243: What if you signed a billion-year contract?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. You were once on solid footing and then the world starts to shake beneath you.

Now your world is completely different. Your landscape, everything you ever knew is completely different. Like somebody reached down in your life, like you're in a snow globe and someone just shakes it up. And so now there's just chaos all around you and you don't know how to handle it. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 243. What if you signed a billion-year contract?

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Hello Prime members. Have you heard you can listen to your favorite podcasts like this is actually happening ad-free? It's good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership.

To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Check out our recently completed six-part series, The 82% Modern Stories of Love and Family, ad-free with your Prime membership. I was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

We were Mormon. We have six kids in our family. We were very good, prolific Mormons in that way. Four boys, two girls. I was the fourth child out of the six. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. My dad often traveled. He was an oil engineer and he worked out in the oil fields and would travel to the Middle East and all around Canada.

They met in college. They had kind of, I think, a fast and furious romance, and they both kind of wanted to get away from their life. So they married and got into the Mormon church together and kind of began their journey there. They started off in Salt Lake City and moved to Canada once my dad got a job. August 29th, 1996, my dad had his 42nd birthday, and we celebrated him. We made a spaghetti dinner that was his favorite.

So the next day, August 30th, we wake up and go to school. I was in fifth grade and I came home and I noticed that my dad's car was in the driveway. And my dad was never home when we got home from school. And we always like really anticipated him coming home. He would open that door. We'd all get excited and run to him and give him big hugs. So his car being there was started raising the alarm bells for me right away.

I go inside, I open the door, and my mom's friend is there, and she's frantically cleaning the house. I just look at her really confused, and my younger brothers were with me, and she's like, well, your dad's in the hospital, your mom had to take him in, and I'm just going to be here to take care of you guys while that's happening. So we waited till evening for my mom to come home. I remember it was dark out at the time, and she walked in and she had one of her good friends with her.

My little brother, the youngest of the family, he was five. He like bounded down the hallway and just said, is he dead? Is he dead? And my mom looked at him and laughed. And so like immediately I felt relief. I was like, there's no way she would laugh if he was dead. So she's like, okay, well, I need to speak with all you kids in the living room. She said that he had started to have trouble breathing in the morning. So they took him into the hospital and his heart stopped.

And they were able to bring him back two times. And the third time, they couldn't. And he died. To just be told that your dad was dead and to chew on those words and to really let that sink in. That this man who I loved, who was a nurturer, who, although I don't have a lot of memories of him, like, I deeply loved him. He was deeply in my heart. And then all of a sudden, he was gone with no warning whatsoever.

How do you even take that in? I was 10. The autopsy report came back like a month later and turns out that he had lung cancer and it had spread throughout his body and his left lung was obliterated by tumors. We had no idea that he was that sick. We had no idea it was about to happen, that our world was about to change forever. He just was here and then he wasn't.

I think I just went numb because I went from celebrating his birthday the day before and then looking at him in his casket and praying that he was just asleep and hoping that this was a dream and it wasn't real and that he would wake up because he looked like he was just sleeping. I didn't know what to do with my feelings. I didn't know where to put them.

My mother wasn't really great at hearing them. I think she did her best. I mean, she was widowed with six kids. She just lost her husband. And I want to give her a lot of grace in that moment because that's a terrible thing to have to go through. But emotionally, I had no place to turn. You were once on solid footing and then the world starts to shake beneath you.

Now your world is completely different. Your landscape, everything you ever knew is completely different. Like somebody reached down in your life, like you're in a snow globe and someone just shakes it up. And so now there's just chaos all around you and you don't know how to handle it. All my siblings and I, we just walked around in a daze. My friends, they were supportive, but they didn't know how that felt. And I felt so alone.

I felt like I was set apart from everybody else, that I had this massive hole in my heart. It was very isolating and I didn't know how to connect to people. And then my mom, she changed. She started going out drinking and getting boyfriends and I really missed her. And I started to develop these feelings.

debilitating panic attacks that she would either leave us or die herself. And so I would like leave notes on her door. Like, did you have fun tonight? Circle yes or no. Just questions because I desperately wanted to connect with her. And she was so distant. Just really letting us know that she really wished we weren't around.

So I started having these panic attacks and then they started to increase in intensity. It got to the point where like my mom would leave the room and I would have to go find her. I would have to see where she is. And then when she wasn't at home, I would just lay in bed terrified that she wasn't going to come back and try to think of plans of what I would do and what I could do if she doesn't come back. Like, how am I going to survive? And I'm 10 and 11 year old at this point.

And I knew that I was driving her fucking crazy. And I can sympathize with that, too, that even though she was beginning to disassociate with her children and really start to resent us, that also having a kid that follows you everywhere you go is really difficult. She'll admit this to an extent that she lost her mind. She said that she went insane trying to not go insane.

She was actively disengaging from us, actively telling us how much she resented us and how much of a burden we were to her. She definitely started showing much disdain and hate for us, telling us that we were a burden and that she wished she didn't have so many kids. That's really heartbreaking to hear from your mom, especially right after your dad died.

When I was nine, my mom left the Mormon church. She said that she couldn't find her testimony and the church just wasn't true to her. So we were religionless for a while. Then her friend started to tell her about Scientology. Churches of Scientology are called organizations and then they shorten that to orgs. So there were no orgs in Calgary where we lived, but there are a bunch of orgs in Los Angeles.

So my mom's friend spent a lot of time down in LA doing courses. She would do her auditing and auditing is Scientology's form of counseling. She suggested that my mom give it a try and that she also take me with her because of how hard I was taking my dad's death and just the panic attacks and all that anxiety and everything that came with that.

She planned this trip for just me and her. Like, I never got one-on-one attention. And so, like, just the idea of going to L.A., going to Hollywood with just my mom, I couldn't think of a better thing to have happen to me. Like, it felt, and it also felt like she's wanting to help me and wanting to spend time with me. And I desperately needed her to care. I desperately needed her to see me and want me in that moment.

She booked passage for us from Calgary. And we flew. It was my first time on an airplane. I remember being terrified. But we made it. We survived. We landed in LA. And I remember looking out the window and there was palm trees. And I'm this 11-year-old kid who had never seen this world before. And now I'm in Hollywood. And I was like, oh my god, this is so cool. So I ended up going at Celebrity Center International. It's an old hotel from the 1920s.

And the church bought it back in the 80s and they renovated it. They did a very good job. So it's like very pristine, very ornate. Everything is kept in tip top condition because celebrities go there like Tom Cruise is online there and John Travolta and Kirstie Alley and Jenna Elfman. If you're a celebrity in LA and you're in Scientology, you're going to the Celebrity Center. And so everything about it is beautiful. And I couldn't believe my lucky stars that I was there and that I was experiencing this.

And that's the whole idea of that building is to pull you in and think that everything is magical and perfect and that Scientology is wonderful. We ended up going downstairs to the lobby. They have people called registrars and they shorten that to regs. And so their whole job is to get as much money out of you as they possibly can. So they will sell you Scientology services.

You take something called like a personality test. On those personality tests, they will look for something in your life called a ruin.

Once they find your ruin, then they can sell you services. So it could be as little as like, you have bad time management. Why don't you take this course? Like if you have trouble with finances, there's a finance course. All these courses were made by L. Ron Hubbard. So he is the founder of Scientology and Dianetics. And he came up with a bajillion courses.

And it can be as big as your husband died and you're losing your mind. So here's what you should do. Or you're having panic attacks because your mom leaves the room and they just told my mom what they thought that we should do. And she bought the services.

So we signed up to do some auditing. I remember going into the waiting room and my mom's auditor comes back first and takes her back. And immediately as she goes back, like the walls start to close in on me. I start to go blank, black in the eyes, breathing hard. And I'm just trying to figure out like, what am I going to do if she doesn't come back? I'm in a different country. I don't know anybody here. How am I going to handle this? And I basically came to the conclusion that I would just be homeless and live on the streets.

And as soon as I had that thought, then my auditor came back and got me. And so that gave me some comfort that there was at least somebody there who would be able to get me back to my mom.

So we go into the auditing room and in Scientology, they believe that there are two parts of your mind. You have your reactive mind and your analytical mind. And your reactive mind is where all trauma, pain, unconsciousness, everything that happens that's bad is recorded there. And then your analytical mind is the part of your brain that functions great. And it has perfect recall and it can remember every single thing you've ever done. You just have to be able to unlock it. But your reactive mind...

or your case is another name for it, is stopping your analytical mind. It's stopping you from being able to do well in life. So when you do enough auditing and go through the course of actions of auditing that you need to go through, you'll become clear. So you'll get rid of your reactive mind. The person being audited are called a pre-clear PC, someone who has not reached that state of clear.

So the PC comes into the room with the auditor and the auditor has something called an E-meter. And so the interface of the E-meter is facing the auditor. You don't have any vision of it. And there is this needle and then a couple of dials off to the side. And so that needle is plugged into the machine. And then there's these two wires that come out and they're connected to these can like things. So you're holding the cans in your hands.

And what they say is that it sends less than a nine volt batteries worth of electricity through your body and it completes the circuit. And then it goes up into your mind. And when your reactive mind has a thought or a memory, those create mass and block the circuit. And so that will make the needle move. The e-meter has been equated to is like a lie detector machine. And that's when the auditor will know when something's reading and then they'll bring that up in the auditing session.

So we start doing the auditing session. The auditor asks you questions like, is there a dog that you like? And you don't say anything.

They are looking at the e-meter and they're looking at your needle. And if your needle reads, then they'll ask you to think about a dog. Then you think back, okay, yeah, there was a dog that I once liked. And then you'll talk about that, but then the needle will still be reacting. And so you keep going back in like the chain of memories to try to get, I guess, to the root of the memory that is causing the problem.

Within the first day of being in auditing, it really started to help me. I started to change how I was feeling and started changing my anxiety. It didn't take it away, but at the time I thought it did because even the thought of my mom leaving the room before would bring me to my knees with panic. And now I could think about that and be okay. And so it was very freeing.

When I go back to my mother after going in session, we both kind of came together and were like, wow, yeah, we feel better. This is really cool. And again, it was also bonding me with my mom. And so that sold me on Scientology. And it also sold my mom. We went home and I felt like super separated from my friends because I had this horrible thing happen with my dad.

But now I had this kind of like other thing happen that was different and like unique and only I had had that experience. So now I was isolated, but in a different way, in this way that like I had experienced something that was good that nobody else had experienced. So my mom and I ended up going back for a short trip when I was 12. And on that trip, she was regged out of a whole bunch of money.

My mom had all this money from my dad's life insurance policy, and she donated at least $100,000 that trip. She prepaid for a lot of courses and auditing. She bought a course for me that was $5,000 called the Keto Life Course. She bought training to become an auditor herself and two e-meters. So they were like $5,000 each. So I took a course called Learning How to Learn.

Hubbard came up with this idea called study tech. And that includes like misunderstood words, call them MUs. They are terrible. They will make you blow. So blow means it's an unexpected departure. So you could be like on course and you're reading and you go past a word you don't understand and you keep reading, then all of a sudden you're going to start feeling like really agitated.

And then you're going to blow. And that can happen in any part of anybody's life. Like the MU is terrible in the eyes of a Scientologist. So I learned all those, the study tech. I was still at the Manor and had these great hotel rooms and could walk outside and there were palm trees and everybody was so nice. It was everything good to me. And it was just a highlight in my life at that point.

We came back for a third time. I was 13 years old and the trip started off as any other trip that we had made there. And I've started the course, the Key to Life course. This is where the MUs come back in because basically the Key to Life is learning the definition of every single word that there is. These are like 45 pounds worth of books and they have these just definitions of all these words.

So I had been working on that. And at lunchtime, I went and I met my mom and we went to the Rose Garden Cafe. Then this woman comes up to me and my mom, and she's a Sea Org member and she's in her Sea Org uniform. And she goes, hey, would you guys like to come down and watch a movie? And I was like, sure. And so my mom's like, yeah, okay, cool. We'll do that.

So in the basement of Celebrity Center, they have like a theater. It's got big screen and it has like the red velvet curtains. And so the video goes on to talk about the Sea Org.

Sea Org is a paramilitary group that L. Warren Hubbard created in the 60s. He was a big tax evader. Like, he had to leave the United States because they wanted him to pay his taxes. And he had said once that the best way to make money is to create a religion. So he took the Scientology to the seas. They bought three boats. And the most loyal, devout followers followed him to the boats. And they created the Sea Organization.

Nowadays, it's not on water anymore, and it's the people that keep Scientology running. How it was explained to me was, we're in a small window of time. We only have this one chance that we can save us from the dwindling spiral that mankind is in. And that only here now with Scientology, we can rid it of war, criminality, drugs. And then the Sea Org members are fighting the fight, and they're very noble and honorable.

So that's what the whole video is about. So she comes in. She's like, what do you guys think? And I was like, well, that's that was pretty cool. Like, thanks for being a Sea Org member. That seems pretty important. And she's like, well, would you like to join? And I was like, uh, no, no, I'm 13. But thank you. People pleaser. Canadian. Had to be very polite.

She was like, well, are you sure? I would love to talk to you more about it. Will you come back after dinner? And I was like, sure. Like, what's the harm? Yes, I'll come back after dinner. So I went off to chorus, had dinner and came back. But this time I was alone. She started asking me like, well, why don't you want to join the Sea Org?

In Scientology, they believe that you are not your body. There are two parts to you. You are a thetan, which is your soul, and you have a body. So your thetan has lived a bajillion years before this. Your thetan is going to go on and live a bajillion years after this. And we are just stuck in this body for this lifetime.

With that belief, they have a contract that Hubbard drafted up and you commit yourself for the next billion years to be in the Sea Org.

And so she told me about that contract and just explained that the Sea Org is just so great. And you will join now, you'll drop your body, and then you're going to come back and you'll be like, oh, yeah, I was a Scientologist. Oh, yeah, I was a Sea Org member. That was great. And then you're going to come back and I guess perpetually forever sign a billion year contract. That's what you're going to do for the rest of your eternity. So that was a pretty wild idea. So I kept saying like, well, I'm 13.

She's like, you're not 13. Your body is 13. Your thing is billions of years old. It's just your body that's 13. So that quote unquote excuse was now rendered invalid. And anytime I brought that up, like I'm 13, I was in eighth grade. She would just say, well, that it's just your body. That's an eighth grade. It's not your thing. And so it immediately started taking my voice away from me.

What it would mean to join the Sea Org is I would sign a billion year contract and then I would live in L.A., my mom would go home back to Canada, and I would now be living on the compound working 24-7 for the Church of Scientology. And they frame it as this way that Scientology is the only way the world is going to get saved. The only way.

So you have to dedicate your time now to save the world. She just laid it on real thick. And it started a two-day recruitment cycle that was very intense, very high pressure. She eventually brought in another guy. He was a security guard there. And again, everything I said was invalid. After two days of being in that room with them for hours, I finally broke.

And in like the meekest voice, I said, okay, I'll do it. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn out pieces with affordable, high quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

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There was a big piece of me that was hoping beyond hope that my mom would be like, are you fucking kidding me? No, you're not doing this. So I was like, well, we'll have to make sure it's okay with my mom. And they looked at me. They're like, don't worry about your mom. We'll handle your mom. Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. So we call my mom down and I very meekly tell her that I, I really want to do this. I really want to join. And so much was hung in that moment.

So much hope, so much grief, so much uncertainty. And she looked at me and she said, "Okay, you can join." The moment she says yes, I just start to, in my head, spiral. And it was another one of those moments, like when my dad died, just the magnitude of what I was about to go through.

I was going to not go back home and commit my life, my next billions of lives, to this organization. And my life would never be the same again. And I felt so powerless to control that. I just felt like I was free falling in that moment. And I felt betrayed by my mom. I felt like she should have said no. She should have defended me. And she didn't.

And so on the next moment, we get out that billing year contract and it's very ornate. It's got the Sea Org symbol. I hereby commit my life for the next billing years to the Sea Organization and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember shaking as I signed it. Since I was a minor, they needed to assign somebody to be a legal guardian over me. So they found somebody who we'd never met before, who was a Sea Org member. My mom signed the papers and gave up legal guardianship of me.

That feeling of just being signed away, it was heartbreaking. But also I couldn't express it. I had to pretend like I was like super cool with this. I went back to the hotel that night to be with my mom one more night. I just remember this deep longing in my heart to connect with my mother and wanting her to stop this and then feeling responsible that I was the one that did this.

And so I started feeling just super guilty. Like I wanted to join. I did this. So it was a whole bunch of conflicting feelings, not knowing what my life was about to be. And so we woke up, I think we had breakfast together and her plane was ready to take off. And I just remember giving her a hug. And, you know, like, I just remember the weight of that hug, like that comfort that I got from my mom. And then to feel that release and then to watch her walk away.

And leave me in a different country. I feel, again, like I was the one who did this to us. I'm letting her down by staying here. I did this. And so desperately wanting to run to her and just say, no, no, I don't want to do this. Take me home with you. But being paralyzed in myself, all this grief I had, I had to put it to the side. And then it was like survival mode from there on out.

So when you first join the Sea Org, you do something called the Estates Project Force. It's shortened to be the EPF. It's basically their boot camp. You are just to be working 10 hours a day doing hard manual labor, five hours a day doing study. And then you do meetings called musters. And so the whole group gets together and they count everybody to make sure that nobody ran away. And they do that three times a day.

We would do military drills. And so like left face, about face, right face. You had to do it in perfect unison. And you didn't get your own uniform. It was all communal. You have to run everywhere you go. And if you're caught not running, you get in big trouble.

The church had just bought the building across the way on Bronson Avenue, and they called it the Bronson Building. It was really run down, so this building needed to be renovated. So I was put on the construction crew.

They were tearing off carpet off of the stairs. And I just remember feeling so panicked because there's this expectation to do everything perfectly. And it didn't matter what you're doing. So the theory is, is that, you know, you've been around for a billion years. So at some place in your life, on your whole track, so your life's before that your thing has lived in different bodies.

You have done carpentry or you have sailed a boat or you have flown a plane. So all these things. And so it doesn't matter that I'm 13. It doesn't matter that I've never pulled carpet. None of that matters. What matters is that I am a Thetan and I should be able to recall how to do all of this.

And since I'm a Scientologist, that puts me above the rest and I should do it perfectly. And the pace that you have to keep is you never want to be found idle or going slow. So you're running everywhere. There's all this pressure to perform. You can't take a breath. You cannot breathe. There is no time for that. There is only time to do what is the task at hand, what you have to do right now. There was no room for error. You will get in trouble.

I ended up just living every day in a lot of fear and a lot of, I'm not good enough. I'm not fast enough. I'm not smart enough. I was trying to live by these rules that I had never lived by and these expectations that were just unmanageable. It just felt like I was being chased all the time. There was no time for your mind to rest, your mind to even process what was going through. It was just like, you need to get through this moment right now.

But nothing I did was good enough. And it was just this out of body experience. I felt like I was just free falling and I didn't know when I was going to hit the ground.

After we would do the hard manual labor, then we would go to course and I would sit down and it was the only time I had to decompress. And so I would just kind of be stuck. Like I would just like stare blankly at the pages in the books I was reading, having the stress of potentially going past a word I don't understand and then being caught going past a word I don't understand and then being yelled at and belittled for that.

And so this course time was like an out-of-body experience every time I would go. And it took me forever to get through the first course because I just couldn't focus. I was paralyzed. And I was still in the mindset that I'd made this commitment. And this is what I do now. This is my life now.

I was so stressed out all the time and I had a really hard time eating and I got to the point where I dropped so much weight and I was so stressed out that I stopped getting my period because I was just in survival mode. But it was a good thing too because I didn't have money to buy pads and I had nobody to talk to about that. Like I knew I was having this problem. I knew I was struggling, but it wasn't acceptable that I was struggling. And so I couldn't tell anybody about

So in Scientology, there's this term called dropping your body. So it's basically you die. Your thing goes on, your body dies. I got so ingrained in it that I just would hope that I would drop my body and then I could become a thetan. And then I could do all this work for the church and I wouldn't have, it's called dev T's, develop traffic, things that get in the way of things. So I wouldn't have this dev T of having a body.

That's what's slowing me down. That's what's causing all these problems. I hoped that I would just die and then I could come back as a thing and then I could fulfill what I was trying to fulfill. One of the perks about being a 13-year-old body on the EPF is that I was able to call my mom once or twice a week, which was more than the people whose bodies were older.

The first time that I went to go call my mom, the EPFIC took me down to the phone booths that they have in the basement of Celebrity Center. I was just really looking forward to talking to my mom. And the EPFIC looks at me and he says, we listen to all the calls in and out of this place. And if you say anything that's going wrong or you say anything that's bad, that's going to interbulate. So interbulate means to like upset your mom. Then we're going to know and that's going to be a problem.

Some of that first phone call, I remember like trying to make my voice sound really chipper and it gave really short answers to things and just said like, oh, it's incredible. That's great. And, you know, I was just terrified that I would say something that would get me in trouble.

It was just another layer of control. And they do it so well. They have it figured out with the language, who you can talk to. Any mail that comes in to the org is read beforehand. So if somebody sends you something that could be upsetting or anything negative about Scientology, you won't get that letter.

So it's definitely like reporting culture and they have something called a KR or knowledge report. So if you see somebody doing anything really that is not on policy and what LRN Hubbard says you should be doing, and it can be anything and it can be perceived like they think I'm flirting with somebody that's called being out 2D. So,

In Scientology, they believe that you have eight dynamics of your existence. And the first dynamic is yourself. And your second dynamic is your sex and your family dynamic. And it basically just focuses on the sex part. So if you're 2D flowing someone and it can be perceived like you could look at somebody and smile and you're just genuinely smiling at them. Somebody could see that and then write a KR on you and say like you're flirting with so-and-so.

And then if you didn't report on somebody else and then they found out that you knew about it, you would also get in trouble. So it was another way to control you. So you were terrified that even if you didn't want to tell on your fellow EPF-er, you had to or else you would face the consequences just as severe. You're just as complicit as the person who did it.

And like every single word that L. Ron Hubbard wrote is true. It's source. It is 100% true. If he wrote it, he said it, you have to follow and you have to believe it wholeheartedly. And if you showed you weren't fully believing it or that you were at all like thinking bad thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard, that would be a big ethics action. That's their way of police people. They have the ethics office and you would be sent there.

So I was just trying to avoid ethics. I was trying to make myself so small that nobody would see me. It was a big adjustment when I got onto the EPF because before the Sea Org members I encountered were trying to put their best foot forward. They were so nice and so kind.

Once I got behind that veil, once I was on the EPF, that faded away. It went from bright and cheery smiles to like, I'm an EPF-er. So I am scum and I am beneath these Sea Org members and anything goes. They can say or do anything to you. And not that everybody did, but that was the culture. And that's what they want. They want you to be abusive. And it's just another way to control people.

These people held everything of my life in their hands. They supplied my food. They had my shelter. They supplied my clothing. I couldn't just walk off the base and go somewhere else. I couldn't do that. So now I'm in this mindset of like my livelihood depends on this. My whole life could be taken from me. I didn't know what these people were capable of. And I was learning more and more that I did not matter. My life did not matter. I was a number.

And so everything hinged on being in the good books and doing what they wanted me to do and playing the game the way that I needed so that I would knew that I would be fed. And I knew that I wouldn't just be on the streets. And I don't feel like maybe I could go home.

I didn't know if she wanted me to come home. She had signed over guardianship. And also, I didn't know at the time, too, like, are they legally my guardian forever? Like, can I go home? Like, all these questions that I had filtered through a 13-year-old mind and not knowing the answers and having nobody to talk to. I talked to her about two times, my legal guardian, while I was there. It was a mere technicality that she was assigned to me. She was not a part of my life. She didn't check on my well-being.

One day I was working the grounds at CC. It was actually the unit I see at this point. And so maybe it was like five months into my time on the EPF. I was changing the garbage and there was a breeze and it brought me comfort in that moment. And for a second there was like, maybe I'm going to be okay. Maybe I can do this. That morning, I just, I remember having that moment of peace and I hadn't had any before that. So I go in and I start cleaning the bathrooms.

So I go into the bathroom stall and I hear the big door open from the outside. And just my hair on the back of my neck just stood up. So I look to see that it is one of the people in my unit. He's an older man, probably in his 40s. Huge. I want to say like 6'4". Just very big, bulky.

And he comes in and he's like, Catherine? I was like, yeah. He's like, I need to talk to you about something. And just the way that he was coming towards me, his demeanor, I just knew something was off. So my heart is racing and he keeps like walking back closer and closer to me. And I'm getting back into the back stall. And he looks at me and he goes, I'm in love with you and I want to have sex with you. And I was like, what? He's like, I'm in love with you and I want to have sex with you.

I'm close to the wall. I think my back is actually touching the wall and his big arms are about to grab me. And at the split second right before he got me, I dipped underneath his arm and I ran out of the bathroom. It messed with me for so many reasons. I was panicked. I had just almost been assaulted. I had never had a sexual experience before. And now there is this 40 year old man telling me he wants to have sex with me, not giving me a choice. His body language was like, I'm coming to take this from you.

Thank God. I can't tell you how many times I have just been so grateful I was able to duck underneath him. In the Sea Org, you're not supposed to have sex before you're married. And I should have been scared for my personal well-being. You know, there's this guy who's trying to have sex with me. I'm much smaller than him. But my main thought was, I'm going to be in trouble for pulling in this 2D exchange. And I have to go tell the EPFIC right now.

So I go into the reception area and I'm shaking as I'm talking to the receptionist. Like, please, it's an emergency. Please page the EPFIC. She's like, okay, I will. I will. I'm just like having a panic attack because I don't want to be caught sitting. I don't want to be this to be perceived as me not working and trying to be lazy. Finally, after I think three pages, the EPFIC shows up and I'm shaking and I tell him what happened. And he's like, oh, is that it?

And I was like, yeah, he's like, okay, well, I'll handle it. Go back to work. I was like, oh, okay. And now I'm expected to go back and act like nothing happened. And so I think they did an ethics. I don't know. But they transferred him to another unit. But he was still on the EPF. I still had to see him. They didn't do anything to protect any future attacks from him. Luckily, there were none. And I was very intentional about not being around him because he scared the crap out of me.

Every Monday, I had the great honor of going to work on a sailboat with the rest of the EPF. We were taught like how to work the sails and how to steer. And one time we were doing that and I was standing there and the bozeman was talking with me. And then, you know, I'd mentioned that my dad had died. I could see him soften towards me. And I think it kind of hit him at that point that I was a child.

And so he was not mean to me again after that. Like, I think it really humanized me to him. And I was really grateful for that because it was just a little bit of reprieve. So at this point, I'm seven months into the EPF. Then I went on to the next course, Welcome to the Sea Org. And it's just these five lectures and you have to clear every word so that you don't go past a word that you don't understand.

So once you complete those courses and you've made sure you've cleared all your words, then you get to graduate and become a Sea Org member. I was so excited to be done with that part. That was a really hard part and I was really hoping that things would get better. And, you know, I'd be a Sea Org member and I would start saving the world and smooth sailing from here. The graduation was actually very lackluster. It was basically, "Hey, you graduated. Cool."

You know, I got to take off the EPF uniform and I was assigned my own uniform. And I was assigned a coat that had officer insignia on it. It had a bunch of badges and that's how it was given to me. Like I didn't put those on.

They have a lot of events that they do. And again, I'm like, I'm thinking like, okay, I've done it. I'm a Sea Org member now. You know, I can proudly wear this uniform and proudly wear this coat. And so I put the coat on and almost immediately this lady who I'd never met before looks at me and she goes, you come here. You're not an officer. You haven't earned those badges. You have no right to wear that coat. Take that coat off right now.

I was freezing cold and I took the coat off and it was just another layer of shame. It's like there was just no doing anything right. That's when it really started to crumble. These little incidences kind of planted the seed where I started to feel like I really didn't want to do this anymore.

I couldn't talk to anybody about that. You cannot let anybody know that you were not having a fantastic time or else you're going to get in trouble. You're going to go to ethics. And so I had this one lady. She was really nice to me. I really appreciated her. And then I told her one day, I really don't want to do this anymore. And she was very kind. And she said, I think you're right. I think it's time for you to go home.

She was new to the Sea Org and she was trying to escape a bad situation, I later found out. So she was still human. She still had empathy and just saw me for what I was, a 14-year-old kid. Just that compassion in that moment was much needed because I don't know what I would have done if there was pushback. I probably would have stayed.

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So they believe that you have things called overts and withholds. Overts are things that you do that are bad that you know you're not supposed to do. And withholds are things that you know that you're bad, that you're hiding, that you're not supposed to do. And so the only reason why we leave Scientology or the Sea Org is that you have committed a bunch of overts and withholds on Scientology and on the Sea Org. And so the benevolent people that they are, they're going to give you the security check so you have a chance to unburden yourself of all these overts and withholds.

Basically, they just want to get dirt on you. They start asking me all these questions like, have I ever done drugs before? At that point, I hadn't. Have you ever smoked before? At that point, I hadn't. And so they start asking more personal questions like, have I ever kissed somebody? At that point, I hadn't. Then they started like getting more and more invasive questions like, have I ever fucked a dog?

And I was like, uh, no. And like, it just felt so violating. And then the questions just went downhill from there. And then she was asking me, like, are you having lesbian sex with your roommates? Are you guys taking out dildos and pleasuring each other? And I was mortified. Another sign that I wasn't myself. I didn't belong to me anymore. I belong to them. Even though I'm trying to leave, they can still make me feel super uncomfortable and they can control me.

After I finished my SEC check, they bought my ticket home to Canada. And then I was home. When I got home, it was... it wasn't home anymore. So unfamiliar. It's completely different than the world I just spent the last nine months in. And I'm just trying to get my feet underneath me again. I started back in school. I started ninth grade.

trying to re-assimilate with my peers and my friends. And I had come back with this experience that nobody could relate to. And I wasn't really allowed to talk about because, you know, I was told that I would be declared suppressive. I'm not allowed to talk about this. Just shoved it down so deep. Like all that trauma, all of it was just shoved down. Like I couldn't deal with it at that point in time. My mom, nine months ago, she had signed me over to this organization and

Didn't tell her what happened to me. She didn't ask. She didn't really care. I don't know if she was happy to see me when I got home. I don't, I don't know. I think, you know, she took me back because she had to. And she had started her descent into madness.

She was heavily drinking, was trying to sell Melaleuca, which is a pyramid scheme. And so she would work that during the day and completely block us out. And then her boyfriend would come over right at a certain time and then he would go in the bedroom. She had burnt through all the money that she had gotten from my dad's life insurance.

She blew it all. It was all gone. And so now we're facing losing our house. We don't have enough money for food. And I only have two pairs of clothing. And then she drops that we're going to move to the States down to Denver because she wanted to get away from her boyfriend.

We had become such a burden to her and she was so vocal about it. Like didn't go a day where you didn't really hear it. Like, you know, I wish she didn't have so many fucking kids. I just wish I didn't have so many fucking kids. Like just so mad at me. And in that moment, I was like, I wish you didn't have so many fucking kids either. Like I wish she had stopped at my brother before me.

I was trying to grapple with that. And again, it turned back into survival mode. So I really started to take on the role of make yourself small and do whatever you need to do to make your mom happy so that there's like just a shred of humanity from her. And I ended up working like two jobs through high school, ended up dropping out of high school so that I could could help pay the bills and

And then she acquired a cleaning business from another Scientologist. And that was the only time we really had food security when we moved here. But we had to work the job. We had to work it for her. We were her staff and we didn't get paid. And then we started being like, I don't want to do this anymore. So she sold it. And then we were back to square one. I had to be her mom and guide her.

In return, I would get her belittling me and she really started to double down on that we were just a burden to her and she wished she didn't have us. And that was a hard pill to swallow. And then also at the same time, I agreed. I wish she didn't have me. I wish I was not here. I'm starting to be hit with these suicidal feelings and depression and anxiety. And I didn't have the words and I just started to have the desire so badly to kill myself.

I started drinking heavily and started doing any drugs I could get my hands on, like Oxy, Coke, anything that I could do. Like, I didn't care. I just wanted to run headfirst into the abyss. And hopefully something would kill me. One thing about Scientology is that they don't believe in anxiety and depression. And they don't believe in psychiatry and psychology. They actually believe that psychology and psychiatrists are the root of all the problems in the world.

So I'm having all these feelings and no way to describe them. I don't have the language because depression and anxiety aren't real. And PTSD is not real. My mom doesn't want to hear about it. And so these feelings like I'm just internally struggling with them. At first, I didn't know. I didn't know why I felt like I wanted to die. And then I would panic like, oh, my God, this is what they warned me about. If I left the Sea Org, I left Scientology that I would want to die. And I felt like such a worthless piece of shit.

I felt at that point, how could my dad be proud of me? If he was alive today, he would be so disappointed in me. And I felt large amounts of shame that I couldn't make it in the Sea Org and that, you know, I was such a fuck up now. I'm drinking all the time. And, you know, I grew up Mormon. So that was like not good. And so it's just like all these compounded shames. And, you know, my alcohol use gets more and more. And by the time I was 17, I was drinking every day.

It got to the point where my mom knew that I was drinking. She liked to drink too. And so I wasn't 21 yet. So we had an agreement that if I paid for it, she would buy it. And then we started bonding over alcohol. Like we would get drunk and then like we could have fun together. And it became like a regular thing that we did. And it quickly engulfed me. And I've only just recently got my head above water with that.

I can attribute my husband for a lot of helping me get my feet underneath me. I got pregnant at 21, so we got married. And that was a big shift for me, obviously. And at that point in time, I was like, I need to stop this. I need to stop all this shit. Like, I can't raise my kid like this. And just so terrified I was going to repeat the cycle.

I had a baby boy love of my life. I can't believe how much I could love somebody. And just every part of me wanted to do everything for him and wanted to be the best for him. But I didn't know how to get there. And I ended up getting pregnant again and then having a beautiful little girl. And it was probably about when she was two years old. It just kept coming up. It just kept coming up.

So I started to kind of delve into these Scientology memories. And my husband was really encouraging. And I found a counselor. We started doing some trauma work. I was then diagnosed with PTSD. And then it all made sense, too. Like all these symptoms and experiences, panic attacks. And I'm super jumpy, just hypervigilant and so stressed out all the time. And little things trigger me.

It's all starting to make sense that this is my mind. You know, I haven't processed the trauma. So I did that first round of counseling and I got on antidepressants and I got some anti-anxiety medication. The suicidal thoughts that had been coming back were starting to subside. And I was like, okay, well, maybe, maybe I'm okay.

I got to the point where my mom was still in my life, was still heavily in Scientology. And I have to be able to speak my truth. I have to be able to say what happened to me while I'm there. And I know that that will cost my relationship with my mother. So I wrote her a letter, just telling her at the time that I needed space. I needed space to heal. She's texting me and like, we have to fix this. We have to make this right. And like, can I call you and whatever.

But I sent her a text saying, no, we can't fix this. No. And I'm seeing a psychologist and it's way better than Scientology. It was my little dig at her. So I haven't spoken to her in at least six years. And I know through my siblings that she's still very heavily involved in Scientology. So they have something called a suppressive person. Hubbard said that like 2% of the world's population are suppressive. And they want to bring down everybody around them.

They want to destroy mankind. So anybody who speaks out negatively against Scientology is a suppressive person because they're trying to stop the only thing that will save mankind. So it keeps a lot of people in or a lot of people quiet. And if they do leave, they do it quietly because they don't want to lose their friends and their family. She definitely thinks I'm a suppressive person.

She actually called my sister up one night a couple years ago. My sister had been in Scientology. She also had been in the Sea Org, but she was much older when she went in. My mom said that if my sister Whitney doesn't stop talking to me, then she's going to have to disconnect from Whitney. So my sister's like, but it's true. What she said was true. And then my mom laughed and said, ha ha ha ha. What does truth have to do with it? What I said was true. And it doesn't matter that the church hurt me. It's that I spoke out about it. And so now...

I'm in that two and a half percentile of evil people in the world. And she's going to stop talking to my sister because of it. And so she did. She disconnected from my sister because she refused to stop talking to me. You know, I've been thinking a lot lately about my mom. And I know people say like, it's the only mom you got and be forgiving. And, you know, for a long time, I felt really bad. Like I had made a mistake and that I had again, fucked up by telling her that we couldn't talk anymore. It's like every day I,

I have to come to terms with this loss of my mom. And every day I'm reminded of things she said and things that she's done. And they torment me. And, you know, then I'm mad at her and I want to tell her off. And I want her to know how much she's hurt me. And, you know, if she was dead, I think it'd be easier to move on and find that closure. But she's alive. She's still involved in Scientology. She still thinks I'm a suppressive person. And she still talks to my brother's

Like, I'm dead. It's hard. It's hard to have to live with that every day. I didn't win when I cut her out of my life. There was no, like, cut, done, feel great. You know, every day I have to know she's alive and every day I have to mourn her. The biggest challenge I'm facing right now is definitely the PTSD and I have symptoms every day.

It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when I'm going to get triggered and then I'm going to spiral. And I'm trying to do my best. And I do not want to hurt my kids with this. So now I'm back, you know, as money allows in therapy and back on medication so I can try to fix this. And I'm not drinking right now. And I no longer have the use of alcohol to numb it down. And so it's also coming back full force. I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I mean, I'm going to keep fighting.

I'm going to keep trying to work on myself and, you know, I got to do it for my kids. Today's episode featured Catherine McElhinney. If you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at canadiankat9 at icloud.com. That's C-A-N-A-D-I-A-N-K-A-T-9 at icloud.com. She also has a GoFundMe page. If you'd like to donate, you can find the link in the show notes.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free.

I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me and Sarah Marinelli, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.