My Nine Lives in Scientology by M. Pignotti 8/10 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/pignotti/ We were just off the shore of South Carolina when Hubbard was warned that IRS agents were waiting on the docks to arrest Hubbard, so we headed for Bermuda, where we stayed for several weeks. This wonderful, peaceful voyage across the Atlantic, unbeknownst to me, was to be the calm before the storm. All hell was about to break loose. 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 to just 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 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 cancelling 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 Miller 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 that 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. The Lesson of the RPF In January, 1975, I was once again on the RPF. This time, however, it was not like the RPF of 1974 that I had been through the first time. This group of RPFers did not pull together to help each other through and it was not so easy for me to get out. A new feature of the RPF had been invented called the RPF's RPF, for people who got into trouble on the RPF. A person assigned to the RPF's RPF had to work deep down in the engine room of the ship all day, cleaning out bilges and was supposed to sleep in the chain locker. No communication with anyone was allowed, except for the RPF's ethics officer. The first person assigned to the RPF's RPF was an executive from London named Ron Hopkins. I caught occasional glimpses of him on his way to and from the engine room. He was covered with muck from the bilges and looked miserable. He still had a chest cough from a bout of pneumonia he was obviously still recovering from. After a few weeks, Ron got out of the RPF's RPF and joined us on the RPF. He and I became friendly and, at first, he was one person who was supportive of me. I saw him as a very sensitive, yet strong person. I can remember that he loved to play flamenco guitar and would often play for us. He was a natural leader and soon became the person in charge of the RPF, at which time his cult personality took over. Life on the RPF was hard, beginning each day at 5:30 AM. We were divided into groups of 5-7 people. The women's teams cleaned all the heads (bathrooms) on the ship, certain passageways and lounges, such as the aft lounge. Cleaning the heads didn't mean just swishing some toilet bowl cleaner around and going on to the next one. We had to scrub down the entire bathroom, including all the bulkheads (walls) and ceilings. After we cleaned an area, it had to pass a white glove inspection. If the glove came up dirty, the person who cleaned that area had to run laps from bow to stern of the ship (about 1/5 of a mile each). One time, when my senior wasn't satisfied with the way I cleaned a bathroom, she ordered me to "take a lap". I protested because I thought she was being unfair and her reply was, "Don't Q&A with me. Take two laps." I objected again and she said, "Take four laps." This went on until I was up to about 10 laps, which I eventually had to do. Another time, I was ordered to run laps and I walked them instead. The person in charge of the RPF at the time, Homer Schomer, caught me walking and ran after me. I tried to run away from him, but he was too fast for me. He caught me by physically grabbing me and I ended up having to do more laps. The lesson we were to learn on the RPF was to obey orders without question, regardless of how we felt about it or who was giving the orders. This was a lesson that I was, obviously, very unwilling to learn. I had not learned it my first time on the RPF, so I was back a second time. Blind obedience violated everything I had ever valued. I had thought that Scientology was about independence and self-determinism, not blind obedience to authority. To add to my difficulties, I was having trouble with my auditing partner. Being audited and auditing another through the RPF program was a requirement for graduation and my partner and I just weren't compatible. Finally, it became clear that it wasn't working out between us and, at his request, he was assigned to someone else. I tried another auditing partner, but that didn't work out either. I felt desolated. There seemed to be no hope for me getting out of the RPF. I can remember one day when I completely broke down. I went down into the lower hold where the RPF classroom was and cried like I have never cried before in my life. It felt like I was never going to stop. I felt totally out of control. Finally, Ron Hopkins went to the medical officer and got me some Cal mag, which was supposed to calm me down so I could get some rest. It seemed to work for a few hours, but the next day, my grief came back. I went through several days where I couldn't stop crying. I was in a deep state of mourning. I had lost a great deal more than an auditing partner. On an emotional level, I had come to the realization that Scientology was a sham, but only on an emotional level. I had no words to describe my loss at the time. There was no exit counsellor or deprogrammer around to help me see what was really happening. All I knew was that I felt worse than I ever had in my entire life. David Mayo noticed the state I was in and seemed very concerned, but not even the Senior Case Supervisor could fix what was wrong with me. I felt I had lost everything. I had come into Scientology with great dreams and visions about what could be and I had worked hard to make those dreams a reality. For awhile, I felt that my dreams had come true. Less than a year before that, I had felt like I was on top of the world and that all the bad times were behind me. Then it was all taken away from me. Why was it taken away from me? Because I had asserted my right as a human being to choose my own friends and the friend I happened to have chosen was L. Ron Hubbard's son. I wished to God he hadn't been Hubbard's son, but he was. Hubbard could wipe a person out, it seemed. He could build a person up, make every dream come true and then, suddenly take everything away -- just like that! I had lost my ability to be angry. All I could do was cry. At one point, I said I wanted to leave, but David Mayo and Jeff Walker managed to talk me out of it. David said things like, "You're going to break my heart." and Jeff really got to me when he said, "You'll be forgotten about once you've left the Sea Org." I finally decided I had to try to stick it out and stay, no matter what happened. As unhappy as I was, I believed that life outside of Scientology would be much worse. I made one final attempt to assert myself. One day I was standing watch as Quartermaster, logging people on and off the ship. This was a duty that RPFers were often assigned to do. One day I had been on watch all morning and someone was supposed to relieve me so I could have lunch, but no one showed up. Finally, I went below decks to the aft lounge to see what happened to my relief person. Ron Hopkins and some other RPFers were having lunch and he refused to help me. I just exploded. My anger had very little to do with what was actually going on -- I just felt I had to make one last attempt to assert myself. I said I was going to have my lunch and to hell with everything, at which point, Ron said: "That's it! You're assigned to the RPF's RPF." I'll never forget those words. I knew I had gone too far and tried to apologize, but it was no use. Ron was adamant. He said I could request a comm ev if I wished to challenge the assignment, but if I did, I would probably be thrown out of the Sea Org in disgrace. And so it came to pass, that on May 26, 1975, I was assigned to the RPF's RPF. I spent very long days down in the engine room, cleaning foul smelling muck out of the bilges and then painting them. Fortunately, Ron Hopkins showed me some mercy and I didn't have to sleep in the chain locker. I was assigned a condition of Enemy and to get out of it, I had to write up the formula, which was "Find out who you really are." I wrote up the formula and submitted it to Ron Hopkins, but he wouldn't accept what I had written. I didn't know what he wanted me to write. For days, I struggled to find an answer that would satisfy him. Who was I? At that point, I really didn't know. If I had known who I really was, I would have let them throw me out and gotten as far away from the ship and everyone aboard as I could. But leaving Scientology was a possibility that I was not willing to consider. Jeff and David had talked me out of it earlier, and at that time I felt that leaving Scientology would be worse than whatever hell I was going through on the ship. I spent five days on the RPF's RPF, but it seemed much longer. I wasn't allowed to communicate with anyone except Ron Hopkins. One day, David Mayo broke the rules and spoke to me. I dutifully told him that he was not allowed to speak to me. He told me not to worry about it. I'll never forget what he did for me that day, just by breaking the rules and talking to me. I don't recall exactly what he said, but he encouraged me to hang in there and helped me feel I could make it through this horrendous experience. He showed me compassion when I needed it the most. I determined that I would hang onto what little sanity I had left. The way I did this was to shut off all of my emotions. It was a matter of survival. I finally wrote up my formula to Ron's satisfaction and got out of the RPF's RPF. I had been broken, after a long hard struggle. When Ron Hopkins said, "That's it. You're assigned to the RPF's RPF" on May 26, 1975 in the aft lounge of the Flagship Apollo, something snapped in me and I no longer had any urge to fight back. I was no longer angry; I was no longer sad; I was no longer happy; I felt nothing. I simply did as I was told. At long last, I had learned the lesson of the RPF. I want to make it clear at this point that I don't blame Ron Hopkins, David Mayo, Jeff Walker, Cathy Cariotaki, Jill Goodman or any other Scientologist or Sea Org member for what I experienced on the ship. They were all under the influence of L. Ron Hubbard and were only doing what they thought was best at the time. We were all trying to survive. I only hope that they are free now and understand what was really going on with all of us on the ship, so they can come to terms with it and go on with their lives. Up to this point, I have not been at a loss for words in describing my experiences, but now I find myself feeling that I have very little to say about the period that followed my being released from the RPF's RPF. Perhaps this is because there was very little of me present during that time. My cult identity had taken over and I had become a Rondroid, a robot for LRH. I had stopped causing trouble and did as I was told. During the summer of 1975, LRH started going ashore on photo shoots. He brought people in the RPF along with him and used us as crew and models. I was in several of the pictures, which are mainly photographic essays designed to promote Scientology. I never saw the final product and don't know if these pictures were ever published anywhere. I starred in one of them as a woman who was very sick, got auditing and became the picture of health. In the "before" shot, they made up my face with a pale greyish makeup to make me look awful. Then they showed me getting auditing and in the "after" shot, put rosy-colored make up and red lipstick on me so I looked like I was glowing with good health. I can remember that Hubbard was very particular about how he wanted me to stand. He came over to me and showed me exactly how he wanted me to pose. Unlike the stories I heard about his later venture as a motion picture director, he seemed to be very nice on these photo shoots, which he enjoyed. After all that had gone down between Hubbard and myself on the ship, this was the first time that he actually spoke to me in person without a messenger, other than the times he had nodded hello to me in passing. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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