Authors: Jenna Miscavige Hill
Beyond Belief (42 page)
I wanted to feel relief, knowing that Dallas did think my life was important enough to break at least one rule. I could see that he was really hurt, that he had been in a horrible bind and didn’t know what to do, and for that, I felt as though I was the worst person in the world, which I had always been told that I was. Still, I struggled to get past my own ordeal. I had risked everything out of love for him and fear of being separated, but, as far as I could tell, he hadn’t felt the same way. He had a lot more to lose than just me.
We weren’t together long when Mr. Wilhere arrived to speak to me privately. He asked Dallas to wait in the other room.
“Jenna, if you get through your program, you’ll be fine,” he began. “Most people would go to the RPF for what you’ve done, but you’re lucky. It looks like you’re going to be spared.”
“What about Dallas?” I asked.
“I don’t really care about Dallas. He’ll probably be thrown to the sharks.”
So, Dallas had chosen the Church and this was his reward: he was dispensable to them. He was just a tool to get me to do what they wanted, which was to not cause PR issues for the Church by acting out. They didn’t know what else to do with me.
Soon after, Linda came to take Dallas. Emotionally and physically worn down, I was ashamed by the way I had treated him. I agreed to go home and think about the best way to approach things. No sooner had I got to my room than I realized what a mistake it had been to let Dallas go, especially after Mr. Wilhere talked about him being thrown to the sharks. Now that I knew where he was, I had to go find him before they moved him somewhere else.
Eager not to repeat past mistakes, I hurriedly walked over to PAC and found him in a room, with a security guard posted outside the door.
That night, I slept in a room with him. It was the first time we had slept in the same berthing, and I took comfort knowing I was finally close to him.
T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING,
M
R.
W
ILHERE MADE AN ANNOUNCEMENT:
the Church was going to send Dallas and me somewhere to calm down and “destimulate,” an LRH method of dealing with someone who had gone insane. I didn’t care what he said. The only words I heard were “get away.” I knew I couldn’t continue as I had been. My body couldn’t handle it. I only weighed ninety-four pounds, and there wasn’t much more I could take.
That day, Mr. Wilhere drove Dallas, our two security guards, and me up to Big Bear, where we were taken to a two-bedroom cabin, one with bunk beds and one with a queen-sized bed. My guard and I stayed in the one with the queen and Dallas and his stayed in the room with the bunk beds. Looking around at the comfortable cabin and the two guards, I couldn’t understand why the Church was seemingly spending so much money on us. I’d experienced many different forms of punishment in my life, but never anything quite like this. Two days earlier, they’d seemed determined to torment me; now I was at a retreat. The arrangement struck me as strange, but given what life had been like, I wasn’t about to complain.
For the next few weeks, the four of us just hung out, cooked, hiked, swam in the lake, and read books aloud to each other. Once a week, someone would come by to visit and bring us mail, any clothes that we needed, and food. I felt guilty about all the money and resources being spent on me. We’d been there about a week when Sylvia Pearl arrived to continue my sec-checking and stay in a cabin near ours. However, her presence didn’t work out. I still couldn’t handle the security checking, and again, I just walked out of the sessions. At the same time, Dallas was being sec-checked, too, except his questions were about me, as they tried to get him to report on me, which only made me angrier. In time, Sylvia was replaced with an RTC auditor, and eventually, with some difficulty, we finished my sec-check.
Mr. Wilhere came up once a week to check on me, bringing with him any news that he cared to share. It was during one of these visits that he told me there had been a significant development in the Lisa McPherson case. Bob Minton, the key financier in the civil case brought by her family, had changed sides. He was no longer supporting the cause of Lisa McPherson, but instead was supporting the Church. I remembered that Bob Minton had been the leader of the Lisa McPherson Trust at the base. OSA often referred to him when talking about our enemies who were picketing and trying to bring down the Church. Minton and his wife had been the most vocal opponents at the Flag Land Base. He had testified at a court hearing that the lawyer representing the McPherson estate had made him lie, change court documents, and pump up anti-Scientology sentiment. The McPherson family lawyer responded by saying that Minton had been extorted by the Church. Already, the criminal charges against the Church had been dismissed in 2000 after the medical examiner changed the cause of death from “unknown” to “accident.”
Aside from periodic stories from outside, our stay at Big Bear was incredibly secluded and peaceful. I never learned exactly why I was sent there. It could have been to make my parents happy. It could have been because I had threatened suicide, which meant that I was insane and a Potential Trouble Source. It could have been that I was a Miscavige, and the only alternative at that point would have been having me leave, thus creating bad PR. I’m sure they assumed that isolating me at Big Bear would settle me, make me happy, and allow enough time for the whole incident to blow over without other people seeing that my punishment wasn’t so harsh.
Whatever the Church’s intentions were, staying there did help me to calm down. Before Big Bear, I was an accident waiting to happen, but after weeks without fear of losing Dallas or having him taken away, and eating and sleeping properly; I’d finally regained my footing.
However, it didn’t put an end to my doubt of the Church; in fact, in some ways, I left Big Bear more determined than ever not to give in to their demands. I knew there were things about Scientology that I disagreed with—the invasive questions, the pointless auditing, the endless security checks—and I understood that, while these things had helped some people, all I’d ever gotten from them was aggravation. Furthermore, I found it completely unfair and unreasonable that I had to be punished over and over again for things that weren’t my fault. As I looked back on what I’d been through, one thing was clear to me: the only way that people in the Church would stop taking advantage of me was for me to say
no
to them, even if it pushed them to the edge.
At times, this attitude put me at odds with Dallas. While he too had issues with the Church and found a lot to suspect in how they’d treated us, he struggled to understand why I refused to cooperate and do the various punishments they gave me. In his eyes, we should tolerate these things, get them over with, and move on; to me that would only result in them pushing us around more. The more power we gave them over us, the more they would take.
As long as we weren’t married, nothing had really changed. Everything that had happened before could still happen again, and, until we were married, we would always be at risk. Sure enough, when we returned home after six weeks, that risk was made perfectly clear.
Before we all went back to L.A., Mr. Wilhere came to talk to me and let me know what our fate would be. Dallas and I were going to be removed from out posts at the Flag Liaison Office, demoted, and posted at the PAC Base doing manual labor in the mill, where the carpentry jobs were carried out. Their final warning was that we were on the verge of being RPF’d.
The idea of doing manual labor at the PAC Base wasn’t that bad. It would have been nice to have less responsibility. We would be doing carpentry. What I objected to was the fact that we were right back where we’d been six weeks earlier, still being punished for the same supposed crimes: our out 2D, my suicide attempt, insubordinations, the list just went on. They had paid for us to go to Big Bear, only to return us to our lives in exactly the same place: receiving an unjust punishment that we were simply expected to take. We were guilty in their eyes and had to pay the price.
Dallas agreed to work at the mill. I refused. After several weeks in limbo, things were finally settled. I was going to remain at CMO IXU and be posted at the Landlord Office at FLO, as a “renderer,” meaning I would render designs and help put design boards together. Dallas was transferred back to PAC, which was considered a lower org. Even though the two were just a few miles apart, they were separate bases, so we couldn’t eat together or see each other at night.
Though being married doesn’t guarantee husbands and wives staying together, this separation was exactly what I’d feared. Worse, when I did see Dallas, he told me he was still being security-checked by Jessica Feshbach, who would soon be famous for being Katie Holmes’s auditor. As had been the case with Sylvia at Big Bear, he told me that his sessions were being used to find out about me, not him. This enraged me all over again. Dallas was upset, too, and together we wrote letters to Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Wilhere, requesting that we be together at FLO. Mr. Rathbun never wrote back, and Mr. Wilhere told me that I cared only about my first and second dynamics, myself and Dallas, and I didn’t care for anything else, like the group or our mission to save mankind. When his response arrived, I shredded it and sent it back to him, which only got me in more trouble.
Despite how rebellious I was being, I still wasn’t sent to the RPF. Instead, I was honing my ability to say no. The realization I’d had at Big Bear meant that they could only control me if I were willing to accept their treatment. For whatever reason, they wanted me to stay, which meant that the Church was in a compromised position: simultaneously trying to punish me for things I’d done, while attempting to keep me calm. So I pushed back on everything I disagreed with, which, by that point, was quite a lot.
Even though I was unhappy, I couldn’t bring myself to take the next step and leave the Church. All the ingredients were there, but as long as Dallas remained committed to the Church, I couldn’t truly contemplate leaving, if we wouldn’t be together. They’d almost succeeded in splitting us up when we were both in the Church, so I could only imagine what would happen if I left and he stayed. My involvement in Scientology became mostly about Dallas. Frustrated as I was, I tolerated it because it enabled us to stay together. It was a relationship worth saving. As a result, I limited my behavior to criticism and insubordination, rather than all-out mutiny.
We still held out hope that our marriage would become a reality. Despite the fact that Dallas and I didn’t always agree as to how we would get out of the mess we were in, we still wanted the same thing: to be together. We were best friends and loved each other. Everything we had been through, had only brought us closer, and, one way or another, we were determined to emerge from all of this as husband and wife.
S
EVERAL WEEKS AFTER OUR RETURN FROM
B
IG
B
EAR,
I
WAS TOLD
that I needed to get onto the daily van run to Int, which was odd, since I hadn’t been there in years. I spent two hours on the van wondering who I would be meeting and why. My meeting was with Mr. Wilhere, and it was about marrying Dallas. He wanted us to hold on a little bit longer, saying things weren’t resolved with Dallas’s uncle yet. Unsurprisingly, handling Uncle Larry was never-ending.
I told him that I would be willing to cooperate and hold on a little bit longer if he was willing to have Dallas posted at FLO so that we could at least be together. He agreed so quickly that it surprised me.
With that out of the way, I figured that, since the only reason they cared about Uncle Larry was based on the premise of my parents coming to the wedding and the possible ensuing conspiracy, I told him I was sure they would be willing to not come, if that was the problem. I could just write them a letter saying as much. To my surprise, after thinking about it, he had me write one, watching while I untruthfully described how happy I was and how well I was doing. I told them I had found someone whom I loved, and that I thought they would love him, too. I had my own life now, I told them, and I hoped they understood. I didn’t ask them not to come to the wedding, but I hoped that they would get the gist without me having to spell it out.
Mr. Wilhere kept his word. The next day, Dallas was posted as a typesetter in the Dissemination Division at FLO. This division was responsible for creating promotional pieces for Scientology materials, magazines, and other publications. We were now able to spend mealtimes together, see each other occasionally throughout the day, and even take the same bus back to the berthing at night.
A few weeks later, Mr. Wilhere unexpectedly arrived in the office, saying that he needed to speak to me. He handed me a letter from my parents, already opened. They said they were no longer in Mexico and were now living in Virginia. They said how happy they were for me, and that they understood about not attending my wedding.
I was pleased with their words, but a bit baffled by how it had all unfolded. What I didn’t know was that my uncle Dave had actually traveled to the East Coast on Church business, and had hand-delivered my letter to them, proving just how aware Uncle Dave was of what had been going on with me. According to what my parents told me, my uncle, along with his entourage, met them at a fancy hotel in Washington, D.C., where Uncle Dave was staying. Not only did he give my parents my letter; he hooked my father up with a local real-estate guy for employment guidance and found my mother a job at a law office. He also told my parents they were no longer SPs; they had lived in Mexico as the Church had asked of them, and had basically done their A–E steps required for someone to become “undeclared,” or no longer an SP.
At the meeting, Uncle Dave said my father could now talk to their mother, something my dad had wanted to do. With regard to my wedding, my mother said that she had expected to hear that I was getting married, being in the Sea Org, so the news wasn’t surprising. Uncle Dave had told them he had heard that Dallas was a nice guy, but that he didn’t know him.