THE FOLLOWING MORNING, MR. WILHERE MADE AN ANNOUNCEMENT: the Church was going to send Dallas and me somewhere to calm down and “destimulate,” an LRH method of dealing with someone who had gone insane. I didn’t care what he said. The only words I heard were “get away.” I knew I couldn’t continue as I had been. My body couldn’t handle it. I only weighed ninety-four pounds, and there wasn’t much more I could take.
That day, Mr. Wilhere drove Dallas, our two security guards, and me up to Big Bear, where we were taken to a two-bedroom cabin, one with bunk beds and one with a queen-sized bed. My guard and I stayed in the one with the queen and Dallas and his stayed in the room with the bunk beds. Looking around at the comfortable cabin and the two guards, I couldn’t understand why the Church was seemingly spending so much money on us. I’d experienced many different forms of punishment in my life, but never anything quite like this. Two days earlier, they’d seemed determined to torment me; now I was at a retreat. The arrangement struck me as strange, but given what life had been like, I wasn’t about to complain.
For the next few weeks, the four of us just hung out, cooked, hiked, swam in the lake, and read books aloud to each other. Once a week, someone would come by to visit and bring us mail, any clothes that we needed, and food. I felt guilty about all the money and resources being spent on me. We’d been there about a week when Sylvia Pearl arrived to continue my sec-checking and stay in a cabin near ours. However, her presence didn’t work out. I still couldn’t handle the security checking, and again, I just walked out of the sessions. At the same time, Dallas was being sec-checked, too, except his questions were about me, as they tried to get him to report on me, which only made me angrier. In time, Sylvia was replaced with an RTC auditor, and eventually, with some difficulty, we finished my sec-check.
Mr. Wilhere came up once a week to check on me, bringing with him any news that he cared to share. It was during one of these visits that he told me there had been a significant development in the Lisa McPherson case. Bob Minton, the key financier in the civil case brought by her family, had changed sides. He was no longer supporting the cause of Lisa McPherson, but instead was supporting the Church. I remembered that Bob Minton had been the leader of the Lisa McPherson Trust at the base. OSA often referred to him when talking about our enemies who were picketing and trying to bring down the Church. Minton and his wife had been the most vocal opponents at the Flag Land Base. He had testified at a court hearing that the lawyer representing the McPherson estate had made him lie, change court documents, and pump up anti-Scientology sentiment. The McPherson family lawyer responded by saying that Minton had been extorted by the Church. Already, the criminal charges against the Church had been dismissed in 2000 after the medical examiner changed the cause of death from “unknown” to “accident.”
Aside from periodic stories from outside, our stay at Big Bear was incredibly secluded and peaceful. I never learned exactly why I was sent there. It could have been to make my parents happy. It could have been because I had threatened suicide, which meant that I was insane and a Potential Trouble Source. It could have been that I was a Miscavige, and the only alternative at that point would have been having me leave, thus creating bad PR. I’m sure they assumed that isolating me at Big Bear would settle me, make me happy, and allow enough time for the whole incident to blow over without other people seeing that my punishment wasn’t so harsh.
Whatever the Church’s intentions were, staying there did help me to calm down. Before Big Bear, I was an accident waiting to happen, but after weeks without fear of losing Dallas or having him taken away, and eating and sleeping properly; I’d finally regained my footing.
However, it didn’t put an end to my doubt of the Church; in fact, in some ways, I left Big Bear more determined than ever not to give in to their demands. I knew there were things about Scientology that I disagreed with—the invasive questions, the pointless auditing, the endless security checks—and I understood that, while these things had helped some people, all I’d ever gotten from them was aggravation. Furthermore, I found it completely unfair and unreasonable that I had to be punished over and over again for things that weren’t my fault. As I looked back on what I’d been through, one thing was clear to me: the only way that people in the Church would stop taking advantage of me was for me to say no to them, even if it pushed them to the edge.
At times, this attitude put me at odds with Dallas. While he too had issues with the Church and found a lot to suspect in how they’d treated us, he struggled to understand why I refused to cooperate and do the various punishments they gave me. In his eyes, we should tolerate these things, get them over with, and move on; to me that would only result in them pushing us around more. The more power we gave them over us, the more they would take.
As long as we weren’t married, nothing had really changed. Everything that had happened before could still happen again, and, until we were married, we would always be at risk. Sure enough, when we returned home after six weeks, that risk was made perfectly clear.
Before we all went back to L.A., Mr. Wilhere came to talk to me and let me know what our fate would be. Dallas and I were going to be removed from out posts at the Flag Liaison Office, demoted, and posted at the PAC Base doing manual labor in the mill, where the carpentry jobs were carried out. Their final warning was that we were on the verge of being RPF’d.
The idea of doing manual labor at the PAC Base wasn’t that bad. It would have been nice to have less responsibility. We would be doing carpentry. What I objected to was the fact that we were right back where we’d been six weeks earlier, still being punished for the same supposed crimes: our out 2D, my suicide attempt, insubordinations, the list just went on. They had paid for us to go to Big Bear, only to return us to our lives in exactly the same place: receiving an unjust punishment that we were simply expected to take. We were guilty in their eyes and had to pay the price.
Dallas agreed to work at the mill. I refused. After several weeks in limbo, things were finally settled. I was going to remain at CMO IXU and be posted at the Landlord Office at FLO, as a “renderer,” meaning I would render designs and help put design boards together. Dallas was transferred back to PAC, which was considered a lower org. Even though the two were just a few miles apart, they were separate bases, so we couldn’t eat together or see each other at night.
Though being married doesn’t guarantee husbands and wives staying together, this separation was exactly what I’d feared. Worse, when I did see Dallas, he told me he was still being security-checked by Jessica Feshbach, who would soon be famous for being Katie Holmes’s auditor. As had been the case with Sylvia at Big Bear, he told me that his sessions were being used to find out about me, not him. This enraged me all over again. Dallas was upset, too, and together we wrote letters to Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Wilhere, requesting that we be together at FLO. Mr. Rathbun never wrote back, and Mr. Wilhere told me that I cared only about my first and second dynamics, myself and Dallas, and I didn’t care for anything else, like the group or our mission to save mankind. When his response arrived, I shredded it and sent it back to him, which only got me in more trouble.
Despite how rebellious I was being, I still wasn’t sent to the RPF. Instead, I was honing my ability to say no. The realization I’d had at Big Bear meant that they could only control me if I were willing to accept their treatment. For whatever reason, they wanted me to stay, which meant that the Church was in a compromised position: simultaneously trying to punish me for things I’d done, while attempting to keep me calm. So I pushed back on everything I disagreed with, which, by that point, was quite a lot.
Even though I was unhappy, I couldn’t bring myself to take the next step and leave the Church. All the ingredients were there, but as long as Dallas remained committed to the Church, I couldn’t truly contemplate leaving, if we wouldn’t be together. They’d almost succeeded in splitting us up when we were both in the Church, so I could only imagine what would happen if I left and he stayed. My involvement in Scientology became mostly about Dallas. Frustrated as I was, I tolerated it because it enabled us to stay together. It was a relationship worth saving. As a result, I limited my behavior to criticism and insubordination, rather than all-out mutiny.
We still held out hope that our marriage would become a reality. Despite the fact that Dallas and I didn’t always agree as to how we would get out of the mess we were in, we still wanted the same thing: to be together. We were best friends and loved each other. Everything we had been through, had only brought us closer, and, one way or another, we were determined to emerge from all of this as husband and wife.
SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER OUR RETURN FROM BIG BEAR, I WAS TOLD that I needed to get onto the daily van run to Int, which was odd, since I hadn’t been there in years. I spent two hours on the van wondering who I would be meeting and why. My meeting was with Mr. Wilhere, and it was about marrying Dallas. He wanted us to hold on a little bit longer, saying things weren’t resolved with Dallas’s uncle yet. Unsurprisingly, handling Uncle Larry was never-ending.
I told him that I would be willing to cooperate and hold on a little bit longer if he was willing to have Dallas posted at FLO so that we could at least be together. He agreed so quickly that it surprised me.
With that out of the way, I figured that, since the only reason they cared about Uncle Larry was based on the premise of my parents coming to the wedding and the possible ensuing conspiracy, I told him I was sure they would be willing to not come, if that was the problem. I could just write them a letter saying as much. To my surprise, after thinking about it, he had me write one, watching while I untruthfully described how happy I was and how well I was doing. I told them I had found someone whom I loved, and that I thought they would love him, too. I had my own life now, I told them, and I hoped they understood. I didn’t ask them not to come to the wedding, but I hoped that they would get the gist without me having to spell it out.
Mr. Wilhere kept his word. The next day, Dallas was posted as a typesetter in the Dissemination Division at FLO. This division was responsible for creating promotional pieces for Scientology materials, magazines, and other publications. We were now able to spend mealtimes together, see each other occasionally throughout the day, and even take the same bus back to the berthing at night.
A few weeks later, Mr. Wilhere unexpectedly arrived in the office, saying that he needed to speak to me. He handed me a letter from my parents, already opened. They said they were no longer in Mexico and were now living in Virginia. They said how happy they were for me, and that they understood about not attending my wedding.
I was pleased with their words, but a bit baffled by how it had all unfolded. What I didn’t know was that my uncle Dave had actually traveled to the East Coast on Church business, and had hand-delivered my letter to them, proving just how aware Uncle Dave was of what had been going on with me. According to what my parents told me, my uncle, along with his entourage, met them at a fancy hotel in Washington, D.C., where Uncle Dave was staying. Not only did he give my parents my letter; he hooked my father up with a local real-estate guy for employment guidance and found my mother a job at a law office. He also told my parents they were no longer SPs; they had lived in Mexico as the Church had asked of them, and had basically done their A–E steps required for someone to become “undeclared,” or no longer an SP.
At the meeting, Uncle Dave said my father could now talk to their mother, something my dad had wanted to do. With regard to my wedding, my mother said that she had expected to hear that I was getting married, being in the Sea Org, so the news wasn’t surprising. Uncle Dave had told them he had heard that Dallas was a nice guy, but that he didn’t know him.
Of course, I knew nothing about this at the time. I was simply relieved that they weren’t coming to my wedding; it was only after I left the Church that I heard the story from my mother.
“So,” Mr. Wilhere asked sardonically, “are you going to get married tomorrow?” I could tell how annoyed he was that I was about to get everything I wanted and had even gotten Dallas to be posted at the base.
“Pretty much,” I answered unapologetically.
“Well, good luck,” he said, mumbling some obligatory advice on how to have a good marriage. I barely heard what he said. I was going to be married.
Early the next morning, Dallas and I drove to the courthouse to get our marriage license. We were too nervous and excited to notice that the car was almost out of gas, and had to coast down a hill to get to the gas station. Dallas’s gas cap had to be opened with a key; he was shaking so much that it broke off in the keyhole when he tried to open it. He borrowed pliers from the gas station attendant and fished out the broken part, which took almost an hour. We prayed that it would work when we put it into the ignition, cheering ecstatically when it did. We paid with the five dollars’ worth of change we had saved from our pay. I could only imagine what the attendant thought when we handed her the pile of mostly dimes and nickels. We still had to coast a lot of the way to the courthouse, because the gas wasn’t necessarily going to get us as far as we needed to go. When we finally arrived, we had to leave the car unlocked because the key was still stuck in the ignition, but we got our marriage license.
Dallas’s dad was a Scientology minister as well as a jeweler, and had agreed to come to Los Angeles to perform a quick ceremony. The plan was to meet him at the Celebrity Centre at midnight, as that was when we got off work.
To my surprise, Dallas’s mother; his sister and her boyfriend; and his brother, wife, and baby girl were all there, too. The only one who was not a public Scientologist was his sister’s boyfriend. Two of my friends, Phil and Clare, were my chosen witnesses. There was no Bitty and Ronnie Miscavige, no Uncle Dave or Aunt Shelly, and no Uncle Larry. I got pretty emotional that Dallas’s family was there to make it special. Even though I didn’t know them well, they had obviously cared enough about us to make the two-hour drive from San Diego.
It wasn’t exactly the wedding of my dreams. Dallas and I were both in our uniforms. I hadn’t even touched up my makeup, and my shoes were caked with spray glue from that day’s design boards. The ceremony was five minutes long, no flowers, no fancy food, no champagne or music, but none of that mattered. We were married now.
I still cherish the moment that Dallas placed the ring on my finger. I promised myself that, no matter what it took, I would protect him and take care of him, and I would never be separated from him again. I knew that it was wrong to make him more important to me than the Church, but I didn’t care. We had finally done it. On September 20, 2002, I became Jenna Hill.