Sinéad O'Connor and Scientology: How she dodged a Thetan-tipped bullet

[O’Connor on The Graham Norton Show in February, 2012]

Sinéad O'Connor's death at the age of 56 has produced an outpouring of tributes to her as a transformative artist and political figure, as well as moving portraits of her struggles with mental illness, something she was more open about than most. (See, for example, this superb piece by Margaret Spillane.)

Last week we began to hear about an encounter that she had with Scientologists in Ireland about a decade ago. And it turned out that O'Connor herself provided some evidence that what we were hearing actually did take place. But in order to tell this story, we are not revealing the identity of our source, whom we will call Emily.

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Emily had only recently broken up with the man who was the father of her son when she first met Jack (not his real name).

"I was just out from being with my son's dad," she says, explaining that one result of being on her own was that she had obtained a computer and was making her first forays on the Internet.

"Jack was one of the first people I'd ever met online," she says. "We met on MySpace."

Emily was in her early 30s, Jack about ten years older.

And one of the first things she learned about him was that he was a Scientologist.

Emily knew almost nothing about it, but she soon learned that Jack considered himself a higher kind of being, and that he expected her to get involved in Scientology too.

"The very first time I met him he told me he was a demigod."

He told her that she needed to do the Communication Course at the Dublin Mission, and she began a tumultuous relationship both with Jack and with the church.

She describes an unequal relationship that today she realizes was unhealthy. But after the breakup with her son's father, she was feeling lost.

She lived some distance away from Dublin, and so she'd wait for Jack to come out on weekends, and accepted his criticisms of her "reactive mind" and other shortcomings that he described in Scientology jargon.

"If Jack said the sky was pink, I'd have believed it must have been my fault," she says. Looking back, she cringes at the way she blamed herself for any problems in the relationship and craved Jack's attention as a form of approval.

"I always felt like he was better than I was. More intelligent and stronger. And if I could just get rid of my Reactive Mind, then things would be better. He would tell me that anything that I struggled with here and now was because I'd probably done worse in my previous lives, and that had stuck with me from that very first phone conversation he and I had. When I met him and he explained some of Scientology to me, I believed him. We did argue, but he'd win most of the arguments every time because he was Clear and I was not."

Then, about three years into their relationship, Jack came out to see her for the weekend, and it had gone about the same as the other times through Friday and Saturday nights.

Then, on Sunday, just a couple of hours before he was scheduled to head back to the city, he said something that stunned her.

"By the way," he said, "I'm going to meet Sinéad O'Connor on Friday."

Confused, she remembers asking, "What do you mean?"

He said that the singer had said publicly that she had joined a dating site in order to meet men, and he had sought her out.

In March 2012, at her website O'Connor made the announcement about how to reach her: "This is to let you all know before anyone else does that I have now officially joined the dating site known as PlentyOfFish.com (or pof) under the username of VeryCareful1 and invite anyone interested to view my profile."

Jack said he had taken O'Connor up on it.

"He was bragging that he had gotten her to meet him," Emily says. "I was so upset. He already had so many things over me."

Jack said he'd arranged to meet O'Connor after she performed in Dublin Friday night.

Emily remembers that she wondered what she had done wrong to cause this, and how she could fix it.

"I asked him, 'Tell me what to do,’" and she pauses to think about it. "It's so sad to think I said that."

If she was bewildered at the time, in hindsight Emily thinks she understands Jack's motivations now.

"I think his aim was to meet someone famous. He had said he deserved to know famous people. I think his plan was to bring her in to Scientology and then he would get all the praise that he believed he deserved."

About a week later, Emily remembers, Jack told her about his meeting with the singer, which ended up back at her hotel room.

"He said he had met her and had a good time, but that her guitar player was better looking," she says, adding how much his comments disgust her now.

"His exact words were 'I could destroy her.' He was referring to her taking medication for her mental health. I took it to mean that he could destroy her mentally and emotionally," she says.

With her own relationship in trouble, Emily also worried about what could happen to O'Connor. At that point, she says, she reached out to someone she was not supposed to communicate with, someone who had not only left Scientology but who was very vocal about it.

A man named Pete Griffiths.

With her own doubts in Scientology growing, Emily had begun reaching out to other people who had left, which had gotten her in trouble with the people at the mission.

She describes her time in Scientology as a troubled series of comings and goings, and constantly being in trouble, what Scientologists refer to as being "in ethics." This time, she was careful to be quiet about what she was doing.

"All I could do was hope that Pete would somehow be able to tell Sinéad to stay as far away from them as possible," she says.

"I can't recall what I found in the end, whether it was a direct email or her record company or management but I dashed off a message pronto," Pete says, confirming Emily's story. "It went along the lines of, 'You don't know me and I hate to intrude into your privacy but I was recently alarmed to hear that you have been developing a friendship with [Jack] who is a known Scientologist who is boasting that he is going to recruit you into the cult. This would be a terrible thing to happen to anyone and I am simply warning you that you are being targeted by this person. Once again I apologize for the invasion and I hope you will respect my concerns for your safety. Yours etc.'."

Pete and Emily aren't aware if O'Connor ever got the message, but Emily said that Jack eventually told her that he had changed his mind about bringing O'Connor into Scientology.

"I got it from him and from my auditor that she wasn't welcome in Scientology because of her psychiatric medication."

About a month after Jack first announced that he was going to meet O'Connor, on April 14, 2012, Sinéad herself published a new blog post in the form of a long letter to Bob Dylan. In it, she makes a reference to a man that is clearly Jack.

"I met another really nice man.. But he says he is going back with his wonderful girl friend.. Who he has probably actually been with all the time, now that I think of it. Also says I could never 'be the woman' for him as he doesn't believe in mental illness or psychiatric drugs and I have the milder form of bi polar disorder and take meds.. But get this.. He'd like to keep coming round to make love with me.. I almost admire him for his honesty. Anyway.. The plight of a million women..."

What did Emily think of Jack coming back to her after his tryst?

"I was relieved. It's sad now, but that's how I thought then. I was glad he was coming back. I'm glad that he didn't get Sinéad into Scientology. They would have hurt her. I think."

She screenshotted O’Connor’s blog post with the reference to Jack and has kept it ever since.

"I remember reading that and checking the news and listening to all her songs that year like a total stalker just to see how I could be more like her and if he was still meeting her."

Her relationship with Jack was soon over, however, and eventually, so was her affiliation with Scientology, but not after she was told that she was making a grave mistake.

"Jack said, you'll be dead within six months of leaving Scientology." And another Scientologist, referring to her growing friendships with Griffiths and other ex-church members, told her that if she continued to talk to them, "You might as well kill yourself."

Emily shared with us several emails from her Scientology handlers, who did their best to convince her that she was making a big mistake by leaving and associating with people like Griffiths.

"Scientology is perfect and it works. Scientologists are not perfect but we will persist until we are all Clear and flawless. I assure you, the planet has no other chance...I advise you to stop talking with anybody who is entheta and is against Scientology because they have their own ax to grind. Hubbard researched this and proved it," her auditor emailed her.

But she put Scientology behind her, and has remained out of it.

Just recently, she and Jack communicated again for the first time in years.

Jack told her that although he is no longer practicing Scientology, he still respects the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard.

"I have no Lord and no Saviour. We are all fractals of Source, the All that is. We are all infinite Creating beings. Our individual Beingness/consciousness/I Am Presence/thetan is not created. It always was. We are part of all creation, before time, before matter. We enter into this physical realm, and we adopt and grow a collection of bodies or fields which are possessions. The Physical. The Mental body. The Emotional body. The etheric body. We continue our journey of experience challenge, learning and expanding. As we do Source expands. At some point the body will expire, but we continue as we always have, and we can re-enter this earth realm or others to continue the adventure and game," he wrote her.

Emily said she is reassured to see that Jack is still a demigod.

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