TRANSCRIPT:
I first met Chantal when I was a kid, probably about six years old, seven years old. And it’s when my aunt and uncle used to bring Chantal and her sister Natalie to Texas to visit, which happened every other summer or every third summer or something like that.
The thing that I remember the most was how happy—they seemed to be the happiest people. You know, they came to visit, I go, “How can these people be so happy? They’re so happy,” you know what I mean? And the kids were having a great time. And they were very happy with their parents and the trip, and so forth and so on. And as they always came to visit, I always had that impression. And we always had a great time and was always, you know, looking forward to seeing them.
In 1978, my grandmother and my grandfather and my brother and I, we actually drove to Florida to visit my aunt and uncle who were living there with the kids in the Sea Organization. And when I arrived in Florida at the FH [Fort Harrison] and I saw where they lived, I’m thinking, this is paradise. I mean, they’ve got their own pool, this huge pool. It’s a hotel, they’ve got views, they’ve got the beach, palm trees. It was incredible.
And then, Natalie and Chantal said, “Hey, let’s show you,” you know. Really excited, “Let me show you where we stay.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” She goes, “Yeah. We get to stay with all the rest of the kids. Sometimes with our parents, but we get to stay with the rest of the kids if we want to. This is the bunk room.” I’m like, “What?” “Yeah, this is what we call our berthing,” or whatever.
So, they took me to this room and there’s bunk beds and there’s kids and there’s toys. And it was just really cool—it was this huge room that was like camp. It was like summer camp. And I’m thinking—I never got to go to summer camp as a kid—and I’m thinking, “This is like summer camp. This is great.”
And I’m like, “God, you guys get to stay here? This is where you get to—you get to live here?” And so forth and so on. And she goes, “Yeah. But we see our parents. We stay with them sometimes and we stay here.” And I’m going, man, this is like living in summer camp, you know.
So, what they’re talking about and what they did and what I experienced and what I observed, with my own two eyes, is not what I would consider “work” or “hard conditions” or “hard labor” or anything else. They loved what they were doing, and they were willing to do what they were doing—and having a ball every minute that they were doing it. And it was the same impression that I got later on in ’90 when I saw Chantal in the Sea Org. She loved what she was doing. She was happy with her life. She was very proud to be a Scientologist. She was very proud to be in the Sea Organization, and very proud of her post, her job.
I actually had a conversation about Chantal with my uncle about three months ago. And in the course of the conversation, we both agreed that the reason that she’s doing what she’s doing, is that she is operating from a viewpoint of—she’s operating from within this delusion of grandeur, that she has made up, that she feels is reality—that this is the way things are. And Leah Rinky-dink, or Remini or whatever, is helping feed into this. And the people that she’s hooked up are help—feeding into this, and just help her feed this delusion.
And that is not the Chantal I knew. And that is not the person that I grew up with, that I had vacation time with, that I visited with; her sister Natalie the same thing. They were the ones—Chantal and Natalie—they were the ones that fought to have me become a Scientologist. They were the ones who insisted that I be more than I was at the time when I went out there. When I went out there, man, I was on drugs, I was coming out of a divorce, I had nothing but a suitcase and a guitar, right. And in the spirit of Scientology and help and family, Natalie took me in. She got me together with Chantal, and they used Scientology to help drag me from the pit that I had put myself in. So, when I found out that she was anti the very thing that she helped to save my life, that was the shock. That’s what I couldn’t believe.
When I first was in Los Angeles as a young Texas country boy, right, I met a lot of really, really nice people, and they were all Scientologists. They were all extremely friendly, happy, helpful people—until I met Leah Remini. And I was like, “Do these people see what I see?” right. I’m thinking, “Alright, so these people are all Scientologists and they’re all happy and they’re brilliant and they’re having great lives, and then there’s this woman.”
She was dating my—a good friend of mine at the time, who later on would become my brother-in-law. And my—my short and brief impression with her, was just, she was just such a…rhymes with [mimes action] digging a ditch. It’s the best way I can describe it without saying the word. You know, I’m trying to be nice. But that was just like, what is wrong with this woman? I just, you know—I’m from the friendly state, in Texas, and these are the friendliest people I’ve ever met. And then there’s her . I just did not get it until later on, many years down the road, finding out about this stupid show she’s doing.
