The Village Voice scored an interview with Valeska Paris, the woman who was basically forced into Scientology slavery aboard a cruise ship, the Freewinds, for 12 years. She describes what it was like to “work” there.
It all began when Valeska’s mother publicly spoke out against Scientology. Naturally, she was labeled a “suppressive person.” At the time, Valeska was working with Sea Org, disconnected from the rest of the world, and, out of the blue without explanation, she was asked to disconnect from her family. She was kept in isolation from her mother at 17 and a year later at 18 was transferred to the Freewinds, the cruise ship that sails the Caribbean and caters to wealthy Scientologists paying for the highest level of spiritual training, Operating Thetan level eight, or “OT VIII,” where a two week stay turned into 12 years. *Gasps* Lucky b*tch got a 12 year vacation. Amirite?
“Well, the schedule in the Sea Org is very different than in the real world. You’d get up at 6 and go to work, and you’d work until midnight. In 1997 and 1998, after our regular jobs we were up every night until 4 am cleaning up asbestos,” she says. “There was rubble on the deck. We’d have to go behind the guys doing renovations, vacuuming up dirt until 4 in the morning.” Village Voice
Oh, Inotrite. But it must have been cool when Tom Cruise came to visit, right? She must have at least gotten an autograph to sell on eBay.
“We were all pulled down to the cinema,” Valeska says, remembering the special announcement when they were told that Tom Cruise was coming to the ship for his birthday, which is July 3. “We were all told we can’t ask for his autograph, or we’d get a comm ev.” (A “committee of evidence” is a sort of Scientology disciplinary trial.) “We can’t tell anyone that he’s coming to the ship or that he’d been to the ship, or again, a comm ev. And we had to call him ‘sir.’ It was like he was David Miscavige’s deputy or something.”
That sucks. Then… at least she got a look at Tommy. How did he look? Is he as good looking in real life as in his movies? Spill, sista!
As the date for the party neared, however, Valeska committed a grave error.
She got a cold sore.
“David Miscavige saw that I had a cold sore, and I was assigned to lower conditions and I was put in isolation for 4 days,” she says. She explains that she was assigned the “condition” of “Treason,” which is below “Enemy” but above “Confusion.”
“I was in Treason. So I wasn’t allowed to go to Tom Cruise’s birthday.”
This story is getting more and more depressing. However, one tidbit she did get is that only men were allowed to serve Tom Cruise because he was so beautiful, any woman would automatically fall in love. And the men had to wear only speedos, free of all body hair and be oiled up. To, um, make them work faster with less wind resistance. Okay, that last part might not be true.
“He said, ‘Tom Cruise is coming and I need really good service, so who’s going to serve him?’ A woman spoke up. ‘No, no, it can’t be a woman, because he’s so good looking, any woman would fall for him.’ So a guy had to take the job,” she says.
As luck would have it, the man assigned to serve Cruise slept in so she did his job and managed not to fall in love. What willpower!
The first morning after Cruise arrived however, the male worker assigned to serve Cruise and his guest, Penelope Cruz, slept in, and Valeska ended up doing the job.
His ass was probably sore… from working 18 hours a day of course.
