I returned to work the next day, keeping the decision I had made secret from everyone. This was something that I was going to have to work out on my own. The two weeks passed and nothing happened for awhile. I continued to come in every day and FES folders. I said very little to anyone and no one seemed to bother me until Friday, August 20, 1976. That afternoon, Gary Epstein had a talk with me. He was very angry with me for leaving my post and said I should cut out the nonsense and return to my post. He sarcastically accused me of thinking I was above everyone because I had been on Flag with Quentin. He sent me to talk to the Ethics Officer, who was nicer. He tried to persuade me to return to my post, but I still refused. He said that if I didn't return, he would have no choice but to comm ev me. I knew that I would have to act soon.
The next morning, Saturday, August 21, I was FESing folders as usual. Some of the people I worked with were gossiping about a young woman named Pandora Cooper who had been an auditor and case supervisor for the org in Washington, D.C. It was rumored that she had wanted to leave and not been allowed to. She was locked up in a room against her will and forced to receive auditing. She pretended to go along with the auditing and told her captors that the auditing had really helped her and that she had changed her mind about leaving. Once she convinced them that she wanted to stay, they let her out of the room, at which time she left the org and never returned. I realized that what happened to Pandora could easily happen to me and I had to act fast.
I had saved up about $200 when I was Director of Processing and getting bonuses. When I left that position, I no longer got the bonuses that went along with it; only Sea Org pay, which was $10 a week at the time. Soon my $200 would be used up and I would have no money to go anywhere and would have to give up my apartment. I concluded that if I wanted to leave the Sea Org, it would have to be that day, before a Committee of Evidence was convened on me.
It happened that I had the afternoon off that day, which gave me the perfect chance to leave, since I would not be missed until the following day, but I still hadn't made a final decision. I went for a swim, took a shower and put on a new dress my mother had sent me. Then I went to a pay phone and called the airlines to see if I could get a plane out of LA, but all the flights were booked up. Then I walked to the bus station to see when the next bus left to Michigan. There was a bus leaving at 6:00 PM and the fare was $125, which I could afford. The time was 2:30 PM. I returned to my apartment and found one of my roomates there. I tried to act normal. He went out to get a paper and I started to pack some of my things. Soon he returned and I hastily hid what I had packed. I told him I had just been for a swim and the water felt great, hoping he would go for a swim. Fortunately, he did and I was left alone, once again.
Now there was nothing to stop me from leaving except the barriers I imposed on myself. For what seemed like a long time, but was probably no more than 5 minutes, I agonized over the final decision I knew I would have to make. I wanted to go, but was afraid. I knew that this would be my only chance to go. If I didn't do it that day, I might not get another opportunity for a long time, if ever. Yet I still vacillated between whether to go or whether to stay. I felt like I was making the biggest and toughest decision I ever had to make in my life. I finished packing some of my clothes in a small carry-on bag. I kept telling myself that I wasn't happy and that things were not going to get better; yet I still hesitated.
Then, suddenly, I realized that making the decision to leave was never going to be easy and if I waited for it to feel easy, I would never do it. Finally, I took the plunge. I gathered up a few of my things and left the apartment. I knew I couldn't take everything I had with me because I might run into someone I knew on the way to the bus station and would have difficulty explaining the suitcases. I just took a small carry-on bag, a plastic bag and my handbag. I even made up a story to explain why I was carrying these bags if I ran into anyone on the street but, fortunately, I didn't have to use it. I was terrified of running into someone in the group, and of being stopped and locked up against my will.
As soon as I arrived at the bus station in Hollywood, which was about a 10-minute walk from my apartment, I purchased my ticket to Michigan. Then I called my mother and told her I was coming home. She was overjoyed and strongly supported me in my decision to leave. She said, «I always knew you were a free spirit.»
At 5:00 PM my bus left Hollywood for LA, where I was to change busses. I had a splitting headache and was still worried about someone finding me. It wasn't until my bus pulled out of LA at 6:00 PM that I finally began to relax. I felt more relieved than I ever felt in my life. I felt as if a big weight had been lifted off me and that I was free at last.
I Begin My New Life
For nine months, I didn't do anything but stay home, try to make some sense out of what I had been through and adjust to my new life. One week after I left, I started recording my thoughts about what had happened to me in a journal, which I still have. I was very confused. For several months, I saw no one but my parents and felt very much alone.
Six weeks after leaving, I made an attempt in my journal to analyze the group to see if I could figure out what went wrong. I wrote, «There is something very wrong with the way this group is being run—something very basic that I can't quite put my finger on.» At this point, I was not yet willing to hold LRH responsible for the situation and I didn't know anything about mind control. However, there is one observation that I made that I consider to be an insight that was of great value to me: that there was little or no real caring about people as human beings. People were only seen in terms of their usefulness to the group.
An example I came up with was a young woman from Holland who was being trained as an auditor on Flag. She was still having difficulty with the English language and, as a result, had trouble with understanding the course materials and later, in her attempts to audit people. She was never able to progress beyond the most basic levels as an auditor because of her difficulty with the language. When she made mistakes she was sent to ethics and was one of the first to be put on the RPF. It never seemed to occur to anyone that her problem was not «evil intentions towards the group» but simply not understanding English well enough. No one cared enough about her to see the obvious. All anyone could see was that she didn't perform well as an auditor and therefore must have evil intentions, so she was disciplined accordingly. If anyone had really cared about her as a person, rather than just a commodity, they would have easily been able to see what her problem was and help her learn English, but that just wasn't the way things worked in the Sea Org.
I began to realize that, for the most part, in the Sea Org there was no real caring—no love. All «love» was conditional upon job performance and the standards for job performance were often quite ridiculous. There were exceptions, of course; sometimes true friendships between people did develop in spite of everything, but that is not how the group, as a whole, was run. Often, when such real friendships did develop, every attempt was made to separate the people, such as what happened between Quentin and myself. The real threat to Hubbard was not the possibility of our having sex, but the emotional closeness and true friendship that we had developed. This separation of true friends has the effect of making the person feel very isolated, even though they may be surrounded constantly by hundreds of people in the cult environment.
In my opinion, the most effective thing an exit counsellor could do in an intervention with a Scientologist, is to have a genuinely caring attitude towards the person. Scientologists, especially staff members, are starving for that sort of compassion. I cannot stress this point strongly enough. A compassionate, caring attitude will be much more likely to help the person break free of their mental prison than any information about the group will. Simply giving the person information will not work, because it will be dismissed as lies from the «wog press».