Hold on to your tin foil hats and put some microscopic seatbelts on your thetans, because a new whistleblower is telling some tall tales about Tom Cruise and the church of Scientology. Valeska Paris claims that she was kept both as a prisoner and slave for 12 years by the church on its cruise ship, Freewinds, as part of the organization’s “Sea Org.” According to the Village Voice…
… she joined Scientology’s hardcore Sea Organization — signing its standard billion-year contract — at only 14 years of age. Three years later, after her stepfather committed suicide and her mother denounced Scientology on French television, Paris was ordered to “disconnect” from her family. She says that church leader David Miscavige then enforced that disconnection by having her put on the cruise ship, the Freewinds, that sails the Caribbean and caters to high-level church members.
Paris finally left in 2007 and first told her story to another Scientology defector last year, but this is the first time that she’s really speaking out publicly and sticking it to the controversial church. The Village Voice got a hold of her the other day for an interview, and not only does she spill the celestial beans on the crazy behind-the-scenes workings of Scientology, but she also points a crooked, glowing finger at Cruise.
As for her duties on the cruise ship:
“Well, the schedule in the Sea Org is very different than in the real world. You’d get up at 6 and go to work, and you’d work until midnight. In 1997 and 1998, after our regular jobs we were up every night until 4 am cleaning up asbestos,” she says. “There was rubble on the deck. We’d have to go behind the guys doing renovations, vacuuming up dirt until 4 in the morning.”
She’ll eventually laugh about that anecdote when doctors are pulling away the lining from her chest’s cavity and explaining that mesothelioma is untreatable.
As for Cruise and his very special birthday voyages, the story is super fun:
“We were all told we can’t ask for his autograph, or we’d get a comm ev.” (A “committee of evidence” is a sort of Scientology disciplinary trial.) “We can’t tell anyone that he’s coming to the ship or that he’d been to the ship, or again, a comm ev. And we had to call him ‘sir.’ It was like he was David Miscavige’s deputy or something.”
“David Miscavige saw that I had a cold sore, and I was assigned to lower conditions and I was put in isolation for 4 days,” she says. She explains that she was assigned the “condition” of “Treason,” which is below “Enemy” but above “Confusion.”
“I was in Treason. So I wasn’t allowed to go to Tom Cruise’s birthday.”
That’s a shame, I’ll bet she missed a chance to woo him and steal his heart.
“He said, ‘Tom Cruise is coming and I need really good service, so who’s going to serve him?’ A woman spoke up. ‘No, no, it can’t be a woman, because he’s so good looking, any woman would fall for him.’ So a guy had to take the job,” she says.
Ah ok, only guys could do interact with Cruise. It was for the well-being of those girls and their quaky loins.
And don’t any of you mention that wicked harpy Nicole Kidman. She never existed, and he certainly never did any movies with her.
“There were posters for every single movie he’d been in except for the one he made with Nicole Kidman [1999’s Eyes Wide Shut, directed by Stanley Kubrick], because she’s a big old SP.”
Stupid person? Semen piggy? Sweat poodle? Sex panther? Surgical puppet?
“The band did all the songs from his movies, except the one he did with Nicole.” And she says three young women from the IASA — the administration of the International Association of Scientologists — were disciplined after the party. “They were trying to get Tom’s attention. So they were put in the engine room.”
And there are plenty more details that paint Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige, as a complete freak show, which is just shocking and completely unexpected.
(Hat tip to the Superficial.)