Yesterday, a story about an Australian woman who says she was held for 12 years against her will aboard Scientology's floating cathedral and cruise ship Freewinds hit the Scientology-watching world like a depth charge.
Last night, we had a lengthy conversation over Skype with Valeska Paris, and learned much more about her upbringing in Scientology, her time on the ship, and in particular, what it was like when church leader David Miscavige brought aboard his best pal, Tom Cruise, for the actor's big birthday celebration in 2004.
We also talked about how she decided to speak out even though she had previously signed confidentiality agreements with the notoriously litigious church.
"They're cowards. They always threaten, but they never follow it up," she says.
Valeska left the Freewinds in 2007, and later left Scientology itself. In 2010 she first went public with her defection at the blog of former high-ranking Scientology executive Marty Rathbun. Then, yesterday, she appeared on the Australian network ABC's program Lateline, saying that she was held against her will aboard the cruise ship for more than a decade. A fellow former member of Scientology's hardcore Sea Organization, Ramana Dienes-Browning, backed up her version of events.
The church has denied all of the allegations by Paris and Dienes-Browning, and spokeswoman Karin Pouw's full statement can be found below. At the end of the statement, Pouw writes to ABC's Steve Cannane: "Your source is doing this because she and Chris Guider apparently cannot get their life in order and move on."
In fact, Valeska and her husband Chris -- who was the subject of his own Lateline program -- are getting on with their lives quite nicely, and even have a bit of an announcement...
"They say we're not getting on with our lives? We both have jobs, we have a boy," she told me last night from Sydney, "And I'm pregnant with another baby."
What a change from her time in the Sea Org, where having children is prohibited, where she signed a billion-year contract at only 14 years old, and where she was pulled away from her own mother and put aboard what she says was a floating prison.
Valeska Paris was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1977. She had two younger siblings -- Melissa (1979) and Raphael (1982) -- and their lives changed radically when their parents, who were both Scientologists, split up and her father, Jean-Francois Paris, decided to join the church's Sea Org in England. At only 6 years of age, Valeska was put into a former Scientology organization known as the "Cadet Org." (Her sibs joined too -- Melissa was only 4, and Raphael barely 2, she points out.)
Her sister, Melissa, has written that the Cadet Org was a sort of "mini Sea Org," where even the youngest children were treated like future hardcore church workers, and were "assigned all sorts of manual labor: scrubbing walls, floors, cleaning the toilets...not stuff that kids would normally do." (We're going to be interviewing Melissa, who has her own story to tell about growing up in Scientology and living in a family torn apart by the church.)
Scientology believes that each of us has lived countless lives over billions of years -- our souls, which Scientology calls "thetans," are ancient, and so even when we inhabit a new body in a new life, as a child, there is actually an adult soul inside.
"We were just future Sea Org members that needed to be molded into 'good' SO members which meant breaking us down into robots," Melissa writes.
Valeska did join the Sea Org, at only 14 years old, signing its standard billion-year contract, promising to come back, lifetime after lifetime, to serve the church by working incredible hours for only 50 dollars a week.
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