Chris Shelton marks a Scientology milestone, and reveals something about himself

[Chris Shelton, Sea Org, circa 2009]

On the day before Christmas, Tony posted something here at the Underground Bunker that really caught me by surprise.

It was the latest roll call of Scientology's wealthy donors, dressed in their finest to receive their latest trophies for turning over $1 million or more.

And there, among them, was the woman I had fallen in love with.

This happened in 2012, when my life was in turmoil: My marriage was falling apart, I was becoming disillusioned with the Sea Org and its incessant work hours, and I had been sent to a distant org on a special project.

And that's where I met this woman, and then shortly thereafter, left the Sea Org. Scientology will tell you that my ethical lapses were what propelled that decision, but I know that my relationship status and love interests had nothing to do with why I left Scientology. It was the endless parade of lies I was being forced to tell public Scientologists on a daily basis that woke me up to the fact that I needed a big change.

For me, being a Scientologist was supposed to be about helping people and saving the world. It took me decades to wake up to the fact that I was surrounded by a world of lies and deceit. Being raised in that world makes it easier for some to stay put, but eventually I woke up.

I pursued that relationship after leaving the Sea Org by getting a regular job and trying to "make good" with the Church for my "crime" of leaving the SO. I was treated like a second-class citizen and a scumbag, but I persisted for months trying to sort it all out because I wanted a future with this new woman I had fallen in love with. And unfortunately, she was still a Scientologist, and a staff member, and her entire family was hardcore.

Her father was one of the largest contributors to their org, and so I was not entirely surprised to see them, years later, all pictured here on the Bunker for reaching $2.5 million in donations.

Still, I tried to talk her out of Scientology. It didn't go well, and I've learned a lot more since that time, and the mistakes I made were classics in the cult intervention field, but ones that most family and friends make out of desperation, fear, and ignorance. I said too much, too fast, and I was too impatient. And that ended up costing me everything. Once it came out that I had been posting nasty things anonymously about Scientology online, the relationship quickly ended and I was disconnected from all of them.

However, before that break, a bizarre thing happened to me that I don't think I've ever discussed publicly. Through this woman's family, I met another Scientologist whose name is rather legendary in the history of the organization.

I met Gerald Wolfe.

He was one of the Guardian's Office spies who actually went to jail for Scientology's "Snow White Operation" of the 1970s, when GO operatives were infiltrating and breaking into government offices to steal copies of documents about L. Ron Hubbard. In 1976, it was Wolfe and another operative named Michael Meisner who were stopped by FBI agents at a DC law library and the whole thing began to unravel. Meisner eventually turned himself in and talked, leading to the famous 1977 raid on Scientology that was the largest in FBI history.

Yes, that Gerald Wolfe. It turns out he was best friends of the father of the woman I was seeing. I met him at a cafe where we all went out to dinner, him with his OT 8 wife.

Gerry was perhaps one of the nicest and most naive men I've ever met. He had this look about him that I can describe as kind of "distant" even though he was there paying attention to me in the moment. It's like he was there but he wasn't all there, a sort of vacant and dazed look in his eyes. He regaled me happily with his very pleasant "wins" from doing the Student Hat course for the third time, something he was very busy with back in 2013 when we talked. In short, he was showing that despite his long and checkered past, he was still very much on board and very much taken with L. Ron Hubbard and his "tech." I didn't actually appreciate at the time who it was I was talking to. It didn't dawn on me until after we parted who Gerry really was. Like a ship in the night, Gerry had come in and out of my life - just another historical but tragic figure in Scientology history, now a broken soul who still can't break out of the delusion.

Having that relationship stripped away and losing all my friends and connections overnight was pretty bad. But as I learned in 2013 in going down the internet rabbit hole on Scientology, there had been far worse cases of abuse against women and children that I never knew anything about when I was in Scientology and the Sea Org. I had learned about young kids being thrown in chain lockers on orders of L. Ron Hubbard directly, as well as the laundry list of criminal conspiracies the Church had engaged in with Operation Snow White and the hundreds of instances of intense Fair Gaming against its critics. All of this and so much more had finally been made clear to me and there was no going back. Scientology had to be stopped.

In late December 2013, I was officially declared a Suppressive Person by the Church of Scientology, almost exactly one year after I had officially left the employment of the Sea Organization in December 2012. My declare was the culmination of months of anti-Scientology postings by me on message boards and blogs under different pseudonyms such as "Galactic Patrol" and "iHateDuplicity." The church eventually discovered who I was from some of what I had written and they monitored me for a while before finally letting me know the jig was up and I was no longer safely hiding behind anonymity.

Most of my posts were really just rants and data dumps to other ex-members, trying to contribute something worthwhile to the general understanding of what Scientology was and how it operated. I barely understood what I had been through and was only just coming to see the magnitude of the situation, but what I did know is that I was angry - really angry - and that something needed to be done about the abuses this so-called church was getting away with.

So it was a bit of a no-brainer for me when Karen De La Carriere reached out to me shortly after I announced I had been declared and invited me to Los Angeles to talk about my experiences on her channel. It was a knockout trip. While I was nervous as hell, I wasn't worried about myself or what Scientology was going to do in response. I just wanted people to get the most current information I could provide to the most number of people so something could be done about it.

That was 10 years ago today, on February 7, 2014, that I appeared on YouTube for the first time.

Little did I know what I was getting into. I wasn't just starting down a new road for myself, but really what I was doing was sort of merging onto a freeway where a lot of other folks were already travelling and I was becoming part of that train of exposure, advocacy, protests, and every other thing we do to try to push back against the Cult of Scientology and its awful activities. It wasn't just about me - it was about a whole lot of people who had been fighting for a long time in the same direction I was now fighting.

I had allies and new friends and people to work with! All those horrible people that Scientology were labelling "Suppressive" were actually some of the friendliest and welcoming and compassionate people I've ever met before or since. For a little while it was fun to be the "new kid" and be praised for my words and efforts. And I, in turn, got to get into the trenches and get dirty fighting the good fight, and before too long I was one of the ones welcoming other new ex-members into the fight. And that cycle has continued ever since as Scientology expels more and more people, becoming less and less powerful or influential over the years we've been fighting it.

And make no mistake, because it needs to be said out loud that these ten years of blood, sweat, and tears have not been in vain. I've not just been a voice behind a microphone on YouTube, nor have so many others who I have been fighting side-by-side with. I've had the opportunity to work directly in cult interventions as well as one-on-one with hundreds of people on cult exiting and recovery. Like I said, it's been a wild ride on and off the camera. I've been on television and radio, countless podcasts and speaking engagements and have produced over 1,000 videos on the subjects of Scientology and coercive control. If nothing else, I've not been idle. And as a result I got to be part of the group that forced Scientology to cancel their cruel Rehabilitation Project Force, their incessant demands for abortion as a method of cult retention, their stripping of basic human rights and even their recruitment of children. While the very existence of Scientology continues to be a blight on humanity, we have to take note of the gains we have had and not lose sight of the fact we are changing things. The kind of change we want is always too slow and too incremental, but it does happen and we must not forget that.

There are lots of days where the work we do can feel lonely and where we feel in a bit of a vacuum that no one else is even paying attention to. During those times, I get by with a little help from my friends and collaborators and they are many. None of what I've been able to accomplish has been done alone. Whether looking back on the work of the OG giants in this area such as Lawrence Wallersheim, Paulette Cooper, Gerry Armstrong, Tory Christman or Jon Atack; working with therapists and trained professionals such as Dr. Janja Lalich, Dr. Yuval Laor, Rachel Bernstein, Natalie Feinblatt or Dr. Steve Hassan; collaborating with other former members such as Mike Rinder, Leah Remini, the Headleys and Alex Barnes-Ross. Of course I'm leaving off far many more names than I can include, so no sleight is intended on anyone. I just wanted to acknowledge that I stand on the shoulders of giants and none of what I've done would have even been possible without them.

Since this is being written on Tony's Substack, let me name him last but not least as not only an ally in this fight but someone I am proud to call a friend. His blog was quite literally the FIRST place where I read the real truth about Scientology that actually got home to me. Tony's Underground Bunker was the source of so much information for me when I first started questioning my beliefs, I don't know that I will ever be able to express the impact it had on my life then and now. Everything I've been doing since has been my own effort to do the same thing for others and where I know Tony succeeded, I have come to learn over the years that I too have succeeded. And that success - that help - is the only thing to me that really matters in all of this. For me, that's all this has ever been about.

Here's to another 10 years moving forward in the fight against coercive groups and cultic elements all around us. The struggle is real, the fight is never ending but I really can't think of anything better I could be doing. Thank you to those of you out there who support me and my work. Every bit of it helps.

— Chris Shelton

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