Reposted from here.

My family were involved in Scientology from 1964/5-1969. I was a child and had two younger siblings. My Father worked at St. Hill until 1967 when my parents split up and we (my Father and I) joined the Sea Org on board the Royal Scotsman. I saw very little of my Father on the ship, had very few meals together and sometimes we went out on liberty days. These got less and less as time went on. I was 10 years old. My Father was sent on a mission in January 1969, supposedly for 3 weeks at most and never returned. I did not hear from him or hear anything of him, even though I did ask on a few occasions. I was miserable without him and after being put in the Condition of Liability in the hold of the ship, I became more and more depressed. I managed to get it arranged that I would be able to go and join him wherever he was though I was not allowed to know where until we had left the ship.

In may, a boy brought the post for L. Ron Hubbard and amongst these letters was a newspaper "The News of the World" 4/5/1969. The boy told me to read the paper as it was about my family. He guarded the door while I quickly read it (I would have been in big trouble if I had been caught reading it). My Aunt had sent a disconnection letter to her Mother and her sister (her Mother was my Grandmother). It also said in the paper that my Father was wanted in a court case as a witness for Scientology. The court case was an attempt by Scientology to sue the News of the World for libel, concerning its quote "Mind Cult". The article had appeared in a paper in January 1966. The Scientologists had said their main witness, my Father, was on a ship somewhere and they did not know where it was. This was an outright lie, as my Father had not been on the ship for 5 months by this time. I became more and more distressed as to what was going on. I could confide in no one; I did not trust anyone on that ship and was extremely frightened.

I finally left the ship (by now named Apollo) in June 1969 and traveled from Portugal to Sweden and on to Denmark.

When I arrived in Denmark I was told my Father was no longer there having been put in a Condition of Treason. Understandably I was extremely upset, wondering what on earth was going to happen to me now.

I stayed in Denmark for a few months. Sometime in August my Father came back to the Org one night to get me ( he had heard I was there) and also collect his belongings. I knew nothing of this until the following morning. When I asked why I had not been able to see him I was told "You know the rules", which of course I did. If my Father was in a Condition of Treason he was classed as a Suppressive Person and neither myself nor anyone but the Ethics Officer was allowed to talk to him. I then heard the Ethics Officer telling someone else "what a night they had had, bullbaiting my Father" and they were laughing. I asked where my Father had been if they had only let him go in the early hours of the morning and was told "he had been locked in a cupboard under the stairs."

I was devastated and could not believe that he would have just gone off without me. I kept my emotions in check until I was alone and then wandered around the grounds looking for my Father. It was open countryside and woods. At first I was calling for him, then crying and then screaming for him but he wasn't there. I did this for several days. Then gave up. I have never felt so alone.

I finally managed to convince L. Ron Hubbard I needed to go back to England to get an education, hoping I would find my Father. That didn't happen. I ended up in social care at the age of 12 years.

I saw my Father briefly for one afternoon when I was 16 years old, and didn't see him again until I was 19 years old. He had been destitute since leaving the Sea Org and mentally he was not a well man. He had been harassed and followed after leaving the cult and all these years later was still convinced they were following him. He stayed with me for two months but I could not cope and he left. I never heard from him again until late 2006, 30 years later. I decided to find him because of an encounter I had with some Scientologists using E-meters and I started to have flash backs to my time in the cult of Scientology.

We speak regularly on the phone and I finally got to visit him in 2007. It was a very emotional reunion.

Scientology caused my Father and myself an extreme amount of trauma and a life time apart, yet they say they don't break up families. Yeah right.