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I grew up fast, almost like someone was pushing me from behind yelling, “Be cause, make it go right!� From the moment I joined Scientology with my family, I was heavily indoctrinated in the Scientology mindset. Ethics, morals and policy were bantered around my house daily. I believed whole-heartedly in the tech and audited others and they audited me.
Today I’m going to tell you about the Dianetics session where I had to relive something very painful and how to this day I regret ever telling my auditor what I told her that day.
You see, although my family appeared to be so on-purpose and dedicated, we had a dirty secret. My step-father had been molesting me for four years. And that day, in that cold metal chair, behind a partition in the Division Six courseroom, all the rage and fear I had held inside came rushing out.
My auditor asked me to locate an incident. It came up in my mind and I scrambled to think of something, anything else. I hated thinking of it, and it hadn’t happened in so long…. But I never knew when it would happen again. I was terrified, terrified if my mother knew that she would hate me, terrified that my siblings would hate me, terrified of what my step-dad would do if I told. I started to sweat in the chair, my closed eyes burning, as tears started to slip down my cheeks. My auditor persisted, and I could hear the excitement in her voice. Her thoughts were almost audible, “this is going to be good.� I shook my head, “I can’t think of anything,� I managed to say. She just repeated the command. The acid in my stomach started to churn, as it always did when I thought of the abuse, and I had gotten good at pushing it to the back of my mind and getting through my days without thinking of it at all.
My voice cracked as I whispered my shame, my deepest darkest secret. I was met with silence. Then she asked me to tell her more. And I did, sobbing between each telling of it, until I couldn’t cry any more and I was numb. She asked for details, and being 12 years old I didn’t know what to say. I stammered and stuttered and she relentlessly pushed on. A cold feeling swept me from my head to my feet and I felt detached from it all. I told her that and she said “Good! Thanks for telling me.� And ended the session.
I opened my eyes, and she was smiling at me, but there were mascara trails down her face. I could tell she had cried during my retelling. She took my hand, and I resisted the urge to pull it away. Back then, I didn’t like it when anyone touched me. “Do you feel better?� she asked. I nodded.
Then I walked unsteadily to the bathroom and threw up. This was the first time I made myself throw up, and it would become a pattern for the next four years of my life.
After calming down, I was pulled into the Ethics Office. The Ethics Officer at the time was a very nice man. He looked highly uncomfortable. He asked me if I was ok, and he said he had seen the write-up on my session and wanted to talk about it. I told him I was tired of talking about it. I still felt the shame, the horror, and now it was all over my mind and I could no longer shut it out.
He asked me point blank if I planned to go to the authorities. I was surprised that he asked that. I said no, that it hadn’t happened in a long time, and my mom didn’t even know. He looked very shocked at that and said, “Your mom has known for a year now, it came up in your step-dad’s ethics cycle.�
I felt the ultimate betrayal at that point. My mother had known, the ethics officers had known, and no one had done a damn thing about it.
I got angry at this point and asked him why no one had helped me if they knew. He said simply, “Everything that happens to you is what you pull in. You have to take responsibility for your lower condition in this.�
I started crying, I told him that I had not asked to be molested. I told him that it scared me and I didn’t know what I had done to cause it. I was truly upset at the thought of that, and at that moment an incredible sense of self-hatred came over me. He said simply that my step-dad had done his ethics handling and sec check and that I needed to come out of lower conditions on the 2-D. He told me emphatically that the only way I was ever going to get over this was to take responsibility.
I felt so ashamed, so sick, so upset. I did my lower conditions, but that feeling of revulsion stayed with me always. I never got over it. Even through all of my days in Scientology, including the Sea Org days, I battled an eating disorder and constant anxiety.
In the last six months I have come to be aware of what the truth really is. I have to thank my husband for that, and for sticking by me through all the drama. I have let go of a lot of my anger and self-loathing that I felt for years. I realize that I did not “pull in� the abuse, but rather a mentally ill man abused me and I was a victim. In Scientology, being a victim is considered a bad thing and I never wanted to be one. Well I WAS a VICTIM, and now I am a SURVIVOR. I survived sexual abuse, I survived the subsequent brainwashing, I survived a nervous eating disorder, and I survived Scientology.
I guess that’s one reason I call myself Serenity Now.
So for all those who think that Scientology might not be that bad, or “it’s the greatest good�, I would like for you to remember me, remember the Sea Org kids in California molested by Wolly Hanks, remember Tommy Gorman’s wife who was raped by a senior church official, and then ask yourself if the wonderful ethical church does the “greatest good� when it protects rapists and molesters and leaves their victims in shame.
Serenity Now
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"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."- Joseph Campbell
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