Saturday, December 10, 2022

HEARINGS RE: THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY EXHIBIT 67: AFFIDAVIT OF ANN BAILEY

 

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CITY OF CLEARWATER COMMISSION HEARINGS RE:  THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY

EXHIBIT 67: 

AFFIDAVIT OF ANN BAILEY

PART I:  INTRODUCTION TO THE SEA ORG

On April 21, 1978 I walked out the front door of the Hollywood Inn located on Hollywood Boulevard, in Los Angeles, California.  I carried with me my purse, which contained a one-way plane ticket to Boston and thirty five dollars for taxi fare to the airport.  I wore the uniform I had worn every day for the past three and one half years.  Navy blue skirt, blazer, light blue military shirt, black tie and small gold chain lanyard.  Ostensibly, I was heading to the Cedar's Complex where ASHO was now located.  There was no other way to leave without being stopped by the guard at the front desk than to act as a perfectly normal Sea Org member, going to work.

Inside I was torn apart.  I weighed ninety-one pounds.  I knew the Guardian's Office personnel would be writing for me as they had for the past four months.  I could not think in coherent sequence and had difficulty forming sentences and words to express myself.  I was totally paranoid that at any moment I would be surrounded by Sea Org officers and sent to the RFP at the Cedars Complex.  Four of my close friends had been sent there and I had seen first hand what had happened to them.  I knew the Guardian's Office had already done the fitness board on me and that the outlook from that was bleak.  I also knew that a concentrated plan to drive me insane and incompetent as a Sea Org member had already been put in effect.  If I did not get out now, I knew I would never get out alive.

I could no longer stay with an organization that denied me the right to exist as an individual.  No matter what I had believed in the beginning, all of those beliefs had been twisted and mutilated by policy being written every day, in the highest level of Scientology.  I was against that policy, and the Guardian's Office does not condone rebels, especially if they are members of the Sea Org.

From April 22, 1978 until November 1, 1979 I suffered the consequences of my decision to leave the Sea Org.  At home in Lincoln, Massachusetts living at my mother's house, I suffered through the first three months of being unable to converse with anyone.  No emotions, no feelings, no thoughts, mind, just utter blankness.  Then night after night of hallucinations where I thought I was back in LA, being punished for leaving the Sea Org.  I had absolutely no feeling of pain, after years of conditioning, so that today, I bear scars on my right arm where a lighter burned the skin for twenty-five minutes, before my brain registered anything at all.  Gradually, I began to move out of that aspect of the nightmare, the hold Scientology had on my mind.  Now in January of 1980, things look a lot brighter although I still have a way to go in being able to totally handle life and reality.  At least I have my mind back as my own and can now write with clarity and accuracy what happened to me between July 16, 1974 and April 21, 1978.

My introduction to Scientology resulted from the writings of L. Ron Hubbard.  The sequence of events was this.  On June 1, 1974, I read an early science fiction book written by L. Ron Hubbard.  At the back of the book was a mention of another book he had written called Dianetics:  The Modern Science of Mental Health.  One could order this book from a publications department in L.A.  I was curious, so I sent a check in the mail for the book.  On June 10, the book arrived.  I had finished reading it by June 11, 1974.  I had just completed my senior year of college and was not overly impressed with the book.  However, I was curious about the promises and guarantees that Hubbard made in connection with his system of Scientology, specifically in connection with curing physical and emotional illness, raising I.Q., creating pre-cognitive abilities and generally enhancing perceptive and creative talents.

On July 11, 1974 I received a telephone call from a Ron Noe.  He identified himself as a recruiter for the Sea Org located at ASHO in L.A.  He said that he received my name from the mailing list because I had purchased the book.  He asked me if I knew what the Sea Org was.  Drawing on Hubbard's two books I said that the Sea Org must be an elite group of very dedicated people who were determined to end suffering in the world through the application of Scientology technology.  Noe made many representations to me and told me I was a rare person and that the Sea Org needed me immediately.  He said I was coming from a position of mental power and that my true home was with the Sea Org.  At that moment in my life I thought I had found the key to unlock the answers to all my questions concerning humanity.  I told Noe that I could come to L.A. to discuss the matter further, but first I had to fly to Boston to tie up loose ends concerning my affairs.  Noe asked me if any of those affairs concerned finances.  I told him that I had stock to sell, which amounted to $8,500.00.  He asked me if I would bring the money with me when I came to L.A.

I flew to Boston on July 12, 1974.  I sold my stock and returned to Athens, Ohio, on July 14, 1974.  On July 15, 1974, I received another phone call from Ron Noe.  He asked what my flight number to L.A. was and told me that he would meet me in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel on July 15, 1974.  On the evening of July 15, 1974, I packed one suitcase.  All my other possessions of five years I left behind, including all notebooks of creative writing and poetry I had written for years.  I severed all ties in my life that night.

The next day, July 16, 1974, I went to the Columbus Airport and caught my flight.  It landed at the L.A. airport at 7 p.m. L.A. time.  I took a taxi to the Hilton Hotel and waited in the lobby.  Ron Noe arrived shortly.  Dressed in the non-formal Sea Org uniform, he appeared to me extremely organized and high powered.

We got into his car and drove to ASHO which was then located at 2723 West Temple St.  The building had originally been an old furniture showroom and warehouse.  It was located directly opposite the Rampart Police Station in the Hillside section of L.A.

Upon arrival, Noe showed me to his desk and I noticed that on every desk was an identical color photograph of Hubbard taken on the bridge of a ship.  There were also enormous posters on all the walls of Hubbard in full, formal Sea Org uniform and enormous Sea Org symbols painted in gold on many of the walls.  The symbol of the Sea Org is a star surrounded by a laurel wreath.  In the years ahead I would be given enormous power as a representative of that symbol and in the end all the power would be taken away from me with no explanation.  At his desk, Ron Noe handed me a Sea Org contract.  In those days it was a black and white piece of paper with sea horses on the border.  The contract read, "I, Ann Bailey, being of sound mind and body do hereby contract myself to the Sea Org for a period of one billion years".  I had no trouble with the billion years part as most new recruits do.  I had already read that Scientologists believed in past lives, immortality and the fact that they were not bodies, but spirits operating bodies.  I signed it and it was witnessed by Ron Noe and Larry Norton, then the Ethics Officer.  The next step was the swearing in.  Ron stood and saluted me as I did him.  He then read a twenty item covenant which I repeated after him indicating what a Sea Org member promised the group.  It was basically to adhere to no orders but Hubbard's and to apply Scientology technology strictly and absolutely.  It was very much like being on a ship, very novel.  After the swearing in I was taken to the center of the room and announced as a new Sea Org member.  For me what happened next was overwhelming.  In seconds the entire lobby was jammed with people in uniform, cheering, clapping, yelling -- it was pandemonium.  The ovation lasted a full ten minutes.  I was also presented with a letter from Hubbard welcoming me into the Sea Org.  Over the years I saw many recruits join the Sea Org at ASHO.  (I know now the letter and hundreds of others I got from Hubbard were not really written by him, although whoever wrote them used to send me wonderful descriptions of life on the Apollo, the flagship of the Sea Org fleet).

After the formal announcement, I was taken by Ron Noe to meet Dawn Proger who was the director of registration.  She was an OTS, Class 5 auditor as was Ron Noe and she carried a lot of power at ASHO at that time.  Just how much I was to learn in later years.  Dawn greeted me and asked for my check for $8,500.00.  I gave it to her and as we were sitting in her office, a very intense man not in uniform walked in.  He introduced himself as Richard Deere, deputy guardian for finance at ASHO.  This was my first but by no means my last encounter with Deere.  He asked Dawn to show him my check and then giving me a look that would melt stone, he said "hell, the damn check will probably bounce".  This attitude confused me so totally that I burst into tears.  Dawn followed him into the hall and they engaged in a terrific argument.  I recall her saying clearly for him to stay the hell off my lines and that if he didn't he would have to answer to Hubbard.  She came back to the office and told me not to mind Deere that she could handle him.

It was by this time 11:30 at night, but I was by no means finished for the evening.  My next stop was HCO, which was located in a separate building from the rest of ASHO.  This is the communication center where the Telex machine that was linked directly to the Apollo was located.  First I had to take two tests.  An I.Q. test and an OCA test.  The HAS (Hubbard Area Secretary) first officer in command of HCO was overjoyed at the results.  Apparently the graph drawn up to show results put all my scores off the paper in an upwards direction.  Next I had to fill out a form that was twenty pages long.  Questions about my personality and life and family.  The last part of the form asked if I wanted to be a crew member on the Apollo, and I wrote yes.

Ron Noe appeared to drive me to the Hollywood Inn.  All Sea Org members at ASHO lived there.  This was an eight story brick building located in the middle of Hollywood.  In 1974, it was not in good shape.  It needed a lot of work to be livable.  Later I would personally find out just how much work.  For that first night there was no room for me with ASHO Sea Org members.  All Sea Org members in the L.A. (PAC) Area, meaning Pacific Area Control, lived at the Inn, assigned to different floors.  Members form not only ASHO but AOLA (Advanced Org L.A.) and FOLO/WUS, (Flag Operations Liaison Office West U.S.).  I was temporarily put in a room with four officers from FOLO.

After four hours sleep I had to go back to ASHO.  I got in the ASHO staff bus and went over early July 17.  Immediately I was told by Ron Noe that I would be going on the ship that night, the Excalibur, and that if I got through the course on her, I would have made it officially into the Sea Org.  However, I had never taken a Scientology Course.  So this morning I was to take and finish the Communications Course and I had three hours to complete it.  So into the Briefing Course room I went.  The Saint Hill Special Briefing Course is an eight month course for class 5 and 6 auditors.  I finished the course in two hours and was given my certificate by the LRH Comm ASHO.  Then I was told to go out and buy clothes and equipment for the Excalibur and to report to the Fifield Manor at 4 p.m. where FOLO/WUS was then based.

The list of clothing for the ship was not very long.  Jeans, sweat shirt, seaman's cap and a knife.  At 4:00 I was outside the Fifield Manor.  After ASHO and the Inn, Fifield appeared as a paradise.  It is a really lovely chateau type Manor, with rose gardens, real fountains, lanterns hung along walkways and very excellent antique furniture inside.  The FOLO staff who were working out of the basement are not lovely or nice.  At that time FOLO staff acted as the ethics arm reaching out from Flag for all new Sea Org recruits.  I spent from 4:15 p.m. until 8:00 at night being interviewed by one ethics officer after another.  I was introduced to a process known as security checking, which FOLO staff were mad for.  At this time in order to even be allowed to go on any Sea Org ship, of which there were five, the new recruit had to pass at least eight separate sec checks.  These were done with an E-meter and auditor.  Using information taken from the twenty page questionnaire I had filled out at ASHO, the auditor would run a series of checks on any part of your life that FOLO staff felt questionable.  For example, if on your questionnaire you put that you had smoked grass, the auditor would ask for all the attitudes, emotions, suppressions and pains associated with smoking grass.  Then if any area "read" on the meter more than any other, you would be sec checked again in that area.  If you put on the questionnaire that you disliked your sister at one time you would have a check run on your family.  I had three hours of the sec checking at FOLO.  My auditor was new at the game and not very bright, because right away I had discovered a very interesting fact about the E-meter.  If during a sec check I relaxed totally and intended that the meter not register in a certain area, it would not "read anything.  If a meter does not read on a sec check the needle is said to "float" and you are considered "clear" in that area.  So I learned very early how to control an E-meter and hence an auditing session.  The G.O. much later found out about this ability of mine and punishment steps were taken with me.  But all that came later.  Needless to say I passed all the sec checks and interviews and was cleared to go to the Excalibur.

Hence began a very bizarre part of my Sea Org career.  At about 4:00 p.m. all new recruits who had passed the sec checks were taken to the Fifield parking lot.  We were herded onto a blue VW bus and driven onto the Harbor Freeway.  The bus then appeared to drive in circles for fifteen minutes and then pull into a supermarket parking lot.  The driver then called off ten names, mine among them.  Ten of us went to the front of the bus where we were given folded sheets of paper.  We were told that each person had different orders and we were not to compare them, just follow them. We were told to leave the bus and as soon as we were all off, the bus turned around and left all of us in the parking lot.  I went over to a street lamp and unfolded my paper.  It was a telex, with a telex number and it was signed love, LRH. It was telexed instructions as to what city bus lines I was to take in order to get to the Excalibiur dock.  There were at least four bus line changes to make, all kinds of street names and a dock H at Wilmington, California.  As each person opened their paper and read it, one could sense confusion.  Each person apparently had different buses to take because we all left in separate directions.  It was then about ten at night.  I arrived at dock H at 1:00 a.m.  A lot of other recruits made it much later than that.

The Excalibur was pretty large.  She was painted blue and white, with a gigantic smoke stack, two decks, a fan tail and bridge.  She flew an enormous white and gold Sea Org flag and on her bow was an enormous painted sword with her name stenciled in old english lettering.  The gangway had an enormous Sea Org symbol in gold sparkles and compared to the dirty tankers in this port of L.A., one would have to say she was a ship with "class".  For new Sea Org recruits however, she was total hell, as the officers who ran her at the time were some of the most sadistic people, outside of G.O. personnel, I ever knew.  They were tough.  Harbor police were never allowed to set so much as one big toe on her gangway.  If any police tried they were told this was a privately funded ship for international research in merchant training with its own police force.  The Harbor police never tried to come aboard.

At the point I came aboard her, I knew it was not going to be easy.  I was told I was no part of the Deck Project Force and that I would get no pay until I completed my courses.  I was to complete a course called Product O and an able bodied seaman's course.  I was told this was necessary as in those days all OT and security materials were on the ships, not on land.  I was told point blank if there ever was a raid on the ship, the deck project force had to know how to run her and be prepared to take her right out to sea beyond the 200 mile limit of the U.S. Coast Guard and into international waters.  I was told to address all officers as sir and to obey all orders instantaneously.  I was led to believe if I got through this training, I would be under total protection of the Sea Org and would have achieved profound realizations about life and death.

I was then shown to my quarters.  These were located in the bottom deck of the ship and were narrow canvas berths six to a wall.  I soon learned that the officers controlled the eight switches.  At 11:00 p.m. all lights in the DPF berthing were turned off.  If you had to work late, you worked in the dark.  I recall that first night asking for sheets and blankets and being told the DPF did not receive any.  My berth happened to be right next to the ventilator and cold air blew on me all night.  I learned to sleep fully clothed so as not to catch cold.

A typical day that first week went like this.  At 6:00 a.m. bugles blowing through the intercom woke us up.  You had ten minutes to be dressed and on the dock at 6:45 for exercises.  From 6:45 till 7:15 the drill commander put us through the mill with no adequate warm up.  If you complained you were sent to the Ethics Officer.  From 7:15 till 8:00 were cleaning stations.  Mine was to white glove the entire fan tail.  You had to get a pass or no breakfast.  Breakfast was from 8:00 to 8:15.  The meal was bread and water.  The DPF had to eat on the dock by the garbage bins.  Any officer could take a dislike to you.  The third mate hated me.  His trick was to inspect my cleaning station at 7:55 and then purposefully dump a bucket of oil on the white deck and give me a flunk.  No breakfast and I had until 8:15 to clean it up or go to ethics.  I would get so angry I would always manage to clean the oil up by 8:15 and that made the third mate hate me even more.

From 8:15 till 11:15 we would be on course.  This would involve all kinds of checksheets on running the ship, ethics tech and Sea Org Tapes.  One had to be very alert to make it through as one had to stay on a time table or get kicked off the ship.  From 11:15 to 12:15 we did ship drills, fire drills, docking drills, evacuation drills.  Two mistakes a drill and off to Ethics.  12:15 to 12:30 was lunch.  Water, bread and a hunk of cheese on the dock.  12:30 to 3:00 more cleaning stations.  Really hard work, too.  Painting the entire side of the ship, varnishing the captain's study, painting the anchors, cleaning the engine room, cleaning the latrines.  3:00 to 5:00 was auditing sessions.  More sec checks mostly.  All the supposed terrible things you'd done in life were brought out.  5:00 to 5:15 dinner -- water, bread and runny scrambled egg on the dock.  5:15 to 6:00 -- hygiene.  There was no hot water for the DPF.  This meant cold showers with no soap.  6:00 to 8:00 were more cleaning stations.  8:00 to 10:00 were more courses, 10:00 to 10:30 were staff drills.  10:30 to 11:00 get ready for bed, unless you had the watch.  If an officer disliked you, you could get the watch every night of the week.  This meant being in charge of the entire ship from 11:00 to 5:00 a.m.  No chairs were allowed, you had to stand by the gangway all night and record in total detail anything that occurred on shore or on the ship.  Plus take readings on all the instruments on the bridge.  The logbook went to the captain in the morning.  Any mistakes you were sent to ethics.  Plus you had to be up at 5:30 even if you had watch and start the schedule over again.  The twist was if a new recruit got through all this, things were made harder, not easier.  I soon learned this the third week into my "training" on the Excalibur.

I had been making it through all the above actions and during my third week on the ship, I and a group of five others were told we had been selected for a special mission.  We were told to be up at 5:30 the next morning and on the dock.  The VW bus was there and we were driven to the Hollywood Inn.  The Inn had a large main lobby and extending from that lobby was an enormous former dining room and kitchen.  These rooms had not been touched since the Inn had been sold to the Church.  The dining room had been used as a dumping ground for all kinds of junk and the kitchen and pantry were filled with thousands of dirty dishes left for over a year.  The six of us were told we had twelve hours to transform the entire place into a dining room and workable kitchen for FOLO executives.  If we made it we would receive a special citation from Hubbard.  If we didn't make it we would not be Sea Org material.  The next twelve hours were unbelievable.  I have never worked so hard or fast in all my life.  Washing dishes so filthy, I had to use straight ammonia to get the mold out, lugging load after load of garbage and trash to the dump.  Setting up tables, waxing every single piece of oakwood in the room with beeswax.  Using water so hot that the skin on my hands blistered, cleaning all the small lead panes in the windows with a toothbrush, moving dining room furniture so heavy that all my muscles pulled out, into place, buying great bunches of flowers for the tables, hanging curtains, laying down a rug, etc.  We finished in eleven hours and fifteen minutes.  All the FOLO senior executives came in and gave us a standing ovation. All I remember is the room swirling around me and willing myself not to faint.  All six of us were absolutely exhausted, pushed to the point of numbness beyond belief.  We were driven back to the ship and allowed to sleep for two hours, before resuming the regular routine.  Two days later in a special ceremony the six of us were awarded gold certificates signed by Hubbard designating us as "Keyed-out OT's".  Looking back now the certificate should have read, "robot slaves".  But we were already halfway brainwashed, under Hubbard's control.

A few days later I was called into the second mate's office.  Here began another twist in my Sea Org career.  He said that something had come up in my auditing and he wanted to know if I had ever seen a psychiatrist.  I replied that I had once when I was ten.  My parents had taken me.  He told me to get my things and get off the Excalibur.  No one who had seen a shrink could be in the Sea Org.  I was really angry and upset because I had listed the fact on my questionnaire and FOLO had still cleared me for ship duty.  But now there was nothing I could do.  I left the ship and called ASHO from a pay phone.  I was told to come right to HCO and write up all that had occurred on the Excalibur.

It took me three hours on the buses to reach ASHO.  I went to HCO amid strange glances from public because I'm sure I looked awful.  On the ship, a DPF member had no opportunity to do laundry.  In HCO I wrote down what had happened on ship.  Two hours later I was called into Larry Norton's office.  He was still the ASHO Ethics Officer.  Larry said that there were a lot of OT's in the Sea Org who were counting on me to make it through Product O.  As proof he handed me a telex.  It was sent to Midshipman Larry Norton, and as nearly as I can recall it read, "All points concerning unqualifications for Sea Org re Ann Bailey are waived.  She is to return to Excalibur immediately to complete Product O.  She is under my ethics protection, love Ron".  I was back on the ship within three hours.

Since the receipt of that telex my last few weeks on the ship were slightly different.  I still worked the same schedule, ate bread and water, but my cleaning stations were changed.  I was assigned to clean the officers' quarters.  No DPF member had been allowed in these quarters and I was amazed.  Each officer had his/her own cabin, wall to wall carpeting, stereo, T.V., closet, everything that I thought did not even exist on the Excalibur, from a DPF point of view.  I felt a bit strange about it, but I was so tired that the whole set up never penetrated my thinking at the time.

By now I had almost finished my last course.  I would be going back to ASHO having completed one of the most demanding training programs the Sea Org ever offered.  Years later when the ships were sold, new recruits at Cedars Complex never had to go through what I did.  I'm sure parts of the Deck Project Force program were incorporated into the Rehabilitation Project Force.  The DPF program was that close to RPF techniques.  That is one reason why the G.O. could not get me on the RPF.  I fought them tooth and nail as I had essentially gone through that cycle just to become an official Sea Org member.

Three days before I was due to leave the Excalibur officially, twelve DPF members including myself were told we were being given another mission.  I was wary of this and I had a feeling it would be a difficult one.  I was right.  Apparently the Fifield Manor was going to be converted into a luxury hotel for public Scientologists only.  For several years before Clearwater it was known as the Hotel Org.  Twelve of us were assigned to do three things in 48 hours. 1) Move the entire FOLO operation from the basements of Fifield to the basements of the Hollywood Inn; 2) White glove the basement of Fifield to a pass given by three Sea Org executives who had come off the Apollo to supervise the move; 3) White glove the Hollywood Inn basements and then set up all of FOLO in these basements so FOLO staff could go to work in that area Monday morning.

This mission was worse than hell.  We started it at 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning and finished all the work at 7:00 a.m. Monday morning.  We had no sleep at all and very little food.  I'll never forget trying to load an 85 lb. filing cabinet into a moving van alone -- I had to load and unload six of these alone.  Everything had to be perfect.  Early Sunday morning I was on a ladder scrubbing steam pipes in the Fifield basement when one of the officers from the Apollo walked in.  I was already so exhausted I thought I was dreaming.  Here was this tan person, all in white with an enormous gold lanyard and an actual sword hanging from a belt.  He had white gloves to inspect with.  This gentleman flunked one steam pipe five times in the next five hours.  To get a pass from him I finally had to go buy white paint and paint the entire pipe white.  Sunday night I found myself on top of another ladder painting the ceiling of the basement room in the Hollywood Inn white.  By now everyone looked as if they were half dead.  The Apollo officers would come in and scream at us if they didn't like the work.  If we couldn't keep up the pace, we had to run around the outside of the Hollywood Inn six times.  We had by now been working straight for almost 48 hours. Still there was no let up -- we were driven and driven to finish on time.  The running was worse than the painting, so I kept at the ceiling which was enormous.  Even today I don't know how I did it.  If I went back to the Hollywood Inn now and just stood and looked at that ceiling I would have no comprehension that I had painted the entire surface alone in under three hours.  And it had to be done well.  The last job was to lay wall to wall carpeting on the entire basement and move all the FOLO furniture in place.

Monday morning back on the ship I decided to take a cold shower to stay awake.  This was my last day on the Excalibur.  I practically had hysterics when I saw my body.  It was literally purple with bruises from my neck to my toes.  This was from moving all the furniture at high speed.  My muscles were so stiff I could barely lift my arms to put on my new uniform for the ceremony on deck that night.

On the bow of the Excalibur with a firey sunset over Catalina Island, eight of us who had passed Product O were awarded white lanyards as able bodied seamen from the LRH Comm International and gold certificates as Sea Org members.  Four of us were awarded special certificates as honorary Apollo Stars, myself among them.  Then we were invited to have dinner with the captain.  This was actually surrealistic to me.  I had had no sleep for 72 hours.  We were shown into a mess room on the ship I had never seen. There were candles in silver candlesticks, gold china with the Sea Org symbol, crystal wine glasses, lace tablecloth, roast beef, roast chicken, salad, bread, vegetables, cake, fish, champagne.  It was ridiculous.  Here we had eaten nothing but runny eggs, moldy cheese, hard bread for a month and the captain ate like this every night!  This should have been a warning to me but I just couldn't heed it.  All I know was I was going back to ASHO.  I was going to strengthen all my abilities and find out all my answers to universal questions.  I could run a ship, and direct people.  I had made it into the Sea Org when even some highly trained auditors and OT's who had joined up had failed the Product O course.  That was all I thought about, nothing more.

That night the VW bus drove us back to Hollywood.  It was very late when we reached the Inn.  I asked the guard at the desk were my room was.  He said there was no room available for me.  My first night as an official Sea Org member was spent lying on a moldy mattress near the trash bins, behind the kitchen sink.  There was no other place for me to lie down.  I guess even then I thought all of this was some kind of a test that I had to pass.  So even with all the discomfort, I didn't think of getting up and walking out.

Now I began my period as a expediter at ASHO before I was given an official job.  At ASHO, all expediters worked from HCO and could be asked to do anything anywhere.  As an expediter, I stuffed letters in envelopes that the letter registrars wrote.  That meant about 2,500 a day.

My schedule as an expediter was very long.  I had to be at ASHO at 7:30 a.m., then on course from 9:00 to 12:30 p.m.  In the afternoons expediters had lots of staff drills to do and lots of upper level TR's.  At night from 6:00 to 12:00 a.m. we would do jobs in the areas assigned to us, in my case stuffing letters and running the promo folding machine.  We also had clearing stations from 5:00 to 5:30 before dinner.  One night as I was preparing to go back to the Hollywood Inn at 12:15 a.m. Richard Deere, from the G.O. came to the bus and ordered me off it.  Per OEC volume policy this was illegal.  As an expediter, my only senior was the HAS in O, but Richard pulled G.O. rank on him.  Richard said he had noticed how good my handwriting was and my ability with words.  Therefore, I was ordered to work every night from 12:30 to 2:30 a.m., directly under him, in the Treasury Division writing out all of ASHO's checks, which went all over the U.S. and Europe.  At 2:30 a.m. I was expected to wait for a city bus that got me back to the Hollywood Inn at 3:00 a.m.  I then had to be up at 7:00 a.m. with all the other ASHO staff who had been able to go home at 12:15.

At one point I was suddenly told that I was to receive a great amount of auditing.  Not with staff auditors as most Sea Org members did, but with public auditors who were some of ASHO's best.  Through the end of 1974, all of 1975, all of 1976, and almost all of 1977, I received auditing on the average of three to four hours a day.  I received more auditing than almost any Sea Org member at ASHO, except the senior executives.  Someone was always pushing me into sessions.  And I was ordered to pay for it, too.  In 1975, I sold my car for $2,500.00.  I asked my own grandmother for money and she eventually sent me $1,900.00.  In all, I gave the Sea Org a total of $12,900.00.  I was also slowly being given tougher auditors.  I realize now that with all the auditing I received, I definitely should have attested to clear and several OT levels, but I kept getting put on very strange auditing programs and for all the money I paid, I never seemed to progress in session.  When I left in April of 1978, my last auditing program consisted of Expanded Dianetics given to me by a Class 9, OTM auditor.  I had been left in the middle of an expanded dianetics rundown, in late 1977 - early 1978, when the G.O. pulled me off all auditing and put me on their own program.

Meanwhile, aside from auditing, I was moving rapidly through courses too.  I decided I wanted to be a Sea Org Executive in Division 7.  So instead of taking training courses to be an auditor, as many Sea Org members did, I took administrative course.  I attended all of the OEC volume courses, TR courses, and ethics courses.

Early in January 1975 I was told that my official job at ASHO was to be Letter Registrar in division 2.  I was disappointed as I had wanted either Div. 1 (HCO), or Div. 7 or to be sent to the Apollo.  I held that job from January 1975 until November 1976.  I wrote an average of 2,950 letters a week.  I had two typists and dictated all my letters.  ASHO had an enormous Central Files section and I wrote to the persons in it many times over.  As a letter registrar I received over 350 letters a week and communicated with Scientologists all over the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe.  The job came naturally to me and I worked very hard at it.  Sometimes I would stay up all night at ASHO working, just to keep up with all my letters.  Also if I didn't answer all my letters within three days, I would be put in a lower condition and sent to Ethics.  So when I worked all night there was more than just a personal desire to stay up.  I didn't want to do amends on top of everything else.

Things began to get tougher at the Hollywood Inn during 1975.  Some nights we would get back at 1:00 a.m. and find orders pasted on the doors of our rooms that the Commanding Officer would be white gloving all rooms at 7:00 a.m., the next morning.  Richard had left me off of check writing when I became a letter reg, so some nights I could leave at 12:15.  When these orders started appearing, eventually the white gloves were done automatically twice a week, we would get no sleep at all.  We would have to work until 6:55 scrubbing the entire room and bathroom, and then be in uniform and at attention for the inspection at 7:00 a.m.  It was important to pass, because if your room flunked, you would receive an ethics condition.

Most of the time during 1975, the Sea Org ate pretty well.  But there were times it was rough.  For example, if statistics were down in any division and stayed down, all Sea Org members would be punished even if your own individual statistics were up.  If Division 4 (training division) statistics were down, that meant not enough auditors were graduating, not enough pre-clears were going on to AO for clear and OT, we would all eat nothing but oatmeal for two or three weeks.  Even if all the other areas were in power, we all got barely enough to exist on with our schedules, until Div IV raised their statistics.  The entire program was designed to make money.  Incidentally, officers ate in a separate dining room from non officer Sea Orgers.  Rank was a very important part of our lives.

The days and weeks wore on through that year and I continued to exist on about three to four hours of sleep a night and keep everything else moving along.  In November of 1975 I was promoted to the job of Ada Scheduling Registrar.  I had more responsibility and juniors working under me.  I had three typists, and an administrative person who did all of my paper work for me, and a secretary who kept track of all my appointments with public people.  An ASR is a glorified letter registrar.  A letter registrar writes to all folders in Central Files.  In ASHO there were easily over 10,000 folders in the file cabinet.  The ASR picks out of those 10,000 about 300-500 people that she writes to only.  Her job is to get as much money out of those people for "paid up" ASHO services and to keep these people coming to L.A. each week to start courses or auditing.  An ASR's "communication lines" are considered to be untouchable.  When I was promoted I was receiving 300 letters a week of approximately 450 that I sent out.  This was considered excellent if a letter registrar received 300 letters in a week when writing to 10,000 folders, but when an ASR achieves 300 out of 450, it is considered extraordinary.  My communication lines were SOLID.  The reason I am stating this background on the ASR post is that people I wrote to told me many things; and since carbons of all letters in are kept in the file folders, anyone who wants to read the contents can.  As I became more proficient at this job, word spread that I was on a very high OT level.  This incredibly resulted in some very horrible experiences for me.  I was raped on orders that had come down lines" by an S.O. officer and by a person who fits the description of Hubbard.

In the Sea Org sexuality, sexual intercourse and reproduction were all classified under the "second dynamic". This was the urge a person had to survive in the above areas. The urge for survival could be taken to mean survival for the body only. In Scientology, though, there is the belief that the thetan survives on these levels too.

It became apparent to me that as a Sea Org member at ASHO, there was one very strong law concerning relationships. S.O. members did not have any sexual contact with public students or preclears. At ASHO anyway, this law was observed rigidly amongst the staff. An interpretation of the S.O. 's feeling about sex with public persons was the the S.O. was "above" such activities. We were so "elite", that sex with the public would "spoil" our control over the public. However, there was no law preventing S.O. members from having sexual contact with other S.O. members. In fact this was expected if one had been with the S.O. for an appreciable length of time. Marriages in the S.O. were common, as birth control of any sort was not encouraged, advancing pregnancies, would cause staff to marry, when they might not otherwise. I could never understand the amount and frequency of "swapping partners" in the S.O. This went on constantly. One week two staff would be married. (Scientology marriage ceremony) and then the woman would become pregnant. A few months later, she would marry another S.O. member, have the baby and then marry another S.O.  member etc. I don't know if this is totally understood, that when a couple married they obtain a marriage certificate from the city hall, but it meant nothing. This was all done as part of a "shore story" to keep legal problems relating to marriage from reaching the S.O. If a couple wanted to divorce, they just broke up. There were never formal divorces in the S.O., and they didn't have to get permission from anyone to end their relationship. There was never much property to divide between the two anyway. The offspring of those "marriages" went to the Pumpkin School, Apple School, and the Cadet Org to be indoctrinated with Hubbard's techniques so they didn't become problems to the Organization.

I observed all this during my first year in the S.O.  It bothered me. Here were all the staff, supposedly ethical people, who were all knowing about humanity, busting up relationships all the time. I never resolved the conflict within me about this. And I never told anyone my feelings. I independently decided that I would have no sexual contact with anyone in the S.O. I totally suppressed my own sexuality and decided I would not play that game as an S.O. member.

For a year and one half no one bothered me about my attitude concerning sex.  I began to notice however that all the girls who were single when they joined the S.O. were by now paired off or married, except me.  I still refused to form a relationship with anyone.

In late 1975, 1 was told to report to HCO. The HAS at that time was Lee Heerling. She informed me that I was to report to the Fifield Manor and go to the seventh floor. She gave me no other information. I did this without  knowing why 1 was going.

At the Manor I was directed to the elevator and went to the seventh floor. The entire floor was elaborately furnished to the point of suffocation. A S.O. member appeared and showed me to a door that was partly open. I went into a very large living room with heavy curtains, pile carpet, overstuffed chairs and clean to the point of obsession. Sitting on one of the chairs, drinking what looked like sherry, was a heavy set older man. He had reddish grey hair slightly long in the back. He was wearing a white shirt, black pants, black tie, and black shoes, highly polished.  He didn't say a word and slowly got up, motioned me to follow him into the next room. I didn't know if it was Hubbard, and wondered if I was to have either an auditing session or an interview.  I followed him.

I found myself in a lavish bedroom.  This still didn't worry me as sometimes interviews and sessions were held in bedrooms at the Hollywood Inn for staff.  There was a small table set up with an E-meter on it and again I thought about a session.  Without a word he suddenly began to undress me.  I was repelled by him.  I did not want to sleep with him.  Yet, I felt really chilled and cold to the bone at that moment.  I actually sensed real fear and danger in the room.  In an instant I realized the calculated power coming from this person.  If I resisted I knew that my punishment would be extreme.  His eyes were so blank, no emotion, no interaction, nothing was there.  I make the decision to not resist whatever happened.  I realized it would be a bad mistake for me to do so.  He seemed to be completely divorced from reality.  He was so strange that I realized that if I provoked him he could be extremely dangerous.  If a person is crazy you can't predict their actions toward you. I let him undress me without resisting.

I was totally mentally unprepared for what occurred next. He lay on top of me.  As far as I could tell he had no erection.  However, using his hand in some way he managed to get his penis inside me.  Then for the next hour he did absolutely nothing at all.  I mean nothing.  After the first twenty five minutes I became about as frightened as I have been in my life in this situation.  I felt that in some perverse way he was telling me that he hated me as a female.  Then, I began to feel that my mind was being ripped away from me by force.  That was the worst of all.  This was weird, total control on a level I could not fathom at that time.  I had no idea what was happening.  After half an hour I really thought I was going crazy.  I couldn't move my body from underneath him and I could feel he had no erection either.  He wouldn't look at me, but kept his head averted to the side and just gazed into space.  I had to discipline myself to keep from screaming because I felt I was having a nervous breakdown.  Then I got the terrible thought that he was dead.  He was hardly breathing.  Then I thought he would kill me.  My thoughts became very morbid. After an hour he got up and walked out.  I just lay there for about ten minutes.  Then mechanically I got dressed.  Instantly after that I started crying hysterically.  I cried and cried and cried.  I wasn't afraid of becoming pregnant.  I was so afraid of whatever had been going on in this man's head.  Finally when I couldn't cry anymore I went downstairs and took a bus back to ASHO.  I didn't say a word to anyone.

Months went by after this.  I got my period on schedule which made me feel a little gratified at least.  One night I was working late.  Larry Norton who was now the deputy C.O. came into my area and asked if I wanted a ride back to the Inn.  This seemed a little strange as he was a senior officer, 0T7, native state, class 7 auditor, but I accepted.

On the way in the car he asked me if I had ever fallen in love sexually in the S.O.  I said no.  He said he thought that was true as I was much too powerful theta wise to be controlled.  When we got to the Inn we went up in the elevator together and as I was about to get off at my floor he said he needed to talk to me.  I said O.K. as he was an officer and I thought a friend.  Also he was married, also he was black.  The only black S.O. member I can recall.  Not many blacks are Scientologists.  We went to the eighth floor at the Inn into a little bedroom.  He sat on the bed and started talking about eight being the symbol for infinity and the highest level of OT-ness.  I thought that was interesting but couldn't figure out why he was telling me.  Then he said Ron worked in eight year cycles and that I had been born in the eighth month of the year (August).  He then said that orders had come down lines that I was to conceive a child.  This really shocked me.  He wouldn't tell me who had sent the order.  He just said that my abilities were such that the S.O. needed me to have a baby.  Then with another word, he pulled me up, hurriedly undressed me and threw me on the bed.  Again I felt the same feeling that I must not fight him.  He got undressed and for the next hour the exact same performance that had happened to me at the Manor was repeated.  This time it was even more intense.  I guess he had his orders too.

Afterwards, I felt ripped apart mentally.  As he was getting dressed I couldn't stand it anymore.  I was in tears again and I said to him, "Sir, I can't understand what you were doing to me?"  He looked at me and said, "Ann, you haven't see the OT materials for OT 7 yet, but you know what you are.  You are an invisible spirit operating your body.  You and I actually live in a totally different universe far away from this one.  This earth, this galaxy, our bodies are just pictures we are mocking up to play and have a game.  Sex for a thetan is nothing.  It's the postulates and control of mind and body that is the prize.  If I postulate you will have a baby from the viewpoint of my home universe, then you will.  You are under my command coming from far away.  I can make your body do what I want."  Then he left.  I was so mixed up.  I had been trained to believe everything he said yet I couldn't believe he had just told me what he had.  I felt really defenseless.  I cried all night.

A month later, I got my period.  A month after that Larry Norton called me into his office and told me to go to Ethics. The Ethics Officer assigned me a condition of treason because I had disobeyed command intention and was not pregnant.  I had to do amends for this crime.

After this the G.O. hitched onto me and I never had any other sexual relations in the S.O.  It was made apparent I was a failure in this area.

PART II:  DISCONNECT SESSIONS, FAIR GAME AND THE G.O.

The first of these was an interview I had with my old friend Dawn Prager in January of 1976.  She called me into her office and asked me to demo (using any solid object to represent a person or an abstract thought) it's part of Scientology tech, to demo out different people in my family.  This I did.  I thought the whole exercise was weird because I did not communicate with my family at all.  Then she told me to demo out disconnection from my family.  I had read my OEC Vol. 1 and told her that the policy relating to disconnection had been canceled.  Little did I know.  Dawn said that in general it had, but in specific cases it had not.  She also asked me to demo out fair game.  I asked her if I was in an ethics condition without knowing it.  She said no, that she had received orders for me to do the demos and that was all.  I felt very strange about the whole thing, like pieces of a puzzle I couldn't fit together.  It didn't sit well with me.

The every next day three staff members from G.O. WW arrived at ASHO to give a staff briefing on the G.O.  One was Judy Palmer who had been my first C/S at ASHO, but had joined G.O. staff.  Her husband, Ted, who had been director of processing at ASHO before joining the G.O. and someone whose first name was Gary.  They gave their briefing and afterwards as I was leaving I suddenly found myself cornered by Judy, Ted and Gary.  They invited me for coffee in an office at ASHO.  There they told me they were all on a mission to recruit for G.O. WW.  Apparently my name was a hot item.  For the next three hours they tried every tactic known to get me to join staff and go back with them to England.  Suddenly my meeting with Dawn made sense.  Demo out fair game and disconnect from my family.  These guys got around that one too.  Judy said I could disconnect as a thetan and sign a paper saying I had done that.  They said that GO WW really needed me to write letters.  The pay would be better than ten dollars a week.  That was Sea Org pay.  They tried everything they could think of.  I said no way.  I was not joining the GO ever.  Period.  Richard who was now head of the L.A. GO had totally turned me off to it.  The more they tried to reg me, the more stubborn I got.  They were all OT's and finally, I got so fed up I put out a picture of all three of them falling into a swamp in the middle of the night.  Real blackness. They all got very pissed off.  (It's an in-joke if you are an ex-Scientologist to get why they got so angry with me.)  OT's get mad if you send those kind of pictures to them.  Anyway, I refused to go with them.  They left for England that night without me.

I went back to auditing and ASR work and the long, long hours of hard work.  Sometimes there would be things known as "bulk mail parties" when the monthly magazine from ASHO would be sent out.  Per policy Division 2, dissemination had to get the magazine mailed.  That meant ten or so of us, starting at 12:30 a.m. and working all night outside.  Bundling and then doing all the zip code sorting for the entire magazine.  Every month, the mailing would be over 100,000 all done by hand.  And again our pay was set at ten dollars a week.  There were also watches, like those on the ship. One could be picked to have the org watch a certain night each week.  This meant being in charge of the entire Org from 11:30 p.m. till 4:00 a.m.  Running the switchboard, letting people in and out, everything.  Then catching a bus at 5:00 a.m. and getting two hours sleep before having to go back to ASHO for the day's schedule Also in 1976 there were many big conventions on Scientology held in L.A.  I was invariably chosen to be the chief PR person and Registrar at these functions.  I met many celebrities and very rich people who would go to the lectures.  One time there was an enormous convention put on by Clearwater staff and I was picked to be a Flag registrar for Clearwater.  I thought ASHO made a lot of money, but I had people handing me $50,000 checks for their next services in Florida. (This was later than 1976, after Clearwater was established.)

Still I was doing very well on my job, and moving still very fast in the Sea Org.  Suddenly another extreme event occurred and I believe this was in early 1977, when things really began to slide into hell.  I was working late when I got a telephone call.  It was the QM (person who had the night watch) and he called to tell me that Richard Deere wanted me in his office at 1:00 a.m. sharp.  This really threw me.  In 1976 the GO had moved out of ASHO altogether and rented a small house down Temple St. from ASHO.  The building was strictly off limits to Sea Org.  The GO even had their own communicator that ran messages between the two buildings.  I really had no idea in the world why I had been called over there.  I tried to think of anything I had done that the GO would want to see me about.  I came up with zero.  I knew Richard was not about to recruit me, as it was plain there was no love lost between us.

At 12:25 a.m. I knocked on the door to the house.  It struck me as funny that the door was triple locked and it took the person on the other side a few minutes to get it open.  The house had two floors, and I was told to go upstairs and wait.  There was a little landing upstairs with no furniture whatever, except an enormous paper shredder.  Every five minutes a girl would appear and shred something.  She kept this up for two hours and I waited for two hours in agony.  There were offices leading off the lobby and in one a heated argument was in progress.  Raised voices, talk about some mission someone had obviously botched up.  I didn't know if I should stay or leave or what.  It was a terrible wait.

Finally at 3:00 a.m. a door opened and out came Heber Janoch, Henning Heldt, John Mettle, and Richard.  Heber knew me vaguely from the conventions, he used to read strange science fiction poetry to the regges at ASHO.  He saw me and said, "Hey, Ann, have you decided to join our cause?" "No", I said, "I was ordered here".  Richard gave me a dark look that meant Shut up and the rest of the party trooped downstairs.

Summarily I was shown into the office.  There was another GO person there whose name was Bill.  He was head of GO information which I knew was a cover name for GO Intelligence.  I was told to sit down and Richard started things off with a bang.  "You're very OT and you write to a lot of OT's and you have very strong comm lines with them.  Someone has leaked the new location of Flag to the L.A. Times and I say you are the person that leaked the information".  I was totally taken aback.  Before I knew it I had said, "That is utter bullshit and you know it".  At that point Bill started laughing.  "Ask her about the pictures she gets of the Base", he said.  He was pretty quick on the uptake.  I couldn't lie because I did get pictures in my head of the Base, palm trees, a large white hotel, swimming pools.  "Is it in the U.S.?", Richard said.  "Yes".  "East or West Coast?" "East."  "What state"? "Florida."  "What town?" "Clear-something."  "Clear-what?" (Here, only someone who has been in Scientology will understand how rude my next response was.) "Are you listing or nulling the item, sir?" I asked Richard Deere who was by now head of the USGO.  Bill nearly had hysterics he was laughing so hard.  But Richard said, "You're tough Ann, but not tough enough.  Watch it."  And I was dismissed.  No one in the Sea Org ever knew about this little interview.

Back I went to my post and didn't get to the Inn until 6:30 a.m.  Also in this year our room had been moved to another floor and there were now six girls in a room meant to hold only two people.  It was very cramped and there was no space for anything.  It was most difficult trying to live in that situation.

More little things were changing.  In 1977, our staff drills were changed to emphasize control in a big way -- control of individuals, control of groups, control of areas, states, etc.  And we started getting a lot more meter checks.  That is where the Ethics Officer puts a staff member on the E-meter and without asking any questions notes down what the needle does.  The meter check is used when Ethics is getting paranoid about suppression among the staff.  In other words, looking for a target to hit at.  I kept getting called in for those a lot.

I don't remember the date when Quentin Hubbard died.  I do know that very few Sea Org members knew the actual truth about his death.  I never met Quentin but he came to some of the conventions in L.A. and I always felt very close to him, in tune with his awareness of things.  I made a big mistake on that day.  I was feeling very strange, all tensed up and I couldn't figure out why I thought it had to do with the fact that several people who I had been writing to, in very good comm with, had simply vanished.  Their folders had been pulled from Central Files and I didn't know why. Plus I had been given a book of poems by an OT6 that morning who I had written for over a year.  He had arrived to take the Class 8 course at ASHO and had looked me up. His book was called Excalibur and he had written in the flyleaf, "For Ann, keeper of the original dream, the dream that has been smashed".  That had bothered me.  I didn't understand.  At about three in the afternoon I couldn't stand it any longer.  I went to the Ethics Officer and said, Quentin died today.  Suicide or murder, I don't know.  But his death was preventable and several staff in certain places know it."  The Ethics Officer said nothing and I walked out.  I had started the wheels in motion, and by 1978 I would find out the consequences for that.

Cleaning stations got very tough in 1977.  You had to get a pass or get a condition.  And what of the Sea Org children?  At ASHO if you were in the Sea Org and had a child this is what happened.  At four months your baby would be sent to the Cadet Org.  This was another old Inn originally called the Melrose bought by the Sea Org in 1977.  Sea Org children saw their parents once a week on Sunday.  The children were totally indoctrinated into Scientology tech.  They didn't even go to regular school.  At kindergarten age they went to the Pumpkin School and then on to the Apple School, both Scientology run.  At sixteen most of the girls went to the Commodore's Messenger Org.  The children had their own Org in miniature.  Their CO was age 8.  They had uniforms and a lot of kids were auditors before they were 12.  The most chilling thing I saw was a Cadet Org Ethics Order on a 7 year old girl.  She had been placed in a condition of enemy by the Cadet Ethics Officer who was 11.  She had to work through the conditions just as a grown-up would.  I only saw the Melrose once and that was enough.  We had an emergency mission one Saturday night, when we usually had liberty time.  The L.A. Health Inspector was coming to the Melrose on Monday.  ASHO Fdn was told to go over and clean the whole place up.  It was a stinking pigsty.  It really upset me.  We worked like demons all Saturday night.  The babies there were all underfed as they were given feeding according to Ron's orders -- he has Flag Orders written on baby formulas.  There was food all over the walls and floors, maggots in the kitchen and these robotic children wandering around. Piles and piles of dirty laundry thrown in the front hall.  It was awful.  I worked so hard to clean it up -- I was so angry.  I wanted to do something for these children who had no childhood and didn't know it.  I remember cleaning the ovens so hard my hands bled.  At least they'll have a clean stove and hopefully won't get food poisoning was what I was thinking.  I was never so glad that I had never become pregnant in the Sea Org.  If I had done so, I knew I would have snuck out and had an abortion, with no qualms whatsoever.  No way would any child of mine end up there.  When the mission was finished and we went back to the Hollywood Inn, I spent the two hours we were supposed to sleep, scrubbing our bathtub over and over.  It was the only way I could vent my anger.

The last shreds of Sea Org innocence, on my part were being ripped away.  August 12, 1977 was the 10th anniversary of the Sea Org's existence.  We were going to have an enormous closed door party at a convention center that night.  I had been working really, really hard.  Two weeks before the 12th I was waiting for the city bus at 3:00 a.m.  A car stopped and someone told me to get in.  It was my Commanding Officer Carl Carlson.  This was very, very unusual.  Carl was a class 8, OT7 and one of the most brilliant minds I had ever encountered in the Sea Org.  He had never said two words directly to me, in the four and 1/2 years I was within the group.  But he was very, very theta.  That's the only way to describe him.  Very powerful and charismatic as a person.  He was wearing his full dress uniform in the car and he turned to me, with his cobalt blue eyes that pierced right through your soul and said, "There are stormy seas ahead for you.  I am being promoted to Clearwater. (He had been ASHO Fdn's CO for six years.) Larry Norton will become your CO.  Tomorrow I want you to apply for officer rank, Petty Officer 1st Class.  You will be awarded your lanyard August 12th.  After that you are on your own and I don't even know if the officer rank will help."  That was all he said, we were at the Inn.  Suddenly, for the first time I felt so sad, some kind of protection was being withdrawn.  I felt so vulnerable with no friend to turn to anymore.  A door had been shut.  I was alone.

I applied for the rank and got it.  August 12, was, well, unreal.  I had a dress uniform now.  White gloves, Sea Org hat, sword.  The event was held with all Sea Org members in L.A. there.  Officers and new officers sat in a group raised above all the other members.  All the "heavies" in the Sea Org and GO were there.  There was a slide show with slides of Clearwater, galaxies, planets, Ron, you name it.  There was champagne served to all of us.  Napkins with the gold Sea Org symbol and 1967-1977 on them.  Then the moment came when I had to walk under twenty crossed swords up to the stage.  I shook hands with all the CO's in L.A.  Yvonne, the CO of AO, Carl, Tony Dunleavy from England, all of them.  Yvonne gave me a medal ribbon thing with the Sea Org symbol that said in gold Ann Bailey three and 1/2 years of dedicated service to mankind.  Then I was presented with two gold anchors for my uniform and a gold chain lanyard.  Afterwards there was a huge bash, with a band, everyone dancing etc.  I remember walking to a window and still feeling really sad.  I had made it again, I was now an officer in the Sea Org.  Prestige, power, all of that was mine.  From no experience at all, I had risen through the ranks.  Yet somehow I kept thinking $12,000 for this?  I felt depressed, something wasn't right.

This is the hardest part of my statement to write.  But it has to be told because all of it is so much worse than the Excalibur experience.  Nothing comes close to this.  Carl left for Florida soon after, along with several other ASHO Fdn senior executives. And, surprise!  Other staff members who had been in the Sea Org for years announced they were all going into the L.A. GO.  It was strange.

Then came the total switch.  At a special briefing all ASHO Day and Fdn staff were told by a mission from Clearwater that we were moving.  The Sea Org had bought the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital Complex for $5 million in cash.  Nine enormous buildings that had been vacant for a year.  This was the big move everyone was ecstatic about it.  I wasn't so sure.

Meanwhile things happened on my post as ASR.  The GO would appear in my area and watch me at work.  Just watch and then leave.  Soon they would come to my desk and pull out cards of people they didn't want me writing to.  And leave.  They would take letters of mine and leave.  No explanations given.  Next I was told by my senior that I would have to run the ASR area alone and still keep my statistics in power.  This was insane for an Org as big as ASHO.  ASHO Day had six people working in their ASR area.  My secretary, my ASR admin were taken out of my area.  I was left with one typist.  An officer was supposed to get more backup not less.  For five months I actually did it.  I ran that entire area alone and kept the statistics up.  I never went back to the Inn at night anymore.  I averaged one hour of sleep a night for five months.  I did everything that usually takes three people, alone.  The GO laid off me during this period, too.  I don't think anyone believed I could do it, but I did, and kept it up month after month.  The Excalibur training had been too good.  It had made me tougher about getting a job done than anyone realized.  Also being an officer when one is dealing with public has its advantages.  If a group of public people saw me coming down the hall, they would get out of my way fast.  One look at the uniform and they would move.  Same with my reg cycles.  I got more of them as an officer than at any other time.

Another factor was now added.  We no longer had liberty Saturday night.  Instead we had to go to Cedars and start tearing it apart and redoing all the buildings from the ground up.  How can I describe how large those buildings are?  We would have five hours each Saturday night to work in.  The first Saturday we tore 100 sinks out of walls.  That was just the start.  We had to sand, and plaster miles and miles of wall.  Rip up and re-tile miles and miles of floors.  Clean out miles and miles of trash.  Tear down walls, put up walls, re-wire walls, install lights, rip up the entire premature baby nursery, tear apart operating rooms, get the L.A. police to de-activate the radioactive equipment in the labs, scrub miles of corridors, put in windows, tear out windows, scrape paint, paint miles of walls, paint stairwells and that still is just the beginning.  I was doing all that Saturday nights and running my area lone.  I was getting XON auditing with a tough auditor at the same time and trying to get through my course to become a Dianetic auditor.  I had done all the admin courses at ASHO, I would have to go to Clearwater to take any more.  Then another low blow fell.  The staff director of processing came to me and told me I could no longer be audited.  He gave no reason.  I was in the very middle of an XDN process and I was pulled off it.  I said I didn't even think I had used up all my $12,000, but he said that was it.  No more auditing.  The strangest part was that all around me new Sea Org recruits who hadn't paid any money were getting sessions right, left and center.  I got nothing at all.  Then I was told that I had to take a special course, the PTS Course. (Potential Trouble Source) I was pulled off the Dianetic Course and put on the PTS Course.  And I had to do that course over and over until the day I left.  I must have done it twenty times.  I wasn't allowed to take any other course.  No reason given.

Next was that I was put in a condition of liability.  I was given oatmeal to eat.  I had to wear filthy clothes instead of a uniform, no one could talk to me, I had to wear a rag around my arm and work up through the condition.  I did all that.  I got no sleep for 72 hours and I got all the staff to sign my petition to rejoin the group.  Then another switch happened.  I took my petition to the Ethics officer to sign and he said it wasn't valid.  After all the work he just ripped it up. He said I was PTS and the condition wasn't valid.  I said, who is telling you I'm PTS?  He said he couldn't tell me who.  I went back to my desk and threw all my OEC and HCOB volumes on the floor.  Damn the policies, they were all backwards.

After that I got my uniform back, but things got worse.  The GO began following me at work again.  Silently watching me.  Watching me on course too.  All the time.  This is hard to explain, but it's important.  One rare night I went back to my room at the Inn.  I was exhausted, wrung out.  I had started through the damn PTS course for the third time, all the reges seemed obsessed with money, money, money.  I was still running the ASR area lone, and the work at Cedars on Saturday night was getting outlandish.  The last Saturday there I and three others had been told to unload a Dump truck full of rusty, sharp scrap iron pieces.  My hands and arms were cut to hell from where the iron had been thrown at me off the truck.  I lay down on my bunk and suddenly, I was floating high above my body.  Melting with every molecule in the universe.  I heard Ron's voice far below me telling me to come back but I didn't want to.  I was free, floating totally calm.  All knowing, intention.  Minutes passed.  Suddenly I looked and far, far away was my body lying on the bunk.  My face was white and I wasn't breathing.  I was letting myself die, literally.  Then my own voice came in waves, that's what they want.  I slammed back into myself so hard my body convulsed off the bed.  I ran into the bathroom and was sick for two hours.

The next day I felt awful.  I had never been sick in the Sea Org, but I knew I was sick now.  By early evening sweat was pouring off me and my face was bright red.  I stumbled into the Ethics Officer and said that something was really wrong.  (Ethics is the first place you go when you are ill.)  I told him what happened and he was really shook up.  He said what I had done was only for people beyond OT3.  (And they pay thousands to do that!)  Anyway he sent me to the medical officer which was a big joke.  All you do to be a medical officer is read a first aid manual.  I asked her to take my temperature.  She did and it was 104º.  I looked straight at her and said, I have a temperature of 104º, I am really sick.  She said, O.K., go down to the galley and wash dishes all night.  That was it -- the answer to a fever, wash dishes.  I barely made it to the galley and started washing a pile of dirty dishes.  Suddenly I got really, really angry.  I marched back to the Org and into the pre clear examiner's office (Where you can go and originate statements as a thetan on an E-meter)  "I'm furious", I said.  "I'm a fucking officer and I have a 104º fever and I've been on the damn PTS Course forever, and someone is playing a nasty game with me.  If you don't watch it I'll melt your damn E-meter".  Her TR's went out, she was really shocked.  "Plus", I said, "Send this to the GO.  They'll never get me on the damn RPF at Cedars either."  This all out of the mouth of Ann Bailey, who had never been heard to swear in the Sea Org ever.  I walked out and realized my fever had blown off.  Incredible.

The next day the screws were tightened.  I went to work as ASR that night when my senior showed up with the Ethics Officer.  I was told I was off post, no longer ASR.  I was told I was under a lot of stress and was to be given a rest to destimulate.  All this was against policy as one is supposed to have a committee of evidence to be taken off post, but not I.  I was demoted to stuffing mail and working at Cedars.  And doing the PTS Course again.  For several more months things held at this level.  I stuffed mail, worked at Cedars, went on course.  The GO watched me and I watched them.  I began losing weight and looking very, very white.  I got strange letters from Clearwater, from the Ethics Officer there, stuff like "Hold on, we'll never let them kick you out of the Sea Org or go to the RPF".  But no one would tell me who "they" were.

Several weeks later I was again told by the staff director of processing that I was to be put on yet another special program.  I was to eat by myself.  The diet consisted of coffee for breakfast, liquid protein for lunch, and one piece of fruit for dinner.  This was all I got to eat for the rest of my time in the Sea Org.  In the morning a car would pick me up outside the Hollywood Inn.  I would be driven to the Hollywood Hills in Griffith Park where I would have to run for three hours.  I had no sneakers so I had to run barefoot.  There were always two people with me when I was running.  They said they were on a special training program, too.  I got thinner and thinner.  The worse I looked the better I was told I looked.  As this program wore on I became more and more apathetic.  I started distrusting all Sea Org members.  I started feeling like a hunted animal and as if I was trapped in a cage.  I could get absolutely no answers from anyone as to who had ordered all these programs for me.  Someone was really putting the pressure on me.  I was not fitness boarded out of the Sea Org, I was not sent to the RPF, I was instead left as a member of the Sea Org at ASHO Fdn, yet put in the position as outcast, almost crazy.  All policies were being reversed on me and there was no one at all I could turn to for help.  On the one hand Clearwater kept sending me letters of encouragement, saying that soon I would be joining staff there and on the other hand I was being staved into some kind of submission, told I was PTS, to I had to run to destimulate, not allowed to eat food, but still told that I was an officer and still in uniform.  It was really turning into a crazy nightmare.

The move time to Cedars came.  All nine buildings had been totally renovated and painted inside like a psychedelic amusement park.  Each floor was painted in weird, brilliant colors, with all kinds of abstract designs.  The inside of the place looked like a circus.

I'll never forget the week preceding the move.  I don't know how we all did it.  We were told there was not enough money to buy new furniture for Cedars.  So from 12 a.m. till 8:00 a.m. right up until move day, all the Sea Org was up all night refinishing all the furniture at ASHO.  Sanding, varnishing, repairing like mad.  The senior executives never did anything, they went home early.  It was real slavery and awful work.  Then, in the morning we would have to go over to Cedars and put finishing touches on all the buildings.  I was as always on the diet of very little food with the speeded up schedule I would get very weak, but I kept going.

Moving was incredible.  I got no sleep at all for four days.  Neither did many others.  We started moving on a Friday night.  You have to understand the extent of this move.  ASHO had been set up in 1968.  Therefore, it had 10 years of papers, pc folders, course packs to move, plus 300 file cabinets and over 2,000 of Hubbard's books.  All the furniture, all the documents in HCO -- everything.  We had five of the biggest moving vans that Mayflower makes and between ASHO and Cedars, we had to get everything to Cedars in vans, then follow the vans to Cedars and take everything out, then put everything in its proper place in the vast hospital complex.

I can't begin to describe what it was like.  I am only left with the impressions.  ASHO Fdn had a crew of about twenty then, ASHO Day about thirty five.   Fifty-five people to do all this work, actually make that forty as executives did none of the moving.  I remember loading 20 lb. boxes of books in and out of moving vans all night long with no breaks, loading desk after desk from ASHO to Cedars, 300 filing cabinets weighing 90 lbs. each into the vans and out again, thousands and thousands of pc folders, chairs, course tables, lamps, telex machines, ASHO was stripped bare.  I remember the morning of the third day, standing in ASHO HCO and catching 100 lb. boxes of ethics folders and documents that were being thrown at me from under the eaves.  When we got all of ASHO empty, moving all of it into Cedars, all of it, I remember the ash grey faces of the crew the morning of the fourth day.  I remember IBM typewriters being hurled at me off the moving van.  One every minute or so.  It was absolutely insane.  Mad.  Finally on the fourth day everything was moved in.  Cedars was ready to go.  The enormous complex was so big we couldn't even begin until all of it was ready for the public.  The CO's called us together and said we could go to the Inn and sleep.  I was about to leave when the ASHO Ethics Officer came up to me.  He said there was no door on the room where all the OT folders were and that I would have to guard that door for four hours.  Silently I followed him to the very bowels of the Cedars, the morgue where the folders were.  I felt as if I was now dreaming, I couldn't believe this was happening.  I wasn't even an OT, yet I had to guard all the OT folders.

Let me describe the morgue.  It had not been cleaned out.  There was the scale for weighing the bodies, the huge stone table where the autopsies were done.  Drains for blood, etc.  There were no lights.  I was left to sit on a milk crate in the dark, with racks and racks of OT folders all around me.  The floor was covered in trash and there was no fresh air.  It smelled of death, really stank of death and chemicals and dissection.  For the first hour I just sat.  Then I realized it was very cold down here.  So I walked back and forth for the second hour.  My mind was blank.  I knew I could look in all the folders but I didn't care.  I couldn't have cared less what was in them.  Suddenly during the third hour I was aware of shadows in the corridor beyond me, they were people.  Slowly I realized that an entire group of people lived and worked down here.  I was so tired it took me a long time to realize who they were.  Then it hit me.  The Cedar's RPF.  They lived and worked down in this stinkhole.  This was their Org.  Then I really found out what had happened to them.  Filthy, tired, skeletons appeared before me and started begging to see the OT folders.  I thought I looked bad, but I looked beautiful compared to them.  They crowded around me pushing and shoving, then the mood turned ugly.  They started hitting each other to get into the room behind me.  I realized then what had happened.  They had been totally broken. They were animals, not humans.  I saw four of my friends, one a Class Nine OT6 fighting to get by me.  They were punching each other in the face, pulling hair, kicking.  And way down in this cellar, no one could hear them, no one cared.  Someone suddenly hit me hard.  I realized they were turning their anger on me, they would beat me up to get to the folders.  I guess in periods of deep stress we all go a little insane.  Survival of the fittest.  From somewhere inside my tired brain, strength came.  I stood up and with all my TR's as in as they had ever been, all my training on control of groups came back.  "Friends", I said, "Believe me, I am your friend.  By some strange fate I am not with you on the RPF.  But believe me if you don't get out of here right now, I know you will be punished.  Go now before it's too late."  And they ran away into the dark.  When I sat down, I was trembling all over.  Because the real intent of my message had been for them to get out of the hospital.  Leave Cedars.  But I don't think any of them got the message.

At Cedars, the routine was the same.  I was still on the PTS course, still running, still stuffing letters.  I hated that Complex so much.  Our uniforms were changed to cutesy outfits and the entire operations was money motivated.  The GO still watched me like hawks.  They were right, I was breaking down.  But not in the direction they wanted.

My last week in the Sea Org was like a dream.  One night I was told to go to the basement and stuff letters.  I did this in a little room with no ventilation and moisture dripping down the walls.  There was never anyone around.  I was left alone most of the time at night now.  That was their mistake.  It gave me time to think.  This night I started stuffing my 2,000 letters.  The old innocent days of the Sea Org seemed very far away.  The idealistic girl who had come here in '74 with dreams of new found powers and increased understanding had died.  All the money I had paid had brought me nothing.  Far above me the Org hummed with activity.  Everyday someone else like me, gullible and hungry for answers was being drawn into Scientology.  Every day someone joined the Sea Org looking for security within the group, not knowing the total control of their personality they were handing over.  Every day someone got sent to the RPF.  These were my thoughts as I stood there.

Suddenly I flung the letters down.  I needed to walk.  Underneath the nine buildings were long tunnels that connected each building.  Great steam pipes ran along the sides of the tunnels.  It was like being in the engine room of a ship.  The public didn't even know these tunnels existed.  I walked for miles thinking.  I knew now that I was going to die.  My body was completely emaciated, my mind had developed frightening blank periods when I could remember nothing at all.  I had very few emotions I could feel anymore.  Things were breaking down.

I walked and walked through tunnels I had never been in.  Then I heard it.  Inhuman screaming and ranting.  It was coming from my right.  There were four doors and someone was pounding on one of them.  I ran over and tried to open the door.  It was locked.  I yelled, "Are you alright?"  I got more screams.  Suddenly someone touched my shoulder.  I turned and looked at a man in clean overalls.  "Hello", he said.  "I'm the Ethics Officer for the RPF".  "What are you doing to her?" I said.  "Oh she's just blowing off charge.  When someone flips out on the RPF, we lock them up for a couple of hours.  They calm down after a while."  He smiled.  I was stunned.  "You lock them up in here?" "Sure, you know the tech.  The tech always works."  I looked at him.  Totally triumphant, with Scientology tech on his side.  I felt sick to my stomach, the corridor started spinning around me.  So this was it.  The final answer.  Cold, calculated, step by step -- a progression to stamp out anyone who questioned, rebelled, criticized, disliked Scientology.  Break them, all of us.  You don't agree, you make a mistake, you are a staff member and you flip out.  No mercy -- just Scientology tech.  Pure Ron Hubbard, turned insane.  He was still looking at me.  "Sure", I said, "maybe she'll drop her body and pick up a new one.  She'll get regged again and come back for another try.  Death doesn't exist does it?  Suffering doesn't exist either.  Only the tech sent from another galaxy".  "Wow", he said, "what OT level are you?" "None you'd want to know about", I said.  I turned and left him there by the locked door.

The next day, April 21, 1978, I walked out of the Hollywood Inn for the last time.  The journey had ended, my home was not with the Sea Org in Scientology or L. Ron Hubbard.  The illusion had been broken, the dream had been smashed.  And somewhere deep inside me I knew I had made the right choice to leave.  Freedom lay in another direction.  I had found the key to the right door at last.

[Signed]

Ann Bailey


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