Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: How I Left Scientology From: peegee@newshost.li.net (Merchant of Chaos) Date: 6 Apr 1996 21:57:49 GMT My parents brought me to a hotel where there were four exit counselors waiting for me: former est members Carol and Noel Giambalvo, former Scientologist Monica Pignotti, and another former Scientologist who wishes to remain anonymous. I was staying at "Excalibur", the Sea Org building on 48th Street in New York, home of the Continental Liason Office/East United States. This was the last week of March, 1990, just 6 weeks before the release of the Key To Life Course, which was scheduled for Dianetics Day...May 9. Every org in the world was required to send a 3-person team to L.A. to take the KTL Course, so that these teams could then return to their home orgs to disseminate this course to the public. (I still haven't learned why it takes 3 people to disseminate this course.) I was to be the KTL I/C EUS...meaning that I was going to be in charge of supervising all the three- person teams for orgs in the Eastern United States (a pretty prestigious job, I must say...and to think they offered such incredible responsibility to little old me- and I wasn't even clear yet!) Obviously, this meant that I, too, would have to go out to California to become one of the pioneers who would be among the first to graduate from KTL! Now here's where the clams always seem to shoot themselves in the foot. Had they sent me out west *IMMEDIATELY* I would probably still be a Scientologist today. But, no... the folks at Excalibur were more concerned with keeping their *STATS* up, so they needed me to stay in New York for a week or so, just until I completed the EPF (Estates Project Force.) The EPF is similar to the RPF, but not quite as strict. All new Sea Org recruits are required to complete the EPF before they become full-fledged Sea Org members. I easily could have done the EPF in L.A., but then the NY folks wouldn't have gotten credit for the stats. So they kept me in NY...just long enough for my parents to contact CAN and get the names of the exit counselors. The exit counselors actually advised my parents to wait before doing the exit counseling, fearing that a lack of preparedness would create a disaster. My parents, fearing they would never see me again once I left for L.A., demanded that the exit counselors go ahead with it right away. My parents received CAN's phone number on March 29, 1990; the exit counseling was scheduled to begin on April 4, 1990. When my parents get pissed, they move *FAST*!!! My parents told me that they would like to take me out to dinner before I leave for California. Naturally, John Carmichael, President of the NY Co$ (and perennial CAN conference attendee) informed my parents that I did not have time to go out to dinner with them. (My EPF duties required that I work 16 hour days cleaning toilets, washing windows, and scrubbing floors..."MEST work" they call it.) Mom and Dad went ballistic, and in a scene that would have made John Wayne proud, my father stood face-to-face with Carmichael in Excalibur's lobby saying, "I've got my *OWN* Fair Game Policy, and *YOU* are *FAIR GAME*!!!" at which point Carmichael said, "Well, I think we can work something out..." It was agreed that I would go out to dinner with my parents on April 4. For two days prior, I spent the entire time doing PTS handlings, which consisted of endless hours of drilling and bullbaiting. On April 4, my parents arrived with my aunt, which was completely unexpected. The cult had programmed me to believe my parents were SP's, but they did not program me against my aunt...they didn't even know I *had* an aunt! When we got to the hotel, out on Long Island, my best friend, Matt, was waiting there with the exit counselors. There were nine people at the exit counseling: me, my parents, my aunt, Matt, and the four exit counselors. I suddenly realized that this was a little more than just "dinner" and I accused my parents of kidnapping me. I felt like I had walked right into an ambush. I left the room and called the Sea Org from the hotel lobby's pay phone. I spoke to Chris White. He and Donna Loewe had been my two Sea Org recruiters (anybody on this list know what happened to either one of them?) Chris wasn't giving me any help on the phone. He just kept saying, "What are you going to do, Paul? What are you going to do?" I assumed that the right thing to do was to stay and talk to my parents and the SPs (exit counselors), because by getting into communication with them, I could handle my PTS condition. I knew that if I failed to handle my PTS condition, I would not be able to take the KTL Course in L.A., and I would miss out on my chance to become the KTL I/C EUS. So I agreed to stay and talk with them. I spent the night in the hotel and continued talking to the exit counselors the next day. By two o'clock the next day, I was becoming *VERY* confused and upset. I ran to the pay phone again, and spoke to Chris White. This time he was more forceful. He said, "Why don't you get out of there?!" I said, "I can't leave because then my parents will get upset." I didn't want my parents to become more upset then they already were, because I figured that would cause my PTS condition to get worse. Chris responded with this: "You won't leave because you're afraid your *KIDNAPPERS* will get upset?!!!" I took that to mean that it was *AGAINST* Scientology policy for me to stay and continue talking to these people. So I decided to leave the exit counseling and return to the cult. My family tried to talk me into staying, and when I called a cab, Matt and one of the exit counselors got into the cab with me. As I stood at the train station waiting for the next train back to New York, they tried to convince me to return to the hotel for just another hour or so. I refused, but I did take some of the exit counselor's literature and I read it while I was on the train. When I arrived back at Excalibur, I was immediately told to report the Office of Special Affairs, located on the 5th floor of the New York Org on 46th Street. I was debriefed by Mo Biardi and John Carmichael. They kept me there until 5am, demanding that I tell them *EVERYTHING* I could remember about the exit counseling...who were the exit counselors, what did they look like, what videos did I see, what literature did I read, etc. I still believed in Scientology, but the exit counselors did manage to put a lot of questions into my head. Monica had told me about her friend, Quentin Hubbard, son of the founder, and that he had committed suicide. When I asked Carmichael why I never heard anything about LRH's family from inside the church, he became very uncomfortable. He became even more uncomfortable when I told him that the exit counselors had shown me the OT3 materials. (Carmichael was an OT7 at the time.) But when I told them the last thing my father said to me before I left, the clams hit the roof. My father said, "We love you unconditionally, and we always will, but the fact that you will be recruiting other people and putting other families through this is completely intolerable. We will be speaking out against this group, so that for every person you recruit, we are going to keep ten people out. And we will spend the rest of our lives *DESTROYING* this organization." I was declared a "PTS Type A" and was kicked out of the cult. I was absolved from the responsibility of fulfilling my billion-year contract. Of course, I had no money left to give them at this point, so there was no reason for them to fight to keep me. I wasn't mad at them for kicking me out. I was mad at my *parents* for getting me kicked out. After almost a month of fighting with my parents, I finally decided to look for a new job, and I answered an ad in Newsday, Long Island's leading newspaper. I took a job working for Cobra (which is now called Impulse), a company which is owned by Wholesale Warehouse Industries. It was a sales job in which you can supposedly get rich in a few short years. I was working 14 hour days, six days a week, and every day began with a morning Impact meeting, which seemed to resemble the Scientology musters. There was chanting and love-bombing, and it seemed so much like Scientology that I kept wondering if maybe this was a WISE company (it's not.) After working there a week, my father called up my boss and exhanged words with him, causing me to get fired. So I was kicked out of two cults in four weeks. After the Impulse experience my parents were able to convince me to go with them to visit Bill Goldberg, a social worker in New Jersey who specializes in cult cases. By the time I was done talking to Bill, I knew I would never be able to go back to Scientology again, because I knew too much about the organization's tactics to ever be able to believe in it again. This realization caused me to become very depressed, and I entered a deep, soul-searching, grieving period. Even though I was only in the cult for six months, it took me about one year to completely recover from it. I began speaking out about cults in October of 1991, and I am now averaging about one cult lecture or media interview a week.