humanity is not difficult to define: it includes the ability to reason, to distinguish right from wrong, compassion toward others, the ability to feel emotion, and the ability to express it.

In the first few days following Kyle’s death, Tom Brennan’s indifference-his detached state of being—was evident to family members. His inhumanity was “chilling and unnerving.” Within hours of Kyle’s death, Kyle’s step-brother, Scott, contacted Tom Brennan by phone. Scott wanted to understand what had gone so horribly wrong in his younger brother’s last days. (Remember, we’d been told by the medical examiner’s office that Kyle had taken his own life.)

Why had this forward-looking twenty-year-old taken his own life? Scott was immediately taken aback by how his stepfather came across. Expecting him to be shaken and engulfed in grief, Scott was shocked when Tom Brennan answered the phone in a celebratory mood. “[W]hen I called him . . .” stated Scott in his deposition, “he thought I was a different person. . . . When Tom picked up, he said, ‘Hey, Scott, how’s it going? What’s going on, buddy?” When Brennan realized which Scott he had on the phone—his step-son and not some everyday acquaintance—“[h]is voice became somber. . . .” Scott explained how this “threw” him at first “because it sounded like he had won the lottery, and I just couldn’t figure [it] out . . . of course I was grief-stricken at the time.” “He told me at least twice,” said Scott, “that he didn’t understand how it could happen, that he hadn’t pushed or talked about Scientology with Kyle, and that Scientology didn’t have anything to do with it [Kyle’s death]. It struck me as being very odd because it [Scientology] was the furthest thing from my mind, and I had never brought it up. I didn’t bring it up, and he kept injecting it [Scientology] into the conversation.”

It was so soon after the death of his only son, and yet Tom Brennan, an employee of the mega-wealthy Church of Scientology, had already returned to work. (It’s important to note that Tom Brennan repeatedly lied in this conversation. He had indeed “talked about Scientology” with his son, and he had indeed “pushed” Scientology on him.

When Kyle visited Brennan in Clearwater, Florida, in the summer of 2006, Brennan told him that Scientology was all he needed in life; he didn’t need to go to college. Brennan also “pushed” Scientology on his son in February 2007 by seizing Kyle’s prescribed psychiatric medication, his Lexapro, and locking it in the trunk of his vehicle. Tom Brennan lied about “talking up and “pushing Scientology on Kyle, so why should any reasonable person believe that “Scientology didn’t have anything to do with” Kyle’s death? Just as William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet in 1602, Tom Brennan “doth protest too much.” It’s obvious that he kept injecting these statements into his conversation with Scott Brennan because he was trying to convince Scott of these lies.)

Life does not prepare you to lose a child; it’s a blow that brings you to your knees and leaves you with lifelong bruises. It’s a heartache like no other.

During those first months after losing Kyle, I could not understand how or why Tom Brennan behaved so coldly toward him. I knew that Brennan was with Kyle when he died. Tom Brennan first told Kyle’s Virginia family that he’d arrived home the night of February 16, 2007—at his Clearwater, Florida, apartment where Kyle was staying—at 10:30 p.m. He later changed his arrival time to 11:15. Brennan’s 911 call for help was not made until 12:10 a.m. How can a parent be so disconnected from their child—and their humanity—that they don’t call for help immediately? And what was happening in Brennan’s apartment between 10:30 p.m. and 12:10 a.m.?

I am no closer to finding answers to these questions than I was eleven years ago. On the police recording of Brennan’s 911 call, his voice is flat, without emotion. Ken Dandar, a lawyer representing the Estate of Kyle Brennan, described it as “a voice of depravity.” Dandar told me that “Brennan was cold, unemotional, not what you’d expect to hear from a parent who’s calling to say their child is dead. It sounded like Brennan was ordering a pizza.”

In my darkest days after Kyle’s passing, I was extremely troubled and haunted by innumerable questions. I couldn’t grasp how the horrific tragedy in Clearwater had unfolded or understand Brennan’s behavior. How does one lose their compassion, empathy, and humanity?

The Church of Scientology’s dictatorial control over its adherents is not just deeply disturbing—it’s also immoral and dangerous. Brainwashed by their religion, Scientologists seem to have lost the concept of boundaries that separate right from wrong. They’ve been told by the Church’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, that in the pursuance of a “just cause”—Scientology, of course—it’s perfectly acceptable to step across that boundary at will. They’ve been taught that the collective, the organization—the Church of Scientology—comes first. It comes before them, before their families, and sometimes even before the lives of their children.

Lying, victim-blaming, obstructing justice–it appears that any tactic is perfectly acceptable in the defense of the Church of Scientology.

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Tom Brennan’s contempt for his non-Scientologist son is evident in his heartless statement.