I returned to work the next day, keeping my decision a secret from everyone. I had to deal with this on my own. Two weeks have passed and nothing has happened. I kept coming in every day and looking through folders. I had almost no contact with anyone, and until Friday, August 20, 1976, no one bothered me. That day, Harry Epstein decided to talk to me. He was very angry that I left my post and said that I should forget all this nonsense and come back. He sarcastically accused me of considering myself superior to everyone because I was on the Flag with Quentin. Epstein sent me to an ethics officer, who turned out to be kinder. He tried to persuade me to return to my post, but I still refused. He said that if I did not return, he would be forced to convene an evidence committee on my case. I knew I would have to act soon.

On Saturday morning, I looked through the folders as usual. Some of the people I worked with gossiped about a girl named Pandora Cooper, who was an auditor and case supervisor at an organization in Washington, D.C. There was a rumor that she wanted to leave, but she was not allowed. She was locked in a room against her will and forced to be audited. She pretended to agree with this and then told those who had captured her that auditing had helped her a lot, and she had changed her mind about leaving. Once she convinced them that she wanted to stay, they let her out of the room, after which she left the organization and never returned. I realized that what happened to Pandora could easily happen to me and decided to act quickly.

While I was the director of processing and receiving bonuses, I saved up about two hundred dollars. When I left that position, I no longer received the bonuses that a director was entitled to, only the MO salary, $10 a week, so soon my $200 would have been spent, and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to go anywhere, and I would have to give up my apartment. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to leave the MO, it had to be today, before the evidence committee was convened.

It so happened that I had a free afternoon, which gave me the perfect opportunity to leave, because I wanted to be grabbed no earlier than the next day. But I still haven't made a final decision. I went swimming, took a shower, and put on a new dress that my mother sent me. Then I went to the pay booth to see if there were flights from Los Angeles, but all seats were booked. Then I went to the bus stop to see when the next bus was going to Michigan. The bus was for six in the evening and the ticket cost 125 dollars, which I could afford. It was half past three. I returned to my apartment and met one of my neighbors there. I tried to behave as usual. He went out to buy a newspaper, and I began to pack my things. Soon he returned and I hurriedly hid everything that I had packed. I told him that I had just gone swimming and the water was great, hoping that he would go swimming. Fortunately, he did so, and I was left alone again.

Now there was nothing to stop me from leaving, except for the barriers with which I surrounded myself. For an eternity, though in fact it may not have been five minutes, I frantically tried to make a final decision; I knew I would have to accept it. I wanted to leave, but I was afraid. I knew that this would be my only chance. If I don't do it today, this opportunity may not come up for a long time. However, I was still hesitant to leave or stay and felt like I was making the most important and hardest decision of my life. Finally, I packed my things into a small carry-on bag. I kept telling myself that I was miserable and that things wouldn't get any better, but I still wasn't sure.

Then, suddenly, it became clear to me that making the decision to leave is never easy, and if I wait for something like this, I will never leave. I made up my mind. Taking my things, I left the apartment. Of course, I couldn't take everything with me, because I could meet someone I knew on the way to the bus stop, and it would not be easy to explain the suitcases. I just took a small purse, a bag and a reticule. I even made up a story to explain why I needed these bags if I ran into someone on the street, but luckily I didn't need it. I was frightened by the thought of bumping into several people at once, and I was also afraid that I would be stopped and locked up against my will.

As soon as I arrived at a bus stop in Hollywood that was a ten-minute walk from my apartment, I bought a ticket to Michigan. Then I called my mother and told her that I was going home. She was overjoyed and supported me in my decision to leave. She said, "I always knew you were a free soul."

At five o'clock, my bus left Hollywood for Los Angeles, where I had to change trains. My head was pounding, and I was still worried that they would find me. It didn't stop until my bus finally left Los Angeles, and only then was I able to relax, feeling the greatest relief I've ever had. I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from me, and I was finally free.

I'm starting a new life

For nine months, I didn't leave the house, trying to find some meaning in what I had experienced and adjust to my new life. A week after I left, I began to write down my thoughts about what had happened to me in a journal, which I still have today. I was at a loss. For several months, I saw only my parents and felt solitude.

Six months after leaving, I made an attempt in my journal to analyze this group and see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. I wrote, "There's something very wrong with the way this organization is run, something fundamental that I can't point out yet." At this point, I wasn't ready to blame LRH for this situation, and I didn't know anything about mind control. However, one observation I made that I thought was an invaluable insight for me: people are cared for little or not at all. People are looked at from the point of view of benefits for the team.

An example is a girl from Holland who trained on Flag to be an auditor. She still had difficulty with English, which led to problems understanding the course materials and later in her attempts to audit. She was never able to rise above the most basic levels in auditing because of language problems. When she made mistakes, she was sent to ethics, and she was one of the first to be placed in the RPF. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that her problem was not "evil intentions towards the group" but a simple misunderstanding of English. No one cared enough about her to see the obvious. All that was noticed was that she was not fulfilling her duties as an auditor and must therefore have evil intentions, and that appropriate disciplinary measures were applied to her. If someone had taken care of her as a person rather than a commodity, they could have easily seen what her problem was and helped her learn English, but that's not the way things were done in the Sea Org.