|
When I was a 10th grade student in public
school in New Jersey in 1975, I read a copy of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard. I wrote to
a Church of Scientology on a card included in the book to request more information. A guy from the Church of
Scientology of New York City wrote me back and said to come in and meet some Scientologists. I took a day off
from school and went there. It was located at 28-30 West 74th Street. I talked to a receptionist there that introduced
me to a registrar named Debbie Kagan Ward. She gave me some I.Q., leadership and personality tests
and I answered some questions on an E-Meter so a Case Supervisor could look at the results. The results came back that I
needed 75 hours of auditing immediately, followed by 300 hours of more advanced auditing, some training courses
and some books to read. The whole Technical Estimate came to several thousand dollars. I took the information home
and agreed to tell my parents about it.
If the Scientologists I met were not able
to recognize at that time that I was a teenager on my own across a state border without a legal adult to accompany me,
then whether I knew it or not, these were the wrong people for anyone to ever have dealt with about anything right from
the start.
A couple of days later on a Tuesday morning
when I was home from school Debbie Kagan Ward rang our doorbell about 10:30 a.m. I didn't remember her calling
and letting anyone in our house know to expect her but my mother agreed to let her in. I had only began the day before
to briefly tell my parents about Scientology but this lady came over for money. When she found out she wasn't getting
any with me in 10th grade she agreed to put $10.00 of her own money in an account at the church under my name to pay
for an introductory course called the Communications Course. She said to come back to the church and repay her as
soon as I could and start the course, so I said OK. She then left.
The next week I took a little money I had, took a day off from
school and went back to New York and repaid her the $10.00 and started the course. Towards the end of
the day I was summoned to the office of a woman named Sally Allerdice who was the church's Ethics Officer. She said I
could not be on course without an adult with me and sent me home. I went home and my parents were called in
to the church to discuss the matter. We agreed that I could keep in touch with Scientology in the mail or by phone,
but not go there to do anything unless an adult was with me or I turned 18, so I said OK.
© 2009 Lawrence Toomajan
|
