Escaped a Cult, Now What? - Secrets Of Scientology #4

The first days of freedom don’t come with instructions. We walked out with a suitcase, a borrowed car, and a head full of rules to unlearn—then found a pizza shop with a Help Wanted sign and realized the world outside wasn’t the barren wasteland we’d been promised. That small win set the tone: get a job, get an apartment, build credit from zero, and discover that time—afternoons, dinners, holidays—is a muscle you have to stretch back to life.

We open up about the invisible work of recovery: nightmares that mirror the hallways we left, the guilt that lingers when control is gone, and the way old messages echo when you try something new. We compare the myths we were told—leave and your marriage will collapse; the outside world is hostile; you’ll never make it—to what actually happened. With humor and candor, we share the joys and stumbles of starting over, from forgetting to ask a wage at an interview to navigating rent with no credit. We talk about boundaries too: why we refused “routing out,” what gray-rocking looks like when harassment ramps up, and how to protect energy for the life you’re building.

Along the way, we map the broader system: digitized files, “connections lists,” surveillance habits that turn people into case numbers. We explain how information—books, documented histories, survivor accounts—became sunlight, dissolving fear and restoring judgment. Most of all, we highlight the power of community and therapy for former members: common language, solved mysteries, and practical support that accelerates healing. If you’re rebuilding after a high-control group, or helping someone who is, this conversation offers tools, hope, and a reminder that ordinary life is a radical act of freedom.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review—we read every word and it helps others find their way to solid ground.

Transcript

Live Intro And Why We’re Here

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Welcome to another episode of Blown for Good, Scientology Exposed. I am joined in live. We're live today, and I'm joined here by my lovely wife, Claire.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Hey, hey, hey. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Oh, yeah, it's Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

I I have a few people that I know that say Valentine's Day. It's Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Valentine's.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Valentine's instead of Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Um anyway, um, yeah, happy Valentine's Day. Um we're gonna go have a nice dinner after this, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yes, we are. We had 13 years of or 14 years of not being able to celebrate Valentine's Day. If I was lucky I got flowers. Yeah on some if you were getting paid.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Yeah, that and that was also very rare that I was getting paid and had access to flowers and uh was in the same location as you.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Right. In the same state or uh city. So these days, because of that, we make a point of celebrating Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

We celebrate everything, babe. Birthdays, Valentine's, anniversary. Anniversary. What this this new year is 34, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

34 years.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

In August. 34 years in August, folks.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Boom.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

She deserves a medal.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Well, you do too. I have my moments.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Um so yeah, what we wanted to talk about today, we're not gonna do a bunch of slides, we're not gonna do a whole bunch of stuff. Um, we're just gonna have a little chat with you guys. And um and we'll probably um, if we have time, which we should, we can answer questions at the end. Um the broadcast platform that we use, if you write question and then say what you what then state your question, it'll actually highlight it as a question in um in our little dashboard here. So it's much easier for us to pick it.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

And then we will also do all the shout-outs to where everybody's uh tuning in from uh near the end of the video. We got uh YouTube uh YouTube said that uh they don't people don't like that when we spend a few minutes doing the shout-outs at the beginning. They just want to get they want to get some uh they want us to dish on Scientology. And um so we move that to the end. It just works out a little bit better for the new viewers that uh are tuning in, and also these videos play and replay.

Choosing Love After Years Of Control

SPEAKER_00 2:52

So yeah, exactly. Nonetheless, we appreciate everyone joining us this fine Saturday. Uh so yeah. And today I was thinking we would talk about kind of some of the immediate things that happened right when we got out and the steps we took to towards recovering and getting our feet on the ground and um building a meaningful life after 30 years of craziness.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Yeah. I think you know, obviously every person is different when they leave, and also how long they were in and where they were and also how they got in in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Like I was born into it, you got in at age six, you know. So to me, there's two different categories of people.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Well, at least two.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

At least two, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Because then there's people that joined when they were in right out of college or while they were in college.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

But most times the two the the two biggest categories are either born in or got in as a young, vulnerable person, often in a bad place that Scientology preyed on. Like that was my mom's situation. Um she was rebelling against a Roman Catholic upbringing and had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, God forbid. I was I was uh about to be a bastard by definition.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

That's a big deal in England.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, she got pregnant with me when she was 17.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yikes.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yikes is right. So my grandmother very quickly arranged a wedding when my mom was like eight months pregnant with me.

SPEAKER_03 4:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Anyway, but yeah, the scandal. The scandal. I know. Well, you know my family. There's no lack of scandal. We won't go there. That's a dark pandoric.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Most of them are pretty chill. Yeah. It's just a few.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

A few.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

A few doing Scientology, a few doing some other stuff over here.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

How many kids she had seven or eight brothers?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

How many So my mom was one of seven. Seven.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

That's funny because my mom. I might think my mom was one of seven or eight.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

I thought it was nine even.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

You're right.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

Was it? Yeah. So they were both from huge families.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, and my grandma was one of twelve. My m my grandma is from Cork, Ireland. She was one of twelve. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

I'm jamming out the farm hands on that one, man. Yeah. Yeah. Gotta get some sheep herders out of the biggest.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

So I have to just get this in here. So our our middle son, who's about to turn 18, unbelievable, and about to graduate high school, is going to take a trip to Ireland later this year. So I was like, oh, we're from Ireland. So I started looking up our family lineage and so forth. And I told you this, but I was like, oh, look, I'm related to the first Irish lady that ever climbed Mount Everest.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Yeah. Yeah, Claire's got some of an Everest gene in her.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

He was like, oh, no wonder you're like a mountain goat that climbs up the mountain every day.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Literally what I said.

Leaving: Fear, Categories, And Family Backstory

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Anyway, yes. So all of that to say, let's we'll we'll talk about some of the things that happened right after we got out and kind of some of the the challenges we ran into. And you know, the so originally when we um when I finally reunited with you af three weeks after you escaped, we were in Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri area.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Aaron Ross Powell Lee Summit.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Lee Summit, Missouri.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Which we love, by the way. It was very nice to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Oh, we did. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

I'm not a real big fan of humidity. And they have do have a little bit of a more humidity than I like to uh tolerate.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Then bigger bugs.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

But it was a nice where we lived was nice. And you know, you we when we were there, Claire didn't have a job, and I was fixing computers, doing uh computer repair. And when we went out to get you a job, we got you a job within literally like 15 minutes, I think. Within leaving the house to look for a job, you had a job.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah, and that that was um interesting because I'd never had a real-world job before. So I had no resume, you know, I had no, I'd never even attended high school. Um, but we just we had no car. So we went to local businesses that would that were within walking distance of your dad's house.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

Yeah, like within a 10-minute walk of the house is where we looked to see if we could get you a job.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah, and we've told the story before, but um I I it's one of those memories that just sticks out in my mind of you, you know, we borrowed your dad's car to go drive around because he was out of town. And so we went to a few different places, but we ended up at the pizza shop, which was again walking distance pizza, just a little pizza parla um place. And I just said, Hey, you know, yeah, I'm just moved here from California.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Well, there was a help wanted sign. Yes, they did have a help wanted sign in the in the window.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, and and I filled out the application and then went in for an interview, and they were like, Great, looks good. Can you start on Monday? And I was like, Yep, great, I'll be here. Come back out to the car. I'm like, I got the job. And you're like, so how much are they gonna pay you? I'm like, I forgot to ask. Just like, doesn't matter when you've been making, you know,$46 on a good week.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

How much am I gonna make? One of the key parts of a job, how much will I be earning each hour?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah, and I want to say it was like two dollars and fifty cents an hour plus tips.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Yeah. And you did you slayed on tips, which I was very, very surprised that you're probably making about, I don't know, maybe twenty, twenty-five dollars an hour with tips. And um and I was baffled. I had no idea that's how it worked.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah. I didn't either.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

That, you know, and again and again, Mark likes to joke about how I'm very c uh tip conscious as a result of that. I know, I know, but m you are because I am.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

It's the it's only in the States, by the way. And it's more prevalent in certain places. But when you go over to Europe or you go to Denmark or, you know, one of these uh Sweden, they're like, there's no tips. We or France, even when we're in France, we are paid enough to have a living. We don't need the tip. It's sort of like but in America they pay you very low so that you rely on the tip.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yep, exactly. Yeah, anyway, so uh and I arrived in Kansas City on the the night of the 25th. So I January. Yeah, January, yeah, exactly. The night of January 25th, 2005. And tying into today's video, I remember that by Valentine's Day, 2005, we had just moved into an apartment. And so that apartment was what, like 10 minutes drive from your dad's house?

SPEAKER_03 10:17

Yeah, it was it was it was of you know, yeah, 10 minutes I'd say, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, depending on traffic. But even when we got out and we were staying with my dad, we only stayed in with with my dad for a few weeks. Um, and I had been for for for many weeks, I had been making um uh pr b about fifty dollars an hour as my first job out of the Sea Org. So I was literally making more in one hour than I had been making in a week if we got paid. Right. And so I was kind of like, this is a this is cake. Like this is they when you're in this sea organization specifically, they tell you there's a lot of preaching about how horrible the world is, and everybody out in the real world is a is a uh robber or a uh you know, uh up to no good, drug addicts, uh just criminals and drug addicts, really, is what everybody is. Or flipping burgers. Or oh yeah, and if you end up getting a job, the best you'll be able to do is flipping burgers. And and I remember thinking, flipping burgers would be quite nice at this point. I think I would flip a burger. I flip a I think I'd flip a few thousand burgers other than being here. Um so for me, um, and also we never really talked about what happened at the base, which I just realized when when I was thinking about what we would talk about on this video. We never sat down and and talked about what happened at the base.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

No.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

It was just like we're not there anymore.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 11:55

Now we're living uh in paradise, basically. We could do whatever we want, whatever we want.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Um I'm making money, you're making money. We it was kind of like um this isn't what they said it was. No. And people aren't who they said they were.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah, really, the the conversation we had initially. So you picked me up at the bus station, and then we went to Denny's, I want to say.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

No, I don't think they have Denny.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

No, it was like a or it was a diner. It was a diner, because I I was like, hey now.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Two days hungry.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Let's talk. Yeah, yeah, two days hungry. I mean, well, months hungry by that point. Years. Um, but I was like, we do need to have a conversation about what the heck you left me behind. And also I needed to clear the air on the lies they told me, which was that you had called the police.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

It's like I didn't call the police. Yeah. They they ran me off the road. Uh the police just showed up out of nowhere. I didn't know what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

It was only many, many years later that we found out that somebody driving by, when they ran me off the road when I was trying to escape, that somebody had called 911. And that's why the police showed up. That's right. I thought it was just like I was just real lucky.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Or real unlucky initially, right? You're like, I'm trying to escape and now I'm getting pulled over. What what in the what?

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Either way, we didn't really talk about that at all. No. And it was just sort of like, yeah, we're not there anymore. Uh, we're doing this now, and let's figure out what let's figure out how this works. And I want to say. I want to say for me, it was everything was easy. It was like everything was on easy mode. I was making a ton of dough, doing the stuff I already knew how to do really well. Work with computers and and stuff like that. Um, getting an apartment was a little rough because we had zero credit. So we had to have my dad uh co-sign for us.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

And I I will say, at least from my perspective, it was a little scary, challenging, like, oh gosh, now we're we're, you know, have to and not that it we wouldn't be able to pay the monthly rent, but it was just a new thing, like having monthly bills and that was just not something that we were used to.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Yeah. I think that is one of the main sort of things that when you know you're in a cult is they are making it they're putting it on easy mode for you so you can do as much work as possible for them. Right. So you don't have to worry about the cooking the three meals. You don't have to b uh you don't have to worry about you the if you're gonna have a place to stay or not. You don't really have any bills, any monthly bills. And and there's not really everything is structured and set up so that you will be in this place with no distractions, and you can just be head down, bum up, working and getting stuff done for us. And then if you if you that the and that in itself is sort of a security blanket. Oh you basically can just coast through as long as you're working, you don't really have to worry about anything except for how much work you're getting done.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

And so then you rely on that. And I think for some people, if they decide that they don't want to be there anymore and they want to leave, then becomes the uncertainty of how am I gonna get food, how where am I gonna stay, where am I gonna work?

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. The flip side of that and the downside is you have an extreme lack of independent resources, and you feel that you know you're just kind of well, the path of least resistance is just to keep keep working, keep going, you know, suffer through the the abuse and the challenges and all that, because at least everything's provided for.

Money, Credit, And Building A Home

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Um and especially if you're like us, we didn't know any different. Right. So we were always in that environment, and that was sort of always the way it was. W we were either uh living with our parents or in the Sea Orc. Yes. You know, we weren't on our own out in the world doing, you know, going n doing a nine to five job and having insurance and an apartment. And we were just it was always just somebody else's providing everything. And now we're completely on our own. The only person that we could uh look to for help was my dad.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 16:42

And he was he was working, he was he he traveled for um IBM doing major refreshes of you know Walmarts or banks and putting taking out all their old computers and putting in new computers. And so he was on the road a lot. And sometimes he'd take his car. So we would we would be stranded if we didn't kind of figure something out pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Anyway, but I don't think I think the only thing that sort of was like we were still dealing with being there was I would have nightmares almost every single night about that we were back there again and that we were trapped there again. And and then sometimes I would tell you.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, I want to say it was like a year after we left. It had been a while. And you and we were talking to somebody and you mentioned nightmares, and I was like, oh my gosh, you're having nightmares too. But like we then and then we compared notes and realized we were both having really graphic nightmares.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Aaron Powell But everybody that we talked to was having nightmares. That as somebody that was an uh ex-Siorg member where we worked, one for one, they were having nightmares. And whenever and and it wasn't like they had 20 nightmares and 10 were about that place. No. They had 20 nightmares and 20 nightmares were about that place. Yep. So then that's where I started to think like, hmm. And that I think is another key thing about when you leave Scientology, you the way it works when you leave is now you're questioning, you're just full-time questioning your decisions based on everything they taught you. You're doing everything the wrong way now.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 18:27

And everything's gonna turn out horribly based on this. And you're constantly having to tell yourself, maybe that's not true, or maybe this can work a different way. So you have to kind of I think for the first few years, you just kind of have to unlearn everything that they taught you. Yep. And maybe some of those things were good for business or good for productivity, and maybe they weren't, and you don't know which which way it is until you you kind of have to go in the real world and then sort of see how everybody else is doing it to kind of maybe meet somewhere in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Aaron Ross Powell For sure, totally. Like I remember being really worried and concerned that our marriage would fall apart because that was also one of the things that they said. I mean, we really had the first 13 years of our marriage was in one very extreme environment. And then, you know, we from for all intents and purposes, kind of s had to start over. It was like, you know, a new, completely different set of circumstances. And they had that was another line that they would say is, oh, anyone who escapes, they they just their marriages don't last and they fall apart and all this. And it was really like, I was like, oh my gosh.

Nightmares, Doubt, And Unlearning

SPEAKER_03 19:48

They do say that. Like as soon as they escape. She went after him and then he he deserted her, and then she lost her whole family because they weren't together, and you're just like, okay. You know, like Yeah. And I remember being Sometimes those couples were a little you would some couples that where we worked, it was it they were a couple by of opportunity because there's not there's there's there's so many people there, so many are married, so many are not in the market or not compatible, and so it's very slim pickings when it comes to matching up with somebody to find your soulmate at that place.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Yeah, do you remember?

SPEAKER_03 20:31

You're never gonna see them anyway. Yeah, remember that list we put together years ago of all the people who had gotten divorced and yeah, there was some gals that had they were like they had like four or five, I think uh there was a few gals there that were married six or seven times. So like they would get married, and then maybe they'd go to the RPF. And then so that would be a divorce, and then they'd get out of the RPF and then they'd get married to somebody else, and then and then the husband would go to the to the RPF and then they'd get divorced, and then so sometimes you'll see people I mean, that's another challenge, is when we're trying to think of people, and you go, Oh, that was Baba Ba Morrison. It's like she's not she wasn't Morrison, she was this. It was like, no, no, no. She before that she was married to Sean Morrison, and then she was Chloe Morrison, and then you're just like, There's like Kathy D. Simone or uh Kathy Hawkins or Kathy Frazier, um and probably a few other last names that we don't even know. At least one other. But so she was three different Kathes while we were there. So some people will have on the list and they'll be like, why do you have Kathy D. Simone and and Kathy Frazier and Kathy Hawkins on this list and be like, oh, those are all the same person? Yeah, they're all that's all one gal, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, for sure. For for a group that alleges that they have the technology to clear the planet, they certainly don't have marriages figured out. That's for darn sure.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

Well, no, they do. That is number of marriages. So they want to get as many marriages in as possible.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Oh my goodness. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

But then the other thing I I think so we started talking with other people slowly over the first year or two. We started connecting up with people that were there. And there's there were two camps. They were either, oh, I'm never going back. It's all nuts. It's all crazy. Two, well, I'm still trying to do my steps to get back in good standing with them so that I could speak to my rest of my family. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Yep. And then there was those that there was another camp which was like, well, the organization is bad and abusive, but I still want to, you know, believe in the technology or whatever. A lot of those people. That was kind of usually a segue, like that was part of the transition out.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Like you never went through that step. I never went through that phase. We were like independent. We were like, hell no. No. And I've said often the moment it was a choice for me, I was like, I'm done. The only for a few weeks initially I did um reach out to Kirsten Catano at Office of Special Affairs and say, like, well, here I am in Missouri. So now what? Um, because I was holding out hope to be able to speak to my family, not that I wanted anything to do with Scientology anymore. So for a hot minute I was talking to you and c contemplating going back to get interrogated.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Well, yeah. It was sort of like, well, if you want to talk to your family again, you at least have to get in good standing with them. Right. You have to come back and route out. Yeah, you don't have to be on course, you don't have to be in the Sea Org. You don't have to be working in an organization. You just have to, they basically have to know that you're not going to say anything bad about them. And then they're going to make sure as part of the routing out, the reason it's called routing is because they have a thing called a routing form. There's a routing form for anything that you're going to do in Scientology in an organization. And one of those routing forms is a leaving staff routing form.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yes.

Marriage Myths And Reality Checks

SPEAKER_03 24:17

And so what you basically have to do is the first step is you need to confess all of your crimes, everything bad you've ever done in your entire life, so that they've got the dirt on you. And then you you have to go through interrogations and they want to basically probe you and and interrogate you to find out if you're thinking about saying any nonsense about them. And then once they've adjudicated that you're you're gonna go your merry way and you're not gonna say anything, then they sort of give you a program of all these things that you need to do. And if you do those, then maybe they'll let you talk to your family again. And you don't know until you get to the very end of that list. And there have been people who get to the very end of that list and then they say, No, you can't talk to your family ever again. And then those are the people that start saying, Hey, this is what they did to me, and I played by all the rules, and then they still didn't let me talk to my family. Yep. And then there's some people that are just like, Hey, you need to come back, and you're like, uh, screw you, I ain't coming back. And now that you've mentioned you don't want me to say anything, I might get up to saying some stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yep. Yeah, and I will say that when we f when so when we first arrived in Missouri, I for sure thought that they would just leave us be and you know, after yes, we had those initial conversations about, well, you have to come back and route out and blah, blah, blah. And and then it they just went radio silent for for for a while. So I was like, oh good, maybe they're just you know, they've just decided to leave us alone. Um but that wasn't the case.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Yeah. And also when we when we first left, I mean he I mean within seconds of me leaving, they tried to run me off the road in a motorcycle, and I could have been uh seriously injured. Yes. Luckily for me, I don't even I guess just because I was the adrenaline was so crazy. When they when I got uh run off the road, I just popped right up and was like, you know, into action. I wasn't even thinking about and I don't even think I don't even think for a second I thought, um, oh, am I injured or anything? I was more worried that the bike was injured because that's how I was gonna escape.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah. But and your suitcase had spilled and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

But that was that was what they did to me within a minute of me leaving. So already I was sort of really like this is you guys are crazy. Yep. And then, you know, in the subsequent weeks and month months, getting on the internet and reading about Scientology and the internet, that just my my uh uh uh un however deprogramming, my deprogramming happened within a matter of a f of I'd say a month. Yeah, in a month, I was like, it's total nonsense. I've I've looked up all the things about Xenu and the body Thetans and all the crazy space cootie stuff, and nothing happened. I know all the dirty stuff that they were up to. I could see all the different people that had escaped over the years and what they were doing and how they had spoken out, and Scientology didn't do anything. So then I was sort of like, hmm.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah, and I will say that um because my mom joined the C organization when I was four years old, it took me much longer to um decide to go on the internet and all that. And so and I knew you were looking up stuff on the internet, but that scared the crap out of me, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

I was like, ooh, you know Well, yeah, because you were believing all the the hokey pokey about all the nonsense.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

But to clarify though, it's not that I believed it, it's that I was there was a lot of fear associated with it because of the so many because of growing up in that and the indoctrination. So it's not even that I, you know that I um didn't, you know, it wasn't a matter of belief, it was a matter of fear. That's my point.

Routing Out, Interrogations, And Leverage

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Yeah. And I was as the more I read, the more I wasn't as scared of them at all. Like, oh, they're basically just big bad bullies. Yes. They've got all these poor people that they're taking advantage of, and they literally claim to believe in cr in aliens infesting our bodies. And then you're going like, if they believe that, then I don't want anything to do with these guys. These guys are nuts. And they're mean as well. So it's sort of like vindictive. You don't need a lot of you don't you you need less crazy in your life than you need more. So if if if I can get rid of that part and I don't have to hang out with people that are mean to me, I'm like, that's a twofer, you know? This is a bargain for me. I'm gonna not have anything to do with them. But then when we started talking to other people, we started finding out that we all sort of had the same exact story.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:34

They were gaslighting us, making us think we were the ones that were crazy and and doing the wrong things and being evil. And then you you talked to 20 other people that they they thought the exact same thing. Yes. And then as soon as we started sharing stories, then people started not being afraid and also realizing, oh, yeah, we're we're the we're the saner ones on this side of this coin. Yes. And they're the ones that are up to nonsense. Yeah, the minute you get to compare notes and talk about things freely, it the you start decompressing, it accelerates the decompression because then all of a sudden, like you said, you you can be like, oh, it wasn't just me that thought that, wow, David Miscavige is a psychotic, abusive, you know, uh megalomaniac controlling POS and um He's literally yelling at us that we're not getting enough work done and then disappears and goes on a yacht with Tom Cruise for two weeks. And you're sort of like, how in your brain does that make any sense? Yeah. I'm a slacker, I'm only working 120 hours a week, bare minimum, and you're on a yacht with Tom Cruise, or you're in Alaska snowmobiling, or you're you're with your personal trainer on the free winds doing scuba diving lessons. Yeah. You're just like, what what in what world am I the bad guy? Right. So but you but you only when you you start figuring that out, I think that's when the the mental or the the healing starts so that you're not thinking it was your fault that you can't talk to your family ever again. Or it's your fault that you, you know, this happened or that and then you just start realizing, no, those are those were bad people.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

And it's unfortunate that our family are still involved with the bad people. Yes. But it's not our family's fault.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

No.

SPEAKER_03 31:33

As m i i I mean, they have some part of the blame.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

I do.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

But then but I would say if you get mixed up with a bad organization, bad things happen. So uh it's sort of like when you kind of come it for some people that could take a year to kind of resolve that some people that's they're never gonna be able to resolve that. And so there's those two and then there's everybody in the middle. But but the one thing that we knew was helpful was at least talking about it with other people and completely finding a community of people who understood what we'd been through, that we understood what they'd been through.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

You know, the language piece is uh, of course, a huge element that isolates you and makes you feel alone and um distraught and like, oh my gosh, now what? Um but like you said, the the freedom though to create and build a life, even with all of that, still was overwhelmingly positive in our experience. And it like, you know, didn't even matter how much I was gonna make at my job because I had a job and I was making some money and it was more than$46 a week. And, you know, sure, initially like and actually when we first got that apartment, we didn't even have our belongings back yet.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

That's true. We literally moved into a two-bedroom apartment. We went to Goodwill or we went to whatever the thrift store they had there.

The Escape, Road Incident, And Deprogramming

SPEAKER_00 33:03

No, and and we would get so at that time that this was you know 2005. It was before I think it was even before Craigslist, if I remember correctly. But I remember we got in a local newspaper and we just went in the you know, the classified ads. That's right. And we went and got we went and got a couch.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Yeah, we were calling people classified to get used furniture.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah. And I remember going to somebody's house and we got we got the couch that we got, and then we went to Goodwill and we got that bed. And you know, and again, it was just like, you know, well, what can we afford? And let's just put pull things together and and eventually we didn't.

SPEAKER_03 33:41

Well, even when we got our stuff, we threw like almost all of it away. It was just junk. Yeah. It was so we don't need any of these.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

We had no furniture, of course, because it was just cloth old clothes and just the biggest thing was the best part of getting our belongings back was that we got our two motorcycles and we got our dog.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Let's let's not forget about number three. I got my depeche mode collection back.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

I had I had an enormous amount of vinyl that I had collected from the early 1980s, as well as CDs and cassettes and all these different things. And when we covered, we did the we did the video. We did.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

We did a separate video of the crazy 60-page single-line item inventory that they did by box, and we told that whole story. We'll link to that video in the video description. For anyone who hasn't seen that, go watch that because you want to see next level crazy in Scientology. That is next level.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Yeah. And I think there was like a few pages of just lists of depeche mode albums and CDs and shampoo bottle, half full.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

And you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

But even when we got that stuff, by the time we got it, I think we left in January. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

We moved into this apartment in February, and then it was mid-April. So February, March, April. So two months that we had literally like, you know, whatever we had. Whatever we had.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

We went and got some clothes for you. We went and got some clothes for me. Yep. And then otherwise, we didn't we didn't really just didn't have any. We had an apartment and we had the bare, bare necessities. Like we had some of the b bathroom stuff, the bedroom stuff, and some silverware and some paper plates. Yes. And we were like, okay, we're up and running.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Yeah. Yeah. And I would say this reminds me too, one of the biggest adjustments that I had to go through was how much time we had on our hands. Like we, you know, I would get off work at like 4 p.m. And it was like, now what? Like, okay, I'll make dinner. Uh and so what about all the rest of the day? What do I do now? It was it was a huge adjustment for me.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Yeah, I think that's when we were watching a lot of movies and we were doing that kind of thing. So pretty much the entire time that we were in Kansas City, we weren't talking about Scientology. We weren't doing any we had nothing to do with it. We were just completely reset our lives and we're just doing trying to be everyday people and figure out what everyday people are supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And I don't think we even explained it or where we came from or anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Like No, my dad found out most of what happened when he read my book. He even I mean he had heard stories here and there, but when he read the book, he was like, I had no idea it was that bad. And I was like I was like, yeah, it's not an easy way to say all that.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

No.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

And and and to to one person or just a couple of people. It's the that's the other m good or bad. As soon as somebody asks you and you start talking about it, and you say one random thing, and they're just like, oh my gosh, that's the craziest. And you're like, that's the craziest thing you've ever heard? That was one of the silly things that I was telling you.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

That wasn't Yeah, this was supposed to be a light story, not a like, oh my God, what have you been through? Yeah. I know I've had the I had the same reaction initially too. Like, you know, there's any number of things that you can start talking about and you realize the impact it's having on the person, but that reaction also helps you process, like, oh, I thought this was normal, or I thought this was just an everyday thing that, you know, it's just was part of my life. And but then someone who has had no experience, no exposure, no knowledge, and seeing their reaction helps you go, like, wait a minute, this is not normal.

Internet Research And Facing The Fear

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah. And that was sort of when we would just casually, if somebody really they or they already kind of knew or they knew something, and or they looked us up and they could see that we had because you can pretty much get on the internet and find out if somebody was in there. If they completed one or two courses in Scientology and Scientology put out a magazine saying that, then it's most likely on the Internet. So you can find a lot of those things. But um when then let's say fast forward to when we moved back to Los Angeles, because I was offered a uh a very high-paying position at a company in Los Angeles. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

With By by an OSA spy, no.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

Yeah, spy somebody who was specifically trying to get us back into the the LA area. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Where they could more carefully monitor and control our activities.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Trevor Burrus But only when we I felt that we were being messed with by them, like they weren't just going to leave us alone. And the more I kind of figured out that this whole thing is just a racket and they're just trying to get people's money and they're ruining lives and families and everything in between.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Then I sort of started to post things. There was a website called Operation Clambake, and they had a message board, and there was a lot of people on there telling stories that hadn't been where they were, or they didn't know exactly. They were just guessing that these things were happening. And as soon as I started filling in the information, like, no, this is exactly what was happening, and this is who was where, and this is who the people were that were running this and doing this, that then people were like, oh my gosh, like this is very possible. These are criminal acts. Like people could go to jail for many of these things.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yeah. I have a question because I don't know the answer to this. When when was the first time or ballpark first time that you started posting as blown for good?

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Um I don't know. It could probably be be looked up on the interwebs. But I wouldn't say it was.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

It was after we moved back to LA though?

SPEAKER_03 39:51

Yeah, it was I think it was after we moved back to LA.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Aaron Powell But before our first son was born.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

When we lived in Burbank.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:59

And um and so I wasn't I wasn't trying to tell Claire what was happening there. She was there. So I didn't even think it was a big deal to even tell Claire because I was just like, somebody said, Oh, this happened here, and they have they have guys on the mountains with machine guns. And I'm like, hey, take it easy. Those aren't the Scientology guys, those are the Lockheed military guys on the other side of the mountain. Um But then just filling in like, hey, no, this didn't happen, that didn't happen. And so then I go, Yeah, uh there's a lot of lies out there about things, but the things that are the truth are much worse than these other silly things that people are talking about.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

So and that's always the case with anything Scientology, it's the, you know, truth is stranger than fiction. Um, it's like just the facts of the events that took place and the specifics of what happened and all that. You know, that we saw that in documentaries that we participated in in the early days, like before Leo Remini Scientology in the aftermath, and it would always be like there would be some reenactments that were like made dark and da-da-da. And it's like, no, you just need the facts to stick to exactly what happened, and you don't need uh anything more or less than that to explain the craziness that was the life we lived for so many years.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

Yeah, and then I think when we did move back to LA, that is when we started meeting up with people that we used to work with that were there. And that's when we started s once we started talking together and sharing stories and and also that we would share we would share info with each other. Oh, I I'm doing this and I'm this is how I'm making money and I do this and I do that, and then you go, oh, that's maybe that's a good idea of how we could do what we're doing just a little differently. And then so you start you then you start getting your resources back where you can easily and freely trade information with other people that have been out for years that are doing really well. Or also finding out about the people who have been out for years and they're not doing well.

Finding Voices, Posting, And Truth-Telling

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Right. Yeah. And and I will say though that when we moved back to LA, so January 2005 is when we escaped, you went back to LA in May, and then I moved we finally moved out of our apartment in Lee Summit, Missouri by September.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

So September is when I moved to LA as well, and we got an apartment there. That's when I started to realize, oh, they are keeping tabs on us because I had gotten a job when we moved back to LA, by which time I was pregnant with our first son. And I'd gotten a job in an office, um, you know, just doing manag office management type role. And one uh two of the people that I worked with were former Sea Org members and former, or at least I thought former Scientologists. But it's at a certain point, like over one lunch break, I realized that one of the ladies in the office was literally on the phone with Office of Special Affairs reporting into him. And when I kind of started to put those pieces together, I was like, oh no, they we are not free and clear of these people, not one bit.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

Yeah. Also I was as well. So somehow we went to being on our own in Kansas City to then now you're working for with and f and for some ex-people at the from the int base, not just in the Sea Org, but that were also posted at the Int base.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

And one of them was Shelly Miscavige's sister.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

Yeah. And then also now I'm working for some people and with people that were also at the int base.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Yeah, and so different sets of people.

SPEAKER_03 43:54

Yeah, and so you're going like, wait a minute. And then once once we really sort of figured out. That they were by that time, but I was posting because I'm like, they are they're messing with us and trying to keep track of us, and but we're we weren't we want nothing to do with them. We're gone, we're done. Yeah, and so you think like it we didn't leave. I didn't leave going, Oh, I'm gonna s I'm gonna leak everything you've ever done here. I'm gonna try to remember every possible thing that went down here, and I'm gonna go to law enforcement and go to this. I didn't set out with that intention. No, it was over the course of two years where they they kept poking and poking and poking and then making it worse and then and then trying to kind of set us up with like, oh, you you did something illegal in your business.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Yeah, and they were threatening to sue us already within a year of us leaving.

SPEAKER_03 44:51

Yeah. So then you go, uh No, these guys are just this is just evil. There's evil and they can't not it there's no way they can't be that way.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

And so at that point, you do have to come to terms with and that's where I think it's a v it Scientology might be a little trickier than others because you're trying to figure out what the truth is, and meanwhile, they're still messing with you, and every time you sort of start figuring things out, then they just mess with you harder and try to make your own.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Which really triggers already so many years of abuse and trauma and so much that we lost just escaping and getting out. Like we've already lost all our entire family other than your dad. Not one single family member was there for us that we'd grown up with. You know, my mom, my siblings, my stepdad, your mom, your siblings, you know. I mean, that is that in itself is traumatizing. And nobody should have to ever make that decision, but we had to to to break free. And then on top of all that, they want to, like you said, keep prodding and prodding and prodding.

SPEAKER_03 46:04

Take away your livelihood now that you've escaped. Now they want to attack your livelihood.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Now they want to make you fail.

SPEAKER_03 46:10

Yeah, and they want to make you fail on the outside. And so it's sort of like it's that's a I think that that's a hard environment to sort of recover and get depro deprogram yourself in, yeah. Where you're just constantly back in the in the soup again.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:26

So you really do have to I think you in my case, I really just had to ignore any noise coming from them. Like, I don't want anything to do with it. You can s I know you're gonna say horrible shit. Yeah. So why would what am I gonna do? I don't they want you and this is a weird kind of thing. They want you to engage completely. And if you don't engage, it kind of makes everything they're doing just if there's there's no effect.

Moving To LA And Ongoing Surveillance

SPEAKER_00 46:59

It's like they're they're an organizational narcissist. You have to gray rock, you know, just go like, no, no, do not engage, do not react, don't respond, which is really, really hard when at least for me, like again, from four years old, I was in the C organization. You you we've talked before about how riled up I would get, you know, you're getting a Kamev, and you would be like, whatever. And I would be like, How what do you mean, whatever? They're gonna give me a committee of evidence, they're gonna rake me over the coals, I'm gonna be like sent to the rehabilitation project force all this multiple times, and you were like, You'll be fine.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

I'm like, I don't know, I don't think I will be fine.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

Yeah. But but when they're messing with you, your reaction is what gives them the satisfaction. That's exactly right. Nothing else will matter. If somebody that works with you sees it, or if as long as you don't hear about it, you don't know about it, it has no effect. And even when you do hear about it, and then you talk to that person and they go, dude, I saw this crazy thing on the internet about you, and you're and I'm like, I know, yeah, they're not too happy that I don't work for them anymore. Uh and and and literally at the end of the day, that's what it is. Yeah. If I'm because I'm not there, then I need to fail. And so you're just like, okay, whatever. You know, like it sucks that you guys have to like constantly, just day and night be trying to do this. And it's just like, I don't even care anymore. Like it is what it is. I can't stop you. I mean, Mike Render, rest in peace. They still have hate sites up about him. So it doesn't matter what I do living or dead, they're still gonna shit all over me and talk shit on the internet. So and also I think that they do it and that they have all these things, it just makes everything that we're saying legitimate because you say Yeah, I left this, I left over 20 years ago and they're still hot and bothered about it. Yeah. And they've got a whole website set up about me, and then you go look and go, they really do.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Yeah, their actions say more about them than it does about us any day of the week. Any day of the week.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

And it just proves the point of why we keep doing what we're doing here because they're still getting away with it to this day, you know?

SPEAKER_03 49:24

Yeah. And then if people need to go to therapy, we have uh on the Aftermath Foundation, the the Michael J. Render Aftermath Foundation, um, we have a counseling group where former members can become part of that group.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

Uh whether you speak with other former members that you knew or you go and do like a group therapy type of thing for ex-Corg members or ex-scientologists, it's my opinion that talking about it and sharing your experience and then that may help you realize when you when you share that with somebody else, who knows that that's also you weren't in the wrong. That's really kind of all it is. Like when you tell somebody this and they go, that's horrible, they should have never done that. That should have never happened to you. That's it's just horrible, it's possibly illegal, whatever all the circumstances are, that is a part that helps.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

It does.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

And you have to kind of pick all those out and then you know, maybe that's gonna help you re resolve some things and and regain agency on the internet.

SPEAKER_00 50:30

Yeah, and then have more trust for people.

SPEAKER_03 50:33

A lot of a lot of ex-scientologists, a lot of ex-Seer members not very trusting and uh easily in Scientology betraying your best buddy is a Tuesday. So in fact, it's encouraged. It's encouraged that if somebody's doing something um that you don't like and that may be a little bit uh out of the norm, that you kind of shame them and blacklist them to kind of keep everybody else in norm. And that's again where this kind of structure thing comes into. If you're doing drugs or you're doing any of these things that make you a little uncontrollable, Scientology doesn't want that. So if you're on a Scientology course or counseling, you're not allowed to do drugs. It's it's forbidden. And although that may be a good sort of idea and rule and structure for many people, there's probably a lot of people that should not do drugs. And so then when you leave Scientology, then you go like, well, screw it. I can do whatever I want now. And then it kind of goes sideways, and you go, well, like, yeah, just because Scientology says not to do it doesn't mean you should do it.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

If you leave. So that's where people, that's that people, that's uh some of the resolving that people need to do is they gotta figure that out.

Harassment, Lawsuits, And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Yeah, there's there's definitely work to be done. And um, like you said, support group, reading books, researching, making choices for yourself, and and hopefully just holding space to work through that on your own terms is really, really important. Like for me, you you went on the internet. It took me a long time to go on the internet, but I did go and order books like Bareface Messiah by Russell Miller, um Madman or Messiah by Bent Cardin, were two of the first books that I got, and even then I was like, ooh, should I read them? I'm like, yeah, I can read them. I you know, I'm gonna I can read whatever I want, and that's my comfort space because I can take what I want and discard what I don't agree with.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

So I think the other good thing about that is because if you're reading a book about somebody that was in Scientology or uh somebody was in the C org at the international headquarters or whatever, you're gonna see things and you're gonna read things in there that if you were in Scientology for any amount of years or time, are gonna want you always wondered about that thing, and you never knew. And there's certain things in Scientology where they're not really allowed to share a lot of dirt on what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Nope.

SPEAKER_03 53:11

So unless it's good for Scientology, you're really not gonna hear about it from other Scientologists. Yeah. But you'll notice things that are off and you'll wonder, hey, I wonder what happened to that person, or I wonder what happened with this, or you know, there was a a woman who was the ED of Hamburg in Germany, and she won the birthday game, you know, seven years in a row, and then she disappeared off the face of the planet, and then they never won the birthday game ever again.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Which by the way, I wasn't here when you were doing the chat with Matt, but I I was like, Vipka, she she went straight into the rehabilitation project for us.

SPEAKER_03 53:46

Yes. So but but but when you see things like that and you're in Germany, this is not an American thing, this is something that happened in Germany.

SPEAKER_02 53:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

I mean, I I think m any German Scientologist that was around during that time, if they found out that this woman who had won the birthday game for all these years in a row and was a rock star, highly trained she was like the yeah, for sure. Zipka Hansen.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 54:11

She was the ED of the Hamburg Org, and she was a rock star in Scientology. And then one day she was on the RPF at the international headquarters.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 54:22

And the story of how that is, I think it it's in my book. I think I tell a lot of whole things. Pretty sharp. Anyway, but either way, um, there's hundreds and hundreds of things like that that happened in Scientology. And when you read one of these books from somebody, they talk about a lot of these things. You'll find out of what happened or you know, these mysteries that get solved. So are we ready to uh do some questions? Yeah, I think I think that was a good decent direction or kind of suggestion. We're not mental health experts, but we were in a crazy cult for all of our lives until our early 30s and have now been out for a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

Yes, yes, for sure. Absolutely. All right, let's do some questions. You ready? Yep, I'm ready.

SPEAKER_03 55:10

Okay, here we go.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

Okay, Love Food Kitchen. You'd never think this fresh-faced youngster would end up as the legendary Beard for Good.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

Not anymore. Oh, you know, we've got a French documentary. We should put a link in the description.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Yes, coming out tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 55:23

Yeah, we we did a documentary um for this French media team, and uh it's finally coming out, and you will see the return of Beard for Good if you watch it. Um so we'll put a link in there. I think when they shot it, I was like I was like one quarter mountain man by that time. I had a good nice big Santa beard on.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

Yes, you did. You sure did. But yeah, there will be, I know Tony Ortega's in that. You, you and I, of course, apostate Alex, and I'm sure there'll be many other people.

SPEAKER_03 55:53

You didn't read the last part of this comment.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

The ginger looks three days older than when that was this was taken. Oh, thank you, Love Free Kitchen. The ginger feels much older than when that was taken, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 56:05

The picture in in our um in the thumbnail. In the thumbnail.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Or maybe even ninety-five.

SPEAKER_03 56:17

Yeah, maybe. I want to say, yeah. Oh yeah, you're right, it was ninety-five because you weren't I don't think you were in RTC when that picture was taken. Or just in.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Yeah, so then it was ninety-four, actually. Anyway. I'll have to look. Yeah, it was right around that time. But either way, we'd been married.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

You look exactly the same, and it looks like my son is with you in the picture.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

You mean our son?

SPEAKER_03 56:38

Well, uh somebody who was related to me. No, no, no. Not me. Not me. I looked like I ate that guy.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

Oh, goodness me.

SPEAKER_03 56:47

Okay. We got a oh, we got some super chats too.

Gray Rock Tactics And Emotional Recovery

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Oh, nice. Angel Cat, thank you for being inspirational to all whose lives you touch. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. And um, you know, we're just here to keep doing this work and helping people however we can.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

If one ex-scientologist finds this helpful, it'll be worth the hour that we spend doing it.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Yep. Jason, hi, did you see my interview with John Kiriakau? I saw the link. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. Very busy work week, but I will watch. Thank you for sharing that. Uh Nalsa, greetings from Anchorage, Alaska. Nice. We've been there. Beautiful. Uh Ryan M, hello from Mississauga, Ontario.

SPEAKER_03 57:33

Oh, burned.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

Burned.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

Babe, you can't have your reading. Good morning from Newcastle, Australia.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

Oh, awesome. Hi, Todd. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

I can't believe.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

I know. Carla, hi from England. Happy Valentine's. Thank you. Uh Olga from Northwest Oregon. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 57:56

Happy love day.

SPEAKER_00 57:57

Patrina, happy love day. Happy heart day. Yay. There you go. We did that one. Olga from Northwest Oregon. Tracy, howdy from Wyoming. Awesome. Thanks for being here. Tracy. Sherry, hello everyone. Coming in from Moorhead, Minnesota. Nice. Poodleboone from New York City. Awesome. Good to see you. Catherine Olson. I love how Claire looks almost exactly the same. No, I've got I appreciate it. Very kind of you, but yes, I can tell the difference. Angela, love depeche mode, born in 1973. Boom. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 58:35

Go for the mode. Yes. That's funny that we did get all those things back and they had all that depeche mode stuff on there.

SPEAKER_00 58:42

Yeah, exactly. I love that Chelsea Graves had inventory all your all your Depeche Mode albums. Mart Knottman, Re Vibka Hansen, Miscavige told her that she had the choice, quote unquote, of A joining the Sea Org and going straight to the Rehabilitation Project Force, or B getting declared. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. I know.

SPEAKER_03 59:00

That's the choice you get. You're either going to go to the rehabilitation project force at the international headquarters, or you're going to be declared an SP and shamed in front of all the people that thought you were a rock star.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

Yeah. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

SPEAKER_03 59:12

Yeah. Oh, that's that's a great point, too. She was an OTA. Aaron Powell, she was. So she had done all there was to do in Scientology.

SPEAKER_00 59:20

And I think I want to say she was like a classics auditor or something like that. Like she was, like you said, she was a rock star by Scientology standards. She'd been at up on the stage multiple times receiving awards and everything else and touted as like, oh, the Hamburg is doing amazing.

SPEAKER_03 59:38

And if you guys don't know the the punchline, they were just making it all up. The staff in the Hamburg organization were just reporting that they were doing more than they were doing.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Allegedly. That's the story. Who even knows what the actual story is?

SPEAKER_03 59:55

Aaron Powell Well, supposedly they had two sets of books. So they were doing one thing over here and another thing over here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

Anyway, but regardless of all that, I'm sure there's more to that story than Meets CI, and I'm sure there's anyway, whatever. Yeah, you get my point.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

Oh, look, here's well, Catherine knows the same short story we were.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

Hamberg was sending a different set of their org statistics to management so they would get left alone. Right, exactly. That's that's what we were told. But again, you know, like like you were saying, every time we compared notes with somebody, we'd find out a different story. So hopefully one day Vipka gets out and we can talk to her and find out what actually happened. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:34

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

Yeah. Um slip shot saying hi from Detroit. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:40

I think that's all the ones I read out, all the shout-outs. If I if I didn't, I'm sorry, guys. There's a lot of comments in here.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

It's all good. So now we can do a few questions. Yeah, yeah. And then everyone can get back to their Valentine's Day celebration. We're going for a nice dinner. So yay. That'll be fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:57

I'm um oh, here we go. Question for Claire.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

All right, question for Claire. How were the folders of the Religious Technology Center Reports Officer organized by names of individuals? How many folders were there? Did RTC have hard copy folders as well as digital ones? So yes, they did have um hard copy folders, but uh during the late 90s to early 2000s, they were switching more and more to an online database. So everything would get scanned in and they would be filed cross cross-referenced, so by individual and by associated organization and everything else. And at the same during that same time period, they were working on scanning in all personnel folders, all ethics folders, um and granting access for so that Religio Religious Technology Center could have access to all of those things. So it was getting to where you would just type in somebody's name into the database, the RTC data files database that was, you know, digital and be able to look up reports and everything else.

Community, Therapy, And Trust

SPEAKER_03 1:02:08

Yeah, you could look up somebody in the data it was called the data files. You could look up somebody on the data files, and if there was a report on them anywhere in Scientology, it would show up. Everything is scanned, and even all the sessions are recorded and videoed with video and audio. Yep. And that's all digitized. Every single counseling session. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:29

And they were also working on documenting who like Billy Bob. Who is Billy Bob connected to? Who has he ever had in interactions with his entire life? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:41

Yeah, they have it, it's a special feature, and it's it's called the a connections list. And they just type in Billy Bob and then they just say who is connected with Billy Bob, and it just triangulates all of Billy Bob's reports and anyone who's mentioned in any of them, or who are the people that wrote reports on Billy Bob, and then it shows all their connections. We actually showed it in the spy files. I'll try to find the figure out which episode it was. But uh when O.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

There was a the You showed that chart of connections, and oh, we cut this connection, we cut this connection, we're cut this.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

But they they the the thing the evil that they do is very proceduralized. It's very they have uh they have uh procedures and processes for everything evil that they do.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:29

They have documented their systemic abuse, systemic organizational abuse, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

It is kind of wild.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:35

There was another question, and I and I was Becky Big Brother fan says, shout out, Billy Bob 123.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:42

All right, question. Did you think it was easier before getting used to the outside world because you were together? I do think so, yeah. I mean, I I never imagined that independently that I would be able to survive that transition, having lost my entire family and everything else. So certainly knowing that Mark was there, I've I've described it before, the way you might feel if you're told, oh, go ahead and jump off that cliff and I promise there's there's a safety net waiting for you. That's what it felt like to me in that moment of escaping. Like I knew you were there and that somehow everything would work out. But the only reason I had belief in that it would work out is because I knew you were there.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:28

Yeah. Yeah. It's easier to do all this with another person, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Yeah. Angela, question, Claire and Mark. Where do you see yourselves 10 years from now? Great question. Well, my book will finally be out. Yay!

SPEAKER_02 1:04:42

We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

I have six chapters left and it's coming along great. And uh sooner than later, I will um update my website with the book cover and everything else. So making good progress. And um, but ten years from now, so our kids will all be grown and out. Maybe out of the house. Out of the house, yeah. Um what did you think I meant?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:07

Uh you just said when they get out. I was like, where are they?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:12

Well, you know, they'll be all grown up, I should say. And uh our work as parents will transition to a different phase of life. That'll be amazing. Um Yeah, and I I think we're just continuing to work on the We'll be busy. Yeah, we'll we're allowed to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:31

We literally have been doing a lot of the same stuff for many, many years. We kind of have a groove in a system we're doing, and we do our thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:39

You started your business in 2006, I started mine in 2008. And both have just we've worked really, really hard to just you know, build that up.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

Um so hopefully, I would say ten years from now, I would hope for a little less all the time. On and more and more just taking time to enjoy life.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:03

I'm already there. I'm already s I'm already switching to that gear right now. You and me.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:09

I've done a lot. I can get up to doing doing nothing and feel totally fine about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

Yep. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:14

Um here's a good one.

unknown 1:06:16

Question.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

Oh no, that was not the one I just showed. That was another good one. Oh, it's for Mark.

Books, Records, And Solving Old Mysteries

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

Okay. Mark Fisher and Janice Gillam Grady question. Do your boys know your stories or have any interest in your history? Yes, they know our stories. Um our oldest son, Mark's talked about, read blown for good for his uh senior year English class, um, which was it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. And our son told us it it really helped him to understand a lot and um which was moving and you know. And yeah, I would say that we've always, you know, been uh completely honest with our kids about our background in an age age appropriate way. So they're very, very familiar with um our stories in that respect. So yeah, there you go. That's my answer.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:06

Sounds good, babe. You did great. Um I don't know if I showed all these or if there was any more questions. I hope I got to everything, guys. We uh if I missed your question, I'm sorry. Uh there's literally hundreds and hundreds of comments in here, and all the ones that are starred, I think I showed.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you to everyone joining us.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:27

And um Happy Valentine's Happy Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

I will say that we have some interesting new content coming up. Uh rest in peace, Mike. I was helping Christy kind of sort through a lot of stuff. So I have some really interesting things that we'll be talking about as a result of that. Um including whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:47

There's documents, there's all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:50

Crazy things coming.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:51

So may have not been talked about.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:54

Yes, exactly. Definitely a lot of things that haven't been talked about, some things I'd never even seen before.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:00

So um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:01

Kind of wild stuff that was that you might not think is really that big of a deal, but kind of the more we find out that anything that was going on sort of had it could be a big deal to a whole bunch of different people that we don't even know about.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:15

So exactly. So yeah, we're gonna keep on keeping on exposing Scientology abuses.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:21

We got the fundraiser coming up, March 11th.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

March 11th in Denver, uh, Comedy Works South. Uh, if you're local to Colorado, we hope you will join us. We're gonna have a ton of amazing, great people there. We'll have an awesome online silent auction, and we're very, very excited. This is our first in-person, really truly in-person organized event. Um, so yeah, we appreciate everyone who's already gotten tickets. It's not too late to get yours. Like I said, it will be Wednesday, March 11th, um in at Comedy Works South. So there is a link on the Aftermath Foundation website.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

Our show's Saturday now. They kind of are what it is, they're usually Saturday or Sunday, depending on our schedule.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

You have something happening tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:09

Mark was gone last Sunday. So we did it Saturday. So sorry. We tried to, we will try to get back on a regular, regularly scheduled programming, but we figured at least it's better to bring you something once a week, whether it's Saturday or Sunday. Hopefully you'll bear with us.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:24

You can watch it on the replay if you can't watch it live.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

There you go. It's fine by us.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:29

Anyway, thank you guys. Thanks for joining us. Thanks everybody who uh watched till the very end, and we will see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:36

Adios, bye bye. Tell next time, guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

You can also pick up a copy of my book, Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology, in hardback, Kindle, and Audible versions as well. There's also a link to our podcast, and you can get that on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to watch another video, you can click on this link right here, or you can click on this one here, or you can click on the subscribe button right here. Thanks a lot, until next time.