Escaping Scientology with Liz Gale: Audits, Absurdities, and Aftermath

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I'm Sarah Edmondson and I'm Anthony Nippie Ames and this is a little bit culty.

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patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Welcome to season 8 of a little bit culty.

Welcome back to a little bit culty, everybody.

Today's guest is Liz Gale, a third generation Scientologist.

From elite Scientology boarding schools and eccentric churches to a family of true believers,

indoctrination was the air she breathed. Right up until her teenage brother Philip Suicide in 1998,

sparked not only a national scandal for the organization, it also forced Liz to start asking

the kinds of questions you're not supposed to ask. You may recognize her from season 2, Episode 3

of Lerimini Scientology, The Aftermath, where she first began peeling back the curtain on

what life inside the church really looks like. Her memoir, Confessions of an ex-Scientologist,

Pothead, dives even deeper into the secret scriptures that shaped her childhood.

The aliens and the global conspiracies woven into the doctrine, and the moment she realized

that protecting her own kids means sacrificing everything she'd ever known.

Now, Liz uses social media, writing, and darkly funny videos to make sense of mind control,

religious trauma, and recovery in a way that's smart, accessible, and just a reverend enough

to keep us all sane while we talk about some pretty not sane stuff. Here's our conversation with Liz Gale.

Liz Gale, welcome to a little bit culty. Right. Thanks for having me. Thanks for getting

up so early. It is early. Let's go. Nothing like waking up in the morning and telling two strangers

on the other side of the continent your entire life history. I thought about that as I was

rushing my teeth. I thought, oh, okay, this, here we go. Well, we've covered a lot of

Scientologists. My grander Lee Remini, the headlies, we've never spoken to somebody, I guess Mike

was born into the seawork, but your mother was born and raised, which means your grandmother was

the first to get involved. A long legacy. Do you want to tell us the cliff notes of your family

history? Sure, yeah. So I was born a third generation Scientologist, which means that on my

maternal side, my mother's mother got our family in. Before there was Scientology, there was a book

called Dianetics that the same founder wrote, it was really important. And she got involved at that

era. So the 1950s, by the time my mom was born, my grandmother was already all in. And so my mom

was raised from birth, pregnancy, her entire life with Scientology. And when I say with Scientology,

I mean, very dedicated, true believers to the tenants and technology, quote, technology of

Scientology. My mother is what I would consider a professional Scientologist. She ran a household

and went up the bridge to total freedom. She was very dedicated. And in some ways, she did it

because she wanted to be a really good mother. So it was baked in very much baked into our, our

like our mother line, very specifically maternal, if that makes sense. And so that's kind of what

I was born into, this really fanatical family who really believed that if they applied these

teachings of Elrond Hubbard to their children that they would have the best experience. And you know,

in a way, we would be kind of superhuman. Spoiler alert, I'm not, didn't work out that way.

But it was a, it was a pretty wild ride. So much of my family is still in Scientology. There's

fourth generation Scientologists in my family that are, you know, working for the church in this

organization, which is the most dedicated, you know, level you can be. Right. Are they all in

Florida? Most of them are in Florida. Yeah. My mother had two siblings and only one of them

actually was in Scientology and raised their kids in Scientology. There's kind of an age gap.

So to make a very brief, by the time my mother was born, she already had a 20 year old sister.

She was kind of a late surprise baby. That's how she was raised completely in Scientology.

My grandmother found it and then she had this late baby and was like, oh, I'm going to do it all

with Scientology with this one. And her older brother was 10. So he, his children are the ones

that are in. Are you in contact with them or are you been? No, at the end. I know you're an alien to them.

Oh, we can't talk about that. But no, that was my mom in eight, nine years, ish. Okay. And I

definitely want to get to like how that, how you decided to do that. Sure. Yeah. Coming up. But

before that, tell us a little bit about your child and what was it like to be raised by someone

who was also raised and born or raised in Scientology? Oh, that's a big question.

Well, for one, I never went to any public school. I only ever went to, quote, Scientology school.

So that means that everything that I learned about how to approach a topic or how to, I mean, study.

It's a very specific mindset. That was all Scientology. I went to Scientology boarding school.

There's a very Nancy Smancey one out here in Oregon called the Delphian. And my brother and I

were sent there both at eight years old before we were eight years old. Our mother, like I said,

was a top Scientologist public. So she was paying a lot of money to go do levels and she learned

how to be an auditor. So I was, we were audited in utero. I mean, not to go too deep too fast, but

Scientology believes in reincarnation. And that's one of our tenant beliefs. And they also believe

that the spirit comes into the body close to birth. So that's a little different than other

religions. Some people think that when those first cells spark, that's when life comes in. It's a

whole debate. We don't need to get into the debate. Scientology specifically, they believe that

the spirit comes close to birth. And so there are processes that a mother would do to welcome the

new spirit to let them know what's going on. And then from birth on, there are processes,

Scientology processes that would be done to like, acclimate the spirit to their new body and new

life. So that was my early childhood. I remember being audited, which is Scientology. These processes

done before I could even write. I was drawing pictures with crayons. Of course, I don't remember a

lot of this. Like I have pieced together memories. But all of that information is put into my folders.

There's like a there's literal actual folders. And so everything that kind of came up during

that time becomes kind of part of my lore, if that makes sense, it becomes a part of your identity.

Because if you think of a child as a spirit, they're coming in with a lot of baggage. They're

coming in with other identities. And so part of my early childhood was understanding that I had

these other identities as well. That I was not just this little girl, but I was this, you know,

eternal being that needed Scientology in order to get through life. And thank goodness my mother was

there to lay that on. You know, so that I hope I painted a clear picture, but like all Scientology

all the time. And that also means anytime I got hurt or got sick, Scientology was applied,

anytime I had a problem with a friend, I learned the Scientology tools to solve that problem.

What would that look like as a kid? Like let's say you're a kid who has a challenge with another

kid. What would be a Scientology approach to like processing that? Okay, so my friend came over

and she wasn't even Scientologists. We were like, I don't know, nine or something. She came over

to play and we were fighting, you know what I think we're fighting about? We were fighting about

the name Candy. We were playing one of those pretend games and I wanted my name to be Candy,

but she wanted her name to be Candy. So we got into a fight about that. And the solution was

for us to do TRs, which are Scientology training routines, where we would sit down in a chair

across from one another and we would just sit there and stare at each other and so we could be

there comfortably, you know, without wanting to rip each other's childhood hair out over the name

Candy. That's what your mother assigned you to do. Yes, this was the solution, which I find

amusing now because when I look back and I think, you know, I'm a mom now, I've been around a lot of

kids. I've done child care teaching and all these things. It's a very interesting response

to that specific problem. I could think about 20 million other ways to handle that problem,

but this was my childhood. This was the solution. Scientology, it's almost like they have an app

for that. In Scientology, it's kind of like, oh, we have a process for that. We have something for

that. And that's fine and dandy if it's a suggestion, but it was never a suggestion. It was the

only way, the true way, the best way and another way would have consequences. Right. And what if

you were sick? I'm just so curious about some of these processes. Yeah, of course. What was the app

for sickness? Right. A PTSD handling. More acronyms. Always acronyms. So many acronyms. It's exhausting.

Yeah. The PTSD. Basically, the idea is that if you are sick, injured, like it could be a cold or

it could be a long-term sickness, you know, chronic illness, even if a child is born with developmental

delays or any sort of neurodivergency, really, this is considered an aberration from the norm.

And anytime there is a sickness or an injury, it means that person is connected to someone who is

suppressive. Right. So you can't just be a kid who falls down and skins their knee as part of

the natural progress of learning how to run. You can't just make a mistake. Mistakes are the

other thing in there. It's mistakes, injuries, illness. Anyway, it always means that you are

connected to someone who has is suppressing you, making you smaller, squishing your energy in

some way. And the handling is to find the who. It's always a who. So who is it? I mean, that's

yeah, I'm holding back on my owl joke with that one. But it's always a person, which I find

interesting, you know, again, now looking back with some contacts and reflection. It's so normal

for children to have accidents. Fill the milk 50 times before you learn how to pour it. We have

humans and trial and error is how a lot of how we learn. I wish I was the kind of person that you

could tell me something one time and I just knew it. And I believed it and I never made a mistake.

But I've never been that way. And so it's frustrating. It's paradoxical and it's thesis too,

because Scientology is about empowering. But if you have a problem, you're looking to blame someone.

Yes. So it message is confusing in its nature. It is. So I can imagine like that takes years to

figure out that's a simple assessment of the inconsistency. But when you're a kid and you're

talking about empowerment and then when something happens, you look into blame and who that's not

good for your development. It's not. And there's one more layer to that, which adds even more of a

sinister aspect for children, in my opinion, is that you can actually never become the effect

of that suppression unless you yourself have done something wrong. So in order to open the door

for that to have happened to you, you have to have sinned or transgressed or in Scientology,

they say committing a hurt. So the solution then isn't always to handle the who and the other

person. It's actually to confess your own sins as to why you got into this place position in the

first place. So as a kid, let's say that you will take something really simple. You were running,

you fell, you skinned your knee, you know, it's bad. You're like bleeding. Maybe it's a

week full of heels. And then the next week, maybe you do the same thing. They do like a pattern,

maybe not the first time, but this if it happened again, you definitely get in trouble. And at that

point, you would have to figure out who in your life was suppressing you. The problem is that if

you're a little good Scientologist and everybody around you was good Scientologist, there's no who.

There's you what are you supposed to do? And at that point, the who might be someone in your past

life. So you can go down a very deep, interesting, like psychological identity hole. I think

especially as a child, because if you're an adult getting into this situation, you have a little

bit of self identity, but if you're a kid, you don't. So this all becomes not just internalized,

but like it is the way the world works. It's taught as a science. It's infallible. It's like

if you fall down in her ear, it's because you did something to bring this on. And you can take that

to criminal level or Danny Masterson criminal level, where it says you were assaulted. What

you do in a past life. It's science without forensics, too. Exactly. You can make it up.

It's so confusing. Similar to with next year, I don't know how much you know about our cult,

but it was like Scientology light in many ways. And it was confusing because in some ways,

taking responsibility and looking at about your participation in something could be helpful.

But then when you're also dealing with potential past lives and other people who are either

knowingly or another physics, yeah, those physics that like you can't really prove or disprove.

Right. Well, in Scientology, we use the emitter, where we would say we would say we're proving it.

Right. So yeah, how does that work? Well, who knows? The emitter is just for anybody who doesn't know.

It is a quote, religious device. It is patented by Scientology. It's part of a lie detector. It

just measures the reaction on your skin. Basically, when you say things, it's part of a lie detector

test. It's one of the elements that would go into a lie detector test. But in Scientology,

they say that it measures your spiritual energy. And so you could sit there and say words all day

long, they don't mean anything. But if the emitter registers energy there, that is considered

legit. So in my case, when I said, one time I thought I was Queen Elizabeth in a past life,

yes. And at the end of my session, I was like, I'm Queen Elizabeth went in and the emitter confirmed

it. And so I believed that I was. And that's how people, you can have a crazy idea like, I don't

know, maybe I was on a spaceship somewhere, trillion years ago. But if the emitter has the correct

read, then it becomes part of your lore. It is, it is factual about your existence, your whole

track. So they'll say it's science. It's not science clearly. That's dangerous. It is.

Scientology, Scientology really did work would be life changing, would change humanity. What they say

they can do is pretty remarkable. Like they'll say they'll cure pretty much any disease. They'll

save you from this prison planet. They'll, you know, all these great things that if they're real,

then yeah, sure, we need help with that. Yeah, other religions have promised it too. Yeah,

exactly. What was it like to be interrogated by your mom? Oh, as a kid, oh, we're going there,

huh? No. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It was, well, I don't know that I have words, but I could tell you what

happened and see if I'm processing it still, honestly, to be honest with you. So in Scientology,

like I said earlier, a lot of stuff comes back to what you've done. A lot of the the handlings

for different things is to get your own personal crimes off, you know, off of you. And there

happens to be a confessional list. So this is called a security check. There's several in Scientology

and they have a list of questions. So you would sec check, sec check, yes, yes, yes. And you would sit

down and you would be asked certain questions that are on a list. Sometimes they'll tailor make

up questions for you, but there are set ones. And there's one called the children's security check.

It is for children age six to 12 years old. It has 99 questions on it. Questions like,

have you ever had a bad thought about your parents? Have you ever done anything? You would be ashamed

of. Have you ever done something to your body that you shouldn't have done? Have you ever, you know,

stolen anything? And so it's like I said, 99 questions. And they're both about actions and thoughts

and feelings. This would be assigned to a child in certain situations. Again, if you think

about the mindset that we need to help this child by getting all of their crimes off of them,

we're going to help them do that with the emitter so that this child illness or, you know,

this delay that they have will be handled. So from my mother's perspective, I'm not trying to

protect her. I'm just trying to understand. Yeah, no, she's a human being too. I was going to boarding

school. It was my turn. I was eight years old. And in order to give me the best experience that

the freest flowing energy she gave me a security check at home in our home office. I think it

lasted like two and a half weeks all day. Again, she specifically got trained too so that she could

do this for her children. It would have cost a lot of money, you know, it's like coupon. It's like

a coupon for certain technology. It would cost probably 25 grand, 20 grand to help me interrogate it,

a little bit less. She still had to pay for my folders to get sent to the church and then they

would the church and air quoting that. And then somebody there would look over everything and

write back what needed to happen and send it back. So we still had to pay for that. I think it was

like 275 bucks an hour. Yeah, when I was eight, you know, I'm not going to age and date myself

here. But it was like at least a hundred years ago. So the thing is that in order to be the best

auditor, the best interrogator, right, you have to do what's called like change your hat.

So my mom would basically say your hat as your role should basically say I'm taking off my mother's

hat. I'm no longer your mother. I'm putting on my auditor's hat. And when you're interrogating

somebody specifically on the family and you are the family, that's an extra layer. Like it's not

a stranger ask me if I've done something that my parents would be ashamed of or if I have done,

you know, that bad thoughts about my parents. It's my own mother. And so uncomfortable is,

I guess, a word that comes to mind trying to navigate through that also being on the emulator

and believing that I cannot lie. I have no sense of autonomy. I have no sense of privacy.

Everything I've ever thought or done has to be told. And I have no other recourse.

It's an inquisition. It is. And they call it an interrogation. I mean, when you do the trainings

in Scientology, they say it's interrogations. And a lot of the time, it's unfortunate because

there was a lot of political stuff happening in Scientology and like a lot of weird spy stuff

in this and that and the leader was becoming a lot more paranoid. And that did trickle down to

everybody within the organization. And even the children, even that six to 12 age bracket,

that security check is for that age specifically. I talked about this like in different settings

before in therapy or this or that. And I don't tend to think of it necessarily as a torture.

But that word has come up. Like, you can't leave. You're stuck in a room. You're being interrogated

by somebody who's supposed to be your caregiver, but they're actually like an interrogator. And

it's very confusing. It feels an appropriate description. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm eight. So

this is kind of already been happening to me my whole life already. But now we're asking crimes.

It's a list of crimes. It's, you know, there are some processes in Scientology that I had done

before that that are like think about ice cream or, you know, things that are supposed to bring

back more positive memories. So to be only focused on crimes against your, a lot against your

family, being interrogated by your mother. I don't know. I'm not sure I have the words to just

describe how I, what conclusion I'm at about that. Somewhere between uncomfortable and torture

is where I lie. It just sort of on a scale there.

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Well, you're certainly a victim. The extent to which your victimhood goes to on a spectrum of

you a victim of a crime, you could make a strong case considering Scientology. Well, it's certainly

abusive. Yeah, it has criminal behaviors linked to it. Is your mom sitting down with intent to

commit a crime? I don't think so. So, it's hard to quantify, but certainly not appropriate behavior

to put on an eight-year-old bunch of people. And traumatic, for sure. Certainly traumatic, especially

even just to sit down with somebody that's supposed to love you and have them do that for you

to for an hour. I mean, it's just like, talk about creating a, like, not secure attachment

to your parent. The attachment is huge. That very much affected my trust attachment,

like the bonding that you have with somebody. It becomes your, when your caregiver, your primary

caregiver becomes dangerous, you know, you're in a bad spot. Yeah, or basically insinuating or

checking or whatever to say or find out if you've been bad, essentially, is what it is. And I mean,

I'm not a, we're not child psychologists. My mom and dad are both in the field, but I do know that

like kids just want to be good generally. They want to be good and they want their parents to see

them as good and get that approval. So that's just really fucking hard. And then never mind being

sent away to boarding school and top of that. I mean, where it's perpetuated even further by

people who probably don't, who aren't related to you and don't have the emotional vestedness

of your well-being as much as your parents. Yeah. Yeah. Those are just the raw materials of

a situation. So it's certainly not. What was the school like? What was Delphi like? And your

brother had gone before you. Yes. Right. And so he'd left and then you went. Yes, we overlapped

a little bit. He was four years older than me. And when he was born, again, I think my mom really

wanted to be the best Scientology mom she could. She started a school, a whole school. My parents

were living, they had started an actual entire Scientology community in New Hampshire. My brother

had just as an intense upbringing. And some stuff happened. We can get into that whatever. But he

was sent to boarding school as a solution to, I guess we'll just get into it. When he was four,

he broke his arm. The family lore says there was a pony ride or something at a party. And my mom

said, get up on the horse. He said, I'm not getting on the horse. If I get on the horse, I'll

break my arm. She said, get on the horse. He got on the horse. He fell off. He broke his arm.

He went to the hospital. They had to reset him in surgery. And when he came out of surgery,

he was not the same. So in Scientology, that means basically that he had a negative recording.

The pain, the incident recorded in his subconscious, negative stored negative energy about it.

My mom came to the conclusion that because she was there and she was the one comforting him,

her words and her voice were part of his negative energy, trapped negative energy. So later,

when she would be talking or she, you know, she would, I'm trying not to use Scientology words

here, but she would basically reignite that. So at some point, my mother came to believe that

because of this surgery incident, she, just by existing and parenting, was somehow harming

my brother, right? Most likely, when he got hurt, she broke the cardinal rule and she spoke.

This is all Scientology thing, but there's things you can do, things you can't do. You're a bad mom

if your kid gets hurt and you say words to them. You're not supposed to speak. You're not supposed

to speak. The idea is that specific words are recorded in our subconscious during times of

pain and unconsciousness. So if I stub my toe and someone across, you know, the room says like,

I don't know, Jersey cow, totally random. Okay, fine. Then later, somebody says Jersey cow,

when I'm walking down the street, and my toe starts hurting. And it's not something that I'm

consciously putting together, but it's if you hear specific terms, I saw the video on this one.

You can go ahead. Go ahead. This is where the silent birth idea. So in Scientology,

mothers are expected to give silent birth. It doesn't mean silent like no grunting because obviously

that'd be impossible. It's this idea that the specific words we say will record negatively.

So I forget the examples in Dynetics. It's very specific. Like said something like, I can't see

his head. Well, the baby goes blind because he hears, I can't see. Or so it's very specific, very

literal words are recorded and then interpreted in this weird way. So I suspect when my brother

broke his arm, my mom did a very natural thing and was like, are you okay? You know,

hugged him and loved him, which is not what you're supposed to do. So when he went into surgery,

she believed that her voice thing she was saying became a part of that collective energy that was

like negative. So he started having tantrums. He started acting differently. Again, I'm a mother.

I understand that when your kid is foreign, they break their arm and they go through surgery

and they're like on pills and they're cranky. They're going to throw fits. They're going to act

different. It's very age-appropriate. It's not great. Kind of sucks, but it's the way it goes.

My mother told me that incident led her to believe that she was the word in Scientology,

restimulating him. And that is the reason my brother was sent to boarding school at eight years old

to save him from this. Well, really, save him from your mom is what it sounds like. Yes, exactly.

It's crazy. When I found that out, I was 19 years old. My brother had passed away already and

basically, when I found that out, I was really upset. I was a preschool teacher at that time.

I was 19. My associates, I was working with kids all the time, that age group, three to four years

old. And the idea that a mother would somehow be convinced that she was the problem and the solution

would be to pay a lot of money and have that, you know, send her child away to be essentially raised

by an institution. And that particular school is a pipeline to join. Like, it is a pipeline for

people to join Scientology businesses to join the seawork. Like, it's a part of the system.

Your childhood was definitely like entrenched in Scientology. You went to boarding school.

Your brother had already gone to boarding school. How much of this, your childhood, were you

like aware that this wasn't normal or like, did you have like internal doubts or thoughts or

like, you know, what we now call red flags. If you knew what you were like, you didn't know what

you were looking at, but knowing what you know now, what are some of the other things other than

like, just mentioned being on, you know, being interrogated, your brother being sent away.

Any other major things that were like, oh, this isn't right, that you didn't know how to articulate

it at the time. I don't think a lot of that came to later. So, I was pretty isolated. I mean,

I knew we were weird. I knew we were misunderstood. I knew that people didn't understand us and we

knew something that they didn't know. And so, that's why we made different choices in our family

that we were somehow special. But that's pretty much all I had figured out until I was around 12.

I'd say, well, maybe. I mean, I don't know how to answer that question. I actually don't know

how to answer that question. I didn't trust the adults, but I didn't know it was a big place

as a Scientology. If I'm hearing you correctly, it's we're different, but we're not in the air quotes

wrong. And then maybe at a certain point, you start to go, oh, maybe there's a case for them

thinking us, we might be off, right? Yeah. Yeah. I went to a birthday party. And one of the people

adults there said something about the clear water trials about how all you Scientologists, your

parents are going to go to jail. So, like, weird little things like that were out. And of course,

I was very upset and went home. And my mom said, they don't understand. They're just it's the party

line. It's the bad probably bad PR. However, when people in my family literally started dying,

I couldn't ignore that. Right. Right. Like, that's not somebody coming up to you on the street

talking crap. That's understanding that, wait a minute, my parents are supposed to be super heroes.

When did you start really questioning things? What was the catalyst to your departure? Great question.

My brother made the choice to die. He committed suicide. And he did it in a pretty spectacular

fashion. He did it on our on Hubbard's birthday. He was at MIT. He wrote the mathematical equation

of his body times the velocity and the distance out of a 15 story building, like to make sure he

would die, broke the window with a chair, signed the chalkboard, Phil was here, and then jumped out.

Jesus. That is enough to deal with and itself. But then what happened after that is there was

like a little bit of a scandal because my mom at the time was a Nash, a spokesperson for

Citizens Commission on Human Rights. So she was going on radio shows and like newspaper articles

and all these things in the 90s saying how bad psych psychiatric medication was and that

Scientology had the answers for mental health. And yet here she had a son who had a lot of potential.

He was very smart. He was very able. He was very young to be in such a high at MIT. He was

accepted at 15. And so it became this so on top of losing my brother. I also got put in my face

probably not a thought I would have had on my own, but the world put this idea in my face of like

your mom was basically a hypocrite. You realize that, right? And that was hard. That all of that

kind of started to crumble. Like they couldn't fix it. They Scientology couldn't fix it. My mom

couldn't fix it. They said they had the answers to everything. They couldn't make me feel better.

They couldn't fix anything. Made everything worse. That's a pretty major inconsistency. Yeah, you know,

as I have this kind of like caption for what happened to us and I'm going to relate it to yours. It's

it took a physical manifestation, right? In the world for people to finally respond to, hey,

this is the symptom of emotional abuse. That makes perfect sense. And I think oftentimes,

particularly with Scientology, it takes some sort of physical world event for people to go,

hey, what's going on here? Maybe there's some stuff going on here that's leading to this. And

unfortunately, you know, Western culture has done a great job of locking down on physical

infractions and an average job by being diplomatic at identifying emotional infractions and

emotional abuses. And, you know, often that leaves our situation, this podcast and everything,

as a place where people got to go, hey, what happened here? And how do we stop this? And then

we got to go back, pick up the pieces, put language to it, turn it into wisdom. And hopefully,

people can take our lessons and go for it. But that's obviously what's gone on here. And, you know,

hearing it's infuriating and, you know, sadly, it had to end in situations like this, you know.

What you said makes a lot of sense. I guess I hadn't really thought about it that way. But yeah,

if something physically manifests, it's much harder to ignore. And there's a confusion that

goes on in Scientology because if someone is scraping their knee, they certainly want to go back

and figure out how you emotionally cause that, right? But they don't want to go back and put

forensics or, you know, language to what goes on here. It's just, you know, a lot of inconsistencies

where the Scientology aspect of it doesn't ever seem to take responsibility for what they're asking

you to do. And they don't pass their own purity test, I guess. Right. Well, that's the thing.

Once I realized my mom was actually like a hypocrite, that led me to understand, oh, I see where

she learned that the entire organization acts that way. They expect their members to take all

their responsibility. And I don't think they've ever apologized to anybody that they've harmed.

They would have to admit fault. That's a crushing story. I'm sorry. I will say that experience

of my brother passing away and the way that he went about it, it definitely got me thinking, wow,

the way that we're raising kids in Scientology is wrong. Something's wrong. I didn't know what it was.

You also keep in mind like I had been raised all in Scientology. I'd never taken a sociology class.

I'd never taken a psychology class. I had never been exposed because anything that comes from the

field of psychiatry or as in mental health is considered like debunked in Scientology. Right. Right.

So I was never taught any of that. So when I finally graduated high school, I was 14 and I went to

community college and I started doing early childhood education, which just introduced you to like,

human development, the stages of development, basic psychology 101, you know, just really basic

stuff. And even in that very first year where I passed like 50% of my classes, I still learned a lot

and basic things, just basic things about human development I had never been exposed to. And it did

lead me to an understanding and to want to learn more about just why Scientology wasn't working.

And what the rest of the world had figured out since Elron Hubbard, you know, because

Elron Hubbard wrote all this stuff in the 1950s, 60s. A lot of science has moved on since then.

I tried to turn into something positive, I guess is my point. I tried to like learn what I could

to make sure that it maybe didn't happen again. But in learning that, I realized just how messed up

the Scientology system of raising children is. And then of course, that compelled me to, I don't know,

try to help protect kids from that in any way I can. Feels futile sometimes. I bet.

What's your journey been from there trying to understand what happened and protect other people

till now? How is your healing journey been when did you actually say, hey, I'm leaving? Tell us

about some of the key points in your life till now. Well, I spent about 10 years under the radar,

which means that I knew I didn't want to practice Scientology, but I wasn't willing to put myself

on the line to say anything negative about it, because that would start a waterfall of negative

things in my life, consequences. So I just played it cool. I lived away from my parents. I crafted

my own life in Portland, Oregon. And for about what, eight years, I actually worked with kids with

special needs and kids with hearing loss. And I was a preschool teacher. And I think during a

lot of that time, I almost, I really honestly reparented myself to be surrounded in such a healthy

and loving environment of professionals who understand how to care for it and nurture and protect

children was wild for me. It was a totally new world. And people who are drawn, professionals

who are drawn into that field are also usually pretty empathetic. So I then had a bunch of empathetic

co-workers, which I had never had before. So taking all that, then I got sucked back in.

And I got sucked back in. I built my life. Then my family had land in Southern Oregon. My parents

were getting older and they really encouraged me to move down and to, you know, my husband and my,

we had one kid and then we had a baby while we were down there to kind of take over this family legacy,

because my family came across on the Oregon Trail. We had this land and it was, you know, really

big and important and it really meant something. Actually, it was a very heavily pressure to move

down there. So I moved down there and I had not lived in the same town as my Scientology parents

since I was, I don't even know, like eight, right? But forever. And that really brought a lot of

things to light. That experience watching my parents interactions with my older child who was

around eight at the time and then the baby, I got to the point where I didn't trust my own parents

to babysit. Not because I ever thought that they would physically harm my child or anything like

that, but it was just when my child falls down and scrapes his knee, when, because he's a little kid

running, it will happen. What will happen then? And those are moments of vulnerability in a child

that I didn't want him. Anyway, I guess you can see my point. Yes.

Gradually, they became unsafe for to me. Again, specifically for the Scientology reason, they have

so much great things to offer. They're very supportive in other areas, but the risk became too high

to subject my children to. And actually, the first time I went to my parents is my stepfather,

who also was a lifelong Scientologist. So your mom remarried a Scientologist?

Yes. She actually remarried the man she was engaged to when she was 19. No, she was 18,

and he was 19. And he is hardcore Scientologists like Guardian's Office.

Before your father, before she met your father. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So we got with him,

went with my dad, because the only suitable partner is a hardcore Scientologist.

You can't stay in the face too. I'm going to tell you what. I'm sure. My stepfather told me actually

when the day I first saw him after he found out I was pregnant with my first child, who was a

surprise, he told us, me and my boyfriend at the time, who's my husband now, your child will be

a fourth-generation Scientologist. Whether you like it or not, those are the words that he said.

Whether you like it or not, and I never forgot that. That's about it. So you don't have to tell me twice.

When it did come time, and eight years old, my mom really started to want to take my kid to Florida,

and you know, start to get a little shady about certain things, and very much came out that

that I was again, Scientology. I thought it was dangerous, that it was unacceptable. Their behavior

was unacceptable, and that a person in my mother's position had an obligation. She was a very

fanatic Scientologist, and she's a high-level Scientologist, and I felt that if she was going to

continue to give her money and her time to an organization that was hurting children,

that I just couldn't, I couldn't allow that in my life, and I couldn't allow that in my children's

lives. Good for you. I must have been hard. It was really hard, and I was told that I was rejecting

the family legacy, and that our property that I was, you know, told that I needed to take responsibility

for, was no longer going to be in our family, which pissed me off, right? Because I was driving

by the graveyard, where my actual great-great-grandmother and grandmother are buried. They didn't know

Scientology. Great-great-great-grandmother was born in a covered wagon. She survived that,

and you're going to give up that land because of the family legacy, because I don't want my children

in Scientology gross. That feels so gross to me. It is gross. Let's take a break from the cult

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Thanks for listening everyone. Let's dive back into the cultiverse.

How did you confront them? How did you tell them? How did I tell them?

Well, honestly, it was kind of a slow burn because there were a lot of things that happened in the

news that I would talk to my mom about, and she was willing to have a conversation with me

to handle me. I think there were definitely a few things that happened in the news and this and

that. And I talked to her about, you know, actually, you know, actually what happened. I remember

when my final straw, one of them, my mother decides to adopt me. She decides that her old friend

is going to move in with us. And she's going to give me up her adoption at 14 to this woman.

And the woman moves in with us. My mom goes away. She goes to Florida to do her own training

with Scientology, her own whatever processing. She realizes, well, she's just begun like a week.

She's gone for three months. She realizes while she's there that she's going to go into the

sea organization like she's done being a mom. That's over. This calling is done. It's a wonder I

survived. I met people on Venice Beach selling hemp jewelry who taught me how to make hemp jewelry

and like let me hang out with them. I could have been had no parents. Ah, who's a mess. It's a wonder I

survived. Yes, I had to move into my house. I drove that lady away. Though lady who, I mean,

I was so cruel to her, I've apologized, but I did not want that woman taking me on. Anyway,

really long story short. Later, I'm 30. I'm a mother. I'm talking to my mom about this. And I said,

mom, what kind of church would let their mother would let a mother just abandon their child,

just go off and not never come back? She turns to look at me as actually. It was the church. It

was Scientology that made me come back. Wow. And I was like, mom, I really like the version of

the story where you wanted to be a mom. It was difficult for you. And you came home because

that's what happened. So she threw herself under the bus as a mother to protect this idea that I

would have of the organization. And my in-laws were actually at my house that night. I went home,

I cried on my mother and lost shoulder for hours because I'm just like, what does it mean?

What does it mean? It was so, I'm an orphan. That's what it means. I was an orphan the day I was born.

I just didn't realize it yet. Where are you at with your mom now? You don't speak to her?

No, I don't speak to her. Though my 11 year old son decided two weeks ago to text her without either

one of our knowledge, she did not respond. But who knows what chapter that will open? I'd love a

world where I could communicate with my mom. I don't know why. I just still feel like I want that,

even though I was one that cut it off. So we'll see. But I haven't talked to her any years. I don't

know. She's still very much in and I'm her who, right? Like if anything bad happens to her,

I'm the person that would be suppressing her in her environment. So if my mom falls down,

it scrapes her knee. It's your fault. It's my fault. Not only do I not want the self-fulfilling

prophecy of my mother believing that she needs to somehow do that. But I don't want to take that

responsibility on I can't. I've experienced any like push back from the church and any like

because you're pretty public. You're pretty vocal. Have you been fair-gamed?

I mean, yes and no. I don't have a website about me. Like they don't attack me in the same way

that they've come after, say, Mike Rinder or, you know, Leah Remny. They're way bigger. Names

than me. Yes and no. It's kind of strange because my parents are osatrange. Like they are

pretty to all of the dirty tricks. You know, they've been involved with that stuff of

Scientology. They're not just front facing members. So most of what I've had done to me was through

them. It's sound very paranoid right now. I have no doubt that I'm being surveilled. I assume

that whatever the most expensive, highest level publicly available or maybe even just

corporately available technology, Scientology has that. And if I haven't pissed them off enough

yet for them to use it, they will eventually. So I just try to live my life knowing that, I don't

know, even me dancing in my living room might end up on YouTube one day. You know, clean hands.

So, but yeah, they don't have a website or anything like that.

Has she tried to contact you? My mom? Yeah. See, the thing is, when it comes to my mom,

because she did spend so much time and energy getting to the top of Scientology's bridge to

total freedom, there's this little loophole in there about if she is connected to someone who

is anti-Scientologist or anti-Scientology, she will not only get sick or get hurt or whatever,

but she'll lose her spiritual progress. That's another little tie in there. So I don't think

anybody had to tell her to disconnect from me. She doesn't want to lose her progress either.

Well, because what's one daughter in one life? When you have lived billions of lives, you've

had billions of daughters. You've been billions of parents. What is one kid when she spent this life

making dang sure that she did everything she could for Scientology to give her spirit a boost,

right? And if she is connected with me, then she eradicates all that work she did.

And how did they justify Tom Cruise? Because he's out in the world.

Well, Tom Cruise is a celebrity. So, there is a whole. He does. He gets a hall pass because

in Scientology, celebrities are considered opinion leaders. And there are valuable tools because one

of them disseminates Scientology. One Tom Cruise gives 10,000 Scientologists a year or whatever it is.

It's very quantific. Your worth is based on your product. So if his product is to tell people

about Scientology, then he was the best out of her while during the Oprah era.

Yeah, he seemed to have changed his tune a little bit or just not singing the praises as much.

I wonder why. Right. Well, I mean, again, the hypocrisy shows. It's like, wow, great. How were

those marriages, Tom Cruise? Oh, you've got technology to have the best relationships? How

those marriages go? Oh, you've got the technology to be the best ever. How's that one biological

daughter you have? Oh, you don't know because you're disconnected because your wife had to literally,

like Katie Holmes had to go through a lot to get herself out of that situation. How did she

ask? I know this is not your story, but do you know from the tabloids? But basically her father

was instrumental because he's a divorce lawyer. And I bet he saw this coming a mile. It's said

that their prenup was like banker boxes full. And I guess when he was doing mission impossible

465 somewhere, she got an apartment. She got like a burner phone. She did all this stuff,

but here's what she did that was so smart. She moved to downtown Manhattan so that every single

paparazzi was watching her. And she did what Tom Cruise could never do. She acted normal.

She took her kid to the zoo. She enrolled her kid in school. She walked down the streets.

And she earned the favor. And she protected herself because when all those paparazzi were watching her,

private eyes couldn't stalk her. They couldn't fair game her because she had so many eyes on her.

In some ways, that's really why I speak out too. It's yes to share the story, but also

it's a way to protect yourself in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. We also went on the offensive.

Yes, with our story. Exactly. You have to know we didn't talk about which I bet we're running out

of time. I watched the vow. Was it the vow? Yeah. Yeah. And I was like doing stuff. I love a good

cult documentary. I'm like doing stuff around the house. And I start hearing

suppressive. It's like intensive. I start hearing these things. And I'm like, what the actual

hell is going on? And I stopped everything I sat. I started watching. And of course, then I did

a deep dive understanding where some of those terms come from. But yeah, that really blew my mind

too, by the way. Yeah. I just pulled up my notes when I started watching going clear. This would

have, this is December 18th, 2017. As long as you watch going clear, I have like 30 things that

are the same. Suppressives, retaining through fear, the use of tech, drills, destroy the enemies,

make your life miserable if you leave, remove the stimulus using command tones, mind control,

most traps. I mean, there's us versus the unfair. Like there's just so many things. Blow, we

called it bolt versus blow, blow, crime versus breach. But and look at all the good things we're

doing. I mean, there's so many things. If you want to really enjoy Mike and I and be talking about

all the similarities that I think was our first chat with another Scientologist and Leah as well.

Yeah. They were there in our first season. There's 10 episodes, I think, or something like that.

And also, just to plug it, since we're here, Leah blurbed our book. And then her quote is,

and this is what our book looks like, by the way, coming soon. This book is a master class in

reclaiming power and finding your voice. It's a wake up call for anyone who thinks they're too

smart or too strong to be pulled into a controlling or abusive relationship. Spot the warning signs

before it is too late. But both Mike and Leah were so like not only was talking to them,

like, helpful. We felt less alone, but they were so so suggest so supportive. And

their show that you were on featured in season two episode three, if I'm correct,

has helped so many people. What made you decide to do the show and how what was that experience like?

It was 50%. Oh, this is an important story. I can give a voice to things that have happened in

the shadows and what a great opportunity on such a big platform. And then the other 50% was it

was me giving a huge middle finger to my family. Yeah. So it was like, half good intention, half

10 on my part. But it was a great experience for me. And honestly, like, what more could somebody

ask for to when they are ready to tell their story and to share their experience to be offered

such a large platform to do so. It's very maybe your rewarding is not the right word. But if you're

going to share your story, being heard and being seen is the best you could hope for.

A lot of that had nothing to do with me. It was a very well made show and all these things.

But I was grateful. I was grateful to be a part of it. And I was grateful for the largeness of it

because it really did amplify that middle finger that I gave my family there. Yeah. I don't think

that's petty. I don't think I think that's totally normal. By the way, I think that's very

I appreciate it. I don't want to feel that way anymore. I don't want to hold on to it. And that's

a line to walk. Maybe you guys experienced this too. It's like sharing my story and talking about

my trauma sort of over and over again. I never want to be stuck in that. I want to

use it as a way to expose what happened. And maybe like your book give people some thought

when they're looking at joining a call or in my case, signing their child up for the service.

Yeah. But I need for the record. Yeah. Well, it's good to have the self-awareness because I think

you kind of reap what you sow. And if you look at a lot of the forums that we have right now,

like it started about 10 years ago. It's so and so claps back. And it's kind of like in our movies

are set up for the final act. Well, what does he get the bad guy? Does he have the revenge? So

there's certainly, and I'm sure you know this because I know you have some MK Ultra stuff too,

but there's certainly entities and forces out there that understand areas of susceptibility.

And you don't want to get caught in that kind of negative emotion of pettiness because that's

ultimately poisoning your well. Right. And for if we're all on the human team or whatever

language you want to use, you want to put more positive energy out there. And we're all susceptible

to areas of like, I want to see the bad guy get it. Or you know, I want to see the person get

clapped back because my dad and I joke, it's like, those are guilty little pleasures, but they

can't be your focus and they can't be your, you know, they can't be what you're about. And

I think it's good that you can have this experience. You know, yeah, I had revenge on my mind,

you know, with Keith Reiner. And that's I think I watched it. And I was like, you know what, I'm

okay with having this feeling right now. My wife got branded and I want to open his head up. I

watched myself go through that, but I also was like, I have a kid, you know, Sarah and I joke,

we say, we live in a world, you know, and I don't want to do the same situation he's in and lose

everything. It's not worth it. Allowance for the feelings, but don't make them your master. I

guess. And it was kind of yeah, because you don't, you're not in that same that that was probably

filmed, but like 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So your message is a positive one. So you've turned it

into that. It's hard. It's not easy. Yeah. It's not easy to transcend that shit. It's hard.

You have to be a certain kind of person who want to do it, want to do it while you're feeling it.

While it's running you. So, you know, good for you. It was a snapshot of where you were then.

And what my point about it being normal is like, it's normal that you went through it. It's great

that you're out of it. And then you can live your life and enjoy your kids and not be stuck in that

spot. I mean, certainly there's there's footage of us early interviews where I am in rage.

Like, I've gone through all sorts of different stages, but those, you know, some of those early

interviews are hard. But when I hear you guys talking about it, I would never be like, oh,

they're being petty. I'd be like, no, that's an appropriate human response. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Or maybe I should be pinder on my. That's all that was off. That's where this is going. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Petty with us. I mean, there's really nobody for me to get revenge on. My best revenge,

I think, is I would like parents to know, fine, go do Scientology. If you want to be in some weird

kink shaming, like BDSM religion and stuff, that is awesome for you. You go ahead, but do not sign

your child up for that course. Don't do it. Tell us why. Tell us. Let's get a sound bite out of this

that's going to go viral. Why should people not put their kids in Scientology? What do they need to

know that they're not going to tell you on the flyer? Scientology was founded by a man in the 1950s

and he passed away in 1980. There is no mention of age appropriateness in Scientology. There is no

concept that a child would have normal developmental patterns that are different than an adult. And the

fact that means there's no protection. So there's no protections for children built into Scientology.

They go up the same bridge to total freedom as an adult and it ends in the same place.

Usually it's not good. It was a terrible sound link. Don't use that. It was great. It was great.

It was great. It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. So the thing that people don't know who

have kids in Scientology and they think they're putting them in this great place, but they're going

to get a great education and grow and go in the birch to total freedom or whatever. What's actually

happening behind closed doors? They are becoming indoctrinated. Scientology deals in products. Your

child is a product. The product is a Scientologist who is willing to give their time, money, energy,

and focus. And anything that is done to a child is done to prepare them to give more of themselves

to Scientology. It destroys their autonomy. It gives them a total us and them group think.

And it undermines their belief in their own instinct because you could know something to be true,

but if Scientology's e-meter or someone in authority tells you it's not true,

you have to change your mind about it or you won't survive. So there's no room for autonomy.

There's no autonomy. There's no questioning. It's a true cult. Everything they do is designed to

make followers who will not ask questions, who will follow the orders in Scientology. They will

duplicate the procedure and they will do it without any human emotionary action, which is like

robot, like not human, alien or robotic. You decide, I meant to ask this earlier and I forgot,

when did you go from doubting and leaving to recognizing that Scientology was a legit cult?

Like, wouldn't it that word come into your lexicon? Well, Scientology introduced me to the word

cults. They came out with a book called What is Scientology in the 90s that all of us had to study

and one of the questions and answers in there was, is Scientology a cult? And it said no.

But the thing about it is, if you're in Scientology, you know that you can never go by a word,

you don't understand. It's a crime. So as a good Scientologist child, I looked up the word cult

in a dictionary and it is a closed group with secretive information that has high control over

its members, which was about the 1990s definition that I read. And I thought, what really was like a

closed group with secret information? And I thought, well, we are a cult. So why are you saying we're

not? That always was weird to me. Honestly, I think my final straw just came when it came to my child,

when it came to my eight year old looking at my, he looks just like my brother. He's tall and red

hair and skinny and good and smart and has the potential of the entire world before him. He can do

whatever he wants. And he, and to know, like they wanted to corrupt him, they were asking to,

they were lying to me. I want to take him to Florida. We want to take him to Disney World.

Are you going to go to Flag? Are you going to go to Scientology? We don't know. No, you can't have my

kid. And if that means I have to tell my kids, Goryama, that he can't take him, she can't take him

to Disney World because that means you will become a Scientologist. That's the line I have to draw

then. And my kid's not going to Disney World. Sorry. Like for you, it was sucks, but that's the call

I made. I think you made it the call. Solid take. It's still a hard call. Yeah. Thank you. Is there

anything that we didn't bring up or ask you that you want to make sure you get out there?

I guess I would just like to say that when people think of me and they look for me in the future,

they see me online or anything, I don't want to be seen as a victim. I'll tell you that right now.

I want to be seen as an artist. I'm working on some really cool art stuff, a writer, someone who took,

who was born into a shitty situation, made the best of it, rose above it to the best of her ability,

and the best she could in her human condition. And oh, now I'm going to cry. I want to make my

great-grandmother proud. I don't want her to have lost everything because of this fucking cult.

And I don't have that land. But you know what? I have the next generation of our family

entrusted to me. And I'm not going to sec-check them and I'm not going to send them away.

I'm going to do the best that I can. I'm going to get the information not just from Scientology. I'm

going to go to school and I'm going to learn. And I'm going to be the best steward for this family

as I can, moving forward. And I hope one day to rewrite that family legacy. Thank you so much

for having me. It's really nice to talk to people who I know understand. I don't have to

justify or explain how I got there, what I know you get it. And I just, I do really appreciate

that.

All right, everybody. We do love our Scientology episodes. Let us know what you think of this one

in the comments on Instagram, Spotify, Patreon or wherever you are listening to this podcast.

And check out Liz Gale's Instagram and YouTube pages for laughs.

Insight. Yeah. Information. She's a funny personality. I really enjoyed that. I liked her.

We hope you did too. Still do. Okay. Until next time. Bye-bye.

We hope you're enjoying a little bit culty. If so, please do show us some love.

Drop a rating or leave a review. Hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.

And subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com, such a little bit culty.

Even better, send this episode to someone who needs it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're

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love. Thanks for listening and see you next time. A little bit culty is a trace 120 production.

Executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippie Ames in collaboration with Producer

Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound. Our co-creator is Jess Temple Tarty. Our production coordinator

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