Karen Pressley has heard it all before. The talk of space aliens having come to earth a millennia ago, the authoritative worldview, the buffed movie star glibly handing out solutions to personal conflicts.
Karen Pressley has heard it all before.
The talk of space aliens having come to earth a
millennia ago, the authoritative worldview, the buffed movie star
glibly handing out solutions to personal conflicts.
Movie star Tom Cruise may be spouting the truth according to the Church
of Scientology these days, but Pressley has lived in that world longer
than Cruise and knows firsthand the nightmare it entails.
“Tom Cruise is doing exactly what Scientology
leaders want him to do,” Pressley says. “He’s a celebrity and
considered to be a shaper of public opinion and he makes a good
spokesman for the organization. Scientology primarily targets the
‘movers and shakers’ in society in order to influence others.”
Such high-profile personalities “add a degree of
respectability that breaks down any resistance listeners may have.”
She knows well of what she speaks. For 17 years –
nearly half of her life -– she was involved with the cult. Nine of
those years she served at the group’s international headquarters
located in a remote part of the California desert outside Palm Springs.
Pressley’s basic thirst for truth is what led her toward the cult.
“From about age 11, I had a strong desire to know
God,” she notes. “I was searching but didn’t know where to look for
Him. Unfortunately I did not know any Christians who had a vibrant,
personal faith who would share Him with me.”
The years passed and she completed her education,
moved away from home, and eventually moved to Houston, Texas, where she
met an aspiring musician, Peter Schless. The composer/arranger and
Karen, an up-and-coming fashion designer, were married two years later
in 1979.
They moved to Los Angeles where they could be closer
to the creative energy of Hollywood and expand their careers.
In 1982, Peter, with Karen’s contributions, wrote the smash hit “On the
Wings of Love.” It was recorded by Jeffrey Osborne and immediately rose
to the top of the charts. The couple were immediately ushered into the
elite world of stars and recording artists and were introduced to
Hollywood’s sizeable Scientology community.
As their careers took off, Karen continued in the
fashion industry and opened a recording studio in their home. The
couple toured with Melissa Manchester’s world tour in 1983, and Peter
played with B.B. King and the Allman Brothers and was a pianist for
Cher.
“Scientology seemed to offer the answers to
everything that I had been looking for,” Karen recounts. “I understood
why it was so appealing to the creative people in the entertainment
industry.”
Entertainers, whether musicians or actors, are
insecure by virtue of their profession, she says; they are only as good
as their last hit movie or song and there is no guarantee of future
success. Public opinion, which is constantly changing, shapes and
drives their lives.
Scientology steps into that void.
While universal truth accepts that humans have five
senses – sight, touch, taste, hearing, seeing (one additional sense
called intuition or extra sensory perception is sometimes included) –
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught there are 57 senses.
By developing each of these, humans gain more control over their lives
and stand a better chance to shape their futures – meaning, their
careers.
Pressley was taught that Scientologists who attain
the highest level – after extensive training – can control other
people’s thoughts and move objects with their mind.
Karen and Peter became so involved with the
organization that they eventually decided to join the staff’s
international headquarters. They left their affluent, jet-set lifestyle
to move to the compound and work 16-hour days, six-and-a-half days a
week, for $45.
The headquarters, located near the small town of
Indio, Calif., is officially known as Golden Era Productions. From
there it produces all of the promotional material for Scientology’s
growth worldwide.
Peter worked in the organization’s public relations
arm to compose and record music for programming promoting Scientology
while Karen helped design and produce clothing for churches on five
continents.
In her role Karen traveled the world to help shape
public opinion of the organization. She would conduct polling to
determine perceptions of how those in mainline churches should dress –
conservative or contemporary, high fashion or low key.
She would then design the clothing and have it produced locally for
that culture. It was then worn by staff members of Scientology churches
or bookstores to present a welcoming image to the public.
But while Peter was enjoying the work, Karen felt unfulfilled.
Bothered by the total lack of privacy and the overbearing workload, she decided she wanted out.
She talked with Peter, who was not interested in
leaving. She eventually tried to escape but failed in two attempts.
“People don’t understand how controlling Scientology
is,” Karen says. “About 800 people work in the international
headquarters and they give their entire life to the organization. We
would work from 8 a.m. to midnight and were forbidden from having
children because it would distract from our mission.
“… Once when I considered leaving I discovered
they would charge me $225,000 for the services [meals, housing,
instruction] I had been provided in four years as a fulltime staff
member. There was no way I could erase that debt.
At the time, the organization purchased a nearby
apartment complex to house staff it could not keep inside the compound.
“That is where they would transport us to work in
the morning and back at night,” she explains. “Security fences were
erected around the property and 24-hour guards patrolled the grounds –
to protect us from intruders we were told, but it was really to prevent
us from leaving.”
There was never any privacy. Staff had to assemble,
military style, in the morning to be sure everyone was present. All
telephone calls were monitored and no one left the compound without a
security escort.
Then occurred what she refers to as her Damascus
Road experience. In July 1998 she came to “a place of complete
brokenness” and knew she could not continue in the cult – even if it
meant losing her husband, which was the only reason she returned on the
two previous escape attempts. She says she felt totally overcome with a
sense of peace from God, even though she did not know who He was.
“At that point I had not been looking for God
because I didn’t know where to look,” Karen says. “The miracle is that
He sought me out and gave me a peace like I had never known in my life.
He spoke to my spirit and told me it was OK to leave, and that He would
take care of me. I determined I would go to Georgia where my mother
lived.”
She decided that her car – an exceptional possession
among staff which she used on business trips to Los Angeles – would
serve as her escape vehicle – but only if she could get through the
gates.
The next afternoon between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. she
pretended she needed to do some laundry. As she walked out of her and
Peter’s tiny apartment, she met a security guard who saw her basket and
commented that she was doing her laundry early that day.
She laughed it off and proceeded to put the basket
in her car. In the basket were hidden a few personal belongings she
would need for her escape, along with $48.
A short time later, staff were loaded onto the bus
for the return to the office compound and she followed in her car as
she always did.
But on the highway she chose her moment and slipped
away on another road. She drove to Los Angeles and contacted an
acquaintance in the clothing industry who had once mentioned God in a
conversation.
Upon learning of her predicament, her contact placed
her in a hotel room for the night where she could hide and returned the
following day to drive her to the airport in Las Vegas, about three
hours away. He then gave her a one-way plane ticket to Atlanta, where
her mother was living – and, unknown to her, had come to faith in
Christ at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga.
Upon arriving in Atlanta she learned that her mother
had joined First Baptist’s senior citizens Sunday School class and
learned to pray. And her mother had enlisted the class to pray with her
as she sought to free her daughter from Scientology.
For six months Karen did not want to have anything
to do with church or faith. She had been conditioned to rejecting those
values because Scientology taught that everything man had produced had
failed – that is, everything before Hubbard developed his concepts.
Slowly she became more open to her mother’s
suggestions and went to a Christmas program where, for the first time,
she heard the choir sing about God’s love, forgiveness and acceptance.
Later she began attending church with her mother and on March 14, 1999,
she accepted Christ.
Since then, Karen says she has been on the road to
spiritual renewal that only Christ can give. She says she has found the
truth she has sought all her life, crediting the long-distance prayers
of a then-73-year-old-mother who she did not even know had become a
Christian.
Her divorce from Peter, whom she never spoke to from
the day she left the housing compound, was finalized through the U.S.
mail. Scientology teaches that once an individual has left the system
there can be no further communication.
Karen eventually joined the choir at Woodstock where
she met her future husband, Greg Pressley. In 2002 she launched a
ministry, called Wings of Love, which she uses to share her experience
and help those whose family members remain in the sect.
“I know that God brought me out of Scientology to
expose its false doctrines and to minister to people who have come
out,” she says. “I also know that I have an obligation to teach
Christians about the dangers of Scientology so they will not be
deceived by it.
“But the best thing is I am not searching anymore.
Today I know the source of all knowledge is Jesus Christ.” (BP)