SALLY JESSY RAPHAEL Transcript #741
Air Date: July 9, 1991
Scientology Ruined My Life
SALLY JESSY RAPHAEL: This is Val and Emma, two sisters who say they're worried sick about their mother. Three years ago, Val and Emma's mother Dorothy abandoned her family and went to work for what they say is a dangerous, bizarre, religious cult known as the Church of Scientology. They say that their mom has been brainwashed to believe that the Church comes before her own family. Now, just last Sunday, in a desperate attempt to rescue their mom from the clutches of the Church, Val and her brother secretly videotaped a conversation. Val questioned her mother with hopes that she would snap out of it.
VAL: [amateur videotape] Every time I come up, I can't see you. You
know, your vacation has been changed. And, you know, maybe the first
year, I understood that. The second year, I didn't think it was very
considerate. And now I'm upset.
DOROTHY: I was doing dishes, I was producing. And I have to tell you
that that was probably the best two weeks I've ever spent. I mean, I
totally, totally have affinity for that gallery.
VAL: What does affinity for a gallery mean?
DOROTHY: A liking for it, a love for it.
VAL: You got to like washing dishes?
DOROTHY: Loved it. I loved it.
VAL: Something is definitely wrong here. Nobody likes to wash dishes
14 hours a day. Are you making under $5,000 a year or over $5,000 a
year?
DOROTHY: I'm probably making about $5,000 a year. I mean, and then
[unintelligible].
SALLY: Val, does your mother know that she was being photographed, videotaped?
VAL, Wants Mother to Leave Church of Scientology: No, no.
SALLY: That meeting you just had with your mom, which we saw on tape, now that was the first real conversation that you've had with your own mother in three years? What was it like talking to her?
VAL: Well, my mother is different now. She is, like, real fragmented. I could talk to her, and every once in a while, I'd get a little piece of coherent information, but then there was a lot of incoherent stuff coming out. So it's like somebody scrambled her mind, and there's a million jigsaw pieces of this puzzle that are just thrown on the floor, and she's just trying to pick up little pieces here and there. And any time I'd try to get an answer out of her, I would get some kind of cult lingo.
SALLY: Right, that you probably didn't understand.
VAL: Yeah, there's a lot of things. She told me, later, from my sister, Emma, found out what exactly she was talking about.
SALLY: How did you know about the lingo, Emma?
EMMA, Wants Mother to Leave Church of Scientology: Well, I was involved in the organization 13 years ago, I was on staff.
SALLY: In Scientology?
EMMA: Yeah.
SALLY: For a long time or a short time?
EMMA: I spent seven months with them. My father told me that if I joined the staff they would train me and give me a career, and I didn't have any hopes of being able to go to college because of my financial situation. So I thought, "Great, a golden opportunity." And I spent 14 hours a day working and getting nowhere and not really getting any training and just under a lot of stress. And so, I had left.
SALLY: Now, what got mother involved in Scientology in the first place?
VAL: I think what got my mom involved was, she had eight children. She devoted her life to us. When the littlest one left home, I think she had a little bit of empty nest syndrome. She had a poor marriage. And I think she wanted to work on her marriage and she also wanted to do something with her life. My mother is a very loving, very Christian, gentle kind of person, and she thought that she was going to help save the world.
SALLY: But what's wrong with this? I know you two are desperate. I talked to you just before the show, and you are absolutely desperate. Mother seems to have found a life. What's wrong?
VAL: What's wrong is that she's 60 years old, they've got her working 14 hours a day. She'll set a vacation, Emma and I will drive 600 miles to see her, and then all of a sudden, the vacation is changed. There's something wrong with the work place. And this cult is a for-profit business, and I want everybody to understand that; they are making big money. They are not paying my mother. She's not even making living wages.
SALLY: Is that true what we saw on the tape?
EMMA: That's true, yes.
SALLY: Under $5,000 a year.
VAL: Under $5,000 a year.
SALLY: For how many days work? Six days a week?
[crosstalk]
EMMA: Six days.
VAL: Well, of course, they study on their own time. She can't see her family. So everything --
SALLY: So that's why this is the first time in three years you've seen Mom?
EMMA: They control her every moment.
VAL: That's right. She has to get permission from them. She has to call them in on her day off. She has to call in and get instructions. She had to call them and get instructions how to handle me, because I was questioning them. And because I question her and what is going to happen to her, she is going to have to impose punishment upon herself, because I have asked her to take a vacation.
SALLY: I'm not quite sure I understand. You asked your mother to take a vacation, she has to be punished by herself because you've done that.
VAL: She told me that she would be considered a "PTS," potential trouble source, because she is supposed to have me under control. And, like she said, she's never had me under control. And then she'll have to go to a book and she'll have to pick out what her crime is, because I've asked her to take a vacation. And then, once she's decided what her crime is, she has to pick out conditions. Now, if she doesn't pick out the appropriate conditions, then they will help her pick out conditions. Now, that's what the 14-hour dishwashing was. She evidently committed a crime a couple years ago.
SALLY: So she washed dishes for 14 hours.
VAL: Yes.
SALLY: Now, the last time you tried to get through to mother -- and we have eight brothers and sisters here who are desperate to get their mother back, out of Scientology -- you were sent a book called Can We Ever Be Friends? It came with a tape or something.
VAL: That was what she was told would get Emma and I back in line.
SALLY: And what does this book say?
VAL: Well, this book -- I took it to be just propaganda from them. My mother and I have never been enemies; we've always been friends. So I kind of thought on the face of it, "What's the point?"
EMMA: Well, why is asking to spend a vacation with my mother an enemy type of action?
SALLY: Oh, OK, I don't know, actually.
EMMA: I mean, why is that wrong?
VAL: Why should a 60-year-old woman not have a week off to see her children? You know, the first year, I thought, "Well, my mom wants to have a new life, that's fine." The second year I thought, "This is kind of different," you know. I really think that the family should be connected. And the third year, I thought, you know, "Eighty-four hours a week," I think it's boiling down to about $1.19 an hour, no benefits. I mean, what is retirement? What about health insurance?
EMMA: My son doesn't even know his grandmother. He's never had a time to spend with her, because he was about 7 when she got involved. And, before that, he was too young to remember her. And that, for me, is very hard, because he --
SALLY: Describe her now. You said she appeared to be deprived of sleep, not able to think clearly.
EMMA: It's like I have two mothers. There's an old mother and a new mother. My old mother was bubbly, happy-go-lucky. She loved to travel. She loved to cross-stitch. She just loved life and she loved people. She loved being with people and my new mother -- You have to feed the conversation. She doesn't offer anything. She doesn't want to travel. She's passed up opportunities to travel. She's just a completely different person and there's no bubbling. The bubble is all gone.
SALLY: Besides taping that and bringing it to us, what are the eight kids going to do to rescue mother?
VAL: Well, I think what needs to be done -- This cult is a business for profit. And if they paid their taxes and if they paid their employees, or their workers, whatever you want to call them, their volunteers, like any other business in America has to pay their taxes and their employees, they would be brought to their knees. So I think that everybody needs to start doing a little bit of talking, and a little bit of networking. Let's talk to our politicians. Let's get the Department of Labor off their rear ends and, you know -- My mother ought to be paid a living wage, for God sake. She's 60 years old. They can't afford to pay their people.
SALLY: Oh, so that might give you mother back. You know, in reading this, Can We Ever Be Friends?, it kind of leads you to believe that anyone who questions Scientology should themselves be questioned.
VAL: Right, and we --
SALLY: So, if anyone attacks you, you attack the attacker.
VAL: That's right. We have been told that there are certain people in Scientology that want us out of their way.
SALLY: Want the two of you out of their way?
VAL: Yes, yes, that came back through our mother, through another sister.
SALLY: Are you afraid?
VAL: No, because I think fear -- I am, but I'm not, because I think fear stops people from doing what they need to do. And I'm not going to be stopped.
EMMA: Besides, if they start attacking people and the world sees that, then they've just buried themselves. I mean, what do you think the world will see when they see that?
SALLY: Next, a woman dying of cancer who says the Church of Scientology is to blame. We'll be right back.
[Commercial break]