A few weeks ago, I recieved this email on the San Diego Anonymous account. It was from someone who had claimed to just left Scientology, telling me a bit about her story and just wanting to share.

At the end of the email, I cried. It was one of the hardest things I have ever read, and made me think "This is why."

I wrote her back, and asked if I could share her email. She agreed, and there were a few changes made. I got the final versin of it she made with the changes to remove identifiers for her own safety. (There weren't many to begin with because she was still scared but there were enough for OSA to track her down if they read the original message.) The final one ended up back in my inbox on the 17th, and I printed this up to read to the San Diego anons at our global. I'll post the video when our camera anon gets back to me.

This is why, people. Make sure you have tissues handy - it's just too incredible not to share.


Quote:
I don't even know where to begin, so please, bear with me.

I was a Scientologist until very recently. It's very hard for me to type this out, and it's taken me a few weeks to decide wether or not to write you. I have no idea who you are, or what you do. I just saw the email link on your site and decided I had to write you.

I'm in my 50s. I cannot tell you where I lived or give you names, for reasons you know better than most people in Scientology do. I wanted to share my story with you, and how thankful I am. I'm going to try to speak in terms the general public can understand, based on you asking me if you could share this email.

I was a public Scientologist for over twenty years. I got into Scientology as a single mother, because members at the Org would babysit my daughter. I ended up eventually going up the Bridge until the level of OT2 before after spending alot of time, money, and more auditing sessions than I can begin to remember over the course of 15 years.

My daughter started attending courses and doing auditing as well and when she was in her later teens, Flag sent some Sea Org executives to our org and she was hooked. She signed on at the Sea Org when she was eighteen years old, in the late nineties.

I was very proud of her. My daughter was doing her part to help clear the planet and I was doing my part at the stress test tables to bring people into the Orgs and then selling them the Basics.

In 2002, I was called in to the office with the president of our Org. He sat me down and told me that my daughter was requesting to "route out" from the Sea Org and Scientology altogether and as her only close relative and one in Scientology, I was being asked to handle her to convince her to stay in.

We fought for several weeks. She had told me what was happening to her in the Sea Org and at the time I didn't believe her. She was telling us of working 18 hours a day 7 days a week, of being touched and groped by senior Sea Org officials, about not eating properly, and other horrors, very similar to what you've all read and what I've read over the last few weeks. I didn't want to believe her, and I was told that if I couldn't handle her I would be declared PTS for being connected to her. I remember calling her that night, and begged her to stop tearing our family apart, that she had to stay in, didn't she see? She was very upset, and said that was one of the reasons she had to leave, that she just believed there was something better out there, there had to be, there had to be something better than what she was in that would make her mother believe what she was being told over what she was hearing from her own daughter.

After that conversation, she blew a few days later and never finished routing out properly. She just up and left. She had called me several times to try and get me to listen to her, to hear why she had to do it and I felt like I had been betrayed. All the good Scientology had done her, had done me, had done us, why was she doing this, why was she turning her back on Hubbard and the Tech and her own mother? I was legitimately angry at her and hurt, and I couldn't realize it at the time. My heart told me something was wrong, but my head and my way of thinking told me otherwise, that I was doing the right thing.

I ended up disconnecting from my daughter around Christmas of 2002. It never did sit right with me, but I knew we were right, I knew we were clearing the planet. I wasn't PTS but I was given several auditing sessions and security checks to make sure I wasn't harboring any "crimes" against Scientology.

I continued on staff the next six years. My daughter would write me once every few months - I didn't even open the letters she sent and threw them away in the trash. It countinued this way until 2008.

Then in March, an amazing thing happened that changed my life. I was told on March 15th to not come to the Org that saturday, because there were "renovations" that were happenning to the interior or something similar. Most staff and workers got the same notice. I had left something at the Org that I needed, so I went there early in the morning.

An hour later, a group of people wearing masks, listening to music, and waving signs all approached from across the street and by our front doors, coming out of nowhere, about thirty to fifty people, I couldn't see through the windows too well. There were about a dozen staff members in the building and three in the lobby when this happened. I remember thinking it was the strangest thing I had ever seen, with all the masks. The signs said negative things about Scientology - that it was a cult, that it was a scam, and other things that would have normally made me brush it off, but the strangeness of it all kept all three of us locked on what was happening.

Immediately, one of the higher execs came from upstairs and told us we had to go to the meeting now, that we had to go upstairs to the conference room we used for auditing. It was in the middle of the building with no windows. All 12 of us went there, and there was where we stayed. Half of them didn't know what was happening outside and when we went to discuss it, the exec who rounded all of us up told us that it was a dangerous group outside and that they would try to kill us or hurt us if we went out - that they had been making death threats, had made bomb threats, had even killed - KILLED - people. We were being held inside for our own safety, and we were not to discuss what was happening outside, or to listen to anything we may have heard or seen from outside. One staffer went to call the police and called several times over the few hours that the "terrorists" were there.

They kept us in that room for six hours, only allowing short trips to the bathroom and we had to be accompanied by the two top execs who were there both to and from, taking a way through the building that made sure we wouldn't pass any windows.

They finally told us to forget about it and go home, at around six pm, and to forget what we saw as it was a group of SPs who we didn't want to talk with, didn't want to listen to.

I went home that night and I remembered a big sign I had seen with a website on it. It was whyaretheydead.net. I went to the site, and I panicked immediately when I saw what it was, but something just clicked on me, remembering my daughter, and I read for hours on that site and all the other ones linked through it. I read through the night, and had a large headache and didn't come in the next day because of it.

When I did get back to the Org the day after, there had been no renovations done at all. It was strange.

The exec I had mentioned earlier was an OTV. I made the first mistake I shouldn't have. I pulled him aside and asked him, since I was OTII, and had already paid for most of the preparation courses for OTIII, if the Xenu story was true, since I had seen it on so many websites. I was asked how I found out, and why I was asking, and when I said I had just looked at a few sites and was confused, I ended up getting sec-checked for three days, and was told that unless I confessed my crimes I would be kicked off the Bridge.

Over the next few months, I made the decision to leave Scientology, after doing research on it. It was a very, very hard step for me to do and it still is. I've had to move twice, change phone numbers twice, and take other steps to keep them from bothering me. I told them I wanted out completely. My friends inside were told to handle me, and I broke down and cried every night for two weeks when I realized what they were doing to me was what I had been told to do to my daughter six years ago. They disconnected from me when I told them to leave me alone and I really felt I had nobody.

I ended up looking up my daughter, who had moved in the six years. I was so scared when I picked up the phone, it took me five tries to dial the number. She picked up the phone on the third ring and said "Hello?" My voice cracked as I said her name. It was the first time we talked in six years. She just said "Mom?" in the same type of voice, and we both cried. We spoke for six hours that night.

I had missed so much of her life. Since she blew Scientology, she had moved, found a career, and was back in school. She had met a wonderful man and they had married in 2006. They had their first child around Thanksgiving last year, a beautiful daughter.

After I hung up the phone, I was so hurt and angry. I missed everything in my daughter's life because I insisted on not listening to her when she told me why she was leaving, or when she would send me letters. All her life was in those to tell me how she was, and I missed them all. I missed the letter telling me that she got accepted into school. I missed the letter about her telling me about her new job. I missed the letter that she wrote telling me about her new boyfriend and year later, her fiance. I had even thrown away my own daughters wedding invitation. I never got to see my little girl walk down the aisle, I never read or opened the letter that told me she was pregnant with her first child, or the letter that said it was a girl.

It has been a long road the last few months, but my daughter has forgiven me. I had lost twenty years of my life to Scientology, and so many meomories, and I thank god every night that I didn't lose my family too.

Scientology robbed me of all those things and I was too blind to see it, but I created a new memory that I cry everytime I remember because it was a miracle to me. Four weeks ago, I held my grandaughter for the very first time.

I'm taking it slow, one day at a time, and seeking the help I need, seeing the same doctors and specialists that helped my daughter when she left years ago.

It has taken me a long time to type this up because of the tears in my eyes, I've had to stop, it's taken me six hours to write this email.

Thank you, whoever you are. While I may never be able to stand with you, or meet you face to face, you will always have my tearful thanks for doing what you are. Get the word out to more people, and don't give up doing what you are doing, because it's working in ways nobody could have ever imagined.

I recieved this letter three days before a cease and desist notice was sent to my grandparents home, accusing me of being a terrorist. My grandmother ws angry at me, and hurt, for getting her involved by proxy, and the feelings of anger I had at the cult, dealing with my grandmother, and also having this weigh heavily on my mind almost tore me apart. I could not read this speech at the protest without tearing up.

I pointed her in the direction of ESB, and told her the last thing she should do right now is join us. I told her to get to know what she's missed, get to know her family, get her life in order, make sure she takes care of priorities. I told her not to make the mistake that so many of the old guard had made when they left - leaving Sci on a friday, and picking up a sign on monday, for a lack of better term.

At that moment - just from some newly ex Scientologist telling us what she's endured since we started in February, and the remarkable journey she's been through...

All we've been through...all the harrassment, all the stalking, all the drama, all the assaults, cease and desist notices...everything Scientology has done to us and everything we've done...

If all we accomplish in this campaign is to have reunited a woman with her family, and her new granddaughter, then all of this would have been worth it.

This. Is. Why.

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San Diego Anonymous