In a way, once we got over the initial shock, being on the RPF was a relief to most of us because there were no more threats about being sent to the RPF—we were already there. We had hit bottom.
When we were first assigned to the RPF, we were told we could contest it by requesting a Committee of Evidence, Scientology's version of a trial. I had requested such a committee and my close friend, Quentin Hubbard was assigned as Chairman of my committee and also the committee of Lisa Zanda, another friend of his. He had no choice but to find me guilty and uphold the decision that I remain on the RPF. No other verdict would have been considered acceptable.
A few days later, Quentin was missing from the ship and a search party was sent out to find him. While the search party was out, Quentin came back aboard the ship and confessed to a messenger that he had taken a whole bottle of pills. The messenger told his father and after his stomach was pumped, he was put into isolation in his cabin for about a month. He was not allowed to communicate with anyone, except his auditor. After that, he was assigned to the RPF.
When I saw Quentin, I forgot all about my troubles. He looked so thin and vulnerable. I vowed that I would protect him and get him through the RPF. In the RPF, people were paired off to audit one another and somehow I managed to be paired off with Quentin. Quentin and I also became the RPF case supervisors. Although RPFers were not normally allowed to be on the deck that Quentin's cabin was on, he and I were given special permission to go to his cabin, study folders and audit one another. That cabin became a haven for both of us. Even though Quentin was very run down, he was very brave. He never lost his sense of humor. We spent a lot of time together in his cabin, talking, laughing and eating peanut butter that he had taken from his family food supply. Later, Quentin referred to these days as «the peanut butter days of the RPF». Quentin and I hung in there for one another and developed an even closer bond of friendship. Humor, warmth and love were rare commodities aboard the ship, but ones which Quentin and I shared in abundance. I have read many accounts that described Quentin as a miserable person. While I don't deny this, I saw another side of Quentin; he was a person who, somehow, was able to continue to love, in spite of all the personal misery he was going through. I'll never forget Quentin and the bond we shared. He never abandoned me, even after I left Scientology. The last letter I received from him was just two weeks before the day he went into a coma.
My LRH Commendation
When I graduated from the RPF in May of 1974, I was sent back to complete the internship and Quentin returned to his position as a Flag auditor. I quickly completed the internship requirements and became a full-fledged Flag Class VI auditor, which was a dream come true for me. The summer of 1974 was to be the high point of my time in Scientology.
I was assigned a very difficult case to audit. The person was a Scientology executive from South Africa who had previously been Director of Processing (the person in charge of the auditors) on Flag during the same time I was an intern and getting into so much trouble. We didn't get along at all and here I was, assigned to audit him. While in South Africa, he had gotten into ethics trouble and had just graduated from the RPF. Maybe assigning me to audit him was a way to further punish him, or maybe it was just a coincidence‑I don't know what the powers that be were thinking when they assigned his case to me, but we turned the tables on them and surprised everyone, including LRH. I knew that the first thing I had to do was to get him to trust me, so we could develop a rapport which was essential if the auditing was to be at all successful. Somehow, we managed to work things out between us and his auditing went very well. By the time we had finished, he was glowing. The difference in his before and after personality tests was dramatic and caught the attention of Hubbard. He sent down a memo, commending me on my auditing, delivered to me by one of his messengers, Anne (currently Anne Broeker). He said that I was to be held up as an example of what Flag auditing is all about.
This commendation had tremendous significance to me, as well as to others. People who never gave me the time of day were all of a sudden very nice to me. After all, Hubbard had said that «Auditors are the most valuable beings on the planet» and Flag auditors are considered to be the cream of the crop. To be held up as an example of an ideal Flag auditor was to be at the top of the most elite group of people on the planet. In my eyes at the time, we were the people who would save the planet. I felt tremendous power.
Quentin and I continued to be good friends, spending a great deal of time together. We still spent a lot of time in his cabin, laughing together and playing with his tape recorder. We were always making up funny little skits and commercials and taping them. Once, we just taped ourselves laughing for several minutes and when we listened to the tape, we laughed even harder. On our days off, we would often go ashore together. Quentin loved to watch airplanes landing and taking off at local airports. His real dream was to become a pilot, but his father had other plans for him. Quentin and I came very close to getting involved sexually, but we didn't because he told me that several years earlier, he had become sexually involved with a young woman and she had been sent off the ship when his father found out. He didn't want to get me into that kind of trouble, so we remained good friends. He once told me that he had decided not to get married until he was 25 years old, an age he never reached. Regarding the rumor that he was a homosexual, he told me that he used to tell that to some of the women on the ship who were after him because of who he was, just to get rid of them. If he did engage in homosexual relationships later, it was probably because he was never allowed to have a heterosexual relationship with anyone.
The Mission to New York
In August, 1974, I was sent to New York City on a six-week mission ordered by Hubbard. This was considered to be a great honor. My mission was to audit Molly Bornstein, the Commanding Officer of the Flag Liaison Office in New York and her husband, Al, also an executive there. Unlike some Sea Org missions, our mission was a friendly one. Molly and Al weren't in any kind of trouble and were very happy that an auditor was being sent from Flag especially to audit them. Two other people accompanied me on the mission: Joan Robertson, a top Scientology executive who was in charge of the mission and David Englehardt, a staff member on Flag. I'm not sure what their purpose was, but it had something to do with helping the organization run more smoothly.
We flew across the Atlantic from Lisbon to New York City. I had been away from the United States for over a year and was very happy to be returning for a visit. We stayed at the Hotel Alden on 81st Street and Central Park West, headquarters of the org. My accomodations felt very luxurious to me. I had my own large private room and bath and we were given an allowance to eat all of our meals out in restaurants. The first night we ate at a diner in the neighborhood. I ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a hot fudge sundae. I had missed American food and felt like I had died and gone to heaven! I had lost a lot of weight, due to the hard physical labor when I was on the RPF and all the times I couldn't eat anything because I was seasick. I was very thin and could eat anything I wanted without fear of gaining too much weight. I remember sitting up on the roof, enjoying the view and eating a whole pint of Hagen Daz ice cream. I hadn't realized until then how homesick I had been for the United States. I savored the simplest pleasures that most people take for granted, like being able to take a bath and use as much water as I wanted. On the ship, we had to take 30-second showers, due to the shortage of water.