Tory Christman
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Tory Christman (former married name Tory Bezazian; online name "Magoo") born 1947, is a former member of the Church of Scientology who left the organization in 2000, after being a member for about 30 years. She is now one of its most visible and high-profile critics, making frequent media appearances.
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[edit] Personal
Tory Christman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest of three siblings to Paul and Inez Christman. The family moved to Park Ridge, Illinois a suburb of Chicago, as Paul Christman was a quarterback who played for the Chicago Cardinals football team between 1949 and 1951, and later a broadcaster for the American Football League with Curt Gowdy.
Growing up in Park Ridge, Christman attended St Paul of the Cross grade school, and Lincoln Junior High School. She attended the Maine East High School through her sophomore year, in the same graduating class as Hillary Clinton.
The family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois. Her parents sent her to Notre Dame de Sion, a Catholic boarding school in Kansas City, Missouri where she attended and later graduated. She attended college in Rhode Island for two years, and moved to Manhattan. Christman went to San Francisco and became a hippie. While there, she experimented with many others in the drug culture. A friend offered her heroin, which was the first (and last) time she ever tried it, as it made her sick. Christman's parents flew her back to Lake Forest, Illinois where she was hospitalized. Two acquaintances whom she had known previously came to the hospital and introduced Dianetics to Tory.
[edit] Joining Scientology
In 1969, Christman returned to college, but left within the year. She went to Los Angeles, California and was recruited into the Sea Organization (Sea Org) and signed a "billion year contract." She was sent to the ship, "Bolivar" in order to do training for the Sea Org.
After training, and within a matter of months, Christman needed to re-order medication for her Epilepsy, and under Sea Org rules, she had to see a Medical Liaison Officer, (MLO.) The person was not a doctor, and Christman was informed to take a leave of absence and go off her medication. Christman was told to begin a program that included taking lots of vitamins, and a drink called cal-mag.[citation needed]
Reducing her medication by a small amount, Christman began having Grand mal seizures, in Scientology organizations and at home, lasting for a period of about six months. Christman's mother was very concerned, and continually warned that "Scientology is going to kill you," due to her having repeated seizures. Christman believed L. Ron Hubbard, in that he wrote that auditing would in fact fix her physical condition. Finally, when she couldn't remember a date the night before, her mother insisted she return to taking all of her medication, or she was coming out to Los Angeles. At that time, Christman returned to taking her medication, however she ended up fighting Scientology for the next twenty-five years until she finally left. Chronic illness was considered bad per Hubbard, and thus needed to be corrected with Scientology technology.[citation needed] In order to advance to the Sea Organization at that time, Scientology policy dictated that no medication be taken. (Years later, executives in Scientology told Christman that whoever told her that was incorrect.)
Christman went back to the Medical Liaison Officer, who told her she was not fit to be in the Sea Org. She was sent to the Scientology Ethics department, who deemed her a "Freeloader." She was given a bill for thousands of dollars to pay for two completed courses, that were required before one can be in the Sea Org. Christman wrote to L. Ron Hubbard, who replied that she was not a Freeloader, and should only pay for two courses. Hubbard told Christman to "continue to get auditing in their organizations" and insinuated she needed to handle her Epilepsy before she could return to the Sea Org. Hubbard told Christman he would see her "up the lines," meaning back in the Sea Org, once she had handled her physical condition.
In 1971, Christman was hired to work at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Los Angeles, as a non-Sea Org staff member, but after six months Scientology cancelled all "Non-Sea Org contracts," so that ended her being on staff. As long as she was on medication, it was considered that she was unqualified.
From 1972-1989, Christman spent her time as a wife and mother, marrying Harold Bezazian in 1974, as well as training and auditing within Scientology. She worked as a teacher, and later in sales and marketing. She and her husband moved to Largo, Florida in 1979.
During this time, Christman was asked to assist the group known as the Guardian's Office in "handling" Richard Tenney, the City Commissioner of Clearwater, Florida, who at the time was running for Mayor, using a campaign, "Save Sparkling Clearwater, Stamp out Scientology." [1] Christman was asked to help by one of Scientology's executives, telling her they came to Clearwater on a lie, and thus could not handle this, as Tenney's campaign was based on "Scientologists are liars."[citation needed]
Christman said that she thought she was helping her group, mostly by trying to get the people in the town to understand that Scientologists were not as bad as they thought, which she says she strongly believed at the time and still does, for the most part. Even today she reminds people the average Scientologist is basically good, with the executives doing the harmful things. She continued to volunteer with the Guardian's Office, which later became the Office of Special Affairs.[citation needed] She later said that due to mostly working on the public relations end she was not really aware of the darker sides of this group. [2]
In 1979, Christman attested to L Ron Hubbard's State of "Clear" and shortly thereafter began the top secret level named Operating Thetan Level III, or OT3. It was on this level that Hubbard said he nearly died doing the research for, and from it created the science fiction story about the "evil galactic overlord," Xenu. The story says that one is covered with what Hubbard called "Body Thetans," or as Christman calls them, "space aliens," from another planet. [3] Christman said that she felt having a seizure was close to dying and began to think perhaps OT 3 could be the answer to her physical problem. After completing this level of auditing, Christman said that she thought she had rid herself of all the space aliens and tried once again to get off of her much needed medication for Epilepsy. The result was that she went into Status epilepticus, or multiple seizures, and ended up at the Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater. [4] This was the last time she tried to get off of her medication, and was the last seizure she ever had.
In 1990, Christman paid for and began Scientology's second to highest level, Operating Thetan VII (OT 7). Christman refers to this time as the beginning of her ten-year process of, "waking up." She began to read many other books having to do with healing. Christman's analogy of this time in Scientology is compared to that of the The Truman Show, where one cannot literally see the walls.[5]
[edit] Public Relations and the Internet
Christman was a volunteer for Scientology's Office of Special Affairs intermittently for twenty years. Later, she served as the head of the Scientology Parishioners League. Her job was to "spin" publicity for the Church, counteracting negative publicity. Christman was the head of the group for about four months, reporting directly to the Vice President of Scientology. She held this position until she left Scientology.
From the mid-to-late 1990s, critical information about Scientology had been published on the Internet. Many of Scientology's "secret teachings" were also published and the church was trying to prevent this from happening. (See Scientology versus The Internet).
Christman was asked by her best friend and auditor to help "handle" the critics on the Internet. He came to her home and removed Internet content-control software, which Scientology calls the "Net Nanny" and asked her to "surf the net" to look for NOTS materials, which are highly secret within the organization. (See "secret" writings of Scientology). While surfing the Internet, she found Operation Clambake, a website that says that Scientology is a cult and a hoax. After reading the website, she says that she quickly decided that the man who created it, Andreas Heldal-Lund, "must be the devil." Christman continued participating in Scientology's efforts to keep its secrets off the web, despite her lack of familiarity with the Internet.
On her own initiative, she managed to get a web forum about the film Battlefield Earth closed down. She had met John Travolta, whom she had met during his training at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles. [6]
Christman says that she currently believes Scientology tries to keep people from reading the Internet. For most of her time in the church, she did not extensively browse the Internet. However, while out opening up phony accounts on behalf of Scientology, she finally got curious and investigated Scientologist activity on the Web. When she found out they were flooding various anti-scientology newsgroups and sites (including alt.religion.scientology newsgroup, see sporgery for details of the attack) with spam posts, she says that she decided that the Church's tactics were too unethical for her taste.
After this, she visited alt.religion.scientology, which had become one of the largest newsgroups on the Internet after the Church of Scientology tried to have it shut down. There she posted under the alias "Magoo," which was a nickname she had given her father.
[edit] Leaving Scientology
During this time, Christman became more disillusioned about her church. Ironically, the person she had thought was "the devil," Andreas Heldal-Lund, helped her while she was posting on alt.religion.scientology. They began to speak via e-mail, and in the process of his helping her with posting to the newsgroup, her personal "Scio-Truman" show began to crack.[citation needed] She confided in Heldal-Lund that if she left Scientology, she would lose all of her friends, and her husband. Andreas wrote back to Christman, telling her that although saddened by this thought, he asked the question, "what kind of friends could those be, if they're going to leave you because you change your mind?" Christman sat in tears, seeing the organization in a new light. At the same time, Christman described the joy of having her Scio-Truman show crack open, and how freeing it was to finally see the light.
In a post made to the newsgroup, Christman said, "To all of you at ARS, and to you all reading this from my Church, as of this date, July 20, 2000, I have officially left the church. Please do not call me, or come over to my house. Any friends who care (and only those who do, please) e-mail me. To the rest, good bye. In the future, listen to Andreas. What he said last night...is what is true." [7]
Christman made the difficult decision to leave the group she had belonged to for thirty years. Her analogy is of someone who had their head in the sand for thirty years, convinced that was all there was, and finally was able to pull it out. She just could not dig her head back into the sand, even though she knew it meant losing all of her thirty-year Scientology friends, and no doubt her husband of twenty-seven years. (See Scientology Disconnection)
Andreas Heldal-Lund helped Christman connect with the Lisa McPherson Trust, (LMT) and she flew to Clearwater, Florida to meet with members of the now-defunct LMT, a group that at the time tried to help ex-Scientologists and spread critical information about Scientology. Christman joined them in pickets against the church and it wasn't long before she was declared a suppressive person by the organization. L Ron Hubbard's policy declares it is a "high crime" for anyone to talk with a suppressive person, and thus many families are broken up due to this policy.
[edit] As a Scientology critic
Christman says that although she at first did not want to become an outspoken critic of Scientology, she became angered at the way the church behaved when she left and when she first picketed them and decided she had to speak out. This was mostly due to families she met who had lost loved ones because of this organization. For years Christman spoke out as a Scientologist, positive that Hubbard's policy of "Fair Game" had been cancelled in 1968. She was surprised, however, when Scientologists included her name on a page used to defame critics. Tory has repeatedly accused them of lying about her. [8]
She has become one of the best known Scientology critics on the Internet and has given speeches about her time as a Scientologist as well as appearing on radio and TV to talk about her experiences. [9] Some of her criticism against the Church of Scientology includes the manipulation of its members, sometimes causing the breakup of families through the policy of "disconnection", medical abuses and the organization's use of "Fair Game" against its critics.
Christman has re-united with friends from Scientology who left years ago, as well as her family and friends from early childhood who have found her videos on the Internet, and contacted her. She says that she wants to educate people, mainly young people and artists, to read both sides and make up their own minds about Scientology. She has done some videos for Xenu TV.
[edit] External links
- Tory/Magoo and Scientology, 30 years before I woke up - Christman's website
- Tory Christman on XenuTV
- "Sympathy for the Devil" Los Angeles New Times article on Christman's departure from the Church of Scientology
