Converted to HTML by Batchild (Sue M.)
STACY BROOKS: It took more than two years before Vaughn and I would even talk to each other about what had happened to us in Scientology. Because we were both of a frame of mind that we were gonna bide our time until DM [David Miscavige, Scientology head] was somehow removed. And then when DM was removed and everything was okay, then we’d go back. And so our whole state of mind was to make sure that we didn’t do anything that would come up and affect us when we went back. So we were still every bit as much in the grip of this thing as we ever had been, without ever talking about it; it was just in suspended animation. It was--it’s, it’s the most amazing thing to look back on. And it wasn’t until, uh, the beginning of 1993 or maybe the end of 1992 that we started to talk about it.
And then 1993, um, when Vaughn went to the library and found a copy of "A Piece of Blue Sky", and he read Jon’s book, and he was mentioned in it. And so he called up Jon Atack in England, and they had a talk. And that was the first time either one of us had ever spoken to anybody that was in any way critical of Scientology.
And Jon said that he was gonna be coming over to the United States and he’d be in California, could he come and see us? And, and Vaughn said, "Sure!" And so one day, I think in March of 1993, Jon Atack and another person came to our house. And we spent all day long sitting out on our patio talking to Jon Atack [starts laughing] about all the documents. Because that’s what he wanted to talk to us about, he wanted to talk to us about the archive documents, about Hubbard. And, um, that was the first time we had said anything overtly critical about Scientology, ever. And it was extremely therapeutic [starts laughing].
And, um, Jon was staying with Priscilla Coates at the time. And, I mean, I had run missions to the story of Priscilla Coates, she was the Devil, the Cult Awareness Network and all this stuff. And, um, so Jon said, "Why don’t you come and have dinner with us?", at Priscilla’s house, and we were like, "Uh-huh, yeah, right! Forget it!" [starts laughing] And, um, he laughed and stuff, and said, "Think about it."
And first thing, first time, I remember this so clearly sitting in the living room and this thought came to me: "Wait a minute, I can talk to whoever I want to!" It was the first time I had had this thought. And I said, "Vaughn, we can go and have dinner with Priscilla Coates if we want!" And he said, "You know what? I was thinking the same thing, let’s go!" And, I mean, this was just a quiet little conversation that we had, but it was revolutionary.
And so we drove up to Glendale, where Priscilla lived at the time, and about two blocks away from her house, Vaughn pulled the car over and we looked at each other and we said, "Okay, now, we really didn’t do this!" Because, I mean, we were crossing a major line here. We were now starting to move into suppressive acts, overt suppressive acts. And we had never done anything like this before, we had been good Scientologists all the way up until this moment. And we looked at each other and we said, "Let’s go!"
And so we went to Priscilla’s house. And Priscilla was the nicest person you could ever meet. And she opened the door of her house, and she’s just a regular old person in a regular old house, and she said, "Come on in!" And we went in and we were electrified, to say the least, to be doing this. And there were these other people that had gotten out of Scientology and, I mean--you know, here we are, these, these two people with this enormous wealth of information about this organization [starts laughing] and we’re sitting there looking around, like, "What are we doing? What are we gonna do?" [smiling]. And, um, everybody was really gentle with us; they totally understood what was going on in our lives, that we were absolutely, uh, really still crazy. And they were really gentle with us; and Priscilla didn’t even ask us any questions, she didn’t do anything, she just gave us some dinner and she said, "You are always welcome here. Just have some cake." [starts laughing]
Back to transcripts
Back to main page