Was I In A Cult? - The Lost Children of Scientology Pt 1: “Born Into Cult Slavery”

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

What happens when a newborn is handed—by his own mother—into the arms of a cult?On today’s episode of Was I In A Cult?, we peel back the celebrity sheen and expose the shadowy depths of one of the world’s most controversial organizations: Scientology. But this time, it’s not about celebrities—it’s about the kids.Jamie Mustard was born into Scientology’s inner sanctum, the Sea Org. Raised without parents, he spent his childhood in filth-ridden tenements, watched over by untrained and often abusive caretakers, and wrote heartbreaking letters to L. Ron Hubbard begging to see his mom again.This isn’t the Scientology you’ve heard about. And this is just the beginning. Part one of a rare survival story—of someone who didn’t just escape, but managed to build an aweinspiring life far beyond the trauma._____Come See Us LIVE!Join us in Los Angeles on July 10th at Dynasty Typewriter for our first-ever Was I In A Cult? live show—featuring special guest Moses Storm! GET YOUR TICKET HERE! Pre-Order Jamie’s Book:Jamie Mustard’s powerful memoir Child X drops July 30th. Pre-order now and support his story of survival, resistance, and hard-won freedom.Follow Us for More Culty Content:Instagram & TikTok: @wasiinacultSupport the Show:This show is listener-powered. If Jamie’s story moved you—please rate, review, and share.Want ad-free episodes + bonus content? Join our Patreon!Share Your Story:Have a cultic experience of your own? We want to hear it.Email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, Podcast One, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. Please note, this episode includes graphic descriptions of child abuse, medical neglect, emotional trauma, and institutional neglect. Listen accordingly. There's a lot of indoctrination where, you know, they teach you that it's all your fault. They teach you that suffering is no big deal as long as you're getting shit done.

So I think I was really programmed not to be self-aware. The level of damage, because I mean, there's cult stories and there's cult stories and the trauma fluctuates or varies but I think my cult story is maybe the cult story of cult stories. Welcome to Was I in a Cult? I'm Liz Iacuzzi. And I'm Tyler Meesom and today's episode, like many of our episodes, is, well, she's a doozy. Scientology. You'd think, need we say more? But apparently, guys, holy mother of holy aliens. Yeah, we do need to say more.

Yes. Today's story is what happens when on the day of your birth, you're handed over by your very own mother to one of the scariest cults to ever exist. And this was at a time in the world where abuse was perhaps more easily covered up because you know, there was no internet, no citizen app, and no one really believed children unless they were on a milk carton. But to take it to a very awkward pivot, I guess, before we dive into the story, we have a very quick but kind of exciting announcement for all you LA-based folks. Yeah, guys, we're doing a live show here in our hometown of Los Angeles. Soon, it's gonna be at the Dynasty Typewriter,

July 10th at 7.30 p.m. Joining us will be the hilarious and brilliant... Moses Storm. You know him, you love him, and if you don't, we'll get to know him. He has a very funny HBO stand-up special called Trash White, and he was in a cult. He's funny, he's great, he's smart,

and we love being on stage with him. I'm going to try to somehow work that into this intro because some of the assholes Jamie was handed over to, I'd say, were also trash white. You know, I love a segue as much as anyone, Liz, but a forced segue. I think it worked. I think it worked really well. I don't. Seamless, as they say. I don't. It was seamless, as they say. I don't.

We do love being on stage with Moses. He's really fun, and it's going to be a great night. So we'd love to see you there. You can get your tickets at the link in our show notes. And if you're in LA, come support us, because, you know, Tyler and my parents, they don't live here, so we can't force them to bring their bridge club to fill up half the seats.

Yeah, it's unlikely my mother and her Mormon Relief Society would force anyone to come to our show. But seriously, the Dynasty typewriter is a cool venue. We're going to do a great show. That's right. Please check it out if you can. OK, now a non-segue into today's episode. It is intense. Please be ready for that.

It's also infuriating. But it's incredibly necessary. You see, Jamie is one of the lucky ones. He made it out. But he didn't end up dead or homeless or a drug addict like many of these lost children of Scientology did. He's now a thriving artist and creative. And his upcoming book about his childhood called Child X releases at the end of July. And it's incredible. We got a copy ahead of time because we're cool.

So with that, take a deep breath and get ready to brave the waters through the shit storm that is the inner core of Scientology. The Sea Org, the military cult that I still can't believe got away with all of the horrible things that they did. Yes, the Sea Org, the military cult that I still can't believe got away with all of the horrible things that they did. Yes, the Sea Org. So steady the helm, Jamie. Secure the bow. Ready the sails.

Finger the musket. That is not a sailing reference, Liz. Not a boat reference. I think Jamie would hate all the boat references. Yes, he would. But a sailing reference, Liz, not a boat reference. I think Jamie would hate all the boat references. Yes, he would. There's a very unique sadistic thing that goes on in Scientology. I grew up in the inner-Navy, the inner clergy. He uses a word called the sea-org to describe it. It's an ugly word.

It kind of reminds me of like a loogie. Sea-org, loogie. But so I try not to use his words, but he had a lot of words, fancy words for really gross things when you would peel back the layer behind the word, what it actually looked like. Great. We too will not use his dumb words. They called the slums that we grew up in these really decrepit, dangerous environments the cadet org. I feel like Scientology kids that grew up like me or again,

there aren't a lot of kids that grew up in the 70s that are like me, that are around to talk. I want what happened to these kids, what I call the lost children of Scientology, I want the story told. To understand Jamie's story, we have to go way back before science botchery, before Elrond the Khan. Because we're going to listen to Jamie's generational family story, which is quite remarkable.

But you know, my family was a family of kind of light skinned black people. And I can trace my family and their success back to freed slaves. My family escaped slavery and did these astonishing things. When my grandmother was growing up in the Jim Crow South, she had green eyes like me. And when they would travel, because her father was a doctor in this town, you know, in the 20s, she would pass as white to get takeout. My grandfather, he was the first in his family to leave the South. They met at Meharry Medical School, which is a black medical school outside of Nashville.

And he inherited all his parents' money, which they inherited from their father and grandfather. Then he went to live with his aunt, and then she gave him his entire inheritance. So when he entered medical school, a black man in the 1930s, he was a multi-multi-millionaire. He wanted no one to know that he had anything. So he would work as a porter.

And then my grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He was a flight surgeon in Burma during World War II. This idea of your family escapes slavery and accomplishes these remarkable things. And then in a generation, you're born a slave. Like, what is a slave? Well, a slave is somebody where they take your geography away, they take your history away, they take your language away, they take your identity away. If you look at what my great-great-grandparents endured, it's not so different than what I endured. And then looking at yourself and having a

realization that you were a slave and were enslaved for your childhood is not an easy thing to face or see about yourself. So how does a brilliant, privileged black family go from generational triumphs to generational trauma? from generational triumphs to generational trauma. My mother came from a very affluent black family on the East Coast of the United States. She's 11 or 12 years old, and she gets type one diabetes and barely survives. So here's a young girl that is dealing with mortality at

11. At 12 years old, her father dies. She was a daddy's girl. My belief is that she just fractured. And then you have the 1960s and people were just exhausted from the Kennedy assassination, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robbie Kennedy, Vietnam, and this real feeling in the 1960s that the world would just be burned in nuclear fire. And so this whole generation of people just went, fuck it. And everybody was joining these movements from Jim Jones to every kind of, there was thousands and thousands of them. Oh, don't we know, Jamie. It seems half of our episodes come from this era.

OK, so stepping back a bit, public angst has long been a catalyst for countercultural spiritual movements. Or, you know, cults. Right. So take the ancient Egyptians, right? Centuries of slavery and suddenly, well, pharaohs are literal gods on earth. The political chaos of the Hellenistic Roman era, it led to cult followings for Dionysus, Isis, Mithras, those were some pretty secretive and shady cults. And let's not forget, oh, how can we forget the 1300s when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe?

That's right, half. Half of Europe. So Q, the roaming flagellants whipping themselves, you've got apocalyptic prophets and sects promising salvation through pain. Very eat, pray, die. Fast forward to the economically challenged 19th century America, specifically the burned over district in upstate New York. That one patch of land gave us the Shakers, the Millerites, the Adventists, the Spiritualists

and my favorite, my former home, Mormonism. And then the trials of the 60s while they gave us Jonestown, Children of God, Manson, Rajneesh, Heaven's Gate, and Scientology. Symbolology. And today? Anyone looked out the window recently because, uh, yeah, we got angst. Climate crisis, political chaos, COVID, existential dread. Cue the next round of cults that are going to keep popping up. I mean, honestly, it feels like the other half of our episodes were born out of the pandemic, am I right? I mean, season 26 of Was I in a Cult is going to be lit. So Jamie's mom, yeah, she wasn't immune to this spiritual fervor that was happening in the 1960s.

You love to use fervor. Fervor. You don't get to use it often. When else can I use the word fervor? Like, the fervor over breakfast was great. It sure was. The fervor over oasis was really strong. I just wish I was a part of the Beatles fervor of the 60s. The short-lived chumbawumba fervor was indeed, in fact, a fervor, but yet short-lived.

My mother was a very talented artist that was on the rise. My mother was a very talented artist that was on the rise. And one day in New York, someone brought her to a Scientology meeting in probably 1967. She might have been in her early 20s. And within a year, she was going for special training at Hubbard's compound in the English countryside called St. Hill. My older brother was born while they were living at the compound and then smuggled into the United States. So he spent the first 20 years of his life stateless,

not having a passport or any papers or having a country. In the late 60s, she went back to the States and joins the inner Navy. Yeah, she was like the senior supervisor for the advanced division in Los Angeles, which would make her the most senior authority on the West Coast. So she went from being a counselor to being this supervisor of counselors. Okay, so then I'm born a couple years later, I was definitely told who my father was and

there is a name on my birth certificate, but there is a tremendous amount of evidence that is not true. My life would be predetermined before I was born. I was marked for labor. I would be penned until I was big enough to work, and then I would serve as a slave for Hubbard's military religious operation. So Jamie's mother rose quickly through the ranks of Traumatology's open water tax evasion organization. Yeah, I know it's long, but that's what it is. And when Jamie was born, the ideology had already made the decision for his mother and therefore, well, him.

People need to understand that I went straight from UCLA Medical Center, was put in a car that I went straight from UCLA Medical Center, was put in a car with a couple people in naval uniforms and hurried across Los Angeles and put into this house where all newborn babies in the movement were kept. And there was probably two or three caretakers in this tenement taking care of maybe 30 or 40 babies. And so we're talking about the first two years of my life, little to no human touch. There are no baby pictures of me because no one was around to take them. Was I an occultist brought to you by Progressive Insurance? You chose wisely to hit play on this podcast today. And that my friends is a very smart choice.

to hit play on this podcast today and that my friends is a very smart choice. Progressive loves helping people make smart choices and that's where they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer. It lets you compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from well other companies. So you save time on the research. And enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. So if you've never fully understood what bullshitology actually teaches good, that

means you've never been indoctrinated, extorted or spiritually blackmailed into a lifetime of servitude. Right, but behind the self-help branding, the celebrity spokespeople, the tax exemption status, the shiny commercials that play during the World Cup and Super Bowl as well, it's a cult that breaks people down, controls their thoughts and action, and profits from their pain. Well, they call it a religion. We call it what it is. A militarized billion dollar machine built on fear, silence and the illusion of salvation.

But the IRS, well, they still call it a church. Only in America could a bad science fiction writer invent fake therapy, label it religion and end up tax exempt. Oh, that's the true American dream. Now here's Jamie breaking it down with just the right amount of sarcasm. And yes, Tyler, I'll be sure to take notes. Oh, is that what the crayon is for that you're holding? How to be funny dryly. In 1950, Hubbard released a book in Astounding Science Fiction, but it was being printed as

nonfiction in Astounding Science Fiction because he was a known science fiction writer. He comes out with this book called Dynetics. I call it diuretics. OK, I call it diuretics and slimetology. Yeah, in this book, he has this new form of therapy. And you know, this was right after World War II. There was a lot of people coming back from the war with post-traumatic stress. They didn't even know what post-traumatic stress was back then. And there was no real solution. And

so there was a few crackpot things that kind of came out that became hugely popular. I mean, and in that he detailed this really complex notion that our physical cells record moments of pain and unconsciousness. So all the things that are recorded when you're in pain, then when you wake up or you're no longer in pain, those things are the things that are making your life bad. So he developed a process where you could talk through and relive these traumatic incidents. And that by going over them 10 times, 20 times, 30 times, 40 times, they would dissipate and then you would just be purely yourself. And Hubbard was a guy that wanted to make money and he didn't like taxes. So he developed what's called Scientology and the machine

to allow people to clear the painful incidents from their past lives. The origin is that we are all immortal spiritual beings that have been around for trillions of years. We've lived billions of lifetimes, okay? And we were in our native, what he would call native state, in our original state as spiritual beings before we got trapped on Earth.

We've lost our awareness and fallen down to a flesh body, a meat body trapped in it, and gotten into a cycle of birth and death imprisoned on Earth. Before that, we were all gods and had godlike powers. And then something happened where we got degraded into our reduced state now. So once he evolved Scientology and he developed what he calls the bridge to total freedom, which is that you go up, you do all these steps. And the idea is that if you do all the steps, you can return to being your godlike state. And it takes years. It may take you half a million dollars and 20

years to go up this thing. It's a lot of stuff. He started the Sea Project where he would go out on the ocean and do this kind of love boat, sci-fi, religion, militaristic, heavily militaristic religion. He started that in, I think and he makes it seem like, you know, we need to do this sea project to save the planet. Really, I think he was probably running from the authorities and the tax man and because Hubbard was in the Navy and he was a commander of a ship. And so he brought this whole Navy structure, including all the uniforms and the organizational charts and the ranks and all this stuff into the religion.

And it's run like a Navy, like everyone's wearing Navy uniforms in the middle of inner city Los Angeles. They would take Scientology and basically take over the world, clear the planet, turn it into a Scientology world where nobody had reactionary minds with trauma in them, and that everything would be this blissful place. So this church of pseudoscientology says trauma is stored in the body and must be cleared through relentless, expensive counseling. But what about the trauma it causes,

that no one clears, that no one even acknowledges? So the idea is we have to get rid of everybody's inner trauma one by one, all six billion of us. Well, that was going to take a lot of work and a lot of manpower. So our parents needed to be on the job, studying the doctrine so that they could deliver this counseling and then doing the counseling. OK, so Hubbard had this concept called the greatest good for the greatest number. So this is a very powerful concept within Hubbard's doctrine. And so the idea is you maybe have to sacrifice your relationship with your child in this brief moment so that we can save the universe or save the planet, right?

So yeah, you could go be a loving mom and have fun and you could raise a great kid. But literally, if you do that, and they use this this exact statement in their recruiting methods to this day, but if you do that, we're probably gonna have a nuclear war before we can clear the planet. That's how you got her to do it. And that's how they get all of them to do it. So we were a nuisance. We were in the way. But Hubbard was smart. He figured, shit, I wait 12 years. I've got a labor force. So the idea was, let's put them over in these dormitories out of sight. They called it the Beacon Street House or the Asho Dayhouse, which delivered

machine counseling. And it was also the nursery. OK, I call it the baby factory. But the mentality is, until those piglets are ready to gut and serve, in other words, be labor for them, they're irrelevant to us. We could just put them in a pig pen. Our parents come visit us, but they need to be focused on saving the world. That's the mentality. And that place was a tenement.

And so there were 30, 40 babies in this place. Probably the worst of the worst became like the nannies and the janitors. We called them the nannies. And so and it was always understaffed because we don't really need these kids. We just need to keep them alive. When I did that interview where I spoke to some of the kids that had grown up in the movement in a different generation, a woman reached out to me and she said, when I was seven years old, I was your caretaker as an infant. So I had a conversation with this woman.

Because I have baby memories and I was doubting them, staring up at people from those cribs. Just like, you know how when everything is slower when you're a child, it was like being in a prison because people weren't changing our diapers. People weren't walking our noses. We had crust around our eyes. We became accustomed to lack of light.

And one of these women, I was asking her, like, these are my memories. Is this correct? And she says, yeah, that's very correct. And then she said, do you remember how they bathed you? And what I'm about to tell you is really disgusting, but it's nothing compared to what happens. Okay? And I said, no, I don't remember how they bathed us. So she said, when they would bathe you once every week or two, they would run a bath, take off your diaper, dip you and wash you in the water.

And then there'd be somebody waiting. They'd hand the baby over who would put on a fresh diaper. And then they would take the next baby and dip them in the water and wash them, right? So we're talking about dirty diapers. So they were basically bathing me every week or so, dipping me in shit. That, again, that's just, that's nothing compared to what happens

when we move to the next building when I'm around three years old. We'll be right back. OK, bedtime. It's a big deal. Did you know, and I'm sure you did, that most adults spend about a third of their lives asleep and more time actually in bed? That's like living 30 years in your bed. Right. It's crazy.

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That's Boland Branch B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch dot com slash colt. Save 15% Exclusions apply. See site for details. We're assuming you guys know how to spell branch. see site for details. We're assuming you guys know how to spell branch. And we're back to a three-year-old child being moved from one Church of Child Abusology hellhole to another. Because in Jamie's world kids weren't raised, they were warehoused. So then at three years old, I leave the baby factory in downtown L.A. and I arrive at this brick building, this tenement on Melrose Avenue in Venice,

which I call, you know, basically the House of Horrors. And that's where I'm more conscious. That's where hell begins. And I'm put into a dormitory. We're stacked in these dormitories in a slum room with mice and roaches everywhere, no air conditioning. The bunk beds are packed in together, stacked three high. I'm put on the third bunk because I can't fend for myself as a three-year-old. No railing, nothing. I had constant dreams of falling and there'd be several times a

week where I would wake up on the floor. They've got kids supervising kids because they don't have enough labor to take care of us. So they weren't teaching us to clean ourselves. I didn't bathe. I didn't have underwear. I never learned to brush my teeth for years. But there was a lot of abusive things, a lot of really sadistic things that occurred there.

You have these, they called them nannies, and there was four or five of these people to a hundred kids. And their job is to wake us up in the morning and have a roll call like the military, put us out to sleep at night, lights out. It's like we're in the army or the Navy. They put you in a room and they ignore you. If you're screaming and crying, you're dramatizing.

They ignore it. If I was screaming and crying, you're dramatizing. They ignore it. If I was crying and screaming for my mother, I would scream and cry until I fell asleep. That's what it was. So yeah, so we're being woken up at six o'clock in the morning, and sometimes we're being forced to work, sometimes we're being allowed to linger.

If we did any schooling, it was in the doctrine. So I did learn to read, because I had to learn the doctrine. So I could read at a because I had to learn the doctrine so I could read at a high level from a young age, but I never learned to write. I never learned to do basic math. And yet, as we mentioned earlier, Jamie has now written a book. In fact, he's written a number of books. And honestly, it's one of the more mind blowing parts of his story.

But don't worry. We'll, of course, get to that. But first, let's rewind to where he was at the time. Los Angeles and not the sunny, yoga and juice bar version people picture today, unless you're watching Fox News, which apparently it's a hellhole here. But we're talking about the 1980s LA. There's gang violence, there's a crack epidemic, and neighborhoods are torn apart by poverty and policing. I grew up in a gang-ridden part of Los Angeles, right?

So I was having to navigate not only this indoctrination, but I was on the streets of LA taking the bus by myself at the age of seven. I was roaming the streets of Los Angeles by myself. My brother was reacting very poorly to the situation and going off and doing his own thing. My way of dealing with it was to kind of stand back and isolate myself. And then there were periods where I was made to do child labor, and there was periods where I was left alone.

And I will say that there were angels that came in at various points of my life that saved my life. I'm four years old. I have a stepfather. My mother Mary is a Sicilian guy. And even though I don't see him all the time, this guy treats me like his son. This guy comes into my life, and I don't see him very often, but he mostly takes me to Tommy's Burgers. And I sit and start eating Keesburgers and fries with all the cops at Tommy's Burgers on Beverly and Rampart. So he would come and pick me up every month and take me to the desert or take me out to

eat. And I remember him taking me to a restaurant when they first got married and him saying, this is my son, Jamie, and just the feeling that washed in my body that I belong to somebody. Right. It was so powerful. So that guy, and he's still in as an old man. He's got to be his 80s, late 70s. He saved my life. If that guy doesn't come into the picture, and he's still in as an old man, he's got to be in his 80s, late 70s. He saved my life. If that guy doesn't come into the picture, you know. So anyway, four and a half years old, every few years, my grandmother flies me, my older brother and my stepfather, my mother to New York. It's day one.

Rosalyn, I'm going to give Jamie a bath. Sounds good, Mom. OK? Rosalyn, I'm going to give Jamie a bath. Sounds good, Mom. OK. She goes, takes my clothes off, puts me in the bath, looks down at me. And because no one looked at my body. My mom never bathed me, not once in my life. And she saw something and screams and screams for my stepfather. Get the fucking car. Get the car. And grab me.

Do people cry on this show? Grab me and rush me to the emergency room. And I had an infection in my lower extremities that was about to kill me. And that was after falling off the bed from three, right? So that's where it... And then the shit that happened to that building, I mean... How many times on this show, Liz, have we heard about individuals not getting the medical attention they require because of the confining rules of a cult? All the time. Every episode, I feel like.

Too many times. It's horrible. But thankfully, Jamie's grandmother got him to the hospital in time, so he escaped that medical problem. I would pretty much always have a medical scare. I'm there. I say I can't hear. My mom says that I'm faking. So there was a doctorate that interned under my grandfather, a woman named Lucille Gunning. And my grandmother convinced my mother,

well, let's just go see Lucille. She hasn't seen you in years, because my mom didn't want me going to the doctor. So we go, we drive into her shell, I'm probably six, seven years old, okay? We go to see Lucille, and she's very kind, tall, lanky, Jamaican woman. She's looking in my ears, how are you?

She's probably doing the prods and the lights and the ear and tapping me. And she says, okay, you hold on. Very gentle, and she says, pulling, you know, doing the prods and the lights and the ear and tapping me. And she says, OK, you hold on. Very gentle. And she says, Dorothy, come here, please. And my grandmother comes in. My mom's lingering in the other room. And she says, uh, heavy. Dorothy, you're going to drive him to the city and you're going to ask for this doctor, this hospital, when he's going to be going into

surgery. I had an infection in my ears. And I never will forget the doctor talking to my grandmother and saying, hey, we can take his tonsils out. We could put him on these antibiotics. But the reality is that we're probably not going to save his hearing. antibiotics, but the reality is that we're probably not going to save his hearing. That shit. And then there's so much more in this fucking book. And it feels so good. Like, when I first wrote it, I was like, I don't want anyone in the world to know this happened to me. Now, I tell you, people knowing is better than it being in me.

I had a tonsillectomy that day and I had my adenoids taken out and tubes put in my ears. Eventually, the tubes resolved and they kind of rebuild. But until that happens, you can't have any water in yours. So I wasn't allowed to shower for the next eight years. Yes, eight years. for the next eight years. Yes, eight years. Again, Jamie's grandmother, well, thankfully, she got him to the hospital in time and...

I didn't lose my hearing. But when I think about watching that conversation in front of me, like I wasn't there, and again, how I'm processing that, because if you get sick, it's because you did something bad. There's a term in Scientology Hubbard created called you pulled it in. Anything bad that happens to you, you've pulled in from the spiritual universe. So you did something earlier in this life or a past life kind of like karma that caused that bad thing happen to you. That's another reason you hide things because you don't want to be accused of being bad and pulling things in. So you hide things.

So I'm hearing that I'm not going to be able to hear. And what I'm thinking is, what did I do to make this happen to me? FUCKING CULLS. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. From the waters of Lake Erie… It was raising flags. He said, there's no way that that fish should weigh 7.9 pounds. It's just not big enough.

To a nondescript office building in Richmond, Virginia, home to a $700 million fund for children with special needs. If there was a cliché list of how to blow money that you just stole very quickly, this guy did all of them. To the ski slopes of Salt Lake City, where a former Olympic snowboarder landed on the FBI's most wanted list. Ryan James' wedding is one of those interesting narcos who have had two very successful careers, one legal and one illegal.

We're pulling back the curtain on a fresh lineup of opportunists who stopped at nothing to get ahead. These are the stories of people who saw a loophole, a moment of weakness, a chance to get ahead and took it. I'm host Sarah James McLaughlin. Join me for a new season of The Opportunist on May 19th. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back.

So now you might have noticed there's a few references to baths in this episode. And if you're a regular listener, you know that there's been this ongoing debate on this show about Liz's deep borderline spiritual relationship with baths. Yeah, I am going to publicly on the show. And while I haven't... This is what they do in cults. It's called public humiliation. You know that. Yeah, I've learned a few things doing this show. I personally, I haven't sat in a tub

since the Bush administration, but it's been kind of a running joke. See how this bath divide somehow lines up perfectly with stereotypical gender thinking. So Liz, would you care to explain in this public forum to our listeners why we're recording this episode early on Father's Day morning, just one day before it airs? You know, comedy is drama plus time, Tyler. There's not been enough time to tell this story yet. I think you should tell the story, Liz. I dropped it. It fell. My computer fell in the bath. this story yet? I think you should tell the story, Liz. I dropped it.

It fell. My computer fell in the bath. It's not funny. It's not funny. It is drama. It is terrible. Also, it wasn't even old. So that's cool. It was a newer MacBook Air. Yeah. But now I have now I got a bigger screen, so I'm seeing you in a bigger form, which is also a downfall of this whole

experience. I think what we're learning from this is that I'm publicly shaming baths and I shouldn't. I shouldn't. I should be publicly shaming you for bringing a computer in a bath. Computers do not belong in bathrooms or bathtubs nowhere. They don't belong in a bathroom. I understand, dad. Thanks. I already have one dad. Happy Father's Day. All right. Okay. We're not blaming the bather. Let's get back to the show.

But if you guys want to send me some, I don't know, go fund me for my new computer that I was forced to buy out of sheer dumbness and stupidity. Just email it, email it to us. You can text me, text me some Apple cash. You know, I'm sure your OnlyFans love that you take your computer into the bath with you. I had to do a couple more feet videos last night to raise money, but I couldn't even afford a pedicure, so it wasn't even that exciting.

And to Rob, who has to edit this show into the night. We apologize, Rob. Take a bath. Relax. Edit it in the bath, Rob. It's a great place to edit audio. Let's get back to the episode, please. So back to Jamie. Thankfully, he didn't lose his hearing.

But what he did lose was the ability to believe he was ever safe or even deserved to be. And unfortunately, well, that belief would be reinforced again and again and again. Starting with yet another move to yet another cult-owned hellhole. By the time we moved to the blue building when I was seven, this is the third place, and we moved into the fountain building on Fountain Avenue, which is another disgusting tenement. Were horrible things, and I almost died happened to me.

Like that place, the fountain building, I every, at one point I was, I got to, like sometimes I'd be in the dorms, but there was five of us in a 100 square foot studio. And I slept on the floor with a cushion and a blanket and at night I would pull a blanket over my head so the roaches wouldn't crawl in my mouth. That was the nice place. They were just constantly moving things around. Okay, you're in the dorms for six minutes. Okay, your mom is back from... My mom went off to Florida for a year to train to be a counselor, a machine counselor. And then she came back, they're like,

okay, you have to live with your mom for a few months. And I mean, at one point I remember I hadn't seen her in like six, eight months or a year, when you're in seven or eight, like you forget who the person is. And I remember someone came over to that slum and said, we're bringing you to see your mom. And I just remember thinking like,

I forgot what her face looked like, but I was like excited to see her. And they brought me over to this giant room in the blue building where they had these card tables. And my mother was on this thing, basically the re-education camp, the hard labor force, where people could spend anywhere from three to 15 years doing hard labor, where you're working 15 hours a day, you're not allowed to walk, you're not allowed to speak unless spoken to, you wear all black and an armband like Auschwitz.

And so it was basically like going to visit my mom in prison and I sat at this calm table and was like, oh, it's good to see you. I've been bad and I have to do this thing, this punishment so that I can be part of the group again. When I'm part of the group, I'll come visit you. So this is what it was. Hubbard's words that trauma is caused by psychological and physical pain is what stores itself in your body. And then he creates a system

that all it does is induce psychological and physical pain. And then you're not allowed to cry because if you hurt yourself at four years old, you're told that human emotion reaction They call it htnr is a bad thing what I began to learn was The idea is that when you're crying as a child is not because you just hurt yourself It's because you've triggered this in utero event a past life event an earlier life event And then you're also told you're a trillion year old god in a meat

body. So get your shit together. All you just need to do is remember. So start fucking remembering. Get it together. And if that sounds bad, well, well, it is. But sadly, it's not the worst. Not even by a long shot. So the kid in military was called the Cadet Org.

It sounds like RO2C, but it was like the Lord of the Flies. And this 18-year-old sadist ran it. And so they started doing this thing where if you did something wrong, then they had public spanking. So they were like public beatings. And they would put us all in a room, and then they would order the parent who never saw their kid to strip them naked in front of all of us and spank them. But it was more like a beating

and force us to watch as a deterrent. And it was so unbelievable what we were staring at. Like we were so like out of body, like you couldn't believe that you were staring at it. We would laugh. That's how you were staring at it. We would laugh. That's how we would deal with it. We would laugh because it was just we couldn't believe what we were experiencing in front of us. So it was it was quite something. And then you'd walk out of there they turn on the lights and there would be a giant picture of Hubbard and a bronze bust of Hubbard and a wooden box where you could send letters to Hubbard. And as kids we wrote him letters and he had people we thought it was from him, but he had people that wrote back

and he would sign all the letters. And I would write letters like, hey, Ron, when am I gonna be able to see my mom and dad again? You know, and he would be like, you're doing great, you're doing your job. I need you to keep doing what you're doing so we can clear the planet.

Now, if you think that's crazy, check yourself or your shoebox, because how many letters did your ass write to Santa over the years? Right. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. Right. So here's Jamie. He's pouring his heart into these letters to Elrond the Khan, a man he believed was a

savior. And then one night, it seemed like maybe, just maybe, a real savior had finally shown up. When I was seven years old, I get woken up at 11 o'clock, there's a nanny grabbing my arm, like, get out of bed, get out of bed. And all and I could hear just ruckus. It's never happened before. And they say, we're all going over to the Big blue building across the street. We're in these slum dormitory and we're walking the hundreds of kids over to this place at midnight. And like we're the building where my mom works. There's all these guys in suits going in and out. I don't really know what's going on.

They put us in, they take us to this park called Lebanon Hall and they're just having us wait. And they're telling us that there's an inspection going on. And then the guys in suits start piling in there. All right. So they move us to another part of the building. We were in stairwells till six in the morning. And what I was experiencing was the largest raid in FBI history. And here's what was strange about that night.

It was actually felt good because we got to do something to break from the routine. There were people around that were caring what we were doing. You know, they were being really nice to us, right, as they were moving us around with the FBI. I didn't realize they were FBI agents. I was thought they were inspectors. I mean, I think I saw a badge and a gun, but I just didn't, you know, my brain couldn't process it. In that raid, it was discovered that a woman named Paulette Cooper, who had survived the Holocaust as a baby, who'd written a book in the early 70s called The Scandal of Scientology, that Scientology had framed her for bomb threats.

This woman was going to prison for decades. In that raid that I was in, this is all documented, you can Google it, Operation Snow White, it'll come up on Wikipedia, and it'll show everything with references. It sounds crazy, but this is all real. And it was found out that she was framed, that she was never bomb threatening anyone, and she was exonerated. And that the weirdest thing about that raid is no one took a second look or gave a shit about what was happening to us kids. And my life just carries on as a form of psychological and physical torture. So, yes, there was a raid. A criminal conspiracy was uncovered and a woman's life was saved.

But it wasn't Jamie's. Not yet. No one looked behind the saved. But it wasn't Jamie's. Not yet. No one looked behind the doors. No one asked about those children. The lost children of Scientology stayed lost. Forgotten. Unseen.

But next week, Jamie, he flips the script. From a child the world forgot to a voice the world needs to hear. You'll want to hear how this one ends, how a man born into cult slavery finally finds his true freedom. I'm a 19 year old kid in dress whites. I'm wearing a naval uniform in central Florida. I have to pretend I'm doing my laundry and then make sure no one's looking, jump into a cab. I got to change cabs four times before I let this guy drop me off at a hotel area in

downtown Tampa, because they're going to track the cab. And meanwhile, looking over my shoulder, check myself into a hotel room under the name Mickey Mouse and pay with cash that I've been scrolling under my bed. that I've been scrolling under my bed. to help our friend Jamie. The link is in the show notes. And hey, while you're linking in the show notes, don't forget our live show, July 10th in Los Angeles with the very hilarious Moses Storm. Because if you've made it through this episode, you deserve a little cathartic comedy, am I right? We'll see you next week,

and we'll see you at the Dynasty Typewriter in LA on June 10th, am I right? And don't take a bath with the computer. I don't think you need to say that, Liz. They've learned. Somewhere out there, there's someone who's like, oh, maybe I shouldn't take a bath with my computer. That's not a good idea. Thank you, Liz. You saved me. I've done it for over 15 years

and it's never failed me. Probably stop blow drying your hair in the bathtub too, Liz. Just letting you know. And cooking breakfast on that hot plate. Don't don't do it in the tub. Don't. Everything's better in the tub. Was I in a Cult is written, hosted and produced by Liz Sarcasmology, Ayakuzzi. And by Tyler Stogeology-Meesam.

And Rob Sound, edit and tell 4AMology, para. And assisting editing by Greta, what the fuck did I get into? I'll achieve the strongest. Thank you, everyone. See you next week. We'll be back in a week. We appreciate everything that you do. I'm exhausted. Go take a bath and relax.

In fact, bring your mic into the bath. We'll just record it in the tub. Let's do that. The annoying part is I had written this episode, guys, and then it went away. To the ether. I'm glad you were relaxed. The bath relaxed you.

I'm glad that they got that. All right, you're free. I will never bring it up again for another minute or two. Until next week. I promise. All right, we're out of here. Don't spare my life Crucify me summer of cinema is here. Feel the explosive action all summer long with movies like Gladiator, Mission Impossible, Beverly Hills Cop, Good Burger,

and Transformers Dark of the Moon. Bring the action with you and stream for free from all your favorite devices. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.