Admin Note: Some names changed or shortened to initials.

I was born in 1981 to Scientologist parents. My mom had just left the SO, from CCI. I guess she was trying to raise my younger brother and I as if we were in the SO. We had a regimented schedule and strict rules. For example, we weren’t allowed to eat anything she deemed unhealthy, which was just about everything. We went to school starting when we were 3. She didn’t believe in things like summer vacation or spring break. She also didn’t believe in doctors, so we didn’t get any medical attention, vaccines, stuff like that. We were never given children’s Tylenol or anything. We were not allowed to watch TV or movies, except the very rare Disney movie. Basically she was a typical “in-ethics” Scientologist parent.

Mom wouldn’t let us go to friends houses to play, or have them over to our house, except on very rare occasions. She had white glove standards, and we spent a lot of time cleaning. She was a typical Scientologist parent in that she viewed us as “out exchange” by nature of being her children. She clothed and fed us, so we owed her. My dad spent most of his time working out of town, he wasn’t around much when I was younger. When he was, sometimes he was great. He would secretly break mom’s rules and give us ice cream, stuff like that. But he was also very temperamental and violent when it came to discipline. He wasn’t as much into Scientology as my mom was, even though he was the first one to get into it. He just left raising the kids up to her, and let her make the rules, choose our schools, etc. There were some really good moments, like swimming with Dad, or being at the beach (we lived in Florida when I was little). I was pretty happy when I was very little, it was later things changed.

Mom was kind of unhinged even for a Scientologist – she lost her temper and got really violent. She would do things like sit on me and spit in my face while she was punching me and calling me names at the top of her lungs. She would hit us until her hand hurt, then get mad because of that, and go on with a spoon or whatever was handy. She was pretty crazy. Now that I look back I realize that’s probably why we weren’t allowed to have friends. She made it clear that she didn’t want much to do with us. She spent a lot of time crying for no reason, I think she must have had pretty bad depression. But she covered it up by acting unnaturally happy in public. We learned to lie about how great everything was, just like her.

We also moved a lot – once a year, at least, and sometimes we would only live in a town for 6 months. So that made schooling and making friends kind of hard, too. My brother and I spent a lot of time reading and ignoring the rest of the world. We tried to take care of each other. He also had a lot of stress, and it manifested in things like constantly vomiting blood for no apparent reason. Mom did take him to the doctor eventually for that, but they said nothing was wrong with him (it stopped when we got there). Usually when we did go to a doc, it was to the Scientology doctors at Shaw Health Center in LA.

We went to Real School in Florida, I think we might have gone to Apple School very briefly. I really can’t recall all the schools I’ve been to. Sometimes it was only for a few weeks. We went to Delphi LA from about 1998 – 1990. We went to Gavilan Hills (a sort of bastard cousin of the Mojave Ranch school) around 1992. We went to the Learning Connection from 1994-ish to 1995ish. I’m the one that wanted to name the big kid school Neilson Academy. I actually got the best schooling there, I finally got a bit caught up.

The teachers were nice to me, too. A lot of the time we didn’t go to school at all, so I didn’t get much of an education. I never took a science class, or a computer class, and never really learned to multiply or do algebra until recently. My mom believed that school was completely unimportant. We needed to be on course at the org. I got her to let me go to a Catholic High School for a few months. It was great. It was an all-girl school, it felt calm and safe, and the kids were nice to me even though I was kind of weird. I even joined a running team. The problem was I couldn’t keep up in my classes. Other than English, I was slowly failing. I didn’t have the study tools that I needed. I knew all the tools to get along in a Scientology school, but things like how to write an essay were missing. I didn’t know what a topic statement was, or how to research for the paper. Math was a joke, I was failing the lowest level class that they had. I got really sick just before Finals, and when mom asked if I wanted to quit I said yes. To this day I regret it.

I was getting auditing when I was 4, just kid stuff. I did STCC and other small courses at CCI. I started the KTL when it first came out in 1998. I was only 7 and my brother was 6. We only made it to the beginning of Small Common Words, because it was way too hard. Then we were routed onto the Purif. I went on and off the purif over the next 2 years. I kept quitting because I hated it. I ended up on really high doses of niacin, more than most of the grownups, and then they finally realized that I was overrun. They told me I had finished in the first 2 weeks. I was only about 9 at the time. Then I think we went onto TRs and Objectives, and failed miserably. I couldn’t do 2 hours of OT TR 0 without starting to fall asleep. Trying to do TR 0 for 2 hours was impossible! Everything was just way too hard. My mom kept telling everyone how genius we both were, but it was sooo out gradient. I don’t really remember what we did after that, I know we bounced from course to course and sometimes got auditing, both in the field and at the org. I didn’t like any of it. Mom made me go even when I begged her not to.

I got in some trouble at CC. I was ALWAYS in Ethics, writing up O/Ws, doing conditions, stuff like that. I kicked and screamed and jumped out windows trying to escape, to no avail. One of my friends showed me how to steal candy from the canteen, that was like the worst thing I ever did. Eventually I confessed, paid back the like 8-10 dollars I owed, and did MEST work to make it up. Looking back, I don’t know why they thought I was such an awful child. My parents told them I was. I was horribly angry all the time. But that’s because they were hurting me. Of course I couldn’t articulate any of this at the time. I didn’t really know what was going on myself. I just knew I was MAD.

I went to Delphi LA from about 7 to 9 years old. I think my parents loved it because we were gone all day. School went from 8am to 5pm. Mom would sometimes forget to pick us up after school, she would show up around 6 or 7. After homework and chores we went straight to bed. That was a very bad school. I spent a lot of time in the classroom doing work, but I didn’t actually learn much. You see, I was already a big reader, I read for fun. But I had missed so much school that the math was too hard for me. I never could understand it. My teachers would tell me to find my MUs, and wouldn’t ever talk to me enough to realize that it was out gradient.

I finally gave up and accepted that I wouldn’t graduate the form and stopped trying. I was sent to ethics a lot. Diana G was the ethics officer then. She would tell me to write up my O/Ws and leave me in the closet room all day, no lunch break or anything. I would tell her that I was done and felt better, but she would always say “no you’re not” and make me write more. I started just making stuff up. They were very punishment-oriented there. Several of my friends were expelled after confessing to minor crimes/issues, even after being told that they would not be punished and that anything they said was confidential. The so-called confidential interview was read to the class by the teacher, so that we all knew how bad the kid was and why they were gone. That made me really upset and also scared. One day I told my teacher, I think it was Mrs. Hill, that I couldn’t sit down because my dad had beat me so bad. I had bruises all over my legs. She sent me to the principle and then they sent me to Diana. I thought I was in big trouble! Then they called my parents. That got me in really hot water at home. After that I didn’t go to Delphi anymore. I don’t know exactly what happened. My parents said that it was because Dad refused to do conditions for hitting me, that could have been true.

After that I was put in my room for a year. I just read my books and lived in an imaginary world inside my own head. Sometimes I ran away. But I didn’t know where to go, I had no friends, the only people I even knew were a long drive away. My mother had indoctrinated me thoroughly to distrust my own relatives, the police, anyone who could have helped me. So I would run away for a day or so and then come back when I was hungry and scared of the dark. Eventually dad put a deadbolt on my door and that stopped. Actually I’m not sure whether or not the year without school was before or after we lived in Arizona. We might have moved there after the incident at Delphi.

Then I disappeared for about a year, when my parents moved to Arizona and I went to boarding school in Riverside (Gavilan Hills). There we didn’t actually do any schoolwork. I just ran around in the dirt, got beat up by bigger kids, got in fights with the ones that I thought I could take, and ate very little. I shudder to think about my hygiene at that point. There was only one bathroom for the school (it was in their house) and never any hot water. Neither of the adults ever told us to shower anyway. So I never bathed or brushed my teeth. I fell in the stream sometimes but that was it for being clean. Ugh! Also, I really had no clothes. I remember at one point I only had one pair of jeans that didn’t fit right, they rubbed my legs raw on the inside seams. I only had a couple of t-shirts and some shoes that were the wrong size. Looking back, I didn’t ever complain to mom or dad about it. I didn’t think there was a point, and there wasn’t. Mom would have taken me to some stuffy grown-up store, like Nordstrom’s, and tried to make me wear adult-type dresses and things that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. I would have refused and it would have deteriorated to crying and going home with nothing. I was determined to be as much like a boy as possible, and she wanted me to dress like a 20 year old girly-girl.

This is the hardest thing to write, but it’s part of the story. I wouldn’t tell about it, but I have been reading other kids’ stories and finally realized that I’m not the only one who was being sexually abused. My rape didn’t happen in the SO though. My dad started abusing me when I was 6. I told my mom after the first time it happened (not that she could miss the marks from the belt and stuff) but she freaked. She told me it was my fault, and that I was lying, and no one would believe me anyway. Her logic sucked I know, but I was 6 so I believed her. She told me not to make things up.

I think he was doing drugs because he was like 2 different people. Sometimes he was my best friend. Sometimes he beat me up. It was weird. I never told anyone while I was living at home. After the incident at Delphi, and some other conversations I had where I was treated like I was at fault for being hit, I knew better than to tell anybody about it. Anyway he said he would kill me if I did. I believed him. I still think he meant it. At least, when he was being the angry dad he did. I managed to push it all down and forget about it most of the time, just act like nothing happened as best as I could. Everyone said I was a bad kid, so I didn’t want them to know just how bad I was. I finally told an auditor later on, but they didn’t do anything. Now I hate knowing that that is all in my PC folder for anyone to find. Even my mom could look at it at any time. This bothers me still. I used to get worried that she was going to call me and start screaming at me about "telling lies" again. Since the org didn’t do anything about it, I’m pretty sure they didn’t believe me anyway. They all knew him, my auditor was his friend, which made talking about it hard. I don’t think she believed me either. Right after that was when they sent me back to him. But I’m getting out of order.

When I was about 13, we switched over to ASHO because mom started on the BC. Everything continued in about the same vein. I "volunteered" for the CF project (thanks mom!) and was getting my objectives in the HGC despite literally trying to run away every time I was in session. Sometimes they posted a guard outside the door. It sucked. I liked course much better, and I actually enjoyed switching to co-auditing. My twin was my age, and we got along very well. After I joined the SO I had to look out for him, because his mom was crazy and did things like drop him off at the org for 2 weeks with no food, no money, and nowhere to live. He was 14 or so at the time. (I ended up recruiting him into the SO, for which I am now sorry. He did leave, however, and is still a hard core Scientologist.)

One of the things that makes me mad, looking back, is how I kept telling people at the org about how my parents were hitting me and they didn’t care. In fact, I was always having to get it off as a withhold, so I was treated like it was something that I did wrong. No one ever pulled them in to ethics, and no one ever reported them. Of course that would have been against Scientology rules anyway.

I signed my first SO contract when I was 12. I didn’t want to join. Dave Horwedel and some other guy took me in a small room, the one off the lobby of ASHO that was at one point the chaplain’s office and once the SORO’s (after the renos it turned into the RTC front office). They said they wouldn’t let me go until I signed a contract. They wouldn’t let me get my mom. So I signed so that I could get away. My mom flipped and said I couldn’t join until I was 18. But I ended up changing my mind eventually. Looking back I realize that it was partly because my home life was so bad. I thought things would be better in the SO, and at least no one would hit me anymore. Plus I was really eager to be a grown-up. Also over those next several years, everyone at the orgs was working on me to join, telling me how I had to take responsibility for planet Earth, stuff like that.

I was working as a contracted volunteer for Pac Renos for about 6 months. I worked with some cool people in the Arts and Signs department. I really liked it. My brother and I both had a pretty rosy picture of what it was like in the SO. We thought it was like being a Jedi or something. You know, elite, special, and the uniforms were cool. Stacey Moxon was a friend of mine and although she wasn’t actively recruiting me, she told me lots of good stories about it.

My mom was cheating on my dad, she had her boyfriend move in with us. He was creepy. My dad was really sick at the time. He would get mad and leave home a lot. I really hated how life was there. She wasn’t hitting me really anymore, neither was my dad, because I had learned how to be their perfect kid. But they were both beating the crap out of my brother, throwing him across the room, choking him, over stupid things like not eating his spinach. I hated it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was doing really badly in school anyway, I knew I would be lucky to graduate high school and I had no idea what I would do with my life.

So one day I walked into the recruiter’s office and told them that I wanted to join. I got routed onto the EPF the next day, even though I was technically too young.

I liked the EPF. I was kept so busy running left and right that I had no time to think at all, much less miss my brother. (Now I know that they do that on purpose in the SO.) I got along really well with Mr. G. I did everything I was told to do with no back talk, I did the courses faster than checksheet time, I never once complained about the gross chores we had to do like scrub the dumpsters or empty the grease trap under the galley (that made me vomit involuntarily, though, it was so disgusting!) So Mr. G liked me and never yelled at me. He reminded me of my dad so I acted the way that worked to make my dad happy, and it worked for him, too.

At some point an SO exec came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go to HCO. I didn’t know what it was. I was slated to go to the TTC. But I told her I didn’t care. I really didn’t. I didn’t know then what jobs were treated better or what orgs had more prestige. CMO and ASHO were actually fighting over me, but I didn’t care. CMO was supposed to get me, and I was told I would go to the Universe Corps, because Stacey was officially my recruiter. But ASHOD got me because they were under a mission to go St Hill size. (That never happened until right after I left, anyway.)

About a year after I joined, my little brother did too. But by then my parents had gone to the Freewinds and FSO, so he joined there. Oh yeah, and around my 16th birthday I got a day off, and that's when my mom told me they were getting a divorce. They didn’t though because my dad didn’t want to. My mom left him, but he paid for her to go on the bridge full time, go to the Freewinds, stuff like that. He had a lot of money and she spent all of it. She got in really big trouble at the org for sleeping with her BC twin. But she and my dad both donated to Superpower, and the IAS, and sponsored a mission, so they loved her again.

So yeah, I went to HCO ASHOD. There I found out how much the SO could suck. I was yelled at all day every day. This is because I was not a good worker. I mean, I could happily do any job you told me to, but I couldn’t think for myself. If you told me to "get the staff hatted" [admin note: "hatted" means "trained"] it was too long range and complicated. I was like a robot. I was in such shock, anyway, that I just spaced out all the time. Also I was really tired. I never got any sleep, and when I did I had insomnia anyway. My seniors were positive that I was out ethics and out 2D [admin note: "out 2D" means "engaging in sexually inappropriate behavior"] and kept pulling me in for interviews and yelling at me. But I was just a stupid kid who was in over her head.

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