Beyond Belief (48 page)

Dallas and I were going to have our committees of evidence individually and I was going first. In the proceeding, I was told the various charges against me and was asked if I pleaded guilty or not guilty. I said not guilty to all of them. I told them that I didn’t agree with anything that happened and that it was their doing. When they asked me if I was going to take responsibility for anything, I said no. They asked me if I would be willing to route out of the Sea Org in the standard fashion, if it meant being able to continue to speak to Dallas’s family. I told them that I would think about it.

Dallas went next. He also pleaded not guilty to most of the charges, but not all of them. On the one he did plead guilty for, however, he told them it was their own doing. For the next few weeks, we waited for our “Findings and Recommendations.”

Four months passed before they finally arrived. In the findings, I was found guilty of Mayhem, Mutiny, and telling Dallas that I wanted to leave staff. The committee had recommended that we be declared SPs; however, the International Justice Chief intervened, saying if we wanted to return to good standing with the Church, we just needed to do 250 hours of amends each, get through a security check, pay our freeloader bill, and do lower conditions.

The findings were severe, and didn’t even attempt to acknowledge an injustice. They were more severe than Dallas and his parents had expected, but for my part, it was what I expected. Not surprisingly, I had no intention of following through with any of their measures. The whole decision felt like it played out too conveniently in the Church’s favor, but, at least for now, Dallas’s parents would not be made to disconnect from us.

B
EING OUT ALLOWED US TO GAIN MORE OF AN OUTSIDER’S PERSPECTIVE
on the Church. It didn’t come to us all at once in the form of one big piece of information from one source. More frequently, we learned little things here and there, but, over time, they added up.

My father sent Dallas and me some online posts written by someone using the screen name “Blown for Good.” They illustrated just how bad things had gotten on the Int Base, and told stories of physical abuse, sleep deprivation, separating people from their spouses, all of which had supposedly been orchestrated by my uncle. In many ways, these stories paralleled other things I’d heard from my family members who’d left.

“Blown for Good” was also posting on the Operation Clambake website, so I’d been reading his entries. There was a link to a
South Park
episode that satirized Scientology, which I had heard a lot of talk about. It spoofed the highest levels in the Church, the OT Levels that existed beyond the state of Clear. Specifically its target was OT Level III, “Wall of Fire,” which disclosed LRH’s theory of evolution.

This was many levels higher on the Bridge than anything Dallas and I had encountered, and we debated back and forth about whether we should watch it. We had always been told that acquiring this information prematurely could result in serious personal and mental injury. I knew it was ridiculous, but honestly, I was a little scared. I might have been out of the Sea Org, but this was something I had been told my entire life.

Even though I was out of the Church, I still had that built-in hesitation. I knew it was irrational. Obviously, tons of people watched the
South Park
episode, and they were still alive, so Dallas and I decided to take our chances. The episode was amusing and a little ridiculous. It was like science fiction. We already believed that we were Thetans, so I had expected that LRH’s theory of evolution would involve other planets. However, the details of a galactic overlord and a planet named Xenu were new to us.

We learned that OT III claimed that, 75 million years ago, a galactic overlord named Xenu banished Thetans to Earth to solve an overpopulation problem on his alien planet. The banishment of the Thetans and a series of incidents surrounding it were said to be the source of all human misery. This was not known to many Scientologists, as they would only have known about it if they had made it that far up the Bridge. Because of its far-fetched conceit, OT Level III is often cited by Scientology skeptics looking to demonstrate the absurdity of the religion.

Learning about OT III was eye-opening, both in terms of the fact that Scientologists actually believed that, but also because of what it told me about my own skepticism about the Church. While it was hard to fathom that the highest levels of the Church were focused on what felt a lot like a science-fiction story, what struck me the most was not the story itself, but the fact that, if I had heard this at the peak of my faith, I probably would have believed it.

As an outsider now, I could plainly see that it raised serious questions; however, it was only because I’d left that I was able to see it for what it was—a web of stories that seemed to have little basis in reality. Once we learned about OT Level III, more than ever before Dallas and I began to feel that this whole thing had been made up, and that LRH had just kept going and going with his stories, making it up as he went along. OT Level III didn’t feel like belief—it felt like fiction.

In the aftermath of learning about the OT levels, I found myself thinking of all the Public Scientologists I’d encountered while we were fund-raising in Australia, and how much time and money they would have had to invest to get to OT Level III. I found myself thinking about what it would feel like for them to finally have that truth revealed, and how natural their skepticism would be, but how hard it would be to embrace that skepticism knowing that you’d devoted such a big part of your life to it. A person who was a Public Scientologist would have already invested thousands of hours and paid in the range of $100,000 to be at OT Level III; by then, she would be pretty deeply invested both financially and socially. She would have already turned all of her friends and family to Scientology, and would have garnered a lot of respect for accomplishing so much; thus, it would be hard to not embrace the reveal.

This is to say nothing of how Sea Org members like my parents and grandparents, who would have invested not just money but years and decades of their lives, would react to the revelations in this level.

In part, because of all this, but also because of our own curiosity, Dallas and I were both becoming more interested in seeing what people outside the Church thought of it. Dallas started reading the
Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard,
by Russell Miller, a British journalist. The book was an eye-opener for Dallas. I read parts of it, too, and began to see what a fraud LRH had been. Even if only half of what I was reading was true, it meant that he had lied about nearly every one of his accomplishments. I had often wondered how he could have done all the things that he had purported to have done, and now I was seeing that he likely never actually had. For both Dallas and me, this book exposed the founder of Scientology as a power-hungry, egomaniacal, crazy, and charismatic liar. It forced me to examine my thoughts and feelings about Scientology. Did I really agree with its policies and its teachings? Had I ever experienced any of its powers?

Bit by bit, I started questioning everything I had ever been taught. I had always believed that I was a Thetan, and that one day I would be able to come out of my body. I had no real evidence of that, as it had never happened to me. I also wasn’t convinced about millions of years of past lives, or the recollections of them, and wondered if they were nothing more than my subconscious, not true experiences from the past. I also questioned whether Scientology’s organizational methods, such as whether Knowledge Reports, really worked. We used them at the jewelry store, and I had started to doubt their effectiveness. In my opinion, the Big Brother concept of internal policing made people more paranoid than productive, and alienated people from each other.

My biggest question with Scientology came from the overts. Growing up in the Church, I had never realized outright the importance of my own individuality and how valuable it was. Anytime you had an individual thought or opinion that was contrary to Scientology teaching, you were told you had an overt or a misunderstood word. I was now realizing this was just to stop you from challenging them on any level. It was nothing but complete suppression of free thought.

Now that I was no longer in the Church, I bristled when I felt they still had influence over even my minor personal choices. On Myspace, I was being pressured to unfriend SPs like Marc and Claire Headley and Teddy Blackman. Claire had been a good friend in the Church, and I wanted to stay in touch with her. Not only did I refuse to block them; I also put up a post stating that I wouldn’t do it. These people were my friends, and if anybody had a problem with it, then, too bad. Slowly, all of my friends in Scientology began unfriending me, including many of those who had said they didn’t care that I was no longer a Scientologist. Many of them contacted me, and told me that they had been told by people in the Office of Special Affairs that they must delete me as their friend, or they would no longer be able to speak to their families.

After that, Dallas and I joined the online communities for ex-Scientologists, using different names. We got a chance to read people’s stories and tell our own. They were eerily similar; we had all gone through hell. I was particularly surprised to hear that many of them had experienced recurring nightmares, just as I did. The sense of community I felt with other former members was growing. In January 2008,
Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,
by Andrew Morton, was published. The pre-publicity was huge, and sure enough, the book was number one on
The New York Times
bestseller list within three days of its release. Dallas and I didn’t know much about Tom Cruise’s life, but we did know he was the most famous celebrity associated with Scientology. We both read the book with great curiosity, and found that it contained many factual accounts of the RPF, family disconnection, and other Scientology practices.

The release of this book and the publicity surrounding it highlighted many of Scientology’s abuses. Dallas and I thought that it was great that this information was getting out to hundreds of thousands of people. Of course, the Church was all over it, and immediately went into damage control mode, denouncing just about everything that had been written. In a fifteen-page rebuttal, it called the book “a bigoted, defamatory assault replete with lies,” and went on to list each and every allegation and provided a response. Their outright denial of a family disconnection policy elicited outrage in me. “Does Scientology encourage their members not to speak to their family if they don’t know the religion?” the release asked. “This is not only false, it is the opposite of what the Church believes and practices.”

Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming need to do something. Their outright lies felt like a spit in the face of everyone who had gone through hell on their behalf. It also showed that they wouldn’t be changing anytime soon. With a nudge from Dallas who, like me, was frustrated by the Church’s continued pressure on our relationship with his parents, I wrote a letter to Karin Pouw, the spokesperson for the Church and author of the rebuttal. I cited dozens of examples of forced disconnection in my family and in others. I ended the letter with a personal challenge: “If I am in fact wrong, and you want to prove me as such, then allow me and my family to be in contact with our family members who are still part of the Church such as my Grandpa, Ron Miscavige, and his wife, Becky. Allow the same for my friends.”

I told her there were too many destroyed families for the Church to be able to get away with denying it any longer. I suggested that she spend less time writing rebuttals and more time repairing the families destroyed by the Church, “starting with the family of David Miscavige himself.”

“If Scientology can’t keep
his
family together,” I wrote, “then why on earth should anyone believe the Church helps bring families together?”

Looking back at my letter now, I wish I had been a bit clearer and a a little less angry. Nonetheless, I had taken a stand and shared my letter with a few friends, who forwarded it to the media, who made it public. Immediately, I received an outpouring of support from all kinds of people: ex-Scientologists, people who had had encounters with Scientology, ex-members of other cults, and regular people. It was amazing as well as eye-opening to hear from so many people with similar stories.

This wasn’t about a few isolated incidents, as the Church liked to make it seem; this was systemic and it was widespread and the world needed to be told.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

SHARING THE TRUTH

W
ITH THE PUBLICATION OF MY LETTER TO
K
ARIN
P
OUW, MY
desire to advocate for victims of the Church was sparked. In the months to come, I found myself speaking out in the media and participating in my first organized protest against the Church. It all started with a video of Tom Cruise that went viral on the Internet. In it, he was discussing LRH’s famous Keep Scientology Working discourse, in all Scientology-speak. He was saying absurd things, such as Scientologists driving by an auto accident were the only ones who could help the injured people. He made all sorts of egotistical comments interspersed with his maniacal laughter, ending with his awkward salute to my uncle. I heard people talking about it everywhere I went.

Right away, the Church went into damage control mode and tried to keep the video off the Internet by sending threatening cease-and-desist letters to the owner of the website hosting the video. This was a common tactic used by the Church, to use copyright law to sue people. But, this time, it didn’t work.

On January 21, shortly after the video aired, a group of hackers/activists who called themselves Anonymous posted a video to the Church on YouTube, telling them that in response to their censorship, they were going “to expel them from the Internet,” and they did. They managed to bring down their servers for three days. Almost immediately, Anonymous’s message became not just about Internet censorship, but also about standing up to the Church and bringing awareness to its violations of human rights.