Val Ross: From Scientology spy to extreme drug withdrawal guinea pig

[With Scientology spy wing, the Guardian’s Office, in tatters, Val Ross left us last time with her family heading from Los Angeles to Bellevue, Washington in 1978…]

We made good time to Washington. Although Bellevue mission was not fun, the accommodations were a giant step up from our previous ones. We lived with Mark’s brother Darryl and his then wife Jane in a large drafty house right up against Lake Washington on the Bellevue side close to the Mercer Island expressway. I don’t know what it would look like now but back then we had an unobstructed view of Mt. Rainier, and it was spectacular.

We arrived and discovered that Jane had decided to divorce Mark’s brother for undisclosed reasons at the time. Those reasons finally came to light in the Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath series years later. It has taken me this long to get the timeline straight in my head and realize that was going on in the middle of the chaos that was my life, and it just shows that Scientology secrets are very secret.

If you know what was described in the very first episode of that show, the man accused of assaulting Amy Scobee was my ex-brother-in-law. I was not aware of what he did back then. If my husband knew, he never told me, and drunk Mark didn’t keep secrets so my guess is he didn’t know either. Nor, as far as I know, did anyone else at the mission besides the few involved in cleanup. It was definitely hush-hush.

For the record I also didn’t see any evidence of Mark’s brother abusing his wife, and I am unaware of any consequences he incurred other than losing his spouse for any bad behavior he exhibited. But I don’t know if that means much. I doubt many people saw evidence of Mark abusing me.

While in Bellevue, I stayed home at first because I was in a cast and Mark didn’t want people seeing “how clumsy I was.” As in the photo above, I was wearing long sleeved shirts to hide my cast, but my right arm was basically useless. It was quite awkward as the cast was up past the elbow so I told Mark I’d just go to a doctor and get it taken off. He had a better idea. He had me come into the mission where some guy he knew on course cut it off with a hacksaw. Problem solved.

Walking into the mission was like walking into an ashtray. The people who smoked far outnumbered the non smokers and they smoked everywhere. After having my nose broken and not repaired properly three times by then, I had enough trouble breathing without inhaling smoke nonstop. While there I would take the Peugeot and take the baby on road trips in the forests and to the mountains, but I got really tired of rain all day every day.

Darryl and Jane ended up not getting a divorce but that’s only because Darryl had a secret he sprung on her. They had never been legally married! He had kept the marriage certificate after the ceremony and never filed it with the court. He told her that in front of us, laughing at just how clever he was. She had a motorcycle, she slammed her helmet on her head left him and Scientology in the dust when she discovered that. I don’t have any idea where she went. To the best of my knowledge that was the last anyone in our circles heard from her.

Drunk Mark admitted to me that his brother, who was the officiant at our wedding, had tried to get Mark to pull the same tactic at our wedding. However, after my dad and Mark and Darryl’s mom signed the document, I took it and said “I’ll drop it off on my way downtown Monday.” It was hard to fight that since Mark was headed to New York for a job. I did his brother’s second wife a favor when he remarried and took their marriage certificate to the courthouse for her.

With Jane leaving, that left us down one breadwinner. Darryl was on staff at the Mission, Mark was doing courses, and I was almost out of funds in everything but my secret savings account. The three of us rang in the New Year 1979 watching the ball drop in Times Square while the guys polished off a fifth of Chivas Regal that I had bought for them and I drank a coke. I went to bed about five minutes after it midnight in New York, only a little after 9 pm in Washington. The guys stayed up most of the night.

While they were mostly sober earlier in the evening, we had decided that in order to stay there, I had to get a job and start supporting us, or Mark and I needed to head to Salt Lake City where his mom had bought a house she wanted to flip. We chose Utah because more of his family lived there.

It was a five-bedroom house in horrible condition, but it was in a really good neighborhood. This was the condition of the master bathroom when we moved in.

I was designated the breadwinner. Mark, his mom and sisters worked on the house. I knew people from the Salt Lake Mission, and the guy I had thought walked on water — the only OT I knew before I joined the Sea Org — was hiring for his printing business. I started working as a typesetter and graphic designer at Overnight Graphics and discovered that I really enjoyed it. There was a darkroom there too and I was thrilled to get to flex my photographic and developing muscle as well. After two months, I was considered part of the crew, not hired help, and I got paid by the job instead of an hourly wage.

Since it was a Scientology business, we had the Thursday 2pm stat count and weekly pay. We were contract labor, responsible for our own taxes. Mark hated that I took 25 percent of my pay and put it in an account without his name on it and filed quarterly taxes. His mother had never taught the family the value of money, the whole family had royalties from oil wells coming in so it was not something they even considered.

After our divorce I got a letter from the IRS telling me I hadn’t filed taxes. I sent them a copy of my taxes and a copy of the divorce decree. I didn’t tell them where Mark was, just said “I filed.” A month later I got a call from Mark yelling at me for telling the IRS he hadn’t paid taxes. Yup, it was still my fault.

But back to 1979: Unlike mission or org staff, we were paid well. I didn’t take home less than $400/week the entire time I worked there and there was more than one week my paycheck was over $1,000. I was able to buy insurance for the family for the first time since I had been in Sea Org. Apparently the reg at Salt Lake Mission knew how well we were paid. Within a month after I was made full staff, the calls began.

I reluctantly signed Mark and me up for the “Sweat Program” to rid my body of those drugs I took when hospitalized and to rid Mark’s body of all the dope he’d smoked as a teenager.

I’m telling you about this to show you how LRH’s “research” processes worked. The cost of the program at the time was $1,500 each. It had originally been written in February 1978 for people who had done LSD because according to Hubbard, it never left the body. Then it was revised about seven times until by December 1979 it was what is now the Purification Rundown.

Having started it in July of 1979, this is what we did then: Meet with the Medical Liaison Officer (this is a title, it doesn’t mean the person actually had any training). Take the “Drug Bomb” (1000 mg niacin, 2000 mg vitamin C, 500 mg carbonate, 25 mg B6, 200 mg B complex and 100 mg pantothentic acid) 3 times a day, drink “Cal Mag” (a really nasty tasting mixture of 1 T Calcium Gluconate, 1/2 t Magnesium Carbonate 1 T vinegar dissolved in 4 oz boiling water then add 4 oz cold water) twice a day.

While on the Sweat Program, we also had to eat a minimum of a teaspoon of salt a day. The only food we were allowed to eat was fruit, heavy juices (juiced fruits and vegetables) and 2 oz. of liquid protein a day. Then you had to put on a full body rubberized suit and run at least an hour a day. The end phenomenon was “The individual will become easier to work with and like and feel more comfortable with himself.” But you couldn’t stop doing it until you stopped flushing from the Niacin, that’s when you knew all the drugs were out of your body.

I know this stuff because I wrote it in a letter to my mom. She wrote back a letter to me asking if that was a healthy diet. I didn’t find any evidence that I ever answered that question.

I didn’t know I was pregnant when I started this. My periods had been nonexistent since we left LA. I wanted to see a doctor about it but Mark didn’t think it was necessary. I was in the last 10 minutes of my hour of running in the late August sun when I started cramping heavily and bleeding ended up in the hospital miscarrying. They estimated I was about 4 months along.

That was the end of the Sweat Program for me. Mark continued his until he no longer got the Niacin Flush. No, of course I didn’t get my $1500 back. Shortly after that, the running was discontinued, the sauna was introduced and the diet was drastically changed. There was also a requirement introduced that a physician had to clear you to go in the program and the “drug bomb” was modified.

LRH’s “extensive research” has always consisted of creating an idea out of thin air, experimenting with the idea on people who pay for the privilege of being a guinea pig and then announcing a new discovery when something goes drastically wrong.

The reg then told me I needed to do the Drug Rundown. I was treated as though I had finished the Sweat Program and was ready for this. I questioned this as the Drug Rundown was for PCs. I was OT V. The reg assured me that this was my next step. There was at the time no Drug Rundown for OTs. Translated, that means that the person giving me the auditing did not have the security clearance for me to answer the questions based on the level of auditing I had reached. In real life, it means absolutely nothing, because the questions are so meaningless, as they were with every other procedure.

About halfway through the Drug Rundown, the Case Supervisor realized that I was OT V and stopped it. When I was told by my auditor in session that I couldn’t do the rundown any more, the auditor got a strange look on his face. He said hmmm, you have a “dial-wide f/n.” In other words, my needle on the e-meter was floating as wide as it could possibly float over the news that I got to stop this nonsense.

Now, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the oft-repeated Scientology phrase “greatest good for the greatest number” is pure nonsense. L. Ron Hubbard went out of his way to create this beautiful illusion that there were eight dynamics: 1. Self; 2. Sex and Family; 3. Group; 4. Mankind; 5. Animals; fish, insects, and vegetation; 6. Matter, Energy, Space and Time (known as MEST) in Scientology; 7. Spirits; 8. Supreme Being.

According to Hubbard, the only way to inner peace was to keep all dynamics in harmony. The actual saying is “greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.” When you first start, you believe that you will have the autonomy to make the decisions that will actually benefit the greatest number of dynamics.

The longer you are in, the more you realize that there is only one dynamic that matters in Scientology. Hubbard quickly disabuses you of the idea that there is a God, he breaks your spirit, your personal belongings are taken from you, or you sell them to further Scientology goals, vegetation is misused at will, mankind is looked down on, family ceases to exist and your personal dreams and desires are subsumed by the group. Greatest good for the greatest number always has and always will mean is what furthers Scientology. The other seven dynamics are just noise.

The reg was trying really hard to find a place for me to spend my money. I kept telling him I should just finish my Class IV internship. He didn’t see the point in that. Because, you see, it was already paid for. How was that the greatest good? Yup, those were his words. Translated, the mission needs more money, and that’s not going to hack it. But I was maxed out in anything I could do other than that at the mission. So I made a deal with him, I’d buy the HQS for the twins if he would get me a twin for the Class IV internship.

He did that for me. Interestingly enough, I was assigned an unexpected twin. Paul. He told me Paul would be back in Salt Lake City in a few weeks. So I plopped down the money.

And life went on. Mark’s sisters, his mom, my daughter and the two of us all lived in and worked on that big old house. Everyone, even our daughter, had their own bedroom and there were four bathrooms to boot. Who cared if it was in a constant state of construction, there was room, and Mark was under the watchful eye of his mom.

Other than the constant calls from the reg trying to get more money, updating me on Paul’s progress, it was almost a normal life. In December I got a call from my goddaughter Tracey’s mom. She had suffered a miscarriage.

Could Tracey spend Christmas with us? Of course. Tracey came to our house in mid December. She was dropped off by Paul. He was the father of the miscarried baby. Tracey hated his guts. Prior to that there had been talk of marriage and Paul adopting her. In true Scientology fashion, no one said what had happened. I let the reg know that I couldn’t twin with Paul as long as we had Tracey in the house. He said Paul had basically told him the same thing already. Tracey moved in to the room with my daughter and it was like they were sisters.

And of course I got pregnant again to start out the new year. The house got finished and Mark’s mom put it in the market. Tracey went home to her mom, so in April I started my internship again, but then Paul had a three-month job out of town and didn’t get back until August. I paid for the Purif for the twins, did another three weeks then I had to get ready to have the baby.

This photo was taken by my boss the morning of September 4, 1980, my last full day at work at OG. It is the last photo I developed in a darkroom. Notice my clear bracelet on my right arm, that’s my Mickey Mouse watch in the left arm. The table to the left was my normal drafting table, we had made me a special adjustable drafting table to fit under my belly. That was an $850 week. A good way to go out.

I had the baby a few days later as described in another story. Within that same week, an offer was made on the house, closing was set, and Mark’s mom set off for Flag. Mark’s mom had found a new house to flip so we moved our meager belongings into it and went to the closing on the old house. I have no clue what happened to the money from that house.

Mark was free to drink and beat me again. I got a job at Graeme’s Typing Service in downtown Salt Lake City. It was not Scientology related and gave me experience in formatting and typing legal documents, which would serve me well a few years later. I rode a bus to work and paid for the twins to babysit because Mark was studying to be a stockbroker and couldn’t be disturbed.

During that time, I frequented piano shops in the downtown area during my lunch hour. One afternoon I found an 1800s-era upright grand with an intact soundboard that needed a lot of other work for $250. I snatched it up. One of the coolest things about it was it had the names and dates of ownership of all the prior owners written on the soundboard. They delivered it for free.

Note the mandatory photo of LRH on the piano. Over the next 8 months in between working on the house, I replaced strings, some ivory, felts, washers, pedal springs and sanded the entire piano and rubbed it with two coats of Tung oil. You can also see the progress on the house by the wall to the left of the piano.

I came home from work about a month after I had finished it and it was gone. Mark proudly announced that he had sold it for $500. I called my dad in tears. He told me “Honey, you know if I could afford it, I would buy you a new one.” The first thing I bought with the life insurance money after my dad died was a Samick baby grand. Unlike Scientology courses, it held its worth. I priced it out and the piano I bought for just under $2,500 in 1984 is listed on eBay for $4,999-$6,999 right now, or I could buy it new for $24,999.

But that piano I put all that work into was gone. I was not important enough to consult regarding selling it. So I kept doing what I did, I kept dribbling money for courses for the twins to the mission to keep the reg off my back. The typing service’s owner‘s husband of 48 years died and she fell apart, along with her business, so in late 1982, I went to work for another Scientology company, Bill Good Marketing.

About the same time, the house we were living in sold, and we made the last move we would make as a married couple into a duplex apartment in Midvale, UT.

— Valerie Ross

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Bonus items from our tipsters

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