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HOW I FINALLY GOT RELIEF FROM SCIENTOLOGY AND CAME REALIZE I NEEDED TO GET HELP FROM OTHER EX-SCIENTOLOGISTS AND TO TELL MY STORY:

It literally took a catastrophe to make me realize I needed to do something about my life and address the pain that I had gone through in Scientology in order to grow and move forward and discontinue the mistakes that I had been making.

I had been in what is called the Sea Organization in Scientology in Middle Management in LA where I lived and worked at the compound and was not allowed to have children and was very sheltered from the outside world. I was there from November 1985 (when I was just 16) until November 2002 (when I was 33). When I left, I was very much incapable of dealing in the outside world and am still growing up and learning (which many people having left Scientology have to do in order to survive and will say is a very tough road).

I have a son who just turned a year and a half old. His father was the man that I had gone to live with when I had left Scientology in 2002. I wanted nothing more than to have a family and have a baby and have what I considered a “normal life” so I immediately got pregnant with his child.

He himself is a criminal who has been in and out of prison an unknown (to me) amount of times in his life. He was in fact in the halfway house when I met him and I was still in Scientology in the Sea Organization.

Having been a Scientologist for so long, I felt that I was “on top of the world” and could “make everything go right” and somehow change him and make him a brand new and better person. Three months after I met him, he went back to prison. The next day I found out that I was pregnant with his child (this was March, 2003).

He was in prison until I was 8 months pregnant and I was naïve enough and stupid enough to go back and live with him even then and “give it another go” and “try to keep the family together”.

Keep in mind as you read this that it was Scientology that made me sheltered and naïve enough to not realize the danger that I was in with this man. It was also Scientology who had mistreated me so badly that my boyfeiend’s abuse paled in comparison.

I stayed with him until the baby was born and left him when the baby was 5 days old due to the fact that I felt he posed a threat to my survival and that of my newborn son (story which I will not delineate here). Five days later, he went back to prison again and was in prison until my son, Orion, was 9 months old.

I was attending a Women’s Support Group while he was in prison this time and decided that I didn’t want to be with him and that life offered more for me and my son than this man. I did, however, let him come up and visit our son and stay with me over weekends, etc.

He did not take well to the fact that I didn’t want to be with him anymore. You see, I was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his miserable life. But I stuck to my guns this time and told him that I no longer wanted a relationship with him but wouldn’t refuse him seeing his son (stupid girl).

At the beginning of this year, in 2005, he got a new girlfriend and seemed to be doing pretty well. I needed to have gall bladder surgery and told him so. He offered to watch our son, Orion, while I was getting the surgery and I would get him back a few days later. I ended up not being able to get the surgery at that time. Orion went with his dad to LA. He called me every day for the first three days my son was with him.

After the fourth day he no longer called. He had been staying at his girlfriend’s parents. I called there and they said that he and the girlfriend were not there and were staying at a hotel. The girlfriend’s father also expressed some concern that there were drugs involved. I left several messages for him to call me and the messages were delivered to him by the girlfriend’s father. He was not calling. After the fifth or sixth day, I started to panic. Was he trying to kidnap my son? Were they OK? Had there been an accident or worse?

On the eigth day that my son was with him, I called the girlfriend’s father and he told me that he had heard they went to Laughlin, Nevada from LA (the girlfriend, my ex-boyfriend, the girlfriend’s 6 month old daughter and my son).

At this point, I was very certain he was trying to run off with my son and not return him to me. I called the police (who were not much help) and his Parold Officer (who was a bit more helpful) and I drove to Laughlin with my current boyfriend and we went from parking lot to parking lot looking for my ex’s car and went into all of the casino’s one by one desparately trying to locate them.

I’m not particularly a Christian myself but at this point, the only thing that I could think to do was to pray and pray and ask God to please return my son to me safely. I asked God to change the situation and pleaded that I had never done anything so bad to deserve the loss of my child and my son needed to be with his mother and not this man.

An hour later, I got a call from my ex on my boyfriend’s cell phone. He told me where he was and that he was ready to give my son back to me there in Laughlin. I was so relieved and happy.

I got my son back safely and we returned to our home. I thanked God for answering my prayers.

Five days later, I called to the girlfriend’s father’s house to ask about some items that were not returned to me with my son (clothes and such). At this point, I heard the most horrific thing that I have ever heard in my life. I found out that my ex-boyfriend had viciously murdered the 6 month old daughter of his new girlfriend just the night before and they had both been arrested.

I was devastated! I felt awful for that little girl, for having trusted my ex, for the mother of the little girl, for the grandfather and the whole family. But mostly I was thinking, “That could have – WOULD have been MY SON – if I had not gotten him back.” I had a gamet of emotions and thoughts occurring at this point, but my main thought was that I wanted to be with family and get some help and some counselling. I went to see my brother in San Francisco and my sister in Sacramento.

[My advise to others – don’t let your life become this much of a mess before doing something about it.]

Once I was there in San Francisco, I found an excellent counsellor who helped me more than any Scientology auditor or process had ever done. We addressed not only the recent situation of the murder of this little girl and the potential loss of my only son, but also my experience in Scientology and what happened while I was there.

I realized Scientology had made me naïve, incapable of dealing in the world and gave me a false feeling of “nothing bad will ever happen to me.” I went into Scientology when I was 16 and in so many ways, though I am now 36, I am still 16 in so many ways and rapidly learning to grow up.

It was not until I left Scientology that I even got an ID, a bank account, an apartment of my own, etc. For the first time in my life I was paying bills, filing taxes, paying rent – it was very tough after living in Scientology for 17 years. In fact, I was almost incapable of coping and meeting the needs being demanded of me by “real life”. It was so stressful.

Like many people, I have had a tendency since I left Scientology to only remember the good things that happened to me there. To remember the good times and the good friends and say to myself, “It was not so bad”. That is, until this catastrophe got me to the point where I realized I needed to “wake up and smell the coffee”.

In doing counselling with this man in San Francisco (who was so kind and caring and helpful), I poored out my soul as to what happened in Scientology, what I’ve been through since then and how impossible it has been to cope in life. I really came to grips, for the first time since I left, that it was AWFUL in Scientology and that I was miserable and treated so badly and inhumanely and was literally made into a slave while there.

It was at this point that I finally decided to go on-line and look for other ex-Scientologists and their accounts of their life in Scientology and what they have done since then to move on with a new life.

Up to this point, I had not dared look on the Internet for such information because, as a Scientologist, you are indoctrinated not to look on-line and read information about Scientology and lies and harmful “OT III” information.

While reading the accounts of the other ex-Scientologists, I went through a real growing experience and found that I was not alone. I was not the only one who had been duped, been mistreated, been injustly punished and persecuted and embarrassed by Scientology.

I continued my counselling in San Francisco while reading this information on the internet in the meantime at any free moment that I had.

Through the counselling and reading and really, meditation, I came to the realization that I never would have come to while in Scientology and had a release that has freed me from more than thirty years (all told) of negative experience in Scientology.

In 1994, I started to have suicidal ideation and migraines and lost so much weight that I got down to 103 pounds, hardly slept or ate and was at the lowest point of my life. My boss at the time in Scientology was literally a tyrant himself driven to that point through lack of sleep, lack of nutrition, too much caffeine and nicotine. He threw the contents of his in basket at me twice and once pinned me to the wall by my neck lifting my feet off of the ground and yelling in my face (this as a reaction to my walking by and telling him that something was done without specifying WHAT had been done). He never let me go home to sleep until he did which was usually between 2am and 5am and then I had to be up again at 7:30. This went on for a year and a half.

Later he was taken off of that job and a year after that I was still having suicidal ideation and not doing well so I was gotten some counselling in Scientology to address what I had gone through with this man. It was counselling addressed to being suppressed by others.

This counselling, however, created no relief for me and I didn’t feel better. Even up to the point when I left, I continued to originate that I was not doing well, still had suicial thoughts, migraines, etc. I was ill about once every three months and ended up in bed every month for at least a day with my period. I was an awful mess.

No one attempted to do anything about this, however except that I was sent on walks every day and that was supposed to be therapeutic (and it was to the degree that I got outside and got to look at things – but it was not ground-breaking and was not designed to get to the bottom of what was really wrong). I was not gotten the help that I needed even up to the point when I left. I finally, after a year of walking, said that I didn’t want to do it anymore because I didn’t feel any better anyway.

In spite of it being common knowledge that I was in a very bad condition of constant upset and suicidal thoughts, I continued to be treated injustly and mistreated and not attended to.

FINALLY RELIEF COMES -- AT LAST!!

Through this counselling that I got recently, the realization came to me that I never got relief from the Scientology counselling addressing being suppressed by this man who was my boss in Scientology because I never got the “earlier similar” or basic on the chain (Scientology principle). The earlier similar person who had suppressed me was L. Ron Hubbard himself!!!!!

Last lifetime, you see, I was on the ship with Ron and worked with him and he was an awful tyrant of a man, just as my boss in 1994 had been. I remembered this (or came to grips with this being the truth) when I was reading an account on the internet from Ron’s own son and from another woman who had been on the Ship with Ron (I don’t recall her name now) and I had gone through the same thing she had with Ron and the staff on the Ship. Only, I didn’t fair so well as she did. I was subjected to maltreatment, malnutrition, lack of sleep and “black Dianetics” and I was driven so nuts that I did eventually leave and then took my own life by purposely walking in front of a car.

Now I finally felt happy for the first time since 1960 when I entered Scientology last lifetime! I got the real reason that I was so upset – the earlier similar suppressive person was RON HIMSELF!!!

I was -- and STILL AM -- FINALLY FREE!!!!!!!! Hurray!!

You see, if I had come up with Ron as an “item” who had been suppressing me while I was in Scientology last lifetime, I probably would have been declared a suppressive person and thrown out on my ear or who knows what. But, even worse than that, I would not have been able to even face up to the fact that he would be an item because, of course, Ron was not a suppressive! As a Scientologist, I would never have realized this. I would never have drudged up those old memories of what Ron DID TO ME!

So, I thank all of those who were brave enough and kind enough to write the truth about Ron and Scientology and post this information for all to read. It is because of your efforts that I am finally living a happy life, finally free from the yoke of Scientology both mentally and spiritually!

Sincerely,

Ann Marie Woodward

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