Then, I briefly read the other ethics conditions and did them too. One of them was "Treason" which is done after Confusion. I had to FIND OUT THAT YOU ARE ______. I had to find out that I was a SEA ORGANIZATION MEMBER, and that I now had that responsibility. I was not just Maureen from Santa Clara, I was a SEA ORGANIZATION MEMBER. After I studied and thought and wrote down things, with the help of the Ethics Officer helping me, I worked through the conditions of confusion, treason, enemy, and up to Doubt. On the Doubt formula, I had to look at the statistics of the church of Scientology. I got shown these graphs depicting all the great works of Scientology Organizations around the world and I was told how the Sea Organization influences that. I was shown all the thousands of people Scientology was helping and then I had to compare that to the statistics of the group I was considering going back to, just being a kid and finishing high-school.

Hmmm.... when I go to high school, I was only helping me and not anyone else. I didn't have any statistics for spiritually freed beings. I had to decide which was a better group to be a part of. Being a Sea Organization member or being a student in a wog (a derogatory term for a non Scientologist) high school that apparently brainwashes kids with psychology information. With the "help" and guidance of my Ethics Officer, I decided to stay in the Sea Organization. This took all of a day to do. The next day I was given some "hatting" on how to do laundry so that it would not take me so long to do. My laundry duties were also lessened so that it would not take us until 4 AM in the mornings to finish all the work.

"Hatting" is the Scientology term for "training". I was shown a Flag Order, which are the policies particular to Sea Organization members, that said that all Sea Organization Members are expected to do ANY JOB WHETHER HATTED OR NOT. So I could not refuse a job just because I didn't know how to do it well. This was hard for me to accept. My step father had always taught me, "if you are going to do something, do it right" and so I felt that I was being pressured to do poor work whenever I got assigned jobs I had no training for. And did not like that I was expected to do a great job on the laundry without any training, but I could not refuse to do the work because of it. I was glad that I got the hatting on how to do laundry better. I wished I'd had it earlier.

My brother and I were then assigned to a month of studying about what a Sea Organization Member was so that I could become a better one. I was told that my "going into doubt" about the Sea Organization didn't really count since I had not done Product Zero, the basic Sea Organization member training, which I should have done when I first arrived. I learned kind of the hard way that most Sea Organization Members often have not studied the LRH Policies for their assigned duties and so they make mistakes that later have to be corrected. It was apparently a mistake that my little brother and I were assigned to laundry duty when we first arrived and not to Sea Org Basic Training, a mistake that I could have noticed if I had read more books of LRH orders.

I was taught that LRH was always right about everything, so if something went wrong, it was because his orders were not followed by everyone involved. It was so contradictory to their practice of putting people onto jobs that they had not done any training for.

We went into a group of about 50 new Sea Organization Members in Clearwater and we had to do the EPF, Estates Project Force. I made many new friends, I was studying and learning. I was appeased for the moment and felt that I had made the right decision and that I should not have doubted it. But also, I felt safer going with the flow of things, with the group. The idea of being alone in Clearwater without anyone else's support was terrifying to me. I'd found that "being in doubt" was really frowned on and I'd been given the cold shoulder even at the mention of it as if it was some kind of disease.

My brother and I were both very hard working. He got given a job at the Fort Harrison of the Internal Communications Flow Officer. He delivered all the mail and letters. He enjoyed the job, he didn't have to work on the weekends, because it "looked bad" to have kids working on the weekends in Florida. Since I was 16, it didn't matter if I worked on the weekends, so I always did. I was put into a management organization called the Commodores Messenger Organization. I did very well here doing errands and being a communicator/admin. I was promoted to "over the rainbow" which was a term for working out in Hemet at the International Management base and film studio for the C of S.

I spent the next 17 years at the Int Base, mostly working in Golden Era Productions, for the film crew and in the Grounds Dept.

During my 17 years, I never finished high school. I never got a college education. I learned some basic film making skills, but nothing that could be called a "film school." I also never completed any formal Scientology training as a counselor as I was promised. I liked the "method one" that I received, which was counseling on the subject of past words not understood in studies. I got to do the Key to Life course which is also related to literacy and words. Mostly what I studied were the manuals to equipment and on the job training programs.

I worked an average of 18 hours a day or more, 7 days a week. I did errands, manual labor, building maintenance and repair, videography, camera work, video playback, set construction, gardening and irrigation projects, etc. Jobs ranging from semi-skilled work to very skilled work. Many of the skills I'd learned earlier in public school programs were taken advantage of. It was implied to me that I was smart because I was a "past life Scientologist" and not because I actually had a great school system taking care of me before Scientology. The Santa Clara County school system had and still has some of the best schools in America.

I was allowed to visit my mom only on two occasions for less than a week each time. My entire life was taken over. Whenever I complained or tried to change things for the better for myself, I had to do the appropriate Ethics Condition until I was perfectly happy to be taken advantage of personally and in relationship to my family. I never got any help with my mother. In fact, in 1992, I was told I had to disconnect from her! Because she was connected to psychiatrists who are the big enemy of Scientology.

By being constantly led on about what I was going to get from the Sea Organization for my work and then never actually getting it, I essentially had a great deal of my life extorted from me. I calculated approximately how much the Church of Scientology International and the Church of Scientology of Clearwater would have had to pay a regular worker for all the hours I worked for them in my 18 years in the Sea Organization, and it calculated to one million dollars. If the Churches of Scientology International and Clearwater had to pay minimum wage or slightly more for the more skilled work, plus the overtime then they would owe me about 500,000 (I subtracted what I was given as room and board and some counseling). There were thousands of hours I spent working on my sleep time on "all-nighters." In 1993, I added up how many hours of actual sleep time I'd been given and divided it by the number of days in that year. The average of sleep time I got in 1993 was 2.5 hours a day! ALL YEAR. 1994 was better, I averaged about 4.5 a night all year.

I developed health problems and emotional problems just from the stress of never sleeping and some work related injuries. I had to quit staff. Or they kicked me out for not being as productive anymore. Whichever. I left. I "routed out" which took me three years of being forced to confess to sins and evil intentions. I just started making things up after a while. It was not fun. I totally understand why others have chosen to skip the "route out" step by simply leaving. I found it oppressive and challenging to my sanity.

My husband [name deleted by admins] filed for a divorce without even speaking to me during this time. He was a Scientology kid, raised in Scientology and it was all he knew, he did not want to ever leave. Even though I hadn't really gotten to know him very well, (we were both too busy to have a real marriage), I was upset about the divorce.

Since I had donated half a million dollars worth of skilled labor, I feel like I have a right to complain about certain lies I was told about what I would get for all my work. During the last 4 years of my Sea Organization life, I discovered that medical and dental are not always given when needed. In fact, it has to get approved by financial planning committees and by the Medical Liaison office. I was often told that "there was not enough money" to pay for my medical and dental needs.

When I finally got out of the SO, I had 3,000 worth of dental needs (wisdom teeth, root canals, and a cap) and I had over 10,000 worth of physical therapy and MRIs needed for my spine problems. Injuries I'd gotten doing manual labor for the C of S that I had been denied proper care for. I did manage to finally get a little Workers Compensation Insurance, but not nearly enough.

David Miscavige, who runs the Church of Scientology from his position in Religious Technology Center, ordered a brand new house to be built for LRH around 1996. It cost 30 million dollars. There were no writings left behind by LRH asking for a new house. He liked his old one. I had actually seen that in writing, the "Very Well Dones" on the renovations projects of his old house when he was still alive to see the photographs of it. There were no verbal or written instructions to David Miscavige to spend 30 million dollars of the CofS money on a new house for LRH, yet DM did so, just on his own whim.

So, there was no money to help me see a doctor. I was mad about this, especially after I'd essentially "donated" about half a million dollars of skilled labor. But there WAS money to build a house that was not really needed. I will never forget this one time after I had read a note from the Medical Liaison Officer telling me that my request to get my back and neck examined was denied because of lack of money, and I looked up the hill to the north of the Hemet property and I saw a brand new house being built. Would LRH even care if he had a new house, or would he have wanted me to get my medical needs taken care of? If anything made me realize I was being a slave, that was it.

After I routed out, I tried to stay a public Scientologist in good standing for five years. I tried to take courses at the Glendale Mission and I volunteered regularly for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, at their office on Hollywood Blvd.

I was stressed out by all the demands placed on me as a public Scientologist. I was routinely demanded to donate between 3,000 and 6,000 a year. Money I did not really have. I was also discouraged from going back to school and I was discouraged from pursuing medical care for my spine. I was told that what I needed was Scientology auditing and training. I wanted this to be true. I wanted to think that what I had worked so hard for was the answer to my problems. I wanted to think that I had not wasted over half my life promoting and training others in something that did not actually deliver what it promised.

Well, I kind of had to wake up one day, because I had an eating disorder. I'd suffered from it off and on for 10 years and it was getting worse again. Only this time, I didn't have a bunch of Sea Org Members around me to come to the rescue, I was on my own with it. I'd had hours and hours of confessionals, checking for evil intentions and even three tries at the Introspection Rundown (probably about 180,000 worth of Scientology counseling) and it had not worked to permanently solve my eating problems. I HAD to seek help elsewhere. I was losing weight, I felt like I was dying. I contacted some ex-Scientologists on the internet asking for help. I emailed with Chuck Beatty and he found me some other ex-Scientologists who said they could help me. They did not try to convince me to leave Scientology. They gave me a choice. They said their offer of help, both financially and in terms of advice was not dependent on whether I wanted to leave Scientology or not. I found this refreshing, because Scientology will ONLY help you if you want to stay a member. They won't help ex-members.

I did eventually decide that I did want to seek non-Scientology help, so I got in touch with a very good psychologist who was a specialist in eating disorders. I had not officially said, "I'm not a Scientologist" but going over to see a psychologist for help is about the same thing.

Within about 7 sessions, only costing me $280.00, I was cured. I no longer had an eating disorder. I was amazed at how smart this psychologist was. She was amazed at how easy I was to work with. She was amazed that Scientology had spent so many hours trying to help me and failing, because I was factually one of her easiest cases. I'd been being told what a difficult and next to impossible case I was to work with by the best auditors and Scientology tech terminals in the world. I mean at the Int base, the tech team is expected to be better even than at Flag, they have twice as many things to do to get RTC OK to work in the tech teams at the Int base. Yet, they were complete failures in relationship to helping me with my problems. I'd been questioning Scientology before, but this really made me question it more.

I called [name deleted by admin], at the Citizens Commission on Human Rights on a Wednesday when I was supposed to volunteer at night, and I told her I was getting help with a psychologist. Sam said that I could no longer volunteer at CCHR because I was 'sleeping with the enemy.' I wished Sam would see my psychologist because she was dangerously overweight. I was worried that she too would not get any help for her eating disorder within the framework of Scientology. I had heard other stories earlier about Scientologists who died of eating disorders despite being on auditing lines at an Advanced Organization.

I began to think of the Citizens Commisison on Human Rights as more of a fanatic hate group than a group of people who wanted to improve the field of mental health. It broke my heart to think of them like that, because I really liked many of the staff there and I always thought about how my mom had been abused in a mental hospital long ago and how it would have been cool if CCHR was around back then to stick up for her. But the problem I was having with continuing to endorse the Citizen Commission on Human Rights is that they do not acknowledge that Scientology does not and cannot help with many kinds of mental health issues, they do not acknowledge that there are good psychologists and psychiatrists around. To them, they are ALL bad and Scientologists are forbidden to seek help from them. To CCHR ALL of psychiatry and psychology are some kind of evil plot against the human race.

So in late 2005, I was mad that I still had not been allowed to see my sister, and I was mad that I had needed to go outside of Scientology for help with my personal problems, problems I'd been told Scientology WOULD and COULD help me with but never did. I spoke to a journalist for the December 2005 LA Times article about the Int base. She quoted me about a project I'd worked on to impress Tom Cruise in the early 90's. I'd had to stay up all night pulling up sod in a small field so that wild flowers could be planted there the next day to impress TC. The field never grew in very well and got re-sodded later. But the fact that 20 religious workers donated their sleep time preparing this wildflower field for TC was something I felt I had an obligation to report on. If Scientology gets tax exempt status, it seems like this was very clearly an abuse of this.

Because I contributed to an article that embarrassed the C of S, I was declared a Suppressive Person. In May of 2006, I was handed a piece of paper in Gold color with a bunch of lies about me. There is paragraph in my SP declare about how Suppressive Persons should not be accorded the rights of a rational human being. I found that Scientology was very clearly against freedom of speech. I had not lied, yet I was being told that I was a Suppressive and should not have any rights because of what I had done. I was given a message from my sister, "I hope she gets on with her life." I don't know what that was supposed to mean, but I never heard from my sister again. Being declared a Suppressive meant that none of my Scientology friends or family (sister) could speak to me anymore.

I have been going back to college and getting the education I wanted and I wished I could have gotten earlier. I have learned about the Constitution and about the Bill of Rights and about democracy. I have improved my writing skills and my thinking skills. I have been able to properly evaluate many of the things I was fed about Dianetics and Scientology.

I can say that despite whatever gains and improvements that Scientology gave me, it was not worth all the work I gave them. I do not think it was legal for them to kidnap me when I was 16 and then trick me into donating so much of my labor. I think it should be illegal for them to recruit minors into the Sea Organization at all. Donating time and/or money to any Scientology organization is gambling, they have no integrity as a group for delivering or keeping good on any of the promises that their recruiters and sales people use to obtain donations and new recruits.

Maureen Smith Bolstad

Pages:[1]