We’re bursting with pride here in the Underground Bunker for Dee Findlay, a reader who first made contact with us about a year ago.
At that point, she had just decided to come out of Scientology, and had discovered the Voice blog almost right away. She became a frequent reader and commenter, and also communicated with us behind the scenes. We couldn’t say it then, but she’s been a great inspiration for us.
That was especially true last July, when Karen de la Carriere stood up to the church that didn’t want her to see her own dead son, and several of our readers banded together with her in solidarity and dared to reveal their real identities in the comments section of our blog. One of them was Dee.
Dee has become one of our most active commenters — under the name DeElizabethan — and now, she’s shared with us her latest accomplishment: she’s been declared a Suppressive Person by the Church of Scientology!
She sent us the letter she received from Cara Golashesky, the Flag Land Base Justice Chief, and we’ve posted it below. In it, Golashesky informs Dee that a “declare order” has been issued in her case, which means that Dee has been excommunicated — “declared a suppressive person” in the parlance of the church. Now, no church member may have anything to do with her unless she takes certain steps to get back into good standing. Fortunately, Dee has no family members or close friends in the church, so she will not be losing contact with people important to her.
The letter is not the “goldenrod” declare itself, but attached to the letter was a 15-page policy about suppressive acts, with some of its lines highlighted to let Dee know what she had done that got her excommunicated.
The first of those transgressions reads: “Public disavowal of Scientology or Scientologists in good standing with Scientology organizations.”
Well, she’s certainly guilty of that. But she tells us, she just wonders what took them so long.
“Finally! I’ve been really trying hard!” she says with a laugh.
Dee’s involvement in Scientology goes back to 1972. From 1979 to 1984, her dedication was so great, she became a volunteer for the Guardian’s Office and its replacement, the Office of Special Affairs, and spied for the church, infiltrating a group that was protesting Scientology. (She even got arrested with the other protesters at one point!)
But at the end of that mission and some follow-up auditing, she began to feel disillusioned and walked away from Scientology for the first time. In 1987, she traveled to San Francisco to try out a Scientology alternative, and through that adventure eventually met David Findlay, whom she married later that year.
They became publishers, putting out a natural lifestyles magazine, New Times, until they sold it years later. David died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009 at age 69. His involvement with Scientology had also been deep — he had been a Sea Org member on the flagship yacht Apollo with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The next year, when the church contacted her again, Dee decided to purchase some new materials and do some coursework from home. But as she got more exposure to the church, she was shocked to see what it had become.
Attending an event at the Fort Harrison Hotel, Scientology’s most holy place, she felt very uncomfortable, particularly when one church official she knew came up to her and said, “What are you doing here?”
“It’s the most unfriendly place on Earth anyway, but this was really bad,” she says. “And I had to wonder, what was I doing there?”
About that time, early last year, she read about Debbie Cook’s infamous New Year’s Eve e-mail in the Tampa Bay Times and soon discovered additional reporting about it at the Village Voice. She tells us she soon became a voracious reader of the blog.
For a while, an OT VIII (a Scientologist who has reached the highest level of spiritual achievement) came by periodically to see how she was doing. “He was keeping tabs on me,” she says. But when she revealed to him that she was reading “entheta” websites, he suddenly stopped visiting.
In July, former Scientology auditor Karen de la Carriere was kept from seeing her Scientologist son, who died suddenly, because she had been “declared” and excommunicated. We covered her story last year as she put on her own memorial for her son, since she was barred from the one the church held. Our readers were inspired by her courage, and several of them, led by commenter Windhorse, announced that they were going to reveal their true identities for the first time…
“Those who knew me in the Miami church may remember Deena Bruno and before that was Dee Dee Johnson, after the church was Dee Johnson, then as now, Dee Findlay. I will keep my Elizabethan name in memory of my dearly departed husband David, an ex for 3 decades. Thank you, Windhorse for inspiration and much love to you.”
Since then, she’s been a steady presence in our comments, which she says is her primary home on the web.
Looking back on her career in Scientology, she knows it seems odd that she went back in after so many years away.
“I had to get back in there so I could completely disconnect from it. So I could see what it’s really all about,” she says. “Now I have a goal, to make sure other people don’t go in there.”
Below, we have the letter she received from the church, instructing her to do her “A to E” steps to get back in the good graces of Scientology.
She says she has no intention of doing so.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on February 13, 2013 at 07:00
