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I finished high school, turned 18
and called Sally Allerdice who said she needed to see me before I went back on to course. I came in on a Thursday
morning about 10:30 a.m. to see her. When I got there, all of a sudden the receptionist said "Sally Allerdice is not here"
but that there was another person there that could help me. The receptionist's name was Carmen Pino Vilinsky and the
girl she introduced me to was a registrar named Cathy McMurray Ondrieka. Cathy took me into her office and the church Treasurer
Susan B. Davis came in. They both told me that Sally would not be there for the rest of the day but they would help me instead.
I was not aware that Sally Allerdice was a Day staff member and Carmen, Cathy and Susan were Foundation staff members.
They were filling in for the Day staff because it was near Thanksgiving and many of the church staff requested time off. Susan
went into her office and stole my files from the Day church's files that Debbie Kagan Ward was working on with
Sally Allerdice. She gave them to Cathy, she drew up new papers saying she had just signed me up for a course
and Susan said "There you go, kiddo!" That is how I got in to Scientology.
Sally
Allerdice worked at the church full time and was already OT III way back then when I was just getting started. A
few months after I started the course I caught up with Sally Allerdice to update her on my situation in a friendly way
and I was told by her "Just never mind. Stop bothering me. Wait your turn like everybody else!". Sally eventually
became the President of the Church of Scientology of New York and then joined the Sea Org to work at their church in Clearwater,
Florida.
Instead of doing the course Monday to Friday
during the day full time like I had agreed with Sally Allerdice, I had to do it on a Foundation schedule evenings and
weekends. My parents wanted to know if I was learning anything. I did so well that within 3 weeks I won the Student
of the Week award. Some of the staff suggested that I work there, and by the time I actually finished the course I was hired
by the Foundation church and started a staff job and training.
My job was called
an Expediter and I helped a man named Bob Cucarullo who was the Hubbard Communications Office Area Secretary, or roughly
the equivalent of personnel manager. I worked in his office with him when I was not on course where he had a huge U.S. Confederate
flag slung over the office window for curtains. I was paid about $3.85 a week and had to be there 7 days a week for roughly
50 hours each week. So, I started looking for a second job for during the day weekdays so I could survive.
Unfortunately most of the staff in the church worked under the table outside the church and did not believe in paying taxes,
something I thought was a bad idea. The first person to offer me a job of this kind was Carmen Pino Vilinsky the receptionist's
husband, Peter Vilinsky. He had an illegal bulk herb sales office on the Upper West Side of New York where he worked with
a Jewish girl named Rivka. The two of them asked me to work there helping them to sell Ginseng roots and I declined.
The second person to offer me a job of this kind was a guy named Frank Tiernan that was a former heroin addict the church
had recruited to be a Foundation staff member. He was friends with a guy named Raymond Baiardi that owned an illegal
pillow manufacturing company on W. 17th Street in Chelsea called Livingcraft.
Raymond Baiardi
Raymond was partners in the business with his
wife Maureen and two Scientologists named Mr. and Mrs. Marcel and Lucille Femine. In addition a lot of the staff
at the church all knew about Raymond's business and many including Carmen Pino Vilinsky often worked there for extra cash.
Raymond Baiardi also happened to be the Executive Director of the New York Foundation church where I worked, meaning he was
that church's highest executive. He asked me there for an interview and Frank Tiernan took me. I went upstairs and sat
in front of his desk and told him I did not think it was a good idea for anyone to work under the table during the day
and then train to be an auditor at the church at night. He said "Where in the hell are you getting your ideas from?"
I decided not to work there either.
Finally another staff member named Margaret Issaeff offered
me a job at a furniture manufacturing company on W. 20th Street called Loftcraft that was owned by and for the most part operated
by Scientologists. Margaret was changing jobs and needed to find a replacement for herself at Loftcraft before she left so
I went and was interviewed and got the job. Fortunately these people took taxes out of their employee's paychecks. The job
was part-time running office errands.
Loftcraft was owned by Randolph Parsons and his
wife Isabelle Szuldiner Falcaro Parsons. Isabelle was a full time New York Foundation Class IV auditor that audited many public
and staff. The company was co-managed by two Scientologists named Mr. & Mrs. George and Dina Goodrich. My boss was
Marcia Valente Cruz, a New York Foundation training supervisor. Raymond Baiardi was authority over all these people in
the New York Foundation church, including myself. None of us ever actually discussed Raymond Baiardi. He was a very unkempt
looking person for an executive.
Not all the people that worked at Loftcraft were Scientologists
and Marcia instructed me on whom I was allowed to talk about Scientology within the company and who I was not. There were
some problems going on in the background it seemed. Mary Sue Hubbard for one thing was already on trial for espionage with
10 other Scientologists. And second the city threatened to close Loftcraft down if they did not fix dozens of building
code violations that inspectors from the city found while doing a routine inspection of the premises. Isabelle gave orders
to remove anything Scientology related from anywhere visible in the company so people would not suspect that anyone
there was a Scientologist. A gigantic 50 lb. board hanging on a wall near my desk that listed all the company's departments
and staff fell off the wall while being removed and gashed a part of my left arm very badly causing a visible scar that
I still have to this day. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't. Not even one person at Loftcraft offered
me so much as a Band-Aid. I had to go to the men's room and patch it with toilet paper and scotch tape from my desk. I went
home that night after staff work at the church and fixed it myself at my own expense. When my boss Marcia and I talked about
this the next day she said to me "Why don't you get your fucking TR's in?" which is another way of saying in Scientology "You
do not understand things very well!"
While my arm was healing Isabelle called me into her office one morning and said she needed me to go downtown and register
her husband's car for him. I did not know at the time that a person who registers their car must do so in person because their
signature is required. Isabelle and her husband Randy knew because between the two of them they had about 35 years combined
driving experience. I ignorantly agreed, and she gave me the papers, the money and subway fare. I got to the Division
of Motor Vehicles and was turned away and told to go back and tell the person that sent me to come in themselves. I went
back and told Isabelle the girl at the Division of Motor Vehicles told me Randy has to come in and do
it himself.
Two days later, Isabelle called me in her office and fired me giving as a
reason that she was doing so because I was PTS. She said to pick up my final paycheck at the end of the week.
I went back to pick up my last paycheck and Bob Cucarullo was there with Isabelle. She had called him down there after
seeing him at the church the night before so that when I got there she could say to him about me "Check this guy out!" like
she was sharp or something. Bob Cucarullo came up to me laughing and said Isabelle hired him to replace me.
In the summer of 1999
I saw Bob Cucarullo in New York at the intersection of W. 72nd St. & Broadway on my way back from the doctor and
he came up to me to say hi. These are part of his exact words during our conversation making reference to the church
in New York: "Holy shit Larry! I left that fucking shit in 1980. I haven't been clear in 20 fucking years.
I know you finished your OT levels and shit."
I told
Bob Cucarullo at the church where we both still worked that I did not think that being on staff at the church was
really for me financially or otherwise. He told me to write up my O/W's. I didn't have any crimes against
Scientology to write up. So, he put me in an auditing session with him in his office and talked to
me about what I may have thought I did wrong somewhere at some point in my life. I mentioned only that I had sex with a prostitute in
New York City one time. He wrote everything down and said "That's it!" and sent me to see an Ethics Officer named
Nancy Levin with his report.
Nancy Levin aside from being
an ethics officer worked for Isabelle at Loftcraft and later joined the Sea Org's INT Management
with her husband Neil Levin.
Nancy Levin said
that for having sex with a prostitute I would have to petition the Guardian Office for approval in writing to continue
in Scientology. She had me read a policy on writing petitions and I wrote one to a guy named Antros Savas who
was the head of the New York Guardian Office. Nancy looked the petition over and said to go upstairs and put it
in the IN basket of the New York Guardian. She said I would hear back from him one way or another if I was going to be allowed
to continue in the church or not. When I came downstairs she said Raymond Baiardi wanted to see me in his office. In
his office Raymond Baiardi told me he was transferring me to a mission located downtown in Greenwich Village to work
while my petition to the GO is active and that he would rather I didn't work at the church at all. He spoke to someone
named David Simon at the mission and I was expected there when I arrived later that day.
I spent most of my time at the mission. It was owned by
two fairly wealthy New York Scientologists named Mr. & Mrs. Howard & Mary Rower. I typed documents for them, because
I was a fast typist, I went to the post office, I called bookstores all over the New York City metropolitan area to encourage
them to stock Dianetics books, wrote lists of bookstores I thought were good places to sell books to, and other things. I
was there for many weeks.
One of the staff at the Rower's mission was an auditor in her 20's named Kathy Boyle. Howard and Mary were in their
60's and were also ordained church ministers. Howard had an affair with Kathy at the mission lasting 7 years at
the time he was still married to Mary that I worked there. Mary found out about it and kept quiet about it at first.
By the time the affair was over the mission had closed, Howard and Mary were divorced, Howard was expelled from the church
and Kathy Boyle got a job at a mission in Teaneck, New Jersey. That mission also later closed. Howard died
in the fall of 2000. Mary still lives somewhere in New York City at this writing. As long as the Rower's provided the church
with a steady income they could have danced naked in the streets and the church would have sent them love letters.
As soon as the situation changed financially all of a sudden Howard was an adulterer where just before that he was
regarded as one of its highest members even with an affair going on between him and Kathy Boyle.
Once a week I went up to the church to pick up my
paycheck and I would go up to the Guardian Office to see if my petition had been read yet. One day when I went over to the
GO Debbie Kagan Ward was there and told me she was now working for the GO with her husband Pat Ward and asked me if I
would like to be a typist there for them part time because they needed one and did not have one. This way I could spend half
of my time at the mission and half of my time at the GO, so I said OK. I had to sign an agreement to the GO that if I ever
mentioned any of my activities that I worked on there to anyone outside of the people I was authorized to get my work from
in the GO that I would have to pay them $10,000.00.
The GO staff secretly tape recorded
people they had conversations with in person or on the phone. Many of these people were government officials in New York City
and Albany that were not co-operating with Scientology the way in which the church expected. For example, the church
would secretly tape record everything these people said and then give the recordings to me. While listening to the recordings
with a pair of headphones on to prevent anyone else from overhearing, I would type everything I heard on the
tape recorder on the typewriter. A lady would come out of the door next to me every so often and take what I had typed so
far and then go back in the office. The door was always locked when the GO were inside and padlocked when
they went home for the day. They were using these documents to manipulate people that were giving them a hard
time one way or another somewhere. I delivered a package with documents like this in it from the GO to a guy that
was staying at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York once. I went up to his room and gave it to him. I think
he later had a heart attack and died after learning the contents.
Sometimes there wasn't anything for me to do in the GO. I was given instructions by Debbie Kagan Ward at such times to either
go home, go back to the mission or go downstairs into the church academy and help the course supervisors Neil Levin and
Mike Spallino. Mike Spallino told me he needed a Word Clearer in the academy and asked me if I could word clear
some of the students for him. So, I said OK. A word clearer has to make sure that a student does not have a single misunderstood
word anywhere in the materials they are studying. I was not even trained as a world clearer and in addition
I had never even heard of some of these courses that these people that came up to me looking for help
were on. So I did the best I could and they let me so they must have thought they were doing the right thing. The other thing
is that the church was short on auditors to audit paying public with. Students in training are not supposed
to audit public people, only licensed professional auditors are supposed to. But, the church used the students in training
that I had word cleared to audit the paying public that came in.
The
Rower's had a lot of real estate in New York and had private gatherings in one of their lofts. I was invited. People
from the GO always attended. Scientologists such as Rev. Arthur J. Maren would give speeches at the gatherings about
who in the government was working against the church. That summer the Rower's sponsored 2 busloads of over 200 Scientologists
from the New York area that went to Washington D.C. and picketed outside the offices of the F.B.I. I had to go, it was part
of my job. The event made the 6:00 p.m. news. My parents told me when I came home.
I still checked each week on my petition.
The strange thing is that because I worked in the GO six feet from the head Guardian's IN box, I could check any time I wanted
to see if my petition had been read yet. If it was still in the box I would know it had not been. It was there the whole time
until one day I checked and it was gone. The Guardian was out of town for a long time and still had not come back so he could
not possibly have read it and left the rest of his messages there unread. Weeks went by and I never heard back on it so I
told Bob Cucarullo and he said write another one. So this time I wrote to L. Ron Hubbard himself and more weeks went by and
I never heard back from him either. So I wrote L. Ron Hubbard a letter and told him I was waiting for an answer to my petition
and that from now on do not send any mail to me through the church, instead send it to my home address. I heard
back from him within 8 days. He said he had already sent my petition back to me approved weeks before and he could
not see that I didn't get it so he sent me a copy of the missing letter I was sent and wished me well. I was very
excited. Right around this time Raymond Baiardi tried to kick me as I passed him on the stairs on my way up
to the GO while he was in the middle of talking to someone.
I
was downstairs by the treasury office one day and a guy about 23 years old was standing by the elevator
in the hall. Bart Dobin {a course supervisor} and 2 other staff members were pinning the
guy in place with their bodies. He wanted his money back from the church and they did not want to give it to
him. Bart Dobin told the guy nasty in his face: "Look man! What is this attitude of every time you
come here of give me your name, rank and serial number like you own the fucking place?" I was ushered
away by the Treasurer Susan B. Davis.
I had not completed Staff Status II to be made
into a permanent staff member at the church so it was easy to just leave. I left the course I was on unfinished. The day
I told my boss David Simon at the mission that I was getting a new job full time somewhere and would not be coming in any
more, he got real upset. He was such a nice guy before this. He said "You want to know something? You're an out ethics
fucking creep that I should have written up a long time ago and I don't know why I didn't! I personally
don't like your ass!"
Just before I got my new job, I met a Scientologist named Susan
Cox Monrove at the church one weekend. She happened to live not far from my house and offered me a ride
there. Her boyfriend who was also a Scientologist drove. While we were on the way home she turned to me as I was
sitting in the back seat and she was up front and said "I know how it is. I've been at home with my demo kit
in one hand and joint burning in the other". So in other words what she was saying was that smoking pot has helped
her to study and understand Scientology better.
By chance a Scientologist named Eric
Krackow told me about a course called the Hubbard Personal Ethics and Integrity Course that was available at
a more advanced church in Los Angeles called the American Saint Hill Organization {ASHO} as well
as at Flag in Clearwater, Florida. He said the course made him an ethical person and I thought "That sounds
like that is for me!" After I began working for an apparel importer on 5th Avenue, I called ASHO and bought
the course from a registrar there named Karen Jensen. The agreement was that Karen would find me living quarters
with other Scientologists and a small job to support myself for just long enough to enable me to do the course evenings
and weekends and then come home. I was making arrangements to go to L.A. when a woman in the Sea Org at Flag
named Amanda Wolfensen called me and convinced me to join the Sea Org.
Amanda Wolfensen
was expelled from Scientology after we spoke on the phone. I don't actually know what she did that got her expelled but
in any event we never met in person.
She contacted someone in L.A. named
Brenda Christensen that called me from the Flag Readiness Unit {FRU} that prepares people
in the Sea Org to work at Flag. I was offered to become a Class XII auditor in the Technical Training Corps {TTC} composed of Sea Org members only that train full time to become auditors. A two week basic
training course called Product 0 that all Sea Org members must do had to be completed first. Plus, auditors
made over $12.00 an hour. I had to act then or the offer would be rescinded. I was told I could always do the course
I paid for at ASHO some other time in the Sea Org. I was given an address to go to in L.A. and a number to call so I told
everyone goodbye and went to Los Angeles and joined the Sea Org.
I took a taxi from downtown Los Angeles to
the address I was given. It was a large former hospital complex called the Cedars of Lebanon that was purchased
and being renovated by the church. The building I was to work in was about 8 stories high. The complex
housed many different kinds of Scientology organizations and took up about 1 city block.
American Saint Hill Organization - Los Angeles,
California
I reported to Brenda Christensen at the Flag
Operations Liaison Office {FOLO} and was routed in to the Flag Readiness Unit {FRU}. There
were about 9 other people in the FRU male and female ages 18 to 57. A girl named Grace Brown was
in charge of the FRU. A guy in the FRU named Chuck Williams took me in his car to a rundown hotel called the Hollywood
Inn on Hollywood Boulevard where Sea Org members lived about a mile away. I shared a room with 4 other
Sea Org men. If Chuck Williams was not around I had to walk, take a bus or take a cab.
I worked from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. 7 days a week with one day off every 13 days for good behavior. I never got paid
for working there ever. One week Grace Brown earned $1.50. I had to buy and wear under penalty for not doing
so Sea Org uniform clothing that applied to my rank. The church did not supply these uniforms. I started Product
0 and a New Era Dianetics Drug Rundown. I was placed in the Estates Project Force {EPF} to
do the Product 0.
To give you an idea of what Product 0 involves, it entails cleaning
toilets, hauling garbage, scrubbing floors, renovating rooms, removing carpets, moving debris and materials, digging
holes, constructing scaffolds and washing dishes wherever they sent me to do it. The place where I washed the dishes
was called Dishland and it was the central kitchen for the communal cafeteria where all the Sea Org members ate
called the Galley.
The food served was very poor quality and rationed. We often got cereal
in the morning but regardless of what we were served there was always a form of milk available. I say that because it was
not actually milk. It was a white powder that when mixed with water resembled skim milk but tasted much worse. After
my third meal I stopped eating there and went across the street to eat at a diner called New York George's.
The first time I went into New York George's and
every time thereafter I saw the former owners of Loftcraft from New York Randolph and Isabelle Szuldiner Falcaro Parsons
and their friends George and Dina Goodrich that now owned the diner, hence the name New York George's. Loftcraft went
bankrupt and the four of them came to Los Angeles to advance on their OT levels. They never once said hello
to me, even though I was in the Sea Org and they recognized me.
On one occasion I was
ordered to clean the floor of the FOLO which had not been cleaned in several weeks. Much like cleaning the toilets, the church
did not have money for detergent or bleach to do this job with either, so I used plain water. After about 3 hours, no
matter what I tried I could not get the smudges off of the floor. The Commanding Officer of the facility complained loudly to
Grace Brown about the kind of incompetent person that I was. She called me into her office and warned me that I had better
get that floor clean. I asked her "With what?" and she said "Try using hotter water". The floor never came clean and
I really didn't care because they acted like it was perfectly normal for people to clean everything with hot
water instead of spending $1.00 for detergent and bleach. At the end of the day after our Staff Muster {daily
staff meeting} I told her that was the best I could do with what they gave me.
About
a week later Grace told me to go next door to ASHO and pick up an E-Meter and 10 volume set of auditor training volumes that
I was going to need when I got to Flag. So I went next door and bought them with money I already had on account there.
Every Scientology book has
a small paragraph in it explaining that E-Meters are not intended to diagnose medical problems and may only be sold
to and used by ordained ministers and students of the church. I was not an ordained minister or student authorized
to use an E-Meter. I just walked in out of the blue and bought one, no questions asked. I have an invoice to prove
it. I told Grace Brown and she said "Don't worry about it!"
I stopped
by to see Karen Jensen the registrar at the Saint Hill to tell her I was in the Sea Org.
Karen Jensen was after that put in the RPF. I do
not exactly know what she was put in the RPF for either, because she was a very professional person and good registrar, at
least with me.
Once a week I worked in the Flag
Service Consultant {FSC} office in the Advanced Org across the street. FSC's sell Flag
Services to people from satellite offices around the globe. FSC's Are always Sea Org members. I answered phones,
took messages, ran errands and greeted visitors. The FSC's names were Fred and Gretchen Schwartz. The two of them
were always getting on a plane to here or there, talking to celebrities, going out or playing tennis
and yet I wasn't even getting paid and could not even get one day off so I took a day off. I spent a day in Hollywood
sightseeing. I went back to the FOLO the next morning and was not allowed inside but taken by escort to
Grace Brown's office. I was not offered the RPF but just offloaded for taking just 1 day off after 1 month of no days
off with no pay. I signed a waiver releasing the Sea Org from any kind of liability related to my employment. I was given
a written signed Tailored Individual Program {TIP} to complete that required me to finish OT
III and do Class VIII training before re-applying for the Sea Org. I was then evicted from the Hollywood Inn. I gave
Grace Brown the heavy 10 volume set of books I bought and brought just the E-Meter and TIP home with me
to New Jersey.
Everything an auditor does in session with a person being audited is written down and placed in a numbered folder with the
person's name on it. A new folder is started when the current one is deemed full. The folders are stored in
a central location should a Case Supervisor need them. These folders are confidential even from the person whose
name is on them. A church is supposed to make arrangements with any church the person is going to be audited at
next to send them the person's folders. It is a crime in Scientology to deliver these folders to anyone any other way.
When I got home to New Jersey, Grace Brown called my house
to say she was going to keep in touch with me to make sure I finished my TIP. Not long after this call she sent me my
Los Angeles auditing folders in the mail. She said to give them to the registrar in New York, Cathy McMurray Ondrieka
whom she notified to expect me. So, I went to give the folders to Cathy and she got upset and wanted
to know if I had read anything in them. I said "No! Of course not Cathy!", but that really was a lie because
honestly I read them. I felt like I had a right to know what any quack like the Class VIII auditor I had in L.A.
was writing about me to some Case Supervisor somewhere.
Nevertheless, I went to the Flag Service Consultant in New York with my TIP to open
an account at Flag and begin making donations to the account to finish the TIP. The Flag Service Consultant's name
was Kitti Kahn Georgius.
I did not learn Kitti Kahn Georgius's name
from her even though she has claimed several times to have been my registrar when she was not. The next year
she was the emcee of a Flag World Tour event in New York. People that had completed a new OT level at Flag called
NOT's had returned from Flag with the first success stories from the level. At the event, which I went to, Kitti told the
audience her name and that is where I learned it. During my alleged consultation on Flag services with her in New
York she refused to give me her name.
Everyone in Scientology goes
to Flag to finish their grade chart because the final levels needed to go OT are only available at Flag.
I explained to her about my TIP that needed to be started and paid for and why I thought it would be a good idea to do the
whole thing at Flag. After she finished pretending she was listening
to me the whole time she said "Look, I really don't have time for this shit OK? I'm very busy so could
you please uh..., leave?" I could not get her name or the name and address of anyone else at Flag to talk to about this
from her, or any information about Flag services and rates to take home or even open an account with her
by giving her money. Instead she just looked at me with her hands folded on top of the desk in an irritated manner. I
left her office feeling disappointed in myself. I guess I would not be doing my TIP after all.
I got an invitation in the mail to an event and went not knowing that Kitti Kahn Georgius would be the hostess of
the event. A singer/pianist named Amanda Ambrose was a guest speaker that night and needed a hand to set up
a stage for herself before her performance/speech so I offered to help. A mission holder named Helen Geltman, a
Scientologist named Jody Marshall and a mission holder named Howard Rower who was cheating on his wife were the
other guest speakers. About 250 people showed up.
The Australian government had put a ban
in place that did not allow anyone in to Australia that was coming there to do business with Scientology. Kitti and
guest speaker Jody Marshall went to Australia exclusively to sign Australian Scientologists up for new Flag services
that had just become available. The two of them lied to the Australian customs office officials saying that they were
going to Jody's sister's birthday party instead and as a result they were let in to the country. So, Kitti
did a "case handling" on herself and Jody Marshall with the audience. She told us we were the first people she ever
mentioned the fact of the two of them lying to the Australian authorities to that should have known about it
and their integrity with us and the church was now restored. Aside from Kitti's obvious mental problems in lieu
of what she reported as the nature of their alleged crime together, shouldn't the church have known about this first
instead of us anyway? What if someone from the Australian government were in the audience that night? So, to some people
such as myself this would be viewed as an abnormal thing for anyone to be engaging in but by now one should realize
that what is normally abnormal to most people will seem like a normal thing to a Scientologist for them to be doing. Afterwards Kitti
did a "Questions & Answers" with the audience about Flag and a guy asked her where L. Ron Hubbard was lately and
she told him it wasn't any of his business. She introduced Howard Rower to us as the "funniest man on the planet".
Kitti was the registrar that sold Howard the services he went to Flag to get in the middle of his affair with Kathy Boyle
that he was now on stage sharing a success story with us about. His wife Mary was seated in the audience but she was not one
of the guest speakers. After Howard Rower spoke the rest spoke and/or entertained.
The basic message of this whole 3 hour event was that the auditing sessions one gets at Flag on OT V are not
longer than 5 to 15 minutes each as a rule and that the auditing is allegedly so exciting it is mind boggling.
Of course this would seem crazy to many people not yet familiar with what these advanced levels involve. I went backstage after
the event because Amanda Ambrose wanted to thank me for helping her to set up her stage. As Amanda and I were
talking Kitti came backstage and interrupted us to burst out laughing at me and indicate that I was a joke. I said
good night and left.
© 2009 Lawrence Toomajan
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