STATEMENT OF MARIA PIA GARDINI I, Maria Pia Gardini declare as follows:

1. I am over the age of 18 years.

2. The statements herein are of my own personal knowledge and if called upon as a witness, I can testify competently thereto.

3. My name is Maria Pia Gardini. I am an Italian citizen.

4. I became involved in Scientology through the Narconon program. My daughter went into the program and at this time she gave me some books to read about Scientology. After 8 months or so she finished her program and told me she wanted to continue studying Scientology. My mother and I paid for her auditing up to OT VII.

5. After she was on the OT levels, she convinced me to meet some of the people in the Rome org. They convinced me to do the purification rundown and to try auditing, so I bought one intensive of "book one" auditing.

6. I started the purification rundown: on the second day I blew (left suddenly) the sauna. I was scared to death of being in the heat for four to five hours. I was 49 years old and felt I would die. Members of the org came to my home and convinced me to return and keep doing it. They said I was just going through something and if I continued, I would get out of it. So, I returned and finished the rundown. I quickly told them I was done, and I was done.

7. I then started the auditing. My father was dead and I had always been sad about his death. When I started auditing, my auditor was a very warm and kind woman and we audited almost the whole 12 hours that I had purchased on my father's death. I went through a lot of emotions talking about his death, crying and laughing and at the end I did feel better.

8. I then decided to continue. I wanted to buy another intensive, but I was regged to buy 10 intensives more of book one auditing. Meanwhile, they also sold me an academy package so I could study to myself become an auditor. Soon, I was getting auditing 3-4 hours a day and studying an additional several hours a day.

9. When I attested the completion of book one, I was told I had to continue to handle the many more areas of my life. I then bought all the Scientology Grades auditing plus NED (New Era Dianetics.)

10. I started on the objectives. This was the first failure for me. Doing a drill called "Op Pro by Dup" involving repetitive actions with a book and bottle, I became so upset I threw the bottle at my auditor and tore up the book used in the auditing. The auditor had to physically restrain me to keep me in the room.

11. Before I had just done auditing where I had talked a lot, so of course one will feel better talking about their problems. Now, this was something different.

12. I ended up slapping the auditor and running from the room. I ran home and that evening four staff members came to get me. They explained to me that I had lost control and if I finished the auditing I would regain control. I returned with them and finished the auditing.

13. I then audited the Grades 0-IV. I did not have any great achievements during these. It was just sit there and listen and talk to the auditor. I told the C/S that I didn't have any "wins" on this (I in fact told everyone this), but they reminded me that I had had a lot of wins before on my book one and the grades were just to stabilize me for my OT levels. They told me to just continue.

14. Then, they tried to audit me on NED, but after all the hours of book one I was desperate…I had already talked about everything! I became sick and was interviewed by someone who said I had to do the CCRD. I had paid for 12 ˝ hours of NED and audited for 25 minutes. When I tried to get the money back for these unused hours they said no, I paid for the intensive and I had started it. So that was the end of that money (about $2000.)

15. I then went to Rome and while I was there a "mission" arrived from CLO Italy to recruit people into the Sea Organization (SO.) They wanted me to join and worked very hard on me. I agreed and they gave me a contract for 1 billion years.

16. In the mean time I had done the class IV internship. They now wanted me to start in the SO, but I wanted to go attest to clear first. I bought CCRD in Copenhagen AOSH and went to do it. I was told, because I was a Sea Org member the room and board would be free. When I arrived, I was told "Free? CLO Italy doesn't have any money on account here." I had to pay for myself.

17. They put me in a hotel that was owned by the church called "Nordland." It was like a pigsty; so dirty. I found one room that was less dirty than the others and did not have other people in it.

18. At this point I was now a class V auditor. It was terrible in Copenhagen. I was given an auditor who was Swiss German who did not speak Italian, but something similar. I started eligibility with him and the session went on and on and on because I could not understand him. I was supposed to stay there two weeks but was there two months. Then, I was told I had to buy more intensives. I explained the language problem, so they switched auditors. He spoke good Italian, so I finished eligibility in two hours then moved to the CCRD. I then attested to clear.

19. Clear is supposed to be an expanded person. I did not feel this. I really wanted badly to go back to Italy. When I did go back, I simply changed suitcases and went to Milano to train for the Sea Org.

20. Now, I was put in the kitchen to cook for 70 staff members. This was terrible. Then, they wanted me to wash dishes. I said no. I never have washed dishes in my life. I had my car there so I left again. I went back home for 2 days before they came and got me. This whole time my daughter was progressing in Scientology. She was at Flag and I was afraid that they would tell her I was misbehaving and she would be upset with me. So, I went back. When I went back, they told me I was done with the first phase of my training.

21. I then told them I had to go back to Rome to close up the house. In Rome, there was another mission to get people to do the OT levels in Copenhagen. I bought a package for OT I-III. I wrote for permission to do these levels instead of going to work. I received this permission and went to Copenhagen to do my OT levels.

22. While I was doing my levels in Copenhagen, I was paying my own room and board and then they asked me to start auditing their pcs.

23. I went onto OT I. It was bullshit. You walked around by yourself and "spotted" things.

24. In the middle of it I went into a coffee shop…I expanded myself on good coffee. After a couple of hours I went back and they asked me if I had any wins. I said, "sure sure," so they sent me to attest to being done.

25. The next day I started doing OT II. On this you run dichotomies. You have a long list of whole track implants like electric implants and talking implants etc. You have to run down the track to run them out. It is solo auditing and it is done by talking aloud to yourself.

26. When I went in session, I hade to spot a light and from there run the implant. Then, I read my meter and ran back and forth the dichotomies of the implant. While doing this I was in a place where thin dividers divided the walls and you could hear other people running their implants. Also, the wall was painted black and I couldn't see the light. I wrote the C/S and asked him "Where is the light!"

27. The next day trying to audit, there was a circus behind the building and I could hear the elephant. The next day I wrote I could not find the light, but I did find the elephant.

28. In the end, I ran off three implants, said I could find no more and asked to move on. I then attested to OT II. I also did the old clearing course and OT II is this same thing manipulated around a bit.

29. Now, I start OT III. This is what I really wanted, what all of us Scientologists wanted. It is the big mystery: the Wall of Fire.

30. I opened the course materials, read what was before me, and closed the book. This was the wall of fire? I had already read this.

31. At this time, I was a huge science fiction fan. Now, I was racking my brain about this story about Xenu and the battle with the loyal officers. I had heard this story before but could not remember where. The story involves an "evil galactic overlord" named Xenu who was captured 75 million years ago and put into an electric trap, and you have these electric strips, like in the department stores, and LRH tells you that beings (called thetans) were brought to the planet earth back then and trapped with these electronic strips and put into a volcano then blown up and they are now stuck all over people's bodies. Now, I feel that I have a full population in my body! There were people in the room passing out when reading this. I am not so impressionable.

32. That night when I went to bed I was wondering where are all these beings (now called body thetans) in my body?

33. The day after studying about OT III, I started to audit it in my bedroom in the Nordland hotel. You are supposed to talk to your body thetans and make them go away from you. Each night I took my auditing folder to the C/S, carrying it in a suitcase with a chain attached to my wrist. We had to do this to ensure the confidentiality of the very secret materials.

34. When I did my first session, my needle was stuck. I got so angry that the needle started to move. Then I said, "I found a body thetan," and started to audit. I think I was auditing my rage.

35. I audited 100 hours on OT III. This was a lot; almost double what many people audit, but I wanted to be certain that I had all of these body thetans gone. The "End Phenomenon" of OT III is that all of your body thetans are now gone. So, I was convinced all my body thetans were gone and I attested to being finished with OT III.

36. Now, I said, I will go back to my post in Italy. No, I am told, I must stay and do OT IV and V. I say I do not have the money in Copenhagen to pay for these levels. That night, from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. they regged me to purchase these OT levels.

37. I finally called my mother to borrow money and she was very angry with me, but she did send me the money. So, now I start OT IV.

38. What do I read in the OT IV materials? That I now have to handle "Body Thetan Clusters. I said what? More BTs? I was told yes, now I am handling drugs on the "whole track": all drugs I ever did and the drugs the body thetans did. These body thetans, you see, were not gone after OT III because they were "druggies." Ok, I said. Let's get rid of the druggie body thetans.

39. I did this level and attested that I was now free from druggie body thetans.

40. Now, I go to do OT V. An auditor audits this. I get an HCOB to read and what is in this HCOB? BT's and clusters! I say, "I don't have any more!" and he says, "Yes you have. These BT's are sleeping and you have to wake them up. Then you give them an identity and they will go away."

41. I now figured what the hell. I had done OT IV; let's do V. At this time you have to make up things to keep yourself going.

42. So, the auditor command is "Look at your body (not with your eyes) and locate a cluster." When the auditor gets a read he says, "Where is this?" I say, "On the knee!" I then had to telepathically communicate with the BT and ask it "What are you?" The BT says, "a banana." You tell the auditor "a banana." Or it says, "a piece of paper" or whatever comes into your head and the auditor says "Ok…tell him that is the item;" for example "The banana is the item." I tell him the item is the banana and at that point the BT can blow or he can stay there. If he doesn't blow on the "What" question you ask him "Who are you?" You get all sorts of names here: Napoleon, Julius Caesar, John Travolta, whoever! You tell all these to the auditor. He gets a read and tells you which name is the right one. Then the BT will blow. These are the only two commands.

43. I did this for 40 hours. Then, I attested to OT V.

44. While I had been auditing, there was a raid in Italy and all of the organizations were closed. When I returned to Italy after OT V, the entire org of Roma had moved into my apartment (they had called me in Copenhagen and asked to move into my apartment.) I had instructed my building superintendent to let them in but to not give them a key. They somehow got a key and made a copy anyway. They were there all the time…the whole building was protesting.

45. So, when I returned, I made them leave. I found them another apartment and paid for the first two months of rent. It took five days for a cleaning company to clean my apartment, it was such a mess.

46. Now, I went to CLO in Milano to work. They were working in a hotel because they had lost their building to the government. I wondered what the hell I was doing there. I had no job to do. We had Int (International Management) missions in to handle the problems while I was paying the hotel for everyone in CLO. I figured I would go on to do OT VI and OT VII. One of my seniors thought this would be good for me to do. At this moment, I was running out of money. So, to do these levels I sold my apartment in Rome. My mother was very, very angry with this. She told me I was crazy and they will ruin me. She was right.

47. Now, I come to Flag. Again, I was supposed to get room and board because I was a staff member. Bah. No room and board! I have again to pay for myself.

48. I now go onto the OT VI course and what is there? BODY THETANS AND CLUSTERS! The questions were the same two as on OT V. "What" and "Who." I almost went nuts. When I protested I was told it was the same procedure but the fact that I was doing it solo made it different and better. They told me that body thetans were everywhere. The materials also explained that my body was not a body at all, but a mass of BT clusters. If they were not there, my body would be translucent.

49. I went into session on OT VI. At the end, I attested that I had completed OT VI, not that I had no more BTs.

50. Now, I moved to OT VII. Now, the end phenomenon of this level is: NO BT'S LEFT OF ANY KIND. NO SLEEPING BTS' NO DRUGGIE BT'S NOTHING. One thing I audited on OT VII was suppressive BTs.

51. Sometimes, you have a BT that will blow only from your body to the door, so you have to mock up a scissors to cut the string that is keeping them attached to your body. Also, you have BTs in layers, so you have to mock up a hand to brush them off.
52. I never went to my home to audit; I stayed at the Sand Castle and audited for 8 months. When I wasn't auditing I studied to be a class IX auditor and was auditing public pcs.

53. When I attested to OT VII, Captain Ron Norton called me. I was validated as being a class IX auditor and OT VII completion. What the hell was I going to do with it? They asked me to sign on to work at Flag and they would send another auditor to Italy to replace me. I told them to call my senior.

54. In Italy they were still trying to open up the orgs. My senior did agree, though I said I had to go back to Italy to finish up and prepare. I did this.

55. When I arrived to start working at Flag, I was told that they would put me in the Sand Castle hotel because there is no room at the Hacienda. The Sand Castle was dirty and had unbelievable cockroaches.

56. They told me I had to pay 10% of what a public would pay, since it was a public room. When they took me to the room there was no furniture, no bed nothing. I complained but was told it was too late at night to do anything. I was told to sleep in a chair. I said no, I just arrive after 10 hours of travel. It was February 8 and cold. I ended up sleeping on the carpet.

57. The next day I refused to go to work unless I received a bed. They then showed me a bed that had been outside in the garden; they were going to throw it away. It was so dirty I would not put my dog on that mattress. It had holes where rats had eaten it. I absolutely refused. I told them I would start work on Monday. I went to the store and bought myself a bed, blankets, chair and sheets. I had it all brought to the Sand Castle.

58. After one month, I was told they had a place in the Hacienda Gardens for me. So, I put my stuff together and they took me to the Hacienda. When they opened the door, I plugged my nose it stunk so badly. There were eight beds one atop of the other. At this point I said take me to the captain.

59. I went to the Captain and told him I will not live like this. I want to go back to Italy. He said no, we have a small apartment in the Hacienda that we rent. We will give it to you for half price. I agreed to this and paid $400 per month (this turned out to be full price.)

60. Now, I moved into this apartment. At the end of the first month, five other people were sleeping in this apartment. They were putting staff members in my paid for apartment. These people would eat my food and drink my water. I returned to the captain.

61. I said enough is enough. You broke all your promises and I want to go home. The captain told me to return to the Hacienda, wait three days and he will come visit me and we will take care of this.

62. In the mean time, I called an area realtor and arranged to purchase a condominium. By the time I met with the captain, I had my new home. At first, he told me no, I couldn't stay off the base. I said it was this or nothing. He told me to write a CSW, which I did, and he approved it. Thus, I had special permission to live outside of sea org quarters.

63. So, I started to audit again. Then, there was a change of captains. Ron Norton went to Gold and Debbie Cook became the captain. This was in 1988. When Debbie Cook became captain, my real problems started.

64. First, she wanted me to move back to the Hacienda, or she insisted that I share my condo with other staff members. I told her no to both. At this time, I was almost every week the auditor with the most hours in the chair and that year I won the worldwide highest auditing hours cup at the Auditors Day celebration. At this point, I was a money making machine for them.

65. I was always on the chair auditing. In September of 1990 I received a phone call from Italy saying my daughter was in the hospital in Pavia in Italy and I had to go to her at once. I CSW'd to go see her and it was approved.

66. I returned to Italy and two months later, my daughter died: November 18, 1990. She was 29 years old and an OT VII.

67. A bit before I left, however, I asked the senior C/S, Kathy Webb, to give me a program to audit my daughter because she was OT VII. This was to help her physically. The answer was, with AIDS, she will die. What program do you want? Give her a program to drop the body. Of course, I never did such a process on her. You don't go to a sick person and say, "I give you a program to drop your body."

68. Also in 1989 or 1990 they started releasing OT VIII. I was told to buy a package on the Freewinds because this is the only place OT VIII was delivered due to its extreme confidentiality. I bought a package, but then I went to Italy because of my daughter.

69. Two days after my daughter's death, I took her to the cemetery to bury her in our family mausoleum. On this day, I was recalled to Flag. My daughter was not yet buried. Flag phoned me and spoke to my mother, who told them to fuck off and leave me alone and forget my phone number. She was heavily against Scientology.

70. When I spoke with them I told them my daughter had left a daughter of 11 years old, Camilla, and I could not leave immediately. The called me every day, several times a day to get me to come back immediately. They called with no regard to the 6-hour time difference between the USA and Italy. They would call at 4:00 a.m. and wake up the whole house of grieving people to demand my return.

71. On the 29th of November, 11 days after my daughter's death, I returned to Flag. I left my granddaughter with her stepfather and my mother. When I returned to Flag I was very angry and the staff at Flag were astonished at this. They could not understand why I would be mad. I then went right back to work, but I was not able to produce as well as I had before. Because of this, they decided to send me to the ship to do my OT VIII.

72. The ship was in the Bahamas. I had to buy my own ticket to get there. When I arrived, I also had to pay for my own room and board. I didn't want to sleep in the staff berthing below decks, as it was extremely hot down there, like 100 degrees. I could not do this. As soon as I arrived, instead of starting my own program I was put to work auditing others on their sec check for OT VII and OT VIII eligibility. I was very valuable to them as I could audit in three languages: English, Italian, and French.

73. Soon after I arrived, Milt Wolf, one of the ship captains, and David Light, a registrar, sat with me and regged me to buy books and materials. They also sold me a gold OT bracelet that cost thousands of dollars. They sat with me and would not let me go until I had bought and bought. I ended up buying an extra suitcase to carry all the materials I had bought. Eventually, I arrived in the course room to start OT VIII.

74. The OT VIII material was titled "Truth Revealed." When I opened the materials and read the data, I went nuts. I couldn't believe what I was reading. BODY THETANS!

75. Basically on OT VIII you run processes from the "History of Man" book, right down to clams. You have to go down the track to clam, figure out an overt, then locate a BT (not cluster; you communicate telepathically and figure out the overt, write it down and ask the BT with the meter: "Is it yours?" "Is it mine?" When you get a read, you indicate who's it is and get an FN and move on. This is the truth revealed.

76. On all levels above OT III when you audit you always ask if the read is the person's or the BT's read.

77. I was so upset with OT VIII that I talked to the supervisor. She told me to just do it and I will be amazed at the wins I will have getting rid of overts off all the BTs from the whole track. I wanted to get out of there but there I was in the middle of the ocean. I was furious! I was just ordering BTs on a sec check (Scientology Security Check.)

78. The night I attested to OT VIII, I went ashore with some friends to see the casino in Nassau. Guess who was gambling there? David Miscavige, Guillame Leserve and Ray Mithoff. Isn't gambling an overt in Scientology? When I saw this, I was ready to leave Scientology. Between the gambling and the OT VIII, it was like garbage. I wanted to leave, but this was very difficult.

79. When I was finished, (this was December 1990) I returned to Flag. Now, I was trying to figure out how to leave Scientology. The occasion came in October 1991 when I received a call that my mother was in hospital and very, very sick. Now, I could return to Italy.

80. I CSW'd to leave. My CSW was NOT approved. I went to the Captain to talk to her and she told me no, it was not important that my mother was dying. It was only a body. I must stay at Flag and produce for Scientology.

81. I again CSW'd to leave. Instead of giving it to the Captain, I gave it to my DofP (Director of Processing) for OT eligibility. Then, I went to my condo, packed my suitcase, went to the airport, bought a ticket and went to Italy.

82. I thought I would be declared a blow, but after four days in Italy I received, by fax, the CSW I had written. It was approved. My mother died December 11, 1991.

83. On the 21st of December, Flag started regging me for the money I was inheriting from my mother's death. Please see my other affidavit for the completion of this story.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America and the state of Florida that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed in Grosetto, Italy this 14th day of February 2001 Maria Pia Gardini

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