The truth about Harry Palmer (article from the Star-Gazette
Ronald Cools
By Lisa Bennett, Staff Writer Feb. 2 1988
She left the man she loved when they told her he was a bad influence. She
left her two-day-old baby at home when they told her they needed her
back. She encouraged her friends to get into debt when they told her it
would be good for them.
For 12 years, Margie Kuentz Hoffman was a model Scientologist -- teacher,
recruiter and third in command at Harry Palmer's Center for Creative
Learning in Elmira, formerly the Elmira Mission of the Church of
Scientology.
Then, four months ago, she quit. And last month, she told her story.
___________________________________________________________________
The people in this story considered themselves members of the Church of
Scientology under the local direction of Harry Palmer, during the period
in which most of these events occurred. However, as the result of a
lawsuit, Palmer is no longer connected with the Church of Scientology. His
local organization is now called the Center for Creative Learning. The
Lawsuit was settled in May, 1987.
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Through most of those years, Hoffman believed she was helping people,
spreading a religion that professes to cure emotional pain by recalling
and sorting through the unpleasant experiences of our past, much like
psychoanalysis.
In time, however, she discovered that Scientology could also cause pain --
she began to recognize it as a cult. But by then, it wasn't easy to walk
away. She had devoted years of her life (and thousands of dollars) to
it. And Scientology's powerful manipulations -- shaped by the charismatic
Palmer -- made departure seem an act of betrayal.
When a disillusioned Hoffman finally left Palmer last October, she was one
of the last to go. Most of the staff that had flocked to Palmer's side in
the mid-1970s quit (and a few were fired) earlier in the year, shocked and
hurt by the puzzle they pieced together about their spiritual leader.
Now 33 and married to the man she temporarily gave up for Scientology,
Hoffman spends her days at her Southside home with her 2-year-old
daughter, Cody, and her black cat, Gus. The Scientolgy books have been
stored away in the attic.
Hoffman's story is not just about faith born and shattered, however. She
doesn't regard herseld as a victim -- "I did it, I went along with it" --
and she doesn't behave like one. in fact, at times she laughs about some
of the things she fell for. In serious moments, her outlook is
balanced. "They were the best and worst years of my life."
Hoffman believes what happened to her could have happened to anyone. "It's
easy for a stranger on the street to say what a jerk!" she said. "But this
happened to us over months and years. If it all happened in one day, we'd
know we were schtuped."
For Hoffman, it bagan in May 1975. She was studying hairdressing in
Syracuse when her 22-year-old boyfriend, Wink, died in a car accident. She
was devastated. "it haunted me," she remembered. "Why did he die so
young? I wanted to be happy. How come I couldn't make myself?"
Then, months after returning home to Elmira to work as a hairdresser, a
customer one day told her about Scientology and Palmer's center, just down
the street from her.
"He gave me a personality questionaire -- one of those famous personality
questionaires," Hoffman said, referring to the hundreds of forms that were
tucked under windshield wipers, between front doors and into the hands of
people waiting in the laundromat next to the center.
She filled out the form and brought it in. palmer offered her this
diagnosis: "He said I was at a low point. I had a goal. I had a strong
personality. My communication level was down. I liked people, but I felt
they didn't like me. I felt I was different from most people. "It was as
general as the analysis a card-reader gives for $5 at a street fair, but
it clicked for Hoffman.
She spent an afternoon at the library investigating the claims she had
heard about the religion, including some of its strange rules like barring
members from taking aspirin.
"I got out every bad article about Scientology," she said. "I read in
Reader's Digest about L. Ron hubbard (Scientolgy's founder) putting
his cigarette out on people; and in Time magazime about how they lured you
in to get all your money and all the weird rituals."
The money didn't bother her. "I didn't care about the money. I was
single. I made a lot of money." And she was skeptical about the more
outrageous allegations. "I never saw those things happening. I decided I
would continue until I saw something."
So she dug out $45 and signed up for the first Scientology course, a
four-week lesson in communication.
Scientology classes are based on an E-meter, or simplified lie
detector. While attached to it, Hoffman answered many personal, searching
questions to get to "engrams": the things one would rather not recognize
about oneself, the kernels of self-truth that hurt. Some 100 questions
range from "have you ever passed up an opportunity?" to "Have you ever
broken up a family?"
When a counselor saw the meter fluctuate, she pushed Hoffman to dig deeper
for the original source of the problem, believed to exist often in the
subconscious or in a prior life. Reaching the source is called a "win".
In the begining, the win experience is as uplifting as a successful
session of psychoanalysis; it freed Hoffman from a burden, making her feel
that some important problems in life had been solved.
Some people discovered why they only married unstable mates, why they
couldn't make good friends, or like Hoffman, why she cried when it rained.
"It sounds crazy or unimportant, but it makes sense," she said. "In my
subconscious, it clicked." She was excited, too, with the religion's
philosophy, expressed in the 1950s by Hubbard as a mission to clear the
planet of misery.
"I guess my ego got the best of me," she said, "... Before Scientology, I
thought this was a one-horse town. Then I thought, 'How incredible! It's
happening here.'"
When Hoffman was offered a second course, called Life Repair, the price
soared to $1,750. "I said, 'You're kidding. Come on, Really, how much is
it?'" But Scientologists do not joke about money.
So Hoffman paid. Within two years, she had spent $20,000 and was making
loan payments like "a good little Scientologist." By Scientology
standards, that's moderate. One former student, Kathy Raine, spent
$60,000.
But that's the way Scientology works, Hoffman said: "First, you put your
toe in and it feels OK, nice and warm. Pretty soon you're swimming."
And persuading others to jump in. Hoffman, like all Scientologists, was
taught to recruit every Wog (non-Scientologist) she met.
Thomas Wright, a former Palmer staff member, said the approach to
non-members as: "I'd ask you if anything was bothering you." But it wasn't
asked idly, like "How are you?" Wright would probe, make himself a friend,
asking for you secrets, however deep or dark. Then he would explain that
it could all be cured by signing up for classes.
After Hoffman took every class available, and was elated by the program,
she was sold on recruiting full time. "They pushed the help button in
me," she said. They asked: "Don't you want others to feel that way, too?"
But it wasn't just charity that motivated. "There was always the threat of
being a Cinder" she explained. A Cinder was a damned person, a fate much
worse than a Wog. if Hoffman did not spread the religion, she was taught,
she could lose what she had gained with frit and $20,000.
It was then -- the moment she became an insider -- that the unadulterated
good feelings she had aboug Scientology began to dissolve. What disturbed
her most and what she still finds most difficult to talk about, was the
"heavy, heavy discipline."
Discipline wasn't new to Hoffman -- Scientology is based on discipline and
that, in part, attracted her -- but it became particlarly rough from 1981
to 1983. She made efforts to rebel, twice leaving the group. Then, at the
urging of other leaders, she came back both times. now, she says: "I
missed my chance twice."
The main disciplinary practices took place in the "ethics room" and
through "amends projects." Former student Raine recalled that in the
ethics room she had to "write and write and write" about all the bad
things she ever did and hope the list would satisfy the center's leaders.
She hated it. So did Hoffman.
Complaints, doubts and missed classes could land a member in the ethics
room. Or, explained Hoffman "if your graph was not constantly going up,
you were in ethics."
The graph in question was a weekly measure of how much work each staff
member was doing. It encouraged Thomas Wright, who supervised students, to
push them through classwork faster and faster.
"I got to the point." said Wright, "that I was not worried about how they
were doing," just that they were doing it quickly.
In the drive to keep her graph moving up, Hoffman pushed to sell more and
more courses. "if it (the graph) went down a little one week," Hoffman
said, she was sent to the ethics room. There, she would have to evaluate
what she did wrong and figure how to correct it.
"If it continued to go down, that meant you were dishonest." For that, the
ethics room was not discipline enough. For that, she would be assigned an
amends project -- an opportunity to atone for her failings.
Essentially, amends amounted to more work or money. Steven Caulkin, a
former door-to door Scientology promoter, was once given the opportunity
to make amends, too. His project: Clean the basement that was still filled
with dried muck from the 1972 flood. It took him two weeks.
After Gale Lyons committed the Scientologist's sin of complaining, she was
told to clean around the basement pipes with a paintbrush. When her
daughter -- already $60,000 in debt -- could not afford $100 for a
Christmas present for Palmer, she was told: Pay $300.
Hoffman saw these assignements as cruel. But when assigned ethics or
amends projects, she did them. She believed her spiritual well-being was
at stake.
In more direct terms, Hoffman did not want to be refused the chance to
take part in the center. And, she was intrigued by the discipline. "I
wanted to get to the limit of my subconscious," She recalled, "to see how
much I could put up with."