Val Ross: How Scientology kept me from fleeing abuse until it was almost too late

[Wedding day, 1977]

Two things keep people in Scientology from knowing what is happening with anyone else. The first is the edict that we are forbidden to discuss our “case.” The second, more important one, is that anyone in Scientology at any time is either at the top of the heap or dodging bullets from an inevitable attack.

The worst part is that those at the top are the largest target. No one in Scientology except the very top brass are safe from attack, until even they get attacked. In order to keep yourself safe in Scientology, you are required to make someone else look worse than you, and you learn to expect the same from everyone else.

I was not as adept at backstabbing others, so I was more vulnerable to attack than those who were ruthless. This would prove to be my downfall or possibly worked to my advantage, depending on how you viewed it. My inability to be ruthless ultimately became the reason I escaped both my marriage and Scientology.

Working for Bill Good and Associates, as it was called then (now Bill Good Marketing), was basically the same as a job at any other Scientology company. They had an admin chart, used stats and the conditions, and operated according to L. Ron Hubbard edicts. A large percentage of their employees were either Scientologists or family. JoAva’s sister was not a Scientologist and was the office manager. Bill’s cousin Jim, and a girl named Deb who was the single mom of triplets were some of her other non-Scientology employees there. Jim gave seminars around the country and was a very charismatic guy. I didn’t bond with many people at the office there, I had my own office and was in charge of compiling statistics and running computer reports. Deb and I got together a little bit but it was hard to make friends married to Mark. Jim and I hit it off right away. Although he was almost 20 years older than me, we had a lot in common. We’d sit in the office and talk sometimes after everyone had left. It was nothing romantic. He was a good guy.

Mark and I hung around with the Goods some. And by hung around, I mean Scientology definition of hung around. If you were a Scientologist, there was no such thing as idle time. You were at work, on course, in session, or doing something productive. We went to their house and spent a full day helping them lay sod. We got a free lunch and all the water we could drink. I remember my arms being so sore I couldn’t lift the baby out of the crib that night.

Their teenage daughter was home from Delphi and wanted to go to real high school but she was under-educated. She was very bright, but she hadn’t been taught the basics that children learn in non-Scientology elementary and secondary school. At nights and on weekends I tutored her on things like multiplication and division, spelling lists, grammar, etc. taking her from a very uneven mostly third grade education to a point where she could pass the tests required to get her into high school.

Mark was still studying to be a stockbroker, “almost through,” he’d say. I didn’t realize how quickly you could complete the stockbroker courses until years later when my son graduated from college then became a licensed investment broker in a short period of time while continuing to work full time.

Mark was “out getting clientele” every night. He’d go to higher end clubs (Utah didn’t have bars) and schmooze with doctors and lawyers. And barmaids. And any other female who would talk to him. I dreaded him coming home. One night he came shambling in about 3 am and woke me up to laughingly tell me that he didn’t realize until he had gotten home and the headlights hadn’t reflected on the garage that he had driven home with his lights off. After that, I kept hoping he’d die in a single car crash driving home drunk and not come home at all. I couldn’t see any other way out.

On the weekends, I had no escape. I was stuck in the house with him until he would decide to leave, and he’d tell me about his latest girlfriend(s). It was always a relief when he had to go somewhere. I remember going out to dinner a time or two with out-of-town clients of his (he had some business scheme going with Paul, I don’t know what) and once or twice with his family members. Each time, the meal was punctuated with him jumping up from the table at random intervals saying “I’ve got to go make a call,” and heading for the nearest phone booth. He made a minimum of three calls per meal no matter who we were with.

At some point, he got his stock brokers license. Then, I thought, we would be able to have a two income household. We did, but two incomes meant we had his income and our income. His income never made it to our joint account or paid bills, but occasionally he would buy stuff, like all of a sudden he would decide we needed a new dining room set for $5,000 cash. Stuff like that. He wasn’t working at a firm. He was doing things on the dark grey end of the stock world, as he did with everything in his life. He would create shell companies, make stock certificates for them then sell them at inflated prices. And he was getting away with it.

I was glad I didn’t have a hand in what he was doing or the money he got doing it. With his stock broker’s license, he managed to rise to a whole new level of anger and paranoia. If the doorbell would ring, he would hiss “get rid of them” and hide in the bathroom. He wouldn’t answer the phone, but I had to in case it was someone he needed to talk to. If I befriended anyone he would tell me everything wrong with them, and if he couldn’t convince me they were bad, he’d go to them and tell them all the horrible stuff I’d said about them, which, in reality, was all the horrible stuff he had told me about them. Needless to say, I stopped even trying to have friends.

He started punching me every time he walked by me just because I was there. Sometimes I’d be in the kitchen chopping up food and he’d put his hand over the knife I was using and whisper in my ear “don’t forget how sharp this is. I could kill you if I wanted.” He knew I was good at hiding evidence of what he did to me as long as he didn’t hit my face. I always wore long sleeves or a jacket to work. I would go in my office, take off my jacket and start working. I was left alone just doing my thing most of the day at work. If someone needed to talk to me, they would knock on my door, I would slip my jacket on and say “come in.” I’m fairly certain people suspected, but no one pushed it. Jim, however, didn’t know the rules.

In May of 1983, Jim came into town, it was first time he had seen me since my mom died. He opened the door of my office and walked in, I jumped up to grab my jacket but not before he saw the bruising all up and down my arms. He said “who the fuck is beating you?” I closed my door and shushed him. He was outraged. I wasn’t used to someone being on my side. I told him I had a clotting disorder. He wasn’t buying it. He said “take off that damn jacket and let me see, those are from being grabbed and thrown around.”

Ironically, years later it was discovered I actually did have a clotting disorder. But not one that causes me to bleed easily. I have a G20210A gene mutation. It probably saved my life because my blood clots too well. I am on blood thinners for life now to keep me from getting blood clots. So back then I didn’t bruise or bleed anywhere as much as I would have if my blood had clotted normally.

Jim insisted on taking me to lunch that day. Bear in mind: I was 28 and he was 47. I told him some of what was going on, he told me he knew I wasn’t telling him everything. He offered to get me out of town right then and into a place where Mark would never find me. He had the means to do that, but I couldn’t leave the kids with Mark and told him that. He understood but was not happy with me going back to that situation. I wasn’t sure how to react. In all those years I’d never had an advocate.

It was in no way a romantic lunch. Ugly crying is not a turn on. He waited til I was cried out and had a chance to look halfway composed before we left the restaurant. We got back to the office. He kept insisting he needed to at least tell his cousin so they could get Mark out of there. I kept begging him not to. I told him it would make things worse. Not being a Scientologist, he couldn’t understand that.

He gave me a big hug, which was apparently witnessed by someone in the office then he went to his cousin. A week later near the end of the day I was called into the main office at work. I knew what was going to happen. I started a backup of my work and walked in there. They let me know I was fired. They said they had talked to Mark. They would never would have hired me if they had known I was a compulsive liar. And of course finding out that I was having an affair with Jim was the last straw. This is the story they bought.

I didn’t even try to defend myself. I just walked out, knowing it would be worse when I got home. Mark pummeled me for about an hour, ranting and raving about what a fucking lying whore I was. Why would I tell those kind of lies to his friends. He beat me the whole time that he was asking me why I would lie to his friends and tell them he beat me. I just kept thinking I wish I could have said goodbye to the Goods’ daughter.

Then it was no holds barred. I had no job, no transportation. I was alone. The kids remember those days as us fighting downstairs after they were supposed to be asleep. I remember waiting for him to pass out so I could go upstairs or better yet those nights when he didn’t come home at all, those nights I hoped it was over.

There was no caller ID back then, and Jim tried calling me at night to see if he could catch me alone. If I answered he’d say “alone?” I’d say “sorry he’s not here, can I take a message,” if I wasn’t. Mark being afraid to answer the phone worked in my favor that way. I had to take every call and he’d decide if they were worth calling back. Lots of people didn’t leave messages so no message was not out of the ordinary.

One night when Mark wasn’t there Jim and I talked for a few minutes. I kept it really short because I didn’t want to risk Mark coming in and catching me on the phone. He hated it when I talked on the phone to anyone if I wasn’t taking a message for him. Jim let me know that his cousin had called his girlfriend and told her that we were having an affair. I just sighed and apologized. He said “no NO NO do not apologize because my cousin can’t see what’s in front of his face. I just wanted you to know just how out of control the whole thing is.” I thanked him for trying and joked that no good deed goes unpunished. We agreed to not talk for awhile. He said to have the office patch me through to him if I ever wanted to escape.

I tracked him down in 1985 after my divorce was final and my life was stable, just to let him know I was OK and the nightmare was over. We communicated sporadically for the next several years. I told him I was getting married in 2006, but by then, he couldn’t come to the wedding as he was quite ill. He did send me an email that said “if he hits you…” my response was “he won’t.” He made sure a family member told me about his death in 2007. That man was the only person who didn’t ignore what was going on when it was the worst. The difference between him and the others: he wasn’t a Scientologist.

The nights Mark didn’t come home meant the next morning I got treated to a litany of who he was with, how much better in bed she was than me etc. The nights when he came home drunk and used me as his personal punching bag, I stopped even trying to defend myself. I found that if I just didn’t move he’d start yelling “fight back, damn you” then he would eventually quit, telling me I wasn’t even worth hitting.

He started seeing the bartender at The Cabana, the club where all the rich old farts hung out. She’d became his main squeeze on the side although there were at least two other women he was seeing during this time.

I went shopping with whatever money he decided was enough for groceries on a day he would decide it was OK for me to do that, and he usually insisted on accompanying me to make sure I didn’t go anywhere else, and other than that I stayed home. He went on random shopping sprees, getting a new bedroom set for us, new bedroom sets for the kids, extravagant toys, new living room furniture. In 1983, he spent $45,000 refurnishing the apartment.

January 1984, on my birthday he came in and told me he was going on a date with his bartender girlfriend. I said “If you have any respect for me at all, you won’t leave me tonight.” He looked at me and said “Fuck you.”

After all I had been through, everything that had been said and done, that is what it took. I could feel my mind flip. That’s the only way I can describe it. Something inside me went from dark to light. I saw with a clarity just where I was and that I could no longer be there. I knew I was the one who had to fix it and I was no longer willing to live the way I had been. My mom was dead, my dad was dying, there was just me. I had to be my own knight in shining armor.

The door closed behind him and I picked up the phone. I called his girlfriend and told her he was on his way over there. I told her we were not separated that we were still married and living together and that when he came home he told me about what the sex was like with her. I told her he loved to beat up women, don’t think she was special. I said to make sure not to send him back, there was no room in the inn here. I called a locksmith but couldn’t get one out at 9pm on a Friday night without a credit card up front. The only money I had was my secret savings account and I couldn’t access that.

I went next door to my neighbor, a single father with two girls who were friends with my daughter. This was a man I had talked to less than an hour the entire time he’d lived there. I explained briefly what was going down. He came over and took the kids to his house. He wanted me to go too, but I told him I had to get this over with.

About that time the phone rang, it was Mark. His first words to me, his wife, were “thanks for fucking it up with [his girlfriend] for me, bitch. What am I supposed to do now?” I told him that wasn’t my problem. He said. “Oh it will be in a minute,” and hung up. I then alerted the police that I was in danger. I found out later that my neighbor who took the kids had also called the cops as soon as he got to his house.

Mark came roaring through the door about four minutes later, leaving it open. He went straight for the butcher knife he had made threats with before. I have a 40-year old scar from that butcher knife, reminding me why I will never ever go back into Scientology or go near him. It starts at my armpit and ends at the inner bend of my elbow. This scar is the epitome of everything wrong with Scientology. They protected this man and punished me time after time for angering him, for making Scientology look bad by making him have to beat me. This has not changed. This is embedded in their DNA.

The scar, though faded after 40 years, is the outward sign of the massive inner damage that Scientology inflicts daily.

I know this sounds odd to say in such a situation, but it was nice to have things go my way this time. The police were not bought and paid for by Scientology. When the police arrived, they walked in an open door to witness a man holding a butcher knife covered in blood, screaming obscenities at a woman covered in bruises and bleeding on the couch and immediately slapped the handcuffs on him.

My next door neighbor had my kids. Not only did he have my kids, but he came over while the police were there to let them know he would change the locks for me. The police summoned an ambulance the minute they walked in the door. I may have been battered, I certainly didn’t have a plan, but for the first time in a lot of years, I felt like things were going to be OK.

For years after that incident, I kept that white couch with the middle cushion bloody, even when I could afford a new one. I kept the bloody side down, but if I suddenly got morose or missed my old life, I’d turn that cushion over and remind myself what I had escaped. It worked every time.

The ambulance rushed me to the University of Utah Hospital and I was in the ICU. This was 1984. There were very few laws even at the federal level regarding domestic violence 40 years ago. But for me, my luck had turned. Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy was, back then, the largest law firm in the western US, and had been in business 100 years. They are now known as Fabian VanCott, and two or three of the attorneys I knew back then are still with them.

VanCott was very staid and at the same time very progressive in its thinking. It mandated that each associate and partner submit a certain ratio of pro bono to billable hours. And they were expected to be meaningful hours. That was my saving grace. I woke up in ICU with a police guard. I was told Mark was in jail. Then I was told he there was an attorney who wanted to talk to me. Excuse me for being cynical, but I thought I was going to jail and losing the kids then.

Instead, a man named Kenneth W. Yeates III (1942-2012) walked into my room. He had a pedigree name and an aw-shucks demeanor. He introduced himself as Ken and told me he was there to help me. I gave him an attitude look, I guess, because he broke into a laugh that filled the room. He responded that it appeared like I hadn’t heard that lately.

Then he started talking quietly about my options. By the end of our talk, he had given me the keys to our Peugeot and the new locks on the apartment, we had arranged for him to draft divorce papers, me to get domestic violence counseling (basically a shiny new thing those days) before I ever left the hospital, and he and his wife Jane took my kids into their home with their children for the last few days I was in the hospital. They were registered with the foster system so they managed to get them legally and quickly.

There were very few causes for divorce back then. Domestic violence wasn’t one of them. We were divorced on the grounds of incompatibility. But the judge added a paragraph in the findings of fact that he appeared to like other women more than me. That gave me some satisfaction.

As I was in the hospital, Ken’s assistant resigned. The only legal experience I had at the time was the pleadings I had typed at Graeme’s. Ken offered me the job and got me a sign on bonus, or so he said. Looking back, I think he had them write a check out of his salary or some other fund but knew I wouldn’t accept charity, so had the company write me the check.

So I left the hospital with a job and my kids and a vehicle and a place to live for the time being.

As anyone who has endured trauma knows, getting away from it is the first step. What happens after you finally extricate yourself is that you stop fighting for your life every day and start figuring out what your life is. The scars he left on my psyche were pretty deep. If I hadn’t had my children, I’m not sure I would have been able to get past the dark days that followed where I had to figure out just what I was going to do now. So many things in my life had gone so wrong for so long, I had a hard time believing I deserved good things.

I used to believe that I endured my own personal hell in Scientology. I was convinced that I had somehow brought this on myself. I didn’t understand that everyone else was also in their own personal hell.

These are the scars Scientology leaves on your brain. I’m not giving Mark a pass, mind you, but until I was able to get my brain to say “no, this is not right” he got to keep doing it. If anyone reading my story takes nothing else from it, please understand that Scientology makes you think that anything bad that happens to you is your fault. Once you leave, you have to reset your entire brain. That’s what came next for me.

— Valerie Ross

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