I DIDN’T KNOW MUM HAD DIED UNTIL AFTER HER FUNERAL
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my mother: how I never got to say goodbye. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, I had no idea. I didn’t even find out she had died, last year, until a week after her cremation. I was not asked to attend because by then, I had long since left the Church of Scientology.
My family are Scientology elite. We joined the church 50 years ago, when I was a teen, after a Scientologist saved my mother, Betty Wordie, from suicide. She excelled and became the first person to reach Operating Thetan Level 6 (OT 6), the highest ranking for a member at the time.
Decades later, my sister’s husband is the executive director of the London Org and my brother travels around Europe collecting donations.
The allegation, this week, that Tom Cruise has banned Nicole Kidman from attending their son’s forthcoming wedding came as no surprise to me; I have missed out on countless family milestones since I was excommunicated in 1982 and then again in 2012.
When you come to the conclusion that Scientology is not for you, you lose everything. Kidman and the children she adopted with Cruise may never see each other again.
In the Eighties, I was director of events for Europe and founded the gathering that would become the International Association of Scientologists at its Saint Hill, East Grinstead headquarters.
L Ron Hubbard’s wife came to England to congratulate me on my work in 1982. But soon after, we came to blows over money. My mother asked me to waive my fee, but I couldn’t keep living a lie and walked away with nothing.
I hid from Scientology and my family, but never forgot them. I went to teach in South America, where I met my wife. When we had two children, I called them Scottie and Sharlene after my brother and sister. I felt that I needed to do so as some form of remembrance. In 2010, I rejoined when my wife said, “Go and look up your family”. It was only when I re-entered that I found out my father and one of my brothers had already died, and my mother had Alzheimer’s. My wife and children moved to the UK, too, but wanted no part in the church and as I refused to cut myself off from them, I quit for good in 2012. I feel lucky, but the family I had before are lost.
Now 68, I live in Plymouth and try to do my bit to undermine Scientology.
I have nothing to gain, no ulterior motive, I just want to tell my story.
When you decide that the church isn’t for you, you lose everything