I was born with my future predetermined. I was born destined to be a Loyal Officer of the Galatic Patrol.

And I fulfilled my duty.

Born in 1977, I was already in training at the age of 6.

The first ‘skill’ you have to learn is being up for doing very long hours. And I was good at it. From the age of 6 I could pull it off to.

Part of it was I washed cars, that was after school until about 7pm then I would go home. When I got home it was my job to then look after my older brother.

His name is Tony and he is a person with special needs. When I was 6 he was 8 and an absolute nightmare to look after. So until bedtime I had to look after him, keep him company and make sure he didn’t cause trouble, pooing in the kettle was known to happen if he was left alone.

So until bedtime it was my ‘hat’ to be his carer. Then after bedtime of course our parents were done with us. But Tony wasn’t nessecarily done with me. It wasn’t uncommon for me to wake up in the early hours with him attacking me. Seeking help from the parents was resoundly met with ‘DO NOT DISTURB US AT NIGHT’ shouts. So I dealt with it myself.

I didn’t ask my mother if this was normal or not, I didn’t know anything other than I was being trained for a special role in life.

That role was to join Scientologies Sea Org before I was a teen to help save the universe. To be clear here, we were not trying to save the world, we were fighting to free the universe from a galactic overlord called Xenu.

And I had to rise through the ranks and become an officer in the eyes of my parents. And I did. By 17 I was a lieutenant in the Sea Org after 5 years. I was 12 when my mother took me out of school and sent me to live in the Sea Org commune. I stayed there until I was 20. Or I should say it took me 8 years to escape.

The training to qualify as an officer included such things as self defense, how to convincingly lie, espionage skills including memory exercises and hacking techniques for phones and computers, extensive study of Sun Tzu’s book The Art of War and a big emphasis on how to conduct successful propaganda campaigns.

It also included improvised weapons training, yes I was taught how to stab someone in the eye with a pen before I saw the Bourne Identity film.

I say again, at 12 I was taught how to stab someone in the eye with a pen.

I bet this all sounds a bit crazy for most people but please believe me, people involved in Scientology take all this VERY seriously, it is ‘defend it with your life’ type stuff.

Imagine a group whereby you have zero individual rights, ‘for the sake of the cause’.

I witnessed the current leader, David Miscaviage physically assault a prominent member of the group. His name was Greg Smith and he was one of the highest ranking auditors (Scientology consoler) in the commune. Scientology public would pay $800/hour to have a session with Greg. One day David Miscaviage called for a meeting of all the consolers in the commune and called Greg Smith to the front, there was maybe 60 of us in this huge event hall that we had at the commune. He had Greg sit in a chair and stood behind him while he explained some error Greg was alleged to have committed, he then grabbed Greg around the neck and began to strangle him, this went on for long enough that Greg was obviously struggling for oxygen.

Why did Miscaviage pick on this consoler? He was prominent, he was popular and respected. What Miscaviage did not know is that Greg is actually an olympic wrestler before he joined the Sea Org and could have very easily dramatically changed the situation and freed himself from Miscaviages strangle hold and kicked his ass… if he wanted to.

Why did he just sit there and put up with being strangled?

He was conditioned to.

While I was in the commune I was physically abused by a superior. Shouted at endlessly. Sexually assaulted by a peer and had it brushed off when I reported it. I was denied rights to talk to my family or if I was allowed to it was only by letter and these were read by an enforcer before they got approval to be sent. I suffered sleep deprivation sometime. Lived on a ultra low protein diet, working 15 hours a day.

As a teen it was a turmoil to endure.

Then there was the restrictions on relationships. The rules seemed pretty typical, no sex before marriage, no cheating, no deviant sexual behaviour, so BDSM was out and if you wanted to spank your wife while banging her it’d be a good idea to do it quietly… so far you can go along with it. But it goes further, your only allowed to have a relationship with other commune members. You can’t fancy anyone who isn’t living in this commune of 300.

When you join at 12 and the youngest female in the commune is 17… Her name was Rosie and she was spanish and yours truly pulled it off! I got her to agree to out with me. Ok it took 2 years, so she was 19 and I was 14 before we had our first ‘date’. We’d go jogging at night, find a quiet field and lie down and look at the stars together and talk endless crap that young people in love manage.

Of course we kissed and cuddled up together. We were allowed a little light petting by the commune rules but there was no heavy petting allowed among unwed members. There was debate if touching her boobs constitued heavy petting or not, but certainly touching one anothers genitals was a big no no.

And there was a rule that members of the group were not allowed to masturbate!

I was 14 and found out having a cold shower reduced ones libido. I had to have a LOT of cold showers as a teen.

On the odd occasion that I broke the rules and had a wank, it would come out in the weekly confessional sessions we had to undergo. Then you’d be pulled front and center in front of the full 300 commune and made to confess that you’d sinned, the Scientology term is: committed an overt (bad) act. You’d then have to describe what you did and even who in the group you’d thought about during the deed.

It was horribly embarrassing for the ‘sinner’ and the audience especially the poor girl who ‘starred’ in this dudes imagination while he was at it.

So yeah. I had a LOT of cold showers as a teen.

Eventually, years later, I married a girl of 26 when I was 19 and lost my virginity on my wedding night. How that went is between me and her. But there are few now in the world who can claim they saved themselves for their wedding night and I am one of them.

I have to also say I am not proud of it.

The prolonged sexual tension I endured messed up my sex life for decades after. It overloaded the whole subject of sex with far too much emphasis on forbidding it.

The good news… you can leave such groups and in time, you do decompress.

I left the Sea Org when I was 20 and it took me another 20 years to eventually leave the ‘Church’ of Scientology. I have spent the last 7 years answering a question for myself ‘who am I?’

One thing that is frequently overlooked is that people born into cults have a very different experience when they leave it vs people who join a cult in their late teens or later in their life. Those who join a cult after the age of 16 can return to their pre-cult persona when they leave. Those born into a cult do not have any pre-cult persona… So asking the question of ‘who am I?’ is a very profound question for people who are born into cults and then decide to leave.

This is compounded by the fact that a persons development and building a moral compass comes primarily from the parents and is supplimented by ones enviroment. When ones environment is a cult and both your parents are fanatic followers then a sort of parental transmutation thing takes place, whereby the child ends up being a child of cults leaders more than a child of their parents. This most definately happened to me.

I ended up a ‘Hubbardite Child’. Ron Hubbard was the name of the dude who came up with Scientology.

A bit more should be said about my ‘cult father’.

He was a science fiction writer in the US in the 30s and 40s barely making a living selling superhero Sy/Fy stories to pulp fiction magazines. It was known as the golden era and birth of Sy/Fy and they were heady times for the imagination of modern man. Enter the ray gun and lasers and aliens invasions etc…

One of Hubbard buddies was an author called E. E. Doc Smith, frequently considered to be one of the greats of Sy/Fy (Hubbard DID NOT make the cut) but Hubbard did claim to his pal Doc Smith that he’s sell the most expensive fiction ever.

It is worth to note, Hubbard Sea Org is a mirror image replication of the Galatic Patrol in E. E. Doc Smiths Lensmans Sy/Fy series.

It is also worthy to note that Scientologies OT III (an advanced and confidential spiritual advancement course) costs $40,000 to do and is a 1 page document in Hubbards handwriting explaing how a galatic overlord took over the universe 75 trillion years ago.

The most expensive Sy/Fy ever written.

Hubbard was good at what he did, conning people.

So you can see I ain’t too impressed with my ‘paps’, when I arrived and decided to leave Scientology it felt like everything I had ever held up as the TRUTH of life was now for the bin. I was literally beginning my life at 40 in a very real sense.