She Escaped Scientology in the Trunk of a Car. Her Nightmare Is Far From Over
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“I’M LITERALLY SHAKING right now as I’m talking to you,” Valerie Haney says, speaking by phone from Florida.
Her 22 years in Scientology’s hardcore elite unit, the Sea Organization, has left her with what her therapist has diagnosed as PTSD, she explains. And a court ruling on March 15 had left her trembling as those years of trauma were stirred up again.
“I was like, am I on another planet? Is this really correct? The court is OK with me having to go back to the place where I literally had to escape in the trunk of a car to get out?”
In November 2016, Haney, who worked casting Scientology’s internal films, crawled into the trunk of an actor’s car during a film shoot in order to get away from Scientology’s secretive international management compound “Gold Base” near Hemet, California. Her unusual escape became the subject of the premiere episode of Leah Remini’s third season of Scientology and the Aftermath, which aired on A&E in 2018.
The episode explained that after Haney made it to Los Angeles, Remini hired her as an assistant, and once Scientology found out about it Haney was allegedly subjected to a frightening campaign of surveillance and stalking.
She also began talking to law enforcement.
“I went to the authorities three months after I got out. I went to the FBI. I was thinking, of course we’re going to court, because this is all illegal!”
No charges were filed, but Haney herself filed a lawsuit against Scientology in June 2019 alleging kidnapping, stalking, and libel, which turned into a legal nightmare that now has her facing the prospect of going to the church to submit herself to an internal “religious arbitration” proceeding.
Haney, like other former Scientologists, finds that the church’s “arbitration” strategy is an impediment to getting a day in court. An exception was the lawsuit filed by Danny Masterson’s rape accusers, who sued Scientology for, they said, harassing them for taking their allegations to the LAPD. That case was also forced into arbitration initially, but then a California appeals court ruled that because the allegations of harassment (including the alleged poisoning of pets) had occurred after the women had left the church, the arbitration contracts shouldn’t apply.
Content retrieved from: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/valerie-haney-scientology-escape-car-trunk-religious-arbitration-david-miscavige-tom-cruise-elisabeth-moss-1234703982/.
