Val Ross: When you’re a Scientology OT, and you have to fight cancer

OK, we screwed up big time. Sure, we could blame the fact that we’ve been out of town this week visiting mom for Mother’s Day in California, but still, we have to apologize to Val Ross that we made such a big blunder. What we did was publish the final installment of her incredible narrative out of order, skipping this, the penultimate chapter, which she had already sent us. Please accept our apologies for our error and try to keep in mind that the following episode was supposed to go before the one you already read on Saturday. To remind you where we were in her timeline, she had survived a butcher knife attack in Utah and was finally getting out of Scientology and her abusive marriage to Mark. OK, take it away, Val…

The actual work of getting on with my life took some mental navigation.

Because Mark didn’t kill me, he didn’t stay behind bars long. But he did have a restraining order. For anyone who has ever gone through the process of having a restraining order issued against someone else, it means if the person violates it, you have the right to call the cops and get that person away from you, usually with legal ramifications. A restraining order does not stop someone from violating the law or even coming after you. It just makes the person get sneaky because they know they may go back to jail if they get caught doing what they are not supposed to.

I learned the hard way that a divorce decree stating the other person is responsible for the debts they are supposed to pay doesn’t stop debt collection efforts against you, it just lets you sue the person after you pay the debt. I paid several large debts I didn’t know existed because of this, and didn’t bother suing him because I knew even if I got a judgment, it would take more effort than I cared to exert collecting it. This doesn’t make me naive or saintly, I did it because it was more important to move forward than to continue chasing my past.

Mark somehow snagged my Amex and used it for his honeymoon with the woman who he convinced to marry him thirty-six minutes after the judge signed off on our divorce. But that was only money, and I’d seen so much slip through his hands before, I was just relieved to no longer be looking over my shoulder.

I was awarded all the expensive household furnishings that he had purchased the year before, which included the now blood-stained couch. I got sole custody of the children with “reasonable visitation,” and he got the Peugeot. He had to buy me a car. The funny thing about that was that he had no demands other than the Peugeot. He called me (in violation of the restraining order) to let me know that he had a bunch of women lined up to testify that they had had lesbian relationships with me during our marriage if I didn’t give him the Peugeot. Ken (Kenneth W. Yeates III, the attorney the VanCott firm assigned me) laughed at that. He asked if I wanted to have him thrown in jail for calling me. I said nah, just give him the car and place a minimum dollar value on a car I’m not embarrassed to drive and make him get it for me. I managed to get rid of the husband and the “status symbol” vehicle that I despised, and got a more modest vehicle that was practical for my family, with no threat of losing my children.

Mark didn’t make a peep about visitation. I was awarded $500 a month child support. Support wasn’t handled through DFS then. All of his assets were in his wife’s name. To the best of my knowledge, he has never held what could be considered a real job, although he has always had lots of money to throw around. Over time, I got less than $2,000 total from him, and that’s life. I remember one time after his new wife had pumped out a couple of kids I asked him when he was going to pay child support. His response? “I have two kids of my own to support.” I said “you have four kids of your own, actually.” Last I knew he owed the IRS millions. I don’t know or care if that is true, I certainly got by without his money.

Paul, my former twin at the Salt Lake mission, called me as soon as I filed for divorce and let me know he couldn’t talk to me anymore because he was doing business deals with Mark and needed to stay on his good side. This meant we weren’t going to be able to get back on our Class IV internship. I told him that was fine with me. The disconnection had begun. Most people I knew didn’t even bother to call, but by then I was fairly isolated so I’m not sure, nor do I care, what they were told or if they even were made aware of the divorce.

I didn’t get to talk to Mark’s brothers or sisters after the divorce, but kept in touch with his mother, the only living grandparent of my children until she died of a brain tumor in September 1998. The last time I saw Mark or anyone else from his family was at his mother’s funeral in September 1998.

My neighbor who took the kids that final night and changed the locks before I came home from the hospital bought his own home in a new neighborhood. He was there when I needed him and I’m grateful for that, a ship that passed in the night, but an important ship.

I didn’t mention to anyone what my past was, and the people at the office knew I came from an abusive marriage so they didn’t pry. This worked, giving me the space I needed to figure out how to act like a human being again.

Mark had always been an angry aggressive driver. The car was a lot quieter without him in it, but of the things I had to do right off the bat was train my daughter not to point at the light and yell “move, asshole” every time it turned green.

Post-divorce, my life mostly consisted of going to work, then coming home. Until I bought my house, I paid the stay-at-home mom across the street to watch my son and pick up my daughter from school and let her stay there until I got home. After that I had a teenage girl who came to my home after school because both children were in school by then. She ended up living with us for several years until she graduated from high school and went away to college because shortly after I hired her, her mother disappeared.

As soon as my benefits kicked in at work, including 401(k) and insurance, I went in for a “female exam,” probably the first real exam I’d had in years. While there, it was discovered I had ovarian cancer. In a roundabout way, Mark beating me almost to death saved my life. I was told I needed to go immediately to surgery. I told them no, I had to get somewhere for my kids to stay and let my job know. They gave me four hours.

I called Mark’s mom to take the kids and checked in for surgery. This was my first surgery, and just over a year earlier, my mom had a stroke and died the night before surgery so I was a mess. But my job was fine, working for a senior partner at a law firm with floaters to cover my job while I was out really was a golden ticket. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had worked elsewhere. I had landed exactly where I needed to be.

The afternoon after my surgery, the nurse came in and let me know my “husband” had been there holding my hand, crying, saying “you can’t die, I need you.” I let them know I didn’t have a husband and had a restraining order against that man. They moved me to a new room and took my name off the public directory. Recently I was talking to my current husband about this event and he said “well, he didn’t take your marriage seriously, what makes you think he’d believe he was divorced.”

I was able to return to work during treatment, first two days a week then work back up to full time again. Ken made sure I had a place and my salary was paid. He was my guardian angel. He let me know they would pay for me to train to become a paralegal which would double my salary. I jumped at the chance. For the next almost three years, I was either on chemo, getting radiation or just recovering. But I felt better with cancer than I had at Mark’s hands because I knew why I was miserable and there was an end to it.

The nice thing about working at VanCott was that I was on the 17th floor of an office tower. We had floor 6 (File Storage), 12 (Word Processing), and 15-17 (Attorneys, Paralegals and their assistants). Anyone going higher than floor 6 had to check in through the guard station. They knew to turn Mark away. I was safe up there.

For a time, my mind was still full of Hubbard. I was OT V and had boatloads of admin training, therefore I believed I should be much more able and operate at a higher level of efficiency than all those lesser beings. Although I was ex-Sea Org and had the never-give-up mentality, I was humbled watching people operate more efficiently than me because they didn’t take six or seven steps to do one thing. The file room, staffed by two people, was amazingly up to date. If I needed something pulled, I’d put a request in the courier basket and the file would be on my from the 6th in less than half an hour while I continued to work. I found the courier could get it to me faster than I could retrieve it myself. The copy room and the mail room worked the same way.

It took about a month for me to realize that unlearning the majority of what I had learned in Scientology was in my best interest. Any admin training that I held onto because it was efficient or made sense I discovered had been plagiarized. It was easy to let go of the feeling that I was superior because I was OT V, because I was underwhelmed by the levels from the get go.

Thank goodness I’ve always been lucky to be a fast learner with an ability to retain what I learned. I needed that back then to make me human again. Once I got my paralegal certification, life was comfortable. I was grateful to Ken for what he did for me and went over and above the call of duty to ensure I was a good assistant then Paralegal for him. And I had weekends off, the kids and I got some quality time to boot.

I was given a wine tumbler by a friend when I retired. It says “A wise woman once said ‘I’m outta here’ and she lived happily ever after.” That could have been my mantra since 1984, and I’d like to say that’s been how I’ve lived my life, but, there were some really dark times, times it looked like my Scientology programming was going to win, and I was going to fight with myself the rest of my life. It’s still a struggle for me to accept a compliment. My mind was pre programmed for so long to hear and believe bad about myself that I can hear fifteen good things about me and one minor bad thing and all I can think is that you must dislike me because you said that one teensy bad thing.

Getting out of an abusive relationship, both my marriage, and Scientology gave me an incredible sense of accomplishment. But it also felt empty. The best way I can describe it is that I had been spending all my energy to keep myself upright for years, to ensure the survival of my children. I was their fierce protector. Suddenly, I was a single mom and rather than that making my life harder, it made it exponentially easier. I had been pushing back just to stay upright for years and all of a sudden there was nothing to push. It was easy to fall over trying to figure out how not to push back.

I not only had to unlearn robotic behaviors and responses, but had to relearn how to feel. Between Scientology and my marriage I had tamped down hard on my fear and anger, and had completely obliterated my fight-or-flight reflex. All I knew to do when attacked was surrender. I wasn’t capable of navigating sad or happy. Life was just this one dimensional one-foot-in-front-of-another thing I woke up and did every day. I had spent so long not feeling, that when it became safe for the feelings to return I felt like I was getting slammed with feeling. I had to ease myself back into feeling a little bit at a time because I had such a low threshold for emotion, having intentionally deprived myself of it all that time. Although I was able to put on a good front, it wasn’t until late 1985 when I felt comfortable enough with my ability to be rather than act normal was I willing to even start cultivating friendships.

The night terrors were horrific. I’d wake up covered in sweat, pushing myself backwards against a nonexistent attacker. Then I’d think how lucky I was that I’d learned how not to make noise when I was scared or unhappy because I would have woken the kids with my nightmares. That made me dread going to sleep because it was not restful any more.

Ken was the one who noticed the circles under my eyes and asked me if I was still seeing the counselor. I didn’t think I got to keep seeing her after I was released from the hospital. Really. I thought it was something they set up for you while in the hospital then you were on your own. I didn’t have a problem with the Scientology taboo on psychiatry because I was so unenthusiastic about what Scientology peddled as counseling and how little it actually helped.

Counseling was what I needed to get my feet back under me. It was so amazing to talk to someone who actually asked you questions about what was bothering me, not some rote robotic stuff. I was so used to a quick in and out with meaningless questions I couldn’t even grasp the concept of aftercare, especially aftercare for your mind after a traumatic experience. Not being forced to come up with things based on what a machine saw but talking from the heart was so incredible. I kept seeing her for six months. Although I was still scared of Mark until I moved to another state, I had conquered the nightmares.

After my dad died, in April 1984, it took awhile, but probate closed and my share of the life insurance proceeds came through. I don’t know how, but word of this money made it back to the mission although I was not talking to anyone there. I had already bought my piano and made the down payment on my new house but hadn’t closed by the time the news filtered down. My money was safely out of the reach of Scientology.

One spring evening in 1985, just a few days before I was going to close on my new home, I pulled up in the driveway of the duplex I would soon be vacating, started to open my front door and heard my name called. There was Paul, my former Scientology twin, standing there, camera in hand.

As you can see from the look on my face in the photo above, I wasn’t sure what to make of his visit. But I let him in the apartment. He started shooting photos of everything and talking a mile a minute, asking me what (not how) I was doing, how much I made at my job, why I had spent money on a piano. Did I have a lot of money now that my dad died? Did my job pay a lot?

I had been in the real world long enough by then that his questions were jarring. When I could get a word in edgewise, I told him “yes, it was sad that my dad had died, thanks for caring” He had the grace to look a little ashamed, and he was quiet for a minute. That gave me a chance to ask him “Paul, why are you here?” He said he had missed me blah, blah, blah. I said something like so you won’t talk to me because I divorced Mark and all of a sudden when I get a little money I’m your friend again? Nope.

Then I asked “did Mark send you?” He physically reacted to that question but said “No, no, no, no, no, not him.” I asked “Who did?” He hemmed and hawed but wouldn’t answer even though I asked three times. I held out my hand and said “May I see your camera, please.” He handed it over. I opened the back, removed the film and handed it back. He spluttered a little but knew it was over. I went to the front door and said “get out” he said “you’ve changed” I said “yep, bye.” I kept the film and developed it.

The next evening I got a call from the reg at the mission telling me I needed to come in and talk to him. I said “lose my number” he said “but” I said “no.” That was the last I heard from anyone in Scientology before I moved and there wasn’t such a thing as number port and only land lines back then which meant they didn’t have my new unlisted new number when I moved.

The day after I moved into my new home in a nice neighborhood, I got a housewarming present. I can’t prove who did it, but I do know that Mark, who had now been married to another woman long enough that their first child was close to due, was angry that I had “moved on without him.” The present was a Molotov cocktail thrown through my plate glass window in my living room. I was so used to operating in emergency mode by then that I ran to the bathtub filled it with water threw towels on the mess and soaked the burning bottle all without waking up the kids, then notified the authorities so I could have a police report for my insurance company.

I heard a few years later through a friend of Mark’s mom, that both Mark and Paul had been put on the Scientology enemies list in 1985. I think Paul got back in good standing. My reason to believe this is that sometime in the early 1990s Paul got my unlisted number and made an odd call to me. He said “if anyone from the church asks you if I talked to you, tell them no.” I said “OK, why does it matter?” He said “it just does.” I said “Goodbye,” and hung up. I don’t know what that was about didn’t ever get a call from the mission.

One thing that I regret doing during that time occurred in the mall attached to our office building. I was getting lunch and I ran into the girl I had tutored. She was with a group of friends and approached me. She was excited to see me. I am embarrassed to say I pretended not to recognize her. I didn’t want her parents to know how to find me. She reminded me, so I said “oh, yeah, hi.” She asked what I was doing. I said “I work here now.” Here could have been anywhere in the three-story mall or the 17-story office building. Then I hurried off. This is how determined I was to leave Scientology in my dust.

By 1987, I had finished oral chemo and radiation and was told that I was in remission but not cured. I knew the cancer would be back. I had asked the doctors to do a hysterectomy on me to ensure it didn’t come back, but I was a woman of childbearing age in Utah in the 1980s so they wouldn’t, just in case I wanted more kids. I couldn’t convince them I was through having children. When my cancer returned in 1996, I was livid. But at least then, I got the hysterectomy. But in 1987, I took the kids on a California vacation then I spent two weeks in Hawaii. I weighed 97 lbs then and was sure I was going on my bucket list trip. But I lived.

The next few years after that, my paid vacations from work consisted of scheduled medical procedures, the first one was to reconstruct my nose so I could breathe. My husband laughs because the cartilage in my nose stops about 2/3 of the way down. This means the end of my nose is wiggly, so when I lay on my side, it sags to whatever side I’m on. There was so much damage, that was the only way they could fix it. After that, I was able to move on to repairing poorly mended bones and the like.

Years later I was talking to my cousin who lived a few blocks from where I bought my home. She asked why I had never called and asked for help. Honestly, I had forgotten that it was OK to ask for help, I thought I was required to do it all alone.

By 1989, I had mended as much physical damage as I could. I had also made huge strides towards turning myself back into a functioning human being emotionally, although it took took much longer to consider going on a date. I always believed marriage was forever and I had gotten divorced. I was a failure. In reality, I know I wasn’t, but my mind kept going there. I also had a totally unhealthy vision of what a relationship was now, and certainly didn’t want to go back where I’d been.

I knew I had turned a corner towards humanhood when on a rare Friday in 1989 Mark’s mom had asked to keep the kids overnight. That freed me to go to “The Wasatch Front” with a group from the office after work. That club was the happening place back then. It always got packed on the nights there were home games for the Utah Jazz. The Jazz players and their entourage had a back room reserved for them.

I don’t recall what I was wearing, but would have been some version of my regular work clothes by then; a bright red, pink, purple or royal blue dress or blouse with a pencil skirt that ended about 2 inches above the knees, or dark slim pants, nylons, and the ubiquitous 4-inch black heels, making me just over 6-foot-2 tall. I’d gained back the weight from chemo, I was about 135 lbs. and my hair had grown out down the middle of my back. I kind of stood out in a crowd. I had just gone to the bathroom with a friend and was headed back to the table.

We were there as a group of ten, and none of us had any intention of doing anything but eating, having a conversation and chatting over drinks. As we walked past the front door on the way back from the facilities, a group of Jazz players came in with the famous (in Utah) announcer Rod “Hot Rod” Hundley, a notorious womanizer. He was 20 years older than me, but looked really good having played in the NBA himself and kept himself in shape.

By way of background, my son was 9 and playing on the Junior Jazz, and John Stockton and Karl Malone were his coaches. I knew a lot of the guys on the team. Ken had season tickets which included meals and courtside visits afterwards with the players. The tickets were two rows behind the team bleachers and my kids and I got to use them 3 to 4 games a year. The players learned quickly to pass their quarterly stat sheets up to my son who devoured them. Later, while my son was in college, he interned with the Jazz front office. But at that moment in that club, I hadn’t yet met Rod and the players had only seen me in sneakers and jeans in full mom mode at games and Junior Jazz events.

As we passed the group, Rod looked at me and did an over-the-top double take, both John and Karl said “uh uh don’t go there.” Hot Rod put his hand over his heart and said “my God, you’re beautiful.” My friend looked at me, I looked at Rod and said “my God, you’re Hot Rod Hundley,” then turned and walked away with my friend to an accompaniment of laughter. That moment made me realize that I had regained my self confidence. I was able to respond with a quick throwaway remark and walk on. I was comfortable with myself and able to handle an off the wall situation by myself.

I did see Rod after that at games and other social functions we both attended, and without fail, every time he saw me, he clutched both hands over his heart and pretended to look distressed and we both laughed. Life had gotten lighter.

In my easier to live life, I started throwing parties at my house. No one in my new life had a clue about my old life. I raised my kids, did normal people stuff and just got on with life.

By 1994, I realized that I needed more distance from Mark to get rid of my fear so I moved the family to Wyoming. My daughter didn’t like it and wanted to go back to Utah. She lasted two weeks with her dad. In 1996, I went to an out of town football game, and met my current husband who happened to live in the same Wyoming town I did..

My cancer recurred in late 1997. I had to come back to Utah for chemo and a hysterectomy, and with my children’s grandmother dying of a brain tumor, I stayed until she died, watched my first grandchild be born, stayed until my son turned 18, made sure he was set up OK, then moved back to Wyoming where my now husband and I got a house together, but we didn’t marry until 2006. We had both had bad prior marriages, we wanted to be sure. My current husband did not know I had been in Scientology. It was never mentioned.

Everything was going great. Then in 2011, my past and present collided.

— Valerie Ross

(Please go to the final installment and remind yourself what happened next.)

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