Monica Pignotti Remembers Quentin....

Although things continued to get worse for me, there was one bright spot for me: the friendship that was developing between Quentin Hubbard and myself. I got to know Quentin when we all did TRs together and sometimes he would be my partner. Quentin and I liked each other from the start. For one thing, we shared a sense of humor and that was unusual on the ship. We always found ways to make each other laugh in a place where there was so little joy and laughter. 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.

#

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.

#

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.

Here We Go Again -- Another Rollercoaster Ride

While we were in Bermuda, Quentin returned from his vacation and dropped a bombshell. It seemed that his father tried to hush it up, but Quentin told me the whole story in a very calm, detached way. According to what Quentin told me, he had decided to kill himself again and had constructed an elaborate plan for his suicide. He flew to New York and took a room at the Times Square Hotel. He then took his passport, which was his only form of ID, and hid it behind the bathroom mirror in his hotel room. He didn't want anyone to know that he was the son of L. Ron Hubbard when his body was found. He then flew to San Francisco, where he planned to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, but when it came time for him to jump, he just couldn't do it. After that, he was found wandering around on a road when he was stopped by police who were looking for someone who had committed a crime. They determined that Quentin didn't fit the description of the suspect, but since he seemed confused and disoriented, they took him to a mental hospital. In order to protect his family's name, Quentin pretended to have amnesia. He was in an institution for about two weeks when someone from Scientology tracked him down, at which point Quentin "regained his memory" of who he was and was released. He told me this story in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice, as if he were telling me about an innocuous vacation itinerary. I was horrified, and he noticed. He remarked that the expression on my face looked like the expression on his mother's face when he told her about it. Quentin and his mother were very close. In spite of all her other faults, Mary Sue really did love her children and Quentin seemed to be her favorite.

To this day, I don't know if it was L. Ron Hubbard or Mary Sue, but someone was very upset that Quentin told me what happened. David Mayo, the Senior Case Supervisor, ordered me not to see Quentin anymore, without telling me who the order came from or why. I don't think the order originated with David. I asked him what was really going on and he flatly refused to discuss the matter further. David and I had gotten along pretty well in the past, but he was very firm on this issue. So was I. I said that Quentin was my friend, he needed me and I was going to be there for him. I told him that my personal life was none of his business. We got into a big argument. David's wife, Merrill, a top auditor on Flag, tried to get me to shut up to protect me, but I wouldn't back down. She knew I would get into trouble if I made waves, and she was right. David warned me that if I continued to see Quentin, I would be sent to the RPF. I continued to argue with him, and he put me on a retread, which meant I had to go back and review certain materials as an auditor. He also had an ethics officer talk to me, warning me of the consequences of having anything further to do with Quentin. I was supposed to just follow orders like a good little robot, but at that point, I still wasn't completely brainwashed, so I refused. I defied the order and kept right on seeing Quentin. There was still nothing sexual going on between us, but other people thought that there was and that we were hiding it. One time I had made a joke to Quentin taking a shower with him and somehow this came up in one of his auditing sessions and was written down, so I suppose David assumed that something was going on. I was incensed that my personal life was being interfered with and wasn't going to stand for it.

I began to realize that, for the most part, in the Sea Org there was no real caring -- no love. All "love" was conditional upon job performance and the standards for job performance were often quite ridiculous. There were exceptions, of course; sometimes true friendships between people did develop in spite of everything, but that is not how the group, as a whole, was run. Often, when such real friendships did develop, every attempt was made to separate the people, such as what happened between Quentin and myself. The real threat to Hubbard was not the possibility of our having sex, but the emotional closeness and true friendship that we had developed. This separation of true friends has the effect of making the person feel very isolated, even though they may be surrounded constantly by hundreds of people in the cult environment.

In my opinion, the most effective thing an exit counsellor could do in an intervention with a Scientologist, is to have a genuinely caring attitude towards the person. Scientologists, especially staff members, are starving for that sort of compassion. I cannot stress this point strongly enough. A compassionate, caring attitude will be much more likely to help the person break free of their mental prison than any information about the group will. Simply giving the person information will not work, because it will be dismissed as lies from the "wog press".

I know this because I lived in such an environment for over five years. The main key to free a person from this cult is compassion. This is true of all cults, but it is especially true of Scientology, where, in the upper echelons, there isn't even any pretense of compassion. Showing compassion just might be the key to breaking through the person's cult identity and reaching the real person. Once an emotional bond is established with the person, you can then give them the facts and help them to see their way out of the trap.

One friendship the Church of Scientology was never able to destroy was the one between Quentin and myself. We continued to write to one another. In September, I received a letter from him, saying that he was having a very rough time. He had been taken off auditing for "errors" he had committed on a PC who had cancer. Quentin had been desperately trying to help the person, but nothing seemed to be working. He sounded very depressed. He sent me a picture of himself, saying that it was to remind me of him. I was very concerned that he might try to commit suicide again and wrote him back right away. I told him I was concerned that he might be feeling he had to commit suicide and if he ever felt that way, he could call me anytime and talk about it.

On October 12, I received my last letter from Quentin. He told me not to worry and that he would never attempt suicide again. Things seemed to be looking up for him. He had written up a proposal to his father, requesting an indefinite leave of absence so he could go to school and learn how to be a pilot. I had the feeling that if his proposal was not approved, he would leave Scientology, which would be very difficult for him. He would have to cut himself off from his parents and the only life he had ever known. I was determined to support him in any way I could, if he made such a decision. Once again, I answered his letter right away. This time I received no reply. For the next eight months, I kept sending letters, hoping to get through to him. I thought that maybe his parents had found out he was writing to me and stopped my letters from getting through. Since I had left Scientology, I was considered a Suppressive Person and no Scientologist in good standing was allowed to communicate with me, but that hadn't stopped Quentin. It occurred to me that maybe the worst had happened and Quentin had committed suicide, but I kept trying to write to him.

I had many dreams about Quentin and about Scientology. For a whole year, I had nightmares every night about the group, where I would be running away from Scientologists who were trying to get me to come back. Sometimes I would have dreams about being locked up in prison and escaping. After a year, these dreams became less and less frequent.

In June, 1977, I received a call from Chuck Ohl, who worked in the Guardian's Office. He told me that Quentin had passed away last October. According to the story Chuck told me, Quentin had been found in a coma in his car near the airport in Las Vegas. The cause of his death was listed as "unknown" and Mary Sue had ordered a full investigation into his death. Chuck wanted to know if Quentin had called or tried to contact me. I was stunned. I had felt for a long time that something had happened, but hearing the news really shocked me. I told Chuck that Quentin had written me just before he left and that I would send him copies of the letters and do everything I could to help with the investigation. I felt that his mother had a right to know what happened to her son. I knew that she really loved him. I made copies of the letters and sent them to Chuck.

Just recently, I talked to someone who had been in Florida at the time Quentin had left for Las Vegas. She had quite a bit of inside information on what happened to Quentin. I asked her if his request to go to flying school had been approved and she said that as far as she knew, it hadn't. He was just going on another three week vacation and had been expected to return. I am now convinced that Quentin's death was a suicide.

By the time I heard the sad news, I had started going back to college at the University of Michigan and was well on my way to a new life. I felt badly about Quentin, but I vowed that I would do everything in my power to live my life to the fullest. Since leaving Scientology, I have never taken my freedom for granted. I know how precious it is because I lived for over five years without it. Quentin was gone, but I had my whole life ahead of me, which I would live the best I could, in honor of both Quentin and myself.

The full text of Ms. Pignotti's story can be seen here.