Interviews

For a basic summary of this collaborative effort and the other data collection endeavors that aim to encourage an informed exodus from the Church of Scientology, please see the Exit Zone Projects index.

Shining a Light on the Truth for a Broader Understanding

Scientology - Through The Door Interviews are an online project first launched by ethercat in 2002. The site includes three very insightful questionnaires, which explores the thoughts and feelings of people who have participated in the Church of Scientology.

The entries collected over the years provide an honest yet respectful look into former member's reasons for joining, for staying, and their reasons for leaving the organization. We hope that through this series of interviews, people who have never been members can gain better comprehension of the motivations shared by the members and ex-members, as well as a further understanding of the different experiences members have had.

The following options are currently available online for confidential participation (no personal information is revealed unless you choose to specify your real name and/or other details).

Note: Total submissions noted above for each interactive dialogue tool listed as of December 2010.
For former Church of Scientology members who are recently out and ready for their voices to be heard, yet aren't quite ready to join the various online communities, the main interview is a simple yet effective venue to stand up and be counted!

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
- Albert Einstein


What Former Members Are Saying

The following is just a small sample of the observations gathered so far with these interviews. Please note, although only widely recognized participants who used their real names is quoted below, submissions made under aliases and nom de plumes are likewise welcome and gladly accepted.

Q: How did you first become acquainted with the Church of Scientology?

Well, in this lifetime, my Dad was into it and got me into it. I took a basic course and found it was just what I was looking for.
Ran into a girl I had known from High School. She was a recruiter from Div VI. She invited me to a lecture presented by Clay Primrose. I was blown away with what Clay was telling me and was easily signed up for the Communication Course.

Q: Were there problems in your life that you thought scientology would address?

Everyone around me saw me as having great abilities but I didn't see my own strengths. I thought this church would give me those abilities or self confidence. What it gave me was the loss of nearly a million dollars, false doctrine, lies and the loss of my son who is so mind controlled and brain washed he can no longer think for himself. ...

Q: Did you see, experience, or hear about things that didn't seem right while you were in the Church of Scientology?

Later I saw the poor way staff was treated and paid. ... Also at one point my father disconnected from me while he was taking the PTS/SP course because I was supposedly out ethics and PTS. When that happened I knew something was f'ed up with the whole system.

Q: Why did you choose to stay in the Church of Scientology?

I thought SCN was trying to save the planet. I thought that my eternity was to be found in scn.
Because I was too occupied to think long enough to find out the end of the facts about it; because I had responsibilities toward 'our' public, since my wife and me were the founders of the org, its main cores. So, ... we couldn't leave without being expelled, in fact. The solution happened when those Sea Orgers got us out, thru inept justice cycles.

Q: Why did you leave the Church of Scientology? Was there a "final straw"?

My wife got pregnant, and I couldn't see supporting her and me and the baby on staff pay. They made it impossible to leave on the routing form, so I 'blew', and was declared.
I witnessed that Ethics is ultimately 'Control by Fear': When I wrote to my superiors stating that I was going to take a week off with my family - whether they authorized it or not - I discovered just how extreme it can get. ... I was screamed at for wanting to see my family. ... I was told that I would be re-captured and brought back to the base if I did make it to my father's house.


Ongoing Data Collection

Follow the links above to participate in the Through The Door interviews, and add your experiences and viewpoints to our growing knowledge base.

The website for this classic project was previously overwhelmed by spam-bots in 2008, making it necessary for interviews to be accepted through email only. However, that is no longer the case as of late 2010, and a new v2 edition is now available to the masses of ex-members fleeing the oppressive tactics of the CofS organization.

With the renewed collaborative interests stirred up by the team effort behind the Exit Zone blog, the original interview form has been partially replaced with a more secure version, and online entries are once again enabled for new participants.

Added bonus - all newly submitted interviews that are not done under a nom de plume, will be carried over to the Big List Project and added to the queue for names being researched to make ongoing additions.

To review the current submissions and read the testimonial accounts of others who have left the Church of Scientology, refer to the links below or use the published indexes for further research.






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