Samantha “Sam” Domingo – UK Independent

Sam with friend Chrissie Pearlman

My Dearest Friends,
As I write this my final declaration of independence as a Scientologist and make my decision to openly declare my disconnection from that entity which calls itself ‘The Church of Scientology’ I thus end the journey of discovery I began so many years ago and begin my life again.

Telling my story was a difficult decision to make – it is personal and it is painful. However, by opening my heart to other independents who have done likewise I know I will fully begin to heal and hopefully my story will help others to heal. Here it is – believe it or not in a very brief version!

It began in the summer of 1988 when I traveled at the age of 21 to Amsterdam looking for adventure. There I met a man who introduced me to the subject of Scientology and got me to buy and read Dianetics. From the moment I opened the book I knew I had found answers to the questions I had been asking all my life. The more I learned about Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, the more I knew I had found truth and purpose in life. Everything I learned made sense. I knew I could use the technology of Dianetics and Scientology to help people, help myself and make the world a better place. At the same time I fell in love with the world of Scientology, I fell in love also with the man who had introduced me to the subject. For the first time in my life I was truly happy. The next year or so was idyllic. Little did I suspect then that this short year of happiness was yet a precursor of the pain that would follow.

Fast forward to 1989 when we both joined the Sea Organization at Saint Hill. We had planned to be married before we joined the Sea Organization knowing that there were strict rules about co-habitation amongst un-married Sea Org Members. As there were logistics problems to getting married right away, we got engaged and went ahead and joined up. The purpose of helping LRH to clear the planet and dedicating the rest of our lives to help others was irresistible to both of us and we couldn’t wait to jump on board.

Within a few short months life became intolerably miserable. Meager food and money rations and the debased living conditions were bad enough. On top of this my relationship with my fiance began to suffer as we were not allowed to live together or have any form of intimate contact (other than holding hands). I blew once with my fiance and returned a week later wracked with guilt. I disconnected from my mother when I was persuaded that my erratic behavior (wanting to leave) was because she was suppressive and was causing me to ‘roller coaster’. My instinct told me that this was not LRH and this was not the way Scientology was supposed to be. However, everyone else around me insisted that it was just the way things were and it was the bad people out there preventing expansion and happiness. Group opinion rules so eventually I (sort of) fell in line.

For those who have never been part of this group I’m sure that the first question would be “why did you agree?” All I can say in my defense was that I, like my friends and fellow Sea Org Members, was driven by the certainty that LRH was a good man and that our fellow Sea Org Members were good people. We had formed such a bond of brotherhood and mutual trust and respect that when we let each other down, we felt that we had failed our friends and LRH. We did not know that we were being duped by a suppressive at the very top of the church.

Shortly after I disconnected from my mother, I was sent to LA for training on a new technical rundown. While I was there my fiance was sent to Africa on a mission.

Six months later I returned to the UK. Then within weeks of my return, my fiance was sent back from his mission in Africa placed under justice actions for some crime he had supposedly committed (forming a relationship with a female Sea Org Member while in Africa). I was informed that he was going to be ‘offloaded’ from the Sea Organization and Declared a Suppressive Person. I was given the choice to leave with him or stay in the Sea Organization. I was not allowed to speak with him alone. Meanwhile I was convinced by senior Sea Org Members that he was a very bad person because of what he had done and that he was actually suppressive and had been destroying me. I was also shown his ethics files and reports of earlier ‘crimes’ he had committed in a very convincing campaign to thoroughly turn me against him. In my state of grief and shock it worked. A few days later my fiance was offloaded from the Sea Organization and I pawned my engagement ring for enough money to buy a bottle of wine and some chocolate and got drunk with a close friend. That done, it was back on post and back to work! I suppose this was the end of any personal integrity, truth or happiness for some time. From there on out it was all business and just getting on with the job. The pain was neatly buried.

Coincidental to the above I had made the origination that I had received past life auditing and had already reached certain states of OT. This was ignored and I was told that it really didn’t matter as I would have to re-do all of my grades anyway. As I had no interest in doing this I pretty much decided I just wouldn’t bother with any Bridge as there didn’t seem to be any point. I did have a lot of sec checking though! Usually right after I had blown the Sea Org yet again and returned like the prodigal daughter.

Sometime around 1993 I was the Keeper of Technology and Policy (KOT) for the UK (a lofty post for a book one trained auditor but I made it work). By the winter of 1994 I had been busted off of this post and ‘put on the decks’ This basically meant that everyone had had enough of me (I wouldn’t profess to have been an angel by any means) so I was given a pick axe and told to dig a hole at the back of the castle. I would have been put on the RPF but my senior up the lines in LA had refused to allow this. After about a month of digging my hole (which did not grow much bigger despite my frustrated hacking due to the fact that the ground was frozen solid) I was told that I was being sent to LA for a comm ev and would remain there to be trained fully on my post.

I arrived in LA and was driven to Celebrity Center International, where despite initial protest I was quickly trained and posted as a supervisor. I wasn’t entirely happy but soon found a nice boyfriend who was also working there and because of the rules about intimate relationships we quickly got married. Life was pretty much OK until about a month into the marriage when I discovered (despite being on birth control) I was pregnant. (oops!) Being the innocent I was back then I figured we would have to simply leave the Sea Org (as Sea Org Members were not allowed to stay if they had children) and just make the best of it. Life shock number two was about to occur.

I was hauled off to ethics and asked what I was going to do about this ‘situation’. Horrified I asked what this meant and was then told specifically that I should seriously consider having an abortion as this would be for the greater good. Later the same day my new husband informed me that he had spoken to the Commanding Officer at CCInt and they were both ‘on to me’ (apparently I had been plotting to get pregnant all along so that I could force my husband to leave the Sea Org). Disgusted at my husband’s behavior and – well – gobsmacked that anyone would think me capable of such treachery I did what any brainwashed, spun in, PTS idiot would do and went ahead with an abortion. The Ethics Officer at Celebrity Center was very helpful in setting up arrangements for me to go to a free clinic where the abortion would not have to be paid for and I was even given a week or two off to recover. As a footnote, two weeks after my abortion a young Sea Org member at celebrity center approached me and asked me in hushed tones where I had gotten my abortion as she too had fallen pregnant and needed to get this ‘handled’. It was many years before I recovered from the guilt of my actions. I watched in a sort of dazed bewilderment as I inexplicably flushed my personal integrity down the toilet yet again. Needless to say divorce followed shortly thereafter and I was single again.

Always fast to bounce back however, I soon fell in love once more. This time it was to the son of a high profile celebrity who had just joined the Sea Org. Soon I had charmed the pants off of him too – the one snag was that he was in the middle of a divorce so we had to stay at arms length and just be friends until the divorce was finalized. We both knew this and so we followed the rules and would simply meet on breaks at the Church for coffee and a chat.

All of a sudden we were both hit with heavy ethics actions for having ‘2D flows’ towards each other and ordered to ‘disconnect’. We were both astounded and spent days trying to get someone to explain what it was exactly we were doing and what the LRH reference was that said we couldn’t be in communication with each other. The Ethics Officer was relentless and apparently there were reports that had been written on us by other people in the organization who were somehow able to perceive these mysterious invisible entities called 2D flows. After being pounded and hounded for weeks, the new man in my life had had enough and demanded we just leave. We blew together (I was getting awfully good at this by now) but once again I was just as easily persuaded to return to the church the next day so that we could ‘do things standardly and avoid being declared suppressives’. This was all done with the usual promises that everything would be fine, no-one would interfere with us and we would be able to leave together in a couple of days.

A week later somehow I found myself locked up in the security office at Celebrity Center. Meanwhile my partner in crime had been offloaded from the Sea Organization and had disappeared. I’m not quite sure how that happened but it was all very smooth. I also agreed a few weeks later to go on the RPF and was personally escorted to the PAC base by a security official and handed over, all without quite being sure just how I had been talked into doing such an insane thing when I was completely sure at that point that I really wanted to leave the Sea Org and have nothing more to do with it. Conditions were grim. I will not document them here for the sake of expediency as they have been well documented elsewhere.

I managed to get with the program for a good few weeks and was quite enjoying myself on the RPF and quickly made friends. However, the fact that I was escorted around the base and watched 24 hours a day did not sit well with my rebellious side and a couple of weeks later slipped my leash and called my boyfriend. He wasn’t doing so well so a few weeks later I jumped out of a 4th story window onto a tree, climbed down, escaped from the base and got him to come and pick me up from a local phone booth I found in Hollywood. I was soon rounded up however and toddled off obediently back to the RPF after I was promised that I would be able to route out of the RPF quickly if I just returned to ‘do things standardly’. This time however, when I returned I was swiftly put on plane (escorted to the gate by a church security goon) and packed off to England where it was considered I was far enough away that I would not be able to cause any more trouble.

This time it was my boyfriend who caused the trouble (not me!) he found me in the UK and got a flight booked for me to return to the US where he would be waiting for me.

My boyfriend and I decided at that point that we were going to get married and would walk away from the church. However, we were soon contacted by the president at Celebrity Center International and persuaded to go and see her as she wanted to ‘talk to us’.

We arrived at Celebrity Center and I was put into a room by myself with my boyfriend waiting in another room. There I was told (by the President) that I was without a doubt going to be declared a Suppressive Person. She informed me that this meant that I would never be eligible to do my OT levels this lifetime. It was entirely up to me whether I wanted to wish the same fate on my boyfriend but she wanted me to think long and hard about whether I wished to be the cause of his never being able to achieve spiritual freedom this lifetime. Wow! She left me alone with my thoughts and then allowed my boyfriend back into the room to see me where it was hoped that I would do the right thing and break up with him to spare him from a fate worse than death. Instead I told him everything she had told me. Upon this news, his face took on quite a threatening demeanor! “We are leaving right now!” he told me through gritted teeth. And we walked away.

When we reached his apartment we got a panicked phone call saying that it was all a big mistake and if I returned to the RPF and ‘routed out standardly’ it was completely fine and no-one was going to be declared. My boyfriend growled and got protective and refused to entertain the idea but I agreed to give it one last shot and this time it actually worked. After two weeks of intense sec-checking and plant checking I was finally ‘allowed’ to leave. The success of finally getting myself routed out might have had something to do with the threats my boyfriend was making in the background of personally getting a chopper flown in to the base to pick me up if anyone dared cross us again.

We walked away from the church determined not to return. We created three children (beautiful girls) together and life was good.

I wish we could say we are still happily married and lived happily ever after but it isn’t the case.

Around 1998 we returned to the church for services. We paid our freeloader debts and moved up the Bridge to OTV.

To document the out-tech and out-ethics we both encountered along the way would require a separate story and one that would make this write up far too long. Suffice to say that Black Dianetics, Black Scientology and Black Ethics was the undoing of our marriage. All of our family members suffered. The out-tech included (but in no-way is limited to) invalidation of case state, running OT procedures incorrectly, added inapplicable (and random) sec-checking and FPRD, evaluations and having to re-do NED (dianetics) after attesting to OT III. All adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage which had to be cleaned up with yet more auditing (and more money).

Yes we got gains from LRH technology and our OT levels – you cannot study and receive Scientology services without huge wins and gains. However, the corruption of the church and the technology was too great. The last leg of the final destruction was played out at Flag – the Mecca of Technical perfection where it had been hoped that good and happiness and sanity would be restored. Instead we were all subjected to callous, greedy and uncaring robots (that is what the Sea Org has been reduced to at Flag) who through lack of sleep, the unrelenting pressure of the next reg cycle and the eventual complete erosion any remnants of their own personal integrity, were instrumental in bringing complete chaos into the lives of our family members. We were never able to recover. Our marriage ended bitterly and I removed myself and my children from the church..

There is a happy ending to this story. When I made the decision to walk away I immediately recovered my own personal integrity and dignity and pride. I was rewarded with a swift de-PTSing and discovery of TRUTH through Marty and all of my new found friends. I re-connected with real Scientologists and real OTs and for the first time since discovering Scientology was freed of nagging doubts. Now I know why I was such a confounded trouble maker and I know that all along, despite our best efforts we were up against David Miscavige – an SP that we just couldn’t see. I found MY group. I am happy and proud to join your ranks. I also discovered that despite the many times I have walked away from the church I never walked away from LRH and I never walked away from my group. They were here, on the outside, all along.
I have been back in communication with my mother for some years (and most assuredly she is not a suppressive person!). I have three beautiful girls – the remnant of my marriage, who are quickly becoming strong independent young women. Life is good.

My story should be considered my doubt announcement. I will be forwarding this to everyone I know on BOTH sides. To those of you who are still lost among the lies I urge you to go look for yourselves. I have sent you the link to my story – there are more stories to be read here and there is much more to be known. Don’t let other people tell you ‘it’s entheta’ and ‘you cannot look’. The only way out is the way through. It isn’t all pleasant but it never is pleasant the first time you run yourself through an engram – and yet you always come out laughing on the other side. You know who I am and you know I would not make these statements lightly. LOOK DON’T LISTEN!

As for the rest of you – welcome back fellow rebels 🙂

Love From
Samantha (Sam) Domingo.