Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life inside Scientology and my Harrowing Escape, Jenna Miscavige Hill with Lisa Pulitzer.  New York: Harper Collins Publishers/William Morrow, 2013.  e-book, 356 pps.

When I spied Beyond Belief, I immediately got on the list to buy it the first day it was available to the general public.  I've read a bunch of books on Scientology, Mormonism, gurus, and thought-blocking in connection with some extended research that I've been doing.  I was curious about this latest entry in ex-Scientologist memoirs and waited rather impatiently for the thing to load on my e-reader.

[To those who are against e-readers: I don't like the idea of them either.  The problem is that I cannot read regular printed books for any length of time due to the brain damage and resultant perception problems].

Beyond Belief started out with Jenna as an infant and toddler living an average life until her dad impulsively decided to join up with Sea Org and signed a billion year contract.  Her mother then had to join also.  Couples could not remain married if one was in and one was out.  Thus started apartments and nannies and then living and working at The Ranch for Jenna and her older brother.  Jenna included very specific information about her relationships with her family, including her uncle David Miscavige, which served to underscore the difficulties that she had in untangling herself from the Sea Org and from Scientology itself.  Although Jenna was not aware of the human rights violations carried out under her uncle's predecessor, she gradually woke up to the things that were happening under her uncle's reign.  It is to her credit that she was able to get out at all.

Jenna addressed the role of Anonymous in her awakening and specifically thanked Anonymous for picketing and getting the word out about Scientology and its' history of human rights violations.  None of the other memoirs that I read did this.  I was surprised and happy that Jenna had thought to include Anonymous in her memoir.  

I came away from Beyond Belief with a visceral sense of who Jenna Miscavige Hill is as a human being.  I was delighted to discover that she is one of the co-founders of the most excellent website http://www.exscientologykids.com/

sapphoq reviews says: Although Beyond Belief didn't detail the abusive nature of Scientology in the same manner that other memoirs did, this book is a valuable addition to the library of anyone seeking information on the subject matter.  Jenna was in a unique position as the niece of the current head of Scientology, and this position would of course reflect the differences in her experiences from those of other ex-Scientologists who also authored books.  There were some familiar names in Jenna's book.  Beyond Belief is a story of the coming of age of a sheltered Scientology kid.  Worth a read for anyone struggling with the hold of any abusive religion as well as for those who enjoy unusual memoirs about experiences that are beyond the realm of "average." Highly recommended.

My Billion Year Contract by Nancy Many

My Billion Year Contract (Memoir of a former Scientologist),
Nancy Many.  Somewhere in California: C.N.M. Publishing, 2009.  approx. 360 pps.

Prior to reading My Billion Year Contract, I knew very little about Scientology.  I'd heard that a relative of an acquaintance had mortgaged and re-mortgaged her home in order to pay for Scientology courses.  She lost that home, I'd heard.  And I knew that Scientologists do something called "auditing" with something like a lie detector in order to "clear" out junk in someone's psyche.  And I had read about Lisa McPherson's death.  I knew that there was a bunch of Scientologists living in Clearwater, Florida.  And that the guy who made it all up was a sci fi author.  [N.B.  I consider all religions to have person or persons behind them who "made it all up"]. And that the collective Anonymous stage lots of protests against Scientology because of human rights and censorship issues within the organization.  And that the higher up Scientologists have a rep for throwing lawsuits and harassment at their detractors.  But not a whole lot more than that.  I didn't know about the Sea Org or the Rehabilitation Project Force or even about the traveling ship.  My Billion Year Contract provided me quite an education along with a feel for how things were for Nancy Many when she was a Scientologist.

Nancy Many had her first known encounter with Scientologists at an Org in Boston.  Within months, she joined up with the Sea Org, signing the typical billion year contract.  She immersed herself in her work, dropping out of college.  Nancy was shuttled to orgs in California, New York, and Clearwater Florida.  She got married and got pregnant.  When she was two months pregnant, she was ordered to undergo a "voluntary" stint on the punitive Rehabilitation Project Force (R.P.F.).  Folks in R.P.F. slept on bunk beds in a crowded room in a basement, wore a dark jumpsuit, and were assigned to menial tasks like scrubbing toilet bowls.  After her son was born, she was assigned once again to R.P.F.  Only this time she and her husband both refused to sign the paperwork noting that their transfers to the R.P.F. were voluntary.  After a few days, Nancy Many and her husband departed, taking their young son with them.

Working in Sea Org is not a great way to make money.  Sea Org workers are generally paid less than fifty dollars a week.  Nancy and her husband were virtually penniless.  Family and friends helped them get on their feet after they left the Sea Org.

As a Scientology, Nancy had gone through numerous auditing sessions utilizing a quasi-lie detector known as an E-meter.  She had a psychotic-like break during one of her sessions.  In contacting other ex-Scientologists, she came to understand that there were others who had had similar breaks with reality during an auditing session.  The lack of compassion exhibited by her auditors plus the death of Lisa McPherson caused some cognitive dissonance which Nancy could no longer ignore.  Once Nancy got free of Scientology, she has helped other folks looking for their way out.

sapphoq reviews says: Nancy Many is very courageous in openly discussing what happened to her along with some of the whys.  My Billion Year Contract gave me a sense of Nancy Many as a human being.  Highly recommended to folks who are interested in controlling leaders and groups and to folks who like to read autobiographies dealing with emotions.