my story, as simply as I can tell it

I was born into Scientology. My parents had been involved with the church for years, my mother had previously worked for them. Growing up, we moved quite a lot – about every year. My mother did her best to keep us sheltered from any outside influences and limited our contact with other people. We were not allowed to watch TV and didn’t have one in the house. We didn’t listen to the radio. We didn’t go over to friend’s houses.

I went to many different schools, and my attendance was erratic. In Scientology, education is unimportant. You should be spending that time reading the works of L. Ron Hubbard and practicing Scientology. All you need to do that is the ability to read. Things like Science or History are considered pointless. I also was only allowed to go to Scientology-run schools, and be taught by Scientologist teachers.

My parents at their best were negligent. My father buried himself in work and my mother in Scientology. She and my father fought constantly. My mother was unstable and depressed, she needed some kind of medical or psychological help quite badly. She would fly off into rages where she would scream and beat us and so on. I know she was miserable, and looked to Scientology for help. But it didn’t help her, and in Scientology you are forbidden to ever see a psychologist, ever read a psychology book, ever look to any other group or support other than Scientology for help. So she went on being violent. She would lose her temper over nothing. For example, when I was about 8 years old, she told me to empty the dishwasher, and I made the mistake of grumbling about it. She jumped on top of me and started punching my face, spitting on me, calling me an “ungrateful little bitch” and other names. This was a typical day in my house. As far as I can tell, doing this resulted in my jaw being broken. It’s still not the same today. But I was never taken to a doctor, so I can’t be certain.

My father was also violent, but not in the same crazy way. He just believed in corporal punishment and would sometimes lose his temper when we back-talked him and wouldn’t obey. For example, when my brother was about 14 he refused to eat the vegetables on his dinner plate. They fought about it for several hours, and finally dad knocked him into the wall, picked him up by the throat, punched him in the face about 10 times, and threw him in his room. That was a usual thing for us.

In Scientology, medical care is looked down on. It is not forbidden, but most Scientologists don’t consider it truly necessary and avoid it. Doctors are viewed with suspicion. The medical establishment is seen as the enemy, a corrupt faction whose only goal is to make money and get everyone in the world on drugs. Growing up, I was rarely ever taken to a doctor, even for things like broken bones or fevers of 105 degrees that lasted 8 hours or longer. If you are ill, the church believes that it is due to a spiritual problem, anyway, not something physical like a germ. I was constantly sick. Most of the kids and teens I knew in Scientology were also sick all the time, but we were ignored or, once old enough to work for the church, we learned to hide it. There is a stigma attached to being sick, and you are expected to shake it off and keep working anyway.

When I was growing up, little things like brushing my teeth, taking showers, and having clean clothes that fit, weren’t something my parents bothered with. This was the same when I went to Scientologist-run boarding school. I also didn’t wear shoes, in fact when I went to boarding school I didn’t bother to take any along. It seems trivial, but it’s just one example of how the adult Scientologists around me just didn’t want to pay attention to us kids. Children are considered to be exactly the same as adults, just reincarnated into a body that hasn’t grown up yet. It would be an insult to treat them otherwise. And I think my mom just didn’t want to be a mom, and tried to have as little to do with me or my brother as possible.

From the age of 7 to 15, I spent about 20 hours a week (on average) studying Scientology at the church, or receiving Scientology auditing (their word for their counseling). I really didn’t like it, and didn’t want to go, but my mother insisted. At first it was alright, but eventually the processes that I had to do became unbearable. For example, spending 4-5 hours in a small room, with a person that is not allowed to speak to you other than to repeat 4 commands over and over, and being physically forced to execute those commands no matter how you try to escape or not comply, is difficult for a child to do. In this example, the process was to look at one wall of the room, walk over to it, touch it, then turn around and do the same with the opposite wall. Over and over again, for hours every day, for weeks, until they decided I was done. As you can imagine, I didn’t like it one bit. Kicking and screaming and trying to run away did not help me get out of it. Another thing I had to do was called the Purification Rundown, where you take handfuls of vitamins, drink oil, and sit in a sauna for 5 hours a day every day. I did this for probably 9 months over the course of 2 years (I quit before finishing the first time) before I was deemed purified enough. Being 8 and 9 years old, I really hated it. This is something that everyone must do before being allowed to participate in Scientology auditing.

I did run away, from home, and from the church, practically daily. That just got me locked in and guarded even more thoroughly. Eventually, after years passed, I gave up and started becoming a good little Scientologist girl. I started doing what was expected of me, no matter what. During this time, as things were pretty miserable at home, I kept asking for help from my auditors (counselors) and what are called ethics officers (the people in charge of discipline and justice matters) and from the occasional teacher. Despite telling them that my parents were beating us, and bruises for evidence, nothing was done. On one occasion the teacher I talked to called my parents, which ended up in some sort of argument between them that I was not privy to. After that, I was taken out of school completely for a year and spent it locked in my room. My mother told me horrible tales of what would happen if I ever told the authorities what was going on at home, and frightened my enough that I would never have dreamed of talking to police or social workers or doctors. In Scientology, it is forbidden for one Scientologist to report another to the police, or sue them, or anything else like that. If you try it, you will be kicked out of Scientology. It doesn’t matter how bad the crime is, you must only go to the church for recourse or justice.

I started volunteering for the church when I was about 13. When I was nearly 16 I dropped out of school to work for the church full time. I joined their para-military organization, which runs all the higher level churches, called the Sea Organization (Sea Org or SO for short.) When you join the SO, you sign a billion year contract and are expected to give them not only the rest of your life, but as many of your next lives as it takes to fulfill that contract. Sea Org members live in a communal berthing, wear uniforms, follow an exact schedule, and are subject to their own rules and justice. You are not permitted to leave the “base”, or church property, without permission. I was paid about $20 per week for the entire time I was there.

In the Sea Org, we worked basically from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, although it was extremely rare for anyone to actually go to bed at that time, most nights we would work until about 1:00 am. Occasionally we would stay up all night or for several days in a row, working on something “urgent”. We worked this schedule every day. There were no days off. On Sundays we were permitted to take a half-day to clean our berthing (the dorm room you live in) and do laundry, etc. People that I talk to usually wonder why we subjected ourselves to this. The simple answer is that I thought I was saving the world. Any sacrifice was okay, because saving the planet was more important. Things like taking a day off to spend Christmas with your family are seen as trivial. At the time, most of us kids were quite proud to give things up in the name of the greater good. This was a noble impulse that Scientology took advantage of.

I was not well treated when I worked for the church, but I didn’t complain, because I didn’t know any better. We ate in a chow hall, like in the military. The food was pretty disgusting, and meals were 30 minutes or less. Sometimes standing in line to get anything to eat took up all your time. Being a teenager and not having much clue about health or nutrition, I often skipped meals altogether and just worked through them. I spent my allowance on candy and cigarettes. I was constantly being yelled at, because I could not meet the goals that were handed down from above. My boss was screamed at by her boss, and in turn screamed at me. Every deadline was “vital”. There was a lot of stress, all the time.

I spent a lot of time doing construction and renovations work on the buildings of the organization. There were entire crews of us teens, with no safety equipment and little supervision, knocking down walls and building new walls, and so on. I was lucky I never got seriously injured, just a few cuts and minor electrocution. Once again, at the time I was glad to help, proud of my ability to work for days on end with no rest, and proud of the fact that I could actually build something. Plus, I got yelled at a lot less often. Unfortunately, just because a teenager thinks it is okay, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

About a year after I joined, my little brother did to. I have seen him twice in the last 11 years, once for a couple of days, once for one day.

I got married when I was 16. I thought we were in love. We weren’t. I thought it would be wonderful. It wasn’t. Neither of us had a clue how to make a marriage. We rarely saw each other. But at least we got our own room.

I got sick more and more often. I had a fever constantly. Because we weren’t allowed to take anything, no medication, no ibuprofen or anything, they just continued. I had fevers about 104 degrees. At one point I spent about 8 hours totally paralyzed, unable to speak or move, because my temp was so high. I literally thought I was dying. I was terrified. Everyone kept walking by and ignoring me, I think they thought I was asleep, but I literally couldn’t move a muscle. I didn’t expect to make it through that day. When I finally felt better, I got up and checked and my temp was 105. But nothing was done about me being sick at that time. A few times I went to a Scientology doctor, nothing came of it.

Once when I was about 16, I took a 3 hour bus ride to some slum hospital in the middle of nowhere, alone except for another sick girl who was my age. At the hospital they sent me to Pediatrics, who said they couldn’t treat me without my parents. But my parents had moved to the Scientology center in Florida. I think they might have been on the Scientology cruise ship at the point, actually. I wasn’t sure at the time where they were. But I told the hospital staff I was married, so they sent me back to the adult area. (I had no ID or paperwork to show that, anyway.) But they kept sending me back and forth between Pediatrics and the ER. I was there all night and into the next day, with no money for food or anything. I was really scared but pretended I wasn’t. Finally a doctor gave me a test and said nothing was wrong with me. Everyone kept saying nothing was wrong with me. But I couldn’t stop puking, and fainting, all day long. I was way stressed out. I was seeing things. I was so tired I could barely get up. I kept begging for help, but everyone said to knock it off, because it was all in my head. I halfway believed them and that stressed me out more. I didn’t know it then, but I was having seizures due to being hit on the head too much. (I still have them -- the damage is permanent.)

After three years in the Sea Org, I was completely exhausted mentally and physically. I had tried to ignore all my unhappiness, but it just got worse. Eventually it got to the point where I just wanted to die. I was desperate for help, kept asking my superiors and my auditors to help me. I was mostly told to be quiet and go back to work. After a while I started cutting myself. I wanted to leave, to be anywhere else but in the Sea Org, but I had nowhere to go, no friends outside of Scientology, no money, no education, no resume, no driver’s license, not the slightest clue how to survive in the outside world.

I do have family that are not Scientologists. But I had been raised to believe they didn’t like me, because they didn’t approve of Scientology. I didn’t know how to get hold of them, and didn’t think they would take me in. I have since learned that that was not true. Unfortunately, that’s pretty common for Scientology kids.

I finally ran away, and walked across LA to an area I lived when I was a kid. But I didn’t know what to do, so the next day I went back. I stopped working. I insisted that I wanted to leave. I was assigned to do menial work and put under watch. I had someone with me at all times, even sleeping or going to the bathroom. I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone, even my husband. I slept in a closet away from everyone else.

After a few weeks or so, I was finally starting to be convinced to stay. Then they found out that I was cutting myself. I was immediately told to pack my things. 2 hours later I met my parents in the parking lot and was handed over to them. I never said goodbye to anyone. It was my third anniversary, and I was 19 years old. I got a divorce of course, and my husband pretty much never spoke to me again.

I still considered myself a Scientologist. I still blamed myself for everything that had gone on. I lived with my parents, who were in the middle of a nasty divorce. I was very numb to everything. But I started to get more sleep and eat properly, and that helped.

When you leave the Sea Org, you are given a bill, called a Freeloader’s bill. You have to pay them for all Scientology courses that you completed and any auditing received. Mine started out around $68,000 but was eventually lowered to something around $12,00 I think. You are also considered to be in debt to them for more than money. After I left I volunteered at the church for maybe 10 hours a week, for about a year, trying to “make it up”. This was the minimum of what was expected of me, and was mandatory if I ever wanted to continue in Scientology again.

During this time my father discovered he had cancer. He visited a Scientologist doctor, who told him that he had 3 weeks to live and there was no point attempting treatment. He died 4 weeks later. After that, my mother left and joined the Sea Org.

A few years went by, with me working in a Scientologist-owned corporation and trying to get back in the good graces of the church. But I eventually realized that I was still unhappy and didn’t actually want anything to do with Scientology anymore. My entire life I had been told how to think and how to act, and it took a little while to shake that off. But I did come to realize that the less I did Scientology, the happier I was.

I left my job. I moved far away from all the Scientologists who knew me. For the first time in my life I was hanging out with people who were not Scientologists. I was shocked to discover that they treated me, and each other, with much more kindness and compassion than I had ever experienced. I started having hobbies, going camping, doing things I had always been taught were a waste of time. I had always been told that to leave Scientology was to doom myself to an eternity of despair and failure. But I found myself happier than I had ever dreamed of being in my life.

I finally got to go back to school, at the local community college. I learned to paint. I met a wonderful man. We got married. We have a son, who is 20 months old, and another baby on the way. Life outside of Scientology is better than anyone inside could imagine.

My only sadness is my brother, who is still in the Sea Org after nearly 12 years, never went to school, is never allowed to be a father (no one in the SO is allowed to have children) and has no idea what he is missing.

To this day, not one Scientologist or Sea Org member has acknowledged what happened to me, no one has ever apologized for anything at all, and the fault for all of it is still laid squarely at my feet. I still try to talk to people about it, but their response is to ignore me completely as if I didn’t speak, to call me a liar, or to tell me to shut up with the threat of dire consequences.

Why I have left the Church of Scientology

A letter to both Scientologists and Non-Scientologists


My name is Karen Wolff, formerly Karen Mitchell. I am 27 years old. I was born to Scientologist parents and raised in the Church of Scientology. I have spent thousands of hours studying and practicing its methods. I worked for the Church as both a volunteer and paid employee, occasionally, from 1992 to 1996. I joined the Sea Organization in January of 1997, and left in the fall of 2000. I was peripherally involved with Scientology from then until approximately 2004.

I was originally a steadfast and enthusiastic follower of the Church. However, it has become apparent that the neglect, exploitation, suffering, and abuse that I personally experienced was not as isolated as I believed. Upon discovering its widespread nature, through discussions with others who were in the Sea Org or raised by its members, I have realized that it is my duty to step forward with my own story. It has become apparent that the Church cannot or will not police itself, nor will it allow any outside entity to scrutinize or regulate it.

I do not do this lightly.

I do this in the hope that it will persuade others who have remained silent to also speak up. I do this in the hope that the Church, as a group, will turn a critical and intolerant view inward. I do this in the hope that those who have covered up crimes to protect the name of the Church will be exposed, removed from authority, and prosecuted. I do this as a small token for those who will never be able to speak for themselves.

For my actions, and because I no longer hold its tenets true to an absolute, the Church will label me their enemy. I am an enemy of any people who work within the Church actively committing or perpetuating crimes.

However I will never consider any individual Scientologists my enemies just because of their personal religious beliefs. Following the path of their religion is their right.

Those Scientologists who were once my friends remain so in my eyes; should any one decide to continue talking to me despite the church saying they can’t, I would welcome their company, and be glad of it.

I will not recognize any attempts to force my brother to “disconnect” from me. Scientology does not have the right to interfere in my family, who are eternally mine and will always have my love and support, no matter what their spiritual beliefs.

There are those who the Church has labeled as evil and bad influences, and forbidden any Scientologist to contact in any way. I do not and shall never recognize the right of the Church to tell me who to talk to. I will continue to communicate with and call my friends anyone who I want to. This will be another reason for the Church of Scientology to label me and take me to task. I don’t care. I do care about my friends – and trust my own judgment about who is evil and who isn’t.

I challenge any Scientologist who is at all involved in a disconnection or knows someone who is “Declared a Suppressive Person”, to think and question for themselves. Despite the pressure that the organization will bring upon you, or perhaps because of it, I dare you to stand up.

I have been silent for a long time. There are many reasons for it.

In the beginning, I was a child, and like many children I did not have the ability to judge my own situation from an exterior point of view. I knew only my own life, and had nothing to compare it to. I would have been shocked at a suggestion that I was being abused.

As I became aware that things were not as they should be, I was still a child and not strong enough, not brave enough to come forward. I saw what happened to those who questions or objected, and learned not to.

I was also silent out of a desire to protect the Church. I had been taught, and therefore “knew” that the Church of Scientology had to be good. Therefore my own experiences must be invalid or isolated incidents. I could not see why I would injure or damage an organization for one small person’s unhappiness. Now years later I see the fallacy in that logic. Why would a group that treated me so not also treat others the same way? We all were silent together, never knowing that the other was also suffering, and never imagining that our own happiness might not deserve to be sacrificed. Therein lies a great weapon for the Church. This is one that I hope to obliterate.

When I left the environment of Scientology, I kept any knowledge, opinions, or feelings locked in a metaphorical box. It has taken me time to open that box and realize what is in it, from my new point of view as an adult. Perhaps my years away from the Church will give room to discredit me. Perhaps people will say that my life story is outdated. But some things never become unimportant due to age. And there are many more stories newer than mine, and worse.

I stayed silent for a little while out of fear; fear of losing my family, my friends, my security and safety in my new life. I am fully aware that there will be repercussions for my actions. But with the understanding that something must be done comes a need for me to set that fear aside.

I cannot speak for other people, only myself. I do not have any copies of damning paperwork, or exciting or flashy or gruesome photos, or juicy gossip about someone inside the Church. What I do have is my story. Contained within it is knowledge of criminally negligent treatment of children, substandard working conditions, and a failure to care for or about its own parishioners and employees. It’s just the story of one child, one girl, a drop in the sea. It’s just a little window into a world that some people don’t know exists. I hope others will join me with their stories, because we are an army – we just don’t know it yet.

Scientologists, this lack of compassion and insistence upon not seeing any wrongdoing has spread like a cancer. It is destroying your people. I implore you to take a hard look at your priorities, that which drives your actions, and their true results. Perhaps, for instance, money is not the best focus for a church.

Words are not enough; to claim “the greatest good” or “to save Mankind” does not make it a fact. I ask you to beware those justifications which can cover any sin imaginable. Frankly, what can be done in the name of the greater good frightens me to no end.

There are good things in and about Scientology. I will never deny that. Unfortunately, that a group or philosophy is partially good does not guarantee that the rest of it is. In some cases, like this one, the harm done dramatically outweighs any good.

There are many of us who have left Scientology forever. Perhaps you should ask why. The Church would have you ignore our words “for your own protection” and “to save you from enturbulation”. But maybe you are stronger than they give you credit for. Maybe you should make up your own mind instead of doing what someone else tells you to. I have faith that you are capable of such a thing. You should, too.