by Leah Remini
Scientology is based on thousands of policies that leave no room for interpretation. Your actions are either “on policy” or “off policy.” One of the challenges Nicole and I had was keeping track of these many policies. There were so many and they were so hard to keep straight that we didn’t always know when we were breaking a rule. That’s what happened one day when the two of us were walking through the building while on post. A girl around our age, walking in front of us, stopped when she got to a door, paused in front of it, and told us to open it for her.
“Are your arms broken?” Nicole said. “Open your own fucking door.”
“I am a Messenger.”
“What are you delivering?”
We had no idea that she was a member of the Commodore’s Messenger Org (CMO), or even what that was. Well, we found out soon enough when we were routed to the Department of Inspections and Reports, otherwise known as Ethics, the department that deals with enforcing policy.
Waiting for us in his office was a Master-at-Arms (MAA), essentially the person you were sent to when you were in trouble. Sort of like the strict parent. There are Ethics Officers throughout Scientology, and their job is to apply ethics technology to Scientologists at all levels.
The MAA waiting for us walked around carrying a wooden stick, and his office was decorated with a picture of LRH and the Bridge, like pretty much every other room. There he showed us an organizational board with all twenty-one departments that made up Scientology. At the very top, of course, was “L. Ron Hubbard.”
“So when you’re talking to a Messenger, you are talking to LRH,” the MAA said. “And when you’re disrespectful to a Messenger, you’re being disrespectful to LRH.”
He showed us all these policies about Messengers and said that from now on we were to address all CMOs as “Sir” or “Mr.” no matter what their gender.
My takeaway from the MAA’s speech was that being a CMO was the shit. On our way back to our berthing, I told Nicole that I was going to be a Messenger.
“You’re an asshole.”
“I might be an asshole, but you’re still going to be calling me ‘Sir’ in about a minute.”
I made an appointment with the Messenger recruitment office. The recruiter, reviewing my Ethics folder, which contained reports on all my “crimes,” had a different take. My record showed that I had a “problem with authority” and flirted too much with boys. “If you are pristine for six months, I will reevaluate you,” he said. I accepted his review and vowed that he would see me again and that I would get in.
A few days after the Messenger incident, Nicole, my mom, and I were summoned to the Ethics office, in the CMO building. The Ethics Officer told me that he had a Knowledge Report that a friend of mine had written up about me. Knowledge Reports are a system of Scientologists reporting on one another, basically setting up the idea that not telling on your friends bars their freedom as well as makes you an accessory to the crime. It’s like systematic tattling. The report he had on me stated that Danny Burns (my first boyfriend, whom I claimed as soon as he arrived at Flag and kissed a lot) had touched my boobs over my blouse. Sex before marriage was forbidden for members of the Sea Org, as was heavy petting—but kissing was okay. In his office, the MAA told me what Danny and I had done was “heavy petting and against policy.”
“But he did it lightly,” I said, confused.
That only seemed to make the Ethics Officer even angrier. He told me to look at the reference in the policy and find the definition of “heavy petting,” which he made me recite back to him.
Unbeknownst to me, the same friend had written a Knowledge Report about Nicole and her boyfriend that said they were having sex, which was even more serious than Danny touching my boobs. It also wasn’t true. Nicole was like a nun about that stuff, and we were both still virgins.
The MAA was sufficiently alarmed and called a code red. Two highly trained security officers of the church (a pair of fifteen-year-olds) launched an investigation into our so-called sexual perversions. They burst into our dorm room, riffled through our drawers, and found a pair of my underwear with a hint of lace, probably from Hanes Her Way, and a baby doll pajama top that belonged to Nicole. This was considered the evidence that my sister and I were sexually aberrated (a Scientology term that means “wrong behavior or a departure from what’s rational and a straight line”).
The Ethics Officer told my mother that he had no other choice but to send us both to the RPF. Nicole had been mouthing off to the MAA earlier and was being accused of upsetting him with her “hostile communication.” I guess “Fuck you” could be interpreted that way.
The mention of the RPF, the Rehabilitation Project Force, sent a chill down my spine. I knew what that was from seeing the RPF members in their musters, which were the formations we all had to assemble in at any Sea Org gathering. Beginning of day, end of meals, group announcements—you name it, we got in our proper musters for it. The RPF mustered separately from the rest of us, so they were easy to identify. In 110-degree Florida heat and humidity, these men, women, and even children were forced to wear all black from head to toe as they did heavy MEST work (MEST is an acronym for matter, energy, space, and time) like cleaning grease traps in the kitchen or scrubbing dumpsters. And that wasn’t all they had to do for their “spiritual rehabilitation.” They also had to run everywhere they went—to the bathroom, to the galley, anywhere. They had virtually no liberties. As long as they were in the RPF they worked pretty much seven days a week, 365 days a year, and that’s not including all the time spent doing security checks for their transgressions. No matter how high they had been in the organization before, once they landed in the RPF, they had to call everyone—even EPFers, the lowest form of Sea Org—“Sir,” and they were not allowed to speak unless spoken to. The RPF was the ultimate form of punishment and your time there could last for months or even years during which you basically weren’t even considered a person.
“Absolutely not,” Mom said. “My girls aren’t going to the RPF.”
The MAA stared at my mother, and she stared right back with her green eyes that could be childlike or very, very hard. In that moment she reverted from her acquiescent Scientologist self back to the Brooklyn survivor. My sister and I were frozen as we watched the silent standoff between the two adults to see who was going to win.
My mother requested a fitness board, referring to a council that could determine our fitness as members of the Sea Org. We had heard this was a way to get out of the Sea Org without too many repercussions. The council would eventually ask the question “Are you here on your own determinism?” and you would respond “No,” and be told to leave.
Shortly thereafter we began packing. Sherry, who had been asked by an Ethics Officer to write up a report on anything she knew about my physical relationship with Danny, was sad to see me go, and I was sad to say goodbye to her. But she wasn’t surprised. “You have a strong personality and they don’t want that in the Sea Org. You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” she said. “I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did.”
Chapter Four
WE WERE ON THE 405, the very last bit of the drive that had taken several days from Clearwater to Los Angeles, when after heading up a mountain, we suddenly saw a sea of lights spread out below us. My first real vision of L.A.
With my sister and me facing the prospect of being thrown into the RPF, Mom knew we had to leave Clearwater. Despite everything that had happened, my mom still very much believed in Scientology and our family’s place in it, and so did I. In moving to L.A. and joining up with other Scientologists we looked forward to the security of this larger group, a real community. Even though Nicole and I didn’t make it in the Sea Org, that didn’t mean we didn’t have a place in clearing the planet. And like all Scientologists, we didn’t want our eternity threatened. We learned pretty early on that we come back again and again, over the course of millions and
millions of years, as the body is just the vessel for the thetan-spirit.
We didn’t have much money, but thankfully a friend of my mother’s from Brooklyn who now lived in Los Angeles offered to take us in. A Scientologist herself, she said the church was really strong out there; L.A. has the greatest concentration of Scientologists in the world.
California was nothing like what Nic and I thought it was going to be. We had pictured L.A. as a beach town filled with blond people in bikinis. But Hollywood, where we were staying, felt like just another big city. “Where’s the damn water?” Nicole asked. I was just as disappointed as Nic that L.A. wasn’t straight out of a scene from Baywatch, but I was still excited to be there. I could hardly wait to start fulfilling my dreams of being an actress.
My mom’s friend and her husband let us sleep on the floor of their apartment. “We” now included baby Shannon, Mom’s new boyfriend, George, whom she had met in Clearwater, and his two teenage sons.
The tiny apartment was a block from the Blue Buildings, a gigantic complex of ten buildings that made up the Church of Scientology’s West Coast headquarters. The imposing concrete Art Deco building was the former Cedars of Sinai hospital, erected on Fountain Avenue in the 1920s. It is known as “Big Blue” because of the color it was painted after being acquired by the church in 1977.
By the time we arrived in California, I should have technically been in the ninth grade, but because I missed an entire year of school while in Florida I was enrolled at King Junior High School. Not very inspired to return to school, Nicole and I persuaded our mother to let us quit. She felt, as do most Scientologists, that studying Scientology is more important than getting a traditional education. So as long as we were on course, my mom was okay with it. (Plus, I would say things like, “Ma, I’m going to be an actress. I will hire an accountant who went to school, I promise.”)
Now that we were no longer enrolled in school, we immediately set out to get jobs. Everyone in our family was hustling to find work, since we all needed to chip in to eat, pay the electricity bill, make car payments—and stay on course. Our religion didn’t come free. The courses Nic and I were taking were still introductory, so they weren’t expensive compared to what it cost to do more advanced courses. Still, the range of $45 to $300 per course was a fortune for us.
Plus, I was starting with a deficit. After I left the Sea Org, I was saddled with what’s called “a freeloader’s debt.” Sea Org members take courses for free in exchange for being on post, but if you leave of your own volition, or are thrown out or found unfit, you owe the church money for those “free” courses you took while in the Sea Org. I owed thousands for the courses I took in Clearwater. I wasn’t allowed to be on course again until I paid my debt, so I went on a payment plan.
Practicing Scientology imposed a lot of financial pressure on everybody, but it also opened opportunities to make money. In businesses run by Scientologists, lack of experience, age, or education didn’t seem to matter. The kind of training provided by being on course was good enough. So after my mom found a job at a solar-heating company, American Sun, which was run by Scientologists, I begged her to find me work there as well, and unbelievably, she did.
It was a telemarketing position, where the barrier of entry was pretty low, but still, since I was just a teenager, the job was nothing short of a miracle.
My job was to call people who were listed in a huge binder, and to stick to a script that went something like this:
ME: Hello, [sir/ma’am]. I am calling to congratulate you on winning an all-expense-paid trip to Laughlin, Nevada! All you have to do is have a representative from American Sun come out for you to retrieve your certificate.
CUSTOMER: What’s the catch?
ME: There is no catch, [sir/ma’am]. You simply need to set an appointment for someone to come out and enlighten you on how solar heating could drastically cut your cooling and heating bills down. After you listen to a ninety-minute presentation on solar heating for your home, you will receive this trip at no cost to you. We have a rep in your area tomorrow afternoon on another appointment. Does that work for you?
Even I thought this was a racket. But my boss assured me it was the real thing. The free trip was from Tuesday to Thursday, and it was to Laughlin, which apparently was the fucked-up part of Nevada where they have $2.99 buffets and penny slots. But it was real, and it was free.
So I took my seat in the large room of rows and rows of telemarketers and looked up at a big board on the wall. On it was every telemarketer’s name—including mine—with little suns that represented how many confirmed appointments each caller had made. Well, I was going to get suns all the way across the board! Yeah, I was definitely going to rock this. I dialed my first number with total confidence that came to me both from my inherent personality and from what I had learned in Scientology. There simply is no “no” in Scientology.
“Hello, ma’am,” I began.
When it came time for the woman to say, “What’s the catch?” she actually said it! Even though my supervisor had told me they always said it, I couldn’t believe it actually worked. But when I got to the part about setting up an appointment, the lady on the other end of the line didn’t go for it. No problem—there were more names where hers came from.
By the end of the day, however, I realized that booking appointments wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be. In fact, I hadn’t booked a single appointment all day. When the next day didn’t go any better, I decided to take matters into my own hands and go off script. Mostly, the people I called cut the conversation short by hanging up on me. So when one man did just that, I called him back to give him the real talk.
“Hey, it’s me again,” I said. “Listen, you do have to sit through this boring thing on solar heating, but you don’t need to buy it. Just, like, do the presentation and you literally get a trip. It’s Tuesday through Thursday, okay? But it seems like you aren’t that busy.”
He hung up on me again. And I called him again. This time I didn’t care about making a friggin’ appointment; I wanted to give him a piece of my mind.
“What is this? What are you, some kind of animal?” I shouted (sounding like my dad). “You don’t hang up on people!”
The man hung up again and then called the company to file a complaint about me. Not only did I never get a single sun by my name—I soon got fired.
I wasn’t so upset when American Sun let me go, because by that point I realized there was a whole network of Scientology businesses in the vicinity of the Blue Buildings (which was important, since I didn’t have a car). My sister got a job down the street at a place called George’s General Store, which sold accessories needed for Scientology sessions and recommended vitamins.
Canvassing the area around Fountain Avenue, I went into the restaurant right across from the Blue Buildings, New York George’s (no connection to the general store). My strategy was to use the fact that I was from New York to get my foot in the door. The owner, Randy, a Scientologist, interviewed me and agreed to try me out as a cashier, because I wasn’t trusted to be a waitress with the attitude I had on me, as he could attest to from my days as a customer there. “Just sit here on this stool, take the money, make change, and try not to lose us any business with your mouth,” Randy said.
“Can I at least—”
“No,” Randy said. “Take the money, make change, and that is it.”
To pass the time, rather than just sit there I took it upon myself to clean the doors every five minutes with Windex, clean the cash register with a Q-tip, and put all the bills facing in one direction. You could say I had an obsession with things looking neat and clean—and I still do. Eventually Randy promoted me to waitress, a job that I know most people complain about, but I absolutely loved it.
I mimicked my grandmother, who used to clean the whole table after we finished dinner and before coffee and cake. “You don’t want to si
t in macaroni,” she’d say. “Let me make it nice.” So before I served the coffee (with the napkin in between the saucer and the cup, naturally), I’d say, “Let me make it nice,” and then I’d clean the table, which customers found charming.
I even loved being a waitress when customers were busting my balls, an occupational hazard. One of my regular customers was a guy named John Futris, who owned a Scientology graphic design company called JFI a few doors down. They printed all of the church’s literature. John was always smiling, but he was a pain in the ass with his muffin ordering. “I would like a blueberry muffin, with the top cut off, but not in half, the top should be smaller, and then I want two pats of butter, one on the top and one on the second half. But make sure the butter is not frozen, so warm it a little in your hand first, and then a coffee with half-and-half and one sugar.” Every day.
This went on for a couple of months until one day when John asked me what I really wanted to do, I told him eventually I wanted to be an actress but my immediate goal was to make more money. “I believe you’ll be a great actress one day,” he said, before asking me if I typed and wanted a job that’d pay more.
“Yes and yes,” I said.
I quit New York George’s that day. I was moving up in the world, going corporate. I only prayed my eyes would go bad so I could wear glasses, which would go perfectly with the pencil skirts I planned to wear.
John called me into his office on my first morning and said, “I need you to take this down in shorthand because I need you to type up a letter.”
“Yup.”
I wrote down what he said (sort of) and went back to my desk to type it up. I sat and stared down at the typewriter. I didn’t know how to type; I didn’t really even know how to load in the paper. I could have sworn I took a class in school once. Or was that in a movie I saw? Whatever. How hard could this be?
