Scientology’s legacy: A look back from a remarkable new perspective

Val Ross, we can say now, has been a big help to the Underground Bunker for several years. So when she sent us this remembrance of her Scientology past, we didn’t hesitate to show it to you. We think you’ll be as impressed by it as we are.

I was raised in a small town by parents who had small town values, although they had both moved there from large cities and were college educated. My father, a Radiological Engineer, was recruited in 1955 by Anaconda during the uranium boom, and we went because my Uncle Vern had been at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos since 1946. So we had family close by.

We lived off Route 66 in the middle of New Mexico between the Navajo and Laguna-Acoma reservations. Cars would break down and our house was the first house people could get to when they got off the road. It was not uncommon for me to wake up to strangers sleeping in our living room. Some of them stayed in our home for days or weeks while their vehicles were repaired and they went on their way.

I got to go out and lie on the grass in the early morning hours and name constellations with my father. I learned how to bake bread with my mother and I spent most of my childhood running barefoot and free around the small neighborhood with my two best friends where all the neighbors kept our parents informed of where we had last been seen.

My parents instilled important values in me. They taught me that I was lucky to be living the life I had and that some others living where we did didn’t have it as good as me. My father was colorblind, so he could not see color, but it wouldn’t have made a difference because my mother was not colorblind yet didn’t make color distinctions. It wasn’t until I had moved away from home and was attending college that one of my roommates pointed out that I had grown up a white person among mostly dark- skinned people. I was just one of the people living there.

Some of the oft-repeated phrases from my childhood were:
• A place for everything and everything in its place
• Bloom where you’re planted
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
• There’s no limit to the amount of good you can do as long as you don’t care who gets the credit

I found great joy in the simple life I lived there and watching and helping my parents help others without expecting anything in return.

Then I left there, went away to college and then got into Scientology in the early 1970s. I was what would be considered a very good Scientologist. By this I mean I bought the whole con hook, line, and sinker. I was in Salt Lake City when I was body-routed into the then Salt Lake Mission. The man, Steve, who body routed me is still in, sadly.

We actually became very close, and started a “2D” as soon as I graduated from the Comm Course, as it was called back then. I was so excited to help Scientology save the world. I wanted all the auditor training I could get and started racing up the training side of the Bridge. I made Class IV auditor in a period of a few months, because any spare moment I had, I spent at the Mission. I was well employed and had enough money to keep buying the next course, and, of course, my 2D was on staff, so I didn’t have anything to do after work except come into the Mission.

While I was interning CL IV, Jack Dirmann and his team came on a Sea Org recruiting mission. I immediately signed up, much to the surprise of Steve, my boyfriend. He was actually quite appalled. I was so excited I didn’t even think what my leaving would do to him. I was still naïve and we still hadn’t “gone all the way” so I really didn’t have any reason to stay.

I left for Albuquerque for a couple of months where I did some more training and worked a job making jewelry while getting my dental work done that I needed before entering Sea Org.

Then I jumped into the Sea Org with both feet. I arrived at the airport, alone and not sure where I was going. I was picked up by a staff member who dropped me off at the Hollywood Inn (now the Hollywood Guaranty Building) where all Sea Org members were berthed.

I was dropped in the lobby and left. There was no room for me. I had to wait in the lobby while they figured out where I would go. Luckily for me, Dick Glass, The Eloquent Elephant was there playing piano and singing. I sat down by him and we played some duets and sang while I waited the several hours for a place to stay. It was about 10:00 p.m. before I had a room.

The berthing at Hollywood Inn was abysmal. We slept in small rooms with several bunks stacked up to the ceiling. I learned then to label everything I owned, because no one had anything and there were some people with sticky fingers who helped themselves to your belongings.

I look back at the letters I wrote my mom and dad during that time (she saved them all for me) and I was grateful to her for small things like warm foot socks for sleeping since we had very thin bedding and the boiler was broken most of the time so there was no heat. Back in the early 70s there were no staff uniforms, no EPF, not a lot of “onboarding.” One day you’re public, the next day you’re Sea Org. The rules were more relaxed as far as dating, marriage, etc. For example, “Lt. Cmdr.” Irene Howey (now Dirmann) was the CO of ASHO D and “PO3” Jack Dirmann was the HCO Area Sec. They lived “in sin” in a house with six other executives before “Reverend” Yvonne Jentzsch performed a marriage ceremony for them in April, 1976.

I was put onto my Staff Statuses immediately and finished up on them, my OEC, FEBC and Course Supervisor and Senior Course Supervisor hats and then became a course supervisor for the ASHO Briefing Course at ASHO Day.

This was back when the Briefing Course was booming. People would be there early to get a tape recorder so they could get through the “wall of tapes,” and there was never an empty chair in the room, some people went out in the hall, so I was kept very busy. This was back in the day when staff was freer to fraternize with students. There were nights after I got off course when we would all go out for coffee and then one of the students would drive me back to my berthing. I still have a very dear friend I communicate with who I supervised on the briefing course.

Mimi Spickler (now Rogers) was my Intern Supervisor and was not even Sea Org, that’s how lax things were. Because of who I was and my associations, I spent a lot of time with Heber and Yvonne Jentzsch, which helped me later in my Scientology career.

There was a dark underbelly, as there usually seems to be in Scientology, and there was a high ranking man there who did things to me that I won’t go into here. When I reported him, he was the one who was “kha khan” so he was the one who got away scot free and I got punished. However, because I knew Heber and Yvonne, my punishment was not real, it was just for show…sort of.

I did not even know what people were told when I left ASHO and the Briefing Course, it wasn’t until about 35 years later when I heard what went down from their perspective.

Mark “Warrior” Plummer was in Finance at the time. He was a good buddy of mine. A group of us would walk down Hollywood Blvd. singing at the top of our lungs on our day off with our duffel bags to go to the laundromat. Mark actually kept a copy of my “SP Declare.” I didn’t ever see it, and did courses, got auditing, and made it all the way to OT V after leaving ASHO, so yeah.

I was rushed out of the Org after dark and sent to live in the 1811 Tamarind Apartments across the street from the Manor – the apartments are now staff berthing and the Manor is now Celebrity Center LA. At the time Guardian Office US was housed in the basement of the Manor. I first had a studio apartment in Tamarind then I got a 3rd floor apartment after I got married.

I had become a GO Operative overnight. However, my students were told I had been “beached” – kicked out of Sea Org. Mark Plummer said my SP Declare was the strangest thing he had ever read. Apparently they were told I was having sex with my students to get student points up. The only sex I had had in my life up to that point was the man in Sea Org who was doing things to me against my will, so there’s that.

Anyway, one of my students, the dear man I’m still friends with, looked for me after he heard that. He knew it wasn’t true and he wanted to find me and offer me a place to stay.

I will always remember that kindness of him.

I was thrown directly into B1 under Diana and Mary Sue Hubbard at the GO. That was really a step up from Sea Org! It was really an odd halfway house because anyone who knew of me before did not know I had anything to do with Scientology. My then husband, who I married because “the doctor told us we were in love,” was also a GO member, but I didn’t know that until 1983. I married him in 1977.

I was trained on an IBM Mag Card ii Typewriter and got a temporary position in the FBI Building in downtown LA through SOS. I was pregnant with my first child at the time. I would take things out of FBI filing cabinets and put them on my desk, when I had to go to the copy machine, I would copy the documents I had been told to copy, then I would put them back where I got them.

On July 8, 1977, I had a doctor’s appointment for my pregnancy, so had the day off work, we were in our apartment when my husband’s brother called him to see if he had heard about the raid. (His brother lived in Big Blue at the time). I grabbed my trusty Minolta and went and stood on the balcony across the street from the Manor and took photos as the raid was going down.

I left my position at the FBI for maternity leave in mid-November 1977, with them being none the wiser. It was about 30 years later that I went to them and told them my part in it. They were unimpressed. I was a teeny cog in a huge deal operation. For some reason, Scientology convinces you that you are invincible. I actually picketed the FBI after I worked there and after I stole info from them. The photo is me with my daughter in her carrier. The sign says “FBI Says Today Scientology, Tomorrow The World”.

About that time, I was offered an out from the Guardian’s Office and took it. My husband and I moved back to Salt Lake City. After a tumultuous marriage and the birth of our son in 1980, we divorced in early 1983 after the police arrested him at the hospital when I was taken there by ambulance due to him beating me nearly to death. In 1983, I stopped taking any calls from anyone who had anything to do with Scientology, moved to a new home with my children, and basically went into hiding and denial that I had ever been in Scientology until 2011.

For some reason, which I have yet to figure out, Scientology had managed for several years to overwrite the quiet, honest wisdom of my parents with phrases like:
• They pulled it in
• Greatest good for the greatest number
• Never fear to hurt another in a just cause

I was trained to lie and taught that lying was a good thing because it was helping Scientology. I was trained that it was OK to not help people because they didn’t deserve it because they were “downstat.”

I believed I was better than everyone because that’s what Scientologists were trained to believe. I thought I had the wool pulled over everyone’s eyes and because I was so smart and everyone who didn’t have the Scientology training and processing I had could not possibly understand, I could do what I did and they just wouldn’t get it.

I was lucky enough to escape before my parents died. I had not attended my grandmother’s funeral when I was in GO “because I couldn’t make it”. That is something I wish I had a do-over on.

When my parents died, I was in my 20s. My mom didn’t make it to age 50. She died of a stroke on my birthday in January 1983. My dad died 16 months later.

My mother and my father always went out of their way to make sure I knew they loved me. I got care packages from my mother non-stop. Although she died on my birthday, a package had arrived from her at my home the day she died. She was buried on my brother’s birthday. When we went to their home to prepare for the funeral, his birthday package was ready to go. It always included, even our favorite cereal. I tell you this so you understand that I was not estranged from my parents, nor did they ever complain about my life choices.

The day after my father’s funeral, my four siblings and I gathered at my parents home to clear it out, and get it ready for sale as we had all moved to different parts of the world.

One of the items we found was a box of Jello my daughter had bought for my mom when we were shopping. I had written a note to my mom that my 2-year-old daughter said “grandma needs this so we need to send it to her.” She had put the note on the box of Jello and kept both together. My daughter was 6 when my mom died. My daughter will be 47 this year. She still has that box of Jello and that note.

Because my parents never said to my face that they thought I was doing something I shouldn’t, I thought I had the wool pulled over their eyes. Then I found my mother’s
journal. I was skimming through it and came across an entry about my time in the GO.

My mother had written down what I had said to her then put this comment: “I just wish she wouldn’t lie so much.” I couldn’t breathe.

That, Scientology, is your legacy: I just wish you wouldn’t lie so much.

— Valerie Ross

---

Want to help?

Please consider joining the Underground Bunker as a paid subscriber. Your $7 a month will go a long way to helping this news project stay independent, and you’ll get access to our special material for subscribers. Or, you can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail).

---

Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.

Paid subscribers get access to two special podcast series every week…

Up the Bridge: A weekly journey through Scientology’s actual “technology”

Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news