She graciously wrote this piece to explain a bit about her new book.
I finally did it! After three long years, I have published a book about growing up as a second generation Scientologist. Because I have so much to say about it and many stories to tell, this is the first of hopefully three books.
Commodore’s Messenger: A Child Adrift in the Scientology Sea Organization covers the years from before I was born, starting around 1953 about how and why my parents, Peter Gillham and Yvonne Gillham-Jentzsch got into Scientology in the first place. It goes onto telling what it was like to grow up in a Scientology Mission, living through the Victorian Government Inquiry, my mother being one of the first declared Suppressive Persons in 1965, the banning of Scientology in Victoria resulting in the family moving to England, and at the age of 11 arriving on the Royal Scotman with my brother and sister — only to find our mother was not there. Instead we were given jobs to work for our keep until she returned from Mission Into Time on the Avon River with L. Ron Hubbard. The book ends in Oct 1970. The second book which is nearing completion will pick up there and follow me through my life on the ship for another 5 years as a Commodore’s Messenger until the Apollo was sold in Oct 1975 and we moved to America.
My main purpose for writing this book was because I got tired of hearing and reading twisted stories of what happened or even stories of things that happened that never did by people who were not there. Having lived on the ship from the age of 11 to 19, it was my home. As a messenger for L. Ron Hubbard, I ran thousands of messages for him to various people around the ship in doing so, I saw, heard and knew a lot about what really happened.
Many who have read what I have written were very impressed with my memory – I cheated. I happened to have been given several years worth of Orders of the Day from the Apollo – the Orders of the Day was like our daily newspaper for what was going on around the ship and L. Ron Hubbard as the Commodore usually wrote a “command” item to the crew informing them of what he had been dealing with. Re-reading these decades later jogged my memory of so many events that writing about it just flowed out. I also had many old friends that sailed the seas with me who helped fill in gaps to perfect some of the stories.
I dedicate this book to my mother and all past and present Sea Org members in hopes they will find the truth they have been looking for.
No matter what is said or claimed about me by the current Church of Scientology, they can only blame Scientology for who I am and what I say, since I was born into Scientology by Scientology parents and raised as a teenager by L. Ron Hubbard himself.
My book is now available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/154720219X/
…and my first interview ever released talking about what life was lilke on the ship can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2JugA-Wphs&t=2s
Please enjoy.
I include here the start of my first chapter:
Captivity
May, 1978
“…The only reason brainwashing works the way the commies do it is because they make people do self-criticism. . . but they make them think-think-think-think-think in their heads… Figure-figure harder, figure-figure harder, and they just keep reducing their havingness (taking things away), reducing their havingness, reducing their havingness. . .”
L. Ron Hubbard “Auditing Techniques…”
January 1957
“STOP!” LAZ COMMANDED, as he grabbed me by the arm.
I shook him off as I ignored his command and kept walking. Laz jumped in front of me and grabbed both my arms to stop me from walking away.
“Get your filthy hands off me!” I shouted back, confronting him directly. Laz refused to let me go.
I shook his hands off me, then slapped him across the face and kept walking. Laz told the guard he had guarding me “Go get six of the biggest men that you can find.” Ignoring them, I made it halfway down the dirt road until the six men surrounded me. I was not allowed to move. Laz ordered them to block me from going anywhere for nearly fifteen minutes while he disappeared.
It didn’t matter if I yelled and screamed. We were in the middle of nowhere in the desert—I knew there was no one around to hear me! There was nowhere for me to run. Maybe the men expected me to kick and scream. I did not.
My intention was to defy them, I felt calm, considering the madness surrounding me. After a lifetime of growing up in Scientology, at age 22, I wanted to leave the Sea Org, the highest echelon of Scientology. I did not want to give up Scientology, as it was a way of life for me and I didn’t know much else. I just refused to be a slave anymore, and didn’t agree with how staff members who worked within the rank and file of Scientology’s Sea Organization were being treated, including me.
When Laz returned, he ordered the six men to escort me to the back of the Ranch House. I could cooperate, or I could resist by screaming or trying to break free from their control—but what good would that have done? There was nowhere to go and no one around to help. I walked with them toward the usual entrance to the staff lounge, and assumed I would be waiting there to see Maria Starkey in her office next door. But once I stepped inside, the door was closed behind me, and locked.
Laz had converted the hall of the Ranch House into a prison, with the doors to the rooms locked from the outside. Laz’s plan all along was to move me into this trap. I was locked inside a hall with a bathroom, and locked off from the rest of the house. This confined space held only a mattress on the floor with two sheets, a pillow, a towel and bar of soap, and the clothes on my back.
I might have been able to climb out of the bathroom window, but where would I go? And my pockets were empty – no money. My brother Peter and my sister Terri shared a car with me, but my keys had already been taken, and the distributor cap had been removed in case I knew how to hot-wire it, which I did not.
I was being held prisoner against my will.
The guards, however, all thought they were helping me by following L. Ron Hubbard’s instructions on dealing with someone having a psychotic break. “Isolate the person wholly with all attendants COMPLETELY muzzled (no speech)” L. Ron Hubbard. However, there is a difference between having a psychotic break and refusing to be unjustly sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force.
Guards stood watch outside the door of my confinement for twenty-four hours a day. They were instructed to not talk to me. They unlocked the door only three times a day to quickly slide in some food and vitamins. They gave me a few pieces of paper and a pen to write down anything I had to say. Besides repeating that I wanted to leave, I had nothing else to say.
My first day of imprisonment, I caught up on my sleep. Sleep was treated as a luxury in the Sea Org, versus a healthy necessity. Since I was a prisoner with no other options, I took advantage of having the privacy and time to luxuriate in a hot bath while I daydreamed of what life might be like in the outside world….”
I just ordered the paperback. I can’t wait to read it!
Pre-ordered. Your beginning gripped me. Not only a fascinating story, that I can’t wait to read, but well written.
Dear Janis,
I have ordered your book and can’t wait to read it!
I hope Aftermath has this lady & Jenna Miscaviage! That would be sweet…
What a great story. I’ll order the book as soon as I get back home.
I met Janis many moons ago. At that time she was a dedicated SO member. The fact that Hubbard set up an organization that would abuse and alienate someone of her caliber speaks loud and clear(no pun intended) how insane Scientology really was and is.
Thank you Janis for taking the time and effort to document your history and the real truth about Hubbard and his erratic and irrational past.
Thank you for publishing this, Janis. I have it pre-ordered on Kindle and am looking forward to reading it.
As a never-in, but one with a fascination with cults in general dating back quite a few years, I feel that I ought not to presume I can relate, since I have not walked in Sea Org shoes. But maybe escaping from an abusive marriage of 13 1/2 years does give me some perspective. I know I couldn’t have done it if my late husband (Bob) hadn’t been threatening my dog’s life. I couldn’t do it for me, I’d been beaten down that much (physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually…) – but I could do it for a ten month old puppy. Maybe that’s why I do feel that in some way, I really can relate.
To all of you who have had the strength to escape for yourselves, I honor you.
I am going to buy this book.
Sleep ! Yes I remember when sent to the DECKS in PAC, I finally could get some sleep ! but on watch also 24 hours a day for 2 months.
I just love these stories from the time of The Apollo; they are so informative and revealing of the true nature of Scientology. I am definitely getting that Kindle edition that will come out on August the 1st.
I hope that the producers of The Aftermath seriously consider interviewing you, Janis. IMHO, exposing LRH’s REAL attitudes and behavior is a key factor in effective deprogramming from this destructive cult.
Yes, its the whole truth that heals us all. We’ve all had enough part truths!
Looking forward to the kindle Lots of Love J
“Sleep was treated as a luxury in the Sea Org, versus a healthy necessity.”
Let’s see, if I remember correctly, sleep deprivation imposed by a “religion” on any member of that “religion” is a pretty strong indication that the “religion” is not a religion, but a CULT.
Get out of that mess of a cult now, lurkers still “in”.
I’m looking forward to reading your book(s) Janis.
Thanks for shedding light on this fascinating, though depressing, subject of the cult of scientology.
Janis, wow, can’t wait to read your book and thanks for doing this. Met your mom back in the day at CC in LA. She was a sweet heart.
Can’t wait to see it in the book store. Sounds like it will be very interesting.
When Scientology Sea Org members do these physical lockups, this ought to be reviewed by outside world lawyers.
Advice ought be published, and the lawyers’ advice ought be made public.
New people getting into Scientology ought to be given pamphlets which give them their legal rights so as to legally make a stand against Scientology’s lockups.
I wish to hell some lawyers would be paid for, to review WHAT are the best legal steps that Sea Orgers need to take, to legally prevent these lockups per Hubbard’s “religious” rules and “tech.”
A book of all of the advice, and a chapter on how to prevent being locked up, “voluntarily” following Hubbard’s “rules” (“scripture”??).
If that includes resigning from Scientology and thus resigning from participating in ALL of the voluntarily agreed upon formerly agreed rules, that whatever the details of the legal steps are, those need to be published and lawyer supported, and made available so Sea Orgers are NOT physically restrained under NO circumstances.
Now, now, Chuck. It wouldn’t be the criminal organisation known as the “church” of $cientology without the lying and the control by all means – including the criminal ones. L Ron Hubbard kindly identifies one of the control mechanisms he uses in the quote at the start – introversion. False Purpose Rundown, much?
No lawyer would sign off on the treatment metered out by the Co$ – and what would the point be, anyway?
Chuck no need for lawyers. It is ALWAYS illegal imprisonment. Lawyers won’t have good escape advice.
For the CoS what works pretty much 100% of the time is for the victim to immediately state to the jailer that when they manage to get free they are going to the police to press criminal charges and THEN sue in civil court for millions. THAT results in them being expelled immediately if they don’t retract the threat.
Wynski, that advice could go on to leaflets and be released by a drone over The Hole.
🙂
Spike, I learned this while at Int. It is generally known. The problem is that most there don’t want to disconnect from the Church. For various and assorted reasons.
Wynski, I wonder what kind of a safety net there is for folks wanting to leave? Assuming that a lot of SO don’t have family to take them in. What do they do?
Chuck, now that the Universal Human Rights has been published and disseminated broadly by Scientology do you think it will help? No it doesn’t. $ and $s’s are ABOVE to law. Trap #1. We (and you that have joined) are above the law. Won’t do any good Chuck but I understand and commend your post of Goodwill. Those guys need all they can get 🙂
Why not a ‘GoFundMe’ page for the ” Sea Org Freedom Legal Assistance Fund”?
I’m going to buy this book.
Mike, please post in your blog when Janis’s Book 2 is published.
It will be a few months at least. I have thought of giving myself a TM of Xmas but I still have the Sea Org drive in me and I would drive myself nuts to make that TM!!!! I have been warned to take a break and relax before I get back into author gear.
Awesome grabber of a beginning to the book Janis! We’re going to order for sure.. support you and help me peel more of the onion. NIcely done!
Janis, we are ordering your Kindle book.
Janis,
hope to enjoy more of what I see has started out to be a great read. As far as setting a crazy-making TM (?? is that another way of saying DEADline??), might I suggest to write when you want, relax when you don’t, and decompress from it all when you can? I was only in for 10 years and have had a fair amount of normal life before and since, but I find when I spend too much time browsing the post-SCN sites, I get sucked back into that whole bubble a bit, which puts me in the wrong mood to get meaningful work done. Better, for me, is to disconnect from the insanity we lived, focus for awhile on the good we have created and enjoyed since those ‘bad old’ days: the new friends & relationships and our good times together. That gives me a bit of strength to confront things more dispassionately for awhile.
Count on another sale here, of course.
Thanks for the welcoming advice. Yes, a TM is short for a scientology term “Time Machine” – which is a deadline.
Hi Janis, very proud of you and your work.
Me4!!
Thank you so much for telling your story. A very important part of grabbing control of your life back 🙂
Janis and Mike, I will eagerly soak up this book and thank you both from my heart for telling about your personal journeys into The Cult of Scientology. Looking back before “Ethics” reared an ugly head, I had made some incredible friends at Asho Fdn. Back then it was a matter of getting to Thurs @ 2:00pm & there developed a chemistry with others who had gone before or could be helped to not get a lower condition for nothing. At this moment it is hard for me not to think of some of the Sea Orgers I knew and how they ended up. I so wish all in could have gotten out or will get out to see that Ron/dms World is darkness and not light. Love to you both and yours.??
Thank you Janis.
I think the truth many of us ex Sea Org members are looking for is simply that, truth.
All these years later, I still seek it to try to make some sense of our common experience.
I am so looking forward to reading your book.
I will receive my kindle version by August 1st. Good on you Janis! Can’t wait to read it.
I would like to echo Janis in what she says, that much has been said about L Ron Hubbard (whom I never met), and also much has
been said about the Sea Organization, of which I was a dedicated member for 10 years of my life. And I dare say that if you weren’t there, your research and opinions do not reflect the truth. See? You don’t really know if you were not there.
I was hooked by Dianetics in 1968 in Mexico City and joined the Sea Org in 1971 (I am now knocking on 80).
First I met Ivonne Jentz at CCLA in 1972-73 while in training at the Excalibur Sea Org traingng ship in LA and Ivonne, to this day, remains in my heart as one of the kindest, most beautiful beings I have ever met. At the time she was my guardian angel.
In 1975 I went to what is known as the Flag Land Base and that is where I first met Janis and Mike Rinder and many other people I worked with and became friend with.
I left (blew) Flag in 1981 and never looked back.
For about 20 years I never heard anything about Scientology, that part of my life was buried and gone, except for the memory of friends and work companions I had shared so much with.
20 years after I left the Sea Organization, when the internet was starting to catch on, a man named Mick Wenlock started a blog called XSO, his purpose (bless him) was to allow ex Sea Organization members to re-connect with each other. It worked! Lots and lots of ex SO people started to pop up on line, the majority using handles for fear of the CofS attacks but eventually managing to identify with each other and privately getting in touch. It was through this blog that we first heard about Blown for Good and Mike Rinder blowing from London.
During that time Janis joined the blog and became a wonderful source of information for all of us people who had so many questions and she soon became known as the Oracle. I’m sure she remembers that. Lots of people had lots of questiortns, wanted to know what happened to so and so, etc, and the Oracle was usually spot on in answering questions. Her memory of people and events was incredible and always helpful. I myself was a beneficiary of both, Mick Wenlock’s Blog EX SO and Janis’ extraordinary memory. So, when Janis says she cheated about recalling events, she really is just being modest.
For me, im sure the first part of Janis’ book series will be very eye opening and the part where Flag came to land will be a serious trip down memory lane.
I want to clarify here that Janice Gillham Grady is not “The Oracle” who writes on Marty’s blog and vehemently defends Marty. That Oracle Catherine Zoltan. I am not “outing her.” It has been known for years what Oracle’s real name was. But I don’t want people to think that Janice is that same person who calls herself the Oracle.
Cyndy you are quite correct.
Thanks Cindy, I appreciate that clarification. That is a name my good friends, Cathy Cariotaki (RIP) and Rob Williamson originally gave me.
Thank you Alex 🙂
I’ve pre-ordered the e-book. Looking forward to reading it!
And I love the pre-emptive strike, warning scientology that they had too much of a hand in Janis’ childhood/adolescence to be absolved of responsibility.
Great, I would love to hear what you have to say once you have read it.
Thank you so much for writing your story Janis! I look forward to getting my copy and reading it and re-living a lot of my own life memories. My parents knew your parents at Saint Hill in the ’60’s, and I remember them talking very fondly of them, especially of your mother Yvonne. I remember you and Terri and your brother Peter at Int. In many ways I know that your story will touch on yet more things I saw and experienced myself as a second generation scnist, my own indelible memories as a child growing up in scientology and eventually the SO. Again, Thank You!
Hi, Janis: I’m very intrigued by what you’ve written and definitely will read more on it. I was most fortunate in knowing both your parents, though I was never SO. Your Mom gave me some terrific advice once, just before I left for Flag. I followed that advice and had one of the great experiences of my scn years. And I actually interviewed Peter on my radio show. We had a grand time!
Just ordered & looking forward to reading!
I can’t wait to read the whole thing. I pre-ordered as soon as I heard about it.
There you have it in a nutshell: The group that wants you to believe that it has the Keys to the Celestial Kingdom, and promises “total Spiritual Freedom” to all who can afford to go up its very expensive bridge, imprisons those who no longer wish to be staff members – as if wanting to be free was somehow evidence of psychosis!
Can’t wait to read your new book! I’d encourage you to name names in your memoir series, not for the purpose of embarrassing and castigating folks like those who held you against your will, but in order to corroborate the occurrence of serious felony crimes which were committed on cult orders, and to refute the cult’s current blanket denials of all such crimes.
By now, there are many more ex-members than there are current Co$ members in good standing. So, it’s time that the whole truth came out…including the stories of the six Ronbots who delusionally imagined that forcefully imprisoning anyone could ever be reconciled with the ideal of spiritual freedom or be mistaken for a path which could lead anyone to it.
I’d truly like to hear what any of them have to say about the cult now. My bet is that none of them continue to believe that imprisoning folks against there will is the way to spiritual freedom, if only because they ended up being treated just as badly themselves soon after they treated you in that way.
What a way to kick off this first book, love it!
I Look forward to getting the kindle version Janis
Wow indeed!
Ordering now! Congrats!
I think i would rather be a drug runner in Mexico. At least there they shoot you on site..not prolong the agony
Down there they have no respect for human life..says alot about Scn
This book too heart wrenching for me…
Thanks Janis. Sorry I didn’t get to meet you at your recent party.
Ordered the book and really look forward to the read.
I was privileged to be able to read the beginning part of Janis’ book(s). I loved it! It was in the initial stages so I cant wait to read the final version with all of the pictures and detail.
Janis said she cheated by using the Orders Of The Day (OODS) to help jog her memory. She is being modest. I have spoken to many old time SO members and I don’t know anyone that compares with the memory Janis holds about her time on the ship and in later years at INT. If I need to match a picture with a name, or to find out who did what dastardly deed, I contact her. She has a wealth of knowledge.
I totally agree! Jeffrey Augustine’s radio postcast interview of Janis astounded me, not only for the content but her amazing recall from events so log ago!
Just ordered the book. Looking forward to reading about your story.
Just bought your book at Amazon and look forward to reading it. I knew your mother at CC where I was Div V staff and she traded me and another auditor in 1972 for a Flag trained C/S to be posted at CC. When on the Apollo, I spent about a year in LRH’s household unit working with Janet Gilford, Andre Tabyoyen (spelling) and others. Anyway, when I worked for LRH in the capacity of “finding airborne contamination that bothered him”, I discovered the ship’s air vents were dirty and so he had me start-up the Clean Ship Program, still known today as CSP.
Your mother and I were great friends (she was friends with everyone, of course) and my sister (Jill Mitchell, RIP) was her personal aide through Yvonne’s years of illness after I went to Flag.
I am so happy you wrote this book. I am now almost 70 and got “out” in 2011, so (as you know) soon there will be no one left from those heady days at Flag to truthfully chronicle what happened. So, thanks so much for doing this Janis. Your time and effort working on these books is time well spent and your words will not fall on deaf ears. Best of luck Janis with a warm hug of gratitude!
Hi Bob – its been a long time. I remember you from your ship days and working within the household unit. I appreciate yours and everyone elses warm support of my efforts.
Yayy!! Janis. One of my best friends for over 40 years and fellow commodore’s messenger. I cannot wait to read the books and the one thing about us messengers is we do know the truth. AWESOME!!
It would be wonderful if you and Janis could be interviewed together by Jeffrey Augustine. Those videos would be absolutely priceless!
Wow, and Lois is here! Hello from the once, “punk kid newcomer”, to the CMO SU. I kept my head (regarding anything to do with Scientology) in the sand for 30+ years.
Once I “woke up” (due to addressing severe depression) I was absolutely appalled at what transpired after I left. I thought once butt head had control, he would calm down. Guess he has no limitations of selfishness and cruelness.
Before I lost internet service seven months ago, I watched part of your episode with Mike and Leah, so I knew you were safe 🙂 But, it is very good to “see” you here also!
I can’t wait to read your books, Janis.
Ya gotta love ship stories! Already pre-ordered the book for my Kindle App! Can’t wait!
Oh gosh Janis…just this small part makes me cry. I cant wait to read the whole thing. Thank you for working so hard to put it down on paper and share it with all of us. <3
Janis Grady, if you can find a few witnesses to your captivity, I know a few lawyers who would love to sue $cientology.
The statue of limitation is up on false imprisonment and kidnapping.
If any evidence of imprisonment its likely it would have had to be brought up a good while ago , as for trying doing justice on times of past now takes a lot , having not brought it on at time of leaving is a challenge
If smokers could sue tobacco companies…and people with mesothelioma can sue for damages from asbestos exposure, is there perhaps an avenue in civil court to sue? i.e. Long term damages to physical and mental health, such as PTSD.
Wow Janis! I can’t wait to read your book. So happy you got out and are sharing your story.
Wow. Your story is awesome and I will buy the book and read it immediately.