Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 2065

Welcome and Guest Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:00] What's it like to be born into Scientology? Hi, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is September 10, 2025, and today we have in studio two people who, in effect, were born into Scientology. And not only that, they worked closely with David Miscavige and Shelley Miscavige and worked at the highest levels of of Scientology for many years, eventually escaped, and since then have become advocates for helping others escape Scientology and heal and grow afterwards. They've also been featured all over the place in lots of different venues. But today we have joining us on Mormon Stories podcast, Claire Headley. Hey, Claire.

Claire Headley [00:00:47] Hello. Thank you so much for having us.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Yeah, so glad to have you. And we also have Mark Headley. Hey, Mark.

Marc Headley [00:00:53] Thanks for having us.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] And y' all are co hosts of the YouTube channel blown for Good, Is that right?

Marc Headley [00:01:00] That's correct.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] And you also have a book, Mark, called Blown for Good as well.

Marc Headley [00:01:06] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] And y' all have. And I think also, Claire, you head what used to be called the Aftermath foundation, is that right?

Claire Headley [00:01:14] Yes, correct. I serve as volunteer board president for the now Michael J. Rinder Aftermath Foundation. Mark and I have both been on the board since the Foundation's inception in December 2017. And, yeah, we're very proud of the work that we do through the foundation to help people get out of Scientology and start new lives.

John Dehlin [00:01:35] Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're really, really glad to have you. And also, if all that weren't amazing enough, we have Margi here as co host. Hey, Margi.

Claire Headley [00:01:45] Hi there.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] Thanks for coming. Yeah, so just a tiny bit of background info for those of you who have been following Mormon stories for a lot of years. We have covered Scientology a bit in the past. There was this time where we had Chris Shelton, the YouTuber Chris Shelton, on many, many hours. He gave an entire background on the history of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. We're going to cover that a little bit today, but we're not going to go into the depth that I did with Chris.

John Dehlin [00:02:17] That was back in the zoom days of Mormon Stories. So the video quality wasn't that great. The audio quality wasn't that great, but I think the content of it still very much holds up. So we'll make sure that Brooklyn includes that in the show notes because I think that's some really y' all will find valuable as background. We also have had Mike Rinder on Mormon Stories, if my memory is correct.

Claire Headley [00:02:44] Yep. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] And the late Mike Rinder. He is. He passed away in the past year, is that right.

Claire Headley [00:02:50] January 5th of this year.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] Yeah. So, you know, our hearts go out to Mike's family. And he'll always be a legend.

Claire Headley [00:03:01] Yes, completely.

John Dehlin [00:03:02] And of course, Mark and Leah Remini were kind of co. Led, not just their podcast, but also they had the TV series.

Marc Headley [00:03:15] Was it Leah Remini and the Aftermath?

Claire Headley [00:03:18] Leah Remini, Scientology in the Aftermath, which is what that show was the reason for the formation of the now Michael J. Rinder Aftermath foundation, because of the huge outpouring of support and outrage that was really generated on a broad public basis through that show.

John Dehlin [00:03:40] And then I can't help but, you know, not mention. I can't help but mention the Going Clear documentary, because when I was trying to process my Mormon life, Going Clear was a really important part of that as well. I'm trying to remember, were y' all involved in that? Were you all.

Marc Headley [00:03:57] We worked with Lawrence Wright when he was writing the book, and we're covered in the book.

John Dehlin [00:04:02] Oh.

Marc Headley [00:04:03] And then when they did. When Alex did the film version of the book, we contributed, but we're not really featured in the documentary. I think there's one or two documents that they show in the documentary, and we're listed in the documents. But it's funny that you say that, because when that film came out, Scientology did a whole bunch of hit pieces on everybody who they thought would be in the film. And so we had hit pieces done on us, but when the film came out, we weren't even in it. We were like, we're just catching shrapnel here.

Claire Headley [00:04:40] They did a Freedom magazine, which is their hit piece that Their magazine that really goes to town on trying to destroy anyone who speaks out against Scientology for that. It was specifically for that Going Clear show. And we were on the COVID and we were like, hey, we weren't even in it. Yes, we were absolutely used. Excited extensively to corroborate the research and all of that, but. And our lawsuit was referenced in that. In Going Clear.

John Dehlin [00:05:10] Yeah. And we should mention your lawsuit as well. So y' all have been involved probably in more than one lawsuit or.

Claire Headley [00:05:17] No, just the one.

Marc Headley [00:05:18] Just one. But it went the. It was ultimately. It was. We lost it. We ended it, ended up going up on an appeal. And in the decision, the judge said, if you had used different causes of action, you might have fared very differently. And because the FBI was investigating Scientology for human trafficking, then the lawyers sort of went all in on human trafficking when they probably should have gone in on forced imprisonment or assault and battery or forced abortion. Forced abortion. There was other Causes of action, which the same law firm did have other people that went forward with those. Those causes of actions, and those cases were ultimately settled when they were about to go to trial, Scientology ended up getting out the check.

Claire Headley [00:06:09] Interesting.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] So y' all sued Scientology for.

Marc Headley [00:06:13] For human trafficking and labor law violations,

Claire Headley [00:06:19] forced abortion, and a number of other causes. And yes, as Mark mentioned, the judge in the final ruling, because this went on over four years, said, had we pursued false imprisonment, assault and battery, et cetera, then we might have come out differently. But it is what it is. That is a tough.

Marc Headley [00:06:40] Yeah. And it. It also. Scientology is notoriously litigious. And they have. I usually ask people, they say, well, why. Why don't people sue them and why don't they do? Well, Scientology has, let's say, three or four billion dollars. How much would you spend if you had that much money? How much would you spend to keep it? Would you spend a billion? Sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:07:07] You spend a billion to keep another.

John Dehlin [00:07:08] We get that. Yeah, we get that.

Marc Headley [00:07:11] So. And they don't. They. They love. They, they. They have decades and decades of experience in that arena.

John Dehlin [00:07:18] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:07:19] And they use lawfare to their advantage all the time.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] We'll get into that for sure.

Claire Headley [00:07:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] Yeah. And Brooklyn's telling me I may have said Mark Rinder instead of Mike Rinder. I don't know if that's true.

Claire Headley [00:07:30] But you did. That's okay.

Marc Headley [00:07:31] It's okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:32] Okay. It's Mike Rinder, not Mark. It's Mark Headley.

Claire Headley [00:07:35] It was after. It was when you were talking about the show and you just said Mark and Leah instead of Mike and Leah.

Marc Headley [00:07:42] Mike and Marks are often interchangeable.

Claire Headley [00:07:44] Yeah.

Claire and Mark's Early Lives in Scientology

John Dehlin [00:07:46] So the way we're going to do today's sort of interview, we're going to do two parts. We're going to. Part one is. Is going to be Claire and Mark's sort of being born into Scientology up through the point where they start to really question it. And that will be part one of this series. And then we're going to come back for part two, which is going to be what caused them to start questioning it and how they escaped and then what their life has been since. So it's going to be traditional Mormon stories, long form, go grab yourself a latte or whatever, a beverage of your choice and settle in.

John Dehlin [00:08:25] Because Scientology might even out cult Mormonism. I think. I think there aren't many organizations these days that out cult Mormonism, but I think Scientology does. It's for its size, let's say billion dollar, you know, religions. I think Scientology probably takes the cake. So, yep, let's do it. Should we buckle in?

Claire Headley [00:08:49] Yes, let's do this.

John Dehlin [00:08:50] All right. Okay. So, Claire, I thought since you were literally born in to Scientology, I thought it would make sense for you to start. And what we do is we kind of COVID a certain portion, and then I'll switch to Mark and then switch back kind of childhood, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, and then early adulthood, early adulthood, and we'll just kind of go from there. Is that okay?

Claire Headley [00:09:14] Sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] All right. So, Claire Headley, where does your Scientology story begin?

Claire Headley [00:09:20] Yes, so my mother got into Scientology when she was a teenager. She had been raised Roman Catholic. My grandparents immigrated to England from Ireland after World War II. And so my mom's. All her siblings were born in Manchester, England, and that's where I was born. My mother was, you know, it was mid-70s. Hippie, had gotten into some drug use, had, you know, was going astray, and her older brother got into Scientology and got her in. She read Dianetics when she was pregnant with me as a.

John Dehlin [00:09:59] That was a book by L. Ron Hubbard.

Claire Headley [00:10:01] Yes. Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard is. It's referred to as Book one in Scientology as, you know, a primary text and a very foundational piece of the body of knowledge of both Dianetics and Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:10:20] Actually, let's do like a three or four or five minute background on Scientology before we totally jump in. Is that okay?

Claire Headley [00:10:28] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [00:10:29] Yeah. How did L. Ron Hubbard go from, like, science fiction author to religion founder? You know, let's just do a quick.

Claire Headley [00:10:38] Yeah, I mean, my answer to that is he was exceptionally intelligent and psychopathic in seeing and seizing an opportunity. The best ground or the best reference to learn the truth of L. Ron Hubbard's life is Barefaced Messiah by Russell Miller. We always recommend that book. It's excellent. It's really the only true biography on who L. Ron Hubbard was. And of course, you know, for me being born into it, I just knew the only things I was ever told. But, yes, L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer. There are many references to that. In the 50s, he saw an opportunity to make a lot of money by creating a religion.

Claire Headley [00:11:28] And so he wrote the Modern Science of Mental Health that was released May 9, 1950. And then from there, it expanded into a very elaborate structure designed to lure people in, get a lot of money from them, keep them very isolated, get their whole families in, get them. You know, it's a very structured and restraining environment that. That Scientology has created, that it exists to this day. That's that's how I would sum it up.

Marc Headley [00:12:01] Yeah. In Scientology, they paint this picture of L. Ron Hubbard like he was a. He traveled. His father was in the military, so he traveled as a young child. And he went to all these ex countries. And he. You know, he.

Marc Headley [00:12:16] They say that he was the youngest blood brother of a certain Indian tribe, and they have all these, like, this folklore that they talk about Hubbard, and they reference his science fiction writing years as that's what he did to finance his research.

Marc Headley [00:12:37] And so he did that. But the true reason for him doing that was so that he could do this research so that he. The evolution of Dianetics could sort of come about. And then when you read any of the Russell Miller book or any of these, the history, the actual history of Elwyn Hubbard, they'll say the Indian tribe that he said he was a blood brother of, they don't do that in that. Like, these are all basically just propaganda pieces that the church has put together to bolster this image. And even old photographs of him with his prior wives. They photoshopped the wives out of these pictures because they don't want him to look like, oh, he had multiple wives.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] And so he was a polygamist.

Marc Headley [00:13:22] It's funny because he was interviewed. He was on his third wife, and he was asked, well, what about your second wife? And he said, I never had a second wife. And you're like, but you're on your third wife. How did you skip the second and the third? And so it's very funny when he gets caught out. Out when he's asked questions.

John Dehlin [00:13:45] So, like the Mormon Church, I guess, number one, the church is obscured and hidden and whitewashed its founding prophets 100%. And like the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith was a polygamist. So there are a couple parallels there.

The Sea Organization and L. Ron Hubbard's Legacy

Claire Headley [00:14:04] There is another important piece that's, I think, relevant for our stories and that's important to talk about, which is that in the late 60s is when L. Ron Hubbard created what's referred to as the SEA organization. Sea as in ocean?

Claire Headley [00:14:19] Yes. And that is where that's relevant for two reasons. Number one, that's when the billion year contract became something that Scientology members were required to sign to commit themselves, allegedly, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime in service of L. Ron Hubbard and the goals of SC and also relevant to that is that the reason it was created at SEA is because L. Ron Hubbard was already by then, an incredibly paranoid madman who was convinced that government agencies and anyone of any importance was dead set on destroying and stopping him from expanding Scientology. So there's always this element of, you know, hiding and keeping things not in plain view that has been baked into Scientology because of L. Ron Hubbard for many, many years.

Marc Headley [00:15:18] Yeah, he basically got chased out of America. He was in England. Got chased out of England, was in South Africa. Got chased out of South Africa.

Claire Headley [00:15:26] This is uncanny.

Marc Headley [00:15:28] And so the sea organization was a necessity because it was the only place that they. In international waters, was the only place they weren't going to get chased down.

Claire Headley [00:15:38] Interesting.

John Dehlin [00:15:39] So, I mean. Interesting. So both Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard were fiction writers because the Book of Mormon, I think we all agree now, is fiction. Both were polygamists.

Marc Headley [00:15:52] When you say polygamist, he had two wives at the same time, but they weren't together. Yeah, no, I just want to. I just want to make that distinction. They had overlap, but they weren't. He wasn't with. With the two women at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:16:06] Same. I mean. What do you mean? Not like, living together?

Marc Headley [00:16:12] Yeah, they weren't together. He had just basic. He basically pretended the second wife didn't exist and then just remarried kind of thing.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] No, but I mean, still, both fiction writers, both polygamists, both became paranoid by the end of their lives. Both led organizations that were driven out of city after city after city after city. So many parallels. So really quickly, as far as special powers go, Joseph Smith was able to gain a reputation by creating the perception that he had special powers, that he could see treasure, that he could look into a stone and be a treasure digger. I didn't even expect y' all would have a reaction to that.

Marc Headley [00:16:58] L. Ron Hubbard wrote a book called Mission into Time, where he took a bunch of new Sea Org members, these people that have signed the billion year contract, and they went off into a remote island somewhere to go look for treasure that he had buried in a past life, and he.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] Whoa.

Marc Headley [00:17:20] And he knew the location of it.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] So both were treasure diggers.

Marc Headley [00:17:23] Treasure diggers of treasures that they buried in another life. But when you said the special powers thing, there is this thing in Scientology, and this also applies to David Miscavige, but it did originally apply to L. Ron Hubbard, where Sea Org members and Scientologists would meet or have a conversation with L. Ron Hubbard, or, in the case of the current people, David Miscavige, and he would know things that there's no way he could know, or he would come into an office, and he'd be talking to you, and then he'd reach into a drawer, and there'd be the one thing that shouldn't be in that Drawer would be in the drawer. And so there were very similar ideas that they do have some extra ability or superior intelligence that they're able to spot and know things, but there's no way how could they know that? So there absolutely was that as well.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] Interesting.

Claire Headley [00:18:25] But I would say too, it's important to note. So in Scientology, you have upper levels, you have the bridge to total freedom. And so you come in, you're at the bottom of the bridge, and you move up, both in training and counseling. And then they have the upper levels referred to as the OT levels, or operating thetan. Thetan is Scientology's word and equivalent for soul.

Claire Headley [00:18:49] So when you reach the upper levels, it's confidential. And there are. It's alleged that you will get special powers. However, it's also completely forbidden to discuss, to ever demonstrate those special powers to another person because it would be out reality. They wouldn't. It wouldn't. It would create upset and division. So you're not allowed to show the special powers and you're not allowed to compare notes. Like you're not allowed to talk about the materials on the level. So, for example, I had gotten up to OT level 5.

Claire Headley [00:19:27] Mark, not so much. Not so much. And so we, I, we never talked about it until after we left of what was on the. On the upper levels. And the point being too, I. In retrospect, of course, it's one of the most elaborate scenarios of the Emperor's New Clothes that you could imagine is the Scientology reality, because there are no special powers.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Well, there's. That's another parallel because Joseph Smith implemented a super secret temple ceremony that only certain people could go to. And then you had to swear that you'd rather be killed than ever divulge what you learned in the super secret temple ceremony. So, so many parallels. Let me go back. Oh, also, so the parallel of sort of perceptions of special powers is key for both. Let me just ask about theology really quick. Like, Joseph Smith was squarely someone who believed in God, and he was squarely someone who was Christian. And Mormonism is ultimately named after Jesus Christ. And it's different than Protestant Christianity, but it definitely belongs as a cousin of, let's just say Protestant Christianity. Is Scientology have a belief in a God? Does it believe in Jesus? Where does the name Scientology come from? And what are kind of the core theologies that are worth mentioning?

Marc Headley [00:20:57] Yeah, I'll let Claire go on this.

Claire Headley [00:20:58] Okay, so Scientology is definitely diametrically opposed to Christianity. In fact, L. Ron Hubbard wrote that religion is something that was developed by psychiatrists and psychologists on the whole track to control and. To control people and as a control mechanism.

Claire Headley [00:21:20] And I think even at one point, Hubbard wrote that Jesus Christ is a pedophile, according to L. Ron Hubbard. Yeah. And so definitely there is no belief in God. I always think the best way to explain that is if you ask any Scientologist, do you believe in God? The ironic thing is you'll get a different answer from. From every one of them. In Scientology, in terms of core beliefs, there are eight dynamics which are considered concentric circles. It starts with, the first dynamic is yourself, and it goes out from there. The eighth dynamic. So you have self, family, group, mankind, the animal kingdom.

Claire Headley [00:22:07] And then you have the physical universe, matter, energy, space, and time. Then you have the spiritual dynamic, where you yourself as a thetan or a soul. And then the eighth dynamic is referred to as the infinity dynamic, which is really just a very vague belief in a higher power, undefined, not God. There's no praying in Scientology. And so it's more of a practical approach, in fact, being born into.

Marc Headley [00:22:41] They call it applied religious philosophy. That's how they technically describe it. And that also helps them with the religious cloaking. So when they get up to no good, they can say, oh, that's our part of our scriptures, or that's part of our religion. But up until the late 60s and the 70s, there's many references where L. Ron Hubbard says, scientology is absolutely not a religion. And only when they start having government and prosecution and investigative issues that they kind of morph over into, oh, no, this is part of our scriptures or this is part of our religious beliefs. And then Hubbard quickly realized that if he was in that group, then the sky's the limit in terms of what you can do because you're a religiously protected group as opposed to a cult.

Marc Headley [00:23:35] And so that is the kind of switch to the religion aspect of it. It was sort of a developmental aspect of Scientology. It wasn't baked into it from the beginning.

Claire Headley [00:23:47] Yeah. And. And it's a misuse of language, but Scientology believes itself more to be a technology than a belief system. And a technology in that it has the mechanisms and all the theories and everything developed so that you can live successfully in any area of your life.

Scientology as a Business and Cult Comparisons

Marc Headley [00:24:07] Life.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] So it's kind of pseudo science, Self help.

Claire Headley [00:24:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] Wrapped in the cloak of a church or religion just to be able to afford it religious protection.

Marc Headley [00:24:19] It's a cult operating as a business masquerading as a religion.

John Dehlin [00:24:25] I'm going to repeat that. A cult masquerading as a Business.

Marc Headley [00:24:29] A cult operating as a business. A cult operating as a business masquerading as a religion.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] I mean, some. Why are you laughing, Margi?

Claire Headley [00:24:38] It's kind of on point.

Marc Headley [00:24:40] And it's funny that you wouldn't know it going in and growing up in it and being part of it as a child, but when you look back at it, almost every single module or concept or piece of all feeds in to the main core, which is Scientology is good. And if anything bad happens in Scientology, that was because of you.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] Yeah. Blame reversal.

Claire Headley [00:25:10] Yes. Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:25:10] So Scientology can never do anything wrong, can never make a mistake. And if anything bad happens, then you did something, or you have crimes, or you have things that you've done in this life or a past life that you are now punishing yourself for because you're trying to do better. And in order to do better, you need to. Basically, you need to punish yourself to stop you from doing bad things.

Marc Headley [00:25:40] And everything sort of feeds into that, including when you're growing up in it. If you don't want to do Scientology, you're taught that the only people that don't want to do Scientology or don't want Scientology to succeed are criminals, because then their crimes will be uncovered, because Scientology is sort of the cleaner that wipes away all of the facade and all of the COVID ups. And so only the criminals don't want Scientology to succeed because then people will realize their true nature. So they've sort of baked into it this thing where if you're. If you're growing up in it, then you're like, well, I can't say I don't want to do it because then they know I'm a criminal or.

Marc Headley [00:26:31] So you're kind of. It's. You're kind of stuck. If you're a young person and you have this sort of moral dilemma that's going on. And that's the other thing. You can't tell anybody anything in Scientology. They will. If you.

Marc Headley [00:26:49] If you voice or express any discontent or complaint, they call it nattering. And if you do that, then that means you have overts and withholds, acts of commission or omission that you either did or you did and you don't want people to know about. That's the missed withhold that they have in Scientology. And. And almost all Scientologists are required or instructed to write up what's called their ows, their overts and withholds. It's basically like a written confession, and you write anything bad that you've done where it happened. When it happened all of the specifics in great detail. And then you turn those in, and then you basically.

Marc Headley [00:27:38] It's sort of like a confession. And then you're the. And it's like, okay, good. Now that you've done this, you're good. The slate's clean. And anytime anything happens, if you get sick or if you get into an accident or anything happens bad in your life, you must have done something again. And so then you need to go back and do this again. And so this is. Scientologists could have been in for decades. You might write up your overts and withholds. You might write them up a hundred times throughout that period.

Marc Headley [00:28:13] And it depends on where you are and what you're doing in Scientology. But in some places, once you write that up, you actually get put on what's called the E meter, where you hold these electrodes, two cans that are hooked up to this machine.

Marc Headley [00:28:27] And if the needle on the machine is doing a certain characteristic, then it means you wrote up everything. But if it has other characteristics, that means you have to go and write more. And so if you're thinking, and this is another weird thing about Scientology, if you think the E meter works, it will work.

Claire Headley [00:28:48] It's the power of belief.

Marc Headley [00:28:49] Yeah. If you think that. Because they teach you. And this is a thing I only learned afterwards, they teach you that this E meter has all these different characteristics depending on how you're thinking or depending if you did this or if you did that, if you know that it's going to do those sort of things and you have those thoughts, you sort of manifest it to do those things. And so then you go, oh, I didn't write up the thing. I did this thing. And then. So then when you're thinking about that, and they go, hey, you must be thinking about something, because. And so everything in Scientology feeds into everything they want it to do.

Claire Headley [00:29:26] Yeah. Circling back on, though, Mark talked about that the. It's not optional to. To participate in Scientology and that they'll call you a criminal. To expand on that a little bit, it's in Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard wrote the. He had the suppressive person, and. Which is also referred to as the antisocial personality. And those 12 traits. Traits of an antisocial personality. And he details that anyone who doesn't want to participate in Scientology is an antisocial personality who is part of the two and a half percent of Earth's population that are suppressive. And of course, that's. As a child growing up in Scientology, it's almost the worst label you could possibly imagine. And it comes with very real consequences, such as? As losing your entire family to disconnection. So it's layer upon layer of leverage and control.

John Dehlin [00:30:27] Yeah. And I just love noting the parallels. So Mormons also believe that things done in a previous life can impact your status in the next life. There's confession, there's repentance, a strong guilt and shame component where you're always unworthy and you're always trying to become worthy. Criticism is the worst thing. The absolute worst thing in Mormonism, by far, is criticizing leaders, criticizing authority. That gets you excommunicated. You guys are laughing.

Claire Headley [00:31:01] It's completely the same.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] Like, you get excommunicated for criticizing leaders. You don't necessarily get excommunicated for being a pedophile. I mean, that's just a fact.

Claire Headley [00:31:10] And that's the same in Scientology.

Marc Headley [00:31:11] Exactly the same in Scientology, if you say David Miscavige is a bad person, you're never gonna see your family again. If you run a daycare and you're abusing kids, that's, you know, maybe a weekend. You'll have to do some amends project.

Claire Headley [00:31:25] Yeah. On the contrary, Scientology will actually protect said criminal acts and said criminals to avoid any bad fallout to their public perception and reputation. And there are many, many instances of that. I mean, the Danny Masterson trial, in which. Which I testified as an expert witness, is a prime example of that. That is broadly known to the public, where Scientology had documentation of Danny Masterson's criminal acts against women and covered it up and did not report it to law enforcement.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] Yeah. And I'm pretty sure we have the same consultants. The Mormon Church and the Church of Scientology have the same consultants or the same lawyers at the same accountants. Yeah. Because where else in the world are whistleblowers the worst people ever? But criminals and sexual predators are protected and sometimes even promoted.

Claire Headley [00:32:20] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] Like in Mormonism, there are instances where predators actually get promoted. So we've got similar lawyers or consultants at some point, but then shunning. So, like, disconnection. If you leave the church. If you leave the church. We don't have hard shunning like Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologists, but you can definitely be divorced, you know, withheld access to your kids or grandkids and socially ostracized and marginalized. And there's no ethical, gracious way to leave. There's no good reason to leave.

Claire Headley [00:32:58] And if you do leave, you are perceived as a threat for sure. Yes, very definitely. But I'm curious. So in disconnection, it's carried out in such a way, like remove all photos. It's like as if the person has died and absolutely no communication is allowed. Like, if they were to run into you in a grocery store, they'll leave and pretty much run away. I'm curious if shunning is that extreme.

John Dehlin [00:33:29] It's not that extreme.

Marc Headley [00:33:30] On average, in Mormonism, ran into somebody that you knew at the grocery store, and they said, oh, hey, John, what's up?

John Dehlin [00:33:37] It would be a sticky sweet kind of high. Well, it would either be. They would avoid to talk to you. That would probably be the most. The most likely thing is they would just avoid talking to you. If there was a confrontation, it would kind of be a sticky sweet, hello, superficial. And then leave.

Marc Headley [00:33:54] Yeah. That's a similar thing in Scientology, except for the fact that, like, if you. If you leave, that's one thing, but if you leave and then you speak out, then you are what's called a suppressive person.

John Dehlin [00:34:07] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:34:07] And that is put up on a very, very high pedestal of, like, this person. If you are in Scientology and you're getting counseling and you are connected to a suppressive person, and they find out that's it, you can't do Scientology because you're basically just by the connection, you are liability to them. And when you're in it, everybody knows, oh, this guy's an sp or this guy did this, but you don't really know what happened. You just know that he was labeled. And that is another thing. When you are declared a suppressive person in Scientology, they write an issue, a piece of paper that says suppressive person declare. And it goes to everybody, everywhere to let everybody know, this guy is a suppressive person, and you cannot have any contact with him whatsoever. So as long as your family are still in Scientology, if they talk to you, then they're not allowed in Scientology.

Claire Headley [00:35:11] In fact, if they talk to you in violation of that paper that Mark referenced, they themselves can also be declared suppressive people. We both have our suppressive person declared. They don't actually issue them publicly anymore, but we have ours.

Marc Headley [00:35:29] We got a copy of ours. But the best part of that is that if you were witness to some wrongdoing and you saw crimes being committed, and then you said, hey, this is not cool. You guys can't be doing this.

Marc Headley [00:35:45] As soon as you're labeled a suppressive person, you've just been isolated and siloed against any of their current members. So it's a great way of keeping people siloed. And also People that are willing to say, hey, I worked at the headquarters for 15 years and I saw this and I saw that that can never get to these lower level people because then they get to see behind the curtain and then everybody goes, is that really happening? And so it's a very. And they use family as leverage. Basically. If you, if you've done something and they suspect that you're going to leave or you're going to speak out against them, they'll say, hey, listen, your mom wants to talk to you, your sister wants to talk to you.

Marc Headley [00:36:31] These people want to be in your life. If you do this, they're not going to be in your life. And the second they flip the switch and they say you're suppressive. We have family member. We have hate websites that Scientology runs on us where they have her mother, my mother, my sister, her brother, they

Fair Game, Critics, and Suppressive Persons

Claire Headley [00:36:51] have stepdad, my cousin, people we worked with at the headquarters that's run by their tax exempt dollars to maintain. We've had those sites for. They've had those up on us for more than 10 years.

John Dehlin [00:37:06] Yeah. And the Mormon Church definitely indirectly funds hate sites against critics. I've had plenty of that. They don't go to the extent of going to my believing family and friends and get them to record testimonials. So y' all take it to a

Claire Headley [00:37:25] level that is next level. It's really painful. That is painful.

Marc Headley [00:37:29] I imagine even in the past year, this is a new thing. We hadn't really experienced this before, maybe within the last few years, where they actually have been going to my business clients and, and writing letters and sending emails and sending the hate website things directly to my clients and to mine and to Claire's clients.

Claire Headley [00:37:54] They were doing a whole slander campaign on me, on Twitter, to our entire town of Castle Rock, like the Chamber of Commerce and this. And wrong audience, for sure, 100%, but also like chaos makers. Complete your life. Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:38:14] When you leave Scientology, you're basically declared a suppressive person. And there is a policy that L. Ron Hubbard wrote which is basically how you treat suppressives. And in it, he says they're fair game. SPs are fair game. And the purpose of the operations that Scientology runs against someone who's fair game is to destroy them utterly. He says it very clearly in this thing. The purpose of a fair game campaign is to destroy them utterly and to silence.

Claire Headley [00:38:52] And to silence them and to find what they love and destroy it, find what they hate and use it against them. Like it's fair game is an entire body of Policies that is structured on it and breaking it down to exactly steps of how to silence anyone who dares talking.

Marc Headley [00:39:14] It's kind of crazy. And. And it. And I don't. I don't want to say we're numb to it, but the fact that we grew up in Scientology, we were there. We were raised there. It's funny to me that they were like, well, these people are horrible people. And these things, all the things they've done, it's like your creation. All the things that you're saying we did are things that you taught us. We were there.

John Dehlin [00:39:41] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:39:41] You're saying we did all these bad things. We were working for you when all these things happened. And then even in my case, they're trying to portray me as like a devil child. So even when I was 6 years old and we were. My mom was just getting into Scientology, that I was doing things when I was six, and my sister and my mom are doing these videos.

Claire Headley [00:40:02] They're alleging. Alleging.

Marc Headley [00:40:03] Well, they're saying, like, oh, he tried to drown me when I was. And I'm like a six year old trying to drown a grown woman when he was 6 years old. And that's why I was in Scientology and worked at the headquarters for 15 years and kept getting promoted because I was this evil child. So to me, it's almost like.

Marc Headley [00:40:24] It's almost comical when they send it to people, and the people that know me, they go like, dude, I got this email from Scientology. What the hell? And I go like, oh, yeah, that was a lifetime ago. And they go like, yeah, where was they? Also, when I first left Scientology, I had a birthday in Hollywood, and it was the first time I'd had a lot to drink, and I passed out. And I passed out right on Hollywood Boulevard. And one of the guys that was with me was working for Scientology. He took a bunch of pictures of me, gave them to Scientology. And then when I started speaking out, they said, hey, we wouldn't want these pictures to get out, now, would we? And I got sent. I got texted this picture of me passed out on Holly Boulevard. And so I immediately.

Claire Headley [00:41:10] This was like seven years after it happened, by the way.

Marc Headley [00:41:13] And I said, wow, how long have you guys been holding this for? And so I just sent it out, I tweeted it out or whatever, and I put it on Facebook. And I said, hey, just so you know, I'm speaking out against Scientology, and they're going to try to whip this photo out. So I'll just tell you, this is the. The scenario, and that is the photo that they're sending to my clients now.

John Dehlin [00:41:32] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:41:32] And some of my clients are getting this email with this photo, and they're going like, hey, where was that guy when you. When you were here doing that job? You know, we wanted to meet this guy. This guy seems like a party.

Claire Headley [00:41:43] I would like to add two things, though. I. In my opinion, the entire body of fair game policies is as much designed to deter someone who leaves Scientology from speaking out as it is to destroy the people that do. And Mark says we're numb to it? I wouldn't say that. I would say that Mark started speaking out before I did.

Claire Headley [00:42:06] And being that I was born into Scientology, to me, it was terrifying. I was absolutely, very fearful of what they would do to us. But there was a moment Mark had been posting for about a year and a half and just saying what our experiences were at the headquarters, what David Miscavige actually does to his staff in terms of physical abuse and all these things that we'd personally witnessed.

Claire Headley [00:42:31] However, in mid 2008, by that point, we had a two year old and we had a second son who was about three months old. And child services showed up at our door and they said, we're legally required to be here. But we've looked into this claim. It's obviously false. You need to watch your back. And it was at that moment, like, you know, frozen in time for me, where I realized, they are never going to stop.

Claire Headley [00:43:01] Our silence means nothing. We have to stand up to this bullying and abusive organization for the sake of our kids and for the sake of the truth.

John Dehlin [00:43:10] That's a great segue to. To jump back to your story, and we'll definitely come back around to that stuff. So thank you for sharing. I'm so sorry that's happened to y'.

Claire Headley [00:43:20] All.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] You know, the Mormon Church has done versions of that to us and others, but not that bad. So we're so sorry. Really quickly, before we jump back into your story, Claire, and then yours, Mark, just in terms of, like, I don't know, I remember watching the south park episode, you know, Tom Cruise in the Closet or whatever it was, and they talk about the volcanoes and the thetans. I want to get a sense for that deeper theology.

Core Scientology Beliefs and Secret Teachings

John Dehlin [00:43:55] I know you don't learn that until you reach a certain level. And it's kind of top secret also. Just like, there's gotta be good things about Scientology. In other words, ways that it does help people learn and grow. That's gotta be the core of what draws people in and makes. Allows them to Pull people off the street and build what the lure is. So let's talk about the lure. And then also that deeper theology really quick. And then, Claire, we really want to get to your story.

Claire Headley [00:44:22] Sure.

Marc Headley [00:44:23] My friend Jason Begay said it best. He says there's always got to be some cheese in the trash.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:44:31] And that in Scientology, they have sort of these things, they're called introductory courses or extension courses that you can do in Scientology, where if you're. If you're having problems at work, they have a course that's how to make work easier, and they have a communication course that will teach you how to have a proper conversation with somebody and be able to talk to anybody and how to have successful relationships. And so they have a lot of these kind of starter courses that you can do that are. And sometimes under $100, like maybe a $25 course or a $50 course, or you can buy a book and read a book and get the audio book and listen to that.

Marc Headley [00:45:18] And a lot of those things are things that Hubbard sort of lifted from all these other different areas. So Scientology is essentially a whole bunch of stuff that L. Ron Hubbard read about or experienced in other books or in other cults.

John Dehlin [00:45:36] Like a mishmash of self improvement, Right, Exactly.

Marc Headley [00:45:39] Completely life improvement, self help sort of collection that he kind of reworded or tweaked or did something like that. Ron Miscavige, David Miscavige's father, Ron Miscavige Sr. He actually, when he left Scientology after he escaped from the same property we worked at, he was doing a project for many years to try to isolate these key components of Scientology and where Hubbard had got them from. And I think he had, like, 11 different books that pretty much contained all of the core practices of Scientology, and they were all 40 or 50 or 20 or 30 years predating Scientology. So you could see, oh, Hubbard 100% read this book because he didn't even really change that much about it. He just lifted it in toto and put it into Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:46:31] Okay. And so that's another parallel, because Joseph Smith was definitely a plagiarist. A lot of the Book of Mormon comes from the Old Testament, comes from the New Testament, comes from what's called the mound builder myth about Native Americans, comes from Protestant Christianity at the time. So, like, both plagiarists, 100%.

Marc Headley [00:46:53] And the other funny thing is that even the Lord Xenu story, so that's sort of that what's covered in the south park episode.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] Do you want to just give an overview of that.

Marc Headley [00:47:02] Well, essentially, there was over 75 trillion years ago, there was overpopulation in another star system. Nine lives light, 90 light years away or something.

John Dehlin [00:47:12] Was this in one of his fiction books or.

Marc Headley [00:47:14] No, this is on operating Thetan level three, where he.

John Dehlin [00:47:17] But he didn't start this in a fiction book.

Claire Headley [00:47:18] Well, there is a script called to the Stars that covers a lot of the story in parallel.

Marc Headley [00:47:24] Like Revolt in the Stars.

Claire Headley [00:47:26] Revolt. Yes, that's right. Revolt in the Stars.

Marc Headley [00:47:28] It's essentially a book screenplay that he had written before or after. Before before. But it is the entirety of the story, but in, like, book form. And that. But that. That is very sort of. In Scientology, no one's allowed to read it because then you would essentially be reading this confidential level. But even in that, he has this. The character Xenu, he says he could be called Xenu or Z Mu, which is kind of a weird thing to say because it's totally different. But even that, there was a very similar alien character that had been created many years prior by Marvel, the comics, and he's called Zemu, and he has all the same sort of powers that the guy. So even the fact that this core belief, it very likely was ripped off from a Marvel comic book, which.

Claire Headley [00:48:33] We do love Marvel, however.

Marc Headley [00:48:36] But this is.

Claire Headley [00:48:38] Yeah, you love Marvel as fiction. That's right. Not as human. The reason you're struggling as a human being is because Xenu, the galactic overlord from TGIAC 76 million years ago, engaged in a depopulation. There was overpopulation, so he took all the thetans and smashed them into hydrogen cubes and transferred them to Earth on. What was it? DC7 on the planes.

Marc Headley [00:49:05] DC10s with jet engines.

Claire Headley [00:49:06] DC10s with jet engines. And then launched said hydrogen cubes into volcanoes all over Earth, by the way.

Marc Headley [00:49:16] Volcanoes that technically weren't there.

Claire Headley [00:49:19] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:49:20] At that time period, because they hadn't formed yet. So, like, there's.

John Dehlin [00:49:24] So there's an anachronism problem.

Marc Headley [00:49:25] Yeah, so there is. There are. And also, tgi. TGIAC is the name for Earth for.

Claire Headley [00:49:31] Oh, you're right.

Marc Headley [00:49:32] You're right. Yeah, they were from another.

Claire Headley [00:49:34] Yeah, they were from another. They were brought to tgak, AKA Earth. He's right. Yeah. But. Yeah. So when you. And. And so in Scientology, once you've reached the state of clear, that means you've now established that you've. You were the source of your reactive mind and everything. It's gone now, and everything's wonderful. But wait, you have millions of body thetans who are stuck to you as a result of this Lord's inu and the hydrogen bombs and all that. So you literally have to address those body thetans telepathically using the E meter, find out which volcano they were put in, even if that said volcano didn't exist at the time they were put into it. That's not a part of the narrative.

Marc Headley [00:50:19] Essentially all those beings that he put into the volcanoes, when they escaped from the volcanoes, he captured them. And this also ties into the Christianity he basically says. Hubbard says that when Lord Zenu recaptured the souls from the aliens, he implanted them by showing them movie pictures of a man on the cross and the angel, and he showed the cherub and the chariot.

Claire Headley [00:50:48] There is a lot of Christianic culture, Christian symbology that is tied into those upper levels as that they were used to implant beings and is the cause of why you are irrational.

Marc Headley [00:51:03] So basically every person on Earth has these aliens in them that were implanted with these memories of Jesus and angels and all these things. And so that's why everyone has a consciousness, common attachment or drawing to it, because everyone was brainwashed with those images. So that's why they're useful to those religions and they can capitalize on that so really quickly.

John Dehlin [00:51:35] So many parallels. So, yeah, it's just hilarious that when Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon, he saw horses and wheat and sheep and silk and things like that all around him in early 19th century America. So he writes all that into the Book of Mormon. Chariots and wheels and steel. Well, during the time period of the Book of Mormon, none of that stuff existed in Mesoamerica. So I guess both the creations, the fictional creations of both founders have anachronisms that pretty much prove, in your case, the volcanoes that L. Ron Hubbard says, what Zenu sent the thetans to those volcanoes didn't exist yet. We have anachronisms too.

John Dehlin [00:52:21] We also believe that in a pre life, Satan got a third of God's spirit children to follow him and they were all cast out of heaven. And so Satan as a spirit demon, along with a third of all the spirit children God created are sent to Earth. And the purpose of Satan and those demons are to infiltrate the bodies of humans and tempt them to do evil.

Claire Headley [00:52:50] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:52:53] So we have thetans. They're just Satan, something else that follow Satan thetans.

Claire Headley [00:52:59] It's not thetans.

Marc Headley [00:53:01] Yeah, they mispronounce it in the south park episode.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] Oh, that's why.

Marc Headley [00:53:05] Yeah, but awesome. I want to see which rhymes with Satan.

Claire Headley [00:53:10] It's relevant.

John Dehlin [00:53:12] Oh, Interesting.

Marc Headley [00:53:12] Satan and thetan. The guy that was the consultant on the south park thought he. I think the story is that he corrected him and said, oh, no, it's actually thetan. But it was comedically funnier to say it as a thetan, so they left it wrong for comedic value.

Claire Headley [00:53:32] Okay, I have a quick clarification question. So when you're talking about this story that you just told us.

Marc Headley [00:53:39] Yeah.

Claire Headley [00:53:41] And you said the book one Dianetics, right? Yes. So are they viewed as, oh, they're helpful books to read, or is it like scripture? And is this story you just described in another work that you read and then you get. Is that how it works?

Marc Headley [00:54:02] Yeah, yeah. The operating thetan, Level three is the level where you find out about Lord Xenu and the body thetans, and that whole entire story is written in words and it's actually in L. Ron Hubbard's handwriting.

John Dehlin [00:54:18] And you were taught this, Claire, because you made level three, right?

Claire Headley [00:54:20] Yes, I did. I made level five.

John Dehlin [00:54:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Claire Headley [00:54:23] But yes, no. And it's super, super confidential like they are. It's printed on what they call them, plant names. And it's locked up and you have to go through double security doors and it can never leave. And it's super. It's like wired to the tables and extreme levels.

Marc Headley [00:54:45] Yeah.

Claire Headley [00:54:45] Doesn't that remind you of. I don't know if you've watched Severance,

Marc Headley [00:54:48] but we've done many episodes on our channel because, like Mormonism, people will say, oh, my God. If you watch Severance, the amount of things that are like Scientology are. Are insane. And if you've watched Severance, the sea organization in Scientology is Severance. Except you don't have an Audi. You're always an Innie. That's how you only have.

Claire Headley [00:55:13] You only have an Audi if you escape. But yeah, we've did like three episodes just deep diving on Severance. I'm a huge fan of the Severance show. I think it's brilliant.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] That's true.

Claire Headley [00:55:24] Yeah. Absolutely brilliant. For Mark, it was a little too triggering. Yeah. Honestly.

Marc Headley [00:55:29] Because I was like, why do I need to watch this? I worked there. I know what this is. The amount of. The amount of parallels between that show and Scientology are kind of wild. And I want to say Ben Stiller

John Dehlin [00:55:46] was never a Scientologist.

Claire Headley [00:55:46] Right?

Marc Headley [00:55:47] No, he wasn't, but his dad was on the same show with Leah Remini, the King of Queens show.

John Dehlin [00:55:53] Okay, okay.

Marc Headley [00:55:53] And. And we were told that there are several people that were involved with the show that 100% studied Scientology to then do the show or use that as. What do you call it? As inspiration.

John Dehlin [00:56:11] That's weird, because we thought it was based on Mormonism.

Claire Headley [00:56:15] Probably a lot of cult people thought, oh, that's the. Because there are so many similarities. Maybe, maybe it's a study in cultic control and parallels and everything else. But yes, to us, there was many, many parallels.

Marc Headley [00:56:28] Yeah. There is a very funny video on YouTube that's probably from the late 70s or early 80s, which is like signs you're in a cult. And everybody's wearing. You can tell by the way it's shot and what everybody's wearing of the outfits. But if they're like information control. And then they basically go through all these things. And when I first saw the video, I thought, oh, this is. This is super lame. This is kind of like a dumb video. But then when I watched the whole thing, I'm like, oh, yeah, Scientology has every single one of those things.

L. Ron Hubbard's Death and David Miscavige's Rise

John Dehlin [00:57:00] Okay, so let's just go from L. Ron Hubbard to David Miscavige really quick. So L. Ron Hubbard lives until what, the 80s?

Marc Headley [00:57:11] Is that January 1986?

Claire Headley [00:57:13] Yeah, January 20th, 24th, 1986, is the day L. Ron Hubbard passed. Which, ironically, January 24th, unbeknownst to me, actually is the day I escaped. I didn't realize it was the same day L. Ron Hubbard died because they kept it very hush hush, like Scientologists don't actually know. At least I never knew what day he died or the circumstances or anything else.

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Was he supposed to live forever?

Claire Headley [00:57:36] Yeah, well, no, it's because he didn't die. He intentionally dropped his body and left to go to target. And, you know, so we were left behind to finish clearing planet Earth and would then meet us on target too.

John Dehlin [00:57:50] According to theology of Scientology, or belief, he consciously chose to move to a different life station.

Marc Headley [00:57:57] This body would no longer support his research. So in order to travel to the planes that he needed to travel to, then he had to discard this body because it wasn't capable of doing the research that he needed to do. And so. And he actually, in his writings, he talks about, basically the overriding purpose of all of Scientology is to clear the planet, so every single person on the planet will reach the level of clear. In Scientology, that's getting rid of all the thetans. No, no, the thetans come after first. You find out in Scientology and Dianetics, you find out that you have engrams, and that these engrams are a part

Claire Headley [00:58:44] of your reactive mind. So you have your analytical mind and your reactive mind, and the reactive Mind is the source of all psychosomatic illnesses, irrational aberrations, as they're referred to in Scientology. And so, yes, when you're cleared, you've run out those engrams, until you realize that you made your reactive mind. Now you've reached the state of clear.

Marc Headley [00:59:10] And then once you're clear, you find out, well, now you're in a very dangerous level, and it's called the non interference zone. And you have to, as quickly as possible, get from clear to OT3, because on OT3, they call it the wall of fire. And once you walk through the wall of fire, now you basically become cause over the universe. And actually, the way they define an operating thetan is someone who is cause over matter, energy, space, and time. And in order to be an operating thetan, you have to be cause over matter, energy, space, and time.

John Dehlin [00:59:53] And that's meaning you have special powers.

Marc Headley [00:59:55] Yes. And they actually. It's funny that later on in Scientology that there was always the cause. They call it mess cause over messed matter, energy, space, and time. But they have a. They have an actual course in Scientology that you do that is called Superpower. It's an actual. That's what the name of it is, the Superpower Rundowns.

Claire Headley [01:00:19] So it's. It's training and counseling in various different steps, but there's all. Yeah, it is called the Superpower Rundowns.

Marc Headley [01:00:28] And so either way, they have. They basically tell you at first you have in grams. So then you do all this auditing and counseling to get rid of your engrams. As soon as you find out that you have no more engrams, that you actually realize, I created the engrams. And so then you find out not only that, but you've got these space cooties living in you too, called. Called the body thing. Thetans.

Claire Headley [01:00:55] Not to be confused with thetan. You're the. Yeah, you are a thetan. But the reason you're struggling in life for any reason whatsoever is because you have body things. And L. Ron Hubbard even says body thetans is what causes cancer. So by. By doing the upper levels of Scientology, according statistically, it hasn't proven out to be true, of course, but circling back to our. On Hubbard's death, yes, he left us all here behind to finish clearing the planet with the technology he'd created and the path he had outlined. And he was going off to target too. Of course, that doesn't line up with his death certificate, but that's neither.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] Because in theory, he would have been so pure without all these thetans and whatever. He wouldn't have died of cancer or whatever. Yeah, because he would have been so righteous. He would have been pure. So he couldn't just die immortal. Certainly not by cancer.

Claire Headley [01:01:50] Correct. Exactly. Yes.

Marc Headley [01:01:51] And one of the kind of wild things is that there were people with him where he lived. He lived in a place called Creston in California. He lived on a horse ranch there. And he actually instructed one of the people that worked. It was like a maintenance guy that did stuff around the ranch there. He had instructed him that he wanted this E meter to be modified. The Scientology E meter to be modified. Because even right before his death, Hubbard believed that he still had body thetans that he had not been able to get rid of. And his thinking at that time was that he had to electrocute the body thetans to kill them.

Marc Headley [01:02:34] And that the guy basically disregarded Hubbard's instructions because he said, if I do this and you use this, you're going to kill yourself. So he wouldn't do it. But Hubbard was still paranoid up until his death that he still had body thetans that were doing things and making things happen in his own life, and he was paranoid about getting rid of them and how he could possibly get rid of them.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] What does death certificate say? Do we know?

Marc Headley [01:03:07] I think he. It was. I think he. I don't remember exactly.

Claire Headley [01:03:09] I'd have to look.

Marc Headley [01:03:10] Pulmonary embolism.

Claire Headley [01:03:12] There was a. There was a few different things, including drugs in his system. And. And again, any. All of those. The documents relating to that were never shared with Scientologists. All of that was very. Nobody should talk about it. Nobody should ever see it. No. You know, because. No, the narrative is Hubbard went off to target too, and Miscavige swooped in and did a coup, essentially, and took control of everything, because that's not what Hubbard had intended.

John Dehlin [01:03:47] And then also, oh, Brooklyn just shared L. Ron Hubbard's death certificate signed by his personal physician, Dr. Jean Denk. Dr. Jean Denk stated the cause of death, death as cerebral vascular accident, stroke.

Marc Headley [01:04:04] There you go.

John Dehlin [01:04:05] A diagnosis also confirmed by the official news report at the time.

Marc Headley [01:04:10] Yeah, and the interesting thing about that.

John Dehlin [01:04:12] And his body was cremated, it says.

Marc Headley [01:04:14] Yes, well, they cremated him because they didn't want anybody to know that he had psych. Psychiatric drugs in his body. In Scientology, they're very anti psychiatry and anti psychology. And L. Ron Hubbard, when he died, he had an antipsychotic drug in his body. So.

Claire Headley [01:04:32] And Dr. Gene Denkra is a Scientologist. It bears mentioning.

John Dehlin [01:04:35] And then really quickly, one of the big questions I always get is, do the Mormon Church leaders really believe what they're teaching? And did Joseph Smith really believe he was seeing angels? So you're saying there's good evidence that L. Ron Hubbard actually believed in the thetans?

Marc Headley [01:04:51] I genuinely think that he really did think whether it started out that way, and then by the time he got to be how many ever. I mean, he was born in 1914.

Claire Headley [01:05:04] 1911.

Marc Headley [01:05:05] 1911, and he died in 86. So he was in his 70s, and he was paranoid. He was taking antipsychotics, and he thought there were space cooties or body thetans in his body.

Claire Headley [01:05:23] So meanwhile, convinced that government and all kinds of other people are chasing after him and they're all out to get

Marc Headley [01:05:31] him, and he thought Scientology was stealing his money. He thought David Miscavige specifically was stealing his money. So he was paranoid and thinking certain things, and he wasn't too far off on a few things. So it's hard to say. And this was also 86. I was like, I think 1312 years old when that happened. So I remember going. They had an event at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, and that is where it was a big thing. All Scientologists had to attend. It was a mandatory event that everybody had to go to.

Marc Headley [01:06:09] And everybody went to the Palladium in Los Angeles. And there were, you know, tons of people there. And they. These people in Navy uniforms from the Sea Organization came out and they announced that L. Ron Hubbard had dropped his body. That's what they call it when you pass away in Scientology. You drop the body because you're a spirit. The body is just like the container.

John Dehlin [01:06:34] Mormons believe that. 2.

Marc Headley [01:06:35] Okay. So as soon as they said he had dropped his body, people started crying and gasping and all kinds of.

Claire Headley [01:06:43] This video is on YouTube, by the way.

John Dehlin [01:06:45] I think I've seen it.

Claire Headley [01:06:46] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:06:46] And it was a wild thing.

John Dehlin [01:06:48] Pretty sure Tom Cruise was there.

Marc Headley [01:06:49] No, he wasn't there. This was. This was in 1986.

John Dehlin [01:06:53] Oh, before.

Marc Headley [01:06:54] So it was before Cruz was in Scientology, I think, even. But. But I remember when that happened. And they put this number up on the screen that showed how far back L. Ron Hubbard had researched or something like that. It was a specific date, and it was like, 47 digits long. And it was sort of like, for some people, they say, he's passed away. Oh, and this is his research or whatever has gone this far back. Some people were like, I'm out. Like, yeah, this is crazy. You guys are crazy. Basically, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:32] Okay.

Marc Headley [01:07:34] A little telling what it's Funny, because actually the person who told me this is my neighbor in Castle Rock. My. A neighbor who lives two houses over went to the same Scientology school that I went to and we didn't even know he was a Scientologist. He didn't know I was a Scientologist until like the Scientology and the Aftermath show came out. And he watched it and he saw Claire and I on the episode and he walked over. Hey, man, I wanted to share my yearbook with. I think we went to the same school. And I was like, dude, he. This guy had done work. He's a construction guy. He's like, you've done work for me. He goes, yeah, I don't, I don't lead with that. I'm like, I don't lead with that either.

Claire Headley [01:08:15] Even his wife didn't know.

John Dehlin [01:08:18] Well, that's wild that L. Ron Hubbard, by the end of his life believed his own fiction. That's crazy.

Claire Headley [01:08:24] I think that has a lot to do with, number one, the power of belief, number two, his psychosis as proven by the information we've heard from people who were directly with him. At some point you can spin a story so elaborate and start believing it. I personally don't think that's the case with David Miscavige.

John Dehlin [01:08:49] Yeah, well, really quickly, so did again, probably another parallel with Joseph Smith. Did L. Ron Hubbard leave a clear succession plan for who would take over?

Marc Headley [01:08:59] No, same with Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [01:09:00] In fact, Joseph Smith probably told five or six different people they would be his successor.

Marc Headley [01:09:05] That's exactly what Hubbard. That's exactly what Hubbard did. In fact, Hubbard had written the levels up to OT level 8 and that was it. But the bridge to total freedom that he wrote in the 60s has all the way up to OT level 15. But he had never written from 8 to 15. He spent the last several years of his life writing a fiction series called mission Earth. It's 10 volumes and all of the volumes are a lot, lot. And it's also very, very graphic. Space porn. That is what it is. It's. Anybody reading it would. Any Scientologist reading it could not negate that fact. It is horrible, horrible, violent porn in space. That's what it is. The whole space.

Claire Headley [01:10:05] Including also involving children and very extreme.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] Is this available to read?

Marc Headley [01:10:12] Oh, yeah, it's called Mission earth. It's a 10 volume science fiction series.

Claire Headley [01:10:16] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:10:17] Okay. He didn't write past OT8, but he spent years writing this and. Right. It was basically released right after he passed away.

Claire Headley [01:10:29] Well, they start the. Mission Earth started. The release started in like the early 80s, but they were coming out regularly.

John Dehlin [01:10:37] Yeah.

Claire Headley [01:10:37] And yeah, that was one thing. Like, oh, well, at least he finished Mission Earth. But bummer, he didn't finish the upper levels.

Marc Headley [01:10:44] So that's the other thing that's kind of like, so wait a minute. So he wrote all these upper levels, and he spent all this time to this point, but from 8 to 15, he didn't do anything, but he spent all these years writing this instead. So it couldn't have been that important to him that if he. He decided, oh, no, this science fiction series, I really want to get that out. Who cares who takes over the Scientology Church? And who cares about these upper levels? I really got to jam this space series.

Claire Headley [01:11:16] And it bears mentioning too. Okay, so we're referring to the bridge to Total Freedom. There's two sides to the bridge. One side is all the training where you come up the levels, and there are all these different classes as referred to of auditors. So you have Class 0, Class 1, all the way up to Class 12. Class 12 is the top of the grade chart. It's the highest trained auditor or counselor that you can be.

The Bridge to Total Freedom and Financial Cost

John Dehlin [01:11:41] How much money gets you there just to let people know how much you lose.

Claire Headley [01:11:44] Like, ballpark for the training is cheaper than the counseling. So I would say just off the top of my head, probably a quarter of a million dollars, including materials, multiple E meters that you have to own

Marc Headley [01:11:57] if you want to do the training and the counseling. You can't get in. You can't get up to there without a half a million.

Claire Headley [01:12:05] Like, at least.

Marc Headley [01:12:06] And if you want to do it fast, then maybe a million. Like, it's not cheap.

Claire Headley [01:12:12] No.

Marc Headley [01:12:12] And there's no poor OT8s rolling around.

Claire Headley [01:12:16] And keep in mind, that's just the cost of those transactional pieces of it. That doesn't include the donations you're expected to make to the International association of Scientologists Normal or traveling to Clearwater to do the upper levels, staying in their hotels, on and on and on. All the elements of it. But yeah, so as Mark's saying, the training side was fully released up to class 12. But the counseling side, the auditing side, lists up to OT15. But he only got as far as OT8.

Marc Headley [01:12:50] And I will note that by the time you get through operating thetan level 7, you are supposed to have excised all of these body thetans. So the fact that there was an OT Level 8, which does not involve any body thetans, it has to do with you realizing that you. And when we talked about the God dynamic earlier, and that Hubbard didn't really definitively define that there is a God, but there are higher level beings. When you get to OT level 8, you find out that you are a God and you created Lord Xenu, you created the body thetans, you created the reactive, you created everything. And so the fact that Hubbard wrote a level that said that, but at the same time he thought he still had body thetans.

Claire Headley [01:13:52] Yes, exactly.

Marc Headley [01:13:53] Then you go, there's sort of a hangup right there where OT7, you're not supposed to have any more body thetans. Hubbard wrote OT7 and then he wrote OT8. But then you find out that he still thought that he had body thetans. You basically go like, well, he must have got writer's block on the OT levels, because he could. Couldn't resolve that. How do we write these next levels? And that's another crazy thing in Scientology is they still are telling members that there are ot 9 through 15 are still going to be released. But everybody that worked at the headquarters and everybody who knows anything about any of this knows There is no OT levels above OT 9. They don't exist.

John Dehlin [01:14:40] Interesting. And by the way, Joseph Smith taught that righteous Mormons would become gods as well someday.

Marc Headley [01:14:46] Wow.

Claire Headley [01:14:46] I've heard that. And that they would get a planet and that's where their wives would go live and that they would all be called. Don't they have a secret name? The wives get given a secret name.

John Dehlin [01:14:58] I mean, all Mormons when they go to the temple are given a new name when they go through the temple for the first time.

Marc Headley [01:15:05] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:15:06] But so, so many parallels. It's wild.

Claire Headley [01:15:09] Which is funny, by the way. It just occurred to me, this is not the case now, but in the 70s, when this property, when the headquarter property was acquired, it wasn't for a religious belief. No, no, we're talking about the. I'm talking about the headquarters in Hollywood, the compound in Gilman Hot Springs, California, which is where Mark and I worked for 14 years. But for security reasons, nobody was allowed to use their actual name. They were all renamed. It wasn't religious. It had nothing to do with religion. It had to do with paranoia. But nonetheless, it just occurred to me,

Marc Headley [01:15:42] like if somebody was listening on the radios or on the phone, no one used anyone's identified name. So everyone had nicknames. And even to this day, we still interview those people or talk to those people, and we use their code name. We don't use their real name. Cause we never knew their real name. Only knew their code name.

Claire Headley [01:16:06] Yeah, that's Very innie.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] That's very. Right.

Marc Headley [01:16:10] That's another thing.

Claire Headley [01:16:12] Very much so.

Marc Headley [01:16:13] Where they even have different names. It was funny because somebody. I can't remember who it was, but somebody I was talking to that said, oh, I talked to Gary the other day. And I go, who's Gary? And I go, you know, Gary used to be the security guy at the international headquarters. I go, oh, you mean Jackson? And they go, yes, Jackson. That was his code name was Jackson.

Claire Headley [01:16:32] Because we just never knew him as Gary. So why you would. Would. We were like, who's Gary?

John Dehlin [01:16:36] And when ex Mormons are feeling naughty, they tell each other their temple names and refer to each other by their temple names. That's awesome. But that's real blasphem. That's blasphemous.

Marc Headley [01:16:46] Oh, it's a bad thing.

John Dehlin [01:16:48] Super bad.

Claire Headley [01:16:48] That's.

John Dehlin [01:16:49] But so that's on par with Mormon wives. Mormon wives are allowed to tell their husbands their temple names, but Mormon husbands aren't supposed to tell their wives their temple names.

Claire Headley [01:16:59] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:17:00] So it's super.

Marc Headley [01:17:02] So we have a very similar thing which is in the Sea Organization specifically, it doesn't matter if you're male or female. If you're a female and you're an officer, then the other Sea Org members have to call you sir or by your last name with mister.

Marc Headley [01:17:22] So, because she worked in Religious Technology center, which is the highest Scientology organization, and I worked in Golden. Golden Era Productions, which was the. Like, the propaganda machine of Scientology, where they made audio, visual, TV ads and stuff like that. But it's a much lower organization than Religious Technology Center. If she came to my work area with other RTC Sea Org members and they were asking me questions, and if she asked me a question, I would have to say, yes, sir. And I would have to call her Mr. Headley, even though she was my wife. And I would have to say, yes, sir. Or if somebody said, did somebody come by? I would have to say, yeah, some people from RTC. And they say, well, who. Mr. Headley?

Claire Headley [01:18:06] If he referred to me as Claire, he could get written up in a knowledge report because it's out fo 38 Flag Order 38, which is called Ethics

Marc Headley [01:18:15] presence, which dictates these rules and things that you have to do. Yes, really quickly. I had to call her Mr. Headley many times.

Claire Headley [01:18:26] Poor sir.

John Dehlin [01:18:28] Just the final parallel. Joseph Smith absolutely became super paranoid at the end of his life and made all sorts of terrible decisions, endangering the lives of so many people because he was being chased by the law and kind of went crazy anyway. All right, well, that's it.

Marc Headley [01:18:45] Okay, so press like a baseline for what we're going to talk about.

John Dehlin [01:18:50] Yeah. But then also, Brigham Young was the successor to Joseph Smith, and he kind of seized control of the Mormon Church. Do you want to tell us, just briefly, David Miscavige.

Claire Headley [01:19:04] I love how we use the word briefly. I feel like this whole last discussion, John, was like 20 minutes. Three minutes.

John Dehlin [01:19:10] Three or four minutes.

Claire Headley [01:19:12] Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the history of Scientology and everything is so involved. This is the brief version. Absolutely. I believe you.

Marc Headley [01:19:21] This is the layers we're doing is the cliff.

Claire Headley [01:19:25] But yes. So David Miscavige. So when L. Ron Hubbard died, Annie and Pat Broeker were a husband and wife that were with him until the day he died. And. And again, some of this is somewhat folk law because it was kept very under wraps. But the initial announcement was that Pat and Annie were to be to take over as the loyal officers. But within a day, that was cancelled and scrapped. And now David Miscavige was at the Palladium event announcing the death of L. Ron. Or no, not the death. L. Ron Hubbard dropped his body and had moved on to target two. And that was the beginning of the end of anyone else having any position of power in Scientology to where you fast forward to today.

Claire Headley [01:20:16] David Miscavige is. His official title is Chairman of the Board, which implies that there is a board, which there isn't. He's the chairman of a board of one. And even any person during the years that we were there, any person who had an executive position in Scientology already had a signed letter of resignation on file. So that no matter what, David Miscavige had complete control over every organization in Scientology. And he, as the chairman of the Board of Religious Technology center, is the highest ecclesiastical person in Scientology that has complete control.

Marc Headley [01:20:58] And the way he did that was he was the head. David Miscavige was. Before this, he was chairman of the board, Author Services. And what Author Services is, it's a corporation that is set up within Scientology, that is Hubbard's literary agent.

Marc Headley [01:21:21] So every time somebody anywhere in Scientology buys a Scientology book or does a Scientology course or goes through a Scientology sponsored rehabilitation program, they get a cut. They get a royalty of that. And that royalty organization, Author Services, was what David Miscavige was the head of. And he was involved with the lawyers and involved with all the different corporations in Scientology so that he knew how to protect Hubbard from and insulate him from being charged in any of these cases.

Marc Headley [01:22:02] Because he's just the author, and he's just getting royalties. He's not getting all the money from Scientology. And so they basically corporately and legally figured out how to insulate Hubbard. But David Miscavige was the one in charge of that project. And it was actually called. I want to say it was called Project All Clear. And it was so that Hubbard could eventually come out of hiding from law

Claire Headley [01:22:28] enforcement and to eliminate the pending lawsuits. At the time, that was also part of Project All Clear, or maybe Project Clear, I can't remember. But yeah.

Marc Headley [01:22:38] But basically, when David Miscavige was doing that, he figured out, and as instructed to him by L. Ron Hubbard, you have to make it so that I can be in the clear again, and I'm not being chased by all these different governments. And in order to do that, David Miscavige isolated all of the weaknesses in Scientology, figured out how he could silo all these different things. And I think this is my opinion that during the course of that, he realized that he now knew everything, how it could work even more than Hubbard did. And he was him and Pat Broeker. Pat Broeker was the one with L.

Marc Headley [01:23:25] Ron Hubbard, and David Miscavige was in Los Angeles or at the headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs. Those two places was where David Miscavige was operating out of. And during that time period, David Miscavige was isolating. Okay, these are my allies. These are my enemies. These are the guys that are threats to me. So as soon as Hubbard passed away, he put his plan into action, and he immediately got rid the people that were. This is an interesting thing, too. The people that were with L. Ron Hubbard, besides Pat Broeker, everybody that was with L. Ron Hubbard when he passed away went to this thing that's called the Rehabilitation Project Force within the city organization. It's basically like a labor and reprogramming camp.

Claire Headley [01:24:14] Yeah, it's the ultimate punishment to a member of the SEA Organization. You're literally not allowed to talk to anybody else outside of that program. You dress in black. You have to run everywhere. You're interrogated five hours a day for your evil purposes. And when you're not getting interrogated for evil purposes, you're doing heavy manual labor. It's the most extreme reprogramming in Scientology.

Marc Headley [01:24:38] Do not speak unless spoken to. Yeah, the whole thing. So all of those people besides Pat Broeker, and the only reason Pat Broeker didn't stay is David Miscavige suspected that he might have OT 9 and 10, and David Miscavige couldn't find OT 9 and 10. And Pat Broeker said, hey, L. Ron Hubbard said, I would be in charge. And Dave's like, well, that's not going to happen. I'm going to be in charge.

Marc Headley [01:25:05] And Pat Broeker was like, well, I'm going to tell everybody all the stuff you've been up to. And David Miscavige told him, you've been transferring large amounts of cash over state lines. I can just turn you in right now. We've got that all taped up. And so he basically offered Pat, you just ride off into the sunset and you don't say anything, and we'll never bother you again and we'll never hear from you again. And that's the last time anybody ever hears of Pat Broeker. His wife, Annie Broeker, tried to escape and go see Pat. And then she was essentially isolated and locked up in the Gilman Hot Springs property until the day she died.

Marc Headley [01:25:46] And she had escaped. She had at least tried to escape once or twice. And she was recovered and caught mid escape and brought back to the property.

Claire Headley [01:25:56] Yeah. And so Hubbard passed in January 1986. In 1987, by that time, David Miscavige took over the Religious Technology center, which is the. It's also referred as. Referred to as the Inspector General Network. It's essentially intended to be the internal affairs of Scientology or the policing organization. They're the ones who are supposed to have oversight at any level of Scientology. And as we mentioned earlier, it's the highest ecclesiastical organization. So he, David Miscavige comes in, takes that over, and then systematically removes anyone who was loyal to anybody other than him.

John Dehlin [01:26:44] Yeah, that's how power works.

Claire Headley [01:26:45] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:26:46] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:26:47] And the funny thing is that a lot of the people that worked with L. Ron Hubbard throughout all the way from the 50s, all the way up into the 80s when he got it, they gotta go. Well, if you look at it in Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard says that 2 1/2% of the population of Earth are suppressive, period. And then there's a small portion of people that are sort of susceptible to those people.

Claire Headley [01:27:16] 20% are potential trouble sources. And of those that 20%, 2.5% are suppressive persons. So basically, to clear the planet, you'd have to clear 80% and the other 20%. They're just.

Marc Headley [01:27:30] They're just a write off. They're just a write off. They're never going to be cleared. Well, if you look at historically, I would say it's about 97.5% of the people that worked with L. Ron Hubbard have been declared a suppressive person. So. And even at the headquarters, there is a large percentage of the people that work at the international headquarters of Scientology that used to work with L. Ron Hubbard. And most of them are doing things that they're not public facing, or they're not interfacing with public, and they're on a job in the middle of nowhere, isolated until they die. And once they die, then there is no living person that's going to be able to tell you about what L. Ron Hubbard was up to. It's only going to be the Scientology propaganda that's left.

John Dehlin [01:28:22] So they've all been isolated.

Marc Headley [01:28:24] They've all been isolated or declared suppressives and kicked out of Scientology.

Claire Headley [01:28:28] And even within the executive structure at any time, information is very carefully siloed so that it's not broad common knowledge, even within the executive structure of Scientology, as to, let's say, what's going on with this legal case or what's happening with this. You know, it's David Miscavige is the kingpin on top that runs everything, but there's not. There's a very small handful of people who have the same information he has. Shelley Miscavige, by the way, was one of those people.

John Dehlin [01:29:02] So really quickly, it's David Miscavige who declared so many of L. Ron Hubbard's associates as suppressive people. Is that right?

Claire Headley [01:29:10] Well, that is right, yeah.

Marc Headley [01:29:11] During. During the. I want to say during the 80s and the 90s, there was a lot of. Because the Scientology were being investigated by the FBI, and they had been raided in the late 70s, and it was uncovered that they had perpetrated the largest infiltration in the United States government in its history.

Marc Headley [01:29:32] Hundreds and hundreds of operatives. Irs, FBI, Department of Justice, American Medical association, they had infiltrated organizations all over the United States and in foreign countries as well. They had people everywhere, and they were essentially trying to whitewash Scientology's criminal files, take information out of them, and plant, like, just flowery nonsense stuff in them. So when people was like, hey, we got this thing on Scientology, and they pull out the file, and they'd be like, oh, these guys are like hippies. Like, who cares? They're not doing anything wrong. And that was a project called Operation Snow White that L. Ron Hubbard had basically been running. And when they caught them in the late 70s, they raided them. They raided Scientology facilities in Los Angeles, I think, in Washington, D.C.

Claire Headley [01:30:28] and subsequently in Canada. There were raids as well.

Marc Headley [01:30:31] Yeah. So basically, when that happened, there was A big campaign to flush out any SPs that were within the organization. So there were people that were being declared suppressive just regularly. And if you had any, if you, if you discussed something like, oh, I think this is wrong, or immediately pulled in, people would rat each other out in order. Scientology is very dog eat dog within the sea organization. Stepping on somebody to get another level up is very, very common within the C organization. It's very. If you're loyal to David Miscavige and you show your loyalty, then you will be rewarded. If you show dissent or you show disagreement, then that will also be very quickly flushed out.

John Dehlin [01:31:27] Yeah, really quickly. So, yeah, those of you who follow Scientology will know that David Miscavige's wife, Shelley has been missing for decades now. How long?

Claire Headley [01:31:38] Since approximately mid-2005.

John Dehlin [01:31:42] So 20 years.

Claire Headley [01:31:44] Yeah. So publicly in Scientology. That long. And I don't think her family have heard from her since 2014. So she's gotten. Become more and more isolated. During the years that Mark and I worked at the headquarters with David Miscavige, Shelly was always present. She was at every meeting. She worked as his assistant. So yes, she was his wife, but also she was his deputy, his. His right hand man there. At every single meeting, every single. She was copied on every single piece of correspondence he had with anybody.

John Dehlin [01:32:22] And some people think she's dead.

Claire Headley [01:32:25] I don't think she's dead.

Marc Headley [01:32:25] We don't think she's dead. She was at a property near Big Bear called Running Springs. There's a property, there's another division of the church, which is called the Church of Spiritual Technology. And this group is responsible for taking any of L. Ron Hubbard's recorded or recorded written materials and burning them into gold records. If it's audio and if it's written word, it is etched into metal plates that are put into, hermetically sealed with argon gas, titanium time capsules. They bore out the entire side of a mountain.

John Dehlin [01:33:07] I was going to say there's got to be a mountain involved or they're

Marc Headley [01:33:09] boring into a mountain. And all of these cases with all these materials, it's a long, like hundreds and hundreds of yards long corridor that has tracks that all of these titanium, they're called time capsules. And they're all loaded with all these materials and they're put in these mountains. There's locations in Running Springs, near Big Bear. There's one in New Mexico, in Trementilla, New Mexico. There's one in Washington. I want to say Petrolia, California. Yeah, Petrolia, California. They have all these mountains everywhere, and they have a distinct logo that is made in the top of the property so that it can be seen from space. So that if somebody comes from another planet after the planet's been destroyed by nuclear.

Claire Headley [01:33:58] Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. In the event of an earth ending event, the technology of Scientology was. Will still be available. They even had solar powered cassette players and record players. Yeah, record players, exactly. Could listen to his lectures. Because, of course, if the planet is destroyed, your number one priority is going to be to listen to Elwin Albert lectures again.

John Dehlin [01:34:20] And y' all will not be surprised to learn that the Mormon Church has a huge granite vault in the side of a mountain. And in our case, we put genealogy, you know, there because we believe that again, when Jesus comes again, we'll spend a thousand years all getting baptized for all the people who have died. Baptisms for the dead. But we'll need all these genealogical records to know who to get baptized for. So we have a big granite vault that's wild for record keeping.

Claire Headley [01:34:51] Wait, I just don't understand what you mean by baptism is for the dead.

John Dehlin [01:34:55] So there's a Bible passage that says, except a man be born of the water and of the spirit, he can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And so in early 19th century, that was often interpreted as meaning you had to be baptized by water and then by the gift of the Holy Ghost to be able to go to heaven. And if you don't get baptized by water, you can't go to heaven. But then that begs us to question, what do you do for all the millions and millions of people who died before Joseph Smith restored the one true church, or even before Jesus was born?

John Dehlin [01:35:29] How do all those people go to heaven? Or are they all just going to hell? Well, Joseph Smith came up with the bright idea that humans who are living, once they've been baptized into the true church, they need to go to temples and get baptized in a water font proxy for all the people who have ever lived who died without a baptism,

Marc Headley [01:35:52] but their specific ancestors.

John Dehlin [01:35:55] Them. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone who was anyone who wasn't about membership.

Claire Headley [01:36:02] That sounds equivalent to trying to clear the planet statistically.

Marc Headley [01:36:05] No, no, no, no, no, no.

John Dehlin [01:36:07] And it's not just anyone who wasn't baptized Christian. Anyone who wasn't baptized Mormon. So all the Catholics and all the Baptists, they all have to get re baptized too. And not just all the ones living now, but all the ones who've ever lived or who will ever live, live. Wow. So Mormons are going to Spend a thousand years with Jesus in the millennium, just constantly getting baptized in temples for dead people.

Marc Headley [01:36:31] Well, that. They have a similar thing in Scientology where they say, we have to clear the planet. And there is the belief, while there is the belief in Scientology, that you had a prior life and that things that you did in that life will affect what's happening in this life.

Marc Headley [01:36:49] If you were, let's say, a Scientologist in your last life, and you went clear when Hubbard was around, if you remembered in this life that you were a clear in the last life, then you were called a last lifetime clear.

Marc Headley [01:37:05] And because there had been so many generations of Scientologists, this was a thing. As soon as David Miscavige took over, he canceled all of that. So Scientology, every few generations, they have to wipe the slate on clearing the planet because they lost all those people that were clear that have now passed away, and they have to restart. So to clear the planet. It's inherently flawed by math because, well, to start off, they can't even clear the zip code that they operate in. But besides that fact, every 20 or 30 years, they're wiping out all the old Scientologists and all the new ones. They have to have new ones to then clear. So whenever we're talking with Scientologists, because that's all they ever talk about, usually. Clear the planet. Clear the planet. Clear the planet.

John Dehlin [01:37:55] They can't even clear the Scientologists.

Marc Headley [01:37:57] Yeah. You can't even get the people that are in Scientology clear. How are you going to clear the planet? And so it's sort of this.

John Dehlin [01:38:06] It's.

Marc Headley [01:38:07] Whenever you're talking with a Scientologist, they. They have. They've been trained for years, even, sometimes even decades on how to respond to criticism of Scientology.

John Dehlin [01:38:18] Of course.

Claire Headley [01:38:19] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:38:19] But as soon as you start using math.

John Dehlin [01:38:21] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:38:22] Then they kind of. They. They start glitching like, oh, well, you're like, yeah, it's. It's mathematically impossible for you to clear the planet.

John Dehlin [01:38:31] Bad news. They're gonna. To keep believing anyway. This reminds me of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They have that teaching that 144,000 are going to, like, make it, you know, into whatever type of salvation they do. But they've had so many Jehovah's Witnesses now for over 100 years. They've well exceeded the number of people promised or told they'd be in the 144,000. So they have to keep excluding people or redefining what it means.

Marc Headley [01:38:56] Do they have a list?

John Dehlin [01:38:57] They use to. They used to have A list. They did, but, you know, like. Like. Like with David Miscavige, at some point, the math stops adding up and starts to become problematic. So they have to get rid of lists or redefine things. I forget.

Claire Headley [01:39:10] But, yeah. By now, there's no question in my mind there are far more former Scientologists than there are actual Scientologists in today's world.

John Dehlin [01:39:18] For sure.

Claire Headley [01:39:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:19] Okay, well, that's a good background. Or that's at least five minutes. Right.

Marc Headley [01:39:26] Six minutes last.

Claire Headley [01:39:27] Glad we took that five minutes.

John Dehlin [01:39:29] Thanks. That's really fascinating, and I think it's fun to do the parallels. Someone really should do either a YouTube video or a book on the parallels between Joseph Smith and. And.

Marc Headley [01:39:40] Well, I think by the time we're done, we will. Somebody could just clip this.

John Dehlin [01:39:44] Yeah, I think so. I think so. Okay.

Claire Headley [01:39:48] All right, Claire, it is fascinating to see the parallels.

John Dehlin [01:39:50] Absolutely. And I'm sure there's more. All right, Claire, back to you. So you're born into this situation in what year?

Childhood Inside the Sea Organization

Claire Headley [01:40:00] 1975.

John Dehlin [01:40:02] So you're born while L. Ron Hubbard is still alive.

Claire Headley [01:40:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:40:05] And your parents were already members?

Claire Headley [01:40:08] Yes. My mom and dad were both staff members at the Manchester Org in England. My mom read Dianetics while she was pregnant with me. She actually named. Named me after the state of clear. Clear is French for clear.

John Dehlin [01:40:23] Interesting.

Claire Headley [01:40:25] I didn't even tell Mark that until a couple of years ago. It was so embarrassing.

Marc Headley [01:40:28] I was just like, say what?

Claire Headley [01:40:30] You're like, one more thing.

Marc Headley [01:40:32] After clear, I was like, that's so.

John Dehlin [01:40:36] It makes sense.

Claire Headley [01:40:37] Yeah. But. Yeah, so my dad very quickly became disillusioned with Scientology and decided he wanted nothing more to do with it. So my first experience with disconnection was when I was 3. My mom divorced my dad, and I've had. No. Never had contact with him since that. Since that time, she always told me the narrative that, well, he cheated on her and he's not a good person. But since I've gotten out of Scientology, I've found that the facts from his family, who we are in touch with, they're like, yeah, no, it was all about Scientology.

John Dehlin [01:41:20] He passed away before you.

Claire Headley [01:41:21] No, no, he's still alive. Yeah, yeah, he's still alive. I'm in contact with all my aunts and uncles. He's also the black sheep of his family, allegedly. So there's more there than we see. I did reach out to him, but. Wasn't meant to be.

John Dehlin [01:41:35] Yeah.

Claire Headley [01:41:36] But nonetheless. So my mom and dad are divorced. I'm three now. My mom is just becoming more and more involved in Scientology. She was very fanatical from the get go. She had this dream that she wanted to go to the ship and work with L. Ron Hubbard as a messenger. Anyhow, so shortly after my fourth birthday, she signed a billion year contract and we moved to Saint Hill, which is the headquarters in England. At that point, I was moved to into what's referred to as the Cadet organization, where children of Sea Org members at that time were groomed and trained in Scientology with the intention of then carrying out their own billion year contract.

John Dehlin [01:42:23] So your mom was in the Sea Org.

Claire Headley [01:42:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:26] When she signed the billion year contract?

Claire Headley [01:42:27] Well, she signed the billion year contract and then joined the Sea Org initiatives. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:42:31] And so then you were born as a Sea Org. I mean, you were a Sea Org

Claire Headley [01:42:34] kid from the age of four. Yes. Until age 10. And the cadet organization is. Best way I've been able to find to describe it that people can relate to is it's like Lord of the Flies meets orphanage meets Nazi youth. In that from the moment you enter the Cadet organization, the schedule is such that if I saw my mom two hours a week, I was lucky. That was a good, good week. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:03] So they separate the kids from the parents.

Claire Headley [01:43:06] Yes. And then not only that, but they have the children run themselves. So There was maybe one or two adults for 40 to 50 kids. The kids age ranging in age from 6 weeks old to 14 or 15, by which age they would then start on their own billion year contract. But Hubbard had a. A policy at that time, children were allowed in the Sea Organization, but Hubbard's policy was that they were allowed at most, best case scenario, six weeks maternity leave. And then their kids would be put into the newborn babies would be put into the nursery, and then by the age of four, be a part of the Cadet organization.

John Dehlin [01:43:48] And was this for you all on a boat or not? Is it a building?

Claire Headley [01:43:52] No, this was at Saint Hill in England.

John Dehlin [01:43:54] So you could be in the Sea Org, but not at sea.

Claire Headley [01:43:56] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:43:57] Okay.

Claire Headley [01:43:57] Yes, okay. Yes, exactly.

Marc Headley [01:44:00] So it's a good distinction.

Claire Headley [01:44:02] It is a good.

Marc Headley [01:44:02] There's only one distinction. Place in the Sea Organization where you're actually at sea. And that's on. They have a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

John Dehlin [01:44:09] It's one cruise ship. Right.

Marc Headley [01:44:11] That it started out as multiple boats in the ocean, and then when they moved to land, the boats were gotten rid of. And then in the 80s, they bought this cruise ship that used to be a ferry or a cow transporter, and they turned it into a little cruise ship. If you See it next to any other cruise ship. It looks like a tugboat, but holds

Claire Headley [01:44:34] about 300 people, I think.

John Dehlin [01:44:35] Oh, so there's no more than 300 people actually at sea in Scientology.

Marc Headley [01:44:39] In the Sea Organization.

John Dehlin [01:44:40] Yeah. I did not know that.

Marc Headley [01:44:41] There's 5,000 Sea Org members probably around the world between all their facilities. And there's about 150 that work on that one ship.

Claire Headley [01:44:51] Yeah, because the 300 capacity is max capacity. So that includes the staff and the public.

Marc Headley [01:44:57] The people that are coming there to pay to go there and do Scientology counseling or courses are part of that maximum amount of people.

John Dehlin [01:45:06] But it's not that the top leadership is on that boat.

Claire Headley [01:45:09] Oh, no, definitely not.

John Dehlin [01:45:10] Okay, that's good to know. I didn't realize, but L. Ron Hubbard was on a boat.

Claire Headley [01:45:14] He was for many years. There were a few different ships that he was on, but I think for the most part, he was on the Apollo. But that was at the time that the Sea Organization was first created and before it moved to land as.

John Dehlin [01:45:28] And he was running from the law. He was kind of a fugitive, right?

Claire Headley [01:45:30] Absolutely.

Marc Headley [01:45:31] I mean, there's stories from people that worked on the Apollo. We know there's a channel on YouTube called Peeling the Ice. It's with a guy named Mark Fisher and a woman named Janice Grady. And Janice Grady was a messenger for Hubbard from. I think she started when she was, like, in early teens or, like 9 or 10. And she was a messenger, and she worked with him on this ship, which,

Claire Headley [01:45:56] by the way, bears mentioning. Shelly Miscavige also worked on that ship from about the age of 11. Her parents were not on the ship. She was just there with L. Ron

John Dehlin [01:46:05] Hubbard as a messenger for child alienation.

Marc Headley [01:46:09] But she tells stories of they. Sometimes they left port with the locals and police and, like, the people of the port throwing rocks at the ship and trying and getting them, like, get out of our town.

Claire Headley [01:46:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:23] Okay, that's good. That's good to know. So. And by the way. Yeah. Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard were both fugitives from the law. So you were in the Sea Org as your mom was in the Sea Org. You were a Sea Org kid, but you were separated from your mom, and it was Lord of the Flies plus Hitler Youth, Hitler Youth plus orphanage.

Claire Headley [01:46:42] So not a great time. No, not at all.

John Dehlin [01:46:45] What are your memories?

Claire Headley [01:46:48] So a day in the life of a cadet was pretty brutal. It was. You know, our parents had no money. We barely ever saw them. There was a girls dorm and a boy's dorm, so we weren't even Allowed to sleep in the same room with our families.

Claire Headley [01:47:12] And in my case, it was only my mother. She was a single mom by now. And so, yeah, there was a lot of heavy manual labor. We would go to the local school because our parents couldn't afford to send us to Scientology school. So we would constantly get teased and called Sino and. And we were often had ratty clothes and poor hygiene and just a general lack of care.

Claire Headley [01:47:42] And within the cadet org, it was run just like any Scientology organization. So we each had posts assigned. We were grouped into groups of six kids. So you had a kid in charge of another five or six kids. And we were essentially parented by checklists, lists of get up, make your bed, eat breakfast, go to school, study Scientology, do what they call Chinese school, which is chanting L. Ron Hubbard precepts over and over again until you know them verbatim. Like, I will never be able to get those things out of my head.

John Dehlin [01:48:24] Give an example. Just. It would be traumatizing to. No pressure if you don't.

Claire Headley [01:48:30] Yeah. Definition of a team. A team has a tendency to know what the other team members are doing and thinking and coordinate thereby and therewith. And that is the definition of a team. It is people who cooperate, one with another, to push forward a common purpose. And they normally get along great. Interesting. That's a. That's a relatively benign one. Keeping Scientology working. One, Having the technology. Two, knowing the technology.

Marc Headley [01:48:55] Three.

Claire Headley [01:48:55] Knowing it is correct. Four, Teaching correctly the correct technology. Five. Applying the technology. Six, Seeing that the technology is correctly applied. Anyway, I could keep going on. So the idea is, when you're going over these things verbatim over and over again, are you in, like, a classroom setting? Is this. As you're working, you're standing in a crowd in front of a big sheet that has it written out, and you have a person with a pointer who will chant it, and they'll say, keeping Scientology working. What is it? And the whole group in unison will chant, like, at the top of their lungs or not the top of their lungs, shouting, yeah, but.

Claire Headley [01:49:33] Yeah, it's that. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's why I started including that reference, because the indoctrination in Scientology, like, we're talking. In my case, case, I was four when I started learning the language of Scientology, I didn't even have a grasp of the English language. So when you're learning the language of Scientology before even understanding any having real world parallels, it's really challenging to walk that back. Yes, I am so sorry we're Here today.

Marc Headley [01:50:07] Right. Yeah.

Claire Headley [01:50:08] So, you know, it has a good ending. Every day is a blessing. Blessing of freedom and love and, you know, making our own choices. So it, you know. Yeah.

Abuse and Trauma Growing Up in Scientology

John Dehlin [01:50:19] Were you protected from abuse? I guess there's psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse.

Claire Headley [01:50:23] No, none of that. I was not protected from any of that.

John Dehlin [01:50:26] So do kids raised in Scientology experience a lot of abuse?

Claire Headley [01:50:31] Very definitely. Do they? Abuse? Is that the Lord of the Flies?

John Dehlin [01:50:34] Each other.

Claire Headley [01:50:35] Like older kids abusing us younger kids was very common. And because of the snitch culture, when you translate that into a Lord of the Flies scenario, you have no recourse. And not only that, Scientology believes that, you know, as Mark was referencing, the overts and the withholds, which is what they call transgressions. They have the overt motivator sequence. So if I say, hey, Billy punched me, then I deserved that, and that means that I've committed transgressions. And the only reason Billy punched me is because I pulled it in and it was my fault. So it's the ultimate victim shaming as well.

Marc Headley [01:51:16] On top of that, in Scientology, the victim is always guilty, no matter what, because they're a victim, and they have a thing called the tone scale, and victim is way, way down at the bottom of the tone scales. So if something happens, are these vibrations

John Dehlin [01:51:31] when they say tone?

Marc Headley [01:51:32] No, it's more like an emotional tone, like anger, happiness, cheerfulness.

Claire Headley [01:51:38] Yeah, it's a signed digit. So the highest is 40.0. It goes down to zero, which is body death, and minus 40.0 is total failure.

Marc Headley [01:51:48] Yeah. So there's tones below body death that you could be exhibiting while alive.

John Dehlin [01:51:56] It's insidiously darkly smart to make any mistake, any member makes the fault of the victim. Yeah, because then the organization's never responsible for anything.

Claire Headley [01:52:08] Exactly.

Marc Headley [01:52:08] It's the Scientology's get out of jail free card is, hey, this happened to me. Well, what did you do?

John Dehlin [01:52:14] Yeah, no, it's called blame reversal.

Claire Headley [01:52:16] Yes. And eventually, the member, the person who's been indoctrinated in all this, they are, for all intents and purposes, doing the work themselves. Yes. Scientology has reinforced that with physical and control mechanisms that keep you in. But really, you're going, oh, no. I had a critical thought. I want to leave. Oh, I can't do that. And you're doing the work yourself. That's right.

Marc Headley [01:52:41] I watched another episode that you done. You did, and you mentioned something I think it's called, I want to say, scripulosity.

John Dehlin [01:52:48] Yeah. Religious ocd, basically.

Marc Headley [01:52:51] Yeah. In Scientology, if you're a dedicated Scientologist. You have that all day, every day. You can't do anything in your life and not be thinking, well, where is this guy on the tone scale? And where is his this? And you look through everything in your life, your business, your family, your personal relationships, everything is through that Scientology lens.

Claire Headley [01:53:15] Yes. In fact, you reminded me now, it's not. There's not the language of, oh, I'm feeling upset. It's like, oh, he's griefy. Grief is a tone level on the tone scale, or he's being really one. One that's covert hostility, which is depicted as a person who's smiling at you while holding a dagger behind their back. Like a lower negative tone on the tone scale. The language is so oriented around the beliefs, you know, the scriptures. Yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [01:53:47] And Scientology is a fundamentalist belief system. So you can't be 25, a scientist, you can't be 70, you can't be 90. You're either a hundred percent or you're not a Scientologist. In fact, so that. That scrupulosity thing, when you. When you were talking about that, that really resonated with me as like, oh, you can't be in Scientology if you're almost a requirement. You have to be that.

Claire Headley [01:54:14] Yeah. In fact, in keeping Scientology working, series number one, which is a policy every Scientologist reads multiple times. It's at the beginning of every single course. Hubbard says, we'd rather have you dead than incapable.

Marc Headley [01:54:31] He says, scientology is. It's rough and tumble and only the tigers survive, and even they have a rough go at it.

John Dehlin [01:54:41] Yeah, but I mean, and I don't mean to be apologizing for the abuse there. Does it produce very resilient, capable, hard working, dedicated people or not?

Claire Headley [01:54:55] I think my answer to that is it produces very damaged people. And I've thought about that, and my perspective on that, and my answer to that has changed through my own recovery therapy, reading books and so forth. Because unfortunately, when someone gets out of Scientology, they're not. They're very often have a lot of trauma and a lot of struggle. So our. In our case, I believe the catalyst that led to our success was the fact of escaping and the motive and that motivation. I don't attribute us being successful to, you know, 100 plus hours work week, no education. I do. You do.

Marc Headley [01:55:42] Well, I say that my take on it is a little different that in Scientology and specifically in the c. Organization, if you're just a Scientologist that lives at your house and you pay to do courses and Counseling, not the same kick, not the same situation. But in the C organization, and specifically at the SEA organization, at its highest levels, at the international headquarters, they beat the wimp out of you. You cannot work there if you get tired. If you can't work till 8 in

John Dehlin [01:56:18] the morning, they make you tough.

Marc Headley [01:56:19] Until midnight, they make you tough. I won't say they make you tough, but they do beat the wimp out of you. Some people become a robot.

Claire Headley [01:56:31] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:56:31] So they basically are just an automaton. They just do what they're told. They do that. They do this. They don't complain. There's no emotions. That's the thing. Maybe it's. They don't beat the wimp out of you. They beat the emotion out of you.

John Dehlin [01:56:45] So they beat the you. They beat the you out of you.

Marc Headley [01:56:47] They beat the you out of you. And so if you can't find you after that, then a lot of people get broken. And that's the thing that happens. They either make you stronger and more resilient, and if that you is still in there, then you can find your way out of it.

Claire Headley [01:57:08] Yeah. Stronger as a result of abuse, not stronger as a result of something that works. Yeah. You either figure out how to power through, and that's very, very hard.

Marc Headley [01:57:20] But I'd say 50, 50 on. There's 50% of the people get broken and 50% of the people, they. And also they might. Even the 50% that become successful, it might still be a little bit broken.

Claire Headley [01:57:36] It's like they're coping.

Marc Headley [01:57:38] Exactly.

Claire Headley [01:57:39] When you say successful, we would say that their coping shows up in socially, like where. Socially we're like, oh, we really admire that.

Marc Headley [01:57:47] Yeah.

Claire Headley [01:57:48] For example, really coping in the way of never resting, overworking as a result. Or like there are some. It feels like socially approved of ways of coping. That's still psychologically.

Marc Headley [01:58:03] Yeah.

Claire Headley [01:58:03] And not healthy. Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:58:05] Even we did actually sort of. We had to reintegrate because we never really lived outside of that world. But even the reintegration was, how do we not work till midnight every night?

Claire Headley [01:58:22] Yeah. Mark still gets frustrated with me because I have a terrible habit of taking on way more than I can comfortably handle. And it's. And it is a flaw. It's not something that I realize like, oh, yeah, let me just work myself to death. He gets very, very frustrated, which.

Claire Headley [01:58:43] And he's trying to protect me and make me realize that, like, hey, this is not a path to success. Or even, like as a child you're experiencing so, you know, aggression so much sort of not just with Your schedule, but, you know, emotionally and all those things. And so later on, what looks like self discipline actually in your mind is a lot of self aggressive thoughts. Completely. But no one knows and it can look so. And that's why it's so problematic when you're talking about what, a successful person or a resilient person. Yeah, completely. And the irony is that.

Claire Headley [01:59:24] Fast forward to which. And I can give you a few examples of some extreme things that happen in the cadet Org that were just. I mean, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, honestly. But then fast forward to our lawsuit. And my mother wrote me a letter from Scientology headquarters in which she said, well, you were in the c. Organization as a child, so I thought you knew how bad it was.

Claire Headley [01:59:52] And again, it's blaming me for, you know, not. I never told her many of the things that happened to me as a child because I knew. I knew that that victim blaming mechanism would break me as a person. And so I prefer to just keep my mouth shut and power through than say, hey, this kid, what he did was abuse. It's not okay. I could not ever say that, and I didn't for many, many years. And so, yeah.

Marc Headley [02:00:22] Anyway, let me really quick ask.

John Dehlin [02:00:24] Did.

Claire Headley [02:00:24] Did.

John Dehlin [02:00:25] Would someone who is sexually abused be blamed as being the reason why they were sexually abused?

Claire Headley [02:00:31] Very definitely, yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:32] Okay. So that. That's. That would be an extreme example, but that was applicable.

Claire Headley [02:00:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:00:37] Okay. Okay, let's keep going, Claire, with your story. So.

Claire Headley [02:00:39] Yep. So I lived in a dorm. You know, it was. I can give a couple of examples, but I went to the local school.

Marc Headley [02:00:49] What about when you broke all your.

Claire Headley [02:00:52] Broke my collarbone. Yeah. So when I was approximately seven years old, I was sleeping in a bunk bed with a friend of mine. We had no play dates, no sleepovers, all of that. So we were would. That was our only version of like, oh, let's have a sleepover in my bunk bed. And I fell out. Someone had left wooden planks on the floor. So I cut open my head, broke my collarbone. But my mentality in the cadet organization was the only normal part of my life was going to school because it was a public school. So it was my only string to the outside world.

Claire Headley [02:01:28] And I loved school. And I did. I was doing really, really well. I was, despite everything, a star student. I loved the teachers. And so I went to school anyway with a broken collarbone and my head cut open. And of course, I could not. I mean, it was excruciatingly painful. Anytime I would move my arm, I would start crying. So the teacher kind of had me first sit by her desk, then she noticed my head cut open.

Claire Headley [02:01:57] The headmistress then called me into her office at lunchtime, and it didn't occur to me until many years later that she obviously saw signs of abuse and neglect. And so she asked me, well, what happened? And I never said anything. I was just like, oh, I fell out of bed. Never mention the fact that I was living in a dorm and I landed on wood planks, because again, already by that age, I had been programmed to never see, say anything bad about Scientology, ever, under any circumstances that would cause any kind of negativity on them. So my mom came to pick me up, went to the hospital.

Claire Headley [02:02:34] I was not allowed to be given any drugs, even though the doctor suggested it. And, yeah, so that was one example. Another example was in the C. Organization, members are not allowed to have any form of sexual activity outside of marriage. My mother was single, so she was dating another member of the Sea Organization, and they engaged in sexual intercourse, for which she was then assigned to the rehabilitation project Force when I was 6.

Claire Headley [02:03:08] So I was not allowed to know where she was or talk to her. From months while she was off on the that program, she was doing heavy construction at the St Hill Castle. She ended up getting hit in the head by a brick, rushed to hospital.

Claire Headley [02:03:24] I was then trained on how to do touch assists deliver Touch assists assist technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard of how to nurse someone back to health after an injury or illness. There are several different kinds of assists, but touch assist is the primary one. One, it's look, feel my finger. Feel my finger. Feel my finger over and over. There's an exact process. So I was trained on how to do those.

Marc Headley [02:03:51] Not creepy at all. Someone touching somebody else with their finger all over their body saying, feel my finger.

Claire Headley [02:03:57] Yeah. And so I hadn't seen my mother in months. She got hit in the head. And I hate to say it, but I was just grateful to be able to see her again, even if I had to do these creepy touches on her. Yeah. Another time, she escaped and left me behind. Anyway, it was. It was a complete chaotic, chaotic train wreck. Yes. And very rarely did I get to see any of her family who are not in Scientology. When I was seven to eight, she used to put me on a train in London to go visit my grandmother in Manchester. So it's like a four hour train with like 20 stops. She would just ask some family to keep an eye on me. You know, this was like, not that long after the Yorkshire Ripper serial Killer and various other things that was going on. So it's. I'm like.

Marc Headley [02:04:52] And she also used to hitchhike with you a lot?

Claire Headley [02:04:54] Yeah, yeah, we hitchhiked a few times. And then my grandmother got really mad. That was during the time of the Yorkshire Ripper in England. Serial killer killing hitchhikers. But anyway, my grandmother put a stop to that. But nonetheless, because my mom had to work all the time. Another element was that starting at around the age of six or seven, I don't exactly remember, but all of the children in the cadet organization were required to sign billion year contracts. So I eventually started my own billion year contract at 16. But I signed my first one when I was. Was 6 or 7, another one when I was 10, another one when I was 12, another one when I was 13.

Claire Headley [02:05:37] Multiple contracts. Wow. Okay. I have a question for you. Okay, so you're. So I'm going to ask you, like in looking back maybe now, it feels like you're in survival mode for years. That's what it feels like when you're kind of describing this experience.

Claire Headley [02:05:56] So I'm curious. Curious if you can remember if you experienced it in a way where you were like dysregulated all the time. Are you just perceiving? Are you stressed? Are you dissociating? Are you disconnected from your. Like, how. I guess I'm trying to get at like, how did you cope with this level of severity when it comes to just a reality? Like, did you have moments where you're like, why is everything so hard? Like, this is just like life or death all the time feeling that way? Or did you get numbed out and dissociated? No, I did not. I was.

Claire Headley [02:06:39] Very commonly in my childhood, I just cried all the time as an example. So my mom's a member of the Sea Organization. She would get two hours once a week to do her laundry and clean her room. And that was, you know, it's probably a bad analogy, but it's extreme enough to be relevant in this case. It was like a drug addict getting a hit.

Claire Headley [02:07:03] But the hit is time with my mom and safety. Exactly. And so every week, I remember I would write. I would have to write a completed staff work to say it's Saturday or Sunday. I can't remember which day it was, but can I please go into work with my mom and I'll help and I'll work there. It would always get disapproved. No, you gotta be here at Stonelands, which is where we live, doing chores and manual labor. And I would Go into hysterical crying. Like, crying. Crying. Crying could not stop. Like headache, throbbing.

Claire Headley [02:07:39] Just a mess. Because it was a constant battle for any time with my mother. And. And so. And being at a public school, I obviously knew that was not normal, relevant to what I saw from my friends. And the only thing I ever wanted was a normal life like we live now with our kids. But I couldn't even say that because that would be me. I'm trying to leave, or I'm trying to drag my mother out from the Sea Organization. That would make me a suppressive. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:08:14] Didn't you at one point, your mom then started a relationship, and then that's how she ended up leaving the Sea Org. And then wasn't she going to leave you there?

Claire Headley [02:08:26] Yeah. So she. Again, it's very strict relationship rules within the sea organization. She began a relationship with. With the gentleman who's now my stepfather, but he was not a member of the sea Organization, so it gets a little complicated. But she had to have special approval to even marry him.

Marc Headley [02:08:50] They don't allow this now.

Claire Headley [02:08:52] No, they do not. They do not. And even talking about stress, like, the first time she went on a date with him, she left the property where we lived. And I woke up the next morning and went to her room, and she wasn't there. She hadn't been there all night. And so I panicked. I'm like, oh, my gosh, where's my mother? She's my only human in this alien world that I live in. And so I ran around and I ran down to the mess hall looking for her. I found her friend, and I was like, oh, she didn't come home last night. Anyway, I go back up and factor in my mother had already been assigned to the rehabilitation project Force, which with a previous boyfriend for having an affair with him outside of marriage.

Claire Headley [02:09:36] So now I go up to my mom's room, and she's there all of a sudden, and I'm like, I've been looking for you. You didn't come home last night. She's like, yes, I did. I was in the shower. She was lying. She, many years later, apologized for lying, but she made me go explain to the people that I talked to that she was there and cover for her and blamed me for getting. Potentially getting her in a lot of trouble. Anyway, it was just so.

Claire Headley [02:10:06] Yeah, layer upon layer of really bad, you know, child abuse, child neglect, Scientology stressed over the importance of actual education. We were required to study Scientology every day after school. So, yeah, it was a constant stress factor. That was really hard to navigate and really hard to ever kind of find a balance. Yeah, I can see that.

John Dehlin [02:10:39] And you mentioned crying a lot and being sad. Was there a part of you that was into it or grateful for it or committed to it where you were also feeling like you were sacrificing? Sacrificing or doing what was right or learning the truth? In other words, were they successfully compartmentalizing you to also feel like it was good what you were doing, even though you were sad and missed your mom and being abused?

Claire Headley [02:11:07] Good question. In the years that I was in the cadet organization, no. It was so miserable.

John Dehlin [02:11:13] You just hated it.

Claire Headley [02:11:14] I just hated it. I wanted a normal life. I wanted to figure out a way to get out of that life where it. The constant pressure was such that it became evident to me at some point that this was the path of least resistance. And you find a way to acclimate to go, okay, well, then I may as well find something good or at least commit myself to doing this. So by the age of 13, I had decided, okay, well, maybe if I become an auditor and a counselor, then I can help people. And if that's. If this is the only way to help people, then, you know, so it was more of a compromise in my mind of a way to not lose my family and not be a bad person, quote unquote in their eyes.

Claire Headley [02:12:04] So I, I would never say that I was like hardcore fanatical, but I was definitely from a very young age program to be a very good rule follower. Mark would absolutely agree with that. He was always the rebel. And that's was where our relationship was such a breath of fresh air. Like, wow, how does he not give any shits about this?

Claire Headley [02:12:32] But it does make sense given that to me, what you're describing is you to want were born into a really unsafe, chaotic experience of the world. And so it totally makes sense to me that at some point you become very cognizant of like, okay, if this is what the world is and this is what I have to work with, how do I. With what I have as a child, literally to work with, how can I create safety? How can I control what I can control to at least have a little more of, you know, yes, that hits the nail on the head, literally. It was like, okay, the only way to succeed in this environment is to embrace it.

Claire Headley [02:13:25] Even though, you know, that was not my goal, not my dreams. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to go to Oxford University. I had this whole game plan that, that included, ironically from when I was like 6 or 7. I was like, I will join the SEA organization when I'm 45 years old, because by then I will have had a boy and a girl, and my life will be over because I'll be 45. You know, that's a good plan. But that plan got torpedoed because of the environment I was in. And so, yes, it was.

Claire Headley [02:13:56] The only way to survive was to embrace it and figure out, you know, I just gave up at some point that I had any path out. Wow.

John Dehlin [02:14:08] So in those early teen years, in your mind, were you ever like, this isn't true. I don't believe this, But I just. I'm basically in prison. Did you allow yourself to even question?

Claire Headley [02:14:19] I did not. Okay, you didn't even let yourself do that. Questioning had already been broken much, much earlier than that, years ago.

John Dehlin [02:14:26] Okay.

Claire Headley [02:14:27] Yeah, because it was dangerous. And, like, I had. You know, I'd already lost my dad, so I couldn't lose my mom too. And I'd seen my friends get in trouble for rebelling. So the only path that I saw as a child was to dive in. And I did have an. When I was 13, I did try to rebel a little bit. Unfortunately, that was just. Didn't go well at all and ended up just driving me further into Scientology. But I was already, by that point, in a Scientology school and very firmly ensconced in an. In an. In an environment that completely depended on Scientology. My. My mother, my friends, you know, all of that was absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:15:15] Random question. Why do you have no British accent at all?

Claire Headley [02:15:18] Oh, yeah, Great question. So I always wanted to move to America. I always wanted an American accent. Americans think that the English accent is cool. Well, conversely, English people think the American accent is super cool.

John Dehlin [02:15:33] I never heard that before.

Claire Headley [02:15:34] Oh, no.

John Dehlin [02:15:35] I guess I've never heard of Brit that would admit that maybe.

Claire Headley [02:15:37] Well, yeah. Well, I'm just being honest. Like, kids would come to Saint Hill from America, and we would always be like, say something. Say something. It was so I had. I had a dream to become an American and get an American accent.

Claire Headley [02:15:53] My family moved to the US when I was 13, and I was told that I was too old to lose the accent. And in fact, when Mark and I got married, I was 17, he was 19, and I still had a British accent at that time. But you know what's funny?

Claire Headley [02:16:09] Not to credit Scientology with anything where credit is not due, because Scientology did not create the dictionary. However, the barriers to study the misunderstood word, lack of mass, the skipped gradient. The misunderstood word means that any scientologist in studying Scientology spends a lot of time in the dictionary. Well, wouldn't you know it? One day I have an American dictionary and I'm sitting. Somebody is doing word clearing with me where you have to read stuff out and so forth. And. And the word was walk. W, A L, K. You walk down the street. So I would always say that walk.

Claire Headley [02:16:48] And this person was an American. And I looked at the pronunciation key in the American dictionary and it said wok. And I was like, walk. He's like, you're saying it right. Anyway, it's a long story to just explain that the final barriers to my English accent were. Were broken by learning to use an American dictionary, which told me how to say them even when my brain couldn't figure it out. So I so thoroughly lost my English accent that nobody believes I'm from England anymore.

John Dehlin [02:17:21] And I mean, are you even able to.

Claire Headley [02:17:24] I'm not.

Marc Headley [02:17:24] She's not even. When we go. We've been to England many times with the kids.

John Dehlin [02:17:29] You don't drop into it.

Marc Headley [02:17:30] No, I cannot understand.

Claire Headley [02:17:33] There's about five or six. There's about five or six words. Tor,

Marc Headley [02:17:39] sixth and aluminium.

Claire Headley [02:17:42] Yeah, whatever.

Marc Headley [02:17:43] Insulation.

Claire Headley [02:17:45] Mark always used to give me a really hard time about my accent. I think now he regrets having done that.

Marc Headley [02:17:49] I do, I do. She used to call me mock. So she would say, mock, and I'd say, you know, there's an R in Mark. Most people say mark, mark, mark. Whenever she would say boot or the bin or I would say water, butter, cutlery, I would just say that every single time she would say, I would think it's in the boot of the car. I'd go, water, butter, cutlery.

Claire Headley [02:18:15] I do think it's interesting, though, because when we talk about cults or high control, high demand religions, this idea of conditioning. Right. And how a conditioned self is created, which is very different than, like a self that we, you know, organically create as we grow. It's just a completely different thing, right? Yes. But it makes it so clear and to what level of detail you were conditioned. Yes. That actually, the way you spoke this, like the root of where you were born and where your story began, it even, you know, it eliminated that. Right. Like, it's kind of chameleon in nature a little bit. Yeah, I know. I've thought about that a lot because I have been asked that a lot, like, why does she not have a British accent?

Claire's Path to Becoming an Auditor

John Dehlin [02:19:10] So you say around 13, you decide to switch from one test to another. What was the main.

Claire Headley [02:19:19] I was so. At 13, I was still Living in England, and I was trying to rebel and get away from it, and it didn't work out well. I got in a lot of trouble with my parents. I was assigned lower conditions, which is ethics. Conditions for betrayal after trust. Condition of treason. Find out who you are. Oh, no. Find out that you are. That's the formula for a treason. Find out that you.

John Dehlin [02:19:45] You are.

Claire Headley [02:19:46] Condition of enemy is find out who you really are. It's part of. It's a whole nother segment of the ethics technology of conditions of existence. You're either doing well and contributing to the group, or you're betraying it.

John Dehlin [02:20:00] And, yeah, this reminds me, many religions have to make you sick, so they can then offer themselves up as the cure. And it sounds like that's very similar.

Claire Headley [02:20:12] Very, very similar.

John Dehlin [02:20:13] Okay.

Claire Headley [02:20:13] One of the lower conditions is also the condition of doubt. So, again, it's another control mechanism where if you're thinking of leaving Scientology, that means you're in a lowered state of existence, and there's a formula to fix that, which is the doubt formula.

Marc Headley [02:20:29] And the formula for doubt is find out who you are.

Claire Headley [02:20:34] No, that's enemy.

Marc Headley [02:20:35] Oh, enemy.

Claire Headley [02:20:35] Yes. Yeah. Doubt is where you basically do this whole evaluation of the good guys versus the bad guys, and then so you say, what's good about this, this, and this, and what's bad about this, this, and this, and then make a decision as to which group you're going to

Marc Headley [02:20:54] join, which group should be helped or supported, and which group should be rejected,

Claire Headley [02:20:58] and then you have to announce the fact publicly to both sides.

Marc Headley [02:21:02] But the greatest thing is that you can never do a doubt condition in Scientology, where Scientology is the group that should be rejected. It's always the way it's worded and the way it's engineered is it's. If you're thinking, oh, I need to leave Scientology, if you do this, you will decide that you should stay in Scientology.

Claire Headley [02:21:23] In fact, there's even a policy that if you decide that Scientology is the bad group, there's a policy to fix that, and it's called hung up at doubt. That means if you're making the wrong decision, you have to go through interrogations and other steps to handle being hung up at doubt.

John Dehlin [02:21:45] And did you say at some point you decided you wanted to be an auditor? Is that right?

Claire Headley [02:21:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:21:49] Okay. What age was that?

Claire Headley [02:21:52] Let's see. I think 11 is when I decided.

John Dehlin [02:21:57] What was that like?

Claire Headley [02:21:58] Well, so I began, I think, the first auditor training that I did. I was 12, and I was the Hubbard qualified Scientologist course. And I, you know, I had never really wanted auditing as a child. The first auditing I received was from my mother when I was about 6 and I really didn't want auditing. But as we talked about earlier, you cannot refuse auditing, otherwise you're a suppressive person.

John Dehlin [02:22:31] And that's holding the cans and the little meter and all that.

Claire Headley [02:22:34] Yes. And you know, so yeah, you hold the. Yeah. So I, I began learning how to do. Use the E meter and do that counseling on other people. By the time I started learning to use the E meter I was 13. And so I started moving through the what's called academy levels to become a classed auditor at 13. And very quickly it was very, very uncomfortable as a child learning how to do that on adults.

John Dehlin [02:23:08] So you were doing that on adults. Whoa. And aren't they confessing big sins and dark sins and.

Claire Headley [02:23:17] Yep. Especially when you get to the. What's called a Class 2 auditor. That's where you are trained on how to deliver security checks and interrogations. And for example, there's a. What's one of the more famous SEC checks or security checks is called the Johannesburg confessional. And so I learned how to do that specifically when I was about 13 going on 14. And it's. Did you murder someone? Did you rape someone? Did you commit sodomy? Did you have sex with someone of another race? Race. Did you.

John Dehlin [02:23:53] Interracial sex is bad.

Claire Headley [02:23:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:56] I didn't realize there was a racial grouped into a.

Claire Headley [02:23:59] It's a. I mean I can give you a copy of the questions are outrageous.

Marc Headley [02:24:04] Especially if you, if you can just imagine a 14 year old asking that love and also did.

John Dehlin [02:24:11] That's about beastie. Did you say bestiality?

Claire Headley [02:24:13] I'm sure that was on there.

John Dehlin [02:24:14] And just as being gay bad. Just being.

Marc Headley [02:24:16] Oh yeah, 100%. That's called covert hostility. Hubbard says that anyone who is homosexual is at the tone level of 1.1, which is covert hostility. So they are presenting a face, a good face while holding a knife behind their back.

Claire Headley [02:24:35] While trying to stab you in the back. Yeah, it's covered extensively in another book by L. Ron Hubbard called Science of Survival where he details and he says that people who are 1.1 on the tone scale, cover hostility should be sent off on a leper boat to die on an island. That's a scenario that he gives in that book.

John Dehlin [02:24:59] Okay. So as a 13, 14, 15 year old kid, you're learning how to interrogate adults to uncover deep transgressions.

Claire Headley [02:25:09] Yeah. So. And it was a, it was definitely a Conflict of being very uncomfortable with what I was being required to do. But yet in Scientology, again, it's another layer of the indoctrination and programming. Like they. The way out is the way through. What turns it on will turn it off is another thing. Like, you have to push through no matter what, and they will not let you quit. So I didn't have the option to say, oh, I just don't feel comfortable doing this anymore, because actually, then the opposite will happen. I'll be pushed through even harder. And on the flip side, now I'm learning and doing auditor training, which, of course, my mother and my stepfather by now are incredibly supportive of.

Claire Headley [02:25:54] It's the only thing they've ever supported me in. I never even went to high school after we moved to the U.S. they didn't put me back in school, but yet here I am, I'm doing my auditor training. So they're super happy and super proud of me.

Marc Headley [02:26:07] And also, as a kid, if you're the child of a Scientologist, if you're doing Scientology courses and you're doing stuff at the organization, everybody is like, this kid's a superstar.

Claire Headley [02:26:23] Right.

Marc Headley [02:26:25] The amount of love bombing when you. You're doing what they want is over the top. As soon as you pull back or you're like, oh, I don't want to go on course anymore. Or now it's like, what's going on? What are you doing? Are you up to. Are you out ethics? Are you doing. Are you committing?

Claire Headley [02:26:42] You're off purpose. You have other fish to fry.

Marc Headley [02:26:44] Are you committing overts? All these things? So then when you do do it, everybody switches into, oh, this is amazing. Oh, let's take you to go shopping. Let's do. So when you do it, you get rewarded, and that is a big thing in Scientology. Rewards and penalties.

Claire Headley [02:27:01] That's right.

Marc Headley [02:27:02] People that are productive and do Scientology and are dedicated are rewarded and everything else is penalized. And that you learn that as a kid, you learn the rules of the game pretty quickly. Like, yes, when I do this, it's good. When I do that, not so good.

Claire Headley [02:27:19] Talk about baptism by fire. You know, it's like, oh, you better cooperate, or, yeah, your parental rights are optional, and you're not going to have any parents anymore or you're going to have your, you know, so much at stake. Yes.

Marc Headley [02:27:32] And the other kind of interesting thing that I wanted to say, because she mentioned it in passing, is that she didn't go back to school after she moved to the States. In Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, really, really Puts down a traditional education system. Like you're basically just being brainwashed to be what society wants you to be. And in Scientology, we're gonna teach you the truth of the universe.

Claire Headley [02:27:58] Right. The one true technology, the path out that we've never had the opportunity for in all the past millions of years.

Marc Headley [02:28:06] So they almost treat it like it's a waste of time. So like, if you're going to a traditional school, that's not a Scientology based school.

Claire Headley [02:28:17] Got it.

Marc Headley [02:28:17] You're not learning the real things that you need to learn. Reading and writing. And the three Rs was the only thing that Hubbard really put any. Like, you need to know how to read, write, and do math. Those are the only three things you know how to do. Everything else is useless.

Claire Headley [02:28:36] Interesting. Okay, so I'm kind of hearing at this point in time that. That you're. You're having more approval. And in some ways, did you feel more valuable, like when you learn skill or you climb make that ladder? I guess that you're kind of describing of the levels or you're cooperating also I guess within that really wants obedience. Yes. So on one hand, are you ex. Are you. Are you feeling the safety? Are you feeling more of the approval? Which basically did you feel desperate for from your childhood being like. So I don't know where you didn't really have any of that. But then on the flip side, you're also now being exposed to really adult situations themes as a child.

Claire Headley [02:29:30] Yes. And it sounds like with not a lot of resources on like how to process that or what you're. So it's like this dark, confusing. It sounds. Yeah, for sure. So backing up a little bit just for context. So my mother ended up leaving the SEA organization when I was 10 because she had got. She had now married my stepdad and he had a lot of debt insight from having done the upper levels of Scientology.

Claire Headley [02:30:02] And she'd gotten pregnant. And this was right at the time when they implemented the new rule of no more kids in the C organization. So she was actually told, if you have this baby, this is going to be one of the last babies born into the C organization.

Claire Headley [02:30:17] Or you can take a one year leave of absence, get the debts paid off, have the baby and then come back. That's the option she chose. She just never ended up going. Going back into the C organization. So, yes, a huge part of and a huge driver of what motivated me to want to become an auditor or counselor was that My stepdad was OT and he was a Class 8 auditor. And my Mother had great respect and love for him. So I was like, oh, well, maybe if I do that, then I'll get my mother back and somehow have a decent relationship with her. So there was definitely a huge piece of the requirements for approval within Scientology were to do Scientology and always be participating and growing and earning love.

Claire Headley [02:31:06] Yes, yes. In fact, I did. I drafted a TED Talk to try and explain to people what it is to be born into a cult as a child. And that was one of the things I covered, is that unconditional love does not exist in Scientology, especially not for kids, but even not in. And husband and wife relationships is just not a thing.

John Dehlin [02:31:29] So how long were you an auditor for?

Claire Headley [02:31:33] Until I escaped.

John Dehlin [02:31:36] So until you were in your early 30s?

Claire Headley [02:31:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:39] So was that your main role?

Claire Headley [02:31:40] No, it was never my main role, but it was always a part of my duties was to put people to do. Sometimes do counseling. So there were. Let's see, there were several years where I did a lot of auditing on people, and it wasn't always necessarily like the interrogation piece is, to me, where it's super, like, really invasive and really destructive. There are other elements where you're just asking people, oh, you know, remember a moment you were happy, recall a moment you were happy, recall. Or talk about problems with communication. That is less. I wouldn't say it's harmless, because, unfortunately, it's all centered around the E meter and the belief that the E meter can see into your soul, and therefore they know everything about you. And so I think that's a very. It's a control mechanism of Scientology that, in retrospect, I think is very destructive and hurtful.

John Dehlin [02:32:45] Do they record the sessions? They do audio and video.

Claire Headley [02:32:48] Yes. In fact, Mark can speak to that.

Marc Headley [02:32:50] That was my job. I was the one who went to the organizations and wired up all the cameras and made all the systems so that it would record to a hard drive.

John Dehlin [02:32:59] So they keep everyone's confessions of their deepest, darkest things?

Claire Headley [02:33:03] Yes, and not only do they record the sessions, but part of an auditor's role is. So you're a setup. You're sitting across from me. We have an E meter in between. So I'm looking at the needle dial. You're holding the cans, There's a shield, and I have a worksheet. And everything you say, every question I ask, every reaction of the needle, everything you say in response is all written down on these worksheets. So there's not only an audio and a video visual recording of this session, but there's also a written recording of it as well. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:38] And that's dark.

Marc Headley [02:33:39] And that is something that they are going to run into some problems with with the new, like, privacy laws, especially in Europe and other countries where they. If you don't have any dealings with an organization after so many years, you have to destroy all of those personal records. Well, because Scientology policies can never be changed. Once Hubbard wrote them, he says, you don't ever destroy any. Anything. So they're gonna. That's gonna be. I really do think that that will be a major hurdle that they will not be able to overcome outside of the US but in the US they

John Dehlin [02:34:15] just say religious freedom, but they can do whatever they want.

Marc Headley [02:34:18] And in the US I think eventually they will have to do something different than keep everybody's deepest, darkest secrets for the rest of time.

John Dehlin [02:34:27] Yeah. Okay.

Claire Headley [02:34:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:29] Okay. So how did your responsibilities grow and how did your personal life evolve after you became an auditor?

Claire Headley [02:34:36] Yeah, so. Well, from age 10, when my mom left the SEA organization, until age 16, I was constantly being hounded by Sea Org recruiters. Constantly. So, as I mentioned, starting at around age 7, I signed my first contract, and I signed it at least four or five more after that until I eventually started at age 16. But the more I became trained. So I finished Class 0, Class 1, Class 2.

John Dehlin [02:35:09] So you were going through it too, yourself.

Claire Headley [02:35:12] Well, so this is the auditor training, right?

John Dehlin [02:35:15] Oh, the training.

Claire Headley [02:35:16] Yeah. So I was becoming trained in how to deliver the bridge to other people.

John Dehlin [02:35:21] And it doesn't involve being audited yourself or.

Claire Headley [02:35:25] No.

Marc Headley [02:35:27] Hubbard recommends that if you're doing the training, you do the processing at the same time. But a lot of people just do the training, and then they just do the counseling.

Claire Headley [02:35:40] Yeah. We were super poor, so we had no money for me to be getting auditing, so I would get student auditing, which is cheaper, where you twin up with somebody. So I had done. I did the purification rundown when I was 13. That's, you know, five hours a day in the sauna, taking up to 5,000 milligrams of niacin daily, which, by the way, is carcinogenic, according to the last research I looked at. And not to mention the fact that the only drug I had had by that point, I'm 13, was Novocaine. So. But allegedly, that resides in your fatty tissues and can cause problems and prevent you from getting the full benefits of counseling. So that's why the purification rundown is one of the first things that you do on the bridge to total freedom. So I had done that.

Marc Headley [02:36:30] And it's also a Good test for how much nonsense you're going to put up with.

Claire Headley [02:36:35] Yeah, because you have to sit in

Marc Headley [02:36:37] a sauna to basically find.

Claire Headley [02:36:40] I was gonna say I didn't seem good for myself either. I got violently ill after three weeks doing this program. I was up all night throwing up vitamins, which, by the way, I do not recommend, is one of the nastiest things on earth. If you're gonna throw up, do not throw up vitamins.

Claire Headley [02:36:58] Anyhow, it was, you know, it was bad, but, yeah, so. But the pressure to join the SEA organization was just. Just ever increasing, like more and more and more. And at one point, even so, I had done the professional TRS course is what it's called, where you have to do the training routines outlined by L. Ron Hubbard to a professional level, which includes sitting for two hours looking at somebody without blinking, without flinching, without yawning, without looking away. Just perfect. TR0 and then TR0. Anyway, so I had done those drills multiple times when I was younger, but by this point, and this was a prerequisite to start the auditor training too, by the way.

Claire Headley [02:37:48] And one of the results of that course is that you should be able to handle any situation, no matter how rough. So when I went to my mother and stepfather and said, hey, I really need your help getting these recruiters off my back. My stepdad said, well, you should be able to deal with any communication situation since you finished the professional TRS course, so you can deal with it yourself. So, yeah, I asked for help and eventually I gave in at by the age of 16, because already, by that, by that point, I wasn't in school, I had no life. Everybody I knew was a Scientologist.

Claire Headley [02:38:29] I wasn't going to be able to resist the recruiters that much longer. So I gave in and I started on my contract at age 16, which was in July 1991. So do you feel like part of your conditioned experience was kind of being left alone a lot as a child and young adult, that when you attempted to.

Claire Headley [02:38:53] When you did kind of brave through and face even punishment for reaching out, the times you did, you weren't really helped in any way? I do, yeah, absolutely. And even the significant trauma and abuse that I suffered, I never told anybody. You know, it was better to just suffer in silence and power through and not be victim blamed. That was less than right, you know, saying what happened for sure. Absolutely.

Marc Headley [02:39:31] In. In Scientology, whenever you complain or anything happens to you, it sort of goes on your permanent record. So they will. There's a lot of times in Scientology where if anything happens, any major accident or event or trouble that you get into, they sort of go through all of your history, and they go through it and they go, he's got a history of this or this happened here or that happened or. So anything you do, if you bring it up, like, hey, I want to bring something up, it's like, okay, put that in the file.

Claire Headley [02:40:09] That's right.

Marc Headley [02:40:10] So you've got to. As a kid, you sort of have to keep your cards close to that.

John Dehlin [02:40:15] The chest.

Marc Headley [02:40:16] You have to keep your cards close

Claire Headley [02:40:18] to the vest, kind of weaponized against you.

Marc Headley [02:40:21] They weaponize your bad experiences against you. So and. And. And if. And if you're a succeeding Scientologist, you shouldn't be having any bad experiences. So it's kind of goes both ways. Like, if I'm having a bad time, it's because I'm bad. And if I'm having a bad time because I'm not bad, it's because I'm bad.

Claire Headley [02:40:43] So you can never win.

Marc Headley [02:40:45] You can never win as a kid. It's very. It's sort of. It's basically like, there's no way to win. There's no good way to do this. There is no lesser evil. It's only more evil or as evil as it is now. There's never. And so the Sea Org, it's kind of like it's almost a get out of jail free card. Because now you don't have to worry about your parents. You don't have to worry about school. You don't have to worry about a job. You don't have to worry about paying bills. You don't. You're getting rid of a whole bunch of problems. And if I do it, my parents might even like me a little bit too.

Claire Headley [02:41:29] It's like, it creates this world of, like, extreme scarcity when it comes to, like, human relationships and human needs.

John Dehlin [02:41:36] Yeah, manufactured.

Claire Headley [02:41:37] That's right. Right. So that it creates this desperation where you're willing to kind of. I'm just thinking on the rebuilding side for y'.

Marc Headley [02:41:44] All.

Claire Headley [02:41:45] I know we're not there yet, but I'm just thinking, like, of how much damage to undo. Cause it's like taking healthy relationship principles when. And you're, like, conditioned to do the opposite, that it's a bad thing. So anyway, just a moment of feeling for you.

Joining Sea Org and Early Duties at Headquarters

John Dehlin [02:42:00] So how was that for you to join?

Claire Headley [02:42:04] Yeah, I, you know, I felt like I was backed into a corner. I literally was backed into a corner. My stepdad told me, if you don't join by tomorrow, My best friend is getting a committee of evidence, which is like a tribunal, like just severe punishment.

John Dehlin [02:42:23] We call that a disciplinary council.

Claire Headley [02:42:25] Yeah, there you go. Disciplinary council. That's what we call it.

Marc Headley [02:42:27] Yeah.

Claire Headley [02:42:28] And does that include guilty?

John Dehlin [02:42:30] Yeah, I was excommunicated.

Claire Headley [02:42:31] Presumption of guilt. Guilt, yes. Disciplinary. What did you call it?

John Dehlin [02:42:36] Mormons have called it a disciplinary council, but it's where you're tried and ultimately excommunicated.

Marc Headley [02:42:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:42] Like a court of law.

Marc Headley [02:42:43] Yeah. So it's not.

Claire Headley [02:42:44] Yeah. So committee of evidence is the one that can. What do they call it? Expelled? Expulsion. Expulsion is a punishment only deliverable by a committee of evidence, technically.

Marc Headley [02:42:55] And that's also where a lot of people are declared a suppressive person is in a committee of evidence. They have another one, which is like a baby committee of evidence, which is called a court of ethics. And that usually just dishes out some punishments and recommendations that you should do. And if you don't do those, they can result in a committee of evidence.

John Dehlin [02:43:19] But it's gotta be weird. Your own stepdad is. I know.

Claire Headley [02:43:21] From a.

John Dehlin [02:43:22] Threatening you with that. Plus your mom left.

Claire Headley [02:43:27] I know. It was definitely a conflict.

Marc Headley [02:43:28] And he wasn't qualified to be in the Sea Org.

Claire Headley [02:43:31] No, it was.

Marc Headley [02:43:32] So he couldn't be in the Sea Org.

Claire Headley [02:43:33] Yeah. But it was his friend who was a member of the sea organization, who was going to get a committee of evidence if I didn't start the next day. And I remember, like, was yesterday. My mom denies it now, but I went home and she was crying and, like. And I'm sure part of that too, was I was. I was looking after my siblings by that point, like 40 hours a week.

Marc Headley [02:43:58] And how old were they at that time?

Claire Headley [02:44:00] Well, when that started. So let's see. Let me just think for a minute. So 14 to 16, I was the daycare for my siblings. So at the start, they were four, two and three months old. My youngest sister. And so I would look after them from noon until, you know, ten to midnight each day. And I taught myself to cook by reading the entire Fannie Farmer cookbook front to back. And, you know, you get pretty creative when you have no money. Like, oh, well, what can I make with the ingredients we have and no money? Oh, let's make ham croquettes. We got ham and we got bread and we'll make it work.

Claire Headley [02:44:42] Anyway, so, yeah, I literally had no life, no social life. I was babysitting my siblings, which I love them. I love them like they were my own kids. And that was actually the biggest reason for me that I didn't want to join the sewer because they, I knew they wouldn't remember me. And sure enough, they don't. And now they do hate videos against me, so. But yeah, so I, I joined and I was terrified. I, I, I, I remember, like, just packing a bag in my comforter and getting dropped off at the big blue buildings in Los Angeles and being moved into a dorm with a bunch of other women.

Claire Headley [02:45:24] It was like, you know, bunks were 3 high in this small, little smelly, cramped space. And I right away was miserable. I didn't enjoy it at all. A few times I called my mom and was crying and telling her I couldn't do it. And she was like, you just have to push through. You're gonna get in a lot of trouble if you quit now. And I know it's hard. And, you know, anyway, it was just being, you know, as a child, really, I was still 16, being thrust back into this very alien world where it was just a lot of, you know, no freedom, no capacity to breathe, no spare time, no access to family.

Claire Headley [02:46:10] One of my first experiences within the first few weeks was there was an Italian woman who had been, she was under security watch in our dormitory where we were sleeping. And she was beautiful, and I was really, she had been working with us, and then all of a sudden it was like, oh, she's not here, she's sick. And then I saw she was under security watch. So I went up to her when I got home late one night and I saw what happened. Are you okay? And she's like, oh, I'm okay, I'm okay. But meanwhile, there's a security watch sitting outside. I'm like, something's not adding up here.

Claire Headley [02:46:45] And so I just kept pushing. And she finally went like this. And she tried to unalive herself, and it was just really, really sad. And as a 16 year old, it was so overwhelming, like, oh my gosh, how could this happen? But again, I already felt by that point I had no way out. That's right.

John Dehlin [02:47:05] What did your main roles become? Your main duties.

Claire Headley [02:47:09] So let's see. So this was July 1991 when I started. By September of 1991, I had been moved to the headquarters where I met Mark. So this was the 500 acre compound in Gilman Hot Springs, California. And for the first five years there, I was in the staff training department. So I was.

Claire Headley [02:47:32] Staff were required to do two and a half hours a day study. So I would either oversee them. Yeah, exactly. Scientology courses. So I would, my role was supervisor and I also did counseling during that time. And then.

Claire Headley [02:47:50] So that was the first five years until March 1996. And then I was moved into Religious Technology center, where I worked for the next eight years directly under David and Shelley Miscavige in various roles, but primarily executive correction. So all the management executives, I would have to correct them if they mess things up with, again, with Scientology, word clearing or interrogations, or various different tools provided by Hubbard. I had to attend most meetings with David Miscavige, with the management executives. That was. That was during the time that he was at the property. It would be meetings every day then starting in 2000-2004. So the last four years that I was in Religious Technology Center, I was over the internal functions of Religious Technology Centers.

Claire Headley [02:48:49] Technically, I was number three under Marty Rathbun, who worked for David Miscavige. Of course, that didn't mean I had any more freedom than anybody else, but I was responsible for recruiting new staff into Religious Technology center, approving the financial planning, staff training, things of that nature.

John Dehlin [02:49:11] So is this one of the most

Marc Headley [02:49:12] elite groups within highest Scientology organization?

John Dehlin [02:49:15] And was Rinder there when you were there?

Claire Headley [02:49:17] Yes. Yeah. He was not in Religious Technology center, but he was a management executive, though there were. There was about a year where he was considered in Religious Technology center, even though he wasn't. Whatever. It gets confusing.

Marc Headley [02:49:35] He was running Religious Technology Center.

Claire Headley [02:49:36] We worked with him. Sometimes I had to interrogate him, sometimes I had to bring him coffee. It just depended on the day. And Miscavige, his mood, it's kind of all over the map. He forgives me. I forgive him.

John Dehlin [02:49:50] So what are the stories you feel are really important to tell about working at Scientology headquarters from the beginning to the end? Like, if people wanted to get a sense for your experiences there, what are the key stories to tell? Because obviously, I want to ask all about David Miscavige. There are rumors that he was physically abusive to people, that he was a tyrant, but I don't want to just jump there. So talk about whatever you want to talk about, about working. Working at Scientology Headquarters.

Claire Headley [02:50:22] Yeah. Let's see.

John Dehlin [02:50:24] I'm sure there's so much you could tell.

Claire Headley [02:50:25] No, there is. I mean, I. Key points. I mean, it sucks to talk about, but I was forced to have two abortions in the year years that I was working there. The first was when I was in Golden Era Productions. The second was two years later.

Marc Headley [02:50:45] You're not allowed to have children in the Sea Organization.

John Dehlin [02:50:47] Okay, so what year did y' all meet?

Claire Headley [02:50:50] And so we met in 1991, and then we married in August 1992.

John Dehlin [02:50:59] Okay, and you joined what year again?

Claire Headley [02:51:02] So, 1991 is when I joined, and then I was moved to the headquarters, which is where we met, and I

Marc Headley [02:51:08] had already been there since 1990.

John Dehlin [02:51:10] Okay, so maybe. Maybe let's back up.

Marc Headley [02:51:12] Well, we can tell mine. Maybe we can then ours kind of match back up again.

John Dehlin [02:51:16] Yeah. Yeah, let's do that.

Claire Headley [02:51:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:51:18] All right, well. Well, first of all, thank you so much for sharing. Going through all that, Claire, so much of that. I mean, we can't imagine what you've been through, but we know it's sacred stuff to be sharing.

Claire Headley [02:51:31] Yeah, it's. I appreciate that. And I will say just in closing that I know it. It is. It's an awful thing, but to me, it also speaks to the tenacity of children and the importance of education to gain perspective on that, because speaking for myself, I really did not have perspective on my childhood until I had kids of my own. And all of a sudden, everything shifted very dramatically. And as our kids have reached each milestone where we can compare and go, oh, my gosh, like, when our oldest son turned 4, I was like, like what? That's how old I was when my mother joined the SEA Organization. It has really put a lot into perspective on the road to recovering from all of that. Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:52:19] Yeah.

Claire Headley [02:52:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:20] Okay. Well, thanks for sharing, Claire. Mark, where does your Scientology story begin?

Mark's Recruitment into Scientology and the Sea Org

Marc Headley [02:52:28] So my parents, we. I. I was born in Nebraska, and then my parents moved to Kansas City. City. And then in 1979, my father in high school was in a band, and one of the band members had moved to Los Angeles, and I think my father was in college for a little bit and then ended up dropping out.

Marc Headley [02:52:58] And then the guy in LA was like, hey, you should come out to la. We can be a band, and we can make it big. And da, da, da, da. So in 19, and I want to say November of 1979, my mother, my father, and my sister and I, we all moved to California from Kansas City.

Marc Headley [02:53:20] And I want to say within a month, the guy who was the band, in the band with my dad, we found out he was in Scientology, and he got my mother into Scientology, and my dad didn't want to have anything to do with it. He was like, this is not good.

Marc Headley [02:53:39] I don't want to do this. And I didn't know at the time, but for that reason, they split up. So I have the memory of the family pre Scientology, and then after Scientology. And after Scientology is when everything goes to shit. And before that, we weren't rich or anything, but we lived in a house and we went to regular schools, and it was like. Like, this is how life is. And then as soon as we got to Los Angeles, my parents split up. We were now poor because it cost a lot more to live in California than it did in the middle of Kansas City. And my mother was sort of all in from the get go.

John Dehlin [02:54:21] Like, do you know, have you ever thought about what made them want to join things in their life? Personality traits. Like, what would make someone. Someone make such a dramatic change? What made your parents want to make such a dramatic change? Do you even have a sense?

Marc Headley [02:54:38] I think my dad genuinely wanted to be a musician, and so moving to California for that dream made perfect sense. And they put out cassettes and albums, and they were doing stuff, and they were always almost about to make it, and then the whole thing would fall. Fall apart. And oddly enough, there was a lot of Scientology people that were involved with all kind of parts of this journey, and including this band, because one of the members was a Scientologist. No, actually, two of the members were Scientologists. One, the drummer was.

Marc Headley [02:55:16] Was a gentleman by the name of Thad Korea, which was Chick Corea's son. So they had connections into the music industry. And one of Thad Korea's best friend was this guy named Danny Keough. And Danny Keough's girlfriend was Lisa Marie Presley. And there was all of these sort of Scientology celebrity and musician connections which they seem to be able to maybe have access to, but then it would kind of all fall apart. So in terms of my mother and why she was so drawn to Scientology, she grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. And I think that the fact that John Travolta and Chick Corea and there were these famous. Tom Cruise wasn't in Scientology in the early 80s, but there was.

John Dehlin [02:56:08] But Travolta went early.

Marc Headley [02:56:09] Travolta was 100. Travolta, I think, got in either right before or after he got welcome Back Cotter, and so that's how long he was in.

John Dehlin [02:56:19] Oh, wow, that's early.

Marc Headley [02:56:20] And. And so I think that was sort of part of the allure. Also. We were in. We lived in Hollywood, and that's where the Scientology celebrity center is.

Claire Headley [02:56:30] Right.

Marc Headley [02:56:31] So in la, in the. In the industry, if you're an actor or if you're a musician or if you're any kind of artist in la, Scientology is all over. They're all. They have people in all these different areas. Of that. Of the industry.

Marc Headley [02:56:46] So. And they use their celebrities to get in other celebrities, and then they use the celebrities to get in the regular folk. So I think, if anything, my mom, that was sort of her thing, like, she kind of gravitated to these are successful people, and they're using Scientology to be successful. So she was sort of all in right away. And I remember even when I was. I think I was probably 7 or 8, and it was like, oh, you're going to go to a different school now. You're not going to go to the public schools anymore. You're going to go to a Scientology school. And there was a school in Los Angeles called Apple School, and they used L.

Marc Headley [02:57:30] Ron Hubbard's study technology. They did all of the normal classes a regular school would do, but if you ran into a word that you didn't understand, you had had to look it up in a dictionary, and you had to do these certain procedures which are identical to what you have to do if you're in the Scientology organization.

Marc Headley [02:57:47] And so there's just a. It's just kind of like just a kiss of Scientology. And then the. The people who ran that school didn't want to be paying Scientology royalties and have to do certain things that Scientology was sort of imposing Scientology.

Marc Headley [02:58:08] The rules of a Scientology organization on these schools that were using Scientology. And so they sort of rebelled, and then the school was blacklisted, and the people that were running the school were declared suppressive persons. So literally, one day, it was just like, at the end of school, like, oh, you're not gonna go back to that school again. It's like, what do you mean? That's where my friends are. That, nope, you can't go there anymore. And, like, what? And then later on, I found out, oh, they got declared suppressives, and. And now no one can go to that school. That's a Scientologist.

John Dehlin [02:58:39] Dang.

Marc Headley [02:58:40] And so then I had to go back to regular public schools again. And it turns out in the Scientology schools, they're not really keeping up with the curriculum of the standardized public school system. And so I ended up not doing so well in those schools just because I was behind. And then my parents said, listen, listen, we have enough money to maybe send your sister to a Scientology school, but not necessarily you. We're going to see how it goes. And so then I ended up going to another Scientology school called the Deli Academy, and that is also in Los Angeles, in California. It's actually in, like, a.

Marc Headley [02:59:23] It was in a town called La Canada, which is maybe like 30 minutes from Scientology's big blue building complex in Los Angeles. And I ended up going there for several years. And at that school by this time, this is in the mid-80s now, and they teach Scientology at this school. They don't just dabble in the study technology. They teach other Scientology concepts. And you do the courses, you do just a regular history course you do with a Scientology check sheet. So you read something, then you demonstrate something. You might do a clay demonstration, and then there's a tests, and you have to get tested in a Scientology fashion.

Marc Headley [03:00:08] And when you're done with the course at. In this school, you put. You go on an E meter, and they do a check. And so it's very kind of hybrid Scientology mixed with a regular education.

John Dehlin [03:00:20] It's like a charter school kind of thing.

Marc Headley [03:00:22] I don't know how they designate themselves. It's a private school. It's a private school.

John Dehlin [03:00:27] Wow.

Marc Headley [03:00:28] And so at this school, and also by this time, Scientology sort of evolved its organization structure so that the office that we talked about, Scientology, perpetrated the largest infiltration in the United States government. Well, the government infiltration was mainly perpetrated by a Scientology organization called the Guardian's Office. And the Guardian's office was responsible for the Scientology schools. So when they. When they. When all these people, these Scientology officials, including L. Ron Hubbard's wife, went to jail for this government infiltration, they had to disband the Guardian office. And so all of the schools that were under the Guardian office, they had to make a new organization, and they called it the association for Better Living and Education Able.

Marc Headley [03:01:19] And that group is the one that controls the Scientology schools, the Way to Happiness foundation, which is kind of like a precepts to good living that was written by L. Ron Hubbard. Like, brush your teeth, don't sleep with your neighbor's wife. You know, these type of things. Don't murder her.

Claire Headley [03:01:36] Don't do anything illegal.

Marc Headley [03:01:38] Support and. And support and forward government supportive of the people and all these different. Different things. But. And Criminon, which is a criminal rehabilitation program that uses Scientology courses, and Narconon, which is a drug rehabilitation program that just uses Scientology courses as a drug rehab course. So this organization, Able. Ran the group that ran the schools. It was called Applied Scholastics, and it's just a corporation. So Applied Scholastics is just a corporation that runs all of the Scientology schools that license L. Ron Hubbard's study technology. So that's, again, how this authored services organization gets a cut from all. They get a cut from the Narconon they get a cut from any group that uses any L. Ron Hubbard technology. They have to pay a royalty fee to the Church of Scientology. This one group, which.

Claire Headley [03:02:44] Which, by the way, just to interject, I'm pretty certain that that was replicated off the Mormon tithing system.

Marc Headley [03:02:51] Oh, yes. Yeah. And we'll get into David Miscavige's fascination with the Mormons later on, but I

John Dehlin [03:02:59] want to hear all about that.

Marc Headley [03:03:00] Yes, of course. He's. David Miscavige loves him. Some Mormons.

Claire Headley [03:03:04] Oh, yes.

Marc Headley [03:03:05] He loves what they're doing and all

Claire Headley [03:03:07] the things and all the ways they do and the bank accounts and balances. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [03:03:13] He is more and more shifting everything in Scientology to that. To Mormon systems and the way they fundraise. And all of those things are slowly morphing over. And most of the things that they do do in Mormonism, Hubbard forbade. He said, you cannot do that. So for the fact that David Miscavige is slowly migrating everything over is an interesting choice on his part. But. So I was going to this school, Delphi, and again, this is now I'm 12, 13, 14. And because this organization, the association, that is a sea organization, they're in charge of the school, so they would send Sea Org recruiters from their organization to the school.

Claire Headley [03:04:05] Got it. Yep.

Marc Headley [03:04:06] And so you're at. And by this time. By the time I was 14, I had. I never had a good relationship with my mother once she got into Scientology. As long as I didn't do Scientology Scientology, I was a zero, and I did not matter, and there was no fixing it. So I. At the age of. I think I was 13 or 14, I was like, I'm out. My dad had moved to Nebraska from California. The. The band thing didn't end up working out.

Marc Headley [03:04:39] He moved to Nebraska, and I was staying with my mother. And she was like, if you don't go on course and do Scientology courses, then you can't be a part of the family. So I was like, okay, good. It was sort of like a ultimatum. And I was like, okay, good. Then I'm not gonna be part of the family. And so I moved out, and I was actually living with my friend, my best friend, and his parents used to be in the Sea Org when he was a baby. And they got out, and the dad became very successful and started a whole bunch of companies.

Marc Headley [03:05:15] And so. And because we went to school together, and I was his best friend, whenever they would go on a trip, the dad would be like, well, Mark, why don't you come that way, Jesse's got somebody to hang out with when we go to Steamboat for two weeks or when we go jet skiing in the Kern river or whenever. So I was with them all the time. And so when the trouble started at my mom's house. House, he was just like, why don't you stay with us? You're not having a good time with your mom. Just come with us. And they were Scientologists, and they were former Sea Org members.

John Dehlin [03:05:46] Okay?

Marc Headley [03:05:47] But they understood that I wasn't in a good place. So, like, just come stay with us. So I just moved in with my friend, and I lived with him. And my dad would send him, like, $200 a month and just be like, hey, here's something to help him. And my dad knew when he lived in California, I would constantly be back and forth, oh, you're gonna live with your dad now because you're not gonna do Scientology. And your dad. My dad wasn't in Scientology, had nothing to do with it, and he didn't care that I didn't want to do it, so it was a safe place for me to go. So when he moved out of state, I was like, well, now I'm.

John Dehlin [03:06:26] You lost your.

Marc Headley [03:06:27] I have no safe place to go. And so I ended up going, living with him. Him. And then he ended up. He was. He. His name was Ron Rasdrum. He's since passed away. But my friend's dad, he. In the early days of cable television, he was the one who manufactured the cable boxes that you would sign up for Showtime or Z Channel or whatever it was back then. You'd have to buy his box, and then you'd sign up for their service.

Marc Headley [03:06:58] And he had two companies, and they were each their biggest competitor, and he owned both of them. They made all the cable boxes, and so he ended up selling that. Those businesses. And I remember to this day that word got out amongst Scientology that he had sold these huge companies.

Marc Headley [03:07:21] And so they sent these people who are the ones who get the money from you. They sent them to his family, to his house, and when we got home from school, they were. There were all these people there meeting with him. And he had made several million dollars from the sale of all these companies, and Scientology wanted their cut. And so they got him to pay for his entire bridge, which means all of the training and all of the audits for him, his wife, and, I think, their children, from nothing all the way to ota, which is hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars per person.

Marc Headley [03:08:02] And so as part of that, the people that Run that cruise ship that I was talking about. That's in Aruba and Bonaire and Curacao. Well, they wanted their cut too. And so he signed up for himself and. And for my best friend and for me to go to that ship and do some Scientology courses.

Claire Headley [03:08:23] I see.

Marc Headley [03:08:24] And as part of that, we would also go to Clearwater, and we would do a bunch of courses in Clearwater at the headquarters there, which is the mecca they call. That's the only place that you can do the highest operating thetan levels. You can only do them in Clearwater.

Claire Headley [03:08:39] They call flag, the mecca of technical perfection.

Marc Headley [03:08:44] So if you want to do the higher levels, you have to be trained in Florida and you have to do your counseling. Your highest levels of counseling. You have to do that in Florida.

Claire Headley [03:08:53] I see.

Marc Headley [03:08:54] And so for the summer, we basically. His dad sold it to us, like, hey, we're going to take. He had two jet skis. He said, we're going to take the two jet skis and we're gonna do a cross country trip to Florida. We're gonna jet ski all over the place on the way there. We're gonna jet ski once we get there. And then you guys will do your courses. We'll go to the cruise ship and do some courses there, and we'll have a great summer.

Claire Headley [03:09:22] This is, to me, the importance of packaging. The packaging. Cause it feels like you left your mom's house, like, living being like, yeah, I don't want anything to do with it.

Marc Headley [03:09:32] Exactly.

Claire Headley [03:09:32] But then this version, see, this is a little more palatable. A little more.

Marc Headley [03:09:36] Exactly. He knew how to sell it. She was like, do it or you're nothing. And he was like, hey, listen, we're gonna do a lot. We'll have a lot of fun. And you gotta do a little bit of work. So during that trip, my best friend gets recruited for the Sea Organization. He's gone. His girlfriend, also a good friend of mine, recruiter for the Sea Orc. Gone.

John Dehlin [03:09:59] Gone.

Marc Headley [03:10:00] My girlfriend was being recruited. She didn't want to go in the Sea Org. And I was being recruited and I didn't want to go in the Sea Org. I lived in Hollywood right around the corner when I was with my mom. We lived right around the corner from that big blue building that has the big sign to it. We lived like a block and a half away. And I always would see the Sea Org members, and they stunk and they were dirty, and they were.

Marc Headley [03:10:25] It was basically like a lower. A Sea Org member was a lower life form to me. They were filthy and they lived and filthy. And they were just. They were to me as a kid, I always got. I always. And I had also when I was young, growing up, when my dad, he lived across the street from the Celebrity center. So my mom lived across from that big blue building, and my dad lived across the street from the Castle, which is the Manor, the celebrity center in Hollywood. And they had a Sea Org daycare facility next to that, the Celebrity Center. And whenever I saw the kids, I would always feel bad for the kids because they never were with their parents.

Marc Headley [03:11:07] They were always filthy because they weren't taking showers or baths daily. They would take like a once a week bath or shower. So they would always be dirty, they would always stink, and they'd always be. You could tell they were just. No one was taking care of them. And so for me, I always thought the worst thing is the Sea Org. You can never join the Sea Org because it's horrible. And they don't care about the kids.

Marc Headley [03:11:34] Anyway, I ended up. My friend goes into the Sea Org, his girlfriend goes in the Sea Org. And so now I'm living with the family because my friend is in the family, and now he's not in the family anymore.

John Dehlin [03:11:50] He's gone.

Marc Headley [03:11:51] So now I'm actually living with the family, and my friend is gone. So I'm like, well, I can't do this. So I move back to California and I stay with another friend that went to school. It was actually a girl, and her sister was at a Scientology boarding school. So they had an empty bedroom. So they're like, hey, you could stay here. And then I ended up working for the school. So that's how I would pay for my schooling. Because it was a private school, I think I want to say it cost five or $600 a month at the time, in the 80s.

Marc Headley [03:12:26] And so the school said, listen, if you work for us, then that'll pay for your education. And on top of that, we will pay you additional money. So I was basically making a few hundred dollars a week, but I was also paying for my schooling. And then I had enough money for some bologna sandwiches and some ramen. And I had to figure out how to get to stay somewhere. I was staying with this girl, her family. The girl that I was staying with, her parents were recruited for the C organization. So they went to the C organization. So then I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

Marc Headley [03:13:07] So then I had to. I'm 14. And so now, now I'm like, well, now I've gotta find another place to live. So Then I. There was two teachers or one teacher that worked at the school who had a roommate who was like a paramedic or something. She wasn't. She might have been, like, barely in Scientology or kind of knew about it, but anyway, so I ended up up staying. She had a room where her son would stay in when he would come to visit her, but he lived with his dad, so I got to stay in his room. Okay. She was. This teacher was recruited.

John Dehlin [03:13:41] They keep recruiting everyone away from you.

Claire Headley [03:13:43] Okay, can I just ask a really quick question? Because the way you're describing at least your perception of the Sea Org Organization, like, that it' syou know the kids are dirty, that it's. It's not the most appealing, but yet it's so successfully picking up all. And even the son of. Didn't you say your first. The first friend you moved in with?

Marc Headley [03:14:08] Yeah.

Claire Headley [03:14:09] Who. The dad got all the money.

Marc Headley [03:14:11] Yeah.

Claire Headley [03:14:12] And then why didn't he quit it? Did he quit this year? Why would he want his son to do it?

Marc Headley [03:14:18] Well, if you are a scientologist and you're in the Sea Organization and you leave, it's usually in their case, it was because of the children that they had to leave. They said, no more kids.

Claire Headley [03:14:32] You can't have kids.

Marc Headley [03:14:33] So because they had kids, it was like, okay, we'll go raise the kids, and then we'll join once the kids are older or whatever. They don't really end up going back. They get in the real world and they're like, well, of course I'm not going to go back, because that place is crazy. But when the kids are old enough now, it's sort of on them. Hey, you never came back.

Claire Headley [03:14:54] Got it.

Marc Headley [03:14:55] The kids. And it's sort of.

Claire Headley [03:14:58] It reminds me of missions almost. Yes. Like, where the parents feel the pressure to have the kids go 100%. The motto of the Sea Organization is we come back. And also, many are called few are chosen.

John Dehlin [03:15:11] So with that, many are called the future.

Marc Headley [03:15:15] That is the motto of the Sea Org. Many are called.

Claire Headley [03:15:17] Many are called fewer chosen. So Mark is telling you his honest perception as a child of the Sea Organization. But no scientologist would ever say that. Yeah, they're like, no, they're the most true.

Marc Headley [03:15:31] You could never say that. I can say it now. No, because I'm a suppressive person. Yeah, but if you were.

Claire Headley [03:15:36] But within the structure of Scientology, members of the Sea Organization are pitched and presented as the most dedicated beings on the planet.

Marc Headley [03:15:45] They're the elite of Scientology.

Claire Headley [03:15:47] Got it. Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:15:48] So, okay. Thank you. So even all the time that I was going to the school, I was constantly. They were trying to recruit me to be in the Sea Org. It's a very. If you're between the ages of 13 and 16, that's the perfect Sea Org age. Because you don't have any debts, you don't have it. You can't have done anything bad that could disqualify you for the Sea Org because you're not that old.

Marc Headley [03:16:17] And actually one of the main disqualifications for the Sea Organization is if you have debts because they don't want anything to pull you back out of Scientology and they don't want anything to be a liability for them. So if, say you owe somebody a half a million bucks and they're like, hey, well this guy works for these guys, let's go after those guys. So they don't want any of that. But the other thing is drugs. If you've done LSD or angel dust

Claire Headley [03:16:42] or those two, you've done those two. Specifically, you can never join the Sea Organization.

Marc Headley [03:16:48] Yeah. Because L. Ron Hubbard, I'm pretty sure, had done both of them and had many Sea Org members that had done both of them. And those guys turned out to be the flat ball bearings he had lots of troubles with. So he said, nobody who's done those two drugs can be in the Sea Org. And so when I was a kid, when I was 12 or 13, when the sea Org members would be like, hey, can we talk to you for a second? I'd be like, LSD in 79. And I just keep walking down the street.

John Dehlin [03:17:13] Let me just say for the Mormon Church, they don't necessarily grab them for multi year commitments in their early teen years, but they grab them when they're 18 missionaries and they serve for two years. They pay for themselves to go on the missions. They're basically paying to be the church's salesman.

Marc Headley [03:17:35] Yeah, globally. And then they have to do so many baptisms or so many this every month or whatever.

John Dehlin [03:17:40] But the church knows, you know, they've done studies. What guarantees or what decision decisions will most likely guarantee that the members will stay faithful for the rest of their lives. If you can get them on a mission when they're 18 or 19, they serve a two year, or in the case of women, a year and a half volunteer mission, they pay for it. And then immediately they get married in the church, in the temple, and then having kids. And they know that if they can get them in. And so the missionary program, people outside the church think that the Mormon missionary program is to convert the world. But the number one purpose of the Mormon missionary program is to amend. The missionary is to convert the teenagers. A lifelong commitment to the church.

Claire Headley [03:18:32] That's crazy.

Marc Headley [03:18:34] Yeah. So in the Sea Org. Yeah, in the Sea Org.

John Dehlin [03:18:37] It's like our sea or basically. And the Mormon mission is the most cult like aspect of Mormonism.

Claire Headley [03:18:44] Right. It's like a little more extreme. The expectations, the control ramps up.

John Dehlin [03:18:49] You can't read the newspaper, you can't watch movies, you can't watch tv, you can't date.

Marc Headley [03:18:53] Is it similar, you know, if you're in the Sea Org and you get People magazine, if there's a bad article about Scientology in there, it doesn't get to you. Oh, it just gets thrown away.

John Dehlin [03:19:06] Well, as born missionary, you can't even read the magazine. Well, yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [03:19:09] There's no. You're not watching tv Sea Org, there's no tv.

John Dehlin [03:19:12] Right.

Marc Headley [03:19:13] There's no newspapers, there's no magazines. If you're from wealth and you end up in the Sea Org. So you might have a car. Most Sea Org members don't have a car. Most members don't have a driver.

Claire Headley [03:19:24] Between few and far between.

John Dehlin [03:19:25] I never had a car as a missionary in Guatemala. Never had a car.

Claire Headley [03:19:28] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:19:29] So. So here I was though. I'm now 13, 14. I've already had to move several times.

Claire Headley [03:19:37] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:19:38] And I'm paying for my everything. My dad was sending my friend's dad a couple hundred bucks. But once I was on my own, he didn't send me nothing. And I don't even think he sent the dad that much money over the year or whatever. I lived with him. But so it was at a point where I was having to somehow get a ride to school, somehow pay for food, somehow get home, make it. So I had like a bed and clothing and just all the necessities and somehow feed myself.

Marc Headley [03:20:12] And I was 14. So I was at a point where I think by the third place, like when I got this final place with the teacher, I was like, I'm good. I got my own room. She doesn't care what I do. She lets me borrow her car. She gives me a ride there, a ride back. I was sort of like, I finally got it.

Claire Headley [03:20:35] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:20:36] And then these recruiters show, Sea Org recruiters show up at the school and there was a rule because they had been swiping so many students. A rule was institute basically like sort of agreed upon between the Sea Org and the school that you're not going to recruit any more kids. You got to let the kids you got to leave the kids alone, because we're trying to get these kids to graduate, and you're stealing them all before they can ever graduate. So nobody ever graduates the school.

Marc Headley [03:21:06] So I was like, well, hey, they're not going to mess with me. And so then I got called into this office, and the recruiters are there, and I was like, what's the deal, guys? Like, well, we wanted to talk to you. I was like, you can't talk to me. I'm a student. They're like, you also work here, so we're going to talk to you, because you already. You're. You're. You're. You're employed here, right? And we're allowed to talk to the teachers. We're not allowed to talk to the students. Well, you're teacher, so we're going to talk to you.

Claire Headley [03:21:33] Got it?

Marc Headley [03:21:35] Anyway, I was like, that's kind of lame. I'm coaching soccer for. For.

Claire Headley [03:21:38] For seven years to pay for your tuition. No less than.

Marc Headley [03:21:41] I'm kind of like, come on, guys,

John Dehlin [03:21:43] this is a stretch.

Marc Headley [03:21:44] Anyway, they sell me this story about how I can go off to this Indian reservation in Oklahoma where they have a Narconon facility that helps get people off drugs. Now, I grew up in Hollywood, and I grew up right next to Hollywood Boulevard, and I've seen anything and everything as a small kid. Again, when you're. When your parents are in Scientology, you're kind of like, no one's watching. I would stay out till midnight every night when I lived in Hollywood, and sometimes I'd come home, and my dad hadn't even got home yet. And sometimes when I was with my mom, she'd be at her boyfriend's house or she'd be at another boyfriend's house. So I could go and do anything all day and a night, and no one would know the difference.

Claire Headley [03:22:27] Incredible. Which, by the way, is driven by the belief by L. Ron Hubbard that children are not children, they're adults and small bodies. So that is the overriding of where it's just an extreme lack of adult supervision across the boards and driving your childhood and my childhood in different contexts, of course, but that's. That's why that is interesting.

Marc Headley [03:22:56] Anyway, so they pushed, but they knew where that. This is another thing that's very interesting in Scientology is they study a person and where they live and what they've done so that they can sort of craft a narrative that's gonna appeal to that person, and they call it Buttons. So if you. If I grew up in Hollywood and maybe some friends Passed away of drugs, or I saw drug use, or I brought up that I was kind of sad that that was happening around me or whatever it was.

Marc Headley [03:23:30] So they were like, hey, you can go to a Narconon facility that's run by Scientology, and you can help get people off drugs. And we're going to pay you to do it. It's not going to be like the regular Sea Org where you don't get paid. We're going to pay you minimum wage. Because Narconon is not part of the Sea Organization.

Marc Headley [03:23:51] It's just a group, and you have to get minimum wage if you work there. So I'm thinking, I don't have to go to school anymore. I can join the Sea Organization and do this instead of the stuff I've seen. The Sea Org. It's horrible in Los Angeles. The Sea Org is horrible. I'm not gonna be in Los Angeles. I'm gonna be in Oklahoma doing this drug rehabilitation program at this big acreage with land Beautiful.

Claire Headley [03:24:17] Sold it.

Marc Headley [03:24:17] Yes. For me, at the time, I'm paying rent, and I'm 14. I'm like, that's too much.

John Dehlin [03:24:23] Both of you.

Claire Headley [03:24:23] Both of you are like. Like, literally children as adults. Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:24:28] And so for me at the time, I thought, this is going to solve a lot of problems, and it might even fix the problem with my mom, because unless I'm doing Scientology, she doesn't want to have anything to do with me. And so as soon as I sign that contract. Oh, she's the biggest supporter of me that in my entire life, I never felt so much support from the day I said, hey, I signed a Sea Org contract. I'm gonna go work. I'm gonna go work for these guys, and this is what I'm gonna do. Da, da da, da da. And then.

John Dehlin [03:25:03] And the parental conditional love in Mormonism is not that extreme, but I think it's. I think it's similar in the sense that we very much have performance equals worth righteousness equals worth obedience culture, where many kids only feel love and support from their parents if they're doing what's right.

Claire Headley [03:25:28] That's right. And parents, particularly mothers, hold a lot of this sense of, like, how successful they are if their kids remain Mormons.

Marc Headley [03:25:38] I was just gonna tell you, in the Sea organ or in the sign Scientology world, if you're a Scientologist and your children are in the Sea Org, your status as a Scientologist is raised because you raised two people that then now are in the elite of Scientology. So there is no there. It's it's almost. Even if you did something bad as a Scientologist, you can erase that if one of your children join the Sea

Claire Headley [03:26:08] Organization, which happened with my mother. My mother had been in the Sea Organization, left. Didn't go back. The way that she was allowed to be approved to do the upper levels of Scientology was because I was in the Sea Organization and I was a member of Religious Technology center, and that literally wiped her slate so that she could be approved to do the upper levels. Got it.

Marc Headley [03:26:32] So I understood that. I understood those dynamics, and I did want to have a relationship with her, even though, I mean, she was very physically violent with me when I was a children, like, punch, punch me in the face kind of violent. Not, you know, not a spanking.

John Dehlin [03:26:48] We're talking, like, would she have been taught that that was wrong as a Scientologist?

Marc Headley [03:26:52] I think corporal punishment. Well, she grew up on a farm.

John Dehlin [03:26:55] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:26:55] That wasn't scientific, and I think that was.

John Dehlin [03:26:57] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:26:57] That kind of. She might have gotten a lot of that from the farm life in the middle of.

John Dehlin [03:27:03] Because I know David Miskovich did.

Claire Headley [03:27:05] And so my answer, sorry, Scientology.

Marc Headley [03:27:07] It's not frowned upon to get violent with somebody. It's not frowned upon.

Claire Headley [03:27:11] So it's encouraged to put their ethics in.

Marc Headley [03:27:15] Yeah.

Claire Headley [03:27:15] Like Hubbard outlines, if somebody's misbehaving, take them in a dark alley and do. And.

John Dehlin [03:27:21] And, you know, do what you need to do. Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:27:23] There's a policy. It's in actually the policy called knowledge reports, where you're. You're encouraged to. To. If somebody does something, you're encouraged to at least report them. But it's also in there that says if Joe's going around with pins, it's literally Joe.

Claire Headley [03:27:38] Yeah. First pin prick, give Joe a black eye.

Marc Headley [03:27:41] Yeah. And then it says, and if Joe ends up getting taken in a back alley and dealt with, then that. So be it. But as long as somebody's not doing what we want them to do in Scientology, then bad things could happen to that person.

Claire Headley [03:27:54] Yeah, that's human. That's where. That's where corporal punishment, like Mark is describing, is not necessarily encouraged broadly, but it's definitely not forbidden. And Hubbard outlines frequently that in his body of ethics technology, you have to make the punishment too gruesome to be faced and enforce those punishments to gain and enforce compliance.

Marc Headley [03:28:26] And, yeah, that's actually, that policy is called two Gruesomes. So if somebody's not complying, make the penalties so gruesome that they will not dare non comply. And in a lot of instances, that is Physical, too gruesome is getting punched in the face.

Claire Headley [03:28:47] Right?

Marc Headley [03:28:48] So. So.

Claire Headley [03:28:50] Especially because Mark was always the rebel that really didn't care about Scientology. So clearly.

Marc Headley [03:28:56] Anyway, I wasn't contributing to de. Escalating that system because whenever I would do something, my mom would pull out an L. Ron Hubbard book and be like, let's see what policy says should be done. And I would always be like, oh, you can take that green book and shove it. I don't care. Care what that old dude had to say. And so anytime I was having sort of challenges as a child, it was always Scientology was going to be the parent and solve this, not her. She's just going to read from this book and tell me all the things I need to do, and if I don't do them well, she'll be the enforcer and give me a whip.

Claire Headley [03:29:36] Interesting. Scientology was the parent.

Marc Headley [03:29:38] Yeah. That is a big thing. Even in the Sea organization, when you're 14 or 15 and you join the Sea Organization, the Sea Org is now your parent. They take ownership, and even somebody there becomes your legal guardian if you're underage.

Claire Headley [03:29:56] For both of us, when we moved to the headquarters, well, I didn't have.

Marc Headley [03:30:01] By the time I got to the headquarters, I was 16. So I didn't need a guardian there.

Claire Headley [03:30:05] Oh, I did.

Marc Headley [03:30:06] But she did.

Claire Headley [03:30:06] She needed a guardian. My parents signed over guardianship of me when I was 16 to somebody that neither they nor I had ever met who worked at that property. Wow.

Marc Headley [03:30:19] So I go, so the very first thing that you do in the Sea Organization is you do what's called the Estates Project Force. And there's an. It's called the epf. It's very similar to the rpf, except the RPF is the Rehabilitation Project Force. And if you screw up as a Sea Org member, you got to go do that project. But when you first start, you do what's called the Estate Project Force. And it's basically you do a lot of hard manual labor for many hours a day, and then you study for a certain amount of hours a day, and you study all of the introductory courses that you need to know to get into the Sea Org.

Marc Headley [03:30:58] And this is a very telling thing that a majority of those courses I did while a student at a Scientology school. So you kind of realize that as soon as I got there, I was like, they say it's going to take, you know, three months to get through this program. And they're like, there's no way it'll take you three months. You're from a Scientology school. And I'm like, what? And they're like, you already know all this way to study. You already know all the c. Work, how everything thing works. You've already done three of the five courses that need to be done. You've already done them because you did them at school.

Marc Headley [03:31:35] And so I was like, oh, so like, I've already being. Been being prepped for this at the Scientology school. It's a. And so then you realize that's why the Sea Org recruiters are so heavy on the Scientology kids, because they're already halfway in the door without even being there. They're already kind of. They already know how everything's gonna work when they get there.

John Dehlin [03:31:59] They're conditioned. Some would say brainwashed.

Marc Headley [03:32:01] Yeah. You already. Your parents are. You already know the punishment systems. You already know the reward systems. You already know the way to study the technology. You know, you're like, their best case scenario.

John Dehlin [03:32:15] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:32:15] They're getting in adults that don't. That have learning disabilities or they're not productive. Those people are going into it because they don't have anything else. They need three hots and a cot. That's what they need.

John Dehlin [03:32:28] Three hot meals.

Marc Headley [03:32:28] Yeah, three hot meals and a place to sleep. So there are a lot of people in the Sea Org from that are foreign nationals. They're escaping a country, and they're going, oh, I'm going to go work at this place. They're going to feed me. They're going to train me on whatever this Scientology stuff is, make the world a better place ways, and I'm going to get a free visa out of it. I'm going to get a religious R1 visa. What the. This is the best setup ever. Yeah, there. There are a lot of foreign nationals, and even at the international headquarters, especially

Claire Headley [03:32:58] now, more so since we've left. But, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:01] No. And more and more, the Mormon Church targets people in developing countries, immigrants.

Marc Headley [03:33:08] They don't know anything about it.

John Dehlin [03:33:10] And they're also. They don't know anything about it. They're also the most vulnerable, the most needy, and. And they have the most to benefit from joining 100%.

Marc Headley [03:33:22] Even as bad as it is in the Sea Org, they're like, this ain't nothing like where I came from.

John Dehlin [03:33:26] Yeah, yeah, triathlon. This is a walk in the park.

Marc Headley [03:33:30] Anyway, so I end up doing this program, and usually it does take people several months to do it. I think I did it in two weeks because I'd already done most of it. And if you do a certain. If you do a certain collection of courses in Scientology, you get, like, a bonus status that's called fast flow, which means no one can challenge whether or not you know the materials or not. And you have to do those courses. And I did those at. When we went and did that trip for the summer. I did those exact course courses in Clearwater at Florida at the best place you could do them. So when I was in the Sea Org, if somebody said, hey, you gotta do this, and I go, oh, no, I'm. Fast flow basically means you just read it and you're like, I'm done. And you don't do a test.

Claire Headley [03:34:18] You just zip through your studies.

Marc Headley [03:34:19] You don't do any tests, you don't get any exams, nothing. If you did those courses and you read things, you know what they are. Ironically, I am very good at sort of just. Just mass absorbing. If I'm reading, I just kind of just glance through everything, and then you can quiz me, and I can tell you everything about everything. So.

Marc Headley [03:34:41] So I was very good at bullshitting my way. If somebody did suspect that I wasn't really reading it, I'd be like, go ahead and quiz me. And then they'd quiz me, and I'd just tell them everything they needed to know, and they'd be like, okay, so.

Marc Headley [03:34:56] But then I'm like, hey, I'm going. When you're doing all these courses, you find out, how old are you at this point? 15. Okay, I just had my birthday and turned 15. And another thing they told me is that, listen, you will have to go to school on the weekend or maybe one day a week. Well, you'll have to go to school because as long as you're under 16, you legally have to go to school a little bit. Bit. A few hours a week at least.

Marc Headley [03:35:26] And so I was like, okay, whatever. It's only a year that I have to do that. I don't think I went to school one day of when I was 15. Not one single time.

Claire Headley [03:35:35] They. They made the same. Alleged. The same requirement for me too. Like, oh, because I would say, oh, I don't want to join the Sierra. I want to get my high school diploma. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. We got it all taken care of. I. I think I went. Wants to.

John Dehlin [03:35:49] I can't believe that's legal. Well, you know, there's basically a clear cult in the United States can keep kids from getting any real semblance of an education, and instead they're allowed to just brainwash the kids for years, disconnect them from their parents.

Marc Headley [03:36:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:36:07] And there's like I couldn't and it's totally fine. In the United States.

Marc Headley [03:36:10] The thing you think about is, well, who's telling? The kid's not telling.

Claire Headley [03:36:14] Yeah, that's right.

Marc Headley [03:36:15] The parents not telling.

Claire Headley [03:36:16] How would they find out?

Marc Headley [03:36:17] Nobody around.

John Dehlin [03:36:18] Well, no, I mean at some point it would get out that this type of behavior is going on. I mean, there's enough whistleblowers throughout the country

Marc Headley [03:36:29] now. It is a little bit more, they try to do it a little bit more under the radar.

John Dehlin [03:36:34] Right, okay, so you're saying back down

Claire Headley [03:36:36] for example though, because we know this from the work through the work we do with the Michael J. Rinder Aftermath Foundation. More recently, what they've started doing is they've developed this two week zippity zip through your high school equivalent program and still join the Sea Org. So they are still doing it. It's not even the GED though. It's like a high school proficiency equivalent. That's a two week fast track program.

Marc Headley [03:37:04] But again, it's not technically a ged, but it's some way they figured out to train you to take a test that they know what the answers are going to be. So they train you to take that test and you get a diploma. And then if anybody asks, by the time anybody figures it out, you'll be 16 and it won't matter. But once you're 16, you can do whatever. Once you're 16, you don't have to go to school.

Claire Headley [03:37:28] I'm sure this, this latest version is not accredited. And if somebody, if a government oversight agency looked into it, I'm sure it would be fraudulent.

Marc Headley [03:37:40] Yeah, so anyway, I get into the Sea Org. Once you start doing, you do a course. It's called the welcome to the Sea Org course. And it's basically a bunch of L. Ron Hubbard lectures that he gave in the 60s on the ship the Apollo. When he's saying, hey, he's welcoming these people to the Sea Org and he's telling them basically how living and working on a ship is. And that's pretty much what it is. It's him just bullshitting about sea stories, old sea dogs.

John Dehlin [03:38:09] Weird they'd be playing those videos in the 90s or whatever.

Marc Headley [03:38:12] Well, these are recorded lectures. So you're sitting there in a course room listening to headphones and you're reading a transcript. And if you come across a word or symbol you don't fully understand, you need to stop and look that up, look it up in a dictionary, use all of the definitions in a sentence and then so you listen to these lectures.

John Dehlin [03:38:32] It's gotta feel irrelevant and kind of dumb to a 15 year old.

Marc Headley [03:38:35] It's crazy. When you're there, if you. If you have. Scientology is a study in. What is it called when you. When you're watching a movie, you have to suspend suspended reality.

John Dehlin [03:38:51] Suspended.

Marc Headley [03:38:53] What is it? I'm trying. I can't remember the word.

Claire Headley [03:38:55] I'm trying.

Marc Headley [03:38:56] It's basically when you just denounce reality and you are.

Claire Headley [03:39:01] Cognitive dissonance.

Marc Headley [03:39:02] Cognitive dissonance. Scientology is a study in cognitive dissonance.

Claire Headley [03:39:06] Right.

Marc Headley [03:39:06] Because you're like, these guys are gonna clear the planet. And these are the most ethical group and.

John Dehlin [03:39:11] And this is the most righteous, pure man who's ever lived.

Marc Headley [03:39:14] And this guy's like, if you mix

John Dehlin [03:39:16] a little rum in your hot chocolate,

Marc Headley [03:39:17] that'll keep you up for a late night at the helm. And, you know, you're just like, what?

Claire Headley [03:39:21] And I was. I remember listening to that, going, oh, he's just joking. Of course, no Scientologist would ever drink alcohol or be, you know, I don't

John Dehlin [03:39:30] know, because alcohol is forbidden.

Marc Headley [03:39:32] Well, you're not allowed to do any type of drug or alcohol within 24 hours of getting counseling. So if you're alone.

Claire Headley [03:39:40] And it is incredibly frowned upon, like, for sure, Absolutely. Drugs weigh more so than alcohol, but alcohol too. It's just a. It's not a. Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:39:52] Anyway, so. And that was the other. That's the other reason why a lot of Scientology kids are recruited for the Sea Org, because some of the main qualification disqualifications are having done drugs or debts. And obviously a lot of kids that are the kids of Scientologists, they're not exposed to drugs and alcohol and these sort of things. So most of them have lived a pretty clean life up until this point, which I had that as well. I never drank or smoked or anything like that as a kid. And so. So when you're doing the course, though, there's a policy that you read, which is basically, wherever we tell you you're going, that's where you're going.

Marc Headley [03:40:33] And it won't have anything to do with what you want to do. It's where we need you to be. And as soon as I read that, I was like, there's no way I'm going to Oklahoma to help people get off drugs. Sure.

Claire Headley [03:40:46] And I would just like to add to that. It's not only will you go anywhere and do whatever we say, it's that regardless of training, training means nothing. You will do any job assigned no matter what. So it's like this whole pre litmus test to make sure that you're going to toughen up to become a member of the Sea Organization.

John Dehlin [03:41:08] Yeah. And for the record, Mormon missionaries don't get to choose where they go. If you get assigned to Sacramento or Mud Lake, Idaho, you go Venezuela. Or if you get Guatemala or Kinshasa, Africa, you go where you're told to

Claire Headley [03:41:23] go and you pay for it to go there, wherever it is.

John Dehlin [03:41:27] Like, that's so genius.

Marc Headley [03:41:28] How do you get people mad genius

John Dehlin [03:41:31] to work for you? Yeah, that's genius.

Claire Headley [03:41:34] Or really smart. Yeah, genius.

Marc Headley [03:41:38] In this case. In the C organization, you basically. When you're doing the estates Project. Project for us, that's sort of. It's like the Sea Org boot camp. And so you're doing drills, you do marching. And it's. The Sea Organization is like. We call it Davies Fake Navy.

John Dehlin [03:41:55] It's militaristic. It's militaristic.

Marc Headley [03:41:56] It's a military. You have rank and ratings. You have, oh, you're a PO3, you're a petty officer third class. You're a lieutenant general junior grade.

John Dehlin [03:42:05] Because L. Ron Hubbard was in the Navy, right?

Marc Headley [03:42:07] He was. And he was briefly. Yeah, he was discharged. There's controversies. He remember he. Yeah. In Going Clear, they talked about he was bombing an island that they thought was the end. It was Mexico. And they're like, you can't bomb Mexico when you're on a U.S. navy boat. That. That's. That's frowned upon.

John Dehlin [03:42:31] We have friends in Bremerton, and we were told he lived in Bremerton, Washington, for a short time. Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:42:37] Anyway, so during.

Life and Punishments at the International Base

John Dehlin [03:42:39] Let me just say, what are the. Just for the sake of time, what are the main stories you want to tell about? Kind of those early years, those teen years in the Sea Org. What are the most critical stories that really convey what it was like for you? If you could even reduce it to that.

Marc Headley [03:42:57] I mean, during that time. So, like I said, I got in because I wanted to do the drug rehab thing. So as soon as I graduated the program, which is just a few weeks, I went to Able International. So those were. The recruiters that recruited me were from this association for Better Living and Education, which is a Sea Org organization that Scientology controls. It's all Sea Org members, and it used to be part of the Guardian's office.

Marc Headley [03:43:24] So when I got there, they told me, you're going to be in charge of recruitment for Sea Org members. For Able. You're going to be the vice president of personnel, which is a. If you're in a science, if any sort of Scientology organization, they have the workers, they have the department heads, they have the division heads, and then they have the executives. This is a division head executive post at an international Sea org organization. I'm 15 years old. And they're like, you're going to be in charge of this entire division, which includes all of the communications in and out of the organization, all our bulk mail promotional activities, recruiting people, keeping the ethics in of all the policing, all of the members of the organization.

Marc Headley [03:44:11] I'm 15, first day on the job. You're in charge of all of these people here. And I failed miserably at that job. I got one person in, and that was my sister, and she was going to the same school I was. And I said, hey, you gotta get over here. I'm gonna get. Get killed if I don't get somebody in. And she joined, and she's still in to this day.

John Dehlin [03:44:32] Wow.

Marc Headley [03:44:34] Anyway, then I was kicked off of that, and I was put into accounts. I became the treasury secretary for that, Vice president for treasury, and then within a few months of that, I was promoted. So I'd gotten taken off of the post of the personnel post in disgrace.

Marc Headley [03:44:54] I think I might have gotten a committee of evidence. Like, this guy is horrible. He's a piece of junk. He couldn't do the job, so we'll just put him on another division. I got basically promoted laterally to another division, and I was the only person in accounts and Treasury. So then I did that, and then out of nowhere, some people came from the headquarters, and they said, you're coming to the headquarters.

Marc Headley [03:45:19] And so I went. And they. In order to go from a lower organization to a higher organization like the international headquarters, you have to get heavy, heavy interrogations. And so you get on an E meter, and they ask you lists and lists, and do you have any evil purposes towards L. Ron Hubbard? Do you have any evil purposes towards David Miscavige? Do you have any evil purposes towards Scientology? Do you have any evil purposes? They just. Anything and everything. It's hundreds and hundreds of questions, a lie detector test. It's 100%. And if you show any sort of reaction or there's a certain characteristic that the needle makes, then you're guilty or you're innocent.

Marc Headley [03:46:00] And. And this is. I will tell this because this is a funny story when I. I've been a very big fan of a group called Depeche Mode for my. Ever since I was.

John Dehlin [03:46:09] What do you mean, a group called Depeche Mode? We are children of the 80s.

Claire Headley [03:46:12] Okay, so we're with you. We're with you.

Marc Headley [03:46:15] In 1988, I went to a concert that they had at the Rose Bowl. It was called Concert for the Masses. It was the 101st concert of their tour that year, and I was front row center. What was the album that was Music for the Masses.

John Dehlin [03:46:28] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:46:29] It was the very last concert of that tour. And that friend that I was talking about, that I lived with him, and I went, and his dad was the one who bought us the tickets, front row tickets for this big, giant concert.

John Dehlin [03:46:39] And Scientologists can listen to pop music.

Marc Headley [03:46:41] They are allowed to listen to it, but not at the international headquarters. Depeche Mode is banned at the international headquarters because I was a big proponent of them. And then I became a big, bad suppressive person. So no one is allowed.

Claire Headley [03:46:54] And because Mark used to run the all hands, that would get done at the property, and he would always play Depeche Mode. So much so that everybody on that property knew Mark was the biggest Depeche Mode fan and associated the music with Mark.

John Dehlin [03:47:09] Wait, what's Depeche Mode's best album?

Marc Headley [03:47:12] That's. That's like picking a best kid. No, that was their first album.

John Dehlin [03:47:17] Not that. No, that's not it.

Marc Headley [03:47:19] No.

John Dehlin [03:47:19] No. What's your favorite. What's your favorite Depeche Mode song?

Marc Headley [03:47:23] I don't have a favorite. I have, like. I listen to. Anybody who knows me knows if you ride in my car, you're just going to be listening to Depash Mode for the end.

John Dehlin [03:47:30] The answer is somebody. That is the answer.

Claire Headley [03:47:33] Right?

Marc Headley [03:47:33] That's a nice song, but that's not.

Claire Headley [03:47:36] I like a bunch of them. I like Precious. I think that's a good one. Give me three.

John Dehlin [03:47:41] Come on, give me three songs.

Claire Headley [03:47:42] There's some funny gold in my eyes. That's a nice policy of truth, Mark.

John Dehlin [03:47:47] Give me three songs.

Marc Headley [03:47:48] Okay, to be fair, I like the live versions, more recent live versions. I like Never Let Me Down Again, World in My Eyes, Pain that I'm used To. There's Enjoy the Silence Live. I like a lot of their new live stuff. That's old songs, but the way they do them live, my favorite thing in the world.

John Dehlin [03:48:09] And your favorite three albums are.

Marc Headley [03:48:11] Violator, Music for the Masses and maybe Memento Mori, the latest one that they just came out.

Claire Headley [03:48:19] And I would. As long as we're going to talk about Depeche Mode, I will attribute Depeche Mode for helping me break free. Because after he had escaped, which we'll get to later, and left me Behind. I went home. I was crying. I packed my bag, but I didn't think I was gonna be able to make it out. Turned on the CD Depeche Mode is playing. And I just knew there's no way I was gonna be able to live without him. And I had to escape.

Marc Headley [03:48:46] Anyway, this all leads back to this interrogation, because for someone who loves Depeche

John Dehlin [03:48:52] Mode, you don't wanna talk about emergency.

Marc Headley [03:48:54] Well, no, because I want to tell you the story that has to do

Claire Headley [03:48:56] with circling back to Depeche Mode. He'll get there. It is relevant.

Marc Headley [03:49:00] Okay, so when you get an interrogation, if the needle has to do something that's called a floating needle.

Claire Headley [03:49:09] It has to just rhythmic sweep of

Marc Headley [03:49:11] the dial, back and forth, back and forth, like floating.

Claire Headley [03:49:15] I'm stressed just thinking about going into something like this.

Marc Headley [03:49:19] So this is the best thing ever. If your needle is floating, that's good. But there's a dial called the tonearm. And if the needle goes off the dial, they have to use this other a lever on the meter that's called a tonearm. And they have to get the needle. They have to move it to get the needle back on. And if your needle is floating so much that they have to use the tone arm, it's called floating ta. And this is basically in Scientology.

Claire Headley [03:49:50] It's just like a really big.

Marc Headley [03:49:52] In Scientology, it means that you are so awesome right now, that you have. There's no way you could have done anything bad because so do people try

Claire Headley [03:50:01] to get a floating.

Marc Headley [03:50:02] Well, so that's the thing they teach you in Scientology, that you are. It's not possible to successfully manipulate the needle, the E meter. You cannot not trick it.

Claire Headley [03:50:12] But conversely, you also do a metabolism test at the beginning of each session, and when you take in a deep breath and let it out, the needle drops. If you've had enough sleep and food. So it's just kind of a contradiction. And recognition.

Marc Headley [03:50:23] But either way, if you have a floating needle, then they're basically like, you're good. Nothing's wrong.

Claire Headley [03:50:30] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:50:30] And when they're doing this list of questions, you could have a floating needle on one question, but on another question, not have a floating needle.

Claire Headley [03:50:38] Needle, yeah.

Marc Headley [03:50:39] If your needle is floating through a lot of the questions, it just continues to float, then that means everything they're asking you is not applicable to you at all.

Claire Headley [03:50:48] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:50:49] If you have what's called a floating ta, then it basically means your shit don't even stink. This kid's cleaner than a whistle. And so I formulated very early on, whenever I would get interrogated on the E meter. I would just think about that Depeche Mode concert, front row, center, listening to.

Claire Headley [03:51:11] I'm even getting you into a happy place.

Marc Headley [03:51:13] I'm even getting goosebumps just now thinking about it. Like, I get emotional thinking about that concert and just being there, front row, and growing up with it my whole life, and then being right there, and the band is right there. It was just. For me, it was a very spiritual moment, and I felt a lot of joy in that one moment. I had a lot of turmoil, and that was sort of like. Not that.

Marc Headley [03:51:36] Anyway, I aced the interrogation, and I went straight to the headquarters. And then every time I would get in trouble at the headquarters and I would get interrogated, I would just go. Just lock right into that moment. And I was a person that was in trouble a lot, but never got in really big trouble, because when I would get interrogated would turn out it was just a misunderstanding or it was just whatever, because he's fine. And also because I grew up in Scientology. What could I have done that was so bad to get interrogated? I'm not. The things on these lists are insane. Like she said, you know, having sex with another.

Marc Headley [03:52:19] I grew up in la. Okay. I'm. I'm here. I'm a kid. I was a kid. I got here when I was 15. What did I do?

John Dehlin [03:52:25] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:52:26] So that was sort of how I got to the international headquarters. And that pretty much lines up where Claire's story is.

Claire Headley [03:52:37] So now you're.

Marc Headley [03:52:38] So now we're at the same place There was in 1990. There was a come to Jesus moment in August of 1990 at the International headquarters, where there was a flash flood that pretty much destroyed the entire property. It. It was a disaster.

John Dehlin [03:52:57] In Clearwater?

Marc Headley [03:52:58] No, this is in Gilman Hot Springs.

John Dehlin [03:53:00] Okay. I keep asking.

Marc Headley [03:53:01] It's in the desert of California. If you know where Hemet or San Jacinto, it's out. It's like two hours outside of LA.

John Dehlin [03:53:09] Okay.

Claire Headley [03:53:09] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:53:09] They have a giant 542 acre compound, and it's.

Claire Headley [03:53:13] It's a confidential location within Scientology. So for. No, no, Scientology were allowed to know the address. Our parents weren't allowed to know nothing.

Marc Headley [03:53:22] All of our mail going in is opened and read, and any mail that we send out is left open so that they can read it, and then they seal it when they mail it. Like I said, if there's any kind of magazines or anything that you could subscribe to, if one has a bad article about Scientology, they just throw it in the wastebasket that month.

Marc Headley [03:53:44] If your family members are like, hey, I don't know what's going on. We haven't seen you. You don't write. You don't get that letter. You get told, hey, your family would like you to write a little bit more. And then when you write to them, you have to write what's called fair roads, good weather. Like, hey, everything's good. Everything's wonderful. My life is amazing. I'm getting lots done. I hope you're good.

Marc Headley [03:54:10] And that's what. You don't talk about any specifics. You don't talk about what you're working on. You don't say anything. Like, you're not even allowed to say what you do.

Claire Headley [03:54:18] Right.

John Dehlin [03:54:19] Mormon missionaries are also discouraged from writing about negative mission experiences. Home. They're told to keep it positive.

Marc Headley [03:54:26] Yeah, good roads, fair weather or fair roads, good weather. Either way.

Claire Headley [03:54:30] Yeah, good roads, fair weather. The idea being nothing. Everything's great. Life is wonderful.

John Dehlin [03:54:36] Don't worry about us.

Claire Headley [03:54:37] Yeah, exactly. Don't worry about us. Us. It's from a Hubbard lecture called can we ever be Friends? Where it says, don't create antagonism. You know, you just always keep it mellow. And, yes, everything's great.

Marc Headley [03:54:51] Yeah. And then. And the. When I was brought there was in May of 1990. That's when I first got there. And there in August, this flood occurred. And the property had been being renovated for many, many years. And one of the reasons was because there was a certain individual named Tom Cruise who was. It was planned that he would be brought there to that property. And David Miscavige was short of. Would sort of wow it on all the amazing studios and recording facilities and film studios, we had all these different things, and those were at the tail end of being done.

Marc Headley [03:55:43] And he was supposed to. I think he was supposed to come and visit the property in, like, September or October of that year. And this flood occurred, and it destroyed the entire property and all. And specifically destroyed the bungalows that had been renovated for Tom Cruise to live in when he was staying at the property. They were fully destroyed, filled with mud. And David Miscavige was so angry at us that we had allowed the flood to occur.

Claire Headley [03:56:17] Because, of course, that would be. Emphasis on allowed.

John Dehlin [03:56:20] Yeah, because you were, like, 16, right? Yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [03:56:23] The entire. Yeah. The entire property was assigned a condition of confusion, which is the lowest condition operating existence that you can have in Scientology. Like, you don't even know what's going on.

John Dehlin [03:56:36] I thought you were going to say they declared the property A suppressive property.

Marc Headley [03:56:39] No, but. But he. He declared many people on the property suppressives that were still in the Sea Org because the.

John Dehlin [03:56:46] The mudslide happened, not because of the

Marc Headley [03:56:48] mud, but because of other things. But either way, the penalties. Because with conditions, these are called. There's conditions that are above that are good. There's like normal and not very many.

Claire Headley [03:57:03] There's more lower conditions.

Marc Headley [03:57:06] There's normal, affluence, power, change.

Claire Headley [03:57:09] That's it.

Marc Headley [03:57:10] There's four conditions that are okay to be in, and there's formulas to get to that next one. And then there are. Are many that are called lowered conditions.

Claire Headley [03:57:19] Yeah, so there's like eight. Eight or nine lower conditions.

Marc Headley [03:57:23] Well, no.

Claire Headley [03:57:24] Well, or considered negative. Yeah, but below normal is negative. Emergency, danger, non existence, liability, enemy, treason. Confusion.

Marc Headley [03:57:33] Yeah, confusion.

Claire Headley [03:57:34] And.

Marc Headley [03:57:35] Oh, and also there is another one.

Claire Headley [03:57:36] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:57:37] Child.

Claire Headley [03:57:38] Condition of child is the only condition that Hubbard said is lower than a confusion. Condition of confusion.

Marc Headley [03:57:44] And people at the property were assigned a condition of child before, even though they're like 60 years old.

Claire Headley [03:57:50] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:57:51] Anyway, so Blanket just assigned the entire property a condition of confusion, which was at the time, I want to say it was about probably 800 people that were there. There's 800 people that work at this one facility, and there's various organizations that are there, but the main organization was a production propaganda organization called Golden Era Productions, and that's where I.

Claire Headley [03:58:15] That was the largest organization, but all of the management of all Scientology emanated from that property.

Marc Headley [03:58:23] So Religious Technology center is there. Golden Era Productions is there. Executive strata, religious or there's like, research and technical compilations where they take all of L. Ron Hubbard's research and they go through it, verify that this is his original recording, and this is where it was modified. We need to go back to this. It's basically where anything that happens or gets disseminated any. To any Scientology organization in the world, it's packaged and created at this one facility.

John Dehlin [03:58:59] Let me just ask. I. I. Forgive me if I missed this. Were either of you there when the rained and flooded flood happened?

Marc Headley [03:59:06] Yeah, I was.

John Dehlin [03:59:07] You were there?

Claire Headley [03:59:08] I was there yet.

John Dehlin [03:59:09] Okay, yeah. Was it. Did anyone die? Was it terrifying?

Marc Headley [03:59:12] No, no one died. It was basically a flash flood, and they were.

John Dehlin [03:59:16] Sometimes flash floods kill people.

Marc Headley [03:59:17] Well, they were fully unprepared for the flood just because the way the property was being designed and maintained, and they were oblivious that they had. There was a construction division there, an electrical department, and. And an engineering department, but they were.

John Dehlin [03:59:36] It's like the flood that happened in Texas at that summer Camp. Did you hear about that?

Marc Headley [03:59:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very similar to that. But it only lasted for maybe 15 minutes.

John Dehlin [03:59:46] And you said it was declared by him. What was the label again?

Marc Headley [03:59:49] We're assigned a condition of confusion.

John Dehlin [03:59:51] And does that mean all the people were assigned?

Marc Headley [03:59:53] Yes, means every single person, no matter what they were doing in their job or their life or their work or what their production performance was, you're now the lowest of the low.

Claire Headley [04:00:04] Because of flood.

Marc Headley [04:00:05] Because of the flood.

Claire Headley [04:00:07] But also too to understand it's not just because it flooded, it's that they weren't prepared in order to stop it. It's a flood. But in the Sea Organization, the theory is that you drill and drill and drill and drill and if you're prepared, then nothing will happen. You will be able to prevent it. Like they should have gotten the sandbags there faster to prevent. Prevent the.

Marc Headley [04:00:32] That's where it's in Hubbard's mind. If you're in the sea organization, A lot of the things I talk about in the sea org indoctrination is that an emergency is only an emergency unless you're prepared. And if you're not prepared, an emergency becomes a catastrophe. So if you were prepared, you would have turned this emergency into a non emergency, but you weren't. And so it was a catastrophe.

John Dehlin [04:00:56] I'm reminded in Mormon history of Joseph Smith needing to save the members in Missouri that were running afoul of the law. And so he brings a bunch of. He assembles an army and brings them all down to the people of Missouri to rescue them and they end up being run away. And long story short, he blames the soldiers he recruited for not being righteous enough. And that's why they were. That's why they were kicked out. That's why they ran away. Even though he told all the people to go to Missouri, he recruited the army to bring them to Missouri. He prophesied that the Missouri town would flourish and he prophesied that they would rescue the people in Missouri. None of that happens. It's a big catastrophic failure. Instead of just saying I got it wrong, I gave a bad prophecy.

Claire Headley [04:01:51] Well, that's saying the inability to self reflect is another huge parallel.

John Dehlin [04:01:55] Or to take any responsibility.

Claire Headley [04:01:56] Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and David

John Dehlin [04:01:58] Miscavige, you never apologize, Never somebody else. It's always the fault of the members.

Claire Headley [04:02:03] Or rather it's never their fault. It's always somebody else's fault.

Marc Headley [04:02:06] Yeah, it's funny that you say that because David Miscavige was the one who sort of picked that these bungalows would be the place where the. The VIP and the pros would stay.

John Dehlin [04:02:18] He chose it.

Marc Headley [04:02:19] And it just happened to be the place that was in the path of the mountain. Like, basically the entire mountain floodplain went to this one spot. And the highway that ran through. There's a major California highway that runs through the property. And on the other side of where this mountain goes to this, those bungalows are right there. So. So all of the water was gonna go to one single, and mud and everything else was going to one place. And it was the place that he picked to be the VIP housing.

Claire Headley [04:02:51] Oh, and by the way, his own bedroom was also in that path. So it was not only. That's right, Tom Cruise's bedroom, but also David Miscavige's bedroom. Yeah, it was.

Marc Headley [04:03:03] Anyway, when that happened, everyone was assigned a condition of confusion. And in order to move up the conditions, you have to do what are called formulas. And it's basically just a few steps. And if you do those and it's approved by the, like, the police department of the organization, they look at it and they look at it and they go, okay, it's okay. This looks good. And then you get upgraded to the next condition. And then you have to do that. When you get to the condition of liability, like, you are a liability now, you've moved up from confusion and enemy and treason to liability. Liability. When you get to liability, you have to petition everybody else on the property to rejoin the group.

Claire Headley [04:03:51] And it has to be approved by majority permission.

Marc Headley [04:03:55] So if you work in Golden Era Productions, Golden Era Productions at the time was probably 300 people. If you worked in Golden Era Productions, you had to get 300. Most of these people you might not even know. You might not even work with them. You might not even know their name because you're not in their division. You don't see them, you don't eat with them, you don't talk to them. Who cares? You've got to go to all these different people, and they have to sign. They have to assign it. They can't just say, yeah, yeah, I'm good. No, they have to sign their name and say, yeah, I'm okaying you to get back in the group.

Marc Headley [04:04:26] So you probably. They would. The people at the time, you have to factor in. There's a lot of other people that might be in liability, too. You don't ask them. They're not in the group. They're in liability. You have to ask the members that are not in liability. So it creates this catch 22, because well, we're all in liability, so who are we gonna ask to get out of liability? So just when you do these blanket things, it kind of short circuits how the systems work. Because you're like, well, wait a minute, find out who I am. I'm with a bunch of people that are in confusion. I don't even want to be part

John Dehlin [04:05:02] of any of this.

Marc Headley [04:05:03] I should be getting out. But either way, in order to get out of all of the lower conditions, he basically assigned production tasks, and only one of them had anything to do with the flood. Everything else was totally disrelated to the flood. So it was basically a lever for him to pull. Hey, we had a flood. Guess what?

Marc Headley [04:05:27] I'm going to rain down the wrath on you guys. And if you don't do these things, then you're gonna be in the shit for the rest of time, so you better snap too. And one of those things was that the area that I worked into, that I worked in, we manufactured cassettes. And the previous people that had worked in this area, they made 300,000 cassettes that were bad quality, they were overt products.

Marc Headley [04:05:55] And the tapes cost about a buck each. They were very, very expensive cassette type tape, metal, TDK tape used, and it cost a dollar. So these guys basically wasted a half a million bucks worth of materials and production masters and time and whatever, and they were all sent to the rehabilitation project force, except for one person, and that was a girl by the name of Clarice. And Clarice was Shelly Miscavige's sister. And she was the only person left in the manufacturing area that didn't get sent to the religious, their rehabilitation project force or declared a suppressive. Some of the people were just declared suppressive and kicked out of the store.

John Dehlin [04:06:37] So, yeah, I'm stunned by the craziness of these rules and these punishments and just the treatment of the most committed, devout members. But ironically, what I've learned about psychology is sometimes in a cult or high demand religion, or in an abusive marriage or abusive relationship relationship. The worse someone's treated, the less they're respected. The more they're asked to sacrifice, the more committed they become.

Marc Headley [04:07:07] Yeah, because you're trying to climb back up that ladder. And. And again, there's Sea Org bases in UK and Denmark and Los Angeles and Florida. This is the top.

John Dehlin [04:07:21] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:07:21] You cannot go anywhere further than this one facility. You can't get higher than that. That is the top of the top. So if you're there, it's sort of like you. We're going to Ask more of you than you're going to get asked anywhere else. Because this is the top of the top. This every decision. Everything that gets done here is the most important thing you're going to do today. It's going to get done here. Yeah, but when that thing happened and he said you have to the area where I worked, it was the. The thing, the. The benchmark that we had to achieve to get the entire property out of this condition was we had to produce 50,000 cassettes every single week.

Marc Headley [04:08:10] If we could produce 50,000, it had never been done in the history of them making cassettes. And also because they had been made all these bad ones, the machines had to be essentially hot rotted to be the best quality that they could be. And they had to. We. They couldn't be any bad ones in order for us to make 50,000. All of them had to be amazing to be able to pass.

Marc Headley [04:08:37] And when the day we did that was Thanksgiving of 2000 of 1990. Thanksgiving Day is in Scientology. The work week ends on Thursday at 2pm and everybody in the sea organization has a statistic. And if your statistics this week at Thursday at 2pm are higher than last Thursday at 2pm Then you are what's considered an upstat, an up statistic. If your statistic is down, then you are in a lower condition than normal. And you have to do something so that you make more of or more widgets or more auditing hours or more study hours or whatever it is you do. You have to do more than last week.

Marc Headley [04:09:25] And so we did 50,000 cassettes by Thursday at 2pm and then David Miscavige assembled the entire property for a meeting and said okay, that just so you guys know the tapes guys did 50,000. I'm upgrading you all from lower conditions. And hold on to your hats. You can have 45 minutes for dinner

Claire Headley [04:09:49] tonight for Thanksgiving, for Thanksgiving dinner, 45 minutes. Which is a big deal when you've been on a 15 minute meal break for a month.

John Dehlin [04:09:57] That's crazy.

Marc Headley [04:09:58] The penalties when we were from that. So from August to November is when everybody was in this. If you. There was three to four musters per day. So everybody lines up and every division says we're all present or present or accounted for. This person's on security watch or present or accounted for. This person is with a celebrity or whatever it is. But every single person has to be accounted for.

Marc Headley [04:10:24] If you are late for a muster, you have to do an all night amends project that night night. So if. If muster is at 12:30, right after lunch, and you arrive at 12:30 and 10 seconds, you're late all night Amends Project. You have to work through the night and be on post first thing in the morning.

Marc Headley [04:10:45] If you're late a second time after that, you go to the Rehabilitation Project Force in Los Angeles. They moved the Rehabilitation. There used to be a Rehabilitation Project Force at the end base. But a bunch of German media came and were filming them working and doing all this stuff. And people were now exposing that there was this thing, this reprogramming camp called the Rehabilitation Project Force. So they disband it at the international headquarters and they moved it to Los Angeles. So if you were late a second time, then you would immediately get shipped off to Los Angeles.

Marc Headley [04:11:20] The Rehabilitation Project force could take two or three. It could take 15 years for you to finish that program. So if you were late once all night Amends. If you were late twice, you went to the Rehabilitation Project Force. And I would say, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 people ended up going to the RPF during that. Or they were just. They just got kicked out of the C organization altogether. They just said, I'm not going to the RPF and I'm not going to. Gonna do anything. I'm gonna leave, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Then those people would usually get given $500 and just kicked in the ass and said, go do whatever you're gonna do.

The Rehabilitation Project Force

Marc Headley [04:12:02] Over the years, David Miscavige was basically figuring out that people were trying to get assigned to the RPF because it was better than staying at the international headquarters. Like, you know you're going to sleep every night. You know you're going to be in la. You know you're going to get fed, you know, you're. It's like this. That's better. Doing the Rehabilitation project, which was always like the worst, too gruesome to get assigned to the rpf. The RPF was now a vacation compared to working at the park.

Claire Headley [04:12:38] By. By relative comparison, when he would be

Marc Headley [04:12:41] yelling at people and he'd be like this and this and this. And the person would be like, I don't know, sir. I just think I need to go to the rpf. He'd be like. He'd be like, no way. Now I know that the RPF is no longer a too gruesome. No one's going to the rpf. You're staying here. I'm going to figure out how to make this place worse than the rpf. And. And you don't get to take a break from this. You're. It's. This is it. And that. That is about the time when this thing called the hole was created at the property. And that is a place that you don't leave. You get locked in a room and you eat there, you sleep there, you work there. And that's where all of the big key executives from all of Scientology were all in this place.

Claire Headley [04:13:34] Well, ironically, originally that was the building where they're off offices were this double wide trailer. And then. And we're talking about the management executives for running Scientology on Earth. But David Miscavige considered that all these people were incapable and non compliant and counterintention and all these other things. So he converted. That's he essentially decided started declaring management executive of suppressive people and then restrained them to what's referred became referred to as the whole which Mike Rinder talks about in his book and Next Level of Punishment and Two Gruesomes.

John Dehlin [04:14:20] All right, so I think I have a good sense for kind of both of your individual experiences leading up to you actually meeting any other stories from each of you that are kind of crucial that need to be told before we talk about how you met.

Marc Headley [04:14:39] Well, I did think about something that you had said earlier and something we were talking about where when you're in Scientology, you're growing up in Scientology, there's always this sort of idea that the elders or the executives or the people that are high up in Scientology. Scientology have these like kind of these powers that they talk about in Scientology that you'll get cause over matter, energy, space and time.

John Dehlin [04:15:04] Special powers kind of thing.

Marc Headley [04:15:06] Yeah, like, kind of like superpowers. You can move things with your mind, you know, things you can locate things that people can't locate. And one of the things very early on at my time at the property was that David Miscavige, the lead leader of Scientology, would come down to our area all the time. Every day he would come to where we were making the cassettes of all of the subjects that he was very interested in and that he liked to deal in audio. Visual was one of his favorite because he used to be a cameraman when L. Ron Hubbard was had the film crew. He was a cameraman on L.

Marc Headley [04:15:43] Ron Hubbard's shoot team. So he was. He was a camera guy who then became an audio guy. So he would always be in the audio and video production areas, but he would come down every single day and it was sort of like everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be clean. Everybody has to be on their best behavior. We've got to be working when he comes in. You can never not be working when he comes in.

Marc Headley [04:16:09] And it was always like, oh, my God. And no one ever called him Dave or David or David Miscavige. It was always cob, chairman of the board. And you never even said chairman of the board. You just said, cob is coming, or cob's in the building, or it was like panic stations if he was in the building. And there were many, many stories and folklore that went around of things. He'd walk in, and he'd see something, and he would go like, what's that over there? And then you'd open the drawer, and there'd be something that wasn't supposed to be in there. And then everybody would get in trouble.

Marc Headley [04:16:43] And that. He just had this sixth sense kind of thing because he was the head Scientology guy. You go, well, yeah, that's what happens when you get that high. You get this. Well, when I was working, making the cassettes, I was on the night shift, and we would have to walk by a whole bunch of the cinematography division to go to where. Where the dining hall was. And we would go in the middle of the night. There's nobody else there, just the people that are on night shift in the entire property. That was 800 people. There might be 20 people on the property in the middle of the night.

Marc Headley [04:17:19] And David Miscavige lived on the property, so he would be up and around sometimes late at night. And one day, we were walking past the cinematography division, and normally when he was. Would come into your area, he'd have five or six people with him, maybe 10 or 15 people with him. He was all by himself, and he was in the cinematography division. And we could see because the lights are on in there. We could see in, but he couldn't see us out in the dark. And he was digging through all the drawers in the cinema. He was just going through all the offices, pulling the drawers and looking in them.

Marc Headley [04:17:55] And we kind of walked by, and we kind of stood there for a second, and he was just rummaging through all these desks. And we thought, that's so weird. Anyway, we just kept going. We went to midnight rations called mid rats. We went to mid rats. We went back to our workspace. We worked all night, and then we would sleep during the day, so a bus would take us to our apartments. We would sleep during the day. And then at dinner time, right before dinner, we'd get picked up and brought into the property. And as soon as we got to the property for dinner, there were people running around and there was flurry of activity.

Marc Headley [04:18:31] And it was like, what's going on? What's going on? It's like, oh, everyone is white gloving all of their offices. And there was a huge flap during the day today. And we found out that in the cinematography division, David Miscavige had showed up to do a surprise inspector.

Marc Headley [04:18:56] And what he had done is the night before, he had gone through all their desks and rummaged through everything looking for anything that was contraband or illegal. And then in the middle of the day, he just showed up. And then he was able to just literally walk into this person's work area and zero in on every single drawer that had contra. Like it was a pair of dirty shoes in one person's desk and maybe some magazines in another person's desk. But he opened the two desks that had this thing in it and everybody was like, oh my God, he has this extra ability.

Marc Headley [04:19:40] And we're being told the story. Like he just walked in and he's talking to the group of people and he's said, hey, what's in that drawer right there? And then they opened the drawer and there was a pair of stinky, dirty shoes. And you would. That's like, come on, you don't. Nobody does that. And then in somebody else's drawer there was a magazine that was forbidden. And everybody's like, he opened two drawers and he knew and those two drawers were the things. And they opened every other drawer in the place and none of them had it. And we're. And I'm sitting there going like, wait a minute. He was digging through all those drawers last night when we were on the

John Dehlin [04:20:18] way to the meal.

Marc Headley [04:20:19] And I'm thinking to myself, is that it? That's the hack. You just go in in the middle of the night while everyone's asleep, and you just dig through everything. And then the next day you show up and you're suddenly you have extra powers.

John Dehlin [04:20:32] So have you heard the story of Napoleon?

Marc Headley [04:20:35] No.

John Dehlin [04:20:36] So I was told once that Napoleon, to engender confidence with his troops, he would find out the name of just a random soldier by asking. And then imagine thousands of soldiers lined up. He would just be riding along and he would stop and address one of the soldiers by name and would be the one that he was told beforehand what his name would be. But it made all the soldiers feel like he knew them each by name.

Marc Headley [04:21:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:21:11] Does that make sense?

Claire Headley [04:21:12] Totally, absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:21:14] That sort of thing.

Witnessing Misconduct and Cracks in the Facade

Marc Headley [04:21:15] So that was sort of the very first little peek behind the curtain. And I wasn't supposed to see it, and nobody else saw it, but I knew. Well, he's not. And the funny thing was, is people, when they would tell that about those kind of stories about David Miscavige, they would say, Hubbard did the same thing. He'd walk in and he'd go into the galley and he'd open up a drawer and there'd be some rotten food in there. Or. And I go, what if that's what that guy was doing? He was doing the same. They were on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

Marc Headley [04:21:50] He could have been walking around the whole ship all night long. Nobody would have known. So immediately I sort of had like this. I don't want to say it was dissent, but I knew that there was. I knew there was a little bit of sleight of hand and trickery that was making this guy, this guy that's all so powerful, knowing I kind of know that he's not, because I saw him, what he was doing the night before.

Marc Headley [04:22:21] So it's really just a trick he does. And nobody knows that that's what he's doing. And the other great thing about it is that when he goes somewhere, he has this entourage. So not even his entourage was with him. So they don't know either. So then I thought, even the people that are closest to him don't know this is how he's doing the trick. That's interesting, but there were many kind of instances of that over the years. And my job was for many years was manufacturing. Then I worked worked in film production and video production and event production.

John Dehlin [04:22:55] Was that kind of propaganda stuff or no?

Marc Headley [04:22:57] 100%. They have seven events a year. Scientology holds seven, like, convention type events where basically all the Scientologists in that geographical area are sort of expected that they need to come. And if they don't show their face there, then it kind of is like, we haven't seen this guy in two or three.

John Dehlin [04:23:18] One in Europe, one in Latin America, that kind of thing.

Marc Headley [04:23:20] More US and England. But they have one in Florida, one in Los Angeles. Sometimes they'll do one in England, sometimes they'll do one in Denmark, but most of the time they're either in LA or Florida or England, those three places. And then they also that cruise ship in the Caribbean. They have a week of a week events there every year where David Miscavige brings all of the top, top donors. So if you haven't given a million or more, you don't get to go. So the kind of guy, and even now, it might even be the guys who've given 10 million or above, are the ones that are coming in.

Claire Headley [04:24:01] Yeah, the events are not location driven, they're theme driven. So the New Year's event, for example, is health in Los Angeles, but then broadcast to all organizations elsewhere. Then they have Auditors Day, L. Ron Hubbard's birthday.

Marc Headley [04:24:19] The anniversary of the publication of dianetics is in May 9, and then June,

Claire Headley [04:24:24] the one that's on the cruise ship is commemorating the anniversary, the maiden and maiden voyage of that ship.

John Dehlin [04:24:33] And so those. You said seven events a year, basically about.

Marc Headley [04:24:37] It's loosely, because that one they do in Curacao is really a week of events. So technically it's like seven events on its own, but they're kind of mini events. But yes, seven major conventions. And for that, we might produce two or three videos for each event.

Marc Headley [04:24:56] And what we do is we go to an organization or a prison that's doing a Scientology criminal rehabilitation, the criminal program, or we go to a drug facility that's using the Narconon program, the Scientology drug. And. Or we're do one for. They have a sort of a business arm of Scientology that's called the Wise Group, and it's the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. So any company that is owned by a Scientologist or is Scientology right run, they're a member of Wise. They pay a membership fee. And as part of that, they have to kind of run their business using Scientology principles and teachings. And if there is a dispute within the business or with another Scientology person or business, then they are the mediator between the them. And usually whoever gives more money to Scientology is the winner of that mediation. That's how that works.

John Dehlin [04:26:01] And so were you always filming, like, testimonials of people that got clean from drugs or had successful businesses that you could play those in the Rah Rah annual annual meetings to make everyone feel excited that they were part of something meaningful.

Marc Headley [04:26:18] Basically proof that Scientology is doing all the good things they say they're doing. Yeah, but when you're doing those, there's a lot of movie magic.

John Dehlin [04:26:30] Well, let me just ask, like, we all want to hate on cults, but let me be fair, like, oh, I'll give you an example. So I'm at Microsoft now. We're talking 25 years ago, and I meet an ex Mormon woman. It was one of the first ex Mormons I'd ever met. She's working at Microsoft, and I'm asking her about her life and she says, I have a son that got hooked on drugs, and believe it or not, he's in a Scientology rehab, because as far as she knew, 25 years ago, that was the best rehab out there. So do your best to be fair. Are these programs sometimes really helping people?

Marc Headley [04:27:11] Well, I would say that if you are doing drugs and you're addicted to drugs, and then you get off of drugs and you no longer do drugs, then that's a good thing. Yeah, that's a. I would say that's a. No, I'll say that is considered a successful individual. That that happened to that. I would consider that a success. Scientology likes to say that they have. I can't remember what it is, but it's like a 90% success rate, which is.

Claire Headley [04:27:50] They claim they have a 90%.

Marc Headley [04:27:51] Yeah, they'll say we have a 90% success rate on keeping people that come in on drugs that stay off of drugs. We have a 90% or whatever it is. Let's just say it's 90. It might be more. It might be a little less. In the drug rehabilitation drug universe, 30% would be amazing. 90% to them is like. Well, that's of course, absolutely false, because it's not true. Nobody has that success.

John Dehlin [04:28:19] So they over inflate their.

Marc Headley [04:28:20] They 100% overinflate it. But this is the thing. In order to get that person off drugs, they do Scientology courses and Scientology course practices that were never designed to get people off drugs. They do the purification rundown, which is meant to rid your body of any residual drugs that might be in your body so that you can then do Scientology counseling. They do a course that. It's called Ups and downs in Life, but it really teaches you about PTS people and suppressive people and to stay away from.

John Dehlin [04:28:56] Let me just say, if I'm a parent of a kid on drugs. Yeah, I don't give a crap what they're learning. If they get off drugs.

Claire Headley [04:29:01] Well, that's what you would care if. Has the program been studied medically? Has it been scientifically proven? Is it even safe to give kids on drugs huge amounts of niacin, up to 5,000 milligrams a day, that is provably, potentially carcinogenic. Like, there are no studies that show that the claims made by this purification rundown are anywhere remotely true.

Marc Headley [04:29:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:29:31] So what do you think? If you had to guess what the actual success rate is of these drug

Marc Headley [04:29:36] programs, I would say it's probably about 10%.

John Dehlin [04:29:39] So a third of a really successful

Marc Headley [04:29:41] program, and maybe not even that, because the thing that happens at these Narconon facilities, and we did, we shot at these places so you would see it when people graduate. So I come in, I'm addicted to, let's say the person's addicted to Adderall. They come in and they do the program and then they stop taking Adderall. As soon as they graduate the program, they're like, this is amazing. I'm clean. I want to help other people. That person immediately becomes an employee. His only qualification to become an employee at the Drug Revolution is that he was a drug addict. That is 99% of their employees are former addicts that can't get a job anywhere else because they were a drug addict. And now they want to help other people get off drugs so they become a Narconon employee.

John Dehlin [04:30:32] It's like Landmark Forum uses former Landmark Forum.

Claire Headley [04:30:35] Yes. And I don't think that they've actually studied the effectiveness of it. I do know, yes, they have had some. I can name a few people that I know that they came in because they were on drugs or struggling addicts and they got off. But when you put someone in an isolated and highly controlled environment, what's getting them off drugs? Is it the purification rundown or is it the environment? No, no, no. What does that have to do with sex?

John Dehlin [04:31:04] I mean, on the one hand, placebo effects.

Claire Headley [04:31:06] Real, right?

Marc Headley [04:31:07] Exactly.

John Dehlin [04:31:09] But also, who cares, like, if it gets you off drugs? I don't care. So, like, evidence based is always the best.

Claire Headley [04:31:18] For sure.

John Dehlin [04:31:19] And you know, a lot, you know, non evidence based treatments that cause harm are terrible.

Claire Headley [04:31:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:31:26] Benign non evidence based treatments that have, you know, placebo effect that lead to healing. I'm okay with that.

Marc Headley [04:31:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:31:35] But I guess what I also hear you saying is there's harm. It's false advertising because their effective rates, effectiveness rates are overinflated and you end up in a cult.

Claire Headley [04:31:46] That's right.

John Dehlin [04:31:47] And it's exploitative. It's exploitative.

Claire Headley [04:31:49] Yes, exactly. It's one of the many ways. It's one of the many front groups that they use to get you in the door.

Marc Headley [04:31:58] The key statistic is they have have less and less Narconons every year compared to what they had 30 years ago. There used to be Narconons all over the United States and now they're barely holding on and staying. And they had. There's that facility that I told you about in Oklahoma. They moved that to another Indian reservation in Oklahoma and they had three deaths within three months.

John Dehlin [04:32:29] Oh, so it's become a liability.

Marc Headley [04:32:30] Probably, yes. They have not Only did they have non qualified personnel supervising? Oh, that's the other thing. There's no detox. It's cold turkey. You come in, you're addicted to drugs. They don't. There's no procedure to detox you. There's no Scientology procedure on how to detox somebody from drugs. So they just say, don't take drugs while you're here. And that's how you detox. It's just cold turkey. Some people can't go through that. Depending on what drug they were on or what that doesn't work physically for their body. It's not safe to do it that way. Or if they are doing that, they shouldn't do other things that they are doing at the Narconon facilities. But regardless of that, the only reason I even brought this up was because when we would shoot there, sometimes there wouldn't be anybody there doing the program. Doing the Narconon program.

John Dehlin [04:33:28] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:33:29] So the staff would dress up like they were participants in the program, and we'd shoot the full program.

John Dehlin [04:33:37] Oh, so when you did these testimonial

Marc Headley [04:33:40] videos, we have to spice them up. We got.

John Dehlin [04:33:42] Because we're like, fraud.

Marc Headley [04:33:43] Yeah. We can't show nobody here. And that's the same thing we did with the Scientology organization.

John Dehlin [04:33:48] Okay. So it's making member others feel like they're contributing to a cause that's super worthwhile when there's nothing. When it was kind of fraudulent.

Marc Headley [04:33:58] Yeah. And so you see that we didn't always have to do that, But I'd say 75% of the time it was like, why are there only five people? You guys dress up, take off your uniforms, put on some civilian clothes and get in here. Or. Or we would. Sometimes we would just get people off the street. Hey, do you want to be in a video?

Marc Headley [04:34:22] You're in la. Everybody wants to be in a video. Everybody wants to be on tv. You say, hey, you mind signing this release form? We need some extra people. And then those people would be in a Scientology course room studying or going into an Applied Scholastics education facility.

Marc Headley [04:34:44] And they're just somebody that happened to be walking down Sunset Boulevard while we were shooting. So there was a lot of that over the course of many years of shooting those videos. But then the only other thing I wanted to say just in terms of that was sometimes when we were pre producing these stories that would get shown at one of these events. So David Miscavige is the MC of all these events. He gets on the stage at the podium, and he runs the whole event. And he'll tell little factoids and little tidbits throughout his speech.

Marc Headley [04:35:21] And so somebody will write in and then say, hey, we have a Dianetics seminar that we're running down here in Mexico, and we've got 25 people that are coming in for this thing. And so then a little blurb gets written up, and then that gets put into a speech for David Miscavige. And then the speechwriters get a hold of that and they go, well, we can't say 25.

Marc Headley [04:35:48] We could say dozens, dozens of new people. Because a dozen is 12, two dozens is 24. It's 25. It's dozens. So dozens of new people are coming in every day? Well, no, it was those amount of people are coming in every month.

Marc Headley [04:36:05] Well, did it say month? Did they say when we'll say a day? The speechwriter's trying to spice it up, cuz he's pitching this to David Miscavige to put into his speech. So then David Miscavige gets it. He goes, dozens. We're trying to clear the planet. Okay?

Marc Headley [04:36:22] So maybe we say. Maybe we'll say scores or he'll punch it up. When it gets to him, he punches it up. And so then when the event happens and he's giving the speech, he would literally be like, there's hundreds of people coming into this Mexican organization. So it just. It basically, each person that touches it just puts a little extra spin on it. And that's pretty much how everything goes for these events.

Marc Headley [04:36:54] They make a mountain out of a molehill for the purpose of deceiving the members. And that's where you go, like, it was similar. You were telling that you were talking about, you know, on a mission. Maybe you witnessed these guys are baptizing drunks or children without their parents. And it's sort of like that flavor of, hey, guys, you kind of are lying in these things and none of this stuff's happening. But the worst part is that in a lot of these events, we're talking about a Scientology organization. There's Scientologists that work there that are in that place, and they know that these are lies because they work there.

Marc Headley [04:37:42] And they're like, we didn't tell you that there. There was hundreds of people coming in. We said there was 25 people we got in a month.

John Dehlin [04:37:48] Yeah, no, I get it.

Marc Headley [04:37:49] And so they're writing in after events saying, hey, I don't know who put this in the speech or did this, but that was a lie. That never happened. And then those people are getting in trouble or those people are being like, hey, maybe something got mixed up here or there. But it's sort of a. It's basically a widespread issue where they. They exaggerate.

John Dehlin [04:38:17] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:38:18] For the greater good. And that's the overlying excuse for everything, is that it's for the greater good. We're gonna get more people into Scientology. And so just telling a little white lie about how many people is not bad in the overall scheme of things, if that gets more people in Scientology or if it keeps the members from leaving.

John Dehlin [04:38:42] Yeah. In the Mormon church, they claim 17 million members, but we all know there's probably only 4 million that actually attend worldwide. The overwhelming majority leave, and, you know, you never hear from them again. But the church still boasts 17 million. And then once. Once the activity rates started falling and people started defecting with the Internet, the church stopped publishing at statistics.

Marc Headley [04:39:08] Yes. Scientology has the exact same thing they used to claim. For many, many years, they claimed they had a million members, and then it went up to millions of members. And for most of the people that leave the Sea Org, they keep track of everything meticulously. And most Sea Org members that have left within the last decade or so, give the estimate that there's between maybe 25 and 20,000 active Scientologists in the world. In the world, yes.

John Dehlin [04:39:38] 25,000.

Marc Headley [04:39:39] Yes. It's not that many.

Claire Headley [04:39:42] Best case. And that's best case scenario, what was the peak?

John Dehlin [04:39:46] What was its peak?

Marc Headley [04:39:47] Probably in the 80s, I would say in the 80s, they probably had about 100,000. And that's another interesting fact, because everything in Scientology is measured by a statistic. Every single person that works in a Scientology organization or in the Sea organization has a statistic. And since 1986, the International Statistics of Scientology have been going down, and they kind of just kind of mosey down. But in 1996, David Miscavige released. Released a new program that was called the Golden Age of Tech. And it was basically, he revamped all of L. Ron Hubbard's courses and the counseling technology and everything so that it would be much faster. And in actual effect, it became much, much longer and more painful and arduous for members to do, and much more

Claire Headley [04:40:53] expensive, since they had to redo all the training that they'd already done because it had now been revamped.

Marc Headley [04:40:59] So basically, anybody who was trained to any level in Scientology, that was erased, and you start from the beginning again, and you had to pay to redo it would be like me telling you, hey, this car you've had is really good. But it has to get. It's been recalled. You can't drive anything.

John Dehlin [04:41:16] It's like, dig a big hole now. Fill it up now. Dig the hole again.

Marc Headley [04:41:20] Yes, exactly. You know, anyway, so they. So when that happened, and you can see this in. In Scientology, you are. It's crushed into your skull, into your activities, into everything you do. Statistics are the key to everything, and if the statistic goes up, you find out why, and you do more of that. If the statistic goes down, you find out why and stop doing that. And in 1996, when David Miscavige released this new golden age of tech, all of the Scientology statistics internationally have been going down since that time. They've never, ever recovered from 1996.

John Dehlin [04:42:09] Given how sacred they view L. Ron Hubbard's instruction and rules to be, I'm surprised Miscavige had the courage to try and change anything.

Marc Headley [04:42:22] Well, this is how he does it. And this. You only would know this if you worked at the international headquarters, because that's where everybody is that knows what all the original L. Ron Hubbard writings are and where he gave this lecture. Most of the.

Marc Headley [04:42:39] Most of the policies and most of the things that L. Ron Hubbard wrote were during the 50s to the late 60s. And then there's just a smattering of things throughout the 70s and maybe into the 80s, but most of it's throughout the 50s through the late 60s.

Marc Headley [04:42:56] And there were typists and transcriptionists and people that recorded it, and then they transcribed, and then we never found the original recording. And then. So they've spent decades and decades finding all of the originals and transcribing them exactly how he said it. And this is another kind of part where you see behind the curtain, because when you listen to one of these lectures, it's very polished, and it sounds great and everything, but L. Ron Hubbard recorded it himself originally, and it took 1,000 hours to make his recording listenable. It was horribly recorded. It was horribly mixed. It was horribly mic'd. It was. But he was an expert in all these things, so how did he record such a horrible recording?

Marc Headley [04:43:47] And then you find out he had no idea what he was doing, but he professed to be an expert in all these fields. And then you find out they're removing coughs and. And racist statements and farts and burps and slurs. And so then you're going like, whoa, wait a minute. And there's many instances where he was very racist. There's actually a few recordings that are still floating around where he's talking, calling Asian people by a certain name or calling black people by a certain name. And these are out there.

Marc Headley [04:44:23] But he left instructions that all those things should be edited out of those lectures before they're manufactured and print out. But then you find out David Miscavige has changed something, and you're like, well, how can he change it? Well, then he'll go to one of these events. He goes, well, we found out that there was a. Somebody did a transcript, and they altered the transcript, and they added things that weren't in the original recording. And so we had to take a bunch of that out because it wasn't in. But really, that never happened. He said something that contradicted another thing that he said. And so something has to go away.

Marc Headley [04:45:04] And the only reason you can get rid of it is if it wasn't really L. Ron Hubbard who did that. And so a lot of times when Dave changes something, there's a whole explanation on what. And the last time that he did this, he redid all of L. Ron Hubbard's books. All of them, and some of them were edited, and a lot of things were taken out.

Marc Headley [04:45:29] And the reason that he gave to the Scientologists at the event was, well, there was, like, semicolons and periods, and that whoever edited the book didn't understand the English language, so they were adding it to taking things away. And so we cleaned all that up. And it's like, that's why that troublesome paragraph and that one book just disappeared because of misplaced commas and periods.

Marc Headley [04:45:53] But either way, he's been doing this since the 80s. He would say, oh, we did a. We went through all of. They call L. Ron Hubbard source. We went through all of the source materials, and we isolated all of the original L. Ron Hubbard writings. And that's what's in this new course that's been streamlined and all this other stuff.

Claire Headley [04:46:15] But the real and most of the courses were not written by Hubbard in the first place. Since the 70s, he had a compilations unit that would put together the actual steps of the courses, and those would get approved by Hubbard, but were not written by him. So Miscavige uses that as well as justification, by which he's just rearranging the steps to train Scientologists.

Celebrity Scientologists and Internal Secrets

Marc Headley [04:46:41] Yeah. So in 1990. Well, actually, 1990, when Tom Cruise was just getting into Scientology for real, he went to the international headquarters, and they had to have somebody for him to audit. And because I had never really done any auditing in Scientology, I had done some courses and training things in Scientology, but not really Any auditing. So then I was to be his guinea pig that he would practice on. And when he was doing that, they brought a whole team of the people that made the courses to be the supervisor for Tom Cruise so that he could do the courses exactly the way they were supposed to be done.

Marc Headley [04:47:27] And there's a film that teaches you how to do certain procedures in Scientology, and they got the guy who played the star of the film to work with Tom to do those procedures. So they basically took out any possibility of anybody doing anything wrong with Tom to be there for that. And then you see. And then Tom didn't want to think like they were treating him special, so they brought in Kirstie Alley also. Kirstie Alley is somebody who came. Came in through Narconon. She had a very horrible cocaine habit. And because she got into Scientology, she was able to not do cocaine. But then she became a Scientologist, and then she just did everything the Scientology way.

Marc Headley [04:48:10] And although she wasn't doing cocaine, there was other things in her life that didn't survive Scientology, like her marriage and, you know, her career and other things. Things.

John Dehlin [04:48:21] Do we know why John Travolta joined? Was there.

Marc Headley [04:48:23] John Travolta joined because he had. It was either his girlfriend or a new. A wife that he had just some sort of relationship, and she passed away. And. And that was. That wrecked him. And then somebody scooped him up. And there's a thing in Scientology that's called life repair. And if you have a horrible or some tragedy or some horrible thing that's happened. Happened in your life, the way they isolate this is they call it your ruin. So whatever's got you in this state that your life is horrible, they figure out a way for you to get past that. And that is an introductory step to Scientology is life repair.

Claire Headley [04:49:08] Yeah, that's how they. Yeah, finding the ruin is how they prey on vulnerable people, find out what is really destroying their life, and use that to get them into Scientology. Everybody does life repair as one of the introductory services when you're becoming a Scientologist, and then for a few.

Marc Headley [04:49:28] Born in it. I never did that.

Claire Headley [04:49:29] I did.

Marc Headley [04:49:30] You did. Oh, I never did it.

John Dehlin [04:49:32] And then do we know what got Tom Cruise hooked?

Claire Headley [04:49:35] He had. Tom Cruise became interested in Scientology through. Yeah, through Mimi Rogers, who was a second generation Scientologist, but he had always struggled with dyslexia. And they offered that they could provide a solution to that, allegedly.

John Dehlin [04:49:54] And I guess the south park episode alleges that Tom Cruise was secretly gay. And I think also people have made the same types of inferences about John Travolta? Possibly, yeah. How is that processed by people in and out of Scientology?

Marc Headley [04:50:09] Well, first of all, it's very, very well known within Scientology that what. That John Travolta. May. That. May there be. May be some truth to that rumor about John. The rumor about Tom is not unfounded, but it is his. The thing that David Miscavige. This is another very sensitive subject. But anyone who gets counseling in Scientology, there are cameras and microphones in the counseling rooms, and they record everything. And David Miscavige loves to watch those and dish about things that come up in those confessions. And so before him and Tom were best buds, Whenever Tom's sessions would get recorded and he'd say things, Dave would tell people about him and joke about him and be like, he's worried people are gonna think he's gay. What a stupid thing to worry about. Or anything of that nature. And even when Tom Cruise found out that all sessions get recorded, they don't

John Dehlin [04:51:18] tell you ahead of time.

Marc Headley [04:51:19] No, no, no, no, they don't.

Claire Headley [04:51:23] They didn't in the years that we were there. Maybe they.

Marc Headley [04:51:25] Now you would secretly record people 100%.

John Dehlin [04:51:29] Oh, my goodness.

Marc Headley [04:51:30] Audio and video.

John Dehlin [04:51:31] So Tom Cruise got. Well, allegedly.

Marc Headley [04:51:34] Well, no, no, no, no.

Claire Headley [04:51:35] I was there. So Tom Cruise, when he was being brought back into Scientology by Marty Rathbun in this was in the early 2000s. So right around the time he divorced Nicole Kidman, Marty Rathbun was deputy to David Miscavige and was bringing. Was doing counseling with Tom Cruise. Tom. Tom specifically stated he did not want to be recorded. And so instead, they removed the cameras and put in hidden cameras and recorded.

Marc Headley [04:52:03] We just moved him to the hidden camera room. So some rooms you can see the cameras. Yeah, some rooms you can see the cameras. And they tell you these are for quality control purposes.

John Dehlin [04:52:14] So they did record Tom Cruise.

Claire Headley [04:52:17] Absolutely.

Marc Headley [04:52:17] In this instance, he moved to the room that had the smoke detector cam and the mirror cam and the pictures.

John Dehlin [04:52:22] So that's the recording.

Marc Headley [04:52:23] 100%.

Claire Headley [04:52:24] Yeah. And so those videos. It was cassette tapes at the time?

Marc Headley [04:52:28] Well, vhs.

Claire Headley [04:52:30] Sorry, vhs. It was VHS tapes that would record the session of Tom Cruise, and then that VHS tape would go with his folder to get reviewed by people in religious technology center and including David and Shelley Miscavige.

Marc Headley [04:52:49] So they would watch his confessions or his sessions in Scientology, and then based on that, they would social engineer what we're going to do with him to make him stay in Scientology.

John Dehlin [04:53:02] So is there any solid Confirmation that y' all are aware of, that Tom Cruise admitted to being gay in those.

Marc Headley [04:53:09] No, no, no. His thing was that he didn't want people to think that he was gay.

John Dehlin [04:53:14] Okay.

Marc Headley [04:53:15] Yeah, because he was going to join this. He was going to be a priest. That's what his path was when he was young.

John Dehlin [04:53:21] Catholic priest.

Claire Headley [04:53:22] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:53:22] He wanted to become a priest, and he was going to go to the seminary, and all these things were going to happen. And then, if you believe everything, he then got in. I think it was Taps or some movie he was in, and then he became an actor, and then that's where he went. But he did struggle with dyslexia. And so his first wife, Mimi, Roger, she was a second generation Scientologist. And even their marriage. When he did a movie, he did this. He saw Nicole Kidman, and I think it was a movie called Dead Calm. And then he was like, oh, we should get her for Days of Thunder.

Marc Headley [04:54:01] That is, when I met him was they had just finished shooting Days of Thunder, and so him and Nicole were a thing. But Mimi, it was basically like, hey, he likes her now. You guys got to get divorced because he likes her now. And it was just like, okay, da, da, da, da. Okay, Mimi, you're out. Nicole, you're in. And now that's this. It's not. It wasn't even. It didn't even seem like it was a big deal. It was just like, yeah, she's out. She's in. But then as soon as Nicole went sour on Scientology, then it was like, we got to figure out what she's up to so we can get rid of her.

Marc Headley [04:54:35] And during that time, the entire time from when he was there, and they just finished Days of Thunder, and Nicole was there at the property with him when we was. When he was auditing me and doing Scientology counseling on me, Nicole Kidman was 10ft away in a chair doing a Scientology potential trouble source suppressive person course. Like, right on the other side of the room.

John Dehlin [04:54:58] Wait, you've met Tom and Nicole?

Marc Headley [04:55:00] Yeah, they went to the property to be trained and get into Scientology and get moved. Like, they basically got super speed to do everything. Like, you're not gonna go to a regular place. You're gonna do it here, and we're gonna get you through as fast as you can possibly get through. And from that time to when they divorced, Tom was not in Scientology. He had nothing to do with Scientology. We didn't even know if he was still in Scientology. And then we were told at the property, we would get updates all the time. And Dave would talk mad trash about Tom Cruise, about how he wasn't really a Scientologist, and he never really did anything. He never talks about Scientology.

Claire Headley [04:55:46] In the mid-90s, during this time period, Tom and Nicole had two people working for them, a husband and wife, who were their assistants. Those two people were Scientologists, and they were sending reports to Dave and Shelley Miscavige on exactly what was going on on a daily basis in their marriage

Marc Headley [04:56:04] and everything in their work life, in their personal life. And so Dave would dish.

John Dehlin [04:56:10] So Miscavige had spies.

Marc Headley [04:56:13] Nicole Kidman's personal assistant was a Scientologist, and Tom Cruise's personal assistant was a Scientologist, and they were a couple that was married, and they were both reporting directly to David.

John Dehlin [04:56:25] And then you're saying David would dish what he did.

Marc Headley [04:56:27] He would dish on. He would dish on anybody, but he would especially dish on them. And we were told by him that Tom Cruise was sterile, and that was one of his ruins, that he couldn't have kids and. Because he was sterile. And so then when they found out, I'm assuming. I don't know where the information came from, but the information that was relayed to us by David Miscavige was that Nicole was pregnant. And so.

John Dehlin [04:56:59] Meaning Tom Cruise wasn't the father.

Marc Headley [04:57:01] Yeah, because he's sterile.

John Dehlin [04:57:04] So she had an affair.

Claire Headley [04:57:06] Yeah, that was the allegation.

Marc Headley [04:57:07] It was told by us.

Claire Headley [04:57:09] That was Scientology's allegation and which was provided to Tom Cruise. Whether it's true or false, I don't know. But this is what David Miscavige was telling us was going on behind the scenes, and was. That was then a pivotal piece that resulted in Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's divorce.

John Dehlin [04:57:29] This would make Suri not Tom Cruise's

Marc Headley [04:57:34] daughter if he is, in fact, sterile. Again, it all came from David Miscavige.

Claire Headley [04:57:40] So who knows?

Marc Headley [04:57:42] It's hard to say what's true and what's not, but this is the narrative that Scientology was creating. She had just done a movie with Ewan McGregor, I think it was called Moulin Rouge.

John Dehlin [04:57:56] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:57:57] And she was pregnant. So if Tom is sterile, then it is impossible that she could be pregnant, so therefore, she must be cheating. And then this is how it was sold to us.

John Dehlin [04:58:09] Us.

Marc Headley [04:58:09] And because Nicole's father was a psychiatrist, it was basically. And she was the one who didn't want them to be involved with Scientology. She was labeled a suppressive person, and it was very imperative to him that if he was going to succeed and have a good relationship and have a good life that he needed to divorce her. And that was basically Scientology's pitch to him. Him. And they did get divorced.

Marc Headley [04:58:40] And oddly enough, he didn't have any children with Mimi Rogers. She went off and remarried and had children. He didn't have any kids with Nicole Kidman. She went off and got remarried and had children. He had a relationship with Penelope Cruz. They didn't have any children. She went off and had children. Every person that he's been with, besides. Besides Katie Holm, Katie Holmes, has gone off to have children with another spouse, but with him, they didn't have kids. So that's just a. I don't know how to reconcile that piece of information.

John Dehlin [04:59:15] Is that general gossip that Tom Cruise is sterile? Is that on the Internet?

Claire Headley [04:59:18] That was David Miscavige.

Marc Headley [04:59:19] That was David Miscavige to go.

John Dehlin [04:59:20] But, I mean, is that leaked onto the Internet?

Claire Headley [04:59:22] I don't actually know.

Marc Headley [04:59:23] The specific quote that I heard from David Miscavige was, thomas Cruise is more sterile than a sand trap.

Claire Headley [04:59:33] Yeah. But so, circling back on John Travolta, Scientology, as we've talked about, is incredibly homophobic. And so it's sad that he would even be in a position where he has to hide or lie about his personal relationships. But that is the nature of Scientology. And if you so fast forward to, I think, 10 years ago now, Scientology very publicly was attacking and behaving homophobically, which then resulted in Paul Haggis leaving Scientology and contributing to the New Yorker article that led to Lawrence Wright's book going Clear. So by their actions in history, there's a lot of behavior on their part that is homophobic.

John Dehlin [05:00:26] Okay.

Marc Headley [05:00:28] Yeah. The only other thing that I wanted just to say about that was that when they sort of got Nicole out of the picture, when we were at the property, we would do auditions for film projects all the time.

Marc Headley [05:00:44] And there was one period, and this was right before I ended up leaving near the end of 2004. And we were doing interviews with actresses in Los Angeles, but they weren't for anything we were shooting. And when I asked, I said, why are we doing all these interviews? And it was like, oh, this is a project being run by Religious Technology Center. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And it's like, let me see the questions they're asking him. And the questions are, what do you think of Tom Cruise?

Marc Headley [05:01:16] Where are you on your Scientology training? Where are you on your Scientology counseling? What do you think about David Miscavige? And it was very Odd questions to be asking somebody for a movie part.

John Dehlin [05:01:32] Weren't they trying to find him a wife?

Marc Headley [05:01:33] They were looking for a girlfriend, which

Claire Headley [05:01:35] is, at the time, I was in Religious Technology Center. Mark and I didn't talk about this until after we escaped. But, yes, Shelley Miscavige told me personally that she was having to run a project to find a wife for Tom Cruise because Tom Cruise was on the phone with David Miscavige every single day complaining about lack of having a Scientologist as a partner. So that entire project was run directly

Marc Headley [05:02:03] by Shelly Miscavige, and they never found a Scientology person to be his girlfriend. There was no Scientologist that could be his girlfriend. And eventually they ended up with Katie Holmes. And the only reason they picked Katie Holmes was because she had written a mag. She had done a magazine article years before, and in there she mentioned that when she was a teenager, she had a Tom Cruise poster on her wall. And that's the only reason she got pulled out of the hat. And she ended up being, you know, the love of his life, and he jumped on a bunch of couches for her, and, you know, the rest is history.

John Dehlin [05:02:42] All right. Okay, so

Marc Headley [05:02:46] that's most of the gossip. Gossipy.

John Dehlin [05:02:48] No, it's good. We'll break some stories here on Mormon stories. Okay, Mark, so I have a good sense for what you did. A lot of videography, filmmaking for conferences, and even. Sounds like you helped out with video stuff at the center, that sort of thing. Why don't we. Let's give Claire some time now, maybe a little bit. Why don't we talk about two things, Claire, I'd love to hear the stuff you did when you were working at headquarters, whatever you called it. We also needed to talk about how you guys met and fell in love and that sort of thing. So. Floor is now yours, Claire.

Mark and Claire's Relationship and Forced Abortions

Claire Headley [05:03:27] Okay, sounds good. Yes. So Mark and I met when I was moved to work at the headquarters in late 1991. In May of 1992, we became a couple. You can't call it dating because when you're working 100 plus hours a week, there's no time for that. It was just kind of like, hey,

Marc Headley [05:03:48] holding hands at dinner.

Claire Headley [05:03:50] Yes. Or on the bus, if we were lucky to ride home at the same time or even eat together. There's no dating in the sea organization. There's not any time for that. So, anyhow, we met and we were married in August of 1992 in a very whirlwind. Like, we drove to LA on Thursday night. We drove to Vegas the next day, got our marriage certificate, got our rings, were married at Celebrity center on Saturday. And by Sunday dinner, I was back at work.

John Dehlin [05:04:22] And is. Is Premarital sex taboo?

Marc Headley [05:04:25] 100%.

Claire Headley [05:04:26] Yeah. Premarital. Premarital sex is completely forbidden.

John Dehlin [05:04:30] And do people blow that off or do they observe?

Marc Headley [05:04:33] Well, if you're caught and this and that. That's actually a good point. If you're caught, most of the time, if you're at the international headquarters and you get caught, you get assigned to the rehabilitation project force.

Claire Headley [05:04:44] Yes. Yeah. No, it's 100% completely. In fact, you can also be beached for that, kicked out completely, or sent to the rehabilitation project force. It's definitely forbidden. And as a result of that, members of the Sea Organization end up getting married very young. And most of the time, there's a very high rate of divorce in the Sea Organization. So we're a statistical anomaly by Sea Org standards for sure, in that we just celebrated our 33rd anniversary.

John Dehlin [05:05:13] Congrats.

Claire Headley [05:05:14] Thank you.

John Dehlin [05:05:15] Yeah. That's exciting. Wow. Margi and I have only been married 32.

Claire Headley [05:05:19] Yes. We were married in August of 1992.

John Dehlin [05:05:24] Wow. Congrats.

Claire Headley [05:05:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [05:05:26] How old are you?

Claire Headley [05:05:28] I was 17.

Marc Headley [05:05:29] That's the worst part about her telling that is that people think I picked her up at daycare and never brought her back because we don't look as old as. Or she doesn't. To be fair, she doesn't look as old as. That old to be married for 33 years.

John Dehlin [05:05:45] Okay. So, yeah. Do you want to talk about. But also, you're not allowed to have kids. Right?

Claire Headley [05:05:53] Right. So backing up for just a minute. I joined the Sea Organization when I was 16 years old. I was aware of the no kids policy, which was already in place at that time. However, number one, I was 16 years old. I wasn't married. I had never been in a serious relationship. And the pressure was so great to join the Sea Organization in the first place that I just followed the path of least resistance. Fast forward to now. I'm working at the headquarters. Meet and marry Mark. As we've mentioned, if we were lucky, we'd get $46 a week and having to out of that pay for birth control. So there were months at a time that our pay would get cut.

John Dehlin [05:06:44] So you didn't have health insurance benefits?

Claire Headley [05:06:46] Oh, no.

Marc Headley [05:06:47] Nothing.

Claire Headley [05:06:48] No.

John Dehlin [05:06:49] So you couldn't afford birth control?

Claire Headley [05:06:51] No.

John Dehlin [05:06:51] So what did they expect couples to do to not have babies?

Marc Headley [05:06:55] Figure it out.

Claire Headley [05:06:56] Make it go. Right. Well, so that's the thing. That's a solid question. Which is very applicable because there was. From the time that I came to the property, I became aware that it was a common practice for, first of all, women to get pregnant, and second of all, for them to then be pressured to terminate those pregnancies. And third of all, if they refuse to terminate the pregnancy, that they would be put on heavy manual labor, restricted to the property, put under security guard, like security watch, and interrogated as to. Because it was considered wanting to leave the sea Organization, which is an unauthorized departure which circles back to. You have crimes and transgressions against the group, and that's the only reason you would ever want to leave the c Organization.

Marc Headley [05:07:53] So even tell them about the van and the amount of people that were.

Claire Headley [05:07:57] Yeah. So it was such a common practice that. What was women being forced to terminate pregnancies was such a common practice. Yes. Correct. That the medical officer weekly would take a number of women to the Riverside County. What's it called? Planned Parent. The medical officer would take women every week to the Riverside Planned Parenthood clinic. So much so that the director at that clinic started speaking out against the practice of forced abortion at that property, to which they changed to a different clinic.

Marc Headley [05:08:37] They were bringing so many girls there that the Planned Parenthood place was like, there's something wrong. You shouldn't be bringing people here every single week.

John Dehlin [05:08:47] Loads of people.

Marc Headley [05:08:48] We made. There was a list that was made.

Claire Headley [05:08:51] I made it. I made a list for. During our lawsuit of the people that I personally knew who'd been forced to abort a pregnancy. And that was more than 60 women long. Some of those women had up to six forced abortions during the years that they were there because of multiple pregnancies.

John Dehlin [05:09:12] It's weird. They just. They just didn't provide birth control for everybody. They had a lot of money. Do you have a theory for why?

Claire Headley [05:09:19] They don't want to pay staff. They don't want to provide support, as after our lawsuit, when someone falls pregnant, they leave immediately. When someone gets married, they're provided with birth control. So that's what people. We've heard from several people who have left more recently than we have because there were multiple lawsuits of forced abortions.

Marc Headley [05:09:43] Yeah, the. The story we heard from somebody who recently left was that the cheapest, most effective way is just to have all of the men sterilized. Get sterilized. And that's what they're now doing to Sea Org members is.

John Dehlin [05:09:59] So Scientology is sterilizing the men, that

Marc Headley [05:10:02] men are getting a vasectomy if they want to have sex with their Wife, they're getting a vasectomy so that they don't have to worry about. About the women getting pregnant. And so that's what we just heard. Within the last few years. We've heard it from a few different people because we were like, well, what are they doing now with people? Because there was a very. There was many years where because of our lawsuit, if a girl came and said they got pregnant, they just said, okay, well, we're going to have to have you leave the Seaworg, and we're not going to tell you to get an abortion.

Marc Headley [05:10:33] We're not going to do any of that. We're just going to let you leave. And then that there were. There was. We know of about 30 couples that were able to get out during that time period. And then we suspect that they learned that that was just not going to be sustainable because that was becoming the new epidemic, that they would get pregnant because they knew it was a sure shot. They couldn't do anything to make them terminate it. And so then we heard then, oh, no, they don't do that anymore. Now the guys just get pregnant. Vasectomies.

John Dehlin [05:11:03] So, Claire, do you feel comfortable sharing the story of your two forced abortions? Okay.

Claire Headley [05:11:11] The first time was in 1994.

John Dehlin [05:11:14] You're how old?

Claire Headley [05:11:15] I was 19. And we had been married for two years. Two years. And so at this time, I was still in Golden Era Productions and so working at the headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs, California. We hadn't been getting paid, and I rarely saw Mark at the time. So the last thing I expected was that I would get pregnant.

Claire Headley [05:11:41] Certainly I had always wanted children. I love my husband. But I also was very aware that here I am in a position where if I do get pregnant, I'm going to be severely punished, isolated, taken away from Mark, and that they would do everything to split us up. And anyway, it was not a good situation. So when I. Oh, and so backing up for a minute, too, it's not like I had access to the outside world.

Claire Headley [05:12:13] So the first thing, as soon as I realized I'd missed my period, I had to go see the medical person because it's not like I could just go to Walmart and get a pregnancy test. I had to pay and ask her to get me a pregnancy test. And then she required that I take it right in front of her. So immediately, the moment I found out I was pregnant, the pressure was on. She was sitting right there.

Claire Headley [05:12:39] I was not even allowed to discuss it with Mark because that would be considered a suppressive act and a statement of wanting to leave. So if I said, oh, I'm going to try and dig in my heels, and that was just not even an option. And that's really tough. At 19, like, what should be your most precious enjoyed moment of your entire life is now, you know, you can't even have a conversation about it. And the threat of consequences of like, okay, as a pregnant person, if I'm going to say no, I want out, then they're going to put me on heavy manual labor for months until I give in.

Claire Headley [05:13:26] And it was terrifying to me. That was. I. I didn't feel, having been born into Scientology, that I even had the strength to withstand that. So I was forced to go through with that. In that moment, it broke a piece of me forever. And I swore to myself, myself that if it ever happened again, I would, no matter what happened, just like, grab my husband and get the heck out of there, no matter what it took. Unfortunately, two years later, I was.

John Dehlin [05:13:59] Wait. Do you mind if I ask? So did they drive you to the Planned Parenthood? They.

Claire Headley [05:14:04] They prepared me. They said. They said exactly what I was to say, that I didn't want to speak to a psychologist about it. I didn't want to have any conversation about it. I was not to have any drugs during the procedure, which, by the way, I have. I know now is completely barbaric.

John Dehlin [05:14:27] So no pain, no nothing?

Claire Headley [05:14:30] No. And so I had to get special approval to take time off from my job, to be driven to the clinic and to. And a six foot guy named Mark Treasure was waiting in the waiting room while I was taken back. What almost broke me in that moment was the lady who was checking me in looked at me and she said, where's your husband? You know, it's one of those things like it's.

John Dehlin [05:15:18] And he didn't know, Is that right?

Claire Headley [05:15:20] He knew. There was no. There was no choice. There was nothing either of us could do.

Marc Headley [05:15:25] I wasn't allowed to come. I wasn't allowed to be part of it, because we could have. Basically, they. When people escape, it's usually right around this. This kind of. This subject when they're like, you know what? We're out of here. And when they go to do the procedure, they never come back from the procedure and they don't end up doing the procedure.

John Dehlin [05:15:44] So she was allowed to tell you, but you weren't allowed to.

Marc Headley [05:15:47] And I didn't find out until it was already a done deal.

Claire Headley [05:15:49] And I was not allowed to even have a conversation. Like, we weren't allowed to Discuss what do. What do we want to do? That's not, not. That's not. Because that would have been considered a suppressive act for either of us to even suggest for one moment that we would fight against this. It was just not an option. So in that moment. And again, I didn't discuss this with Mark at that time, but I just in my mind decided that I would never go through with that ever again. And unfortunately.

John Dehlin [05:16:23] One more question. Sorry.

Claire Headley [05:16:24] Yeah, no, it's okay.

John Dehlin [05:16:25] Had y' all talked before that first pregnancy? Like, okay, Scientology doesn't let us have kids, but we want to have sex, so we need to be careful so that we don't get pregnant, so that we don't have to terminate. Like, was there any of that?

Marc Headley [05:16:41] Not really.

John Dehlin [05:16:42] Between. But you knew that you couldn't get pregnant.

Marc Headley [05:16:46] Yes, but it wasn't. It was sort of like, I don't know, it was sort of like if it happens, we, we might be able to just leave. Because that is how it is if you do get pregnant. Sometimes they leave, sometimes they let them go.

John Dehlin [05:17:02] It wasn't like, oh, we'll just abort it. It wasn't like that.

Claire Headley [05:17:04] Oh no, it wasn't.

John Dehlin [05:17:05] And it wasn't. We'll just do the pull out method or we'll just.

Marc Headley [05:17:08] No, it was never. It was never. I don't think we ever talked about it.

Claire Headley [05:17:14] We didn't ever talk about it. But also. So I think it's important to understand, like Again, we're working 109 plus hours a week. We've committed to a billion year contract. We're not allowed to have any conversations that would even infer the possibility of leaving because that's a suppressive act. So you're under such completely tight control that it's not even like even having a conversation with Mark, who I met. We'd already both committed to a billion year contract. If I say him. So we're going to get married. You want to have kids. That's a suppressive act. Because. Because the only way, because no kids are allowed in, in the Sea organization. So even just having that conversation was completely forbidden. So no, we never.

John Dehlin [05:17:57] Yeah. So in a cult. It makes all the sense in the world to me. But my, my logical brain is like, well, surely there would sort of be a thing where they sit a couple down and say, you're going to get married, married, but you can't have kids. So like here are ways to prevent getting pregnant so you don't have to have an abortion.

Marc Headley [05:18:14] No conversation.

John Dehlin [05:18:15] There's no Education around that?

Claire Headley [05:18:17] No.

Marc Headley [05:18:17] And again, most of the kids that are there that were our age or

John Dehlin [05:18:21] your parents would have done it, or your parents would have sat each of you down and had, quote, the talk. And your parents would have said, okay, sweetie, you're going to get married, but you don't want to get pregnant. You don't want to have an abortion. So you. And you didn't have that conversation with your mom?

Claire Headley [05:18:35] No, I never had that conversation with

John Dehlin [05:18:38] my mom and Mark. You never had with your.

Marc Headley [05:18:40] No.

John Dehlin [05:18:41] Like, that's.

Marc Headley [05:18:42] I don't actually think my. I don't even think my parents had the birds and the bees conversation with me yet.

John Dehlin [05:18:48] Yeah, I mean, I expect that from conservative Christians.

Claire Headley [05:18:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:18:52] I don't expect that from kind of atheistic Scientologists. Right.

Claire Headley [05:18:57] My mom was. She absolutely knew about the women being pressured to abort children. But it's taboo. Like, you don't talk about it, but it's demonstrated policy by evidence of the list of more than 60 women that I know personally that were forced to terminate pregnancies, but also you should say

Marc Headley [05:19:20] those are the only. The person.

Claire Headley [05:19:21] That's. Only the people I know personally. Yes.

John Dehlin [05:19:24] And that's only if you're in Sea Org, right?

Claire Headley [05:19:26] Yes.

Marc Headley [05:19:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [05:19:26] Okay. So regular Scientologist couples are allowed to have.

Marc Headley [05:19:29] Yeah, they can do whatever they want,

Claire Headley [05:19:30] but within the SEA organization. And that practice was rampant. Like, almost. I would say 90% of the women that I asked had terminated pregnancies statistically. And again, some of them were multiple.

John Dehlin [05:19:47] Okay. Yeah, I keep interrupting you. So now you were going to say you said you'd never let it happen again.

Claire Headley [05:19:51] Yeah, it was, you know, again, we didn't ever talk about it, but I'd decided for myself that it was such a complete violation of my personal desires, integrity, my love for Mark, everything that I was like, if it ever happens again. Not that I'm trying to get pregnant, but I would just put my foot down. Well, Fast forward to 1996.

John Dehlin [05:20:18] You were how old at that point?

Claire Headley [05:20:19] Now I'm 21.

John Dehlin [05:20:21] Oh, so it's two years later.

Claire Headley [05:20:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [05:20:23] Okay.

Claire Headley [05:20:24] And we'd been staying up around the clock again. I'd rarely seen Mark. We also weren't getting paid again.

Marc Headley [05:20:33] And you went to Florida.

Claire Headley [05:20:35] I went to Florida because I was promoted in. I was moved into Religious Technology Center. So now I. So I arrived there in March of 1996, and I was training to be an RTC representative directly working under David and Shelley Miscavige.

Claire Headley [05:20:56] I truly had no idea I was pregnant. And the way I found out was super weird. I was in a meeting, standing all day long with these other members of RTC with David Miscavige coming in and out all day, yelling and screaming apoplectically at us, and I collapsed and just clunk, passed out. And I was carried out of there, taken to a bathroom. And to this day, I cannot tell you why they gave me a pregnancy test. I definitely was not showing. I was, you know, maybe two weeks past when I, you know, like, very early, very early.

Claire Headley [05:21:42] They brought me a pregnancy test, and it was positive. And now I'm in Clearwater, Florida. Mark is in California. I was working under Ann Rathbun. Now she's Ann Jozeim, who was Marty Rathbun's wife at the time. And I made multiple requests. I had to have written approval to make a phone call to Mark, and every single request I made was denied. And I knew that if I stuck to my plan and held my ground that they were going to.

Claire Headley [05:22:20] I would be out. And I felt quite sure that they would never even tell Mark that I was pregnant. So, once again, for the second time, I was forced to go to the clinic with a handler.

Marc Headley [05:22:35] In Clearwater.

Claire Headley [05:22:36] Yeah, in Clearwater.

Marc Headley [05:22:37] The first time.

Claire Headley [05:22:38] I didn't find out until you found out. I told you six months later.

Marc Headley [05:22:43] I didn't find out out until six months later. I would. She would. She. I think she either came back to California or I had gone to Florida to put on one of the events that we would do in. In Clearwater in Ruth Eckerd hall or the Fort Harrison or wherever it was there. And then she told me, and I was like, what? And I was like, why didn't you. Why didn't you tell me? It's like they wouldn't let me. And I was like, oh, my God.

John Dehlin [05:23:09] How did you feel, Mark, knowing two of your children had been terminated?

Marc Headley [05:23:15] It's one of those things where when you're there, there's not really an easy way to leave that everything doesn't. You don't burn everything down. And that is a way that. It's sort of like it's a chance for us to have a life and to have children and get away from this nightmare. And it's like. It's kind of like it could have been. It could. We could have got out of here, basically, and we could have had a kid. And I always knew she. When I. The more I got to know her and she used to take care of her siblings, and she. I knew. I was like, she would Be an amazing wife, because I already know she took care of three kids for a year that weren't even hers. They were her. Her mother's kids, but she took care of them.

Claire Headley [05:24:06] And when I would go home, they were my half. Half siblings. And, yeah, I looked after them more than my mother did.

Marc Headley [05:24:12] Yeah. And when we would go to. Sometimes we would do an event in Los Angeles, and because we were doing an event in Los Angeles, we would get to stay the night in Los Angeles. And sometimes, because I was always driving, driving a crew around, and we were always filming, I had a tiny bit more autonomy than most Sea Org members. And I would have a vehicle that I could drive all these crew around in, and I would drop the crew off and then grab Claire because she was also at the event. And we would go to her parents house, which was only like 30 minutes from the Scientology complex, and then we'd stay there just overnight, and then we'd drive back to the property in the morning.

Marc Headley [05:24:52] And her. Her brothers and sisters just loved her. Like, they were like, gushing with, oh, Claire. And then they'd show her what they. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So to me, it was just more like a missed.

Marc Headley [05:25:08] You know, as tragic as it was, it was more like a missed opportunity that we could have been happy. This would have been our chance to be happy and to get out of here. And so.

John Dehlin [05:25:19] So

Marc Headley [05:25:21] it always makes me happy when. Because after we let. When. When I had left and I was talking with her, I don't know if I don't want to jump too much ahead, but when I. When I did escape, and then she was able to get ahold of me because I had a secret email address. Most Sea Org members didn't have email, but I was one of the few people, because we were in film production, that I needed to have an email account to contact vendors. I had a secret email that I had told her about that I never used on any of the Scientology networks.

Marc Headley [05:25:55] And so she managed to get a message to me, and as soon as I got on the phone with her, she was trying to get me to come back. And I said, hey, listen, you can leave and we can have kids. We can have a family. And I knew for me, I was trying to use what I knew how Scientology does it. Like I'm going to play into what she. What her ruin is, what her.

Marc Headley [05:26:21] What the one thing she could never have. You could have that now for you. Come now and get out of there. We can have kids. We can have a family. We can be happy. We can do the two dogs and a cat and some kids and a boy and a girl, and the girl never worked out, but we got three boys. But.

Marc Headley [05:26:40] And so. So because I was so affected by what happened back then, I knew that was her thing. If she could have kids, it would be worth it. And to be fair, in order to have those three kids, we had to give up our entire other family to have those three kids. That was the trade off. If you want kids, then you can't have any other family that are in Scientology. So it's definitely the Sophie's Choice of happy endings.

Claire Headley [05:27:10] The what ifs are hard to deal with, even in retrospect. You know, like, what if I had somehow managed to get a message to Mark? But the bottom line is we were still so firmly entrenched in that organization at that time. And in retrospect, I would never want to expose any child to being raised in that environment. And until we were free, it was not even safe to have children. So not only was it not possible, it wasn't safe. You know, that's how I view it in retrospect, because we would have even. Had we somehow, despite all the odds, gotten out, we still would have been completely under their control, and most likely we would have had our family, but we would be in a position where we were being forced, in course, to raise our children in that organization.

John Dehlin [05:28:08] Makes sense. I can see y' all ended up. You ended up suing Scientology for that reason.

Claire Headley [05:28:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [05:28:17] I could see Scientology coming back and saying, look, on the first one, we can talk about it. But by the second one, you knew what you were doing. Y' all knew better. Fool on once, fool me once, shame on us. Fool us twice, shame on you. Like, what would you say to the accusation by the Scientology people that by the second time, you knew better and it was on you the second time? Yeah, I know that's a question.

Claire Headley [05:28:45] No, it's not a fair question. But the problem is that there's a paper trail that thoroughly documents that I wasn't getting paid and that I had requested to be able to talk to my husband, and that was denied, and that then I was interrogated for and around this pregnancy and that I was escorted to an appointment. So there's. Because in Scientology, there's always an extensive paper trail of everything. So, sure, you could say that. But how am I supposed to not get pregnant if I'm not getting paid and have no money and so. Sure.

John Dehlin [05:29:23] Celibacy. The answer is celibacy.

Claire Headley [05:29:25] Yeah, well, we're married. We didn't agree of celibacy.

John Dehlin [05:29:29] And, you know, that wasn't the requirement.

Claire Headley [05:29:32] No.

John Dehlin [05:29:32] Oh, interesting.

Working Directly Under David Miscavige

Claire Headley [05:29:33] No, it was not the requirement. We were expected to just make it go right.

Marc Headley [05:29:37] And it's funny that it's funny that you say that, because one of David Miscavige's sort of pet peeves is he likes to know everything that's going on sexually between couples in the Sea Org. And when something goes to sideways, it's his People magazine, It's his gossip. He likes to gossip about those things with other executives. And we've been in those meetings.

Claire Headley [05:30:03] Well, he's done that to us, David Miscavige, from the very first time that we went and, like, said happy New Year to him, three months after we'd been married, it was at New Year's. So we were married in August 92

Marc Headley [05:30:16] at the New Year's event for five months.

Claire Headley [05:30:19] Yeah. Four or five months from that moment, multiple times over the next 13 years. He gave us a hard time about being married. Like, Mark would get in trouble, and he'd come to me and say, oh, you're still married to him. And then even during the time I was in Religious Technology center, he, in a meeting again, said to me, knowing full well I'm married to Mark, oh, I've implemented a new personnel policy, and staff in Religious Technology center can no longer be married to staff not in Religious Technology center, which is me, because Mark was in Golden Era Productions, so. Meaning I'm now required to divorce my husband to retain my position, which I refused to do, and that's what landed me in the hole.

John Dehlin [05:31:09] Okay.

Claire Headley [05:31:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:31:11] Well, I'm so words, I guess, couldn't communicate how sorry I and others feel for what happened to you.

Claire Headley [05:31:19] I appreciate it.

John Dehlin [05:31:20] Yeah.

Claire Headley [05:31:20] I'm so sorry. This is one of those things that falls into the category for me of time does not heal all wounds, but it does motivate me to let people know the abusive and dangerous practices of this organization and to hopefully manifest change like happened with our lawsuit, that there are many children now we know of that were born because we spoke up on this subject.

John Dehlin [05:31:47] So that must feel good.

Claire Headley [05:31:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:31:50] Well, Claire, what can you tell us about the main duties you had working with David Miscavige and Shelly at headquarters? And what are some of the main stories you can tell to give us a sense for what it was like for you? What are the types of things you did and what were some of the interesting and. Or horrific and. Or inspiring things that you experienced?

Claire Headley [05:32:15] Sure. So during the years That I was in Religious Technology Center, I would very often attend meetings with David Miscavige. The first time I was. Well, I was moved into Religious Technology center in March 1997, and that's also the same month that I personally witnessed David Miscavige physically abuse staff.

Claire Headley [05:32:40] Specifically, he beat up Ray Middaugh, who was a senior executive in Scientology. And that was shocking for me at that. I had always had the idea, as we've talked about, that the executives are good people. They follow L. Ron Harvard policy. They're on purpose. They're getting the work done. And any manifestations of things that we see that are awful is just people not following L. Ron Hubbard policy correctly. So then, to see the leader of Scientology physically abusing staff made me realize I was in a whole different game or whole different. On a whole different board than I realized even existed. And. And so from that point forward, so from 1996 until 2004, I attended hundreds of meetings with David Miscavige and witnessed him physically and verbally abuse staff many, many times.

Claire Headley [05:33:39] Mike Grinder, Lyman Spurlock, Norman Starkey, Mark Yeager, Guillaume Le Cerve. Like, it wasn't just an isolated instance. It was pretty much anyone in. In an executive position was fair game to David Miscavige's physical and verbal abuse. He would fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, and he had a reign of terror over that property and over the people that worked directly for him, including Shelley Miscavige.

John Dehlin [05:34:10] He didn't beat her.

Claire Headley [05:34:11] He didn't beat her that I ever witnessed personally. So in the years from 2000 to 2000, 2004, I was responsible for essentially, the internal staff in Religious Technology center, making sure they were doing their jobs, and the financial planning of Religious Technology center recruitment, things like that, but also staff morale and seeing that they were doing well, and many other of the staff in RTC were not doing well and would constantly get yelled at by David Miscavige. And I was supposed to help them and correct them so that they would do their job.

Claire Headley [05:34:56] So during those four years, I would report directly to Shelley Miscavige, meet with her almost every day. And Shelley mentioned on a number of occasions that I had no idea what I was. Was putting her through, meaning at the hands of David Miscavige by not getting the Religious Technology center staff to perform better than they were.

Claire Headley [05:35:22] So while she didn't say outright, he is abusing me, she was just telling me she was not exempt from the treatment that everybody else was getting. And More and more, I saw her isolate from David Miscavige. They were already sleeping in different rooms, and she was more and more getting in trouble or being sent back early from trips with him to get things done at the property. So it was.

Claire Headley [05:35:51] We always thought it could never get worse. And yet consistently, over and over and over, over the years, it always got so much worse.

Marc Headley [05:36:01] That is the one thing that we would joke about. We would say, there's one good thing. It can't get any worse than this. And then.

John Dehlin [05:36:11] Oh, yeah, never say that.

Marc Headley [05:36:12] And then the next year, we'd be like, somehow it got worse. And the best part is we left in 2005. We talked to people who left in 2010 or 2015 or 2000.

John Dehlin [05:36:23] Kept getting worse.

Marc Headley [05:36:24] Every time we talk to them, they're like, oh, dude, you got out just in time. We're like, what do you mean? I got. It got way worse after you left.

John Dehlin [05:36:30] Let me ask, were there senior people that would help you feel better about David Miscavige's physical abuse? Was there some sort of apologetic or excuse or justification that the leaders would give?

Claire Headley [05:36:46] Shelley would just always say it was our fault, you know, or their fault, and they pulled it in, and they just need to get their act together and do better and get his orders done, and then everything will be fine. We're good.

Marc Headley [05:37:02] Most of the time. Sorry, I let him do that.

Claire Headley [05:37:05] That's okay.

John Dehlin [05:37:06] I don't know what that was, but it's. It's okay.

Marc Headley [05:37:10] Go ahead. Yeah. Most of the time it was Shelley doing mop up after there was, like, a bad meeting and where he punched a bunch of people or threw a bunch of people up against a wall or threw a bunch of packages at us or whatever it was. And then she would say, you know, you guys have no idea. We just came from a big legal case meeting, and he's under a lot of stress, and Scientology is being attacked, and the SPs are, you know, launching a full onslaught against us. And, you know, he is the one who has to bear the burden of everything that's going on. And so it would be like, you guys have to do better because he's trying to do everything, and you not doing it means he has to do even more and sort of excusing why he had to beat us that day.

Claire Headley [05:38:05] Yeah. At the same time, however, Shelly had expressed to me and to another staff member that she was worried David Miscavige was going to have a psychotic break and try to escape or hurt somebody very seriously. And she was Trying to get David Miscavige fixed with Scientology counseling, but he was even refusing that.

Claire Headley [05:38:29] So. And that's where. When we. When we talked earlier about Hubbard believing or not, to me, like at that time, David Miscavige hadn't received any Scientology counseling or training in more than five, five years. So that's not the actions of someone who's a firm believer when you're required to.

Claire Headley [05:38:49] By policy, you should be studying 12 and a half hours a week and going in session and going up the bridge. David Miscavige was not doing that. And Shelly was very, very concerned about him, clearly, correctly. So, since she's now been missing for 20 years, or at least banished to where she has no freedom. She has no personal freedom and no personal connection to the outside world, what

Shelly Miscavige's Disappearance and Org Abuses

John Dehlin [05:39:14] do you think happened? Were you there when she was banished?

Claire Headley [05:39:17] No, she was banished approximately six months after we escaped.

John Dehlin [05:39:23] And if you had to theorize, what drove them apart and what led to her banishment and where she is and what's happening, what's happened to her?

Marc Headley [05:39:32] Tell me, because we've talked to people

Claire Headley [05:39:35] that were there, and it had a lot. So. Shelley's banishment had to do with two main things. Number one, she did not approve of the close, an ever increasingly close relationship between Tom Cruise and David Miscavige, where they were speaking daily, and his involvement in trying to find her, find a new wife for Tom.

Claire Headley [05:39:57] She considered all of those were a distraction to David Miscavige's primary role, which is to expand Scientology. Number two, there was a building on the property that had been built for Religious Technology Center. It was a $40 million like 40,000 square foot building. She moved management executives in there against David Miscavige's wishes. And that triggered the next series of events where she was now Persona non grata and removed from his presence to a remote property in Big Bear, California, and has been kept there ever since then, maybe moving around to different of those properties, but with at least three dedicated handlers and multiple security guards on top of that, restricting her every move. And so what was her offense?

Marc Headley [05:40:53] Just, she basically implemented personnel changes and for many, many years at the property, there was a project to post everything. In Scientology, everybody has a post and everybody has a stat. And David Miscavige had been going on for decades about how he has to do the jobs for these people and they shouldn't even have these jobs cuz he has to do them. And so what he asked for was I want a proposal so that every post that I'M doing. This is David Miscavige. Every job that I'm doing for somebody, you have to put somebody on those posts so I don't have to do those jobs anymore. She did that. She put all the people on the jobs that he was doing, but she didn't get his approval to do that. And he had been, let's say, what, a hundred proposals.

Claire Headley [05:41:43] Yeah, that's where it's difficult to explain and understand. He told her, go get this done. She went and got it done.

John Dehlin [05:41:50] Done.

Claire Headley [05:41:51] And as a result of that, he was pissed because she didn't get it approved by him when he told her, go get it done. It's the ramblings of a madman. In short, is the reason she was. So that's what got her doing what

John Dehlin [05:42:03] he asked her to do.

Marc Headley [05:42:03] It was an excuse to get rid of her, basically.

Claire Headley [05:42:05] And that's. So that's what got her into trouble. Then she was sent off to be interrogated. He stormed off to Los Angeles. She went and got in a car to drive after him to sort out their marriage. And then she was accused of escaping without authorization, even though she was driving to see her husband. And then, next thing you know, she's completely banished off the lines and has not been seen or heard from since by any of her family, and certainly by. It'. Sit' smagine. If the President of the United States has a first lady, his wife, and she's everywhere, attends all the meetings and all of it for 15 years, takes the notes, manages his personal staff, everything, and all of a sudden, poof, she's gone.

Claire Headley [05:42:52] And nobody even asks any questions or dares to ask any questions, because as we know from Leah Remini's book, she asked, where's Shelley? And was told, f you. You don't have the rank to ask that question.

John Dehlin [05:43:05] Well, I mean, I've heard just theories that maybe she was dead. And y' all are saying, as far as you know, she's not dead?

Claire Headley [05:43:14] I don't think she's dead. Because if she were dead, how convenient would it be for that to just be leaked out, to go, oh, she

John Dehlin [05:43:22] passed away, but then is she lobotomized? Is she in chains? Like, do you think she's being held against her will, or does she believe that she deserves the punishment she's getting? What do you suspect?

Claire Headley [05:43:35] I suspect both of them. Those she's doing the work to keep herself in. She thinks. She thinks she has no option to get out of Scientology. In addition to which, she's physically under guard and has no Freedom in the outside world. But Shelley has been in Scientology since she was six years old. She worked with Hubbard away from her parents on a ship since she was 11 years old. So for all intents and purposes, Scientology is. Is the only life she's ever known. And different to David Miscavige, I think she is a true believer. I think she considered L. Ron Hubbard a father figure and she respected him and believed in him. Even if it doesn't make any sense. She did. And so now she considers that it's her duty to remain because she believes that eventually L. Ron Hubbard will come back.

John Dehlin [05:44:30] He was supposed to return like Jesus.

Claire Headley [05:44:32] Yeah, he was supposed to show back 2007. In 2007, there was a prophecy that he would return.

Marc Headley [05:44:37] He said when he would come back, he told people in the Sea Org, I'm going to be back at this date.

John Dehlin [05:44:43] And what happened?

Marc Headley [05:44:44] He missed a bus or a train connection or something.

John Dehlin [05:44:46] He didn't show up. Was there an event like to usher him in or.

Claire Headley [05:44:50] No.

Marc Headley [05:44:50] But we did build a multi million dollar mansion at that international headquarters property at the. Called a Bonnie View, a beautiful view. And it is a giant mansion. You can cut to B roll of that if you want, but there's drone footage of this property. It is an amazing mansion that was built at that property. And the entire reason that it had to be built by the time it was built was because Hubbard was coming back and it had to be ready for him when he got back. Back.

John Dehlin [05:45:23] How was it? So what happened? Yeah, when he never showed up.

Claire Headley [05:45:26] He's a no show in Scientology's terminology. He's officially blown.

John Dehlin [05:45:31] Wait, so how was that dealt with with the membership?

Marc Headley [05:45:34] Well, it wasn't. It wasn't told to the membership that he was coming back. It was only known at the international headquarters that he was coming back. And it was a very specific date into 2007 was when he was coming back and this house had to be built. The only kind of odd thing about that though, is that. And in this house, they actually put his clothes out every night and they, they like for tomorrow, there's somebody putting his clothes out on a bed.

Claire Headley [05:46:04] His same clothes from the seven clothes

Marc Headley [05:46:07] that he wore before he died. So I, that I would always ask like, like, hey, if you're setting out the clothes for that old 70 year

John Dehlin [05:46:16] old dude, he's gonna show up as leisure or suit Larry. Basically, yeah.

Marc Headley [05:46:19] He's gonna be a 21 year old kid that's not gonna fit in those old fuddy duddy clothes from the 70s.

John Dehlin [05:46:24] Plus, it'll look kind of goofy, right? So that's funny.

Marc Headley [05:46:28] They have his. His cars are waxed and gassed and ready to go. His clothes are out on the. They change all of the bedding, all of the decor, all of the furniture in the house for every season.

John Dehlin [05:46:41] Do you think they're still doing this?

Marc Headley [05:46:42] They 100% are still doing it.

John Dehlin [05:46:45] Even though it's way past the year

Marc Headley [05:46:46] he said they were doing it when we were there. The entire time we were there.

Claire Headley [05:46:51] Yeah.

Marc Headley [05:46:52] Before they built the new mansion, they had his old house.

John Dehlin [05:46:55] So there's literally some people preparing the bed and the clothes for Zombie 70s L. Ron Hubbard.

Marc Headley [05:47:03] That's gonna come back in. Casey comes back tomorrow.

Claire Headley [05:47:05] Tomorrow.

Marc Headley [05:47:06] His stuff's all ready. Get together.

John Dehlin [05:47:07] And this is in 2025 still happening. Yes. And he still hasn't come because he

Marc Headley [05:47:12] laid out in a policy what he wanted done. And so they have to do it. They can't. Can't undo that. So there's an entire household unit of, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 people.

John Dehlin [05:47:23] What city is this?

Marc Headley [05:47:24] It's Gilman Hot Springs.

John Dehlin [05:47:25] Still in la.

Marc Headley [05:47:26] No, it's

John Dehlin [05:47:29] two hours outside of.

Marc Headley [05:47:30] Yeah, but if you go. There's a drone. There's drone footage. People have gone to this property and filmed the entire thing in detail. And you can see this mansion that's built there is. It's solely for L. Ron Hubbard to

John Dehlin [05:47:43] return for when he returns. This is the same place the mudslide happened.

Marc Headley [05:47:46] Yes. And there's only two people that have ever stayed in this house.

John Dehlin [05:47:50] Tom Cruise and David Miscavige.

Marc Headley [05:47:52] You got it.

John Dehlin [05:47:53] How did I know?

Marc Headley [05:47:54] I don't know you. You've been paying attention.

John Dehlin [05:47:58] What did John Travolta do not get to go.

Marc Headley [05:48:00] What's that?

John Dehlin [05:48:01] Why didn't John Travolta get to go?

Marc Headley [05:48:03] I don't know.

Claire Headley [05:48:03] That's because of his relationship choices and not reforming Kelly Preston.

John Dehlin [05:48:07] Or is he on the outs?

Marc Headley [05:48:09] No, no. He.

Claire Headley [05:48:10] He would constantly be in trouble for his choices and men, which were frowned upon.

John Dehlin [05:48:16] So you're. I think what I hear you saying is that John Travolta was continuing to have relationships with men.

Claire Headley [05:48:22] Correct. And he was Persona non grata because of that. He was constantly being handled by Scientology to stop his relationship choices. And because of that, he was not considered in the inner circle the same way Tom Cruise was.

John Dehlin [05:48:39] I didn't know that. So he's not, is he, right now, in 2025, a Scientologist in good standing, or.

Marc Headley [05:48:46] No, he is.

Claire Headley [05:48:46] Yeah, he is.

Marc Headley [05:48:47] He Is. But he's not.

Claire Headley [05:48:49] Not.

Marc Headley [05:48:49] He's not on the same level as Dave and Tom. He's another category of scientologists. And even when we were shooting, we were shooting things at the property. But when John Travolta was shooting the movie Battlefield Earth, David Miscavige was like secretly producing that movie for John Travolta. David Miscavige was. Was seeing the costumes and the special effects and the storyboards and the who's going to be hired as this and who's going to be hired as that? And David Miscavige was phantom producing Battlefield Earth. And when it was done, David Miscavige told all of us, this is the best movie that's ever been made. It's the best. It's not going to. There is no movie that's going to be.

John Dehlin [05:49:40] Travolta was in this movie. Right.

Marc Headley [05:49:41] And John Travolta is the star. And Forest Whitaker and Kelly Preston, John Travolta's wife, who was. Rest in peace, she was in the movie as well. But David Miscavige told all of us it was going to be the best movie ever. That's a done deal. John Travolta was amazing. The whole movie's amazing because he produced it really. So he was the one taking credit for it being amazing. And he would get the dailies, all the footage would come to him. And when it came out, we all were paid. We got tickets bought for us to see it twice, actually. Three times.

Claire Headley [05:50:16] Yeah, three times in a row to

Marc Headley [05:50:18] make the ticket sales be up.

Claire Headley [05:50:19] Yeah. Which, by the way, it's rough watching a bad movie once. It's terribly worse watching a bad movie three times. And it's even exponentially worse watching it three times. When you been getting about one to two hours of sleep a night.

Marc Headley [05:50:34] Yeah. A lot of us were able to take a few.

Claire Headley [05:50:36] Few hour naps and a good six hours of sleep.

Marc Headley [05:50:39] But the best story about this is that when the movie was released, it was panned unanimously by everyone as one of the worst movies ever. And I think it even won a razzie or whatever the award is for the worst movie ever. But Tom Cruise called David Miscavige and he said, what the f, dude? And Dave said, I know John Travolta. That out ethics mfer. He blamed the whole thing on John

John Dehlin [05:51:08] because he was gay, but also because

Marc Headley [05:51:11] Dave produced the movie.

John Dehlin [05:51:12] Yeah.

Marc Headley [05:51:13] And now it was a giant pile

John Dehlin [05:51:15] of nothing without ethics. Means what it means.

Marc Headley [05:51:18] Basically, John is the one who made this thing and he's off the rails and it's his fault.

Claire Headley [05:51:22] So if you're. If you're in ethics, you're being a productive, contributing member of Scientology. If you're out ethics, then you are committing transgressions and making mistakes and not doing your best to promote Scientology to the world and present a good face.

John Dehlin [05:51:41] So was that code for he's gay and that's why the movie was bad?

Claire Headley [05:51:44] That was a piece of it. I don't think that was the entire reason. And it certainly, I don't think was of the part of the conversation between David Miscavige and Tom Cruise.

Marc Headley [05:51:52] I think it's actually the way he told it, or the way it was told to us is he said, yeah, John, that sea sucker, he really. Which means, what a cocksucker.

Claire Headley [05:52:04] Oh, David Miscavige is notorious for absolutely terrible language.

Marc Headley [05:52:09] When we first left, we cursed more than, you know, 40 year old veteran sailors. That's just the way. Way you talked there. And David Miscavige, we will be in a meeting with him and he'll say, suck my big fat wet in a meeting with all of the executives of Scientology.

John Dehlin [05:52:27] But he would refer to David Miscavige of Scientology, would refer to John Travolta

Marc Headley [05:52:32] as A. Yeah, 100%.

John Dehlin [05:52:34] You heard that?

Marc Headley [05:52:35] 100%.

John Dehlin [05:52:37] You too?

Claire Headley [05:52:37] I did.

John Dehlin [05:52:39] And was it pretty much out within the Scientology leadership that John Travolta was gay?

Marc Headley [05:52:45] It was that he had a problem that he needed to sort out.

John Dehlin [05:52:48] They didn't like to call him gay.

Marc Headley [05:52:50] Yeah. And even he. John Travolta even had an auditor at one time, like a counselor, and the counselor was going to try to leave, and they were like, you can't leave because you know all these things. And when that guy eventually did escape, it was a big flap because. Because now they have people that are being counselors that are getting these secrets from people that Scientology is keeping a repository of, but now they're getting people that are escaping that know about these things. And they have that same problem with Priscilla Presley, with John Travolta, with Lisa Marie Presley. It's a very.

Marc Headley [05:53:34] It's a very. A big problem in Scientology that these people are being counseled and they're giving up all these secrets, and then the people with the secrets are then escaping from Scientology, and they have no way to keep those people from contacting the person and saying, hey, just so you know, David Miscavige jokes about your sexual proclivities an hour after you've confessed them in the room with a bunch of executives or that's his gossip is Scientologists transgressions that they're confessing is his entertainment. And so. And the entire time we were there, we would have meetings with him and he would always have the up to the minute info on anything that was going on.

Marc Headley [05:54:22] And sometimes he would be talking about a person that had done something within the Sea Org or even a member. Sometimes he would tell us about members that had done things. And then that was even like when you're hearing about the other Sea Org members, something went wrong. They're getting investigated. And so the results of the investigation are what he's telling us about. But then when he switched over to telling us, oh, there's this one guy in Australia who's not even a Sea Org member, and he's been screwing the commanding officer of the Sea Org in that area, and it is the mother of somebody who's in the meeting.

Marc Headley [05:55:02] And he pretends like he doesn't even know that, but he's basically shit talking about this Sea Org person and a public member of Scientology, a paying member of Scientology, having relations, and he doesn't even know if it's true.

Marc Headley [05:55:17] Sometimes people are interrogated so long that they just confess to whatever they want him to confess to. So you could be in an interview for 15 hours, and they just keep asking you the same thing. And after 15 hours you say, yeah, I did it, I slept with her, whatever, even though you didn't to end it. And this is a known thing with interrogations in the CIA and they've done other studies where if you interrogate somebody and torture somebody, they'll admit it. Eventually they'll say whatever you want them to admit to. And they have the same thing, especially

Claire Headley [05:55:48] when you factor in sleep deprivation and everything else that are all elements of those interrogations.

John Dehlin [05:55:55] Claire, let me ask you. You claim that you believe that David Miscavige doesn't really believe that Scientology is true. I'll use those words. How would you describe it? He doesn't believe in Scientology.

Claire Headley [05:56:08] I just believe that David Miscavige does not have belief and conviction in Scientology. His commitment to is as a result of the power and control that he's leveraged over its members and over its money.

John Dehlin [05:56:22] And the money, yeah. So two things. Can you tell us what evidence or what things you saw that led you to believe that David Miscavige wasn't a true believer? And any stories you want to tell that would be disturbing to members if they were to watch about kind of what goes on behind the scenes, bodies get buried, that kind of thing.

Claire Headley [05:56:49] Sure, yes. Primarily when I started to see that David Miscavige was not a dedicated, committed Scientologist, as I mentioned, is that he has not participated in counseling since 1993. Last I knew, obviously, I escaped in 2005. But also. So he was not regularly studying Scientology. He was also not following the rules and guidelines of the Sea Organization the way he was requiring most other members of the Sea Organization to do. For example, he would keep his own schedule and meet behind closed doors with a close circle and drink scotch and go on extended trips doing scuba diving and. And had liberties that no other member of the Sea Organization had, and that was.

John Dehlin [05:57:43] Why is scuba diving bad?

Claire Headley [05:57:44] It's not that it's bad. It's that he's spending Scientology's money going on personal, private vacations to. What's that, Junkets?

Marc Headley [05:57:53] Oh, no, just vacations.

John Dehlin [05:57:56] Well, that's what I think of when I think of the word junket.

Claire Headley [05:57:59] But anyway, in. Erment.

John Dehlin [05:58:02] Okay. Yeah.

Claire Headley [05:58:02] Okay.

John Dehlin [05:58:03] Intermittent.

Claire Headley [05:58:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, so we're all living by the code of a Sea Org member and other requirements, and he's not.

John Dehlin [05:58:13] And did he tell people he was, or is there, like, I'm the king, so I get to do what I want, and God's okay with that, or whatever.

Claire Headley [05:58:19] Yeah, he. There was no disclosure that, for example, he's drinking scotch every night, which is strictly forbidden from members of the Sea Organization. Anyone else would have gotten in trouble. Yes, for sure. And,

John Dehlin [05:58:35] yeah, so going on little private vacations, drinking scotch was there. You know, it's. Almost every single cult leader ever has multiple mistresses or, you know, sexual escapades. Any idea whether that was going on at all?

Claire Headley [05:58:51] I never witnessed him actually doing something, but I know that Shelley. Shelly Miscavige, was very, very concerned with. So David and Shelley had three staff that were stewards for them, personal stewards who would prepare their clothes, bring them their breakfast, wake them up in the morning. And Shelley was concerned at various times that all three of those stewards were having inappropriate relations with David Miscavige and was having those three women interrogated about her suspicions of that. Then there was another case.

John Dehlin [05:59:28] How do you know she was suspicious?

Claire Headley [05:59:29] She told me.

John Dehlin [05:59:30] Oh, yeah. So Shelly Miscavige told you that she was worried that three of his. David Miscavige's assistants were possibly having sex with him?

Claire Headley [05:59:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [05:59:40] Okay.

Claire Headley [05:59:40] And another person that Shelly Miscavige was suspicious of was Jenny Linson, who is still there to this day. And is rather famous for a very bizarre interaction. Oh, yeah, Anderson Cooper. She was on Anderson Cooper. But then also subsequent to that, a very bizarre interaction that was filmed with her and Mark Yeager, who's another executive still there with Marty Rathbun at LAX Airport. Either way, Shelley was suspicious that Jenny had designs to create a relationship, an inappropriate sexual relationship with David Miscavige. Shelley's blame was putting it on the women, not on David Miscavige. But yet why would she be concerned if her husband was completely above board and the all holy leader he was pretending to be?

Marc Headley [06:00:39] One time there was, actually, I remember there was one steward, Georgiana, one of his stewards, very attractive young woman that worked for David Miscavige. Shelly was convinced that there was a problem, and she. And she. The girl was interrogated and nothing had happened, according to the girl. And so Shelly just had moved her. Her to another base.

Claire Headley [06:01:04] She moved. Shelly moved Georgiana to the Free Winds cruise ship.

Marc Headley [06:01:08] So she would only see David Miscavige for one week out of the year if she was there. And she became a steward on the Free Winds, even though Dave wasn't on the Free Winds. And she became a steward there. And that. I think that was the last time she was at the base. Right. I don't think she come back after that.

Claire Headley [06:01:26] I think she was brought back after that. But you. But, yeah. And originally she was banished to do heavy manual labor in the engine room of that cruise ship as a punishment. And then eventually she was let out from that. But the point being, there were many signs that there was more going on than met the eye. So again, I didn't personally witness him having this.

John Dehlin [06:01:49] The transaction, as they say.

Claire Headley [06:01:50] Yes, I didn't personally witness a transaction, but Shelly Miscaviged expressed to me personally on many occasions concerns of said transactions. For sure.

John Dehlin [06:02:00] Okay.

Claire Headley [06:02:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [06:02:01] Any other behaviors on David Miscavige's part that gave you the impression he didn't really believe or was a hypocrite? Basically, yeah. Are those the main ones?

Claire Headley [06:02:12] I mean, he had. So another significant piece of this is David Miscavige had many. The personal favor is being provided to Tom Cruise using Sea Org members. So doing renovations of Tom Cruise's personal hangar, renovations of his private plane, you know, vehicles. Vehicles, yes. Hiring his personal staff, selecting his personal staff from Scientologists. I mean, there were numerous instances of that. Which is like, that's not what the leader of a quote unquote religion should be focusing on, is catering to and pandering to a top Celebrity and going way above and beyond what would be considered legal.

Marc Headley [06:03:04] There was also a time period after we left in 2005 and in 2006, where we witnessed RTC Religious Technology center interrogators arriving at Tom Cruise's house. And we found out through people that worked for Tom Cruise that Dave was sending interrogators from Religious Technology center to interrogate his staff on the E Meter that were not Scientologists to find out how things were being leaked to the media and to tabloids. Because it wasn't Tom and it wasn't Katie, but things were factual. Items were being leaked to the press, and it had to have been within their household. And so Seaworg members were going and interrogating non Scientology members of Tom Cruise's household on what? Who's the evil person leaking things to the tabloids?

Claire Headley [06:04:05] Yeah, towards 2003, 2004, during the time that I was still in Religious Technology center, the meetings were getting worse and worse and worse with physical abuse. But then David Miscavige started declaring the top executives as suppressive people and created the hole. And when that happened, it was.

John Dehlin [06:04:27] Created the hole. Do you want to talk about what that was?

Claire Headley [06:04:29] Yes. So the hole was essentially the management executive offices were in these double wide trailers. And at first, Miscavige designated a room as the SP Room and started putting holding people there who had been declared suppressive people. But then it expanded to all of management because all of management was not getting his orders done. So then when, you know, you don't have the moment to pause and consider it, because you're in such an environment where you raise your voice against David Miscavige, you're going to be in the hole too. And you. Yet.

John Dehlin [06:05:07] So he could beat you, but you couldn't raise your voice back.

Claire Headley [06:05:10] That's right. No. And if you did, you would be immediately sent to the rehabilitation project force. So, for example, if I had ever done that, not that I dared to in that frame of mind, I would have never seen Mark again, or vice versa.

Claire Headley [06:05:26] You know, it was just. And we're talking about people, management executives, who've been in Scientology for decades, have committed to a billion years of search service, and now they're suppressive people. And it really, you know, it creates this environment of complete fear of the person who has complete control over your every movement.

Claire Headley [06:05:51] There's a security force that will keep you restricted to the property. You know, all the conditions were just so deteriorating, repeatedly, year after year, that by 2000, 2004, I mean, I couldn't imagine a life out of Scientology. At the same time, I longed for a life outside of Scientology. I would have nightmares about trying to escape, but I would never tell anybody that I had a nightmare that I was trying to escape.

John Dehlin [06:06:19] Including your husband?

Claire Headley [06:06:20] Including my husband, yes. And because Shelley Miscavige had personally told me, I'd forgone my right to escape. And that came from a position of authority and power that I. I believed that even if I tried, they would track me down and bring me back.

John Dehlin [06:06:38] So you. Were you saying something about the whole?

Claire Headley [06:06:41] Oh, yes. So David Miscavige created the whole as a. As an extreme form of punishment where top executives were now labeled as enemies of Scientology and

Marc Headley [06:06:56] couldn't leave.

Claire Headley [06:06:56] Yeah, they couldn't leave. They're being made to do heavy manual labor. Confessions. Group confessions.

Marc Headley [06:07:02] They welded bars on all of the windows of the building so there was no way to get out of the building. And they had guards posted at the entrances. And they barred one of the doors. They barred. So the door that is in the main room of the hole, they made it so all of the windows and doors in that room you could not break out of if you wanted to. They were barred from the outside.

Marc Headley [06:07:27] And then the doors that you could easily go through that were locked and unlockable, they had guards at those doors. So even if you were able to get out of there, you wouldn't be able to leave the building.

Marc Headley [06:07:38] And they had to eat there, they had to sleep there. They had to work there. They had to do group confessions. That was also the time when he would. Basically, he already knew all of the crimes that these people had seen been. Had committed for decades because he was reading all of the sessions. So if they would admit to something in front of the group that he already knew, they admitted before that to their counselor, he would say, no, no, no. I already know all about that. And then people would say, no, no. They said. There was a time in the 90s where Scientology was running a major campaign against Eli Lilly and Pfizer and saying that they were poisoning society and all of these different things.

Marc Headley [06:08:21] And they had been running a national ad campaign in USA Today putting giant anti Eli Lilly or Pfizer or big Pharmacy. They were attacking big Pharma every week in these giant newspapers. And David Miscavige was like, you guys need to confess your crimes. Well, one of a few of the big executives market, Mark Yeager, Guillaume Lisaev,

Claire Headley [06:08:47] Ray Middaugh, Ronnie Miscavige, his brother, David Miscavige's brother.

Marc Headley [06:08:51] They had admitted that at the very, very end of that campaign, they all bought a ton of Eli stock because they knew it would go up after that.

John Dehlin [06:09:03] So they were manipulating the market.

Marc Headley [06:09:04] Yes. And they were basically insider trading.

John Dehlin [06:09:08] They were taking the stock.

Marc Headley [06:09:10] They were taking the stock and then buying it because they knew when they ended the campaign, the stock would go back up. And this was a confession of the major executives in all of Scientology that they had bought Eli Lilly or Pfizer stock knowing it would go up. So they'd make a ton of money. And when they admitted it, you would have to. The people in the hole would have to admit all these crimes, and then somebody would summarize them, and when he would come to find out what they had confessed to, he would go, okay, what's the big thing that these guys confessed to?

Marc Headley [06:09:45] And they would say, sir, this is so insane. But this is what they admitted. And he was like, that's not good enough. I knew about that a decade ago. That's not anything new. Let's hear something new. And to everybody there, it was like, wait a minute. You knew about this 10 years ago, and these guys have been in charge this whole time? And then you find about them. They were. This is another big thing in Scientology is statistics. And that every.

Falsified Statistics, Legal Immunity, and Leaving

Marc Headley [06:10:18] Every organization has to have statistics so they can measure it. And then those statistics in the olden days would come up to management, and then management would present them to L. Ron Hubbard. All of the executives, including David Miscavige, knew that the organization were falsifying the statistics and that they themselves were padding and. And blowing the statistics up to. To be sent to L. Ron Hubbard. And then L. Ron Hubbard was rewarding and penalizing people based on these false statistics. And they basically admitted that in the eight in the 1980s, when L. Ron Hubbard was still alive, they were all lying and false reporting these statistics to L.

Marc Headley [06:11:02] Ron Hubbard cupboard, and they were getting bonuses, those tens of thousands of dollars worth of bonuses that was later used to buy that Eli Lilly stock and these other things. And they all had sports cars, and one guy had an mg, and one guy had a BMW, and they were living high on the hog. David Miscavige and these top executives.

Claire Headley [06:11:25] Yeah, it was about 10 top executives. It was not broad, and there had been no bonuses in the Sea Organization since that time. But they had amassed some decent amounts of money during those years.

Marc Headley [06:11:39] But they were basically admitting to things that were unbelievable crimes that if any Sea Org member committed, they would immediately be kicked out of the Sea Org. It's Just impossible that they would be allowed. And not only did he know about, but he might have been. The way the stories were told by these guys. He was in on it. He knew about it.

Claire Headley [06:12:02] Right.

Marc Headley [06:12:02] And that he kept it. He kept it under wraps as a way to ally them. And, hey, listen, I know what you did. You know what I did. But I'm not gonna do anything if you don't do anything. And then now that he's risen to this amass, he's amassed all this power, he can play with people whoever he wants, and he can throw anybody under the bus. And I don't think there was ever a time when he came down and they confessed something that he didn't already know. All about it.

John Dehlin [06:12:35] All right, so I've heard forced abortions. I've heard physically assaulting, beating people. Misappropriation of funds. Personal. And your government. Racism, homophobia, stock market manipulation, Hypocrisy, not living up to the standards. Any other. Imprisoning his wife and other people.

Marc Headley [06:13:04] Imprisoning. Just regular SEA orders.

John Dehlin [06:13:08] Exploitation, all that stuff. Any other big thing.

Marc Headley [06:13:12] Confidential. Releasing confidential information that's given under a priest. Pertinent, sort of penitent relationship.

John Dehlin [06:13:21] Violation of people's confidences, of their confidentiality.

Marc Headley [06:13:24] Recording and sharing the recordings of the

John Dehlin [06:13:28] people without the permission, without their. Any other.

Claire Headley [06:13:32] I mean, those are the top.

John Dehlin [06:13:34] Are those the big ones?

Marc Headley [06:13:34] Sounds like the. That's like the top 10.

John Dehlin [06:13:37] Okay.

Claire Headley [06:13:38] Yeah. And Factor. And this is up until 2005, and we know from other people who we found since then, it got dramatically worse. Yes.

John Dehlin [06:13:47] Okay. So, I mean, like, we're past the time limit that we had set for this episode.

Claire Headley [06:13:54] Yes.

John Dehlin [06:13:54] So stay tuned. So, I mean, what we're gonna do, let's. I'm gonna ask you a couple questions to end today, and then we'll have you come back tomorrow and we'll talk about your escape.

Claire Headley [06:14:05] Perfect.

John Dehlin [06:14:05] Is that all right? Sure.

Claire Headley [06:14:06] Sounds good.

John Dehlin [06:14:07] Because y' all have been really good sports today, and you haven't eaten all day, and neither have I. Y' all are treating me like David treated you. No, without the.

Claire Headley [06:14:16] We're all running on a lean mixture at this point.

John Dehlin [06:14:19] I'm joking. Sorry.

Claire Headley [06:14:20] I know it's all good.

John Dehlin [06:14:21] So one, I guess, is just a reaction. Like, I am stunned and not stunned that this didn't collapse, that all these abuses didn't lead to everybody defecting, didn't lead to the collapse, didn't lead to scandals and betrayal. I want to talk a little bit tomorrow about, like, when Mike Rinder defects and Leah remini Defects and how defections were handled. So help me remember that. We want to talk about that tomorrow.

John Dehlin [06:14:53] But I'm just. The abuses and the illegalities are so severe. I just can't believe that, number one, it survived and survives to this day. And then the second thing is I can't believe this is legal in the United States, that this organization continues to grow and thrive, maybe not in membership, but in wealth. They're probably richer than ever and they're probably going to keep getting richer and richer. I can't believe that this is allowed in the United States of America. That all this information's known.

John Dehlin [06:15:27] You guys and Leah and Mike and all the people and Chris Shelton, you've all come out whistleblowers. Everybody knows what's going on. And I guess under religious freedom that's exactly clauses, Scientology is still allowed to thrive. So that's. I'm shocked at both of those things.

Claire Headley [06:15:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [06:15:45] Let's give each of you guys a chance to kind of summarize today and then we'll come right back tomorrow and talk about your story.

Claire Headley [06:15:52] Okay. I would summarize it as Scientology has decades long history of perfecting their approach, their contracts, their legal team, in order to protect themselves and enable them to continue their abusive practices. I would say that we have made progress. It's not satisfying in that at least yet, as that they're still getting away with it to this day. But we've certainly anyone who's spoken out against their abuse. Each voice matters, and each account, each lawsuit, each contribution has continued to portray the reality of this organization. But yes, it's systemic abuse that is shocking that they're still getting away with it to this day.

John Dehlin [06:16:39] And today we didn't even really go into the harassment of defectors, the lawfare, just the physical and emotional and psychological and physical abuse of apostates and defectors.

Claire Headley [06:16:51] Correct.

John Dehlin [06:16:52] So we'll talk about that tomorrow. Yes, but. Okay, so you're saying every voice matters.

Claire Headley [06:16:58] Yep. And because Scientology has been getting away with this for decades, as Mark mentioned, they're responsible for the largest infiltration of the U.S. government. And that and the raids from that proved that Scientology's body of fair game policy was alive and well. I mean, they had. They were framing people for murder back then and bomb threats like Paulette Cooper's story. Anyway, it is frustrating, but it also is why we continue to speak out and use our voices to continue to expose them.

John Dehlin [06:17:33] But I mean, in a better world, a government like, I mean, 2025, forget about it. But I mean, in a better world. Any free market democracy with ethics would not allow this type of abuse and corruption in the name of religion.

Claire Headley [06:17:52] That's right.

John Dehlin [06:17:53] It did shut all this down.

Marc Headley [06:17:55] One of the key ways that they get away with it is not only the lawyers, but they use the celebrities, and they use the celebrities to paint this picture over here. And when you've got a DA or a prosecutor or a judge or a mayor who could go the wrong way or be an enemy, you invite that guy to the old Clearwater, get together we're having and let his wife dance with John Travolta for five minutes.

John Dehlin [06:18:28] Just go on the floor and he's

Marc Headley [06:18:30] your biggest fan in the world because you made it possible for his wife to have a dance dance with John Travolta. And now that judge is your best friend.

John Dehlin [06:18:40] And they would do that with. With judges and 100 police officers. That is law enforcement.

Marc Headley [06:18:45] Big deal and judicial system. You're going to have an la. We're going to have an. We're going to have a Christmas event, and we're going to invite all of the LAPD and all of the people that are involved with. If something goes bad for Scientology, these are the guys that we need in our back pocket. The LAPD are performing at their Christmas show. They're singing and playing guitar at the Scientology showcase, and they're getting to meet the Scientology celebrities and they're getting to pal around with all the muckety mucks that Scientology invited. And so. And also those. Remember we talked about. About those events that happen every year. Seven events.

John Dehlin [06:19:31] Yeah.

Marc Headley [06:19:31] Every time they have one of those, they hire police to be off duty security for their event. And so they're having seven of those a year in Los Angeles, in Florida, in all these places. They have the events and those police.

Marc Headley [06:19:49] That's how they're taking their family to Hawaii, and that's how they're going to get the boat that they. The fishing boat they've always dreamed of, the Scientology. That little back rub that they're getting from Scientology is how they have a life besides what they make being a police officer. So when that girl shows up to the police station and says, Danny Masterson did this and that and the other thing, there's a. There's a police officer there that goes, hey, we got one of your guys over here, and they're saying some stuff about one of your other guys and they. And then it goes away. So they have been doing this for decades.

Marc Headley [06:20:26] They know how to play this game. So if they don't win in the Lawfare or the harassment, it just won't ever become a thing. When the people go to the police or when the people go. When the case gets assigned to a judge and the judge says, oh, give me a break.

Marc Headley [06:20:43] There's two lawyers that worked for Scientology. One of them was on our case, and one of them was on the Danny Masterson case. Those two lawyers are California Supreme Court judges. Now they're. They're the Supreme Court judges.

John Dehlin [06:20:59] Scientology helped them 100.

Marc Headley [06:21:01] How would two guys that work for Scientology within a matter of three or four years?

John Dehlin [06:21:07] Well, there were lawyers hired by science.

Marc Headley [06:21:08] They were lawyers hired by Scientology.

Claire Headley [06:21:10] Lawyers were representing scientists. Scientology and then became Supreme Court judges.

John Dehlin [06:21:15] That's so scary.

Marc Headley [06:21:17] Two separate ones. Yeah, it's one that was defending them against Danny Masterson and one that was defending them against. Win our lawsuit.

Claire Headley [06:21:23] Yeah, those are just the two that we know of. There hasn't been a complete study of it. But then you look into and learn that now Scientology has created this whole false arbitration system which we can talk about tomorrow, because that's a whole other thing that they've invented to prevent lawsuits from even making it to the courts

Marc Headley [06:21:46] because the courts are not allowed to interfere with religious disputes. So Scientology says, well, we have a thing called the commev, the Committee of Evidence, which is basically just a kangaroo court that you're. If you Scientology wants you to be guilty, then you're guilty. That's how that works. And so these, these cases are being sent back to Scientology. So the judicial system is saying, we don't want to get involved with this. You guys have an internal arbitration system, so sort this out within yourselves. And so you're going to a lawyer you're paying to sue Scientology, and then you're being told you have to go and sort it out based on Scientology's policy.

Scientology's Power Over Law and Final Reflections

Claire Headley [06:22:29] Yes. Not only that.

Marc Headley [06:22:30] And your lawyer can't.

Claire Headley [06:22:32] Yeah. Go back to your abuser and they'll. And figure it out there. And giving them no recourse in the judicial system. Even for the woman who had to escape in the trunk of a car. And that's the only reason she is out. Now they're saying, go sort it out with Scientology and other worse examples too. But yes, this is.

John Dehlin [06:22:54] So Scientology's worked with the. What, California legislature.

Marc Headley [06:22:58] No, they've just established through precedent.

Claire Headley [06:23:03] Oh.

Marc Headley [06:23:03] That this case went this way. And so now it's basically just a get out of jail free ticket for the judge to say, you know, this is going to come back to bite me. Also, if you're that judge, you are now entering into the fair game. We can. All your secrets are now going to get out.

John Dehlin [06:23:21] So judges can be fair gamed.

Marc Headley [06:23:23] 100. Anybody who doesn't like Scientology can be fair game.

Claire Headley [06:23:26] Even. Even in the Danny Masterson trial, the district attorney's office, they were being fair gamed and they documented and spoke about it publicly.

John Dehlin [06:23:35] That's wild.

Claire Headley [06:23:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [06:23:38] Wow. Dang, man. What a crazy world. Okay, well, the one thing I'll say in closing is I'd be willing to bet $10,000 that the Mormon law firm, Kirtne McConkey has the Scientology lawyers and law firm on speed dial and that they're communicating with each other regularly on tactics and techniques.

Claire Headley [06:24:04] I would absolutely agree.

Marc Headley [06:24:05] I would say the same because David Miscavige has said on many, many occasions that he. If we needed to do something when we were working there, if we needed to build an audio visual system for audience haul or we needed to create a video for a certain thing, he would tell us, go see and see what the Mormons are doing, because they're doing it the way we want to be doing everything.

Claire Headley [06:24:30] Yep. David Miscavige was 100% an advocate for mimicking and studying and researching how Mormons were doing things and following that same approach.

John Dehlin [06:24:41] Any idea if there was direct communication between Scientology and the LDS Church?

Marc Headley [06:24:45] I don't know. But he knew a lot about a lot of Mormon stuff that, I mean, obviously we didn't know. We were search members. We're kind of cut off from the whole world. But when we were building a new, there was designs, which is. Now they're trying to do it again. It's called the L. Ron Hubbard Hall. They're trying to build this thing down in Clearwater. But when we were designing different properties in Clearwater and we were putting the initial sort of this is what we would have in this. This facility if we did that. And he was like, oh, you've got to go see what the Mormons did in Utah.

Marc Headley [06:25:16] Because they have a place there which is just teched out to the. It's just the best. And that's a conference center, basically. And that's what we need. We need to have it set up like they have it set up. And we would look up whatever we could look up on the Internet and see what equipment and hardware we'd be like. I don't know. This is.

John Dehlin [06:25:34] This is a lot.

Marc Headley [06:25:35] This is like, this is way over what the budget we're used to submitting to Dave. And nobody wants to be that person that gives him the proposal that says it's going to be $10 million because he's going to. Someone's getting beat in that meeting for sure.

John Dehlin [06:25:53] Wow. Okay. Well, if that's not enough teaser for tomorrow, I don't know what else we could do, but yeah. So tomorrow we're going about to talk. Talk about y' all escaping. We'll talk about the Danny Masterson thing. We'll talk about your legal efforts, y' all being fair gamed, what you know about other celebrities leaving, how they were fair gamed, how y' all have come out the other end, how you've tried to help people, how you've become healthy. And that's so a whole nother. I'm sure four or five hours. We'll do a little more we appreciate.

Claire Headley [06:26:29] Sounds good. Yes.

John Dehlin [06:26:30] Well, I hope today was okay for you guys.

Marc Headley [06:26:33] Sure.

John Dehlin [06:26:33] Thanks so much for your generosity and fascinating stories. It's so disturbing.

Marc Headley [06:26:39] Well, yeah, that was the craziest thing when. When people would ask us about what happened when we were there, and then they would go, well, at least you're gone now. We say, oh, no. After we left and started talking about them, that's when they really started putting the screws to us. So that is like basically everything up till now was just training for us for what was to come.

John Dehlin [06:27:03] Oh, wow. Okay. So you didn't see nothing yet is what they're saying. So, Claire Headley, thank you so much for being willing to share your stories and experience.

Claire Headley [06:27:13] Of course. Thank you for having us.

John Dehlin [06:27:15] And Mark, thank you so much.

Marc Headley [06:27:16] Absolutely. So the YouTube channel is called Blown for Good Scientology. Exposing Scientology.

Claire Headley [06:27:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [06:27:23] And the book is called Long for

Marc Headley [06:27:25] Good behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology.

John Dehlin [06:27:28] And the nonprofit is called the Michael J.

Claire Headley [06:27:31] Render Aftermath Foundation. We also have just started a YouTube channel dedicated for those stories, which is The Aftermath Foundation YouTube channel.

John Dehlin [06:27:41] Beautiful. Well, thanks for all you all do and your courage and for coming.

Claire Headley [06:27:45] Thank you so much.

Marc Headley [06:27:46] Thanks for having us.

John Dehlin [06:27:47] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. We couldn't do this without our donors. So if you're a donor. Thank you. You made this possible. If you're not a donor and you value this content, we would love to have you become a monthly donor. Just go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. We'll keep providing this content for as long as people support it. Also, there are ways to support us even if you can't donate. Don't worry about it. If you can't do it, donate. We're happy to provide it for free. However, subscribing to the channel, liking the episodes, commenting, sharing all helps with the algorithms.

John Dehlin [06:28:24] You can also find us on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and again on YouTube. So those are all the different ways you can subscribe to us, join us, like us, follow us, et cetera. So please do that if you can and come on back for another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and part two of this two part series with Claire and Mark Headley. Thanks for joining us today everybody. Y' all take care of.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 2066

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is September 11, 2025, and I want to begin by offering a heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot yesterday while we were recording yesterday's episode. We condemn all violence, and we also express our support for open dialogue and respectful dialogue, you know, in the sense that we, you know, we understand Charlie Kirk's long history of engaging in dialogue with people, and that's what Mormon Stories is all about. And we condemn all violence, and we also just. Again, our heart goes out not just to the family and friends of Charlie Kirk, but also to people who respected and loved him.

John Dehlin [00:00:57] We need less polarization, in my opinion. We need less echo chambers. We need more conversations and more respectful dialogue. And so it's a sad, dark day, and especially that it happened In Utah, just 30 minutes away from where we were recording yesterday.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] So, anyway, just wanted to say that before we begin. Welcome back to part two of our interview with Mark and Claire Headley. For those of you who did not hear our previous episode, you may want to pause it, go back to yesterday's episode, watch it, and then come back for today. Claire and Mark Headley were effectively born into Scientology, and yesterday's episode was about their experience as children in Scientology, the conditional love offered by their parents as it related to their allegiance to Scientology.

Recapping Part One and Guest Resources

John Dehlin [00:01:52] I talked about their respective recruitments into the Sea Org, which is the most elite, and I would say culty and or abusive part of Scientology, which is saying a lot. And it talked about their experiences as teens in seaorg, and then eventually their recruitment to work at church headquarters, one of the church headquarters, in this case the one in California, and eventually their meeting.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] We talked about Claire's forced abortions after she married Mark. We talked about what it was like to work with David Miscavige, the successor to L. Ron Hubbard. We gave a history, a brief history of Scientology that included, you know, the work and life of L. Ron Hubbard. We also talked about Shelley Miscavige and lots of cool things. So yesterday was a one. One of the longer episodes that we tend to do these days. I think it exceeded five hours.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] In my opinion, it was worth every minute. So check it out. Even though it's a long episode, it's great stuff. Where we left off was the meeting, being married, but we spent a lot of time on their reflections on how Scientology worked at the top leadership level. So we talked about Tom Cruise and his celebrity.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] We talked about John Travolta. We talked about ways that David Miscavige spoke ill and violated the confidentiality of not just the celebrities, but other members. We talked about David Miscavige's violence, physical violence and psychological violence. So many important and interesting things.

John Dehlin [00:03:32] And we talked about, I guess, Claire's opinion that she tended to believe that at best, David Miscavige was, was hypocritical and at worst wasn't even necessarily a true believer in the teachings or the beliefs of Scientology. And I think Mark probably shares that. They also speculated that by the end of L. Ron Hubbard's life, unlike just David Miscavige, that L. Ron Hubbard was a true believer, even though you could argue that Scientology began as a fraud. So we also, to, to finish my summation of yesterday, we found lots of parallels between the life of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the lives of L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige and between behaviors and practices in the respective churches.

John Dehlin [00:04:27] Although I to this day am willing to concede that if we're talking about the spectrum of, of harmful organizations and or high demand religions and or cults, I can say with a lot of confidence that Scientology out cults the Mormon Church maybe by a long shot, but maybe by the end of today we'll talk about why that might be smart or savvy on the part of the Mormon Church to be less like Scientology. We also talked about how David Miscavige loved the Mormon approach to business and PR and corporate management and how they were often directed to figure out what the Mormons were doing and to do more of that.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] So that was a, you know, we may get more into that in today's episode, but that's a long intro. But it's to say, please go back and watch that last episode. It's absolutely worth it. And it gets better and better with each hour.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Believe it or not, Margi can't join us today. She sends her love and respect. And so today's all going to be about the unraveling of Claire and Mark's belief in Scientology, how they escaped, how they rebuilt their lives after escaping, how they've been attacked and pursued by the church, and also their advocacy that culminates in, you know, them running a nonprofit or helping run a nonprofit that helps others escape from Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:06:03] So really quickly, we mentioned at the beginning of last episode that you all have a YouTube channel and a book and the nonprofit. What do you all want to sort of say to our returning audience in case there's people who missed yesterday's? Plugs.

Claire Headley [00:06:20] Yes, absolutely. Our YouTube channel is blown for Good, Scientology Exposed, and. And the Michael J. Render Aftermath Foundation. The website for that is theaftermathfoundation.org and we also now have a newer YouTube channel that's the Aftermath foundation, where we cover stories, successes programs, and current endeavors that we're working on there. I'll let you cover the book.

Marc Headley [00:06:46] Yeah, the book is Blown for Good behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology. And we also. On the Aftermath YouTube channel, we have interviews with people that. Who have. We've helped get out. And then after a bit, they wanted to tell their stories on how they were helped by the Aftermath foundation, which are. There's a. There's a particular, very cool one called the Story of Serge Obolinsky, which is the individual we helped many years ago. And it's a. It's a great documentary if you want to watch that.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] And yesterday we talked about, you know, Shelly Miscavige, the wife of David Miscavige, going missing for, what, 20 years. And you have a series on Blown for Good about where is Shelley?

Marc Headley [00:07:30] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:07:30] Where you talk to various people about their theories on whether Shelley's still alive and if so, what happened to her. And.

Claire Headley [00:07:37] And yeah, yeah, that was inspired because, particularly in my case, I worked so closely with Shelley for the eight years that I was in Religious Technology center, and. And Shelley's fate could have been any one of our fates. Had I not escaped, I. I would never have seen Mark again. So Shelley is a real person. She's not. She's not. She's a. A prisoner. And she has been removed from her position completely. And so I don't want that to be forgotten about, nor do I want. It seemed like the perfect example of how to expose what Scientology is capable of behind the scenes.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] And unlike your opinions about David Miscavige, you believe Shelley was a true believer.

Claire Headley [00:08:25] I definitely know Shelley was a true believer 100. She is, I'm sure, waiting for the day that L. Ron Hubbard will return in.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

Claire Headley [00:08:36] Yes, exactly. So. And hoping that he will free her and banish David Miscavige. Probably by now.

John Dehlin [00:08:42] That's another thing we talked about yesterday, is the. The prophesied return of L. Ron Hubbard.

Claire Headley [00:08:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] And the mansion that's been built to await his return. So you'll have to go back and watch to hear about all that stuff, but it's just gripping. So thanks for rejoining us today and giving two full days to Mormon Stories podcast.

Claire Headley [00:09:02] Yes, thank you so Much for having us. Absolutely. Our pleasure.

The Beginning of Doubt Inside Scientology

John Dehlin [00:09:06] Okay, well, so yesterday we ended with, you know, lots of controversy and insider tea and descriptions of the inner workings. And we can do much more of that if you want any tea that we. We had dinner last night. Net that we want to also add in addition to what we talked about yesterday. But what I want to start by focusing on is just when the cracks started developing for each of you and then how you dealt with the. When I say cracks, that's a Mormon. I don't know if it's.

Marc Headley [00:09:47] But 100%.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] Okay.

Claire Headley [00:09:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] When the crack started developing in your faith or commitment to the movement, and then how each of you, respectively, and how you together did or didn't deal with the cracks. So where should we begin?

Marc Headley [00:10:00] I think I'll start because I'm the one who cracked first.

John Dehlin [00:10:03] Okay. So you were always a bit of a skeptic.

Marc Headley [00:10:08] I wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:10:08] And reluctant. Were you reluctant or not?

Marc Headley [00:10:10] I was more. I was more working and trying to get stuff done and being a good worker, a doer. A doer. I'm sort of. If you're not producing, you're just consuming. And I'd rather produce and do just a little bit of consuming.

John Dehlin [00:10:28] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:10:28] And so. And for the most part, the entire time, the entire 15 years that I was in this organization, I was making things. I was producing cassettes or producing DVDs or laser discs or whatever, or films or videos. And so at the very end of my 15 years there, I was put in charge of the audio visual systems manufacturing department. And so I was responsible for all of the audio visual systems for Scientology worldwide.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] It's a big deal.

Marc Headley [00:11:04] It was a lot. It was millions and millions of dollars worth of installations and equipment that needed to go to all of their facilities all around the world. And not only was I responsible for designing them, programming them, producing them, and then in making sure they got installed correctly in all those locations.

Marc Headley [00:11:25] So it was a lot of work. And. And Scientology doesn't like to put more resources on something than are needed. So in. In most of the instances of this, if. If something would take 15 people to do comfortably or capably, then three people would be assigned to it. And that is exactly what we had. We had three people responsible for producing, installing, and getting all this work done for, let's say, 150 organizations worldwide. So it was. We were wholly unprepared and unmanned to be able to do that successfully. So it was always last minute, two minute, you know, too little, too late, just always scrambling.

Marc Headley [00:12:20] But. But as part of that, in late 2004, there were several. There was a new campaign that David Miscavige had launched, essentially based on Tom Cruise shooting films in certain locations. And Tom Cruise, now an avid, avid Scientologist. Between 2000 and 2004, him and David Miscavige became very, very close.

John Dehlin [00:12:49] When was his jumping on Oprah's sofa moment about.

Marc Headley [00:12:52] Do you remember 2005?

John Dehlin [00:12:55] Okay, so this is leading up to his marriage of Katie Holmes and that whole public sort of re. Rebirth or rebranding of Scientology.

Claire Headley [00:13:05] Yes, yes. It was from the time period of Tom Cruise being brought back into Scientology, separating from Nicole, and now becoming extremely fanatical about wanting to spread the word and get as many people, as many high profile people into Scientology as he could, and then complaining to David Miscavige, hey, the New York organization is terrible. Like, it's not. It's not worthy of me bringing Steven Spielberg, who I'm working with on War of the Worlds, into that organization. You need to fix this.

John Dehlin [00:13:39] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:13:39] So based on this sort of dialogue that's happening with Tom Cruise, David Miscavige created a new type of Scientology organization. And he deemed it the ideal organization. And this would became to be known as the ideal Org program. And so any Scientology facility that was in a strip mall that next to the dog groomer or had a rundown building that they bought in 1972 or anything like that, was now deemed unacceptable. And they would need to purchase or obtain or move into, ideally a historic building or something that's classified as sort of a landmark in their city. And that is many, many tens of thousands of square feet and in a major city and all of these things. And as part of that, they would get these new systems that I had designed for all of the different divisions of the organization.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] So they're zhuzhing up now that they have more and more money, more and more celebrity, they want to upgrade their class.

Marc Headley [00:14:54] Let's get like the Mormons.

Claire Headley [00:14:55] Yes, let's get it going. And two things to add to that. Number one, Hubbard had a policy in which he said, quote, they will know you by your messed, unquote matter, energy, space and time. In other words, the. The general population will know you by the quality of your presentation of physical buildings and so on and so forth. That's what was used as the explanation to the existing Scientologists as to why this was needed. And not only that, David Miscavige's vision was, you know what you are? You're incapable of bringing people into Scientology. Properly. So we're going to do this by audio visual, and the audio visual systems will do the work of recruiting people because you're failing.

Marc Headley [00:15:41] That's exactly what it was. He, David Miscavige believed the only way to get new people into Scientology is if he was personally getting them into Scientology. And the only way that he could do that was to create video programs and presentations and to create those. Like, he's the one who said this is what this needs to be and this will bring people in. And because. And his, his explanation to us was we need to bypass the failure of Scientologists and go directly to new people.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] That's fascinating. It's not the Mormon way. The Mormon way is to not rely too much on the cult of personality of any one leader. Now that's post Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. But I think over time the church has learned that if you rely too much on any one personality, that person could get shot. That person can fall out of fashion or be controversial. Better to have 80,000 missionaries spanning the globe being your personal representatives and connecting with hearts and minds. So I do think the Mormon Church's missionary program is brilliant and one of the big secrets to its success.

Claire Headley [00:16:58] Yes. Scientology has not learned that lesson yet, but it is. Hopefully they don't either.

John Dehlin [00:17:03] We talk about the difference between a 3 billion church and a 300 billion dollar church.

Claire Headley [00:17:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:08] I think that might be one of the differences.

Marc Headley [00:17:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] Now we do love our multimedia. So in that. In that we agree.

Marc Headley [00:17:14] Yes. Well, so as part of that program, I was responsible for going to these new organizations that had just been renovated or just been updated with these new systems and going and making sure that their systems were installed and operated as David Miscavige intended. And one of the carrots. There used to be a. There used to. There's been other programs throughout the years, and when those milestones or objectives were completed is when the upper OT levels 9 and 10. So they've only released up to operating level fate, operating thetan level eight. And. And. But it has on the bridge to total freedom in Scientology. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. So as a carrot, David Miscavige basically mandated, once every single one of our organizations has been upgraded to an ideal organization, OT levels 9 and 10 will then be released.

Claire Headley [00:18:23] Though. Though, as we talked about yesterday, there are no. They were OT 9 and 10. No, but that was. So it was like a, you know, the presentation of. Well, you. You haven't met the target. So that's why it's not being released as the explanation. Because of course, it wouldn't. Wouldn't fly with the civilian Scientologist to be like, sorry, he went off to target too, before that was completed.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] And when she says off to target, she means died. But. Yes, but. But. But also, I'm guessing Scientology followers wouldn't have been okay with David Miscavige authoring those highest levels.

Claire Headley [00:19:02] Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [00:19:03] And also, what you told us yesterday was L. Ron Hubbard did have a lot of spare time in his final five or 10 years, but he spent it writing space porn instead of actually completing the levels. Am I right?

Claire Headley [00:19:16] Completely. Absolutely. No, because in Scientology, Hubbard is source. He is the only person that can originate anything, which is where Scientology has an incapacity to change.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] I love this so much, I should be laughing at darkness. This is fascinating.

Marc Headley [00:19:34] It is kind of wild to think about it all and that there are people that don't know any of this information, and they're just operating on the information they're getting through David Miscavige from Scientology. And if they knew a quarter of what we're talking about, that it would be a deal breaker for them.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] It would certainly be, oh, the general membership. Oh, 100 not knowing very basic things about 100.

Marc Headley [00:19:59] About David Miscavige and about L. Ron Hubbard. Yeah, they were both. Well, I think the only thing that David Miscavige hasn't kind of matched L. Ron Hubbard on is the number of wives Tom has. And LRH both had three wives, at least that we know of, and. And David Miscavige only had the one. But when the. The FBI raided Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard's wife went to prison, he never, ever saw her ever again. He basically banished her after she got out of prison. She was banished? Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [00:20:36] Wow.

Claire Headley [00:20:36] She was put in a. In a separate location. So we're referring to Mary Sue Hubbard, who she was, went to prison and served time for her involvement as the head of the Guardian's office, which they were protecting L. Ron Hubbard, and she was his wife, but she fell on her sword for him. And yes, she was banished. She was literally written out of Scientology's history, removed from all the photos, never spoken about until the day she died. So we're talking the late 70s. And so for 20 plus years, she was in a remote location that nobody knew about with Scientology handlers. Exactly. Like Shelly Miscavige.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] I'm going to keep drawing parallels. Joseph Smith's first wife, Emma, was written out of Mormon history because she refused to follow Brigham Young to Utah. And Brigham Young hated Emma. And Emma hated Brigham Young because Emma hated polygamy. And so we also, for many, many generations, wrote out the founding wife of our founding prophet.

Claire Headley [00:21:42] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:21:43] The other thing is that most Mormons today don't know the very basic truths about their history, more so now than ever because of the Internet. But when I 30. Just 20 years ago. 20, 30 years ago, I learned for the first time that Joseph Smith had 30 to 40 wives. And to this day, most Mormons don't know that. Wow.

Marc Headley [00:22:05] So, I mean, wild.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] Yeah. I think y' all have withheld more from your members than we have withheld from ours, mostly because y' all just have so much more to know and learn. Your. Your sacred language goes so deep. You know what I mean?

Claire Headley [00:22:21] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:22] And your history, your intricate history goes so deep. But what we share is a generally ignorant membership in terms of the truth about the Church, just at different levels.

Claire Headley [00:22:34] Right. And it's. It's fascinating to just reflect on that. I think there's two key factors. Number one, the Internet has changed everything in terms of availability of actual factual information. But in retrospect, it's. It's alarming and shocking. And concerning that in human nature, you. You would go. Like my parents or my family or anybody would go into a belief system not even knowing the basic facts of who it is they're following and believing and what their actual history is.

John Dehlin [00:23:08] Yeah. That's why our main theme is informed consent. Like, I don't care if people are Mormon. I just want them to know what they're joining that or be a part of.

Marc Headley [00:23:17] Yeah, that's exactly. Kind of the message we try to push is that we're not really attacking the beliefs of it. We're attacking the fraud and the criminal activities and the. You know, there's been a long history of defrauding elderly members and running up credit cards in elderly people's accounts and then just saying, well, they're going to pass away and the credit card debt's just going to get forgiven. So there's no. It's an innocent. It's a victimless crime that we're basically stealing money from credit card companies.

Claire Headley [00:23:52] And I would claim we're not attacking anybody. We're just exposing what we know to be true. It's. You know, Scientology calls us attackers, but, no, we're just whistleblowers sharing our experiences and our truth so that other unsuspecting people don't get lured in by their facade.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Yeah. Makes total sense.

Claire Headley [00:24:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] Okay, so you're. You're judging up all the. You Know all the buildings with the latest tech.

Marc Headley [00:24:18] Yeah. So.

John Dehlin [00:24:19] And. And there's a promise for the highest levels of curriculum to be released so that people can reach their Scientology equivalent of exaltation or enlightenment.

Claire Headley [00:24:31] Exactly, exactly.

Marc Headley [00:24:33] And throughout my entire career within the Sea Organization, I was involved with audio visual systems, and I did travel to many organizations all over the world over those years. And this was the first time that I was going to these new organizations, these new ideal organizations that David Miscavige had been building.

Marc Headley [00:24:58] And I went to the New York Ideal. Org, and I went to several Ideal, or Scientology Ideal organizations in California. And every single time that I had gone to one of these places, they were bare. There was no one there. I went to San Francisco. I went to New York. I went to cities where Scientology organizations traditionally had hundreds of people in them each day for decades. And now I'm going, and they have this new organization that's the Bee's Knees. It's the old San Francisco. They have the old transamerican building, Transamerica building on the corner, and it's right across the street from the new Trans America building.

Marc Headley [00:25:46] And there's not one single person in there, a paying member of Scientology on a weekday, in the afternoon, when that's sort of the afternoon and night are sort of the busy times for people get off work, and then they go and do their Scientology technology study at after work. No one there and no one coming. No one been there for the last few days. No one coming for the next few days.

Claire Headley [00:26:09] And on the flip side of that, you're seeing the empty organizations, and I remember very well. Meanwhile, you're attending meetings with David Miscavige where things are just falling down. Like the whole musical chairs incident, which I don't know if you want to cover that or not, but that was. That was absolutely a part of the. The cracks forming. I remember because it was.

Marc Headley [00:26:34] That was an entire chapter of my book. So I don't know if we want to cover. That's gonna.

Claire Headley [00:26:39] We're gonna.

Marc Headley [00:26:40] We're gonna outdo.

Claire Headley [00:26:40] Yesterday. We covered it with David Miscavige's violence. But I'm just saying that was on the flip side of empty organizations. Meanwhile, the leader is degenerating into physical and just crazy psychological abuse like we had not seen at that level before.

Marc Headley [00:26:57] Yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot. And.

John Dehlin [00:27:01] And that's. That's just real quickly. That's how I remember going. Clear ending is that Scientology is becoming fabulously wealthy and empty in terms of actual people.

Marc Headley [00:27:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] It's going to be a super wealthy church with few to no members. And weirdly, the Mormon Church is also potentially on a similar trajectory in the United States because our growth is almost slowed to a decline in the United States. And so we're about to start declining in the US in membership, and we're having massive defections and we're building a gazillion $50 million temples all across the United States and the world. And everyone's asking who's going to be showing up in these temples once the membership is in total freefall. So, I mean, again, yes, interesting similarities.

Claire Headley [00:27:52] Yes. The way I put it is Scientology is currently rich in dollars and real estate and poor. And people. Yeah, their people are. Because of the. Many people have spoken out, more and more people are leaving Scientology by the day at this point. So they are definitely shrinking.

Marc Headley [00:28:10] Yeah. The other. The other thing that was happening was he is pushing that we're going to have to open eight or 10 of these new organizations every year. And here I am when I went to New York and it was empty. I was. That was a. That was. That was kind of a shocker. The. The new. The New York Scientology ideal organization is right around the corner from Times Square. So there's sort of no good reason in the world that there would be no people there because there's more people just their period than anywhere.

John Dehlin [00:28:45] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:28:46] And you can't even get a handful to come over there.

John Dehlin [00:28:49] Interesting.

Claire Headley [00:28:49] And we're not even just talking about people actively doing courses or training. They would. In a location like that. They're supposed to quote body route is what Hubbard calls it. People in to do the personality test and all this like, simple things that with a huge amount of humanity right there should. Technically, that building should be busier than any location.

Marc Headley [00:29:14] Exactly. There's also there traditionally they have maybe 100 to 150 organizations worldwide in the entire world that are Scientology organizations. And all of those organizations make money and then they send that money to the Mother Church. There's one organization in Clearwater called the Flag Land Base or the Fort Harrison or. It's a collection of many properties, millions and millions of dollars of the propert. But in that one location, they make a million dollars a week delivering Scientology and doing counseling and training. That one organization sends or makes a million dollars a week, and then that million dollars supports all of Scientology's management facilities. The Sea Organization is basically funded by that one single organization.

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Can I take issue with that? I don't. Let me tell you what I mean. Yeah, When a church is small and growing, it relies on revenue generated by its branches. Once you amass a billion bucks at central headquarters and then you get the best Wall street investors to invest that money, you just grow on the law of 7, 6 or 7% a year.

John Dehlin [00:30:40] And like the Mormon Church now, it was 30 or 40 or 50 years ago that they had that billion dollars. But once they started Ensign Peak and started investing it, well, now we're a 300 billion dollar church and the church literally doesn't need the tithing of its members anymore to continue growing at the rate where it will be a trillion dollar church in 30, 40 years. So there's a point, there's a long period where it relies on the tithing or the revenue of the branches. But you know, the Mormon Church doesn't need the tithing of its members literally anymore to become a trillion dollar organization.

Marc Headley [00:31:18] Just, just money making money.

John Dehlin [00:31:20] At this point, it's the law of 7%. How long does it take a billion dollars to double if you get 7% a year? So I'm not arguing with you.

Marc Headley [00:31:28] No.

John Dehlin [00:31:28] But I'm just, you know, this is a conversation.

Claire Headley [00:31:30] Yeah, for sure.

Marc Headley [00:31:31] And this is, this is where this is sort of going, that this information to Scientologists would, would be a mind blower.

John Dehlin [00:31:38] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:31:39] All of those other organizations all around the world do not make as much money as the one in Clearwater, Florida. And that is mainly why David Miscavige spends most, if not all of his time concentrating on the Clearwater facility and building new facilities and buying up more property and. Because that's where they're making the bulk of their income.

Claire Headley [00:32:05] Yeah, yeah. And sorry not to go too far off into the weeds, but the other, the flip side of this whole Ideal Org program was that these, these, the existing organizations were small and failing and very often were getting evicted and couldn't pay their utilities and everything else. So then the structure that David Miscavige envisioned was international Landlord will buy all the buildings and then they'll pay rent to, to the management landlord office and then we won't have any more evictions and we'll own all the buildings and so forth.

John Dehlin [00:32:39] It's like McDonald's. McDonald's is a real estate company. Yes, first and foremost.

Claire Headley [00:32:45] Yes.

Marc Headley [00:32:45] And that is what science, when this Ideal Org program switched over the way David Miscavige is doing it, is if Buffalo needs a new Ideal organization, then hit up all those folks in Buffalo, get 5 million bucks together and then give us the 5 million, we buy the building and now we rent it to Buffalo.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] Yeah, totally. That is literally McDonald's.

Marc Headley [00:33:10] Yes. So Scientology is a franchise operation at this point.

John Dehlin [00:33:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [00:33:15] And, and, and, and similarly, they're licensing the technology of L. Ron Hubbard to that organization. So not only are they paying a royalty, they're paying a licensing fee, they're paying a, a starter package sort of fee to buy all their new audio, visual systems and all these things. The money is coming to Scientology. But that local Scientology organization, they have no say in anything that happens there. They are the workers that work for David Miscavige.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] Yeah, as I'm just. I hope. Hey, David, I hope you're watching and listening or I don't. I think that's a short sighted business model to have your revenue tied to training. What you want to do is hook the hearts and minds. Well, of the people.

Marc Headley [00:34:04] Yeah, that's what we're going to get to.

John Dehlin [00:34:05] And then you get there and you get their lifelong tithing and their inheritance.

Marc Headley [00:34:09] Well, that is.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] Right.

Marc Headley [00:34:10] It's.

Claire Headley [00:34:10] Yes.

Marc Headley [00:34:10] It's funny that you say that because since the Ideal Org program, they have Scientology when we left in 2005, they have a statistic that they keep, which is called advanced payments. And that is where somebody paid for counseling or somebody paid for training. But you have not yet delivered those products to them. So you have. You're in the red on everything that you haven't delivered that you still owe.

Claire Headley [00:34:38] It's the liability on the balance sheet situation.

Marc Headley [00:34:42] And David Miscavige told us that in 2005, 2000, at 2004, 2005 era, that Scientology had over $1 billion in advance payments. And if they had, tomorrow, every single Scientologist in the world said, I'm not paying you any more money until I get everything that I've paid for delivered to me and do the courses, do the training. It would take 100 years for Scientology to deliver that billion dollars. And that entire time they would be getting no income because that people had already paid for everything. And so he switched. From that point forward, he basically switched to this is not a good business model. We just need to get them to give us their money. We don't need to give. We don't want to have to give them anything.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] To quote Tom Cruise, show me the money.

Claire Headley [00:35:44] Right, exactly. However, Hubbard had specifically said to not do that. Do not fundraise, do not ask.

John Dehlin [00:35:50] Yeah, well, past leaders, wisdom is expendable.

Claire Headley [00:35:54] Right.

Marc Headley [00:35:54] And that. And that is exactly what it's switched over to. Now they have one individual, his name is Bob Duggan. And he had a pharmaceutical company. He sold it. He was actually a very successful engineer, inventor. He had made a chocolate chip recipe that sold to chain. He was. He had many different ventures over the course of his life, but he had amassed billions and billions of dollars. He personally is. Has admitted to giving over $360 million himself to Scientology. One guy. And so when David Miscavige started getting these guys to start, hey, give me 10 million, give me 20 million, give me 50 million, give me another 10 million, what sort of happened is he created an entire network of rich Scientologists that in order to be in this little network, you have to give a $10 million donation.

Marc Headley [00:36:55] And once you do that, you are now in a club with all these other guys that you're only a multimillionaire now. You're in the club with a bunch of billionaires, and now they're going to help you become even more wealthy.

Marc Headley [00:37:11] And so now he's got, let's just say it's 100, 200 guys that are. They're not all billionaires, but they have enough to give Scientology a couple million, maybe 10 million. And the more of those guys he got, then it was sort of like, who cares about the Scientology training and the counseling? And that's. That's basically not even a deal anymore. But meanwhile, the Seaworg members are still making $46 a week. Yeah, the. The people that are in the Scientology organizations, they're not even making $20 a week. And so now you've got this disparity where David Miscavige is hanging out with the millionaires and the billionaires, and he's living like a billionaire, and the Scientology is paying all of his expenses, and he has a salary of a couple hundred thousand.

Marc Headley [00:38:05] The last thing, the last time it was reported, I think he had, in the 90s, he had a salary of $300,000 a year. He is the captain of the sea organization. He's making several hundred thousand dollars a year, which for a major corporation or a major nonprofit or any of these things, it's not really that much money. But when your counterparts are being paid maybe 2,500 a year, if they get paid every week, maybe a little bit more.

Marc Headley [00:38:36] It's kind of like, hey, what kind of game are we playing here? Like, they could increase the sea or pay to $250 a week, and it wouldn't even phase anybody. They basically have a 5,000 man workforce that they're paying peanuts. They're not even paying their members what Somebody would get as a meal per diem payment for a single day. They're not paying that in a week.

Claire Headley [00:39:01] Which, by the way, during the time that I was in Religious Technology center, it was very carefully structured so that David Miscavige was the top paid person. Obviously Shelley was his number two, but she had to be number three on the pay structure. Larry Stuckenbrock was number two because having a Mr. And Mrs. As the number one and number two was not a good look for the IRS. So it was carefully fabricated to not do that

Marc Headley [00:39:31] anyway.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] Interesting.

Marc Headley [00:39:32] So all of these things are sort of coming around and I'm seeing them. So for most of those years I was working at the international headquarters, but I would travel to the organizations if we did a video for them or an event or we had to do the audio visual systems. And over the years they were getting. There was less and less and less and less people in these organizations. And now we have the ideal organization program.

Marc Headley [00:40:01] These places have been built and occupied for months, if not years by the time I'm traveling to them. And they're the emptiest they've ever, ever been. And we're doing event videos, pumping them up and showing them full of people and all these things. And even I, who know there's a bit of movie magic involved, I'm like this, we're way past movie magic now. This is just outright lies and propaganda. Nothing that he's saying is happening is actually happening.

Realizing Scientology Was a Scam

Marc Headley [00:40:34] And that is when I'm sort of like, I'm. I've dedicated 15 years to this. And I'm seeing in real time this is basically a scam. We are scamming people. And I know, and I also am at the other end of the money. So I'm seeing the struggle of the people on the ground and how they're not getting paid. I know I'm not getting paid. I know David Miscavige is living high on the hog. And we have, we've. At the international base, they were wasting millions and millions of dollars on building projects. And oh, this building has to be completely redone. They'll rip everything out and redo it.

Marc Headley [00:41:16] And that's $2 million. And then. And I'm seeing, I'm basically just seeing that this is being run insane. And not only are. Is there. Are there millions of dollars being wasted on nonsense. And David Miscavige is living high on the hog, but the people are struggling in these places. The, the people that are sacrificing are sacrificing everything. And the People running the place are not. Aren't sacrificing a single thing, really. They're living it.

Pressure to Divorce and the Threat of the Hole

Claire Headley [00:41:45] And meanwhile, Mark found out from Shelly Miscavige directly that I was under incredible pressure to divorce Mark and that I was going to be put in the hole because of my refusal to divorce Mark.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Why were they pressuring you to divorce Mark?

Claire Headley [00:42:02] Because David Miscavige had decided on a new personnel policy that in Religious Technology center, you could only be married to someone else also in that organization. So even though we worked on the same property and had both been in the SEA Organization for many years.

John Dehlin [00:42:19] And were married.

Claire Headley [00:42:20] Yes, and married. Exactly. Now he was implementing this person personnel policy knowing full well, okay, he actually get divorced or you're out.

Marc Headley [00:42:31] Yeah. He actually called it sleeping with the enemy. He considered anyone not in his organization, even though they were seared members in Scientology organizations, that they were the enemy of his organization.

Claire Headley [00:42:44] And that's. And that's the paranoia that we're talking about, because he was worried that if I attended a. And saw David Miscavige punch Norman Starkey in the face, that I'm going to go home and tell Mark about that.

John Dehlin [00:42:57] And that he might not be as compelled to be supportive as you might feel, being a part. Being an insider.

Claire Headley [00:43:07] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:43:08] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:43:09] Yeah.

Claire Headley [00:43:09] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:43:10] Anyway, coupled with the fact that I'd already myself been attending meetings where this has happened, it used to be that I think he kept the violence and sort of the bad behavior in the inner circle. And pretty much Starting in the 2000s, 1999 forward, he just let it all hang out. He literally had no.

Marc Headley [00:43:33] He had no filter, and he would lose his temper and physically abuse or punch people or scream and yell or throw shit at us or whatever, to a point where if you were going to a meeting with him, probably a 95% chance someone's getting beat up in this meeting. And that was in the late 2000, like 2004, 2003 period, where it was pretty much you could go to a meeting with him and either get beat up or get assigned to the RPF or get taken off your position. Any of those things were not a sure thing, but it's going to happen to somebody in the meeting.

Claire Headley [00:44:12] Yeah. So it had gotten to the point where Shelly Miscavige told me that her. One of her co workers that was a friend of hers who had escaped. Shelly said she was the smart one. Like, she got out of there and. And. And that was shocking to me. Like, wow. She's telling me that somebody who escaped was the smart one. Clearly, everything was not going well.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, I'm thinking your. Your church is kind of where our church was at the end of Brigham Young's era. Right.

Marc Headley [00:44:50] That sounds about right. It seems like even with the successor and then. And that is actually kind of. It's a kind of weird thing that David Miscavige is almost exactly following L. Ron Hubbard's trajectory. The FBI have been investigating Scientology for many years now. There's lawsuits cropping up everywhere. There's fraud, credit card fraud, wrongdoings. They just had one of their major celebrities arrested for sexual assault, Danny Masterson.

John Dehlin [00:45:24] Right, we'll talk about that.

Marc Headley [00:45:25] And so all these things are sort of happening, and they are. It is at a point where it's about to boil over for David Miscavige. He. He's been avoiding process servers for going on probably six or seven years now, where if there's a lawsuit, they cannot serve him. He literally makes it impossible. And they'll drag out the lawsuit for an extra year or two, arguing that he hasn't even been served yet. So how can this be going forward?

John Dehlin [00:45:54] It's weird. They can't serve the corporation, you know.

Marc Headley [00:45:58] Well, the lawyers can argue endlessly on the semantics of how the service was conducted. And you literally. The guy. Guy has. He has homes in UK, LA, Clearwater, Gilman Hot Springs, all of these different locations. So they. No one can say, oh, he's not there right now, because he's over here right now. And then he's at an event in Florida, and they say, we're going to serve you here. Oh, no, he's back in California now. And. Well, his driver's license has a Florida address. Well, his corporate address is in California. Well, it's just endless on the law fair that they just drag it out

Claire Headley [00:46:32] and then literally just degenerated into cat and mouse games to avoid accountability.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] And that's the thing is, you know, he'll die at some point, probably, but, you know, as long as you have enough money and enough lawyers and enough religious protection, there's nothing to stop Scientology from, in 150 years, becoming a trillion dollar organization.

Marc Headley [00:46:58] Yeah. If there's nobody that says this has got to stop, then it'll just keep going because they. It is like you said, and that is a policy. I don't know that it's all of Scientology, but they have a trust called the International association of Scientologists, the ias.

Marc Headley [00:47:16] And. And I think it might have been Hubbard that dictated they can only spend the interest that They've made on their principal. They can never spend the print the principal. They can only spend interest amounts that have been earned. So they have a very similar 7%, sort of. We're gonna. This is how much our budget is, but that's only for that one organization. I don't think that applies to a lot of the other Scientology organizations. But, okay, so I'm traveling to all these places, I'm seeing all this. I'm back at the property, and this is go. I go into excruciating detail in my book about this whole thing.

Inside Work Life at Golden Era Productions

Marc Headley [00:47:57] But essentially, in the 1980s, we started out with projectors in all these organizations. And L. Ron Hubbard said we should use this exact projector. And we have this many organizations. So they bought 500 of these projectors so that each organization could have two or three different film rooms, and they'd all have this projector in it. Anyway, Fast forward to 2004. I get word that they're cleaning up the AV systems warehouse in Los Angeles, and they're getting rid of a bunch of old stuff. And I say, well, tell me what you're getting rid of, and if I can use any of it or do anything with it, let me know.

Marc Headley [00:48:36] And they said, well, we already threw out the projectors, but we've got some other stuff. I said, wait, wait, what projectors? They said, we had like 20 or 30 of these IKE 16 millimeter projectors. Obviously, we don't use those anymore, so we were just going to throw them away. I said, oh, no, don't throw those away.

Marc Headley [00:48:53] Send those to. Well, they're like, we already put them in a roll off. They might already be gone. I said, get the pallet out of the roll off and ship it up to me. And if they're useful, I may be able to sell them and make some money to again, billion dollar organization. I can't get purchase order approved for computers to send to the organizations that need. I have to build systems for. So.

Claire Headley [00:49:16] And which David Miscavige had ordered Mark to build and was holding like, waiting for his submission. And Mark couldn't get the money approved to. To put everything together to send to David Miscavige.

Marc Headley [00:49:30] So they send me these projectors. They're still in the box from 1980. They've never been open and for 20 years old for right or wrong. At that time, there was a resurgence of collectors and hobbyists that are buying 16 millimeter films and doing little film showings. And these projectors had sound as well. They had a mag stripe sound strip so if you had an old movie that had sound on it, you can actually play it with these special projectors from the 1980s. And I was. I think I may have bought them for a few hundred dollars back in the 80s. I was selling them for two, $3,000 in 2004 anyway, so I ended up doing a whole.

Claire Headley [00:50:20] Because you were able to salvage them from the dumpster?

Marc Headley [00:50:22] Yeah, I had literally taken them from the garbage to then say, hey, I've got a bunch of this old equipment. I'd like to sell it. Yeah, I did a whole proposal. In Scientology, you can't act as a Treasury if you don't actually work in the Treasury Department. So I actually had advisory council and executive council and the financial bank to get approval to be able to do this. I get approval, and I sell 15 to 30 thousand dollars worth of stuff over a period of several months. And then I'm. I now have all the things I need to. To give this proposal to David Miscavige.

Marc Headley [00:51:00] I've purchased all the equipment to be able to does design and sample the system so that he can come and look at them. And I've sent this to him. And then it has to go through several channels of people before it gets to him. It has to go to my executive director and then the executive director of the management organization before it can go to Religious Technology center and get approved by David Miscavige. And David Miscavige has to approve. Within the Scientology organization, he has to personally approve maybe three. Three to 400 things that happen in Scientology when they change the carpet in the mess hall. He has to say, that's the right.

John Dehlin [00:51:39] He's a micromanager.

Marc Headley [00:51:41] The micromanager of the universe and in the Scientology world. So because it's taking days to get to him, he writes a dispatch to the police department of Golden Era Productions and says, hey, I was supposed to get a submission from Mark, and I haven't got it. Maybe you guys could find out what he is doing. Oh, and that's basically like a free for all on me. That's basically a target on me. Like, go get him.

John Dehlin [00:52:12] Okay. This reminds me of one of the conversations we had last night.

Marc Headley [00:52:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] When you talked about potentially judges and attorneys being in the pocket of science and police officers.

Marc Headley [00:52:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Being in the pocket of Scientologists. Is that relevant here to give a little context for his involvement in police?

Claire Headley [00:52:32] No, no, we're talking about the internal police of within the organization.

John Dehlin [00:52:37] Yeah, that's me remembering. One of the things I want to

Claire Headley [00:52:39] make sure but so when David Miscavige writes a. Writes a. A dispatch like that, it's. It's not a. Oh, let's see if he's up to no good. It's a declaration that Mark is up to no good. Tell me what he's up to, because he hasn't given me the submission I asked for.

Marc Headley [00:52:59] He.

Claire Headley [00:52:59] Even though.

Marc Headley [00:53:00] Yeah, it was with somebody on the way there.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] But. But you said. Did you use the word police?

Marc Headley [00:53:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] So is there a term in Scientology for internal.

Marc Headley [00:53:08] The. It's called the. The director of inspection and reports and the division is. The department is called the inspections and reports department.

John Dehlin [00:53:18] Okay.

Marc Headley [00:53:19] And they are. They're basically the security. The security forces in that department.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] Got it?

Marc Headley [00:53:26] They are the internal.

Claire Headley [00:53:27] The. It's the ethics department in Scientology that makes, you know, they're responsible that you're on your job, you're doing what you're supposed to be doing when you're, you know, at all times of the day.

Marc Headley [00:53:37] And if you get in trouble, they're the ones that are supposed to get you out of trouble.

Claire Headley [00:53:42] Yeah.

Marc Headley [00:53:42] And so he basically sends a dispatch to. Directly to that guy, the guy that's in charge of that department, saying, hey, find out what he's up to. And this guy, right or wrong, I had a history with. Because he was also in Los Angeles when I was posted in Los Angeles, and he had the exact same job in Los Angeles of that whole building. And so he. I had been a frequent flyer with him for many years. Over my 15 years, we had a long term relationship of him kind of being up my ass.

Marc Headley [00:54:19] And so he was very happy to oblige. David Miscavige direct order to go find out what I was up to. Anyway, they're. They literally went. They tossed my office, they went through all my files, just whatever we can find to light this guy up. While I'm there working, they're just digging through my stuff and they find a receipt for a lens that I had sold.

Marc Headley [00:54:45] And he goes, what's this? I go, that's a. I sold some old lenses. And he goes, wait a minute, you're selling Org equipment? And I'm like, yeah, I got a whole. I've had a whole thing approved. It's. It's all above boards. I. I'm there. I'm. I've been selling. I've been selling for months. And he's like, it says here you sold seven a 700 lens. And I kind of laughed like, that's nothing. Yeah, you have no clue, dude.

Marc Headley [00:55:12] Anyway, so they Go to town on the over the seven hollow $700 lens. And then they actually confiscated my PayPal card, and I had to give them all my PayPal info. I was selling all this stuff on ebay.

Marc Headley [00:55:27] Another interesting fact about this is there was maybe a handful, maybe 10 or 15 people on that entire property of 800 people that had access to the Internet. And I just happened to be one of them because over the years, I needed it for professional reasons and contact vendors and do research.

Marc Headley [00:55:44] And so the fact that I was on the Internet, which is kind of a taboo thing for most people. And. And I would say out of the 10 or 15 or 20 people on that property that could get on the Internet, about half of them had done things that there's a filter, a Scientology program. So when you go to an anti Scientology site or a site that's not Scientology friendly, a porn site, and they had many, many problems with anyone who had access, that if. When. When they do try to do that, it alerts.

Marc Headley [00:56:23] And so somebody comes and says, hey, what are you doing? And. And. And I had mentioned before, there were many foreign nationals on that property for many years, they would just search terms in another language, and the filter didn't even know what they were searching.

Marc Headley [00:56:36] And then they got wise to that, and they put all of the Hungarian words and the Russian words and all the other languages for those same search terms. But it's also interesting that you cannot look up Scientology within a Scientology facility on the Internet. The word Scientology is blocked in the filter so that you're not able to access any information about Scientology.

Claire Headley [00:57:01] You also can't Google Hubbard, David Miscavige, and if you do, then you.

Marc Headley [00:57:06] It'll hit the filter, and then you'll get. Because I was aware of all these things, I never would ever search any of those terms because I knew one of the admins actually knew three of the admins for the filter. So I knew what not to do when I was on the Internet. But regardless, they really latched on to this idea that this was gonna be the silver bullet that was gonna take me out, that I was selling this equipment. And after a whole bunch of back and forth and accounting and how much did he make? How much is in his account? How much was the equipment?

Marc Headley [00:57:41] They basically said that there was a $250 discrepancy, and that $250 was mainly comprised of the fees that eBay charges you. And they very carefully picked everything apart and said, we saw your proposal, which was approved, but nowhere in there does it say, that there's a 2% fee that has to go to ebay or pay.

Marc Headley [00:58:06] So basically, they lit me up for the ebay or the PayPal fee or whatever the discrepancy was. And I was sort of like, are you kidding me?

Claire Headley [00:58:14] And specifically, there's a Hubbard policy called financial irregularities, where Hubbard says if somebody is found guilty of a financial irregularity, they should join the walking dead or something like that.

Marc Headley [00:58:27] That's exactly what it says.

Claire Headley [00:58:28] Yes. And so because Mark hadn't specified that there was an ebay fee and accounted for that, that was ruled as a financial irregularity.

Marc Headley [00:58:40] Yeah. So that was basically. That was the end of the line for me, because now I'm like, well, this is sort of ridiculous. I. I made $30,000 selling garbage, and you're gonna light me up for 250 bucks in fees? Come on. Now we're. Now we're just. Now we're just being silly. Like, this is ridiculous.

John Dehlin [00:59:02] So I have two questions.

Marc Headley [00:59:03] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] Question number one is, you know, it's their. I was excommunicated, and they. They didn't like my framing of why. Why I was excommunicated based on the evidence. And so they had to come up with their own framing, which was ridiculous, but it spoke to a larger truth for me, which is their club, their rules. They can kick out whoever they want. Totally. So. So why did they feel like they had to? Even if they didn't like you for whatever reason, why did they even feel like they needed to justify why they wanted to get rid of you? Which speaks to a more of a core issue. Why did they want to get rid of you if you were doing great work for them?

Claire Headley [00:59:47] So my answer to that is, it's not that they wanted to get rid of Mark, is that they needed to give an answer back to David Miscavige that was adequate and answered the question of what has Mark been up to? What is Mark guilty of that he hasn't completed this submission? So it was.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] So if dear leader has paranoia.

Claire Headley [01:00:05] Yes, exactly.

Marc Headley [01:00:07] It doesn't matter what the facts are.

Claire Headley [01:00:09] Yeah. The answer to David Miscavige's letter saying, what is Mark up to? What is he guilty of? Cannot be. Oh, sir, no, he did your submission, and it's just with one of the other people. That is not an acceptable answer. The answer has to be, oh, we found it, and here it is. A big, juicy financial irregularity. Sir, you were right.

John Dehlin [01:00:30] Oh, yeah, That's. That's dark. Yeah. Anyway, people are giving their lives to you.

Marc Headley [01:00:35] I know. And also that's what, that's sort of my thing. I'm like, you know, 250 bucks, come on, this is ridiculous.

John Dehlin [01:00:45] Well, when you made more revenue from what you grabbed out of the dumpster.

Marc Headley [01:00:49] So that's, and that's sort of my argument. I'm like, so let me get this straight. I give you 30k and 250 of that went, went to making that 30k and I took garbage and made that. And now that's the. And they basically said I embezzled $250.

Claire Headley [01:01:08] And so, and, but to add to that too, first of all, financial irregularities is an offense for which you can be assigned to the rehabilitation project force. Second of all, Mark hadn't been paid and went to try and collect his pay to say, okay, there's a $250 fee I didn't account for from EB here, let me give it to you. And what did they say to you to that?

Marc Headley [01:01:31] They said, now that it's done, you did it, it's done. Join the walking dead. And that's literally what they told me. You're joining the walking dead. That 250 bucks. And, and in the course of trying to get my back pay that I hadn't collected, I actually went to L. Ron Hubbard's granddaughter who worked at the property. Her name was Roanne, and we were very good friends. And I went to Roanne and I said, hey Roanne, there's a giant frickin mess cluster that's happened. I basically got to come up with 250 bucks like right now. And I couldn't get my back pay. But I was wondering if you could spot me, you know, 250 bucks, or maybe it was 200 bucks or whatever it was.

Marc Headley [01:02:14] And, and she wrote me a check on the spot. She was L. Ron Hubbard's granddaughter. So she had a couple of bucks. And, and so, and she was, she was just a few years younger than I was and we had been friends through the entire 15 years that I was at the property. And, and I went back to the ethics department and I said, here, I've got the money. And they said, no, it's done.

Marc Headley [01:02:41] And I was like, okay. And so then I thought, well, I've got 250 bucks. I did end up getting to the treasury guys, I went in there, they said, what do you need? I'm like, I can't wait till Friday. You can only get paid on one. You can only go get your pay on a certain day of the week. And I said, listen, there's a Whole mess happening. I need all my back pay right now.

Marc Headley [01:03:01] So I was able to get a couple hundred bucks from them. I had the 250 bucks from Roanne, and they were like, we don't want your money. It's done. The ship has sailed. We're writing up a whole report to David Miscavige on all the nonsense you've been up to. My division head.

Marc Headley [01:03:17] I was the head of the department. My division head had gotten my submission back from the person that it was with. They took my name off the submission. They put her name on it. They wrote a whole preamble. Mark's a criminal. He stole $250. He's going to the RPF. He's done for. So I went to my office and I started getting all my stuff ready.

John Dehlin [01:03:42] To what?

Marc Headley [01:03:43] To get the hell out of there.

John Dehlin [01:03:44] Okay. And what, for those who didn't listen to yesterday or to the extent that we didn't describe it, describe in a minute what your life would have been like in the rpf.

The Rehabilitation Project Force as Punishment

Marc Headley [01:03:56] If I went to the rpf, I would basically be working in Los Angeles or in Clearwater in a completely separate location from Claire. I would most likely never return to the property ever again for the rest of my sea or career. If I did graduate the rehabilitation project force, which includes at least five hours of interrogations a day, and then the rest of that, you know, whatever it is, 16 hour day is spent doing hard manual labor, scrubbing dumpsters with toothbrushes or cleaning dishes in the galley or swabbing the decks or whatever the worst possible thing is that they have to

John Dehlin [01:04:35] do horrific manual labor.

Marc Headley [01:04:37] Yeah. For up to 10 years.

Claire Headley [01:04:40] Yeah. And forbidden from even originating communication to anyone outside of that program. So during the entire time he would be on that program, setting aside that he would never be working where I was again, he would also just be forbidden from having any communication with me

Marc Headley [01:04:58] until I was done with the program, had graduated the program, and then was reposted in a new organization if I made it that long. So essentially, the whole 15 years, it's gone. I don't have a wife. I don't have a family. I'm now going to be in this. Basically, it's like a prison. It's a. It's a Temu prison camp. It's Scientology's version of prison.

Marc Headley [01:05:23] And so. So I'm basically like, okay, I've got 500 bucks that I got. I've got a check. I gotta get to a bank to cash this. Got about 200 bucks in cash here. I'VE got a motorcycle that I haven't been riding because I haven't been allowed to ride a motorcycle because I was an ethics particle, they call it.

Marc Headley [01:05:51] But my house was on the outside of the property, right outside the fence of the property. So they have ultra barrier razor wire around the entire perimeter of the property. They have ground microphones in the ground that can detect anything bigger than a rabbit or a fox. So if you. If you jump over the fence, they have fence shakers that have a little mercury tube that when you shake the fence.

John Dehlin [01:06:15] And did you help install.

Marc Headley [01:06:17] I installed microphones, fence shakers. I never installed any ultra barrier, but I have been sliced up by it when climbing up and over the fence while we install the other things you mentioned.

John Dehlin [01:06:27] This all was put to keep people in.

Marc Headley [01:06:29] Yeah, the ultra barrier in the beginning was on the inside.

John Dehlin [01:06:33] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:06:33] Which raised a few eyebrows here and there when people took pictures of that. So they added it to the outside as well.

Claire Headley [01:06:42] Yeah, we. We talked about that in our deposition, and then the lawyer's response was, oh, well, we're preventing people from stealing equipment. And we're like, oh, what, because somebody's going to toss hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment over a fence?

Marc Headley [01:06:57] Yeah. Anyway, so. So getting out of the property is the biggest barrier, because you can't freely come and go without checking with security. They have gates that have to be opened by them. They have to unlock the gate, and they have to close the gate. And so when you go out any of the roads that have vehicle entrances, you pull up to the gate and they say, where are you going? And if they don't like where you're going, you ain't going.

Claire Headley [01:07:25] And. And very often, if someone's in trouble or under interrogation or anything else, they will be restricted to the property. So they're not allowed to go home even for the few hours of sleep. They have to stay at the property.

John Dehlin [01:07:39] And if you said to the security guards, I, I'm leaving. I'm leaving Scientology.

Marc Headley [01:07:44] No, you're not.

Claire Headley [01:07:45] That people have done that. I mean, it's gotten so bad that at one point, there was a guy by the name of Fred who was one of the few people that had a car, and he was literally ramming the security gate to try and get. Get out, and they would not let him go. If somebody. There's been many times somebody would just walk down the highway, and security will pull up in a vehicle and just toss the person in the back of the van.

John Dehlin [01:08:09] Yeah, that's should be. That's illegal. It's got to be illegal.

Marc Headley [01:08:12] 100.

Claire Headley [01:08:12] Absolutely.

Marc Headley [01:08:13] There's one girl who escaped, and when they. When they pulled up to her and they threw her back in the vehicle, I think she either broke her wrist or her ankle or she got injured when they threw her back into the vehicle to bring her back. And there's. In my book, there's. When you. When you escape from Scientology, it is called a blow.

Marc Headley [01:08:34] And. And blowing means that you have. You have. You have an unauthorized departure. So even if you're on a course in Scientology and you stop doing the course, it's considered a blown student. So any authorized departure from anything in Scientology is called a blow. And people that have blown are considered escaped or they need to be recovered and got back onto the thing. So in Scientology, at the international headquarters, whenever somebody escapes, they call a blow drill. And there's about 20 to 30 people that are activated. And those people have a specific task to recover someone who's blown, whether it's going to the bus stations, whether it's calling the taxi companies, going to the nearby hotels, contacting their relatives, staking out their relatives houses.

Claire Headley [01:09:29] Yes.

Marc Headley [01:09:29] And if they come there. So if you escape from the international headquarters and you have three siblings that live in Los Angeles, there will be an int. Base Sea Org member parked outside of all three of those locations waiting in case you may show up there to get them to help you to wherever you're trying to get to. So I know all of this because I've been there for 15 years, and I've seen hundreds and hundreds of blow drills where you know, somebody's escaped. They say at the muster, everyone accounted for except for Jimmy, we don't know where he's at. And then you don't see Jimmy for a week. And then the next thing you know, Jimmy's washing dishes a week later in the galley, and he has been recovered and brought back. He's no longer the division head of the film department. He's a dishwasher for the next eight years.

Planning and Executing an Escape

Claire Headley [01:10:16] Yeah, it bears mentioning that any member of the SEA Organization is required to complete a very extensive life history. So they have all the information on every member of your family where they live, and every friend you've ever had where they live. So they have carefully collected all that information. So if you ever do try to escape, they have a very good chance of knowing exactly one of the people that you would be heading to.

Marc Headley [01:10:43] And one of the craziest things that never made sense to me is in the life history form, you have to list your mother's maiden name. Like, who needs that? You also have to list any pets that you had over the years. You have to, like, random facts that make no sense to a Sea Org member, especially a child that's joining the Sea Organization. Then when you go to recover your bank account and they ask you what's your mother's maiden name and what's the name of your first pet? All those security questions on bank websites, those are in the Sea Org member life history. So when somebody escapes, they just long.

Marc Headley [01:11:24] If you do have a savings account or a checking account that in many years, no Sea Org members didn't have that. And then some Sea Org member was at a Walmart or something and didn't have the right amount of money. And because they couldn't pay, because they didn't have even a bank card that they could put in, it was like, this is getting weird. We got to at least get these guys bank cards so they're not living in the stone ages. So I knew that they could track my bank. I knew that they could track the airlines. They have a travel agent in the Sea Organization that has access to every single major airline, and he can actually purchase and print airline tickets and.

Marc Headley [01:12:10] And. And see if the plane is full. He can't see what the names are, but he can see the first initial and the last few letters of the last name. So if they're trying to find out where Mark Headley's flying, they can literally log into United is either going to Kansas City or is going to Denver. That's where he has family. And they can just go through the flights and see if I'm on any of those flights. And they can bump me if they want to. They can say, oh, we're his agent. We're gonna move his flight to a different flight.

John Dehlin [01:12:44] That's wild.

Claire Headley [01:12:45] And they've done that before.

Marc Headley [01:12:47] We've witnessed it in real time when someone was. We were helping somebody escape, and their flight was delayed unexplicably. The flight left, but they got bumped off of it. And their Sea Org mother showed up in an airport where she didn't work in the. The later in that day to intercept

Claire Headley [01:13:08] him, to stop him from stopping.

Marc Headley [01:13:10] And this was in the late 2000s, so we know they're still able to do it somewhat.

John Dehlin [01:13:15] Anyway, we're going to say this information together helps them figure out people's passwords to break into their computer systems.

Marc Headley [01:13:22] Oh, 100%. Any. Any of those things, Whether it's their bank account or their credit card or whatever they even have. They Even had for many years. They had an issue of how to find out where. They would say, here are all the frequent flyer numbers for all these airlines. You just call, say you lost your card and you want to make sure you are accredited for your last booking. What's the last flight I booked? I want to make sure it shows up. And then you go up, he's going to Denver. He's on the 3:30 flight today. They have a whole system for this. It's documented.

John Dehlin [01:14:00] Dang.

Claire Headley [01:14:01] Anyway, they've also used that same information to obtain phone records. They've done it to us a number of times. We finally had to. We explored going into the witness protection to avoid this, but then we would have lost everything we built up in, in just three years. But whatever, it's. It's crazy.

Marc Headley [01:14:22] Anyway, so I know my house, the house that we live in because she was in Religious Technology Center. There is a golf course that they own that is adjacent to the international headquarters. And along the road that goes along the golf course, there was maybe 10 or 15 different houses. And over the years, Scientology purchased. Anytime somebody moved out of one of these houses that was not. Had nothing to do with Scientology, they were just by the house. And so we lived in one of those houses that was maybe a few hundred yards outside of the property.

Claire Headley [01:14:57] We. And we, we had a room in that house, just to be clear, like there were other staff that lived in the house. We didn't have a house. We had a room.

Marc Headley [01:15:06] I want to say it was a three bedroom and there was six people living, living there. So we hadn't shared a bedroom. There was another couple in another bedroom and there was two girls that lived in one of the other bedrooms. And all of those people were either in Religious Technology center or they. There was a couple where one of them was and the other one wasn't. So I'm.

Claire Headley [01:15:26] I'm still surprised that they actually let you go home that well.

Marc Headley [01:15:29] And that was actually the biggest surprise to me too is usually I had been restricted to the property over the 15 years, maybe two or three years I had been restricted to the property. So there might have been a six month period where I couldn't go home and I just slept under my desk or found a closet somewhere and rolled up a sweater and slept on that. But. So this was the most trouble I think I'd ever been in. And, and I think like around one or two in the morning I'm like, I gotta go and sleep and be sessionable so I can get interrogated tomorrow. I'M going and they let me go. And so. But I don't think they realized that I did have a motorcycle under a tarp in the garage of that house, charged and gassed and ready to go.

Claire Headley [01:16:16] Hadn't you specifically moved the motorcycle there so that they couldn't take it from you?

Marc Headley [01:16:21] I did. They had locked up the motorcycle many times when I was. When it was on the property and I would use it to drive around the. The property is 500 acres, so if you're an executive that has to travel to multiple. If you don't have a motorcycle, you're spending four hours a day just walking around.

Claire Headley [01:16:38] Yeah. So we, we both had motorcycles for to. Well, yeah, if you. If it's going to take you 30 minutes to get to a meeting with David Miscavige, that's not going to fly.

Marc Headley [01:16:47] Yeah, you need to be there within a minute or two because he's going to be waiting and you don't want to keep him waiting. That's not going to be a good meeting for you. If you're the last person to show up to one of those meetings. You're the one getting the beating that meeting.

Marc Headley [01:17:00] Anyway, so the motorcycle was parked there. I left around. I want to say it was maybe 1 o', clock, 2 o'. Clock. I was sort of hanging out waiting for them to tell me what was going to happen. And then somebody came to me and said, the submission's now gone up. Oh, they needed me to hang around in case there were questions on this submission that was now being submitted by somebody else and they'd taken my name off it and basically said, he's a shit stain. He's not even doing anything. Meanwhile, I'm hanging out. So if they have any questions on the submission, I can answer them for them.

John Dehlin [01:17:33] Waiting for your own execution because they

Marc Headley [01:17:35] have no idea what this thing is about.

Claire Headley [01:17:38] And also during that time. So we had Next. The organization had Nextel phone radios, so they own them. We didn't, but I had one and Mark had one.

Marc Headley [01:17:49] But the one I had was given to me as a present. David Miscavige for my birthday.

Claire Headley [01:17:55] Yes, that's right. So he was an exception where he owned his. The point being that during that time Mark radios me and he doesn't tell me what's going on, but he just asks, are you going to come home? And I said, I'm going to try. I don't think so, but I'll at least try and come home to get a shower. I'll let you know. So he didn't tell me anything that was going on. I didn't know what was going on. But I knew that he had asked me to come home. I didn't make it home, but either

Marc Headley [01:18:23] way, and I didn't do that a lot because I knew she's either coming home or she's not coming home. If I make a request, it's not going to happen. Weigh in on the facts of what happens. So I go home before I go home. I must say this because it's one of the shoulda woulda, coulda's I had because I had set up the entire computer network for the international base. I was one of the few people who knew how to do fiber and cat 5 and do terminations and network switches and all that, starting from when they had 10 base T switches for all you geeks out there.

Marc Headley [01:18:57] And. And so I had basically until I networked the entire property. You have a 500 acre property with 3040 buildings spread out all over those acres. They used sneaker net up until I networked it. They used sneak, which is I've got a file. I'm going to walk a half an hour across the property and give it to this guy on a USB or a floppy disk or even the. What are they called, compact flashcards. Whatever it was, zip drives over the years there was a lot of people walking around and I basically said, you guys are wasting all the time in the world. You could just move the folder to his office in one click.

Marc Headley [01:19:40] And so I had access to most of the computer systems on the entire property as an administrator, including David Miscavige's personal photo server, which I went and got the biggest USB stick I could and filled it up with pictures of him and Tom Cruise at David, David Beckham Games for Real Madrid and them snowmobiling and sailing and scuba diving. And I just filled that thing until I couldn't take one more file.

Marc Headley [01:20:09] I took that, put that in my pocket. I went to the house that we lived in. I checked on the bike, it was ready to go, it was gassed up, it had charge. And I basically got all my stuff together and I waited for Claire to see if she would come home. And I wanted to stay awake as long as I could so that I could have a conversation with her and debated whether or not I would say I'm out, I'm doing it and if you want to come, you got to come.

Marc Headley [01:20:45] She never came home. I fell asleep waiting for her. And normally I would have to be at the 8:30 muster in the morning. So I'd have to get up 7:30ish, get ready, go maybe have a coffee or some breakfast or whatever, and then go to muster. I got a bang on the door at 9 o'.

John Dehlin [01:21:05] Clock.

Marc Headley [01:21:05] I overslept. I missed muster. And it's a security guard banging on the door. And he goes, hey, where are you? And I said, oh, I was. I'm. I'm still dressed from the night before. I haven't even changed. And I go like, oh, I overslept. I'm supposed to blow today. I'm supposed to be escaping right now. I missed my window anyway.

John Dehlin [01:21:31] So creepy. They had a security guard banging on your door?

Marc Headley [01:21:33] Yes.

Claire Headley [01:21:35] Not only that, we had a security. There were security cameras all down that road. So there was security cameras on top of our house that fed into the main security booth feed.

Marc Headley [01:21:45] Yeah, they could. That was the reason why I kind of rationalized why they let me go home is because they could see me walk all the way down. And I did notice that there was a car parked outside. The house. Next to us was also a Scientology owned house. And there was a gentleman that lived in that house who was always in trouble. He was in trouble. Six out of seven days of the week he was in trouble. His name was Rick Cruzan.

Claire Headley [01:22:12] And he also had a history of escaping blows of unauthorized departures. And I think he'd successfully escaped and then been brought back five or six times.

Marc Headley [01:22:22] At least five times where he has escaped and he'd been brought back. He went to the RPF two or three times. He was on the radar of the security force, and their car was there when I went home that night, outside of his house, which was kind of weird. Anyway, so then the security guard says, hey, you got to come in. I said I was. I thought I was supposed to be. In order to get interrogated properly. You're supposed to have slept so they can get the most juice out of you as possible.

Claire Headley [01:22:55] To be on the. For an interrogation on the E meter, you have to have had adequate food and sleep.

Marc Headley [01:23:01] Yeah. Anyway, he said, nobody cares about that. You're supposed to come in. So I said, okay, no problem. And I had known this guy. This is actually the. He's kind of the. The tech support for security that installs the cameras and the fence shakers. And so I'd worked with him for many years. So I say, no problem, Karsten, Was it Carsten, the tall German guy? Carson. No problem, Carsten. I'll be. I'm gonna. I got a shower, shave, and then I'll be right in. And so he leaves. So I go, okay, well, he's gone. I better get my together Left that thumb drive on the ironing board with all those photos in it. So those photos never left their property. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. They probably could have complained.

John Dehlin [01:23:50] I might.

Marc Headley [01:23:50] Might not. Should have had access and maybe should not have taken those. So maybe a blessing in disguise. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:56] I could have gotten sued.

Marc Headley [01:23:57] Yeah. Anyway, so didn't end up getting those. And basically had a bag with some clothes on it and it was like a really old shitty suitcase. And I just bungeed it to the back of the motorcycle and I was like, okay, I'm doing it. I'm. This is it. I gotta go turn my phone off. That's done. Take the battery out. I know they can track a phone. I know they can see where the GPS is of it. So got to get that out of there. And this is like Breaking Bad stuff, man.

John Dehlin [01:24:30] It literally get rid of the burner phone. Like, literally.

Marc Headley [01:24:34] I knew.

John Dehlin [01:24:35] It's like Gustavo Fring's got the whole neighborhood.

Marc Headley [01:24:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:38] You know, cameraed up.

Marc Headley [01:24:40] And my plan was basically, I've got to get into town. I gotta cash. I gotta get to a Wells Fargo and cash this check from L. Ron Hubbard's granddaughter so I can get some cash and I'll figure it out from there. I'm thinking I'm gonna call my dad, who lives in Kansas City.

Claire Headley [01:24:59] And it bears mentioning that Mark's dad, who we've mentioned was never in Scientology for all these years, had maintained a toll free number so that if Mark or his sister or I ever needed to call him, we could do that.

Marc Headley [01:25:16] That's for free.

John Dehlin [01:25:16] Awesome. That's freaking awesome.

Marc Headley [01:25:18] Yeah. And I never really thought.

John Dehlin [01:25:20] Wild.

Marc Headley [01:25:21] I never really thought anything of it, but he wasn't in Scientology and he. He knew what was up, but he was playing along to get along because he knew if he caused any problems or said anything sp, we're never going to talk to him ever again. So he played the game my entire life with Scientology. And he was the one who was like, how's it going? And wish you'd write more, I wish you'd visit more. But the normal stuff never really went too far.

John Dehlin [01:25:51] So that's a great lesson.

Marc Headley [01:25:53] Yeah.

Claire Headley [01:25:53] That toll free line is some of the inspiration for the crisis line that Michael J. Render Aftermath foundation now maintains.

John Dehlin [01:26:00] Yeah. Makes sense.

Marc Headley [01:26:02] So I've got a plan. I'm getting on the bike. I'm going to drive from the property into the town of San Jacinto which is just kind of three or four miles down the road. And that's where I'm going to go. I'm going to get to that Wells Fargo. And at the Wells Fargo, there's a payphone, and I'm going to call my dad.

Marc Headley [01:26:22] So I get the. I open the garage. It's a. I want to say it's an old timey garage, so I actually have to manually open this garage. I'd pull my bike out. I've got my bag bungee corded to the back of it. I close the garage and I put. I have a helmet. My bike is street legal, it's got a license plate, it's good to go.

Marc Headley [01:26:47] I pull out of the driveway and I turn onto the road, and the security truck is parked there because they're watching the other guy next door to me. He's hasn't gotten up yet. He was up all night mixing or doing whatever he did, and they're waiting for him to get up before they leave. And so the second I pull onto the road, I've got a suitcase on the back of my motorcycle. They know my bike, they know my helmet, they know I live there, and they know I ain't showed up yet. And in retrospect, they could have been waiting for me. I never really thought about that.

Marc Headley [01:27:26] They could have just been waiting for me to come in and not even waiting for the other guy. I had assumed until this exact second they were waiting for him. They could have just been waiting for me.

Claire Headley [01:27:35] That's a good point, anyway, because they probably were just like, keep an eye.

Marc Headley [01:27:40] Keep an eye.

John Dehlin [01:27:40] Yeah, or both.

Claire Headley [01:27:42] Or both. Exactly.

Marc Headley [01:27:44] Anyway, I. Soon as I pull onto the road, they're following me. The car's already been running. They just put it into gear and were following me. And so I'm. I'm basically like, wow, 10 seconds in and it's already a chase. So I drove down the highway. It's Highway 79, that's right up. That runs through the middle of the Scientology property, and then that leads into the street. That goes all the way. It's the main drag all the way down into San Jacinto. And I take that road, goes all the way to the. To the Wells Fargo. So all I have to do is drive down the highway, get on that road, and drive the whole way.

Marc Headley [01:28:23] I see them behind me, and I'm just like, whatever, what are they gonna do? I'm on a motorcycle, they're in a car until I stop. There's nothing they can do. I found out that wasn't the case. About a few hundred roads. Once we got onto that main drag, they. I can see them. They pull right up next to me and they're like, you gotta. You gotta come back. You. You can't do this. And they're motioning to me and the road, there's kind of like a little shoulder there and there's farms. It's really farmlands. There's a giant dairy cow. Dairy. Milk. Milk farm there. And I'm driving, and they basically are driving next to me and they just sort of move until I'm now in the shoulder and there's no more road left and I crash.

Marc Headley [01:29:08] So they just run me basically slowly off the road. And I may be going 25, 30 miles an hour. It's a. It's a dual sport 200cc motorbike. It's got no balls. It's going max speed, 60 miles an hour on a good day. So I get. I crash my suitcases in the road. The bike is damaged there. The handle, the. I want to say the clutch, the clutch levers broken off.

Marc Headley [01:29:41] And the security guard, his name is Danny Dunnigan, he jumps out of the security suv. It's like a black Nissan Pathfinder. He jumps out of that and he takes the key out of the motorcycle. So now I'm. That's it. It's. It's done. And I'm like, give me the key. He's like, no, you got to come back. I'm like, dude, I'm never coming back. Give me the key.

Marc Headley [01:30:06] I'm. I'm out. I'm done. And he's like, you can't leave. You're coming with us. We're going to get back in the car. We're taking the key. And right as that conversation is taking place, they have a police scanner in the security vehicle and they hear there's been an incident on the side of the road. And somebody's the dis. They can hear dispatch saying there's units on the way.

Marc Headley [01:30:28] Somebody call. Somebody driving by called 911 and said there's a car that just drove a motorcycle off the road and they're fighting in the middle of the road. And so thank goodness for that.

Claire Headley [01:30:39] Thank goodness for that, seriously.

Marc Headley [01:30:42] Anyway, good. As soon as that call comes out, one of the other security guards or Danny or. I don't remember exactly how it went down, and I'm. I've just crashed on a motorcycle and I'm worried about getting my key back. And as soon as that call went out, he took the key Threw it to me, got back in the suv and they hightailed it out of there. They pulled a UE.

John Dehlin [01:31:03] Boom.

Marc Headley [01:31:04] And I'd say 30 seconds after they were out of view, here comes a cruiser, and I'm getting the bike going. I'm getting everything. My bungee and the suitcase back on, getting everything set up. And I'm like, oh, I have no clutch. So I'm trying to bump start a motorcycle on the side of a highway road. And the cop just pulls right up behind me. He pulls the U turn. He pulls up and he says, what's going on? And I say, oh, I'm just going into town. Just my bike's having a little bit of problems. He goes, we got a call. There was an altercation here on the road. And where are those guys?

Claire Headley [01:31:43] Yeah. You know, it's funny, it bears mentioning, because it's relevant in both of our escapes, that we never would have considered calling 911 and asking for help because it was so forbidden and ingrained to not do that because it would be considered an attack on Scientology in retrospect.

Marc Headley [01:32:00] Well, yeah. And even at this point, I'm trying to protect them.

John Dehlin [01:32:05] Yeah.

The Motorcycle Escape from the Base

Marc Headley [01:32:06] I'm playing it cool. Like, I don't want to get. Because I know if I say I'm trying to escape, then that the ship has sailed. I've now I'm basically a full blown enemy. I'm not just trying to escape. I'm now getting law enforcement involved and making a giant mess. So I'm like, oh, I'm just trying to get to the place. He goes, okay, well, let me grab your license. And I give him my license, and he sees the addresses. Golden. Golden Air Productions. And the local law enforcement knows what's up. People have been escaping this place for 15 years.

John Dehlin [01:32:37] Wow.

Marc Headley [01:32:38] That I know of.

John Dehlin [01:32:39] Wow.

Marc Headley [01:32:39] So they know what's up. They know what the. They know what time it is.

John Dehlin [01:32:43] Wow.

Marc Headley [01:32:44] So he looks at that, and he sees that I'm from Golden Era. And right while he's kind of going like, hey, what's going on? Somebody pulls up in a car. It's the public relations officer for Golden Era Productions. The interface between the Sea Org base there and the police and the mayor and the town council and all that stuff. So they all know who she is, and they know she's from the property. So now he sees her and she says, what's wrong with Mark?

Marc Headley [01:33:15] And the cop looks at her clocks that she's from Golden Era and says, nothing, ma'. Am. Just we're doing a routine police Stop. And she goes, oh. He goes, oh, you're fine. Move along. You're good. And then he looks back at me, goes, where are you trying to get to? I said, I'm trying to get to the. Just into town. I got to get to U Haul or Wells Fargo something. My bike's broken now, so I can't get. I'm. It's no longer a viable escape option because the. It's flooded, the carb is messed up or whatever. In the accident, I don't have a clutch cable and a carburetor.

Marc Headley [01:33:51] And so he's like, you think you could get it there? And I said, I'm. I can try. I'm going to try to bump started or something. He goes, we'll get you there. And I said, okay. He goes, you try to get it started. I'm going to get another unit here and we're going to escort you to where you're trying to get to.

Marc Headley [01:34:07] And I'm literally like. I'm basically like, these guys are going to help me. This is the only way I'm gonna get out. I'm sorry, I haven't. I haven't really talked about this in a long time. Anyway, another cop comes within a few minutes. I bump start the bike, and one car is in front of me and one car is behind me. Rivers, I want to say Riverside Sheriff's Department. So not San Jacinto, not Hemet, but the county sheriffs are the ones basically escorting me.

Marc Headley [01:34:45] And. And while they're escorting me, I can only go like 10 miles an hour maximum. The. The bike is, like, in first gear. I'm basically idling in first gear to. If I give it any gas, it just dies.

John Dehlin [01:35:00] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:35:01] So I'm driving and. Sorry, I apologize. I'm driving and I can see them motioning to each other, the cops. And there's a vehicle that's following us, and it's Muriel, the public relations person. And so the. The back cop pulls her over while the front cop keeps escorting me, right? And then I see this and I'm like, oh, my God, they're not even gonna.

Marc Headley [01:35:32] They're not even going to let me go with the police. They're trying to follow me and the police to where we're going. And so then they pull over another car, and it's the legal affairs director who works under Muriel in the public relations department, and they pull him over.

Marc Headley [01:35:51] And so then finally the rear cop rejoins us and we go all the. Sorry. We go all the way to. We. I think we ended up going to U Haul because the bike is dead to me, basically, and I've got to get it into a vehicle. So I go to U Haul, and while we're in the U Haul, I call my dad from the U Haul because I don't have money to rent a U Haul. I've got a few hundred dollars maybe, and a check that I need to still cash.

Marc Headley [01:36:24] And so I call my dad, and I use the 1-800-number that I'd always remembered for all the years what it. What the number was. Because he would always say, if you ever need to call me, it don't cost anything. You just dial this number. It goes right to me. And I go, okay. So I go. And I go, hey, can I make a phone call? And they're like, okay, yeah, sure. I use the U Haul. While they're trying to figure out if I can rent a vehicle to go from there to Kansas City. I'm thinking I'm gonna put my bike in a U Haul and drive it all the way to Kansas City.

Marc Headley [01:36:55] And I'm talking to my dad, and I said, hey, Dad, I just left. And he's like, I've been waiting 15 years for this phone call. And this whole time, I was worried that he was gonna let me go to where he was.

Marc Headley [01:37:12] It wasn't even. It wasn't even an idea that it would be a sure thing. I was, like, hoping that he would let me come to where he was. And he was like, 100. Absolutely, you can come to where I am.

Marc Headley [01:37:27] And I said, well, you know, Stephanie, my sister, and possibly Claire are going to be calling you to see if I'm coming to where you are. He goes, don't worry about any of that. As far as I know, I haven't spoken to you. And so I go, okay.

Claire Headley [01:37:43] And yet Scientology claims members of the Sea Organization can leave at any time, and they're free to do so.

Marc Headley [01:37:50] Yes.

Claire Headley [01:37:51] Anyway.

Marc Headley [01:37:52] Anyway, so he basically tells me driving a U Haul with a motorcycle on the back of it is the. Maybe one of my worst ideas besides joining the Sea Org, and. And that I should. They. He says, we know somebody in Los Angeles that you can park the bike with, and then we will book a ticket for you to fly to Kansas City from Los Angeles International Airport.

Marc Headley [01:38:18] And she lives out near the airport. So instead of now driving all the way to Kansas City on a motorcycle, I'm now just gonna move the motorcycle to la, dump it at their friend's house, and then she's gonna take me to the airport and I. That's my new escape plan.

Marc Headley [01:38:35] So we. We sort all that out on the phone, and then I tell the U Haul guy, guess what? I'm not going to Kansas City. I just need to go to LA. So, two hours. I need this truck. He's like, oh, that's $20, or, you know, whatever the fee is for just a few hours. And so I'm like, okay, cool. And I look at the cops and I'm like, okay, I'm all set. They're like, no, we're gonna wait till the bike and you are in the truck on the highway before we leave you. He's like, they're like, two people have already tried to intercept you after you guys had the fight on the highway.

Marc Headley [01:39:10] We're not leaving until you're. We know there's no way they can get you again. And I'm like, okay. So they literally are just hanging out with me while I get the keys, and the guy shows me the truck and I put the bike in the back, and I. They. They lend me some straps or something to lock the bike down, and I get in the U Haul. I'm like, thank you, guys. I appreciate it. I'm sorry to cause any trouble.

Marc Headley [01:39:37] And I head over to the Wells Fargo. I go do the whole thing with the check. I cash the check. Thanks, Roanne. And I go to their friend's house in Los Angeles. So I'm on the road for two. Two hours, two and a half hours, and literally just checking my mirrors every second of every minute to make sure no one's following me.

Marc Headley [01:40:05] And I meet up with this woman who lives maybe 45 minutes from the airport that. That my dad's wife knows, who used to be a high school friend. Dump the bike, get. Return the U Haul. She takes me to the airport. And when I walk into the airport, they have. Scientology has a system where the international headquarters and the Los Angeles facilities send packages of mail through the airlines. They don't send it through the postal system.

John Dehlin [01:40:36] The Mormon Church does that for missionaries. It's called the pouch system.

Marc Headley [01:40:40] They call it the mail pack. They say, we got to send this on the mail pack, and it goes to any organization anywhere goes on the mail pack, mainly between Los Angeles and Clearwater, because those are the two major hubs. But as I'm walking.

Claire Headley [01:40:55] Okay, sorry, sorry. I. I just have to ask this question. So do the missionaries do. Do they do the pouch for security reasons so that it can't be infiltrated, or. Why is. Why is that? I'm just curious.

John Dehlin [01:41:07] I Don't know. And I haven't thought about that in. Since my mission, which was, like, 35 years ago.

Claire Headley [01:41:12] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:41:12] Because I just know they had their own weird mail system called the Pouch.

Marc Headley [01:41:17] Yeah. In Scientology, it's called the Mail Pack, and it's counter to counter. So there's no vias, there's no sorting center. There's no this.

Claire Headley [01:41:26] So it can't be copied and stolen as they. As Scientology has done to government. Government documents. You know? Anyway. Sorry. That was. That was a.

John Dehlin [01:41:35] And so they can monitor everything coming and going.

Marc Headley [01:41:38] Yes, everything.

Claire Headley [01:41:39] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:41:40] And he said. So as I arrive to the airport, the. The Mail Pack van. The Sea Org Mail Pack van is right there, and the Mail Pack Sea Org member is walking in the terminal right with. I'm there.

Claire Headley [01:41:56] Like. Like.

Marc Headley [01:41:58] And they don't know.

John Dehlin [01:41:59] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:41:59] They don't know me from Adam. So, anyway, I. I can't get on the flight. The flight's canceled. There's a major snowstorm in Kansas City, so I can't fly. They tell me, you got to go tomorrow. And so now I'm. Now I'm kind of like, oh, now this is where they're gonna. This is how they're gonna get me. And I don't. And I'm even half thinking, did they mess with the flight? Is that why my flight. I can't get a. I'm very, very past him.

Claire Headley [01:42:31] Nope.

Marc Headley [01:42:32] Anyway, so I end up having to call my dad and saying, hey, evidently there's a storm where you're at. He's like, yep, it's one of the biggest storms we've had. Whatever. Look up January 2025, 2005. There was a storm.

Marc Headley [01:42:50] Excuse me. Anyway, so I end up having to stay at the hotel at the airport, and I don't remember if my dad booked it or. I just blew every last cent I had to get the hotel room. But I'm busted at this point. I'm. I've got just a little bit of cash left. By the time all these U Hauls and all this other stuff has happened, I'm running low, and I get a hotel room, and I'm sort of amazed that there are beds as comfortable as a bed that the. I have not slept in a bed like this in 15 years.

Marc Headley [01:43:24] And I basically get a room. I say, might as well get some food. I go down to the restaurant. I only want to tell this one part because it was sort of demonstrative of how a Sea Org member lives. I'm used to eating a meal in about two minutes because I've only got a certain amount of meal break, and half of that's me walking there and eating and getting out of there. So the woman brings me. I order a burger or something like that and a drink, and she brings me the drink. I take a little sip, she brings me the burger. And the next time she comes back to check if I want to refill, the burger is completely, entirely gone.

Marc Headley [01:44:06] And she's literally like, you okay? And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And she's like, you want to refill? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've literally eaten an entire plate of food in about two minutes. And I realized, oh, wait a minute. I'm in the real world right now. I can't be, like, a barbarian. I've got a slow roll to eat in here.

Marc Headley [01:44:24] Anyway, I end up getting. I sleep. Great night's sleep. I get on the plane the next day. There's no issues at the airport. I keep an eye out. I don't see nobody anywhere. I'm gone. I'm in the wind. I'm. I get to Kansas City. My dad picks me up at the Kansas City airport.

John Dehlin [01:44:39] You're blown.

Marc Headley [01:44:40] I'm blown. And. And a lot of people are like, why is your book called Blown for Good? Well, I mentioned that recovery effort, the blow drill. Most of the time, I'd say 75% of the time, they get them back. And I wanted to make sure that they knew that I was blown for good. I'm never coming back. I'm gone forever. You never get me back. So that's why it's called blown for Good.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] I bet that they have kidnapped people. Like, I bet they have traveled to a different state, waited with a van, waited with people inside the van, followed somebody, and then, like, pulled up, abducted them, thrown them in the van.

Marc Headley [01:45:23] That'd be a safe bet. They once. I'll tell you, two instances. They once found a woman who escaped. They tracked her down in South Africa. There was another gentleman who escaped. They found him in Candlestick park at a baseball game. That's the level of insanity. Can you imagine finding anyone at a birth. At a baseball game, at a. At a ballpark? That is, to me. Or even in South Africa. You find somebody and you travel to South Africa to get them back.

Claire Headley [01:45:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:58] Abducted. It's he said, she said about what really happened. If you're alone, yes, they can abduct you, and then it's their word against yours as to whether you were really abducted or not.

Claire Headley [01:46:10] Mark Yeager was what have for years has been one of their top executives. He escaped in the dead of night into San Jacinto and tried to make it to a payphone. And they intercepted him with a van and just threw him in the van and took him back.

John Dehlin [01:46:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [01:46:29] It's not. It's not unusual for them to go to great lengths to track you down. So it wasn't a matter of. Of if they were going to track me down. It was how long that it would take them to catch up to me and if it would be worth it for them to do anything. And I realized now that the police had gotten involved, that greatly complicated matters because now it becomes there's a record. He's on law enforcement's radar, and we don't know what conversations and who he's talking with. If we make another attempt and there's somebody that's paying attention, then this could be a very big problem.

John Dehlin [01:47:09] Your dad could call the police and say they've. My. My son escaped. They abducted him.

Marc Headley [01:47:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:14] And then all of a sudden, police are showing up.

Marc Headley [01:47:16] They've already got. It's already on record.

John Dehlin [01:47:18] Yeah.

Marc Headley [01:47:18] This guy was. There was an altercation. He was leaving. There was an altercation. And the only way he got away was because we had two dep. Escort him. And even then, they made two attempts to sort of intervene or. So I met my dad's place. It's snowing, which is amazing. It's Kansas City.

Marc Headley [01:47:40] I'm sleeping, I'm eating, I'm sleeping, doing some more sleeping. And my dad's sort of like, so now what. What happened with Claire? And I'm like, I couldn't. We couldn't meet up before I left. And so he's like, so what's going to happen? I go, I don't know. I don't know how. I don't know how this is going to work. I said, if she comes, then she's going to lose her entire family.

Marc Headley [01:48:05] And I said, stephanie and her. And I don't know who else is going to call, but people are going to start calling and they're going to want to. They're going to know I'm here no matter what. They're going to know, and they're going to try to get me back. And so they do end up calling. My sister calls, Claire calls, and they basically tell me, David Miscavige is livid that they treated this. They messed this up so badly.

Aftermath of Mark's Escape and Contact With Family

Claire Headley [01:48:30] But you were never. Yeah. To clarify, David Miscavige was not mad at Mark. They're like, you. You Blew him off. You like that. That the people involved had mishandled the situation. He's like, David Miscavige was saying, mark was the only person getting my orders done. And now you've gone and blown it, and he's escaped.

Marc Headley [01:48:53] And also, they were telling me, you're not even going to get in any trouble. When David Miscavige found out that you had sold all of this old equipment that had been sitting around for years, he was sort of like, why are you guys on him for this stupid thing? When he got. He sold the garbage, and basically, they were telling me what I wanted to hear and what I had been arguing before I had left. And so. And I. And I. Now I'm sleeping and I'm eating, and my faculties are pretty, like, now tuned in. Like, you guys ran me off the road a few days ago.

Marc Headley [01:49:33] Okay? You ain't. You're not on my team. I know that for sure. So now when you start playing nice, and I'm basically like, I know how this is. I know how you guys roll. You tell me everything I want to hear. I come back, and then I'm on the RPF the next day. It's.

John Dehlin [01:49:50] It's.

Marc Headley [01:49:50] Who cares? This is ridiculous. And so this goes on for a few days where they're calling me and they're trying to convince me. And I know when my sister calls, there's people listening in on the call. It's not just my sister. So everything I'm saying, they know. Everything she's saying, they're watching. They're there. If they're not even there, right? With her on another muted handset, they're listening.

Marc Headley [01:50:13] And they have. In the ethics department. That's a good point. They have in the ethics department these little interview rooms, and they have multiple phones in there. One of the phones has the handset, the microphone of the handset not installed. So they can hear everything that's happening, but their phone doesn't click when they hang up or join the call. And the other person's phone is just a regular phone. So I've. No. I'm the tech guy. I've built the systems that do all this. I know how this all works. So I'm basically, like, playing along.

Marc Headley [01:50:48] Nah, I'm not coming back, you guys. It's done. It's. This ship has sailed. If David Miscavige says it's this way, it could change tomorrow. I don't believe anything you're telling me. You guys mishandled it. You guys figure it out. If the world's gonna end because I'm gone. Good luck. You guys mess this up. I've given 15 years. Blah, blah, blah, who cares? I'm done. And then my phone, because I had one of these special Nextel phones, which not everybody had. Religious technology center had them, and key executives have them. But I've got David Miscavige's phone number in my phone. I've got every single executive Scientology phone number, direct line.

Marc Headley [01:51:30] The phone next to his bed is in my Nextel. I could give this phone to anybody, and they've got all that stuff. And I don't want to use this phone anymore because they can track it. It's on their account, but it's my property. So I fire up another ebay account. And the first thing I did was sell that phone. And I sold it to a guy who was giving it to his 12 year old for his birthday.

Marc Headley [01:51:55] And so some 12 year old out there got a phone with David Miscavige's phone number on it. Might have called him once or twice. They've changed all their phone numbers since then. But during this time, I do talk to Claire, but she is. It's an arranged call from them, and the phone number that I did have for her no longer works.

Claire Headley [01:52:18] Yeah. So on my end, what happened is the morning he escaped, I hadn't made it home. I was dozing at my desk, and all of a sudden I get called in to see Jenny Linson. She tells me, Mark is escaping down the highway. He's blowing. You gotta go get him back.

Claire's Decision to Leave Scientology

John Dehlin [01:52:37] Were you surprised? Did you see this coming at all?

Claire Headley [01:52:40] No. We had never once talked about escaping. Never. We'd never had, because again, that would have been a suppressive act. So it completely rocked my world, like, shook me to the very core. Rug pulled out from under me. Like, what?

John Dehlin [01:52:56] And. And were your emotions. How dare he? Or like, whoa, this might be our chance. Like, do you know, like, were you mad at him? Angry, sad.

Claire Headley [01:53:06] I was shocked more than anything else. Shocked. Like, what the heck? Like, he's escaping, he's doing this completely forbidden thing. And then secondary to that, like, wait, what? He left me behind, you know, Like, I didn't ever dare to. To say I. I more than anything, want to get the heck out of here. Because that was, you know, taboo. Couldn't even be considered. But at the same time, I'm like, dude, you left me behind.

John Dehlin [01:53:38] You would have remembered. You would have remembered that he asked you if you were coming home completely.

Claire Headley [01:53:43] I was like, now it was a whole different. You Know, ball of wax. Like, wait a minute, this is why he was asking me if I was going to come home and shower. Like, oh my God, my gosh. And, and again, I, as I've said before, you know, I, I honestly, had I gone home, I don't know that I would have. Wouldn't have ratted him out because it was terrifying. The thought of trying to do what he was doing was not considerable, you know, not, not. You couldn't even think about it.

Marc Headley [01:54:15] It's basically like you're. You're ending your. You're ending your life.

John Dehlin [01:54:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Claire Headley [01:54:21] It's. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm all of a sudden like, oh my gosh, I'm going to go get him back and we're going to fix this and we're going to stop this and oh my God, he can't do this. But then within the first 20 minutes, all of a sudden, the tone dramatically shifted and security and one of the top executives who was going to go with me to bring him back says, sits me down and says, oh no, Mark is now he's gone to the dark side. Like, what do you mean? And they're like, he called the police. So as Mark said, that's not what happened. But they're telling me, oh, he committed the criminal act of calling 911 and contacting the police. And I again, I was just like, wait, what?

John Dehlin [01:55:08] And let's say in the Mormon Church there are strong efforts to make sure bishops never call police. Just had to throw that in. Keep going.

Claire Headley [01:55:17] Yeah, same. It's actually, it's policy in Scientology that you're not allowed to involve. Scientology has to deal with stuff in within that world. You cannot involve any authorities. But either way. So now my entire world is been tossed upside down and, and instantly it shifts to Mark's now an enemy.

Claire Headley [01:55:46] I'm now, you know, as his wife under a huge magnifying glass because surely I probably knew that he was planning to do this. Meanwhile, I hadn't talked to Mark in days. I think the, the last time before that conversation was he had radioed me a few. Two days before that on my birthday and said, hey, that's right at 3 o' clock in the morning. Should we go have a, a birthday burger at Jack in the Box or something? Because you know, which even that was strictly forbidden, but technically it was breaking the rules anyway. And I did. I couldn't even go to that. I was like, no, I'm sorry, I'm working and blah, blah, blah.

Claire Headley [01:56:28] Anyhow, that. So I immediately Start messaging my Mark and trying to get through on his phone and, like, try to talk to him. Even if I'm not supposed to talk to him, I don't. You know, I'm instantly thrown into this, like, well, what do you mean? I've been married to Mark for 13 years, and now all of a sudden, he's a bad guy and he's an enemy. This doesn't make any sense. So I'm trying to reach him to. To sort out what happened and find out what's going on. Like, oh, did you. Is this your way of saying we're over?

Claire Headley [01:57:02] Anyhow, I'm not getting through. He sends Mark, sends me a text message somewhere in that. That first day and says, I'm done. I'm not coming back. You know, I. I can't do this anymore. And he included an email address that I had. I didn't know he had.

Claire Headley [01:57:26] So it was a hotmail email. So I. I wrote that down just like, okay, worst case scenario, I have a way to reach him if I can't get through on the phone. Not that I have email access, but I'll note that. Doubt that'll come in. Coming useful. Some. Somehow. Some way.

Marc Headley [01:57:41] She has no access to the Internet at this point. She can't get on the Internet.

John Dehlin [01:57:45] What year is this?

Marc Headley [01:57:46] 2005.

Claire Headley [01:57:46] 2005.

John Dehlin [01:57:48] Yeah. So the Internet's email is in full force by 2005?

Marc Headley [01:57:51] Oh, 100.

John Dehlin [01:57:52] Yeah. Okay.

Marc Headley [01:57:52] And so.

Claire Headley [01:57:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So I had no email access, but I knew that that was an important piece of information because it was a way to connect him that wasn't associated with the organization. Not that I had a way to use it, but, you know, even. Even at that moment, I was like, I've heard there's these things called Internet cafes. If I can get to one of those, I can send him an email.

Claire Headley [01:58:17] And hopefully, somehow, anyway, anyhow, I knew that, you know, all the efforts immediately shifted to breaking us up, like, even that very first day, because I know very well how they work. I took my ring, my two rings off, and I put them on my necklace, under my shirt so that. Because I knew what was coming. So I was playing along to avoid the immediate pressure of, like, sign these divorce papers right now. I. I just was trying to play along.

Claire Headley [01:58:50] That night I was allowed to go home, and I packed a bag and hid it under my bed. That was the last time I was allowed to go home from that moment forward, even to the. To the house we just talked about that was adjacent to the property I was restricted. And from that moment forward, I had to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor of my office.

John Dehlin [01:59:11] They keep people prisoners. They literally imprison people.

Marc Headley [01:59:14] It's called. They have a name for it. It's called being restricted to the property. That's if you're on the restricted list, which during the 15 hours, 15 years I was there, there could be 20 people that could be 100 people on that list.

Claire Headley [01:59:26] Yeah. And so, honestly, in addition to losing my husband, now they're treating me like I instantly, just by connect, by proximity, am now being treated like a criminal. And that was really. Really made me mad. I was like, this is. I'm sorry. But just because this happened, and. And then I started to find out what. What had been going on with Mark and that they were doing this investigation. I didn't know the. The facts of it, but I knew that they were trying to make him what they call a head on a pike, like, you know, make an example of him.

Claire Headley [02:00:05] Anyhow, that same night, that one night that I was allowed to go home, Jenny Linson, a top executive, radioed me, radios me at 4:00 clock in the morning, and she says, David Miscavige has ordered that Mark be brought back. So while my bag is packed under the bed, I'm being told David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology, is bringing Mark back. So in my mind, I have.

Claire Headley [02:00:31] First of all, I don't have the logistics figured out of how I'm going to escape, but second of all, if I do escape and meanwhile Mark is being brought back, the end result will still be the same. I'll never see Mark again.

Claire Headley [02:00:45] So I realized I kind of have to bide my time and figure things out and figure out a way to break out of there anyway. So it takes me 20 days. Cutting to the. To the literal chase, it takes 20 days for me to figure out the logistics. And meanwhile, it's

Marc Headley [02:01:08] tell about your sister.

Claire Headley [02:01:10] Yeah. So I come up with a way. Because I cannot send an email, I try to figure out a way to bypass the filters. And I realize I've never sent an email in my life. I'm not technically proficient to be able to bypass their filters. So I do still have the organization phone Nextel, though.

Claire Headley [02:01:31] I managed to. Oh, so they had changed. Originally, security changed my number because they saw that I was trying to call Mark Mark, but then they said, oh, no, we should use Claire to catch Mark and bring him back. So they change the number again and let me text it to Mark, so he has my Number. But then if he calls, I'm supposed to immediately alert security.

Claire Headley [02:01:58] So he does call. He does call, but I don't immediately alert security. And I just. I ask him a few questions, like, where are you? What happened? And he tells me I was going to be sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force, and it's all bogus, and.

Claire Headley [02:02:16] But I'm doing really well now. I'm sleeping. But he wouldn't tell me where he was. But he told me enough information. And then with. And then I. I let security know. So then security come on the phone and are listening to the rest of the conversation.

John Dehlin [02:02:33] Why didn't you want her to know where you were?

Marc Headley [02:02:36] Because then they'll just come get me.

John Dehlin [02:02:37] But you. They. You were talking to them on the phone.

Marc Headley [02:02:40] I was talking to her.

John Dehlin [02:02:41] No, no, before.

Marc Headley [02:02:42] You said they were trying to time when she got. When they.

John Dehlin [02:02:45] Okay, got it. Okay, I get it. I get it.

Marc Headley [02:02:47] I got rid of that old phone.

John Dehlin [02:02:48] Okay.

Marc Headley [02:02:49] I got a new phone.

John Dehlin [02:02:50] Okay. But they knew. Okay. They didn't yet know where you were.

Marc Headley [02:02:54] They played like they. They were trying to find out where I was.

John Dehlin [02:02:59] Okay, got it. Okay. Okay.

Claire Headley [02:03:01] Yeah. Then they. At least at that point, they didn't know where he was. Like, Stephanie and I, Mark, sister Stephanie and I did both call Mark's dad and demand to know, have you seen Mark? Have you heard from him? Blah, blah, blah. And Bernie sure enough was like, no, haven't heard anything. But just.

John Dehlin [02:03:20] I have to keep making parallels. If you move to a different congregation in the Mormon Church and you don't want to be contacted, you don't tell them where you're moving to, they will ask your friends and family and neighbors if anybody has your address so that they can continue pursuing you. It's not in an abduction, kidnapping sort of way, but it's just so they

Marc Headley [02:03:43] can keep their tabs.

John Dehlin [02:03:44] Keeping tabs. Soft tracking. And so it's. Everything in Mormonism is like a soft version of Scientology.

Claire Headley [02:03:52] Scientology is not. Not soft at all. It's very hard.

Marc Headley [02:03:55] They're going hard.

John Dehlin [02:03:57] Principles are often still applicable.

Marc Headley [02:04:00] 100%.

John Dehlin [02:04:01] Yeah, yeah.

Claire Headley [02:04:02] The tracking, the controlling, the leveraging. 100%, yes.

John Dehlin [02:04:06] Soft control instead of hard control.

Claire Headley [02:04:08] Yes, exactly. Okay. So. So, yeah. So security comes on the line, so. And they tell Mark, oh, you got to come back. It's all a mistake ever. We're going to get you the people that you need, blah, blah, blah. And I. I told Mark the same things, too, because as much as I would have loved to entertain the thought of possible freedom, it was still not an unreality to me that, that I could actually succeed and get out. And, and also the threat of losing my family was significant.

Claire Headley [02:04:44] But at the same token, and the moment Mark escaped, the house of cards kind of tumbled around me. And you know, as I mentioned that night, I went home, turned on some music. It was Depeche Mode. I was like, I can't live without Mark. It's not going to work. It's not.

Claire Headley [02:05:01] You know, we've been married for 13 years. I love him. Now they're telling me he's an evil person. You know, it. That's what dramatically accelerated the cracks in. From my perspective of this is just all wrong. Meanwhile, without Mark, my life is complete misery. He. He at least helps me to find humor and laugh about things and not take, take things so seriously. Now all of a sudden, without him, I'm like, if I stay here, I'm gonna literally die. It's just not gonna. I had suffered extreme weight loss, wasn't sleeping. Psychologically and emotionally, I was a complete train wreck. I had no relationship with my family, couldn't even talk to them without somebody listening in on the phone conversation.

Claire Headley [02:05:53] So I'm like, who's kidding who? This is not, this is not a good scenario. So I start to plan out how to get a message to Mark. I was also very, very aware of all the many different attempts. And given the fact that I'm a.

Claire Headley [02:06:10] And you know, at, at that point, weighed less than £100, at 5 7, was completely malnourished and could easily be overcome. I knew I had to come up with a way to escape that didn't involve physical confrontation because they could toss me in a van no problem.

Claire Headley [02:06:30] So I, I figure out that I, I can't call Mark. I can't. All I have is this email address. And so I come up with a way that I call my sister, who is a civilian Scientologist. She's in college in Los Angeles. And because I was not allowed to tell my family that Mark had escaped, she didn't know anything that was going on. So I tell her, hey, how's it going? Can you help me out? Mark's on a special project and I haven't been able to see him for a while. Can you send him a message and ask him to call me at six o' clock tomorrow morning, please, at this number?

Claire Headley [02:07:11] And she was like, oh, sure, no problem. Because ironically, that had been the case many times that Mark was off on a project and I hadn't seen him for a month. So it didn't really raise any red flags. So she did it and sends Mark this email to this address that he had texted me to this hotmail, and he gets this message. And I think you knew right away that I was breaking the rules.

Marc Headley [02:07:35] I knew because it was from her sister, and it was from her sister's email. And it was to this email that I'm the only one who knew I had this email. I've never, ever used this. I think when hotmail, when I first got on the Internet, I saw, oh, this is like an independent way I could send emails. That is. No, there's no filter. It's not. Not in. Within their system. So I was like, I'll save this for a rainy day. And I've. And I. I still have that to count to that day. Scientology stopped sending me spam anyway.

Claire's Time in the Hole

Marc Headley [02:08:08] But so when I got the email from her sister, I was like, ooh, clever girl. I knew she was going outside of their system, so. And it was basically, call me at 6 o' clock in the morning. So then I'm like, okay. And it was a different number. So I go, okay, they've changed her phone and she's giving me her new phone that they don't know I have. And I know that they're going to check the phone records, but it takes several hours for the call log to update to the Internet.

John Dehlin [02:08:42] This is like mission Impossible, right?

Marc Headley [02:08:46] So.

John Dehlin [02:08:47] Oh, wait, that's a bad. That's a tough.

Marc Headley [02:08:49] I was gonna bring it up Sherlock Holmes.

John Dehlin [02:08:57] That's funny. Okay.

Claire Headley [02:08:59] Anyway, but yes, so, so. And six o' clock in the morning also, Mark knows there's nobody around, especially not at. By this time, I'm. I'm in the hole because I refuse to divorce Mark. So I'm.

John Dehlin [02:09:12] The hole is like, what, in the

Claire Headley [02:09:14] double wide trailers where the people are monitored, not allowed to leave punishments, you name it. And I had been in. In there by this time for four months. And I mentioned yesterday when I was talking about Shelly Miscavige, that Shelly had told me that because I was in Religious Technology Center, I had forgone the right to leave. That was. Those were her exact words. So now here I am. I've been kicked out of Religious Technology Center. I'm in the hole. My husband has escaped. I'm like, well, guess what? Good thing I'm not in Religious Technology center anymore. So I'm gonna break. Make a break for it.

John Dehlin [02:09:51] Okay, wait.

Claire Headley [02:09:52] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:09:53] Did they put you in the hole before he escaped?

Claire Headley [02:09:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:09:56] Did we talk about that?

Marc Headley [02:09:58] Yes, we did.

Claire Headley [02:09:59] A little bit Yesterday or today. We. We didn't go into the. Into the gory details, but In September of 2000, yeah, we did talk about it. In September 2004, David Miscavige made this new personnel policy and implemented it, saying that anyone in Religious Technology center not married to someone outside of Religious Technology center has to either divorce their partner or they're out.

John Dehlin [02:10:25] This is part of him being the enemy, because he was in sleeping with the enemy part of the organization.

Claire Headley [02:10:29] He literally came through our offices in September. And not to be, you know, rude or inappropriate, but his direct words to me was, get out, you thed weedy cunt. Meaning that thed weedy is a word that means that you have an incapacity to confront evil. And you're basically like, it's a Pollyanna type of. That's what he was accusing me of, which I. I'm many things, but I'm. I wouldn't consider myself a Pollyanna type person. Quite the opposite, actually. Anyhow, that would. That's what he said to my face. That then resulted in me being put into the hole.

John Dehlin [02:11:11] And you were. So you lost your. Your job at that point?

Claire Headley [02:11:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:11:14] Okay.

Claire Headley [02:11:15] Yes. Not before I had to choose Chelsea, Chelsea Graves or Laura Dolan from Religious Technology center to go and do interrogations on Tom Cruise's staff. Shelley asked me to pick which one of those would be better. And I said Chelsea Graves. And that's who we talked about yesterday, was at Tom Cruise's house around the time Surrey was born.

John Dehlin [02:11:41] So what did they. What did they have you doing work wise, while you were in the hole?

Claire Headley [02:11:45] Oh, my goodness. Mainly working on reorganizing the. The executive assignments, the postings that Shelly misgavigated. But also during that same time was when that famous Tom Cruise video was being done, where he talks about that. You know, he's the only. He's the only in the black polo. It's quite famous.

Marc Headley [02:12:09] Turtleneck.

Claire Headley [02:12:10] Yeah, sorry, the. In the black turtleneck, where he says Scientologists are the only people that could help at an accident and, you know, keeping Scientology working. Anyway, that whole video, I. We were all working on that video. So I was doing video editing, administration, like literally tracking footage and everything to help get that video put together. Even though I know nothing about video editing, still, it was all hands. We all had to work on this to get it done. I was working on that during that period anyway.

John Dehlin [02:12:45] So you were still working for them. Maybe you had lost some privileges. You were in a degrading living situation. You knew you were being punished but they were still exploiting you. You.

Claire Headley [02:12:57] Correct. Yes, they were exploiting me. I wasn't allowed to go home and I was expected to. But yes. Attend meetings with David Miscavige and all that kind of stuff was still going on even though I was in the hole.

John Dehlin [02:13:11] Okay. Even though you were the weedy C word.

Claire Headley [02:13:14] Yes, that's right.

John Dehlin [02:13:15] Okay.

Claire Headley [02:13:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:16] Okay. Thank you.

Claire Headley [02:13:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:13:17] So you'd been the whole four or five months.

Claire Headley [02:13:19] Yes. And so again, circling back, get the call. Now Mark's gone. And I'm like. Similar to his reaction, I'm like, I've been living through hell all these years, really have no relationship with my family, so why am I putting my family over Mark, who I love and is my husband, when I can't even tell my. For example, I couldn't. Was not even allowed to tell my. My family that I'd broken my leg and almost wasn't able to walk again by a motorcycle accident I'd had. I couldn't even tell them that. I couldn't tell them anything. I was. I couldn't tell them. I was forced to have abortions. I had. They literally knew nothing about my life. They did not even know physically where I worked. They were not even allowed to know

John Dehlin [02:14:06] that, even though they were Scientologists.

Claire Headley [02:14:08] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:14:09] Yes. Believing Scientologists.

Claire Headley [02:14:11] Yes. They were believing, cooperating Scientologists who were not allowed to know the physical location of where their daughter worked.

John Dehlin [02:14:19] Wild.

Claire Headley [02:14:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:20] Lived and worked.

Claire Headley [02:14:21] Yes. So I. I come up with the. I come up with this idea to get a message to Mark. And so I get up early off my office floor out of my sleeping bag, and I go to another building where I won't be overheard and.

John Dehlin [02:14:40] Is there a mattress? Were you sleeping on a mattress? No, there's a sleeping bag on the floor.

Claire Headley [02:14:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:14:46] For months and months,

Claire Headley [02:14:50] when you get that tired, you're less discerning on what you're sleeping on. You know, it. I mean, four hours is four hours. It's just like it is. And I do think that the sleep deprivation and the food deprivation are a huge part of what prevents you from having the mental capacity to even get out of the situation you're in or see out of it. Because when you're literally just struggling to stay awake and in a complete fog of exhaustion, your problem solving skills are, I think, the first thing to go.

John Dehlin [02:15:23] Yeah.

Claire's Escape Plan Takes Shape

Claire Headley [02:15:24] Anyway, so I. I managed to talk to Mark, and of course, he's. He's always the. You know, so what's going on? I'm like, I cannot Stay here. I'm not going to make it. He's like, but what, what about your family? I'm like, I, let's just call a spade a spade. That ship sailed a long time ago.

John Dehlin [02:15:42] Because you weren't allowed to see him.

Claire Headley [02:15:44] No, no, exactly. And, and I tell him, no, I cannot stay here. I need your help. And he said, oh, well, next time you go home to do your laundry, just call a cab. And I'm like, yeah, about that. I'm not allowed to go home. And he, and he, of course, says, wow. Yeah, things are really, really gotten better, haven't they?

Marc Headley [02:16:05] Well, to put it in. To put it in. Persp of her and my sister, just a week or so earlier are telling me how everything's gonna get better and everything's changing, and I'm just like, huh, yeah, sure. Like 15 years to get here. Sure. One week to turn it all around. Makes a lot of sense. And so then now she can't go home. She's sleeping under her desk.

Claire Headley [02:16:30] I'm like, now I'm asking for his help to get out of there. And he's like, oh, yeah, that's so much better, because, you know, he's just calling, like, he loves to do. Anyway, so I say, no, I can't do that because I'm not allowed to go home. And he's like, so what's the plan then? I'm like, well, best I've been able to come up with is I've made up a story that I need contact lenses, which I did wear contact lenses. I still do, but I hadn't run out of them, so. But the, the only. I knew that some way I had to get a head start off the property, because otherwise I was going to fail.

John Dehlin [02:17:08] This is like East Berlin or like North Korea.

Marc Headley [02:17:12] That's why my book is called behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology, because that is literally once I escaped. That's the only thing I've ever found that's, that's similar to this situation, Eastern West Berlin.

Claire Headley [02:17:24] Yeah, it's. It's not easy. I mean, I, I, I have nightmares to this day. They're. They've lessened. But, you know, even a lot of therapy later, it's. It's tough to live through something like this. And it's, you know. Anyway, thank goodness I succeeded, though, because otherwise, God only has. Huh.

Marc Headley [02:17:43] But how.

Claire Headley [02:17:46] So what happened? Back to the story. Okay, so I tell Mark I have a contact lens appointment. It's going to be Monday morning, 10:15. So I. Generally speaking, a medical driver would drop Staff off at appointments around town and then circle back around to pick them up. So I thought, if that happens, then I've got an hour head start and I can get away from them. Okay. So I tell him, well, I have this appointment. This is like three or four days before that. And he said, okay, good. So. So get there.

Claire Headley [02:18:24] And I also knew because of the lag in phone records that I would be able to call a cab early that morning to schedule to be there at the time of my appointment. So that was kind of my rough plan. So he said, okay, great. So do that. Call me when you're in the cab at 10:15. Or I'll call you when. I'll call you at 10:15 on Monday morning, by which time you should be in the cab and I'll tell you what to do from there.

Marc Headley [02:18:52] Because he.

Claire Headley [02:18:53] You still didn't. I didn't completely trust.

Marc Headley [02:18:55] Yeah, I did. I. I knew that this could. I. We could. I could still be being played.

John Dehlin [02:18:59] Yeah, you could get abducted.

Marc Headley [02:19:01] So I was like, why don't you get free? And then once you're free, then I will tell you what the next step of the plan is, but I'm not going to tell you the plan until you're free.

Claire Headley [02:19:12] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:19:13] So if they. If they see. Because she has three days, basically, in Scientology, they're very key on behavioral. Behavioral cues.

Claire Headley [02:19:23] So some indicators, they call it.

Marc Headley [02:19:25] Yeah.

Claire Headley [02:19:25] Bad indicators and good indicators. So if I show any sign of what's actually going on, they could smoke. Smoke it out and interrogate me. And which they did actually try anyway. So. Yeah. And meanwhile, he. He's not trusting me. I'm like. Like, dude, I'm. I'm trying to escape. I need your help. Come on. But I. I understood. I. I wasn't. I. I did get it. I was like, hey, I read it him out a few times in my.

Marc Headley [02:19:55] She did. There was many times. If I did something that was off the boards or many.

Claire Headley [02:19:59] Just a few.

Marc Headley [02:20:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:04] No judgment.

Claire Headley [02:20:04] Anyhow. Okay, wait.

John Dehlin [02:20:06] How did you not get in trouble for receiving that one. One phone call that one morning at 6am when you were in the hole?

Claire Headley [02:20:14] Because they weren't. They. They overlooked checking my phone records. They didn't. They didn't realize that they did. At some point, they asked you call me on it.

Marc Headley [02:20:24] And you had asked if Mark had gone, if they'd heard from me or something like that, when they'd ask you, hey, why didn't you. Why'd you end up calling your sister?

Claire Headley [02:20:30] Yeah. And I said, well, you guys were Trying to get me to get Mark back. So I just called her to ask if she'd heard from Mark. It was. I. You know, we'd been there long enough that even though we were under close scrutiny, you could.

John Dehlin [02:20:46] Anyway, you had some credibility.

Claire Headley [02:20:48] Yeah, I did. Like, and in fact, in fact, the. Because I'd been in religious technology center and. And I had the Nextel radio, it was a fact that Shelly and Larice would both still call me because I had worked close to them. And so, for example, one time I went to. Went out to call Mark and to tell him something or other to like one of these conversations that we had, these illicit conversations. I came back in and they said, oh, who were you on the phone with? I was like, oh, that was. That was Shelly. That was cob assistant. You know, that's what I would refer to her as. And they bought it. So, you know, this needs to be

John Dehlin [02:21:32] a screenplay for a Hollywood. I'm serious.

Marc Headley [02:21:35] There was a young filmmaker in Los Angeles and an ex Scientology actress that we know really well, and they actually made a short of the story and they mainly condensed it just to the. To Claire's escape.

Claire Headley [02:21:50] Yeah, but I do have to tell this one. This one piece leading up to this because now. So now I'm. I've talked to Mark. I have a plan. I have my. My eye doctor's appointment on Monday, so I just have to make it through the weekend. Well, on Saturday, I get a dispatch addressed to me from David Miscavige, which automatically puts a big old magnifying glass on me because it's also the. The communication is about how management is not performing and they're out ethics and we got to do something about this. So at lunchtime on Saturday, I have to get up in front of these 150 people in the hole and read them the riot act basically, and tell them you need.

Claire Headley [02:22:36] You're off purpose and you got to get your act together and blah, blah, blah. And meanwhile I'm. I'm about to escape, but also I have to. I have to provide a credible response to this dispatch. Otherwise I for sure am going to be. Get being interrogated. If I don't respond and act appropriately, it's going to blow the whole thing.

Claire Headley [02:23:01] So, yeah, so that happens. Oh, and also it's worth mentioning too, that I coincided my eye doctor appointment with a time that I knew David Miscavige was not going to be at the property. He was going to be in Clearwater, Florida at the annual Fort Harrison gala event, because I knew that they would be. My chances of escaping were better if he was not at that property.

Marc Headley [02:23:29] Also, he has a security detail. And most at that time, some of the security guards at the international property were part of that busy. So when he leaves the property, the security of the property is now lowered because he's not there. And he's the main reason for the property to have to be secured.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] Yeah.

Claire Headley [02:23:50] So Sunday rolls along and now I have to get my completed staff work approved to even go to the eye doctor appointment. And I have to get that approved by four people. So I write up my little presentation situation. I need new contact lenses data. I have an appointment on Monday at 10:15. I cannot do. I cannot work without contact lenses. So I have to go do this appointment. I'll be. I'll be. I'll make it quick. Solution. Approve that I go to said appointment.

Claire Headley [02:24:22] So when this goes to Jenny Linson, who's the final person to approve me going with the medical staff, she's not having it. She says, no, you can only go if you have a dedicated security escort who's going to stay with you during the appointment. And I. And literally I'm sitting there going, really?

Claire Headley [02:24:42] Like that was the only time, only way I was even going to get an hour head start. But I also know if I react and throw a fit or be like, how dare you? How Then that's a bad indicator that they're gonna. That's called an animal reaction. That means I have things, I'm hiding from them, so I can't even react. So I'm like, okay, all right, I'll go with a dedicated security escort. No problem.

John Dehlin [02:25:08] Because you had to have been identified as a place risk for sure.

Claire Headley [02:25:12] 100. I mean, yeah. Yeah. No. And in fact, yeah, I thought there's

John Dehlin [02:25:16] no way they're gonna let her go alone.

Claire Headley [02:25:18] No. At one point, Even during this 20 days, between Mark escaping and me escaping, I. I mentioned I had lost extreme weight. Well, I. It got even worse. I just had no appetite. I was nauseated 24 7. They assigned a buddy just to make me go to meals and eat and then bring me back to my office. So yes, I was absolutely a flight risk. It's in their golden rule book of how. How to stop people from escaping, that when one partner escapes, there's a really good percentage of chance the other one will try to escape too. Anyhow, so Monday morning rolls around.

Claire Headley [02:26:00] Now I have a person whose sole job is to drive me to the appointment, sit with me during the appointment and bring me back. And even then I'm still not certain that security is going to let me off the property. Even with the security escort, like, it's still. If I, it's up to them. If I blink wrong. Yeah, yeah. If they, if, if I blink wrong or somebody else, somebody changes their mind about me going to this eye doctor appointment, it still can get shut down for sure.

Claire Headley [02:26:28] And meanwhile, it's January in, In San. In Riverside county, so it's a little chilly. So I'm wearing my uniform. I have a. A duffel coat on, and I've stuffed like, a few little belongings into my pockets, like the few little things that I can take with me, like, you know,

John Dehlin [02:26:48] change of underwear.

Claire Headley [02:26:49] Yeah, change of underwear. My one necklace that I really don't want to part with, and a few other things, and that's it. Everything else I'm leaving behind, including our dog, which was really, really sad. We managed to get him back months later. But that's a story for another day. We get to the gate, make it out. So we're driving to Walmart, which is where my appointment is. And like I said, this staff member, Christy, her, she's twice the size of me. Her sold job is to stay with me during this appointment. I did, I had that morning.

Marc Headley [02:27:23] But you were also her boss.

Claire Headley [02:27:25] I was, yeah. So that's, that's where it's like weird, you know, weird world that we lived in. Anyhow, that morning I'd gone to the same closet and hid in the closet and called a cab, which, yeah, even that I had copied the last time I'd been to my home, like weeks before that, I had tore out a little piece of paper with a cab company number just in case, because, you know, so cinematic.

John Dehlin [02:27:56] I'm just imagining the actors getting in

Marc Headley [02:27:58] the closet, whispering, yeah, is this Yellow Cab? Tell them the name that you use because that's part of it.

Claire Headley [02:28:08] Yes, yes. So I'm like, yes, I need to order a cab from Walmart to Riverside bus station. But then I'm like, but how much is that? Because I only have $180 cash. That's it. I have no credit card, no debit card. So I'm like, but tell me how much it is. And they say, $90. And they're like, what's the name? I said, barbara Smith. It's the best. I know, it's terrible. It's very uncreative, but it was the best I could come up with in the moment because I, I couldn't give him my name.

Claire Headley [02:28:42] Anyway, so then, so this, that's 6:00am So I scheduled the cab. They're like, okay, Walmart will be there. It's $90. So I'm gonna. I. Great. I'm not even going to be out of Riverside county, and I'm going to be down to $90 left to go somehow. And I had figured out that Mark was in Kansas City by then.

Claire Headley [02:29:03] I had even tested the waters, by the way. And I called Warren McShane in religious technology center, their big legal executive, who to this day is still there. And I said, warren, I heard that David Miscavige ordered Mark be brought back. I figured out he's with his dad in Kansas City, so is somebody going to get him? And he said, well, we're figuring it out. And that's all the answer I needed. I'm like, they're not going to go get him. It's. That's done. Anyhow.

Claire Headley [02:29:33] So now I'm. I. We pull up at the Walmart, and it's right on the dot of 1015. There's the entrance. I look over there. There's the cab. And as it happened, the parking lot was full. So I said, oh, Christy, just let me off right up front. I'm. It's my appointment right now. I'll run it. Running ahead to the appointment. I'm playing my cool. She's like, okay. I'm like.

Claire Headley [02:30:00] Because I didn't know. Was I literally gonna have to 5k try and beat her to the cab and, like, you know, like, tussle, like, what was gonna happen? I didn't know. So she lets me out of the car right at the first entrance. So I walk in.

Claire Headley [02:30:14] Coolest cucumber. Trying to be. Anyway, walk, because I didn't want to run because already in my mind, the private investigators, you know, like you see in the movies. Have you seen this woman? Oh, she just ran that way. You know, that's what's going through my head. I was like, just walk. Walk as fast as you can. So I walk, climb into the cab. Cab, look. Driver slowly looks over. Barbara Smith. Yep. I'm like, okay. Starts driving.

John Dehlin [02:30:43] So the guard didn't see you?

Claire Headley [02:30:45] No, she was parking the car. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [02:30:48] Okay, got it.

Claire Headley [02:30:49] Yeah. So I'm. I'm at my appointment.

John Dehlin [02:30:51] Yeah.

Claire Headley [02:30:52] While she's parking. So we're not. But we're not even out of the parking lot yet. And she's buzzing me on the next tail. Where are you? And so I'm like, well, I had to go to the bathroom. I'll be right there.

Marc Headley [02:31:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:05] Yes.

Claire Headley [02:31:06] By myself.

Marc Headley [02:31:07] Even two minutes you know, she's in the cab when this guy and the cab driver's like, what the hell?

Claire Headley [02:31:13] I know. I'm like, this cab driver must think I am literally loony. He's just like, don't pay attention. It's all good. I'll hold it anyway. And now. So now it's 10, 15. I'm in the cab. They're already on to me. I'm like, mark, please, please, please call. Like, I need you now more than ever. He calls and he said, okay, look, are you in the cab? I'm like, yes, I'm in the cab. Okay, so. And he's like, so you're heading to Riverside bus station? Yes. Okay. As soon as we're done talking, turn off your phone and do not, under any circumstances, turn it back on. Like, okay, got it. It's like, when you get to the bus station, call me from the pay phone. Said, okay, great. Got it, got it.

The Greyhound Bus Journey to Freedom

John Dehlin [02:32:14] Because, Mark, you were afraid they would follow her to the bus station.

Marc Headley [02:32:18] I knew that as soon as they could find out out that she. Because they're going to see that she called a cab. They're going to figure out where she can get to with the cab. With a certain amount of money, it's too far to go all the way to lax. That's hundreds of dollars. So it's going to be somewhere nearby. And they always, always, always, I know from the blow drills over the years, they always go to the airport, they always go to the motels, hotels, and they go to the bus station. Because the bus station, even to this day, is relatively the cheapest way that you can get a good distance for not a lot of money.

Claire Headley [02:32:55] Yeah. I had even honestly envisioned just hiding in some random person's backyard in Hemet until they stopped looking for me. Another thought, I was going to ride my motorcycle through the Rockies to Kansas City and just sleep in the back of movie theaters during the day.

Claire Headley [02:33:13] And then I was like, but would they kick me out of movies. Movie theater because I was sleeping on the floor? Anyway, I. I got very creative. And that's when I finally was like, I cannot do this without Mark's help anyhow. So that's so wild. Yeah. So we get to the bus station. I get to the bus station. Cab driver drops me off. First thing I do is I go into the bathroom, take off my uniform pants, unroll my pair of spare pants that I had in my pocket, throw my uniform in the trash, and I go and buy a ticket it from. Oh, no. I call Mark. I call Mark.

John Dehlin [02:33:44] Wait, uniform?

Claire Headley [02:33:45] Yeah, I was. I was still wearing uniform. My navy. My navy pants and. Okay, yeah. And the belt buckle with the Sea Org symbol on it. I threw all of that in the garbage. Wow. So I go to a pay phone and I call Mark.

Marc Headley [02:34:01] No, you could not figure out how to.

Claire Headley [02:34:03] No, no, we're not to that part yet. Oh, yeah. From there, I did call the pay fund, because here's what happened. So I called. I call him on the pay phone. He says, okay, listen, just this one time, you're going to turn on your phone and I want you to call this number. It's an AV company in Times Square, and ask them how. Or, no, it's close to Times Square. Ask them for directions of how to get from Times Square to that company. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, whatever. I'll just do it. And he's like, okay, and then buy a bus ticket.

Marc Headley [02:34:37] No, I bought the bus ticket.

Claire Headley [02:34:38] No, not that one. I bought this one.

Marc Headley [02:34:40] Okay, you're right.

Claire Headley [02:34:40] You're jumping ahead.

Marc Headley [02:34:41] Sorry.

Claire Headley [02:34:42] He's like, buy a bus ticket from Riverside county to Barstow, which is like a 20 bus ticket.

Marc Headley [02:34:49] And it's the opposite direction of Kansas City.

Claire Headley [02:34:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:52] So trying to throw them off on the trail or something.

Marc Headley [02:34:55] I'm trying to make it so they can see in her phone that she called an AV company in New York. Because I had recently spent time in New York York doing AV work at the Scientology facility there. So they would go, oh, he knows somebody there, and he's going to get a job at this AV company in New York.

John Dehlin [02:35:14] You're throwing them off the trail trying to. But her using the phone be a way for them to figure out where she is.

Claire Headley [02:35:20] Yes, yes.

Marc Headley [02:35:21] But also the fact that she's getting on a bus going a different direction, maybe closer to the airport or to another place where she can then get a plane. So I'm trying to make it. It she's going the wrong way to go to Kansas City. And why is she calling New York an AV company in New York?

John Dehlin [02:35:39] Okay.

Claire Headley [02:35:39] Yeah. So again, I was just like, okay, whatever. I'll just do what he says, and hopefully it all works out. So I got on the bus, and this time I. As I remember, I couldn't put it under a false name because I had to show them my driver's license. So.

Claire Headley [02:35:56] So I buy that ticket, get on the bus, go to Barstow. Barstow is where I started panicking because I get off and I go to every pay phone, and none of them accept coins. They all only accept calling cards. And I've never heard of a calling card. I have no idea what it is. And I think that if I ask somebody for a calling, like, what's a calling card? I think I'm going to be like Starman, you know, like, how do you not know what a calling card is? So I didn't want to do that. Anyway, I panicked. I turn my phone back on and I call Mark because Mark had told me, you're going to have a short window, so just make sure you call me right when you get there.

Claire Headley [02:36:38] So I, I panicked, turn my phone on, call him. The first thing he says is, what are you doing? Why'd you turn your phone on? I'm like, I told him what happened. He's like, okay, hopefully nothing goes sideways, but you know, here's your ticket, you're coming to Kansas City. It's leaving in 20 minutes.

Claire Headley [02:36:59] Just go to the counter and they'll print it off for you. I'm like, okay, so, so we finished that call. But he's like, seriously, do not turn that phone on again. So I turn the phone off, go to the counter to get the ticket. And of course, right at the counter it's like we sell calling cards. I'm like, anyway, wait, what does that mean, calling card? Like, it's, it's just a loaded card that makes a payphone work with something other than coins. It's, it's a silly detail, but you'll understand why it's significant shortly.

Claire Headley [02:37:36] So I get on the next bus. It leaves at like 1:30 in the afternoon approximately. So now I, I've been in the wind since 10:15. Now it's 1:30 and I've made it, haven't even made it out of Riverside county yet. Anyway, this next bus is like a five hour stretch to Las Vegas. And in Las Vegas I have a bus change, a 40 minute, you know, layover and then heading out to Kansas City.

Claire Headley [02:38:04] So by the time we pull into Vegas, it's dark and I'm like, oh my goodness, there's a McDonald's there. Guess what? My $20. I could buy a cheeseburger. I haven't eaten in days. I'm like, that's where my mind is at.

Claire Headley [02:38:20] So I wait for everybody to get off the bus just because again, I'm afraid I'm being pursued and everything else. I climb off the bus, I go to put my hand on the, the door to open, to go into the station, to go out to the McDonald's. Before I even walk in the door. Boom. There's three staff members there.

John Dehlin [02:38:40] No. In Vegas.

Marc Headley [02:38:43] In Vegas, crossing state lines. We're now, we've left California. We're now in Nevada.

John Dehlin [02:38:49] Yeah. This is the trafficking.

Marc Headley [02:38:50] And they have now crossed a state border to intercept and recover her. Back to the.

John Dehlin [02:38:57] And was it, was it the GPS of the phone that. They knew you were at a bus.

Marc Headley [02:39:03] They knew she went to Barstow and the only bus leaving out of there was going to Vegas.

John Dehlin [02:39:09] Wild.

Claire Headley [02:39:10] Okay, so Greg Wilher, David Miscavige's henchmen, six foot tall, much bigger than I am, Boom. He's standing right in front of me and he Sundays, and there's two other staff as well. Yeah. And come to find out there's even more staff outside waiting in a vehicle.

Claire Headley [02:39:30] So Greg says, you're not doing this. You're coming with us. And I'm like, no, I'm not. And he's like, so I just walked into the station, I just pushed in because I'm like, I don't, I don't know. There's every chance that they can physically overcome me and get me into a vehicle. Remember I said I needed to find a way to escape that didn't involve physical confrontation because I knew I was in no condition to overcome such a situation. Not only that, my entire life had been indoctrination leading up to me failing in this moment really.

Claire Headley [02:40:07] So I walked into the bus station. I literally just put my purse on the floor and sat down and, and in my mind I was thinking to myself, well, if they physically try to grab me, I'll just scream and maybe some nice person will take pity on me and call 91 1. I don't know. I don't really know how the real world works, but that was my hope.

Claire Headley [02:40:26] And then so, so the next 30, 40 minutes was literally just non stop them going at me. You're destroying your family, you're destroying everything there. And they're like, we know you've been in talking to Mark. We know it. So give us his phone number. And I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure you already have his phone number. I'm not giving it to you. And because I'm like, why would I help them stop me from escaping? Like why they call Mark that.

Marc Headley [02:41:00] Well, so this is the other thing. So when she got to Vegas, I know she has a bus change and she's going to be there for a little bit. So she's supposed to call me. Now that she knows how freaking call calling cards work, she's supposed to Use a pay phone and call me. She never calls. And the phone. I'm. I'm literally pacing on the sidewalk outside my dad's house in the snow, losing my mind because she's been. I have the bus timetable and I know she's been there for 15 minutes and she's not calling me, and I'm losing my mind. And the phone rings and it says Greg Wilher.

Marc Headley [02:41:40] And I'm like, I literally am screaming out on the sidewalk in the middle of the. Just nowhere going anyway. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, we've got Claire. We're taking her back to the property. Just wanted to make sure, you know, she's not coming. We've got her and we're. We're heading back there now.

Marc Headley [02:42:03] And I was like, okay. And he was like, you. You should come back. You need to come back. And I'm like, no, I'm not ever coming back. I'm like, dude, I've slept for like two weeks. You guys are insane. That place is insane. You're all insane. I'm never ever coming back. You got Claire. You got Claire. I'm. You're not getting me. I'm never coming back. Forget it.

John Dehlin [02:42:29] It.

Marc Headley [02:42:29] Don't ever call me ever again.

Claire Headley [02:42:32] Luckily, they didn't got Claire.

Marc Headley [02:42:34] Yeah, but. So they're. So now I hang up with Greg

John Dehlin [02:42:37] and I could have still come after you.

Claire Headley [02:42:39] Oh, for sure. Well, no, we're still in the bus station.

John Dehlin [02:42:42] I know, I know.

Claire Headley [02:42:42] Yeah. While Greg is having this conversation, there's three. Another staff member came in. I'm surrounded by staff. I'm just sitting on the. In the middle of the bus station. In the back of my mind, this little voice is like, I wonder what people think is going on here. But you know, I. I literally just had to kind of. Of figuratively plug my ears to get through and. But Greg comes back from that and tells me, we told Mark that we caught you. You're not. You're not coming. He's coming back to the property. They told me he's coming back.

Marc Headley [02:43:16] So dark.

John Dehlin [02:43:16] They're lying to you both independently to try and influence your decisions.

Claire Headley [02:43:22] That's right.

Marc Headley [02:43:22] We have to both trust that the plan is still going ahead according. Because I'm not not. I can't talk to her and she can't talk to me. And they're being the go between telling us that the wrong information to both of us. So she's going back is what they tell me, and that I'm going back is what they're Telling her in order.

Claire Headley [02:43:47] And none of it is true. None of it.

Marc Headley [02:43:48] None of it is true.

Claire Headley [02:43:49] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:43:50] Anyway, so I'm losing my mind on the sidewalk.

Claire Headley [02:43:54] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:43:55] And I think it's night time by this time.

Claire Headley [02:43:57] Yeah, it is. Because you're. Yeah, it's like six, seven o' clock at night in Vegas and you were in Kansas City two hours ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like 8 o' clock at night anyhow. So, you know, again, they tell me my entire family is going to be destroyed. That. And, and at one point Greg Wilher says to me, well, what if David Miscavige were here right now? And I'm thinking to myself, well, yeah, duh, he's not. So I exactly planned this so he wouldn't be able to be here to intercept me. Not that he would. I didn't think he would ever go to a bus station. He doesn't do the dirty work himself. He has other people like the Greg Wilhairs of the world do it for him. But I was just like, that's irrelevant anyway, so I appeal.

John Dehlin [02:44:42] It's appeal to authority.

Claire Headley [02:44:44] Right, exactly. Yeah. And, and actually they have, have put David Miscavige on the phone with people.

Marc Headley [02:44:51] Yes.

Claire Headley [02:44:52] To stop them from escaping in the past. And I, I was aware of that. Either way, he threatens to follow me on the bus. But again, I knew that already. Like, even though I wasn't aware of the illegality of crossing state lines in pursuit of somebody in that aspect of human trafficking at that time, I was aware that, that they wouldn't be allowed to just pursue me endlessly without David Miscavage approving it. And again, he was in Clearwater, Florida, less accessible, it's three hours ahead, yada.

Claire Headley [02:45:29] So he threatens to follow me on the bus that I'm just like biting my time to get on the next bus. And so the people start lining up. I'm like, thank God. So I get in line, surrounded by now four people, people all just going at me, telling me I can't do this, I have to come back, blah, blah, blah, my family, that, this and this and this. I get on the bus and huge relief just to have even that little bit of distance between them. Of course the first thing I do is turn on my phone and call Mark because, well, obviously they, they know where I am.

Claire Headley [02:46:07] So that ship has sailed. So let me at least talk to Mark and make sure he's not coming to me or going back to them or whatever.

Marc Headley [02:46:15] So I'm liter pacing up and down the sidewalk in this Suburb of Lee Summit, Missouri, outside of Kansas City. And it. It's her. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? She's like, they tried to intercept me. It was Greg Wilher and Sharon and whoever the group of people was, all top executives in Scientology. And. And so I'm like, where are you? And she's like, I'm on the bus. And I'm like, are they on the bus? She's like, no.

John Dehlin [02:46:45] And I'm like, I'm surprised they didn't buy p. Tickets and travel with you on the bus.

Claire Headley [02:46:50] They. They threatened. They threatened that they were going to. But like I said, I knew that they couldn't do that on their own without David Miscavige's approval. And anyway, they. They. But they did. They absolutely threatened to. And yes, they have done that before, so.

Marc Headley [02:47:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the only reason that some people are like, why don't you just get on a Southwest flighter? They have. They have a internal ticket agency within Scientology so they can access United, Delta, American. They can access all major airlines to book tickets because they fly so many people all over the world that they are a major account with it. Like, they're a. Scientology has a Sea Org travel agent. He's a Sea Org member that has access to all major ticketing systems.

Claire Headley [02:47:42] Not. Not to mention we had no money. I mean, that was. That was the other piece of it.

John Dehlin [02:47:47] They can book and cancel.

Marc Headley [02:47:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:50] So if. If Claire had booked on an airline, it. They could have used their Scientology book agent, flight agent, to actually cancel her flight.

Marc Headley [02:47:58] Yeah. Or at least delay it or muck. Muck around. Yeah, I know that. We know for a fact that I suspected they could do that. We found out they could do that a few years later when we were helping somebody else escape. So either way, the. But I knew it was much harder for them to do that within the Greyhound system because it's a much, much lower tech, pedestrian setup.

John Dehlin [02:48:23] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:48:23] For it. Compared. Anyway. So.

Claire Headley [02:48:27] So, yeah. So she's not going on the bus. I call Mark and I tell her.

Marc Headley [02:48:31] I tell her they told me you were going back. And she's like, they told me you were going back. And I'm like, those. I was like. I was like. I was so mad that I almost destroyed my phone.

John Dehlin [02:48:42] That's how. Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:48:43] Just.

John Dehlin [02:48:44] Oh, yeah.

Marc Headley [02:48:45] Angry. Physically angry. I was. I was just like. I was. I almost threw my phone against the concrete that I was so upset that they intercepted you. We were this close.

John Dehlin [02:48:55] Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:48:56] Anyway, so she's like, I'm fine. I'm good. I'm gonna stay on the bus. They can't get me. I will just stay. She's like, I'll stay on the bus for all the rest of the stops. If I see them, I'm even getting off the bus. Like, I'm just gonna get there.

John Dehlin [02:49:09] Wow.

Claire Headley [02:49:09] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:49:09] And then.

John Dehlin [02:49:10] Did you ever get your McDonald's?

Claire Headley [02:49:12] No, I did not. No cheeseburger for me.

John Dehlin [02:49:17] Gosh.

Claire Headley [02:49:18] It's all right. I would. I had already been starving for months at that point. What was a few more hours, Right?

Marc Headley [02:49:24] So at that point, we know that they know where she's going. They know where I am. They have my phone number. They basically know the whole plan. But they. They didn't follow her in Vegas. Basically, like, we're good, because they're not gonna come.

Claire Headley [02:49:40] But your question about the cheeseburger reminded me that was another thing that they tried. They're like, okay, well, let's just talk about this. Let's go get a meal and realize I'm literally starving. And. And I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm good. I don't want to talk about it. I'm just gonna sit right here in the bus station.

John Dehlin [02:50:01] Yeah, but, you know, withholding food and sleep and water is a interrogation technique.

Marc Headley [02:50:07] It's another lever they can always pull if they need it.

Claire Headley [02:50:10] Yeah. Anyway, so we finally make it on the bus. Mark and I talk, and I. I tell them they threatened. They did threaten to follow me on the bus, but I don't think they're actually. It doesn't look like they're coming on the bus, but obviously I didn't know that for sure until we pulled out of the station. And so we agree, okay. Every single station from the rest of the distance, I'll just make sure there's nobody there. If there's nobody there, then I'll get off and call. But now, for sure, no more calls. Turn off the phone. It's done. You know, obviously, they know where I'm going. So there is, of course, already the chance that they'll try something more, but hopefully not. Anyway, a day and a half later, I think. So this was.

Marc Headley [02:50:59] Don't ever try to escape anywhere on a Greyhound. It's like. It's like a slow burn. I was literally. I had the timetables, and so for every few hours for the next day and a half, I would be, like, setting alarms so that I would be like, oh, she's about to get to the next place. Let's make sure she got to the next place. And it would literally, like, I want to say like every two or three hours it was a new place, a new place, a new place, a new place, a new place. From Vegas all the way to the downtown Kansas City bus station. And so a day and a half later, I. And this whole time.

Claire Headley [02:51:39] Oh yeah. So. So Monday, Monday afternoon, early afternoon is when I left Barstow. And I think I got there Tuesday night.

Marc Headley [02:51:45] That's right, yeah.

Claire Headley [02:51:46] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:51:47] So. But I tell my dad, my dad's there in Kansas City. He worked for IBM as a technician traveling, doing up Walmart upgrades and bank upgrades and just would replace all their computer systems. And I tell him, Claire's coming. And so he's like, really? And I'm like, yeah. Is that okay if she comes and stays here as well until we kind of figure out what? He's like, absolutely, no problem. And so I'm like, okay. And then in the. When the whole Greg Wilher thing came happened, I basically came storming in the house.

Marc Headley [02:52:19] And he's like, what happened? And I'm like, they got her. And he's like, what? And I'm like, they got her in Las Vegas. She got caught. And he's like, they tracked her all the way to Vegas. And they said yes. They just told me that she's on the way back.

Marc Headley [02:52:36] And I'm just like, oh my God. Anyway, so we. Then she calls and then I come back in and I'm like, she's on the bus. And so he's like, now what? I'm like, she's gonna get here tomorrow night. I gotta go pick. Can I borrow your car and go pick her up tomorrow night? He's like, absolutely.

Claire Headley [02:52:55] And I will. I will comment that it will was so. Everything about this situation was something I never imagined would ever be possible. And it was kind of funny because the stark difference of, you know, just interacting with people in the real world on a Greyhound bus was so starkly different from the life I had just escaped from. You know, the single mom with her little baby and this girl and d. And it's like. And I just. Just kept my head down, you know, like, I'm going to get there. And. Yeah. So the next. By the next night, I didn't sleep at all. I was just way too wired and didn't ever get my McDonald's cheeseburger, but still made it, made it through to that bus station. And there was Mark waiting for me.

John Dehlin [02:53:48] I want to see that hug.

Marc Headley [02:53:49] Oh my gosh. It was literally like. Like, it was. It was. I want to say One of the most, like, exhilarating moments of my life that it's been. I finally got out of there, and I've now. I've been sleeping, I've been eating, I've been working. I'm now fixing computers. I'm making $50 an hour just fixing people's personal computers. I'm making more in an hour than I was making in a week if we got paid. And people are nice and in the sea. Organization, they're. They indoctrinate you. That everybody in the outside world, they're drug addicts, they're criminals, they're prostitutes, they're degenerates.

Claire Headley [02:54:31] And not only that, but if we were to ever leave, we would completely fail and would be flipping burgers for the rest of our life. And the sad part is it got to the point where, first of all, I love making burgers. Second of all, fault, you know what? If I flip burgers for the rest of my life, that's gonna beat this mess completely. This is utter misery. But it's. It's funny because, yes, that was the best hug ever. But then it was like, okay, let's go to Denny's. I'm like, yeah, we need to talk. Like, what. What's up with leaving me behind? Like, I gotta clear the air on this for real.

Marc Headley [02:55:11] And I was sort of like, you're here, ain't you? Like, it all worked out perfectly.

Claire Headley [02:55:19] I was like, dude, but what, man? You couldn't even tell me? He's like, well, I. I tried, you know. I was like, yes, you did call me and ask me to come home. And, you know, and again, I. I have to be realistic that it was such a terrifying prospect that I don't know that I wouldn't have ratted him out about in that moment.

John Dehlin [02:55:39] Can I tell you just to kind of draw a parallel? I've met many, many, many Mormon couples who were married who both lost their faith but didn't tell the other and went years not believing, afraid to tell their spouse that they no longer believed.

Claire Headley [02:56:01] Yes, 100%. We've had families. These. We've had. We've had many people tell us they've done that exact same thing.

Marc Headley [02:56:08] We had a family that. The mother had read my book on Kindle. The father had bought the book and kept it a secret. And they. One of them found the Kindle and saw that they'd bought the book, and they were like, what the hell? And the wife was like, I read this book and that we got to get out. This place is crazy. And he was like. Like, I'm glad you told me. I read the book three months ago, and I'm trying to figure out how you told it. And then they were like, what are we going to do about the kids? They had teenagers and they.

Marc Headley [02:56:42] They told the kids, hey, listen, we're thinking about leaving Scientology. And the kids are like, we've been reading stuff on the Internet for years. We've been waiting for you guys to finally figure it out. And the whole family had decided that they didn't want to be in Scientology, but none of them could tell each other because they would think they would rat each other out.

John Dehlin [02:57:02] And it does. I'm just saying it doesn't have to be as severe as your situation. I'm reminded of this concept that I learned from. I think his name is Marty Seligman, but it's called learned helplessness. If you put a dog, and I'm going to get this wrong, but you put a dog and surround it with, like, an electric fence or whatever, you know, tries to leave, gets shocked, tries to leave, he gets shocked. Eventually you could take off the, you know, the collar and take the fence away and the dog stays there.

Claire Headley [02:57:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:57:32] So you don't have to ha. You don't have to put someone in prison to put shackles on their brain so they feel like they can't leave.

Claire Headley [02:57:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:57:43] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:57:43] And that is exactly. And that was one of the most interesting things to me when Lawrence wrote. Lawrence Wright wrote Going Clear.

John Dehlin [02:57:49] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:57:50] Because it's called Going Clear here. The Prison of Belief.

John Dehlin [02:57:53] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:57:54] That is the. The tagline for the book title. So that is a very, very apt description of Scientology.

John Dehlin [02:58:02] So what a gripping story. I was. Brooklyn and I were on our edge of our seats the whole time, so thank you for sharing. Have you ever told that story that fully and completely?

Marc Headley [02:58:14] No, we were.

Claire Headley [02:58:14] We were just talking about that. We've, you know, because as we've mentioned, we've done a lot of things, but we've never, like, sat down blow by blow, you know, and of course, there's a lot more details which I'm covering in my book, but we went into it in enough detail, and it's.

Marc Headley [02:58:31] It is legitimately covered in excruciating detail in my book. Pretty much everything.

John Dehlin [02:58:35] Yeah.

Marc Headley [02:58:36] We went to. And a little bit more, you know, but.

John Dehlin [02:58:39] Well, thank you for the honor of allowing us to make a audio visual record of that story. We're both vocal, could contribute, so that was powerful. Thank you.

Claire Headley [02:58:51] Yes.

High-Level Defections and Internal Consequences

John Dehlin [02:58:51] Okay, I want to pause on your story for just a second because were There any I want to ask about. I want to kind of go back in time to while you were still at Scientology, you know, headquarters. Do you remember any defections of high level. High level members and. Or celebrities while you were working at the headquarters? And do you want to talk about how the organization thought about or talked about or dealt with defectors who successfully made it out and then were starting to speak openly or had none of that happened yet, or do you not have any stories?

Claire Headley [02:59:36] Yeah, no, we do. I certainly do. Like, there had been a number of people. So Jan Sims is somebody who comes to mind. That's the lady who was very close friends with Shelly Miscavige. Jesse Prince is another person who had worked with Hubbard and had been in Religious Technology center in the 80s. But the story that was presented to us, first of all, there was very limited information and we would only ever be told, oh, this person's now an enemy. Never told what they're saying specifically. Never allowed access to see what they're saying. Just that they're suppressive now and therefore they're bad people. And, you know, it was very much information control of their. They've. They've escaped and their enemies and never to be seen or spoken of again type of approach. That's my answer.

Marc Headley [03:00:32] Yeah. And there were many times. There was one individual that I remember in particular. His name was Jeff Walker. Walker. And he was a very, very high level, technical trained Scientology executive who had actually worked with L. Ron Hubbard. And he had captain rank. And he. They have another thing that's called right arm rank, which means that he. Not only was he a captain, but he actually had right arm rank, which means he is a. A captain that can. That can captain an actual sea vessel.

John Dehlin [03:01:05] Vessel.

Marc Headley [03:01:05] And that he was trained on the Apollo by L. Ron Hubbard and he was what was called the senior case supervisor international. So he was in charge of all Scientology technology and training internationally. And he escaped and he was brought back. They did track him down and brought him back and he became the deputy deputy de Weeding. I see.

Marc Headley [03:01:33] So he was one of the top executives in Scientology. After escaping and brought back. He was in the grounds department of Golden Era Production Productions and his job was to pull weeds. But he. But David Miscavige wouldn't let it be at that. He was the deputy of a deputy of the D Weeders. So he wasn't even the top de Weider. He was the third string Dweeder.

Marc Headley [03:01:59] And that's the sort of thing that would happen if you did escape and you were Brought back. It was never, oh, you just go back to work. So when they were singing that song to me, I was like, oh, I was there for 15 years. There's. This has never happened in the history of the international headquarters where somebody escapes and then they just go back to work when they get back.

John Dehlin [03:02:21] And do you think he was abducted, or do you think he, like, believed them, that they were going to maybe treat him better when he decided to come back, or did he just miss it and, like, came back thinking he would be, you know, forgiven?

Marc Headley [03:02:36] I don't know the circum. Circumstances of his recovery, but he was a disgruntled person the entire time. When he. When he. Before he left, he wasn't the nicest guy in the world, but he was. He had status when he came back. He was just an angry. That had no status.

John Dehlin [03:02:56] I guess I'm wondering why he came back.

Marc Headley [03:02:58] I don't know.

Claire Headley [03:02:58] I think it had to do with his wife and family.

Marc Headley [03:03:01] That is true. He did have a wife named sue that worked at the property and when. Even when he was in grounds.

Claire Headley [03:03:08] And a daughter.

Marc Headley [03:03:10] Oh, I didn't know about the daughter.

Claire Headley [03:03:11] Sherry.

Marc Headley [03:03:12] Sherry who? Morehead is Jeff Walker's daughter.

Claire Headley [03:03:16] Well, Sue's daughter. I don't know for sure that they're the same parents, but I do not know this.

Marc Headley [03:03:20] It.

Claire Headley [03:03:21] That. That's why I'm saying it's. It's control and leverage. Like, you know, even Mike Rinder has talked about that he stayed years beyond or several years beyond what he would have otherwise done in hopes of saving his wife and his daughter. You know, you. I mean, you talked about that too, that you stayed.

Marc Headley [03:03:40] Well, yeah, I stayed because of you. And. But either way, I don't know, I

John Dehlin [03:03:44] just say a parallel, like. Yeah, so many Mormons stay because they don't want to leave their spouse or children behind and hide or lie. We call it pmo. Physically and mentally out.

Marc Headley [03:03:55] Yeah. In Scientology, they call that under the radar. So you're not in Scientology, but you fly below the radar if you're doing anything that's not supposed to be done so that you don't pop up and they've. They know about it and then.

Claire Headley [03:04:09] And then cut you off from your family. There. There are so many people that reach out to our US that are like that. They're like, you know, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. But I'm under the radar because I don't want to lose my children, which, of course, who wants to lose their children, you know?

John Dehlin [03:04:25] Yeah. And you Know again, that sort of dynamic still exists even when people aren't in prison, you know what I mean? Because they, sure, there's physically, you know, incarcerating you or your family and then there's mentally mental chains incarcerating you or your family.

Marc Headley [03:04:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:43] And if you can, you want to escape with your family, sometimes you, you stay in.

Marc Headley [03:04:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:49] Awesome. Yes. Often.

Claire Headley [03:04:50] Yes.

Marc Headley [03:04:51] And, and I want to say for the 15 years that I worked at the headquarters, I would say at least 100 people escaped. And there was a large percentage of those people that you wouldn't see them for a while and then even sometimes they'd get brought back, but they'd be segregated. There was an area of the property called, called Old Gilman House. The, the man who used to run Old Gilman, who used to run the hot springs of Gilman Hot Springs, he had a house on the property and they turned that house into what was called isolation. So if you were sick or if you were under security watch, you would stay there because that's where all of the security force lived.

Marc Headley [03:05:30] So you would basically be in a room with all of the off duty security guards sleeping in their room with them. Them. So if you get up, they're going to be like, hey, where you going?

John Dehlin [03:05:40] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:05:41] And I slept in that room with them many a time.

Claire Headley [03:05:44] In some cases, if they had a high value target who was trying to escape, like an executive or someone who knew had information, they would even put them in a room and have a security guard sleep right outside the room so they couldn't even physically get out if they tried.

John Dehlin [03:05:59] Yeah, yeah, okay. And that's fascinating and dark and terrible. It should be illegal. This organization should be defunct. But anyway, yes, I digress.

Marc Headley [03:06:14] So we're with you on that.

John Dehlin [03:06:16] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:06:16] We share your sentiment now.

John Dehlin [03:06:18] This is beyond anything this is, this should invalidate this behavior and this history should invalidate. In a sane world, this organization is extinguished.

Claire Headley [03:06:30] Yeah, exactly.

Marc Headley [03:06:31] It's. To me, when I got it out into the real world and I started telling my story, that was the general response. Every time I would say something like, wait a minute, they opened your mail. Oh yeah, wait a minute, you had to call your family with someone on the, on the phone. Every single thing is like, that's so super illegal.

John Dehlin [03:06:51] But instead they're given tax breaks which allows them to grow at a faster rate than a normal business and they're given religious protections where they don't have to be transparent in their finances. And they are basically above the, the reach of law enforcement, judges or police that's right.

Marc Headley [03:07:09] The people outside of Scientology are subsidizing Scientology. Your tax.

John Dehlin [03:07:15] Yes.

Marc Headley [03:07:15] You're paying for this.

John Dehlin [03:07:16] You're welcome. You're welcome.

Claire Headley [03:07:19] Okay, so.

John Dehlin [03:07:21] So trying to dig a little deeper with the original question. Like, there's Leah Remini, there's Mike Rinder, you know, Chris Shelton, well known oppositional apostates, subversive people that have left. Did all them leave after y' all left?

Marc Headley [03:07:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:07:40] So none of the really high profile. Go on, go on. TV junkets, publish a memoir. When did going clear. Lawrence Wright's going clear. Come on out.

Claire Headley [03:07:50] Approximately 2014, I want to say.

John Dehlin [03:07:53] Oh, so that's 10 years after. Yeah, tennis. Years after y' all left. Okay.

Claire Headley [03:07:57] Marty Rathbin had got out somewhere around when we got out.

Marc Headley [03:08:02] He got out a few months. He got out. I think you want to say he left in September, but I've never heard of him.

John Dehlin [03:08:06] So if I've never heard of him. I mean, I don't remember.

Claire Headley [03:08:08] He was on. He was ongoing clear. He's. He's. Was a top executive who was in speaking out. But then they. They got him back in.

John Dehlin [03:08:17] But I, you know, I didn't read the book. I saw the documentary.

Claire Headley [03:08:19] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [03:08:20] Which comes out years after the book.

Marc Headley [03:08:22] Right. And that was nearly a decade after we had escaped. So up until we escaped, as far as I know, up until we escaped and I wrote my book in 2009, there had never been another person. There had been other Scientologists who'd written books, but there had never been a Sea Org member, and especially from the international headquarters that had left and written about it and released this information into the wild. The only person that ever did who really did sort of inspire me to speak out was the gentleman that she mentioned earlier, Jesse Prince. When he left, he joined forces with some very influential and wealthy suppressives who were suing Scientology and Clearwater, and he joined their ranks.

Marc Headley [03:09:12] But before that, he had even posted on the Internet. It is impossible for them to fine you for violating your NDA on telling anything that was illegal that happened. An NDA can't. An NDA cannot protect them from you going to law enforcement about illegal activities. The end. That's a loophole in the NDA. So I knew as long as I was talking about and telling about the illegal things that happened and the human trafficking and the abuse, there's nothing they can do. They can't. We signed NDAs when we were there that said any confidential information or operational information, $50,000 for every instance. Well, we've given about A thousand instances, and nothing has ever happened.

John Dehlin [03:10:01] And that's all the Mormon Church now does make its employees sign NDAs, and. Or it holds their pensions in the minds of the employees or retirees holds pensions hostage, where people who leave the church's employee and are retired are worried that if they speak up, their. Their retirements will be taken away.

Marc Headley [03:10:24] Possibly illegal.

John Dehlin [03:10:25] Right. Oh, no, I know. And also. And. Or they're what, did I sign an NDA? What could the church come after me for? So this is relevant in a Mormon

Claire Headley [03:10:33] context as well, for sure.

Marc Headley [03:10:34] And also in the Scientology context. We never get copies of any agreements or paperwork we signed. We're never. We don't have a lawyer to review it. We. And all of the time, it's just everybody has to sign this, and you just go to the legal office, and they say, where's my thing? And they go, oh, it's already ready for you. That you sign your name and you walk out. You don't even read this.

Scientology's Influence on Law Enforcement and Politics

John Dehlin [03:10:54] Okay, so y' all weren't able to really see the Leah Remini, Mike Rinder going clear, kind of in real time. Like, I'm just imagining the room when Lawrence Wright publishes going clear. And you would have been in the room, Claire, with. With David and Shelley Miscavige, maybe when the book comes out, and what. What bricks he might have passed, so to speak.

Claire Headley [03:11:20] Right. Completely.

Marc Headley [03:11:22] The only thing that we knew was that there was a big legal case in Florida, legal stuff, for this woman, Lisa McPherson, who died in their Clearwater facility. And then they brought her to a hospital, and instead of.

Claire Headley [03:11:35] After she'd been held there for 17 days and deprived of food and nutrition and.

Marc Headley [03:11:41] And she wasn't a Sea Org member. She was a paying Scientologist who went psychotic. And then she became a liability, and so they locked her up, and they did this program, which is called the Introspection Rundown, which doesn't allow anybody to speak with her or for her to have any physical contact or verbal contact with anybody until she unwinds from the state that she's in. And she eventually fell ill, and she passed away. And instead of taking to the hospital when she was almost dead, that was right next to where they were. They drove her to a further away hospital where a Scientology doctor worked.

Marc Headley [03:12:21] And by the time she got there, she had. She had passed. So there was a lawsuit involving that. And. And David Miscavige was embroiled in that for many, many years. And he let everybody know. Know that this was our fault. And the whole reason this is Happening is because people are doing stupid. Even though behind the scenes, he was the one who was personally recommending what this individual woman was doing, and his actions were essentially what. What did her in.

John Dehlin [03:12:51] So I have bad news for you guys.

Claire Headley [03:12:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:12:54] Like, I'm thinking about Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which was where, you know, a bunch of Mormons in southern Utah massacred over 100 men, women and children who were just pioneers traveling through to go to California from Arkansas. Right. Big scandal. Brigham Young, I'm sure it was a huge headache. Their investigations.

John Dehlin [03:13:15] Once an organization becomes rich and powerful enough, they become number one, more and more able to escape any liability. Because by the time you have good enough lawyers and enough money, anytime you're sued, you either win or you just settle. Pay them off and silence them. So the legal channels have less and less of a. Of a potential to really impact you. And then once you get in enough trouble, you start cleaning up your act. Like Mormons, getting rid of their polygamy over time took them a long time, took them decades or half a century, depending on how you're counting. But eventually the Mormons got rid of the polygamy, didn't commit any more massacres that we know of.

John Dehlin [03:14:04] Right. And slowly assimilated and became, you know, Mormons are now the Osmonds and Steve Young and David Archuleta, you know, like secret lies, whatever. And all of a sudden the image gets better, the behavior cleans up. Up. And the, the sleight of hand the church does is it gets fabulously wealthy in the meantime, and then you just add $3 billion growing at 7% a year, and, you know, in a hundred years, Scientology is a trillion dollar church with very few members.

Claire Headley [03:14:38] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:14:38] And.

John Dehlin [03:14:39] Right. So I don't mean to be sad, but that's. No, that's how these things are working.

Claire Headley [03:14:43] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:14:43] That's how we've.

Claire Headley [03:14:44] The issue is that Scientology is not cleaning up their actual act. They're still pursuing critics or anyone exposing their abuses. Whistleblowers like us using their tax exempt dollars with hate websites. Their practice of fair game is alive and well. So they're not cleaning up their.

John Dehlin [03:15:04] But remember, and I, this is just two, three nerds. Sherry. Yes. Like the Mormon Church denounced polygamy in 1890, said, we're not doing it anymore. Federal government, world, all the membership, no more polygamy. We want to become a state and we want you to stop putting us in jail. Guess what? Can you guess?

Claire Headley [03:15:25] They kept doing it for another 30 years.

John Dehlin [03:15:27] They were secretly practicing polygamy, getting Caught getting their hands slapped. They issued two manifestos and there was actually almost like a third quasi manifesto. And it took 30 years, but eventually. Two steps forward, one step back, two step forwards, one step back. They just realized we can make all this money and we can have way better PR if we just stop doing stupid shit.

Marc Headley [03:15:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:15:54] And just quietly invest that money and grow. Grow the money.

Claire Headley [03:15:58] And that's a fair point. Except that their practice of get fair game, though, they canceled it in I think the 70s.

Marc Headley [03:16:03] Well, they canceled the issue.

Claire Headley [03:16:05] The one issue.

Marc Headley [03:16:06] Yes, says we do fair game. This is said the issue has been canceled. But within the thing that canceled it, they say this does not change the way we treat suppressive persons. We're just canceling the issue because it's bad PR to have an issue.

Claire Headley [03:16:24] The practice of fair game is a whole body of work.

John Dehlin [03:16:28] And guess what? Several Mormons, prophet seers and revelators, five, six, seven of them all said said polygamy is eternal doctrine. It will never be taken from the earth and you can't even be exalted without it. So just trust me. Things that are written as scripture, known by the entire membership, is like unchangeable. Guess what?

Claire Headley [03:16:50] It changed.

John Dehlin [03:16:50] They can change. You know, once. Maybe not. Maybe David Miscavige will. Will totally run the whole organization into the ground.

Claire Headley [03:16:59] Yeah. Hopefully he does. Does.

John Dehlin [03:17:02] I know. I don't mean to take your hope away.

Marc Headley [03:17:03] We're bank. We're banking on that. He's already on the rocks and we're just waiting for everybody to get.

John Dehlin [03:17:08] We'll see.

Claire Headley [03:17:09] We'll see.

John Dehlin [03:17:09] Life is long. Okay, let me. Let me go kind of in a. In a slightly different direction. So. Okay. You told a really fascinating story yesterday at dinner about how Scientology keeps judges and policemen in their pockets.

Marc Headley [03:17:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:17:32] And. And the whole. It's almost like the California legal system in 2025 has been bent to protect Scientology.

Marc Headley [03:17:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:17:42] Do you guys care that? Because that is a mind blowing.

Claire Headley [03:17:45] Yeah, it's absolutely should be talked about because it's. It is a pattern. We discussed that. So our lawsuit we filed in 2009 and it included labor law violations, forced abortion, human trafficking, etc. The big law firm that was representing Scientology in that lawsuit was Proscour Rose, I think it was called. And Mark Marmaro specifically was Religious Technology Center's attorney. He did my depositions. And. Representing Scientology, representing Scientology.

Marc Headley [03:18:24] And David Miscavige, representing Religious Technology Center. Scientology is made up of multiple corporations. So I worked for csi, Church of Scientology International and the. The DBA as Golden era. Production.

John Dehlin [03:18:39] And that's all liability management. Risk management.

Claire Headley [03:18:42] Exactly, yeah. Very complex cutouts. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so the attorney that did my deposition, within months after that, he became a Supreme Court judge for the state of California. And recently Leah Remini put out an article on her sub stack outlining that. Another attorney, more recently, I can't remember his name, William Foreman. Yeah, William Foreman, who was involved in multiple Scientology cases, is now a judge as well.

John Dehlin [03:19:17] And so there's, you know, correlation is not always causation. It could be that they're moving for Scientology, help them become Supreme Court justices. It could be Scientology pays for the best possible lawyers who inevitably are going to become Supreme Court justices.

Marc Headley [03:19:31] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:19:32] So I don't know if you're trying to suggest one or the other, but it kind of. Maybe it doesn't matter because they get a Scientology friendly justice at some point in the Supreme Court of California.

Claire Headley [03:19:42] It really just illustrates their. Their intent and strategy to have connections and influential people. Of course, technically that that judge then can't rule in any Scientology case. So I don't. It's. Whatever the. The outcome is, it's more than just a coincidence, is really the sole sum up of the point.

Marc Headley [03:20:08] And in terms of the Clearwater Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department, we had mentioned in the. The last video that they hold these conventions every year. They have seven of these. Many of them take place in Los Angeles or Clearwater, and whenever they do that, they close off all the streets around their events. So protesters are not allowed to get close to the event. And in order to enforce that, they hire off duty police officers in uniform. And in Los Angeles, they bring their motorcycles and they're in uniform, but they're there as security for Scientology. Even though they're in uniform, LAPD uniform, they're not on the clock. They're doing security.

John Dehlin [03:20:53] How can they wear their official uniform while they're getting privately paid?

Marc Headley [03:20:57] Because the way it works is in Los Angeles, when you have a film shoot, if you have. If you have a non profit corporation, you can pull a permit, permit for a sidewalk walk and talk, or shut down a lane or any of this, the only fee is to. If you shut down a lane, you have to just pay a cone company to drop off some barricades and some cones. But if you're just closing off all the sidewalks, all you need is a police officer. And so as part of the permit process, you can say how many police officers you want as part of your filming permit.

Marc Headley [03:21:32] So whenever they have one of these events. Events, they Pull a filming permit. They block off all the streets and the intersections so protesters can't get in. But you're talking about. For a Los Angeles event, you could have anywhere from 15 to 25 LAPD officers that are getting paid 75 an hour. That's just right to them. It's not going through anybody. It's going straight into their pocket. And they're there for two days, all day.

Claire Headley [03:21:58] Yeah. Shifts.

Marc Headley [03:21:59] They're running. They keep. They're running them in shifts.

John Dehlin [03:22:01] That's a grand, let's just say.

Marc Headley [03:22:03] And let's say you network and let's say you have seven of those a year. That's a sizable amount of seven grand.

Claire Headley [03:22:09] Yeah. But concurrent to that, they're also Scientology making significant donations to LAPD, associated foundations for $25,000 here and $50,000 here. And so. And even we. We know somebody who even raised objection to one of their foundations accepting a $25,000 donation. And that was overruled. The objection was overruled. So, you know, they use their money to influence people. However that pans out and comes to. To be. That is what's going on. And it's a very intentional strategy.

John Dehlin [03:22:51] No, seriously going clear. I'm sorry. I just watched Breaking Bad, and the gangster warlord Gustavo Fring was best friends, you know, donating all the time to the police department, to the Federation of police Officers, whatever.

Marc Headley [03:23:06] They're his chicken restaurant.

John Dehlin [03:23:08] Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Marc Headley [03:23:12] Yeah. No, it's not. It's not far from the truth of. It's not far from reality, what actually goes on behind the scenes.

John Dehlin [03:23:20] And. And so. So then, you know, connect the dots for us. So then, you know, someone's trying to escape, they call the police, the police show up. How does potentially that money, those donations, those security, you know, how does that affect law enforcement?

Marc Headley [03:23:40] Yeah, well, you know, there was one other thing that I just remembered when you were saying that, which is when I was on the night shift for many years at the ant base, or if I just happened to be there in the middle of the night or very, very early in the morning, warning, many times the chp, California Highway Patrol, or local PD would be parked in front of the int base in front of the security booth, and the security guards had bought dozens of donuts, and they would. When they would come by, they would see. They would stop there, and the security guards and the police would hang out and eat donuts right in front of the base.

Marc Headley [03:24:17] So you also don't know. Know if you try to escape and the police get called if it's that guy, if it's Donut Dave who shows up to the call, you don't know that he's going to be like, let me give you a ride into town. And he's just going to take you right back to the property. You don't know, because mobs.

John Dehlin [03:24:34] This is like Godfather, New York Police Department mob stuff.

Marc Headley [03:24:37] Yeah. And also Golden Era Productions, they had a golf course, which is called the Golden Era Golf Course, right next to the property. And every year, several times a year, they do fundraisers for San Jacinto or Hemet or the police department. And they would. They would basically donate the golf course for their event. And then they'd invite any celebrities that Scientology could throw in. They'd throw them some money. So it's called in Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard calls it safe, pointing to basically lock up all of your local politicians and city council. The other thing, which is kind of crazy, which is whenever there was a local election, we would.

Marc Headley [03:25:19] There's 800 people there. There are foreign nationals, but there's several hundred voters on that one single property, one address that has several hundred voters. If you're talking about a Hemet election or a Riverside county election or a San Jacinto election, and you've got 100 votes or 300 votes. Votes, that's a win or lose on a town council pres. Member or whatever, the Riverside County Commissioner office or whatever is happening. Police chief.

Marc Headley [03:25:54] So they. We would get printed list and it would say, this candidate is for psychiatry. So that means that's code for you ain't voting for him. And they'd have a whole list of all the candidates. And you get basically a voter cheat sheet. And it would say, this guy's for Scientology. This guy's for Scientology or psychiatry. This guy likes Scientology education programs. So then you go, that's my guy. So you. And we were all. This is the. This is the crazy.

Claire Headley [03:26:27] I was. I was still a foreign national, so I didn't get to vote, but that's how I personally know they hold foreign nationals passports. Because they had mine in Locker Europe.

Marc Headley [03:26:38] Yeah, but. But when they would have the elections.

John Dehlin [03:26:41] And Mormon mission presidents hold the passports of the missionaries when they're in foreign countries.

Marc Headley [03:26:47] Wow.

Claire Headley [03:26:48] So it's a very. That's the same. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:26:51] They're not for missionary.

Claire Headley [03:26:52] For a missionary. Yeah. No, I get it.

Marc Headley [03:26:54] All Sea Org members that travel, that have passports, the legal director has everyone's passports. Unless you're getting on a plane, going to another country, you don't have your Their passport.

John Dehlin [03:27:04] And the church would say they do it because missionaries might. They might get stolen, they might get lost.

Marc Headley [03:27:08] Same exact thing.

John Dehlin [03:27:09] But also, if they want to leave, it just.

Claire Headley [03:27:13] Yeah, they do the same thing in Scientology. It's a legal rudiment that they need to have all the. Every. All the documents in the files. But yet, fact is, if said person needs their passport to get out of there, they're not going to be able to get. Get it.

John Dehlin [03:27:29] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:27:29] Yeah. The last thing I wanted to say about the voter thing is that the voting booth for the town was in the lobby of Golden Era Productions. They set it up so people would drive onto the property that lived in the zip code or whatever and vote there.

John Dehlin [03:27:48] Wow.

Marc Headley [03:27:49] But then that guaranteed that all of the voters on that property would be able to vote in that election. And the city council or whoever knows, oh, if I get these guys, I just locked up all those votes because it's on their property. They're going to make their people vote there. So.

Claire Headley [03:28:06] And, of course, if the voting booth is not on that property, there's no way those 400 staff who don't have cars or any other means of voting are going to be voting.

John Dehlin [03:28:16] So, yeah, two things. In 2025, I mean, all of that is the way Scientology got around the prior law that religions couldn't tell their members how to vote. In 2025, that's been lifted.

Marc Headley [03:28:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:32] And in 2025, it's now permissible for religions to tell their members how to vote.

Marc Headley [03:28:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:38] So they don't even have to.

Marc Headley [03:28:41] They don't have to play around. They just do whatever they want.

John Dehlin [03:28:44] Welcome to 2025.

Claire Headley [03:28:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:47] Okay. The other thing I was going to say is, again, parallel. Joseph Smith got into huge trouble in both Missouri and Illinois because he was using the large concentration of Mormons to negotiate with different political parties to try and extort them, basically, to give his people favors and benefits. And he crossed too many politicians and too many parties too many times. And they say that was part of what contributed to his ultimate death. Death was he just played that card once too often and pissed off. Ended up pissing off both sides.

Claire Headley [03:29:24] Makes sense. Scientology absolutely does the same thing. They were using David Miscavige, was using Tom Cruise to wield influence with the Department of Education to allow L. Ron Hubbard's study technology into multiple schools.

Marc Headley [03:29:39] The other thing I want to say is that When Scientology gained IRS tax exemption in 1993, Bill Clinton wrote a letter of support, and it was displayed on all of the screens at the event. It was at The Los Angeles Sports Arena. Rest in peace sports arena that played on all the screens. And it was like, well, thank. Thank you for all your contributions to helping society. We're so proud that you finally have your exemption. And da, da, da, da. Bill Clinton. And you're just like, wow. And they. They play. They play. It doesn't matter if you're blue or red. If you can help Scientology, we'll figure out how to. To put you to use.

Claire Headley [03:30:23] So I will say, I love you, David.

Marc Headley [03:30:25] Yeah, I love you, David, but I have to. Let me tell the other Bill Clinton story.

Claire Headley [03:30:29] Oh, okay. Then don't let me forget to.

John Dehlin [03:30:30] No, go ahead. We'll go back and forth.

Claire Headley [03:30:32] Yeah. So. So relevant though, because just because Bill Clinton gave that letter does not mean he knows of. Knows that it was in support of Scientology. For example, earlier this year, there was a situation where a. A city in Colorado had declared May 9 as Dianetics Day, which is a Scientology day. And we were alerted to this by some friends of ours. So we scheduled a meeting with the mayor of that city to educate him on this abusive organization known as Scientology. And he. And he was very willing to sit down with us and explain to us that the way the information was presented, he had no idea that this was in support of Scientology. And they. They immediately revoked it.

John Dehlin [03:31:18] So Clinton could have been fooled, you're saying?

Claire Headley [03:31:20] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:31:21] Or it could have been lower level staff that.

Marc Headley [03:31:23] Yeah. Or however that came about. The only reason I told that was so I could tell this other thing, which was Oprah had a birthday party. Oprah Winfrey had a birthday party. Well, everybody knows she is a. A big lover of a John Travolta and a Tom Cruise couch jump. And so.

John Dehlin [03:31:40] And Elvis Presley, you know.

Marc Headley [03:31:42] Yeah, yeah. But David Miscavige got to go to her birthday party because of the connection through Dave and through John Travolta and Tom Cruise, who. I don't know if Tom was there, but I do know that John Travolta was there, but Missy Elliott. There was a laundry list of celebrities that were at this thing, one of which was Bill Clinton. He went to this birthday party, and it was widely kind of going around the Sea Org whisper web that David Miscavige met Bill Clinton at this birthday party.

Claire Headley [03:32:13] And this was like 2004, right?

Marc Headley [03:32:15] 2003.

Claire Headley [03:32:16] 2004. Just for context.

Marc Headley [03:32:19] Anyway, a Sea Org member was in an elevator with David Miscavige, and he's. And this is David Miscavige telling this story. Story goes. Yeah. This guy asked me, is it True. You met Bill Clinton. And David Miscavige goes, no, that's not what happened. Bill Clinton met me. That's David Miscavige in a nutshell.

John Dehlin [03:32:42] Yeah. And another. And just because it's fun. Another reason why the Mormon Church is 100x, you know, Scientology is because we're not just dealing in county or city or state elections. Like, we own a state.

Marc Headley [03:32:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:00] We have a theocracy in Utah.

Marc Headley [03:33:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:03] And we also have heavy, heavy control and influence over Arizona and Idaho. And we have a pretty significant influence over California, believe it or not. A lot of wealthy donors and members, but also influential attorneys and judges, movers and shakers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And it's. It's a different thing. You know how, like, this is going to be a terrible analogy. People are going to get really mad at me. But you know how, like, Al Qaeda was able to do a lot more once they had Afghanistan kind of under their control.

John Dehlin [03:33:35] If you have an entire US State under your control, which means you have two senators completely under your thumb, four US Congressmen completely under your thumb. They even had the Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid, you know, from Nevada, was the Senate majority leader for what, a decade? I don't know. Like, that's one big difference between why the Mormon Church out in some ways out Colts Scientology. I mean, there's so many ways where y' all out cult us, and I'll admit that. But we out cool you because. Because we're a nicer organization.

John Dehlin [03:34:16] You said it, not me. Because we're a nicer cult. We can have Mitt Romney as the nominee for the Republican Party for president. We can have Harry Reid as a Senate Majority leader for the United States Senate. We can have entire senators and congressmen who, because we're a little bit nicer, we. They'll get voted into office.

Claire Headley [03:34:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:34:39] And we control the state. State. And have heavy influence in several other states.

Marc Headley [03:34:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:34:43] And that's something Miscavige hasn't figured out how to do. Well.

Claire Headley [03:34:47] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:34:47] I'm gonna. I'm gonna break your heart a little. Now, they have just recently, within the past decade that I told you about Bob Duggan, this billionaire guy. Well, he divorced his wife, and I suspect that he may be sort of straying from Scientology. That kind of is the impression that I get. But his wife is all in, and she's on the board of the new JFK Center. She is one of the biggest donors to.

John Dehlin [03:35:18] What's the JFK Center?

Marc Headley [03:35:19] It's the.

Claire Headley [03:35:20] The Place Center.

Marc Headley [03:35:22] No, no. And it's in Washington, D.C. yeah.

Claire Headley [03:35:25] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:35:26] The Kennedy Center.

John Dehlin [03:35:27] Oh, the entertainment.

Marc Headley [03:35:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:35:28] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:35:29] She's on the new board of the new Kennedy center that's been appointed by the new president.

John Dehlin [03:35:33] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:35:33] And she is also one. One of the largest donors to the current sitting president's campaign. So. And he's. And he acknowledged her on stage at. At major events, and maybe even when he won, he acknowledged her life.

John Dehlin [03:35:49] Yeah. And let's be clear. We're not saying, because we mentioned Bill Clinton, that Democrats and Scientology are in bed, and we're not saying, because we just kind of indirectly mentioned Trump, that Republicans in Scientology are bad.

Marc Headley [03:36:01] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:36:02] Right. What you learn. What I learned from Enron, is that wealthy corporations donate to both parties.

Marc Headley [03:36:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:36:09] And they gain influence and control over both. Both parties.

Claire Headley [03:36:12] And it's about influence and control, not about one party or the other.

John Dehlin [03:36:18] No.

Marc Headley [03:36:19] Yeah, exactly.

Claire Headley [03:36:19] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:36:20] The other thing is that Pam Bondi has done events at Scientology's facility in Clearwater.

John Dehlin [03:36:27] Wow.

Marc Headley [03:36:28] That's the current Attorney General.

Claire Headley [03:36:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:36:31] Okay.

Claire Headley [03:36:31] Attorney General.

Marc Headley [03:36:32] So she's done. She has done events with them when she was the. I think I want to say she was the AG for Florida, and she. She. They became very cozy with her over the past decade. And so they have people.

John Dehlin [03:36:47] Where.

Marc Headley [03:36:47] They have people. They're. They're working it. They. Like I said.

John Dehlin [03:36:50] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:36:51] David Miscavige is fascinated with how the Mormons are doing it. So everything they're doing, he's trying to do.

John Dehlin [03:36:57] He's just, like, a hundred years behind.

Marc Headley [03:36:59] Yeah, basically.

Claire Headley [03:37:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:37:01] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:37:01] Anyway, they. They're working it, and they. They are a bipartisan cult. They don't care who's doing what. They're gonna try to. And. And also, David Miscavige is also trying to play the long game more and more. So this Pam Bondi thing, it really worked out for them because they brought her in years and years ago, and it just so happened that everything lined up, and now she's basically the main cop that's gonna. If they're gonna get lit up, she's gonna have to sign off on it. And they got her where they might have helped her to get to where she's at along the way.

John Dehlin [03:37:37] And if there are FBI investigations or, you know, DOJ or IRS investigations, once you're in the Cabinet, you might have influence.

Marc Headley [03:37:47] Yeah. Which we should mention that for many years, from 2010, for a few years, we were both. Claire and I, we were confidential informants for the FBI, and we saw drone footage of Scientology properties. We had multiple. Multiple hours and hours and Hours of meeting with agents. And even those agents told us, do not call our office. Do not talk to anybody else. Do not speak to anyone in the FBI besides us.

John Dehlin [03:38:23] Meaning maybe they had been infiltrated.

Marc Headley [03:38:26] They knew they had people they told.

Claire Headley [03:38:29] They were absolutely worried that the word was going to get out on that investigation.

Marc Headley [03:38:35] And it did.

Claire Headley [03:38:35] It did.

John Dehlin [03:38:37] And can I blow your mind one more time?

Claire Headley [03:38:38] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:38:39] The Mormon Church doesn't have to infiltrate the CIA or the State Department or the FBI, because this is what Mormons tell each other. Because Mormon missionaries learn to obey, learn discipline, don't drink, don't smoke, don't sleep around. They're heavily recruited into the CIA, the FBI.

Claire Headley [03:39:01] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [03:39:02] And the State Department. Mormon.

Claire Headley [03:39:03] Wow.

John Dehlin [03:39:03] So they don't have to, like, proactively plan to infiltrate.

Claire Headley [03:39:07] They just do.

John Dehlin [03:39:08] They are recruited because they're Mormon.

Claire Headley [03:39:11] That's mind boggling.

John Dehlin [03:39:12] Wild. That's true.

Claire Headley [03:39:13] Yeah. See, Scientology's missionaries are recruited into the SEA Organization, not into the FBI or the CIA, because. And again, goes back to L. Ron Hubbard's paranoia, actually. If you've worked for. If you've had high security clearance or worked for a government organization, it's a disqualification for the SEA Organization.

John Dehlin [03:39:34] Yeah, yeah. No.

Marc Headley [03:39:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's wild. I mean, we could. I don't even know how much we have left. But.

John Dehlin [03:39:42] No, I. I've got questions.

Marc Headley [03:39:43] Okay, good.

Claire Headley [03:39:44] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:39:44] Go for it. If y' all are all right.

Claire Headley [03:39:47] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:39:48] Okay. Okay.

Claire Headley [03:39:48] Of course.

John Dehlin [03:39:49] So y' all both leave. You both get out. Congratulations. It sounds like that wasn't the. Yeah. Fist bump. Sounds like that wasn't the end. Do you want to talk briefly about the extent to which they tracked. You mentioned this at dinner yesterday. Is that. I mean, we. Here are the things we can talk about. There's the lawsuit you guys sued them about. There's the. The one where you sued them. There's the. The abuser guy lawsuit that y' all were involved with as witnesses.

Claire Headley [03:40:19] Oh, Danny Masterson.

John Dehlin [03:40:21] That's something we could talk about.

Marc Headley [03:40:22] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [03:40:23] Also the harassment that you received, the surveillance and the harassment after you left. I. I totally want to talk about that.

Marc Headley [03:40:30] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:40:31] And then also there's the. The foundation.

Claire Headley [03:40:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:40:34] And the work you're doing to help other people. So we've got. I mean, you'll have to go to the airport. We've got about 45 minutes total.

Claire Headley [03:40:40] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:40:41] Help me manage the time so we cover at least all that and anything else y' all want to cover.

Claire Headley [03:40:45] Yes, absolutely. Well, I. So let's start on speaking out and the. The fair game and attacks.

Speaking Out and Facing Fair Game Harassment

John Dehlin [03:40:53] Fair gaming.

Claire Headley [03:40:53] Yeah, fair game.

John Dehlin [03:40:54] Okay.

Claire Headley [03:40:55] Mark started posting on the Internet within a year. Yeah, within a year of our escape. And. And factor in, you know, of course, yes, we made it out. That was the first day of the rest of our lives. The first day. Our first days of freedom and everything else. Our focus was on getting on our feet, getting a place to live, getting clothes, getting all those things, Getting a job. So, yeah, jobs.

John Dehlin [03:41:18] Eating a cheeseburger.

Marc Headley [03:41:21] Those cheeseburgers.

Claire Headley [03:41:23] In fact, the first job I got was three days after that escape. And we. We always tell this very quickly, but I went in for the job interview. Mark was waiting outside. It was as a waitress at a pizza restaurant. Like, whatever. I'll do anything. And so I go in, they interview me. They say, great, you can start on Monday. I go back out to the car. I'm like, I got the job. And Mark says, amazing. That's great. How much are they going to pay you? And I'm like, I forgot to ask.

John Dehlin [03:41:53] It didn't matter.

Claire Headley [03:41:54] It did not matter at all. It did not matter. Anyhow, so Mark starts posting on the Internet. I was trepidatious. I didn't even know in the beginning. But I quickly, you know, we. He was like. And I said, well, you know, we each have to do our. Have our path to recovery in this, so if you feel you need to do that, it's okay. I was terrified, having grown up in

Marc Headley [03:42:18] it, posting on the Internet Internet under a pseudonym. So I wasn't using my real name. I was going to try to kind of keep. Keep it going as long as I could before they knew who it was. And so I posted under the name Blown for good.

John Dehlin [03:42:33] Okay.

Marc Headley [03:42:34] And that is where that came from. That was just my handle on the ex. Scientology forum.

John Dehlin [03:42:39] Nice.

Claire Headley [03:42:40] Blown for good. AKA bfg.

John Dehlin [03:42:42] Yes.

Claire Headley [03:42:42] Not to be confused with Big Friendly Giant.

John Dehlin [03:42:45] Yeah, freaking giant. That's a rolled doll book, right?

Claire Headley [03:42:48] Yes.

Marc Headley [03:42:49] It's also a gun in the game Doom. And it is a big effing gun.

Claire Headley [03:42:55] Yes. So. So originally, we were in Kansas City, and. But very quickly, within. Within four or five months. You should tell this part.

Marc Headley [03:43:08] Yeah. Within a few months of leaving, I started to look up other members that I knew on the Internet who had left. And I reached out to one or two different people, and I didn't hear anything. And then after maybe a month or so, I got an email from somebody, and they basically said, hey, you're out. And I was like, yeah. And they had told me that this individual had Left and he went to visit his family in Las Vegas and He gained like 400 pounds and he was doing drugs and hiring hookers and all these things.

Claire Headley [03:43:47] So just like they would tell us of any members who got out and were able to escape.

John Dehlin [03:43:53] It's the abuse. It's the abuser's technique of saying, you're nothing without me. You won't survive without me.

Claire Headley [03:43:58] Yes.

Marc Headley [03:43:59] So the only stories we would hear of people that did escape is how they basically failed in a miserable and they're degenerate criminal.

John Dehlin [03:44:05] Because there's no way to leave a cult with your dignity intact.

Claire Headley [03:44:08] Yep, exactly. And nothing good happens from abandoning your belief and your loyalty to the cult.

John Dehlin [03:44:15] Mormon's called the Covenant Path. You made a covenant. So you've abandoned your free agency at that point.

Claire Headley [03:44:21] Yeah, yeah.

Marc Headley [03:44:22] So anyway, he tells me, we get to speaking and he says he's out, he works in Los Angeles now and he could get me a job at a company that he's basically consulting for and that I could make like 2,500 bucks a week. And I'm like, wow, I'm doing pretty good on the computer repair. But that is a considerable bump, monthly bump to be making. You know, this is six months after I've. I escaped. Maybe April. No, even. Yeah, Aprilish. We left in January. This is about April because you were

Claire Headley [03:44:56] there for your birthday. So yeah, April. So not even four months. Like I'd been out just three months by then. We hadn't even. We had just managed to get our belongings back from Scientology by this point.

John Dehlin [03:45:09] Point.

Claire Headley [03:45:09] Like just which. Anyway, they gave us a 60 page inventory of all of our belongings. Like no joke, half a bottle of shampoo. Anyway, so he gets. Yeah, Mark gets.

Marc Headley [03:45:22] I get this job, I moved a lot, move back to la and I'm go. We're going to basically see if this works out and if it does, then we're going to set up in la. Like if it pans out and it's a real thing, I'm going to go for a few months.

John Dehlin [03:45:36] Months.

Marc Headley [03:45:36] See if I can do the job, see how it works. And so it does end up working out. I do end up doing this job, getting paid very, very well. And so we decide we're going to move back to Los Angeles to the belly of the beast, because the money is too. It's sort of like, I don't know that we can pass this up even though we're doing good. It's just we know la, we know know we have some connections. We have. That's where her family lives.

Claire Headley [03:46:06] Yeah. And we're. We're still in the process of building our life from absolutely nothing. Like, we didn't have a car. We didn't have. We'd never. You know, we. Mark's dad had to co. Sign with us to even be able to rent an apartment because we had no credit. Which we thought, well, what's wrong with that? At least we don't have bad credit. No, no, no. No credit is worse than bad credit.

Marc Headley [03:46:30] Basically, every time we tried to buy a car or we tried to get an apart, give them our info, and they would be like, that's weird. You don't have any credit. You're. There's no record of you as a person existing in the credit system because we'd never had credit cards. We'd never had. We never bought anything on credit, so.

Claire Headley [03:46:51] And we even asked a. A. A car salesman at one point. We're like, so, no credit, that's not a problem, right? He's like, no, that sense makes. Makes it look like you are drug dealers. And we were like, oh, didn't know that.

Marc Headley [03:47:06] Yeah. And we told them, yeah, Our parents always encourage us to use cash for everything. And they're like, yeah, that was bad advice.

John Dehlin [03:47:16] I just have to say, you've got to be incredibly grateful to your dad.

Marc Headley [03:47:19] Oh, yeah. My. My dad is literally the only reason that if we didn't have him, this whole thing would not have worked at all. And he. He actually ended up moving in with us, and we supported him and took care of him when he. He ended up getting lung cancer and then brain cancer, and he actually passed away at the end. The end of 2019. But he basically, from 2011 through 2019, he spent tons and tons of time with us. He got to meet all three of his grandchildren, which were his only grandchildren that he was able to have contact with. My sister and my mother have both since been kicked out of the SEA Organization, but they are still Scientologists, So he hasn't met my sister's children, and my mom was not allowed to talk with him.

Marc Headley [03:48:17] She actually told her family that if she spoke with my dad, Claire, or myself, that she would be risking the future eternity of all mankind by speaking with us. And so even now, her family are like, she is batshit crazy that she thinks talking to Bernie is gonna wreck the year.

Claire Headley [03:48:40] Who was never in Scientology. The only thing he ever did was be there for us when we escape raped.

Marc Headley [03:48:46] So. But yeah, we are very grateful to my father.

John Dehlin [03:48:51] And just the. The lesson for those of you who are in other high demand religions or cults that I take away is that 1-800-line. You don't never give up, never give up on someone completely. But also don't, you know, there's some out there that want to do interventions where they're like, you know, like okay, let's, let's basically kidnap the person and try and shake them into getting them out.

Claire Headley [03:49:21] Right.

John Dehlin [03:49:23] Go ahead, you're shaking.

Claire Headley [03:49:25] And on the contrary, very often those types of measures and approaches backfire and actually end up driving the person further in. We've seen it many times through the work we do with the foundation and, and when we were still in where we hurt would hear of a, a Sea Org member whose family tried to do an intervention and not only did it fail, but it ended up driving the person in for longer than they would have otherwise.

Marc Headley [03:49:53] And then they weren't even allowed to contact that person at all. So maybe they had, they could write letters back and forth or maybe they could talk on the phone every few months. Now they have no contact with that person and they are no longer, longer a resource for them.

Claire Headley [03:50:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:50:07] And I don't, I guess if somebody goes to that measure, if they're worrying that they're going to become Shelly Miscavige and in, in the hole for the rest of their life, I can see why they would think a dramatic intervention could work or might work or might be the only chance.

John Dehlin [03:50:24] And maybe occasionally that's actually worked. But also, as you're kind of doing your calculus, what I think your dad did that was amazing is he. He maintained some sort of a relationship with you, made made himself feel safe to you so that when you could arrive at your own time in your own way, you knew he would be there for you. Yeah, that seems like not necessarily the right answer in all situations, but a really sound strategy for many which is make them feel like you're safe. Safe. Don't create the backfire effect. Make them feel like you love them and are just there to support them when they're ready.

Marc Headley [03:51:07] That's right. Just be there have be a safe space that they can go to.

John Dehlin [03:51:10] Is that right?

Claire Headley [03:51:10] That's exactly, absolutely right. Yeah, for sure. And, and you know, we work with law enforcement agencies to educate them so that in the event or a situation where somebody is concerned that their loved one is going to become a Shelly Miscavige, then let that then great. Get, let's get a welfare check done and make sure that the responding law enforcement understand that they need to have a one on one conversation, no handlers present. They need to look and see. Is the person nourished? Are they sleeping? Like, you know, ask educated questions if there is a sincere concern that the person is being held against their will.

John Dehlin [03:51:48] Yeah, yeah. And just to be ham fisted about it, Mormons, I'm talking to. You do. I'm talking about your believing spouse. You're believing parents, you're believing kids, believing friends. Don't be so obnoxious in your zeal to, you know, take people out that you, number one, push them farther in and. Or make them feel unsafe with you so that you eliminate any chance you have at influencing them once they come around.

Marc Headley [03:52:22] Yeah. The other thing that we try to do is we try not to focus on the beliefs of Scientology, but the actions of Scientology. So it's okay with me if you believe that you're infested with space cooties. It's okay with me if you believe L. Ron Hubbard is the Messiah or he's created all this wonderful technology. I don't care about that. If you feel like you're being held prisoner and you feel that you're not in a safe space and you're being cut off from family or deprived of sleep or food or. Or, you know, personal rights that you are entitled to, then. Then you should get out of that situation.

Marc Headley [03:53:06] And then if you decide, once you get into the real world, if you don't want to continue to. To be a Scientologist, that's. That's your own thing. That, that. That's a totally separate matter. Then it's not a matter of believing. It's a matter of are you a prisoner? Are you free to be a human? Yeah, well, let's fix that first and then we can sort out the what. What you believe in.

John Dehlin [03:53:30] Nice.

Marc Headley [03:53:31] After you get to a good place.

John Dehlin [03:53:32] Nice.

Claire Headley [03:53:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:53:33] Okay. Sorry. Didn't mean to Rabbit hole.

Marc Headley [03:53:35] It's all good.

Claire Headley [03:53:36] No, it's relevant.

John Dehlin [03:53:38] Yeah. Okay. So you're grateful for your dad. Dad, both of you. That's cool you were able to have a happy ending. That, that, that's going to work well in the screenplay for your movie.

Claire Headley [03:53:51] Would have been better than me getting caught and never seen or heard from again. Right.

John Dehlin [03:53:54] And him never reconnecting with his dad or.

Claire Headley [03:53:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:53:57] Okay. So the move to la, you know,

Marc Headley [03:54:00] so I start posting stuff on the Internet as blown for good. And now I know I'm. And I'm posting the stories that we've told today, a lot of the things that happen at the base, pretty much everything that's in my book. Book, I did post some version or a snippet of that on the Internet where it was on a forum called Operation Clam Bake, which was a very, very popular site for ex Scientologists and Scientologists under the radar. And it comes from some L. Ron Hubbard.

Claire Headley [03:54:32] It's from like one of L. Ron Hubbard's books where he talks about clams

Marc Headley [03:54:37] on the whole, like humans are descendants of clam.

John Dehlin [03:54:39] So this is totally wild because now I'm paralleling because I lose my faith in 2001, but I'm still in the church and I'm working at Microsoft. Facebook hasn't been invented yet. Instagram doesn't exist. YouTube doesn't exist. Podcasts don't exist. But it's past the AOL, you know, bulletin board chat groups.

Marc Headley [03:54:57] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:54:57] So forums, these Internet forums that really no longer exist. Yeah, between 2000 and 2005 were like the main way I communicated with people. So I'm going through my process now at the exact same time.

Marc Headley [03:55:11] Totally.

John Dehlin [03:55:11] You're going through yours.

Marc Headley [03:55:13] So 2005 into 2006, I'm posting. And during that time there's all kinds of coincidences and things happening where we, we basically suspect very strongly started to

Claire Headley [03:55:29] clue in that they were not going to leave us alone and that we were being watched. And because I remember our first son was born in February 2006. So leading up to his birth I was spending more time at home and I would remember, remember mentioning to Mark, I was like, man, there's this creepy old man who walks by our house at the same time every day with this big old clunking like old style radio. I'm like, I don't know. I think they're watching us. And Mark's like, no, no, it's, it's okay, they're not. But then, yeah, things started to add up that we were like, no, there's, there's definitely there, there.

Marc Headley [03:56:08] And she was pregnant. So I was basically trying to be like, like, don't worry, don't sweat it.

John Dehlin [03:56:15] You're being emotional.

Claire Headley [03:56:18] No, I'm like, no, I'm actually not being emotional. I think I'm being very logical.

John Dehlin [03:56:23] Yeah.

Marc Headley [03:56:24] Anyway, so basically over the course of a few years we start getting connected up with other people that worked at the property with us that have now it. And it actually turned out in 2005 there was sort of a major exodus of people that escaped or they did something and they got kicked out. And they were all from this property, Jeff Hawkins and.

Claire Headley [03:56:50] And this included Shelly Miscavige's half sister.

Marc Headley [03:56:53] Yep. Oh, that's the other thing. So when we got a house, we got a house in Burbank, California, and we had a. We were renting a house from a guy who actually was a vendor that used to sell software to Scientologists. And he was a great ally of ours, and he was an amazing guy. Shout out to Sean and.

Claire Headley [03:57:12] Never in Scientology.

Marc Headley [03:57:13] Never in Scientology. But he. He had a guest house, like a. It was basically like a converted garage that was made into a little apartment. And Shelly Miscavige's sister had gotten kicked out in 2005, and we ended up reconnecting with her, and she lived in our guest house. So we got to hear all kinds of Shelley information that we.

Marc Headley [03:57:38] We never had access to because we never really would find out the personal things about Shelley, just the business or the Sea Org side of things. And her father, Shelly Miscavige's father, would come and visit her sister at our house. And I became very, very good friends with him, and I eventually hired him as my handyman because I saw that he was basically broke and he. He. He had cancer, and he was a roofing guy, and he was a very old guy, and he was working like a 60 hour week and trying to support a bunch of people that weren't related to. It was a horrible scene.

Marc Headley [03:58:17] And he wasn't being supported at all from Dave and Shelley, not a penny. They would send him L. Ron Hubbard lectures for his birthday instead of just giving him a bundle of cash that he needed. And so I started hiring him to do things at my. My business. And basically, here we are. We've got Shelley's sister and her father coming and going from our house. We don't know this at the time, but there's private investigators watching Our House 24 7. But they don't know who this old guy is. Nobody knows. Well, at some point, somebody from the Office of Special affairs, which is the. Which is the successor to the Guardian's office that does all the Scientology's dirty tricks.

Claire Headley [03:59:00] Yes, exactly.

Marc Headley [03:59:02] Somehow, one of their top people ends up coming to our house to watch the house, to see for herself who's coming and going. And she knows who Shelley's Miscavige's father is. And as soon as he starts showing up, things get very exciting, very quick.

Claire Headley [03:59:19] And. And to be fair, the reason she showed up is because we helped break out somebody who worked very, very closely with David Miscavige for years. From the outside. We broke. We got in, got a line in and broke them out. So we were, from the get go, not, you know, we were doing everything we could to help people get out.

Marc Headley [03:59:39] It's the first time that we know of, besides a couple, that somebody was able to activate a spy, get us, not a Scientologist, onto their property to deliver a phone in a box of gloves to the exact person that we needed the phone to go to. And we basically got that person out of the headquarters. We broke her out in a. In a tactical planned operation that involved multiple vehicles and decoys and everything. And when we did that, and it was. It was somebody that was very, very closely connected to David Miscavig.

Claire Headley [04:00:21] Yeah. And. And to your point, by the way, the reason the phone was critical was so that there would be an open communication line by which she could say, yes, I'm happy here, or, no, I want to get out. And the latter is what she said, which is where we helped her get out. There was no convincing. It was like, no, I'm ready. I. I'm. I'm being held. I want to escape. And she did.

John Dehlin [04:00:43] I just want to say that, you know, in Mormonism, the absolute worst state of a soul is someone who believed. I think we mentioned this yesterday. Someone who believed and then forsake their beliefs. They're called sons of perdition in Mormonism. And they don't go to the lowest degree of heaven. They go to a place called outer darkness, where eternity. They're weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. It's the Mormon equivalent of hell. Yep. Hitler doesn't go there. Rapists and pedophiles don't go there. The only people that go there are people that once believed and then, you know, apostatized. And the only reason I make that point, that the enemy from within the walls is always more dangerous than the enemy without.

Marc Headley [04:01:33] And it's so wild that you're saying that, because. What did they call it? Eternal darkness.

John Dehlin [04:01:39] Yeah, outer darkness.

Marc Headley [04:01:41] In Scientology, it's called you go. You went to the darkness, dark side. They use the Star wars analogy, and they say, oh, no, he went to the dark side. And that is how they say. They say if somebody left and they're. They've turned enemy or they've turned suppressive, they say they're either an SP or they turn to the dark side.

John Dehlin [04:01:58] But it's. It's. It makes sense why I'm excommunicated, why so many of my public spokespeople, you know, podcasters, YouTubers, are excommunicated, why we're so dangerous. Because we have insider information, we can explain this to the public. We gather other people together. We help form communities and networks that we are super dangerous.

Claire Headley [04:02:22] Yes, completely. And that has always been Scientology's objection with Mark especially and me as a. By. By association. Yeah. Because we've always brought people together. They don't want former Scientologists talking to each other, comparing notes or like, hey, do you have nightmares? Yes to a one. Every person we've ever asked that question, they say, yes, they have had nightmares. But you reminded me too, that Hubbard has a policy where he says, if someone's a suppressive person or, you know, you expel them, you always leave the door open just a crack to give them one last chance. Except if they escape from the headquarters where we worked, then hub cupboards dictate was you bolt it shut and do not ever open it, not even a crack.

Marc Headley [04:03:09] And you weld it with an atomic branding iron. That's what he said. That's how shut door gets shut. When you turn to the dark side, it's done.

John Dehlin [04:03:20] But also there's the fair game. It's not like it's done.

Claire Headley [04:03:22] No.

Marc Headley [04:03:22] Yeah, well, okay.

Claire Headley [04:03:24] Yeah, exactly.

Marc Headley [04:03:25] So what ended up happening was we started helping people. We did help people escape, but we also helped former members that they had either thrown out or who had escaped. We started to create a loose knit group of individuals that we would figure out how to help that person get a job. We would get them a car, we would help them how to get a bank account, we'd show them how to get a good credit score, like get a Macy's card and put $200 on it and just pay off the. The bill or get a debit card that's a pay as you go car, all these different things to basically help them survive and be.

Marc Headley [04:04:08] Be a support group for them. Because in a lot of cases, they still. Their family was still in Scientology, or they didn't have the knowledge or the resources to be able to kind of get their life going again. So for many, many years, we didn't have a foundation or we didn't have donors. We just had had Headley Savings and Loan that would basically finance helping people that had escaped that really just needed some direction and a champion to make it so that they could then succeed and make some money and be able to pay their bills and be able to get an apartment or whatever it was that they needed help with.

Marc Headley [04:04:49] We were there for them. And that is when we started, started gathering. We used to have these things, we would call them sp Parties, and we'd invite everybody to a restaurant or our house or Thanksgiving or Christmas. And for many years, that was sort of our new family was all of the other people that had escaped or had been kicked out or however they ended up getting to the outside world, if we knew them at the. At the international headquarters, we considered them part of the family.

Claire Headley [04:05:21] Yeah. The only issue there was that some of those people were spies and were reporting back to Office of Special affairs as to who was there, who we were meeting up with and what we were doing.

Marc Headley [04:05:32] Yeah. We even got. When. When Mike rinder escaped in 2007, he left with a thumb drive. And he, at the time, was doing operations for David Miscavige and relaying and communicating back from the Office of Special affairs people that were being investigated or people that private investigators were following, following. And there would be, like, daily reports and summary reports that would come from Los Angeles. They would go through Mike Rinder, and then he would forward them to David Miscavige. And when he left and we got those files, we basically got an entire year's worth of documents, because it was basically up until Mike left in 2007.

Marc Headley [04:06:16] So from basically 2006 to when Mike left, left, we got to see every person who was spying. Their reports, Their reports. Their reports that they gave to the. Their handlers at the Office of Special Affairs. And then what Office of Special Repairs was reporting up to David Miscavige.

Claire Headley [04:06:36] And. And that's where we learned that they had our phone lines tapped. They were doing special trash collections.

Marc Headley [04:06:43] They would get our guns monitoring who

Claire Headley [04:06:45] we were talking to. They even were getting caught. They had. They had a way to find copy, get copies of every fax we sent.

Marc Headley [04:06:54] Well, they were digging them out of the garbage.

Claire Headley [04:06:56] Yeah. Well, but they also. But they also had phone records, not just, like, who we called, but summaries of the conversations.

Marc Headley [04:07:03] Yeah, it was wild.

Claire Headley [04:07:04] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:07:05] And then that's when we found out that a bunch of people within our friend circle. At one point, I think I had a birthday party in 2006, and I think we counted up that there was maybe, you know, 25, 30 people there. Maybe 25. There was seven people that were there. And they knew that they were there to kind of watch and see what was going on, and that they would report back to the Office of Special Affairs. And one of the individuals had even volunteered that if I was out in the back running the barbecue, that while I was doing that and cooking all the burgers and dogs and wings and all that, that he would go through my office and see as much stuff as he could get through while I was outside, basically entertaining all the people that were at the party.

Claire Headley [04:07:55] And, and what's laughable is let's not forget we're talking about a billion dollar cult and we're just two people that have left and just trying to start our lives over with a, a newborn baby and everything else. And they are. Have seven people spying on us.

Marc Headley [04:08:13] That's the other reason when people say, well, doesn't Scientology have millions of members? And this. And they've got all these billions of dollars. Okay, maybe they do have the billions. Now they do not have the membership. If you had a million people in Scientology, why would you be worried about 2x members? If you have 20,000 members and you've got two people that are poisoning all of these people into.

Claire Headley [04:08:42] Poisoning. Well, sharing the truth. Yeah. And educating. Exactly.

Marc Headley [04:08:47] Yeah, but from Scientology's view.

Claire Headley [04:08:49] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:08:49] You're. You've got a few group, a loose group of people that are maybe influencing hundreds of people. That's a huge deal when you've got 20.

John Dehlin [04:09:00] Well, let me just be clear. The Mormon Church has 4 or 5 million active members. Members, but they have, they hire staff. They. They have what's called the Strengthening the Members Committee, which is an organization that keeps files on all people that speak openly on the Internet or newspapers. They save clippings, they save blog posts, they say podcast episodes, all in a big file. You guys are.

Marc Headley [04:09:25] We have, in our law. In our legal case.

John Dehlin [04:09:27] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:09:28] In, in our depositions, they had banker's boxes and bank, I want to say 10 banker's boxes.

Claire Headley [04:09:34] They had printed out copies of anything Mark had ever posted on the Internet.

John Dehlin [04:09:39] No, they have that. They had a file on me. It's called the Strengthening Members Committee. And they have volunteers that help collect all that information and submit it to church headquarters. But they also have employees. We've met employees that have left the church's employee who their full time job was to track people like me every single day. What did he post on Facebook? Screenshot. What did he post on Instagram? What did he post on? So the Mormon Church is doing this too. Even, you know, with 4 million in,

Marc Headley [04:10:08] in science, in the Scientology community, we call it Facebook police. They have people on Facebook volunteers. And like you said, this, the Sea Org members.

John Dehlin [04:10:15] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:10:16] They go to your Facebook profile and they look at every single profile of every friend that you have.

John Dehlin [04:10:23] Have. Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:10:24] And every friend that they have and they triangulate everything.

Claire Headley [04:10:29] I would say maybe it's even because of Scientology. That Facebook made it so you could hide the friendless. I'm. I'm half joking, but. But, you know, in the early days, you couldn't hide who was on your friend list. Now anyone who's on under the radar, that's the first thing they do is hide who they're friends with.

John Dehlin [04:10:47] And also Mormon church employees and apologists, infiltration trait groups, private groups that you're a member of.

Marc Headley [04:10:55] Same exact thing.

Claire Headley [04:10:56] Yeah, yeah, completely.

John Dehlin [04:10:57] To monitor what's being said and to turn people in.

Claire Headley [04:11:00] Yes, yeah, exactly. And. And cause, at least in Scientology, in the former Scientology community, there's efforts to cause dissension amongst the former Scientology community to cause division.

John Dehlin [04:11:14] Oh, we have that big time.

Marc Headley [04:11:15] So like what you mentioned, in other

John Dehlin [04:11:16] words, my book biggest enemies are ex Mormons, oftentimes not believing or active Mormons.

Claire Headley [04:11:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:11:24] And I believe I. I have to wonder if some of that dissent in animosity is stoked.

Marc Headley [04:11:31] Yeah, they do.

Claire Headley [04:11:32] Yeah, it definitely is. And I mean, we've seen it many times. O. The office of Special affairs creates dead agent packs. That's what it's called, where they'll put together all the documents about Mark or about me. Me to show it to any. Show it to my mother or other members who. Who were. I was friends with. To show them, oh, look, see this. This is. This is all the bad things that we've collected. And therefore I'm dead to them to minimize any power or influence I might have. But when you see statements and lines from those dead agent packs being spread in the former Scientology community, you have to wonder and go, well, if they're saying the same things, then that's not a coincidence.

Marc Headley [04:12:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:12:17] And you were mentioning Mark just because. For the sake of time, I want to make sure we get this in. They've. As far as, you know, they've contacted clients of yours.

Marc Headley [04:12:26] Oh, 100.

John Dehlin [04:12:26] To try and get clients to buy you as you know. Right.

Marc Headley [04:12:31] Yeah. Both Claire and I operate our own companies that are. We're moderately successful. We. We support our families easily with it.

John Dehlin [04:12:40] You bought Generalized night.

Marc Headley [04:12:42] Yeah, I did. I did buy dinner.

Claire Headley [04:12:44] We've worked really, really hard to build up our, you know, a successful.

John Dehlin [04:12:49] Much to my chagrin, you.

Claire Headley [04:12:50] But Mark sneaky that way.

Marc Headley [04:12:55] We. This is. Within the last few years, this has become. They. We've had instances where we've got. We've almost gotten projects or we've been invited to participate in projects that were setups that if we had gone through and done the project project, they'd figure out a way to basically Throw us under the bus and it would cost us or we'd have to sue or we wouldn't get paid or whatever it is. But more recently, within the past few years, they have been directly contacting my clients and former clients and sending them these dead agent information, either pictures or factoids or PDFs or whatever, basically saying, I'm horrible person. I'm.

John Dehlin [04:13:38] You got drunk ones.

Marc Headley [04:13:39] I got drunk in 2005 and passed out on Hollywood Boulevard on my birthday. And so he's a drunkard. He's a horrible person. And so it's. A lot of people ask me, well then why don't you sue them for defamation? And this goes. It circles all the way back to they are very proficient and have the resources and wealth to participate in lawfare to the end of time. I can't do that. I don't have millions and millions of dollars to spend on attorneys to then only it just dead end somewhere because unfortunately for me, and I don't. I don't think I've ever shared this publicly, but in a lot of instances where they have sent an email to my clients, I end up getting more work work from that client because now they know the other side of my life.

Marc Headley [04:14:34] And in a lot of instances, my clients, the clients that I work with, they know me. When we do a project, we are sometimes working with that client for maybe a year or two. A year or two before we do the job, and then many months and months after we do the project and we're there on site for many weeks or months. So they get to know me as. As a working person, a professional relationship. But then they find out about all this, and then they read my book or they watch our videos or whatever, whatever. And now they're like, dude, we want to get you back there just so we can ask you all kinds of crazy stuff about Scientology.

Marc Headley [04:15:06] And we do end up getting. Sometimes get more work. So it's a horrible thing to have your business world being contacted by this cult and talking smack about you. Unfortunately for Scientology, and, and to be fair, I don't know of all of the people they've contacted connected. So I don't know if it's gone sideways for some people just because I don't. I don't usually. We do a job and then we usually don't hear from those people again. It just so happens that the people that they have contacted that we know, they've contacted, in a lot of instances, we've done additional work or future work with those people.

Claire Headley [04:15:44] And those, Those Are the people that have told us.

John Dehlin [04:15:46] Yeah.

Claire Headley [04:15:47] That they were contacted and they're. They're always shocked and surprised, like, what the hell is wrong with these people?

Marc Headley [04:15:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:15:54] But it takes mental resilience to know that there's always people trying to take you down, always trying to smear your name. And anytime, you know, someone declines an offer or something doesn't work out that you think should, is it because they've been told something? What do they know? What have they been told? Who's working? And then to not just give up and say, I. I'm defeated, but to keep moving forward.

Marc Headley [04:16:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:16:27] Takes a particular level of resilience and consternation or grit or, you know.

Claire Headley [04:16:35] Yeah. In our case, every time these things happen, we take it as a sign that our work to help people get out is important and meaningful and needs to continue. That's just how. How we always approach it of, you know, ob. Obviously, they don't like what we're doing, so let's keep getting people out and helping people start over.

Marc Headley [04:16:55] Yeah. And. And in regards to the hate sites and the. The tweets and all the nonsense they put out about us, I don't remember where I heard it, but I remember somebody talking. It was a very similar situation, like, I think, in regards to the Internet and social media. Why should you care about somebody who talks about. About you, that doesn't care about you? They don't have your best interests in. In mind or in heart, so why should you care that they're saying bad things about you? It's. It's basically irrelevant. It's horrible, and it sucks, but it's sort of like they're not my. They're not my people, and I don't care what they say. They're gonna say bad things. I know that. So it's. It's. I can't control it, so there's no. It's not productive for me to worry about it, because I can't. I don't. I have no way of changing it.

John Dehlin [04:17:54] So it's acceptance.

Marc Headley [04:17:55] It is what it is.

John Dehlin [04:17:56] But also, it's one thing if it's just their opinions about you.

Marc Headley [04:18:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:00] It's another thing if they're tampering with your livelihood.

Marc Headley [04:18:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:04] But still, either way, you. You got to just keep moving forward.

Marc Headley [04:18:07] Exactly.

John Dehlin [04:18:08] And I'm. I'm happy to know y' all are doing okay.

Marc Headley [04:18:10] Yeah, we.

Claire Headley [04:18:11] We.

Marc Headley [04:18:11] We basically, for. For many years, it was sort of hit or miss on if we were going to be able to come out of the other side of this. Okay. And I would say within the past five or six years, we have just. We just, you know, soldiered on and soldiered on and. And now we are at a place where we are confident that there's not a lot that they can do that we can. Can't weather, and we can't make it through.

Rebuilding Life After Scientology

John Dehlin [04:18:40] Let's take a minute just to talk about your. The. The kind of, like, rebuilding and that there's hope and joy afterwards. Do y' all just want to paint a picture of how you know your family and. And how you've done work to. To heal and grow, that kind of thing?

Marc Headley [04:19:00] Sure.

Claire Headley [04:19:00] Yep. Absolutely. So, yes, it's been. And it's. It's been years of hard work, but every day, absolutely is a joy that I'm personally grateful for. And just having the freedom to set our own course and set our own goals and set on. What do we want to do? What are we passionate about? What are we good at? You know, both of both Mark and I have built successful companies, and in addition to being out, having the opportunity to have three boards voice, it's been an amazing journey. We've. I've personally. My road to recovery has included therapy, reading books, learning about other people's experiences and parallels.

Claire Headley [04:19:46] Two weeks before my oldest son graduated high school, I got my ged, mainly on the principle that I wanted him to know. We do consider schooling very important, you know, but. And of course, not that I haven't done other studies too, but, you know, you know, I. I'm always very passionate to let people know that it is never too late to change the course of your life. It's just a matter of your perspective and your drive to do it.

Marc Headley [04:20:15] Yeah. One of the other things I think helped me a lot is when we do help other people and we. We find somebody that contacts us, or even before we had the Michael J. Render Aftermath Festival Foundation, I sort of talked about how we had this loose group of people and we'd help people get cars. And so we have been doing this since 2006 on our own. So the fact that when the Leah Remini Scientology and the Aftermath TV show came out, that really sort of started telling the stories of a lot of these people that were at those early SP parties. Amy Scobie, Matt Peck, Jeff Hawkins, all these ex Sea Org members, Mike Rinder, they then started telling their stories, and then they were given a voice and so that we could help more and more people like that, that sort of makes it worthwhile to us that we're doing the right Thing because now these people have got their families and their.

Marc Headley [04:21:17] They have grandchildren they've now met. And it's sort of not only were we able to achieve that for ourselves, but we're trying to, as much as we can, help other people that escape or leave or are wayward people that don't know what to do in life if we can help them. And we also have a store that's called the SP Shop, the Suppressive Person.

John Dehlin [04:21:41] You're embracing sp.

Marc Headley [04:21:42] We love sps, and we also. I am also a huge Lord Zen Zenu fan. He's one of my favorite guys. I hang out with him. I have T shirts that say xenu is my homeboy. I've got all kinds of merch at the Blown for Good website. But one of the things that we do is we sell these things. When you're in. In Scientology and you achieve the state of clear, you get given a bracelet, and it's called a clear bracelet. And it has. It says clear, and it has a number, and you're assigned the number of clear Clear. I don't know what number they're up to. I think they're in the tens of thousands or hundred thousand or something in the 50 year or the 70 years that they've been giving these things out. Well, we sell in the SP shop. We sell SP bracelets. And just.

Claire Headley [04:22:27] Because. Because we always say the only power in their labels that they have over you is the power you give them.

Marc Headley [04:22:33] Yeah, yeah. So if you're an SP and you've been declared a suppressive, hey, show your colors.

Claire Headley [04:22:39] Let's embrace. Let's. Let's do this.

Marc Headley [04:22:42] Another thing that we did just this last Christmas, I think, is when we started doing them. Was it this Christmas or the Christmas before? Sometime before Christmas. The Sea Org is like a Navy. It's David Miscavige's Fake Navy. So one of the things that we also sell in the SP shop is we have the Captain Davey dolls or the Fake Navy doll and these little. This is a life size David Miscavige Digital. But we sell these. I think they're like $20, and they're a good. Good cat toy, dog toy. They. They have a little Velcro.

Claire Headley [04:23:19] And all of the proceeds from the SP shop benefit the work of the af, the Michael J. Render Aftermath Foundation.

Marc Headley [04:23:26] Yeah. So we brought you a couple of those for you. So you have your own little fake Navy Davey doll now.

Claire Headley [04:23:33] There you go.

John Dehlin [04:23:34] I love it.

Marc Headley [04:23:35] We also call them Capital Chuckles Worth and all kinds of other fun names. There's about eight. Eight different listings for the same doll on this.

John Dehlin [04:23:41] Some Santa Christmas tradition.

Claire Headley [04:23:44] Elf on the Shelf.

Marc Headley [04:23:45] Elf on the shelf. He is the exact same. His life size, David Miscavige. But he is the same size as an Elf on the Shelf doll.

Claire Headley [04:23:51] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:23:51] And. And that is actually a. A pretty accurate Sea Org captain uniform that he's wearing.

Claire Headley [04:23:58] And we're very dedicated to bringing humor to the world. Dangerous, abusive cult of Scientology. What's that?

John Dehlin [04:24:05] Is he blonde?

Claire Headley [04:24:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:24:07] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:24:07] I mean like, it's not really David Miscavige. It's. It's a guy named Fake Navy Davey or Captain Chucklesworth.

Claire Headley [04:24:15] But.

Marc Headley [04:24:16] But. But the other thing. And also in the Sea Org, I should say for accuracy, they don't have the. The. The star collar or the little elf hat. That is not an actual official Sea Org uniform style. But.

Claire Headley [04:24:28] But the captain bars and the insignia, the Appalachian. That is all true. True.

Marc Headley [04:24:33] That's.

Claire Headley [04:24:33] That's legit good look there.

Marc Headley [04:24:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:24:35] What are you talking about? I don't.

Marc Headley [04:24:37] Anyway, so. But all of the proceeds from the FSP shop, they all go to the Aftermath foundation to help people that are either trying to rebuild their lives or we have helped a number of people get out of the sea organization.

Claire Headley [04:24:50] And I would like to say too. So since that's a really good look, I'm gonna have trouble keeping a straight face.

Marc Headley [04:24:56] Worried about getting. Giving him the doll that he might take it the wrong way going with.

John Dehlin [04:25:01] I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Claire Headley [04:25:02] Oh, this is hilarious.

Marc Headley [04:25:04] So I got one for you as well.

Claire Headley [04:25:06] Yes, there we go. We also brought you SP bracelets too.

John Dehlin [04:25:09] I was gonna ask for an sp.

Claire Headley [04:25:10] Yes, we brought us bracelets as well, but. So the Michael J. Render Aftermath Foundation. Mark and I have both been volunteer members since its inception. I now serve as the president. We're. We have. Have built up so many great programs. Career counseling to help former members identify transferable skills. We have education grants. We have an online support group now. And of course we help with emergency costs when someone is just getting out so that they can get emergency housing, transportation, etc, while they reconnect with the outside world, reconnect with their family and loved ones on the outside. So it is incredibly meaningful work that we could not do without the support of the many people who support the work and the. And our donors.

John Dehlin [04:25:59] What do you think, Davey? I like it. Oh yeah. I like it a lot.

Marc Headley [04:26:05] How do I do comedic episode we've done in a while.

Claire Headley [04:26:13] How did I do on keeping my cabin straight there?

Marc Headley [04:26:17] We try. That is another Thing that I personally feel that is valuable in all of this kind of work. This is not a uplifting subject. Most of the time. It's very depressing. There's a lot of. I. I don't want to. I don't like to use the term, but there's a lot of trauma drama, and there's a lot of just, you know, destruction in the wake of Scientology. And we, like.

Claire Headley [04:26:42] There's a. There's a lot of truth in the statement that hurt people. Hurt people. And we're, you know, in. In whatever form it takes, we are just committed to continuing to do this work of exposing, despite the hardships.

Marc Headley [04:26:54] And we don't want to make it depressing, and we don't want it to be a grind. We want to be like, hey, we're doing what we're doing, and we're trying to help people, and we're trying to also have a laugh while we're doing it.

John Dehlin [04:27:04] Yeah. So love it really quickly. I don't want you all to miss your plane. But Margi wanted to make sure. I asked about rebuilding marriage and parenting under a new paradigm. And I. It's. It's probably rude for me to even ask you, knowing you have to leave soon, but.

Claire Headley [04:27:21] No, no, not at all. Not at all.

Marc Headley [04:27:23] When we first got out and we got. We went to the bus station, and we got to Kansas City to my dad's house, and we're sort of narrow. Now we're there in a house in the middle of Kansas City, and Claire says to me, hey, I was thinking of making dinner. And I was like, really? What are you gonna make? She's like, I was gonna make spaghetti bolognese. And I looked at her, and I went, you know how to cook. We had been married for 13 years, and she had never cooked a meal for us.

Claire Headley [04:27:52] But. But he. But so much so. Mark didn't even know that I knew how to cook because, remember, when I was 13, I read Fannie Farmer cookbook cover to cover. Loved cooking. I just had never in 13 years had the opportunity to cook a meal for Mark. It was. It was one of those moments that's really reflective of the situation that we were in. It's like, you know, we have our marriage that started and the first 13 years in that cult, and then it was. It was a lot like starting over.

Marc Headley [04:28:26] It really was. It really. We've. For the first time, time we could actually communicate with each other. Completely open. There's no. We don't have. For 13 years, we had to keep secrets from each other, that we weren't allowed to talk. It was. It was forbidden that we would share thoughts or.

Claire Headley [04:28:44] Yeah. And I will say. I will say, too, that part of that rebuilding was also dismantling the lies that they had put in place, that we were. That our marriage was destined to fail. Fail on the outside. And we. We. You know, we talked about that too. Like, hey, that's, you know, that fear that you have is from them, not from us and our relationship and our trust that is still there and remains intact. So it was. It was a lot of things to work through, but, you know, but also the overwhelming joy of freedom is helpful in, you know, just, hey, we can do whatever it is we want to do and build whatever life we want to have.

Marc Headley [04:29:28] The. The only other thing I wanted to say was in Scientology, I did so many different things, and a lot of those did transfer to the real world, whereas Claire's jobs were very Scientology esque functions. That there was no real transfer or equivalent in the real world. And. And. But we did work hard, and we did know that if you work and you do a good job, then you can make a living that way. We didn't. We knew at least that. And it's funny now, looking back, that just working all day is. That's a high bar in this world because you go into the workplace and the people might be there from nine to five, but there's only about three or four hours worth of work getting done.

Marc Headley [04:30:19] You bring in somebody that's working 100 hours a week, and you just tell them you only have to work for eight hours. And if you work for the entire eight hours, you're an instant rock star in almost any industry that you. You go into.

Claire Headley [04:30:33] Yeah. And I will say it was a shock to the system to adjust, for sure. Like landing in Kansas City. And like, you know, I would get off work at 4, and we would literally be sitting on the couch like, what do we do now?

Marc Headley [04:30:46] Yeah, we.

Claire Headley [04:30:47] And it was. This was in the early days of Netflix, we were watching like two, three movies a night just because, you know, it was like, hey, we have all this dead time. What do we do? Of course, now, you know, it's not like that.

Marc Headley [04:30:59] We also did have 15 years where we didn't see any movies. So even though Netflix didn't have a lot of new movies, it had 15 years worth of movies that we never got to see.

Claire Headley [04:31:09] We were trying to make up for our media blackout years too, you know, was like. But yeah. And then I will say that when we had Kids. That for me was a huge shift because I had. I did not have a good childhood, but I had just kind of shut it away and not ever even considered what I went through or, you know, reflected on anything. But when the moment we had kids, we both knew we would do anything to protect our kids from Scientology and, And also to show them unconditional love and raise them in a way that. And give them opportunities that we never had.

Claire Headley [04:31:48] And it also with that brought some latent anger, I would say, and frustration with my childhood gaining perspective. Like, would anyone do these things to a four year old child or to a newborn child or, you know, all those things? So that. That has been a part of the road to recovery too.

Marc Headley [04:32:09] It was interesting when they would reach certain milestones which coincided with my, like, oh, he. Our. This son turned this age. And it's like, gosh, that's the age I joined the SEA organization. And just trying to in my mind rationalize, in what universe would I let my child make that decision and not just be like, no way. That's never in a million years gonna happen. And then, then to the point where then the kids are, as our two oldest sons are, how old we were respectively when we got married.

Claire Headley [04:32:47] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:32:47] Seven. 19 and 17. And it's like, can you believe that we got married when we were 19 and 17? What the actual hell is going on? So we, we, we. I. I think if anything, we might be erring on the side of too much opportunity and too much of everything that we didn't get. And I don't. From everything I've read and seen and watched. And that tends to be kind of the way it goes. If you had a bad childhood, you want to make sure your kids had a good childhood. If you had a really, really good childhood and you think you might have gotten too much, then you try to maybe air the other direction for your kids.

John Dehlin [04:33:31] Sometimes you can overcorrect.

Marc Headley [04:33:33] Yeah.

Claire Headley [04:33:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:33:33] And sometimes, no matter what you do

Marc Headley [04:33:35] as a parent, it is what it is.

John Dehlin [04:33:37] It ends up.

Claire Headley [04:33:38] Yep.

John Dehlin [04:33:38] Yeah. But you do your best.

Claire Headley [04:33:40] Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:33:41] And unconditional love, it's hard to. It's hard to feel like there's any other way to go.

Claire Headley [04:33:46] Yeah, exactly. And that's. And that's how we've approached the topic of disconnection with our kids. Like, obviously they know that they're both Mark's mom and my mom are not in their lives. But we've said, you know, know our. We. We call it our family of choice. Our family of choice. Love you unconditionally, and that's much better. And certainly any. Any person who's under the control of an organization that's attempts to destroy those family bonds is not worthy of support.

Marc Headley [04:34:16] Yeah. The last thing I wanted to say is one of the proudest moments for me as a father was it's. We often struggled with how are we going to tell our kids what happened and what we went through. And one of my sons had to do a book. He had to read a book and write a book report. And he on his own said, let

Claire Headley [04:34:38] me insert one thing. The. So the English teacher said, pick a book about a story of survival.

Marc Headley [04:34:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:34:47] Wow.

Marc Headley [04:34:52] Anyway, he got an A and he. He read my book and he wrote a book report on my book. And when the teacher was like, what book did you do? He was like, oh, this. My dad wrote this book. And it just so happened. Teacher also just happened to be a big Depeche Mode fan, and there is a giant Depeche Mode Easter eggs in this book. And. And that. That probably didn't hurt his grade either, but he did get an A. But it. For me, it was sort of of like, I didn't tell him. I didn't encourage him. I didn't. I had nothing to do with it.

Marc Headley [04:35:27] But the fact that he chose that and then that I could basically tell him the story the way I tell. Well, the way I've told everybody the story. But he got to read it and experience it in that way. And also for him to be able to. It was part of his education, and he got to do that.

Claire Headley [04:35:49] He told us that it really helped him understand a lot about us, gain some understanding of who we are, which was incredibly meaningful, especially because, you know, yes, he knew Mark wrote a book, but it's not like we're like, so when are you going to read dad's book?

John Dehlin [04:36:05] Yeah.

Claire Headley [04:36:05] You know, we never. We just never approached it that way.

Marc Headley [04:36:07] The funny thing is that they happen to just be the packaging crew for these books. For years, they've been putting these books into cardboard boxes for.

John Dehlin [04:36:15] Since 2006.

Claire Headley [04:36:17] They know we're entrepreneurs and they see that side of us. So they've. They've learned various things along the way. They. They didn't do all the packaging, but they certainly have on.

Marc Headley [04:36:27] On occasion, they've dropped off many a book at the post office.

Claire Headley [04:36:31] Yeah, for sure.

Marc Headley [04:36:33] Anyway, I wanted to, if possible, end on that because I think that's kind of. That's kind of where we're at. We're trying to help people. We're trying to tell our story. We've been doing it kind of on our own for a while, while within the last few years. The Aftermath Foundation, Michael J. Render. Aftermath foundation is now. It's an organization. We have a board, we have volunteers, we have donors. And now it's sort of spreading, and we're now getting. It's not just heavily savings and loan anymore. We got other people throwing in on it, and we think it's working.

Claire Headley [04:37:08] It's really reassuring to see people getting out and having resources to start over, because obviously we had to escape with nothing. Nothing, and start over from nothing. So that's where that work is just so incredibly meaningful to us.

John Dehlin [04:37:26] Wow. Beautiful. And let me predict. At least two Easter eggs in your book. Is that okay?

Marc Headley [04:37:32] Oh, there's way more than that.

John Dehlin [04:37:33] Let me predict. Let me predict two. Yeah, here's the first.

Marc Headley [04:37:36] Oh. Oh, you're gonna.

John Dehlin [04:37:36] Grabbing hands. Grab all they can.

Marc Headley [04:37:40] Well, you're almost.

John Dehlin [04:37:42] No, no. Get out there.

Marc Headley [04:37:44] That's.

John Dehlin [04:37:45] Is that not in your book?

Marc Headley [04:37:46] It is, but in it, you'll have to see. You'll have to read.

John Dehlin [04:37:49] How about this one? Let's play Master and service.

Marc Headley [04:37:53] Absolutely. 100%.

John Dehlin [04:37:58] Yeah. That was it. That made it.

Marc Headley [04:38:00] Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin [04:38:02] Yeah.

Claire Headley [04:38:02] You'll see. You'll know instantly when you look at it.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [04:38:06] All right. Well, Claire and Mark had Lee. What a beautiful, powerful two days. Y' all are so generous. 12 hours. 11 hours of recording. Who knows if anybody watches all 11, 12 hours. We'll have a event where we bring you all together and buy you all cheeseburgers.

Claire Headley [04:38:29] We'll send them a Davey doll.

John Dehlin [04:38:31] We'll send you a Davey doll.

Marc Headley [04:38:32] Yeah, we do. Actually. Every time we. We do a video once a week on our channel, on the Blown for Good channel, and pretty much every single episode, we do a giveaway. And. And just this last week, we have switched over to exclusively giving away Davey dolls, and we gave away three Davey dolls last week. So all you have to do is comment on one of our videos when we're doing it live and you're entered in to win a Davey doll, so.

John Dehlin [04:38:58] So subscribe to their channel. Blown for good. Buy the book. Blown for good. Buy the merch. Get yourselves a Davey doll and a bracelet.

Marc Headley [04:39:11] Sp. Bracelet.com.

John Dehlin [04:39:14] donate to the foundation. Subscribe and like all the stuff. Foundation again.

Claire Headley [04:39:22] Oh, yes. The Aftermath Foundation.org and the YouTube channel is the Aftermath Foundation.

John Dehlin [04:39:28] All right. Right. Beautiful. Well, thanks, y'. All.

Marc Headley [04:39:31] Thank you.

Claire Headley [04:39:32] Thank you so much for having us.

John Dehlin [04:39:33] Let's collab some more.

Marc Headley [04:39:35] Absolutely.

Claire Headley [04:39:35] Very definitely.

John Dehlin [04:39:36] Let's change the world.

Marc Headley [04:39:38] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:39:38] Thank you for all you do for so many people.

Marc Headley [04:39:40] That is the other thing. David Miscavige is going to lose his mind. Knowing that the ex Scientologists are teaming up with the ex Mormons, that is going to ruin his day.

Claire Headley [04:39:51] It's destined for success.

John Dehlin [04:39:52] No, what he's going to do is he's going to walk, watch this and get all sorts of good ideas about how he can make Scientology a 300 billion dollar.

Marc Headley [04:40:00] Well, this is another trick. As long as we say he should do it, he can never do it because then we're right and he's wrong.

Claire Headley [04:40:08] He can't take or he cannot take orders from a suppressive person.

John Dehlin [04:40:12] So yeah, you know what, they can do whatever they want. Actually, that's true.

Marc Headley [04:40:17] Whether he will or not.

Claire Headley [04:40:18] Yeah.

Marc Headley [04:40:19] All right.

Claire Headley [04:40:19] But no matter what, a collaboration between former Scientologists and former morons Mormons is absolutely going to lead to good things. No doubt about it.

John Dehlin [04:40:27] Okay, well, look at world. All right, well, thanks, y'. All.

Claire Headley [04:40:31] Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [04:40:32] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to Margi for co hosting as always. Thanks to Brooklyn for all she does behind the scenes. And Julia, thanks to all the donors that make this possible. We couldn't do this without donor support.

John Dehlin [04:40:45] Almost. You know, a large percentage of our revenue is just donor supported. So thanks to all of you who don't donate to make this possible. If you don't donate and you value this type of content, all you got to do is become a monthly donor. Go to mormonstories.org Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. We lose dozens of monthly donors every month for whatever reason. And so if we don't replace them, we have to start cutting back. So if you value what we do, become a monthly donor. If you can't donate, no worries.

John Dehlin [04:41:15] We give the content away from free, don't even bill back. But there are other ways you can support us. Subscribing to the channels on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Liking our episodes, commenting on them, sharing them with others. All that helps with the algorithms and just makes things interesting. You can also email us@mormonstoriesmail.com we love your feedback. We love when you apply to be on the show. We're really looking for people like couples in their 40s or above, 50s, 60s, 70s. We need some more just traditional Mormon couples who are big fans of Mormon stories podcast and want to tell their story. Please apply go to MormonStories.org click on the application button, fill out the application, do a 3 minute video, send it in.

John Dehlin [04:42:02] We'd love to have some more Mormon couples to interview as well as all the others that are applying. We really appreciate it. That's. That's it. Thanks again. Claire and Mark. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Marmon Stories podcast. I don't even know David. His voice.

Marc Headley [04:42:25] No, you're good.

John Dehlin [04:42:26] Is it? Fine. Let's get you guys the airport before that. You miss your plan?

Claire Headley [04:42:31] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:42:31] All right, you guys take care, everybody.

Marc Headley [04:42:33] Thank you.

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