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my story as a post-GAT auditor

cantsay

Patron Meritorious
Ive never really spoken about my time in the Church. Only my family and one of two close friends know I was a Scientologist, and that I was married. I don’t tell people, because frankly, it sounds too weird to talk about.

Ive never spoken about it out of fear of retribution, fear of hurting those I care about who are still in the CoS, and the fact that I still believed in the effects of overts and natter and the fact that I really don’t think Im a bad person and therefore didn’t want to “act like an SP”. Since hanging around the forums and reading the stories of people who have been long-time Scientologists and left, Ive begun to realise that Im not an SP. I simply chose what was the best course of action for my dynamics and Im glad my personal integrity won out over the harassment. Although the huge guilt of leaving has been with me for the last 4 years.

I don’t think Ive been declared as yet, previously was quite scared of it – because it would hurt like mad that people could think such a thing when they knew me so well.

Having said that though, Ive been out of the church for years, and despite silent phone numbers and several house moves, they keep trying to find me. Im sick of it, Ive had enough, I don’t want to be harassed anymore. Perhaps telling my story will put them off. A declare may finally give me some peace. Go ahead OSA.

It all started when I was dating a guy in my last year of highschool. His family were scientologists (the Craven family, now either all on staff or in the SO). I was curious about all the books they had, and started asking questions. They helped me understand the actions of my mother, who is schizophrenic and a perfect text-book suppressive. That was the ruin that got me interested. Davids parents bought us the Comm Course and I quite enjoyed it. I liked the org, everyone was nice, warm, caring. The ED was Andrew Bromwell and the DED was Lynley Bromwell.

I was recruited onto the TTC when I was 18. It was obvious at the time that I was only being recruited because they wanted to use me as leverage to recruit my boyfriend – I was openly told that in the interview – and then potentially his family could be recruited too. I didn’t mind, I thought they were doing this for a noble cause. I wanted to be an auditor. I was currently at uni doing a geological engineering degree. I wasn’t enjoying it much, and when I was told auditor training was the equivalent of a degree, I thought that was a better option. So I dropped out and worked on staff instead.

I trained up to ClassIV internship GAT auditor but never get much auditing myself – I was too PTS - I suffer from migraines. The fact that my mother was schizophrenic and heavily opposed to the church was a huge problem. I was not allowed to take painkillers, and have had more PTS handlings than you can poke a stick at. It got to the point where I was being flat-out told “your migraines are from sugar” despite the fact that I had never originated anything of the sort. The DED would get angry at me every time I ate anything sugary, and I even had some nasty staff try to tell me my item was friends of mine that had routed off staff. I went on a very strict diet of protien drinks, vitamins and all that stuff recommended by that dietician LRH liked. It didnt work. I still get massively pissed-off if people try to tell me what causes my migraines. I KNOW what causes mine, And it ISNT BLOODY SUGAR!! Wrong item anyone??? Since getting out of Scientology I have since been able to handle them completely.

Anyway, when I was 19 I got married to my boyfriend because it was expected, and because we were trying to go to FLAG for training and were told we would have to if we wanted to share a room. I remember an IAS speaker asking us when we were planning to get married when I was still 18... I was shocked at how normal he thought that was. After being in the Church for a year, I thought it was normal too. Funny how your perceptions change.

My whole family was opposed. The wedding was put off 3 times due to problems with my family and there were so many times I wanted to call it off.
Most of the problems I had in the church centred around the problem of my SP mother. Now I still agree that the woman is nuts. She is a terrible mother and I try not to have any contact with her. However, many incidents occurred (including my mother-in-law being instructed by DSA staff to try to make my mother cave in. She tried, and other than getting slapped, had no effect) and a lot of it was to try to get my mother to sign an affidavit that she wouldn’t sue the church. She threatened to go to the media, she threatened to get deprogrammers, she did the works. The more DSA and the execs tried handlings, the worse it got.

more story to come...
 

Alan

Gold Meritorious Patron
Wow! Great stuff can'tsay! :rose:

You can feel the Scio stat push hidden in the background! :angry:
 

Carmel

Crusader
Good for you on posting this cantsay. :thumbsup:

Sorry to hear that you had to endure all that with the migraines - glad at least that you have it sorted now.

Looking forward to hearing all of your story. :)

Cheers,
Carmel
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Hey cool !!!

Great story so far .... :drama:

I know the Bromwells well - they were LC ANZO and Snr HAS ANZO when I was KTL I/C for Syd org and was dealing with them daily (esp. as I was getting the CLO crew thro' KTL/LOC in the org.)

Moar? :drama:
 

cantsay

Patron Meritorious
its ironic, but after spending more than 3 years getting PTS handlings for them, it took me about 10 minutes on the internet to figure out what was actually causing them. For me, hormones, sleep deprivation and bad eyesight. Changing the pill, getting glasses and making sure I get good quality sleep - voila. No migraines. SO DAMN SIMPLE! auugh.... sorry, must get back to finishing a report for work. Another chapter tomorrow!

Thanks for the encouragement everyone, much appreciated :]
 
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cantsay

Patron Meritorious
Not sure if I mentioned already, this was the Perth Fdn org, and I was there from 1998-2002ish.

In the end, I said “hey – standard tech is to disconnect from the SP. So that is what I will do.” Well, everyone went off the deep end. You cant do that, she might sue us!! Well, it’s the correct thing to do, and Ill never get audited if I don’t. “Too bad,” the ED said, “the reputation of the church in the media is more important” than following policy or being able to get up the bridge. But I had had enough and simply stopped talking to my mother anyway. The problem disappeared.

There are lots of double standards in the church, and policy can be used to justify almost anything. You can natter all you like about public that are “difficult” to get money out of, or treat a fellow staff member like rubbish if they are in ethics, and that isn’t considered an overt. Its quite acceptable to keep someone in a room inside the org overnight while you try to convince them to join staff, and not let them leave. I personally joined staff because I thought I could help people. I didn’t realise it meant years of working 7 nights a week, hardly ever allowed to take time off to see family and friends, working for free most of the time and being expected to coerce others into doing the same. All staff I knew were broke. That was one motivating factor for more staff – the more you have the more income, therefore we might actually get paid!!! Great trick, that. And if you DID have money, there was always an IAS event that would convince you to hand it over. Everyone I knew that joined staff with money didn’t have it for long.

One of my friends sold her car and her furniture and gave all her savings when she joined staff to pay for some of her bridge. In the couple of years that I knew her she didn’t get any of the auditing or training she had paid for. She told me that she wanted to be an auditor instead of working in Div6, so I showed her the policy that covers what a staff member needs to go in regards to their post if they want to join the TTC. The ED heard, and I was put in ethics for trying to "rip off" his staff... this happened a couple of times while I was there.

Due to being “PTS” I didn’t get to go to FLAG. However, at one stage the AO required all TTC trainees in Australia to go to Sydney because they figured the orgs weren’t doing a good enough job at getting us through. It took us a lot longer at the AO because of the overcrowding, no available wordclearers (a week wait usually), and the fact that we were all hungry - our food was rationed. I dropped from a size 12 to a size 6-8. I was a walking skeleton. We didn’t have enough money for laundry a lot of the time. We all stayed in the one house (over 15 of us from around the country), and one guy slept under the stairs. A fair few TTC there were people that had been hastily recruited to comply with the AOs orders, and lots blew over the months, slipping away during the night. We were all sent home when the AO finally figured that it was a drain on resources to have us there.
 

Megalomaniac

Silver Meritorious Patron
When you tell a piece of your story, and then I don't post a reply, then that means that I'm so interested that I don't want to clutter up your thread.

I was going to say, I get headaches when I don't get enough sleep or sweat too much and don't get salt. But it looks like you solved it without my unprofessional opinion.

Plus, you made me realize how I just thought it was "standard" for me to be regged for money on a regular basis. I didn't dare complain because I thought that would be counter-intention to going free. :duh: Why didn't I see this for what it was?

More, please! :clap:
 

cantsay

Patron Meritorious
haha, thanks Megalomaniac! Its a lot harder than I thought to put all this stuff together. Its jumping around a little time-wise.

I remember chatting to a public once who was telling me about a problem they had. I told them a certain training course handles that sort of thing, and maybe one day they should look into it. An SO mission guy overheard me and said "hey, you should be a reg". I was horrified...
 

Megalomaniac

Silver Meritorious Patron
haha, thanks Megalomaniac! Its a lot harder than I thought to put all this stuff together. Its jumping around a little time-wise.

I know how it is. I'm due to put in another chapter on my story. But Emma will let you add pieces out of order and you don't get in trouble. :)

I remember chatting to a public once who was telling me about a problem they had. I told them a certain training course handles that sort of thing, and maybe one day they should look into it. An SO mission guy overheard me and said "hey, you should be a reg". I was horrified...

See. That's how it ought to be, though. People just telling people what they recommend. Period.

It's funny, since I've started criticizing Scientology, I've done more GOOD PR for Scientology than I ever have. Because I'm free to communicate, I say the good and the bad. I've disseminated more Scientology wins than I ever did when I was in good standing. :duh: Just let people communicate -- Jeez! How hard is that? Now, I'm not afraid to tell the wins because I'm not afraid to tell the crap that went along with them because I don't give a damn about Scientology's reputation.
 

cantsay

Patron Meritorious
the next bit. God this was hard to write... I need a a walk now...

I really enjoyed auditing. I thought GAT was great, I wanted to go the ClassVI course, get more auditors trained and into the HGC so I could just audit staff. I thought staff were the people who really needed auditing, considering how hard they worked, the problems they had to deal with and how many of them weren’t clear. I tried to get staff in for auditing whenever I had spare time, although that wasn’t very often. Im not trying to say I was an angel, but every goal I had was for the org and for the staff.

I got pregnant just after I was married, and had a miscarriage at 3 months. No huge drama, we just got on with training and posts and so on. I got pregnant again after a while, and at 3 months things started to go wrong. I was told there was a massive bloodclot behind the placenta and was ordered by a doctor to have bed rest and no work. I was in and out of hospital a lot. I was so stressed and I had no family or friend support (they had all drifted away). I had to stop training (I cant remember if I was on the internship at that point yet..) and there was about a month or so where I was at home. Things were bad with my husband – he said I “got myself pregnant”, didn’t come to any doctors appointments, when I would haemorrhage he would drop me off at the emergency department and go to work.

One day we had an argument and he punched me in the face. I was shocked. I knew there was a lot of 3Ping from the execs about me that was making our relationship worse (like the gem that I didn’t want sex because I was too low on the tone scale), but that was the point when I realised all the odds were stacked against me. He told the ED, and I was sent to ethics to have my overts pulled. Seriously. I nearly lost it when the auditor said I had to have done something to MAKE him hit me. It was my fault – I must be suppressive, right?

I got a lot of pressure to be on post. One night I got a phonecall from a public – someone Id never spoken to before, she wasn’t even onlines. She asked if I could help her, she was stuck in the city and needed a lift home. I said ok, figuring the org had given her my number. Id already been driving around doing all the grocery shopping etc, (my husband wouldn’t do it, it was “the wife’s hat”) so I figure another drive couldn’t hurt. I get another phonecall, almost immediately, from my husband at the org, angrily announcing that I would be ComEved by the ED if I helped this girl. I began to wonder what the hell was going on... I said it was too late, Id already told her I would get her, and I had no way of contacting her to change my mind. He said I should just not go, strand her there. If I was willing to pick her up then I am able to work on post. That’s when I started to get furious. The whole thing was a setup to guilt me into getting back on post. I picked her up and drove her home anyway, (I knew she was pregnant and not doing well), and said they can ComEv me if they want. Nothing was mentioned again...

Ill never forget the phonecall about a week later, when Lynley rang to tell me I should be at the org and it shouldn’t matter if the baby dies – doing my duty was more important. I stuck to my guns and stayed home, despite the harassment, but I was extremely upset. The next ultrasound at 20 weeks showed that the baby had just died. I had to get a friend to drive me home from the ultrasound because David hadn’t bothered to turn up. Lynley called to tell me not to blame myself and to get back to work. I was hysterical and nearly threw the phone at the wall.

The next day I went to hospital and was induced. I was in labour for over 8 hours, then it went badly and I had to go to surgery. I lost a lot of blood. The next day I was discharged at 10 in the morning. David was at working at the org and “forgot” that I was in hospital. The Treas Sec ended up coming to get me. My doctor implied weight loss from stress may have been the cause – tests showed there were no genetic defects.

I was told I was too young to have a blood transfusion, so I was still quite ill when I got home. Still, I was a good little girl and went back to work a day or so later. I remember a public who ws a nurse being horrified. I was still extremely upset and completely estranged from my husband who was more interested in being liked by the execs to bother caring about his wife. Still, I soldiered on.

When David wanted to go to Flag for training later (just before I blew), he and the ED asked me very pointedly “are you SURE it wasn’t just a slap? You know, you may just have exaggerated a bit?” I replied “sure, just a slap. Whatever you think”. I figured if he wanted to lie, he could. Who cares. At that point I was sick of being ethics bait and was happy to avoid any conflict.

When I originated (almost a year later, just before blowing) that I wanted to leave my husband (yeah, I stuck it out that long, I cant believe it) I was told to do marriage counselling. THE GUY HIT ME and I must have overts to want to leave him????? Auuuugh!!!!!
 

Megalomaniac

Silver Meritorious Patron
Standard Lines

One day we had an argument and he punched me in the face. I was shocked. ... I nearly lost it when the auditor said I had to have done something to MAKE him hit me. It was my fault – I must be suppressive, right?

...

Ill never forget the phonecall about a week later, when Lynley rang to tell me I should be at the org and it shouldn’t matter if the baby dies – doing my duty was more important. I stuck to my guns and stayed home, despite the harassment, but I was extremely upset. The next ultrasound at 20 weeks showed that the baby had just died. I had to get a friend to drive me home from the ultrasound because David hadn’t bothered to turn up. Lynley called to tell me not to blame myself and to get back to work. I was hysterical and nearly threw the phone at the wall.

:ohmy: :grouch:

Ok, Cantsay, I have to say somethin'

When I told some fellow Scientologists about horror stories I read about, I got the reply that I should handle it on standard lines. I was also told that "it's not too late", I could still handle this with RTC. To that, I replied, yes, it's not too late -- RTC CAN STILL HANDLE IT WITH ME. Why do I have to handle it on someone else's terms? How about someone else come to me and handle it on MY terms? This was a shift in viewpoint for me. Why do Scientology, RTC, LRH have some authority over me? Because I granted them the authority. And now I withdraw it because it was not earned.

So I'm reading your post, and it hits me again. This is not YOUR job to "handle it on standard lines". This is THEIR job to handle it with YOU. They may use standard lines or whatever, but you should not have to go out of your way when THEY ARE IN THE WRONG.

So I have a new comeback for the "handle it on standard lines" line. It is: "Which standard? The STANDARD way of handling mistakes in the real world is for the person who has done wrong to make it right with the person who has been wronged. And while I'm waiting for that to happen, I'll communicate with whoever will listen." Something like that.

Thanks for your courage in telling this. Thanks for your commitment to mankind. Though you discovered the organization was not what it was sold to be, I know the reason for why you stuck it out and that is noble.

mac
 

cantsay

Patron Meritorious
Thanks mate. I always figured that what happened to me was simply a one-off. Just jerks that happened to be in the same city as me, and I should have been able to "fix it through standard lines".

Unfortunately the whole culture of scientology has evolved since the 80s into this behaviour. Its NORMAL in orgs. Competely normal. Reading stories like Carmels remind me that the same thing happens all the time. My story is just a little one - so many others had it much worse.

Scios still in are probably reading my story and thinking "look at that natter, she pulled in whatever went wrong, etc". I recommend they clear the definition of an overt. Then read the Code of Honour. And realise that an overt is an overt, not matter how its justified. No matter who commits it. And behaviour like the above story is simply not ok.

Youre right mate, Im not the one who needs to do A-E.
 

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
Wow, cantsay.

Unbelievable.

That part where they were saying to you, "Are you SURE it wasn't just a slap?"

That's how they do it. They wear you down. They get you to tell the story over and over again, to each terminal on endless routing forms....

Unbelievable.

Keep telling your story.

Tell it to the whole world VERY VERY LOUD.

And don't stop!
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Wow, cantsay.

Unbelievable.

That part where they were saying to you, "Are you SURE it wasn't just a slap?"

That's how they do it. They wear you down. They get you to tell the story over and over again, to each terminal on endless routing forms....

Unbelievable.

Keep telling your story.

Tell it to the whole world VERY VERY LOUD.

And don't stop!

^^^^^ What he said ^^^^^


Thanks for telling this much of your story.

Yes it ISN'T you who needs to do the handling - something my wife and I began to find out once we left.
 
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