Mariette Lindstein: My years of hell trapped in the grip of Scientologists

The first time she saw a high-ranking member of the Church of Scientology strike someone to the ground "all the brainwashing from years and years vanished in an instant" says former member Mariette Lindstein. "I thought 'I have to get out' but it took six years from that point to get away." Mariette, 60, escaped from the movement, which counts actors Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Elisabeth Moss among its followers, in 2004 after 27 years as a member. She has used her experiences at the desert compound HQ near Los Angeles as the basis for a gripping thriller, Fog Island, published in the UK last week.

In it an impressionable young girl falls under the spell of the charismatic leader of New Age movement Via Terre and moves to its Fog Island base. Initially dazzled she soon realises the leader rules with an iron fist and no one ever gets past the electric fences.

Mariette says: "Nothing in the book is true but everything is true in a way. It is all inspired by truth."

After growing up in Halmstad, a small town on the south-west coast of Sweden, she was introduced to Scientology by her boyfriend at the time and was dazzled by its young, good-looking members.

She says: "I was frustrated by living in this little town and wanting more. Everybody knew everybody and it just felt too small for me.

"I was 17 when I listened to my first lecture but was 19 when I joined. It was a slow process but I think it is like that for everyone, I read books, met a lot of people and when I was 19 moved to Malmö and started taking courses, joined the organisation and ended up working there.

"The people appealed to me, not the Church. The teachings were simple, almost boring things - sitting and looking at each other, methods to make you study - but the people were so different to the people I was used to, they were outgoing and young, good-looking and smart, and they made you feel like you were the most important person in the world, which was wonderful."

Mariette fell in love with the executive director of the Malmö base, Billy Lindstein, whom she married and had a son with. After five years the family moved to Scientology's US HQ, where she started having doubts.

She says: "I think I always had little doubts about Scientology popping up, things that were not really right, the extreme discipline, the fact that people were wearing uniforms.

"The discipline in LA was much stricter but it was not like you were suddenly entering jail. We were 800 people working and eating together, spending Christmas together and I don't think I will ever feel that sense of togetherness with a big group again.

"But then things got worse and worse, and then none of that was left. Life was so unpredictable. You would get woken up after four hours' sleep and thrown in the lake.

"There was one point when I started to see spiders on my desk that did not exist. I was so sleep deprived that I was hallucinating."

Still Mariette kept her doubts to herself: "It would be so uncomfortable to say 'No, I don't believe in this', it was easier to just go along with it. Now when I look back it is like looking at a stranger, I don't know that person."

After rising to a higher level in the organisation she was separated from Lindstein, who was no longer seen as suitable for her by executives, and met US author Dan Koon, 70, whom she later married after they both escaped - but only after she had spent years in confinement.

Mariette says: "Dan was the only person I could talk to about what was happening and then suddenly he was gone..." Without telling her Dan used a Christmas shopping trip to the nearest town to escape, which led to extra security at the desert compound.

She says: "We were 80 people sleeping side-by-side in sleeping bags in double-wide trailers with bars on the windows and guards outside, and we were basically prisoners. It was almost impossible for me to escape but I found a way.

"I saw that a few people had got off the base by harming themselves or saying they were suicidal, so I played crazy. I said it was not worth living and immediately I got transferred to a rehabilitation centre in LA to have counselling. There was no fence there so that is where I escaped from."

Her first phone call was to Dan, who drove down from San Francisco and took her back with him.

Mariette initially struggled to adjust to the modern world after two decades, saying: "It was like discovering a new world because we were not allowed to have mobile phones or the internet in the Church. We were dressed in clothes from the 1980s."

After working as a nanny for a lawyer in San Francisco for seven years, she returned to Sweden in 2011 to spend time with her ageing parents but was plagued with nightmares. "I had terrible nightmares at first, being back reminded me of my dreams before joining the Church," she says. "I met a journalist who told me they would not end until I spoke out about Scientology.

"Rather than lecturing people about not joining cults I wanted to write stories that parents could give to their children that would be enjoyable to read but also educate them.

"A broader section of the population will end up in abusive relationships than will join cults, so I wanted to speak to them too, to people who are brainwashed or fall under the spell of someone with more power. This has happened in Hollywood with #MeToo as well."

She adds: "Two weeks after I started writing Fog Island the nightmares went and have never come back. I was not taking responsibility for what I have been through until then."

This is the first of a trilogy of books already published in Sweden, with the second about life after leaving a cult and what happens to you when you speak out, and the third book about children born into cults.

Since speaking out about Scientology she says her email accounts have been hacked and she has been followed and filmed at public events such as literary festivals but she does not regret the stance she has taken.

Says Mariette: "Leaving has made me appreciate the little things in life so much more and I will never take them for granted after having been in Scientology for so many years."