My 9 Lives in Scientology

Here we Go Again — Another Rollercoaster Ride

While we were in Bermuda, Quentin returned from his vacation and dropped a bombshell.  It seemed that his father tried to hush it up, but Quentin told me the whole story in a very calm, detached way.  According to what Quentin told me, he had decided to kill himself again and had constructed an elaborate plan for his suicide.  He flew to New York and took a room at the Times Square Hotel.  He then took his passport, which was his only form of ID, and hid it behind the bathroom mirror in his hotel room.  He didn't want anyone to know that he was the son of L. Ron Hubbard when his body was found.  He then flew to San Francisco, where he planned to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, but when it came time for him to jump, he just couldn't do it.  After that, he was found wandering around on a road when he was stopped by police who were looking for someone who had committed a crime.  They determined that Quentin didn't fit the description of the suspect, but since he seemed confused and disoriented, they took him to a mental hospital.  In order to protect his family's name, Quentin pretended to have amnesia.  He was in an institution for about two weeks when someone from Scientology tracked him down, at which point Quentin "regained his memory" of who he was and was released.  He told me this story in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice, as if he were telling me about an innocuous vacation itinerary.  I was horrified, and he noticed.  He remarked that the expression on my face looked like the expression on his mother's face when he told her about it.  Quentin and his mother were very close.  In spite of all her other faults, Mary Sue really did love her children and Quentin seemed to be her favorite.

To this day, I don't know if it was L. Ron Hubbard or Mary Sue, but someone was very upset that Quentin told me what happened.  David Mayo, the Senior Case Supervisor, ordered me not to see Quentin anymore, without telling me who the order came from or why.  I don't think the order originated with David.  I asked him what was really going on and he flatly refused to discuss the matter further.  David and I had gotten along pretty well in the past, but he was very firm on this issue.  So was I.  I said that Quentin was my friend, he needed me and I was going to be there for him.  I told him that my personal life was none of his business.  We got into a big argument.  David's wife, Merrill, a top auditor on Flag, tried to get me to shut up to protect me, but I wouldn't back down.  She knew I would get into trouble if I made waves, and she was right.  David warned me that if I continued to see Quentin, I would be sent to the RPF.  I continued to argue with him, and he put me on a retread, which meant I had to go back and review certain materials as an auditor.  He also had an ethics officer talk to me, warning me of the consequences of having anything further to do with Quentin.  I was supposed just to follow orders like a good little robot, but at that point, I still wasn't completely brainwashed, so I refused.  I defied the order and kept right on seeing Quentin.  There was still nothing sexual going on between us, but other people thought that there was and that we were hiding it.  One time I had made a joke to Quentin about taking a shower with him and somehow this came up in one of his auditing sessions and was written down, so I suppose David assumed that something was going on.  I was incensed that my personal life was being interfered with and wasn't going to stand for it.  Meanwhile, I had finished my retread of course materials and was back auditing on my Class VII internship.  I was auditing another intern, Rick, on Power processes.  His auditing went very well and he completed the grade before all the processes had been run.  In Power, at the time, if the PC went exterior (meaning if he had an out of body experience), he was considered complete on the grade and no more Power processes or its companion, Power Plus were to be run.  This was the case with Rick, and he happily attested to completion of the grade.  One week later, Rick came down with a cold and I, as his auditor, was immediately blamed and accused of "out tech".  Hubbard personally ordered to see the folder, which was something he didn't often do.  The folder was inspected by one of his teenage messengers, Jill Goodman, who was not a trained auditor and didn't know the first thing about what to look for.  She told Hubbard that I hadn't taken the correct action to repair his Power Plus, which was a bald faced lie.  The fact is, I hadn't even run Power Plus and so any action taken to correct that level would have been meaningless.  Any auditor trained as a Class VII could have seen that, but nobody seemed to want to get involved.  The result was an ethics order from Hubbard, personally canceling all of my certificates and ordering a Committee of Evidence to be convened on me.  I desperately tried to write to Hubbard to explain that this PC had never received Power Plus and to please look at the folder himself.  I never received an answer.

At the time I blamed Jill Goodman for this travesty of justice but, spiteful as she was, I now see that she was just another victim of Hubbard's.  Today, she is out of Scientology and realizes what happened to her.  In an interview with Russell Baker for his book, Barefaced Messiah, she said, "We became poisonous little wenches . . . we had power and we were untouchable."  I certainly have to agree with her statement, but I don't blame her anymore.  The truth that I was unwilling to face at the time was the neither David Mayo nor Jill Goodman were to be blamed for what happened.  I am sure that LRH was to blame and I think he was getting back at me for continuing to see Quentin.  Some day I would like to talk to David Mayo and Jill Goodman and find out exactly what went on.

An order for a Committee of Evidence from LRH was considered a serious matter.  Every charge in the book was thrown at me and Barbara, the woman who was appointed Chairman of my Committee of Evidence was well known on the ship to be someone who despised me.  Before she got married, Barbara's husband had been interested in me.  I didn't return his feelings, so he eventually got involved with Barbara and married her.  I was happy to see that he found someone, but Barbara never got over her insecurity about me because sometimes her husband would still flirt with me in a joking way.  He would bump into me on purpose and say things like, "We've got to stop meeting like this".  Nothing ever came of it because I wasn't interested in him.  Barbara made it very clear that she couldn't stand me.  This is a matter of written record because once I was supposed to audit her and she refused to have me as her auditor.  This is the person who was appointed as Chairman of my Committee of Evidence!  I'm sure she had a great time finding me guilty of all charges against me.  Once again, I was sent to the RPF.  In addition, all my auditing certificates had been cancelled by LRH.

After I heard the Committee's verdict, I went to Quentin's cabin and told him about it.  I knew that once I was on the RPF, I would no longer be allowed to go there.  I told him that the RPF would be a relief after what I had been through in the past few months.  I had lost everything I had worked so hard for.  I didn't see how things could get much worse for me.  I was wrong.  Things got much worse.