So, You’re Being Stalked by the Church of Scientology
After three years of Googling whether or not I might be getting stalked by the Church of Scientology, I am pretty sure I might be getting stalked by the Church of Scientology.
If you or a friend thinks the Church is stalking you, these links and unsolicited commentary may help. They were passed to me by others, and with as much care as I can manage, I now lovingly pass them on to you. As with all forms of abuse, validation that you are not crazy or imagining things can be a lifeline.
This material can be triggering so take care of yourself and read what helps you when it helps you. May this blog post lead you to further, better resources.
1.) “The Golden Suicides”
Vanity Fair Magazine, Nancy Jo Sales, December 11 2007, 12:00AM https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/01/suicides200801
This article illustrates the true capacity for doubt and discrediting to which anyone who claims they are being stalked by the Church is subject. I took special note of the fact that some sources claim this couple offered to help Beck leave Scientology. That right there may have been enough to put them on the Church’s drone strike list.
Yes, stalking and abuse can make someone lose touch with reality and act in odd ways, but always go from the basis that their behavior and reactions are grounded in a perceived reality.
Scientology spies sometimes pose as fake Scientology victims, while real Scientology victims, as with all cult victims, run the risk of re-joining the Church and ratting out the people who tried to help them.
2.) The Aftermath Foundation
http://theaftermathfoundation.org
The Aftermath Foundation is currently the only official organization committed to helping people leave Scientology. Assuming you’re not a spy, many thanks for an interest in helping. It's also good to know you put yourself at risk and might be getting stalked by the Church now too.
Getting stalked can drive anyone crazy, even if you aren’t dealing with cult recovery. Scientology may even send spies who test someone's willingness to speak against Scientology, and then sabotage that person if they fail.
I’m not saying Jeremy Piven’s food poisoning at that Sushi restaurant when he was on Broadway with Elisabeth Moss was anything but coincidence. I’m just saying that hiring a food taster when collaborating with Scientology celebrities, whose handlers are always near, might not be a frivolous cost.
If you don’t want to be Jeremy Piven’s professional food taster, but still want to do something:
http://theaftermathfoundation.org/volunteers/how-you-can-help/
If you even place one card on the bulletin board at your daily coffee jaunt and make sure it’s always there, you’re making a huge contribution. I bought my ~$9 cardstock at STAPLES and am going to place some myself, once I’m less busy with writing about Scientology, getting stalked by Scientology, and writing about getting stalked by Scientology. I also don’t want Scientology spies harvesting my DNA samples from the cards and planting them on forged threats to the Pentagon. Speaking of which
3.) ”The Unbreakable Miss Lovely", Tony Ortega, Paperback Available on Amazon
Paulette Cooper is an adopted holocaust survivor who recognized the importance of monitoring authoritarian movements and became one of the first major Scientology whistleblowers. She was ruthlessly subjected to Church sponsored espionage.
People were hired to live with her, date her, sort through her garbage, and even use suggestion tactics in the attempt to drive her to suicide. She was never a Scientologist, just a highly intelligent writer who became successful very early in her career, and even she was almost destroyed by the stalking. Nevertheless she is alive today.
If the Church’s tactics were this obsessive in the 1970’s, imagine how they’ve evolved since. Sometimes I wonder if Scientology hasn’t developed a smartphone app able to monitor and sabotage it’s targets via GPS and hacked accounts in videogame-like format.
(For more on Paulette Cooper see Wikipedia: Operation Freakout)
4.) “Harvey Weinstein's Army of Spies” New Yorker Magazine, Ronan Farrow, November 6th 2017 https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies New Yorker Magazine
This article draws attention to contract stalking and spying that anyone with enough money can hire against victims, whistleblowers, journalists, writers and other PR disasters. It’s an illuminating read for anyone being stalked by Scientology and other shady organizations/individuals (corporations are people too) who keep a hefty budget, tax-deductible or otherwise, for spying purposes.
Scientology stalking targets should be aware that not all church spies are in-house, but contracted. They are not subject to the religious doctrine, only the paycheck.
Some other organizations whose members have been spied on include Anonymous, The Black Panthers, and even the Church of Scientology itself. Save that clickhole for another time, at your own discretion.
Spying is a business just like any other, so let’s all please try to be professional.
5.) Guided Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_nRslK0Nn0
Like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, you may be prone to unprecedented stress levels due to your involvement in the world of espionage.
Anyone getting stalked by Scientology in real time probably doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth--which is pretty much the goal of any stalker. Don’t let this crash your mental hard drive so that you implode or react and accuse all your friends of being spies. Even if they are (they totally could be) you will just be giving the spies license to hurt your credibility, or putting off people who care about and want to help you for real.
Read these articles for validation and to share with your therapist, or trusted authorities, activist organizations, lawyers, or law enforcement down the line. Let these articles help inform the process of navigating weird interactions or signs you’ve been hacked. Don’t spend eight hours every night ruminating over these articles, and certainly try to make friends other than people like me who write blog posts like this. Intellectual diversity is healthy and counter-fascist, I feel.
If possible, do the best to be immediately safe, calm, housed, employed, and well fed. Socialize, go to work, exercise every day to blow off the rage of being hacked.
Don’t lock yourself in your bedroom and start setting makeshift booby traps for your roommates-who-might-be-spies. That’s how that dude who went to Harvard became the uni-bomber. If you decide to become a spy, do it through a credible agency.
A conspiracy theory can be a quick way for the mind to cope with an absurd reality. Moreso if you have actually been subjected to internalizing Scientology’s closed system of indoctrination, as your mind seeks to regain Scientology Doctrine’s perfectly computable sense of control, even at the price of cognitive dissonance.
I’m not saying you are wrong to claim that all of your friends and family are spying on you in exchange for career promotion from the Church, or the Government, or the Government posing as the Church.
I’m just saying that when you stand on the White House lawn with a mega phone ready to non-violently present your bag of evidence to the President of the United States, I want you to be your best self.
Careful! This post could be written by a Scientology spy logging the IP address and identity of every single person who visits this page.
By the way, here’s the real story of Jeremy Piven’s food poisoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfJpWrXyCk
See how easy it was for me to go for the joke and conspiracy theory? Be your own best devil’s advocate.
"Why I left Scientology" by Carmen Llewelyn, Gawker Online, June 23, 2015 10:10AM
I reference this article as a Scientology spying resource simply because towards the end it mentions that the target’s phone was hacked and turned into a 24-hour surveillance device. Validation. This, like many Scientology spying stories, comes from someone with a career that afforded them existing visibility and resources, but general finding and consensus is that Scientology does this equally to people who not only don’t get to tell their story, but never even know they’re being spied on or sabotaged.
"Recovery from Cults”
by Michael D. Langone (Editor), Paperback
I would say this book is so smart, I see it as not just of use to cult survivors and their loved ones, but as an aid to understanding toxic social influence. It also has a great index targeting specific topics if you don’t read it straight through. It is built around case studies that identify traits and symptoms shared by cults and cult members. Among many things, I like that cult survivors might benefit from being able to recognize cult patterns so that they can begin to see their experience take shape, and so that they do not attribute their traumatic experience to a unique flaw in themselves, and see what powerful social influences and repeat offenders cultic formation has been in our society. Or whatever keeps you sane while being stalked by the Church.
