Ex-Scientologist story #399, Skeletons in the Closet, Violence at the top.

Janela Webster saw the inside of the rabbit hole of Scientology’s leadership.  What did she find?  A place where people are abused, starved and almost worked to death.  Add daily humiliations and a total disregard for children and you have a good part of the picture.  To outsiders it seems incredible that something like this should exist yet we see it exposed time and again.  Read this woman’s experiences in the wonderful world of Scientology and see if you can find any sanity in it; I can’t.

I am writing this to make it known my own personal experience with the physical and emotional abuse I either witnessed or experienced from David Miscavige, including his forcing me to disconnect from my daughter when she was 14 years old.

I also want to make it known that, being staff on the Int Base and in RTC for the better part of 15 years, I have differentiated between Scientology and truth from downright arrogance, coercion, physical abuse and any other scare tactics that were used to control us.

What was and is happening on that base is not Scientology; the destructive activities that are occurring and that so many others have spoken about were never the reasons I became a Scientologist or joined staff in 1983. My purposes were to use Scientology for the greatest good, not only for myself, but for others, which, for me, being a staff member was the ideal scene.

Over the years, life at Int degenerated until finally it had nothing to do with Scientology anymore. It became all about David Miscavige and how he was the only one that could do anything right at that base and “everybody else” was just suppressive and didn’t deserve a life. We were the targets of his continual wrath and black propaganda — the complete reverse of what Scientology teaches.

Accordingly, toward the end of my tenure, I convinced those I worked with that I was incompetent and my only worth was to do staff laundry. Ha ha – the joke was on them. I did staff laundry because it was more productive than sitting at a desk gritting my teeth and mulling through my head how the hell I was ever going to get anything done in that mad house! I’m fully trained in LRH’s administrative policy, but I sure LOVED doing laundry in those last days of my life there. Although fellow staff members would only glare at me and made sure I understood what an irresponsible bum I was, I could not believe their blind devotion to this tyrannical monster, a devotion that seemed to grow stronger with each passing day. I knew who the real idiots were. . .
 

For those sheep still condoning abuse from David Miscavige, lying for him and covering up his crimes like Tommy Davis, I can only say “Shame on you.” They have lost any and all sense of dignity or truth and in no way exemplify what Scientology is.

Norman Starkey: how could you stand up and lie about David Miscavige not laying a hand on you? I was standing right there in the office when he just walked up to you and boxed you in the ears with no concern whatsoever. And you, a senior citizen in your ‘60s? Why is it that he has such a hold on you?

And since when is it that someone can tell me that I’m not a Scientologist if I’m not affiliated with that organization? You can’t tell me what I am or am not. No one, not David Miscavige nor any organization has totalitarian control over truth – you can’t rob my identity because I refuse to allow it. And you will never ever control me with the idea that my eternity lies in your hands ever AGAIN. Sorry, it lies in mine. When I saw this for myself I broke from your hold and found freedom.

While I have my own personal experiences of being thrown in the lake; sleep deprivation; being incarcerated on the Int base and forced to sleep on a cot in my office for 7 months; starved on a diet of rice and beans for weeks; the most destructive and painful of all was the forced disconnection from my daughter in 2001. My experience is one that rings of violation of parental rights, human trafficking, and labor code violations.

My daughter moved with me to the Int base in 1990 when she was 3 years old. She lived on the Int Ranch (called Happy Valley) and, while I did not see it in the earlier years, the lack of any time to be a parent or to spend time with my daughter severed my relationship with her. The only time available to see my child was on Sunday mornings, yet that was also the time scheduled to wash clothes and clean berthing. So, I was lucky if I even got to see her at all, since I frequently had to work on a night schedule and sometimes ended up working during that little “free time” we had in the week. In addition to this, I later discovered that my daughter was being told by staffers at “Happy Valley” not to “talk to me” when she had problems as she would distract me from my job. What parent does not want their child to come to them when they have problems? That’s what parents are for! , , ,.

In 1999, David Miscavige went to the Int Ranch to do an inspection. I don’t recall the specifics of what he found, but the result of this inspection was orders to ship all children off to either Florida or Los Angeles, forcing them to take jobs on staff. Was I ever consulted as a parent? No. Did I have any say in the matter? No. Parental rights did not exist and the idea of asserting them was “out-ethics.” Instead, I was told that Christina, my 12 year old daughter, was being shipped off and routed into the Sea Org in LA.

I had grave concerns for my daughter leaving the base and further away from me. She was having problems at the Ranch and probably needed more care and handling than what one receives then they join the Sea Org. Sure enough, after being in LA for approximately 6 months, she started to hang out with the “wrong crowd” and took unauthorized leaves from her staff job to roam the streets of Hollywood.

In the summer of 2001, my daughter originated wanting to leave the Sea Org. I was at a complete loss. My daughter, who, at that time was 14 years old, wanted to leave and I had no control on what was happening with her. The idea of allowing me, as her mother, to see her, be a terminal, participate or have any decision on handling her ever was not even considered a possibility. I originated going to see her, but no, in the Sea Org, everybody is a thetan in a body and there is no recognition of the impact a mother or father have with their children and making decisions about their lives. She was “out-ethics” and acting “suppressively” and others were expected to handle it so that it was “not on my plate” as an RTC staff member.

September brought disaster. One of the security guards who worked for David Miscavige during the Maiden Voyage was sent back from the ship early due to some failure on his part to live up to David’s expectations. As part of his “ethics handling,” the RTC Representative in Los Angeles assigned him to watch my daughter full time. When David found out about that, he came into my office (AVC Int RTC) and confronted me with the matter. He looked at me straight in the eye and said, “and do you know what one of my personal security guards is doing?”

When I replied, “No”, he told me how his security guard was watching “my” daughter. Of course, the entire room went silent and I was speechless. That David Miscavige even “mentions” my daughter as a distraction to him brought on an entire host of additional meaning to the situation and suddenly, Christina was a flap that RTC had to terminatedly handle.

The next day I was confronted by one of David’s direct juniors, Greg Wilhere, on the idea that my 14-year-old daughter was suppressive. I was coerced to write a disconnection letter and disconnect. It was a robotic, cold and squirrel handling. Never would the handling be for me to talk to her myself, be a terminal for her, be a loving mother and find out what was going on. No, it was sec checks, ethics, disconnection. The concepts of mother, child, daughter, family do not exist. . .

Around this same time period, my mother (who I hadn’t seen in 14 years) had a stroke. For me, this also represented the chance to escape. I gave no one any reason to suspect anything on my “leave” to see my mother. Once I was sitting on the plane and in the air I knew I was free. My mother needed help and I’ve spent nearly every day with her in the three years since I left. But not 24 hours had passed before I received a phone call from RTC ordering me back to the base within 24 hours. Well, you can guess what my answer was to that.

While providing care to my mother, it still took me another year to find out where my daughter was. Finally, she contacted me. The relief I felt that day when she called! She had been living in Long Beach and working at the Aquarium.

 Since that day, while still caring full time for my mother and going to school, I have worked to somehow make amends with Christina and take responsibility for the great wrong done to her. We continue to make progress.

And I want everyone to know who is reading this that, to this day I still can’t believe that I, at one time, would have done anything to support David Miscavige, including the abandonment of my own daughter. But, at that time, I believed that following David Miscavige was for the protection and expansion of Scientology. But it was destructive and I never live a day without thinking about it. And I know so many others have had similar pain, for he ordered the divorces of dozens of people, and is responsible for disconnections affecting thousands of people all over the world.

At the Int base, through constant repetition, it was continually drummed in to me that I had a PTS situation with my mother and daughter. I had Greg Wilhere yelling 2 inches from my face on how my mother is suppressive. Yet, my mother is a sweet lady, wouldn’t hurt a fly and has appreciated me more in the past 4 years I have been back than I ever was in the 15 years I worked in RTC. Well, the perverted application of the disconnection policy is what created that situation for me. And it would never resolve because PTS tech was never standardly applied.

My experience at that base was not a happy or successful one. You would think that staff, particularly those working directly under David Miscavige, would have abundant and successful lives on ALL dynamics. Not one of living literally like a slaves, stripped of all dynamics and acting like meek bums that aren’t worth anything.

And while I am now working on rebuilding my life, I still have scars, as I am sure other numerous children, parents, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters do as a result of squirrelled disconnections. Christina was but one victim. There are thousands more.

What David Miscavige has done is NOT Scientology.

It is human trafficking.

Written by Janela Webster

To read her full story go to this website: http://www.scientology-cult.com/skeletons-in-the-closet.html

The abuse in Scientology is not limited to one specific area.  There was plenty of misery to go around.

Ex-Scientologist Story #395, “Jokers and Degraders.”

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO BULLETIN OF 5 FEBRUARY 1977 (Also published as HCO PL, same date.)

C/S Series 100

JOKERS AND DEGRADERS

Each of these persons fell into one or more of the following categories:

1. Were rock slammers. (Some List 1.)

2. Were institutional type cases.

3. Were “NCG” (meaning no case gain) (the only cause of which is continuous present time overts).

4. Were severely PTS (Potential Trouble Source) (connected to rock slammers).

It might be supposed that misunderstood word phenomena could also be part of this. The rebellious student in universities is usually handled by clearing up his misunderstoods or curing his hopelessness for his future. However, the investigation did not find that any of these jokers or degraders were acting that way solely because of misunderstood words, but the possibility cannot be ruled out. . . .  [to read the whole deluded policy letter go here: http://www.suppressiveperson.org/sp/archives/319 ]

It cannot be said the L. Ron Hubbard liked people with a sense of humor; at least where Scientology is concerned.  The older he got the more flaws that the great man found in his fellow human beings.  Besides a laundry list of faults that he found among his students likewise his paranoia increased with age.   He was beset by fools, traitors, agents of evil and psychiatrists at every turn.  This led to more and more savage “ethics” conditions and security checklists.  He wanted to know who were the people who were countering his benevolent intentions.  Here we are concerned with one of those pronouncements that came down from on high.  Apparently people were laughing at that would have to stop.  Who pissed off the old man and brought down this sharp rap on the knuckles?  Gerry Armstrong has identified the culprit as former member John Ausley.  Gerry had this to say in a post on ARS in 2003.

“Funnily enough, when Hubbard wrote this bulletin, I was on the RPF in Clearwater, Florida, and he was at La Quinta, California. I had been ordered to the RPF by him personally, which was no joke.

Hubbard wrote this bulletin during his biggest — and utterly psychotic — List-1 R/S period, where literally hundreds of people were being routed summarily to the RPF for R/Sing on a List-1 item. It was nonsensical to request a Comm Ev because there was no “recourse.” How could a person possibly contest a sec checker’s noted R/S in the worksheets?

Ordering people to the cult’s prison for a needle movement on a “religious artifact” is a lot like sending people to prison because the entrails of a duck were the wrong hue of green. But I’ll save that subject for another day for another essay on Hubbardian and Scientological “religious” persecution and insanity.

L-1 — also called “The Scientology List” — which Hubbard invented (and didn’t discover) in 1962, contained, of course, the cult’s terms, plus Hubbard, Mary Sue, Founder, etc. See HCOB 24 November 1962 “Routine 2-12 List One – Issue One The Scientology List.” An R/S on L-1 meant — so Hubbard said — that the R/Ser had an evil intention toward one of the subjects on the list.

There were other periods when the paranoid Hubbard targeted R/Sers, all the way back to his invention (not discovery) of the list. When he created (and didn’t discover) the RPF in January 1974, he made “R /Ser” the first reason or criterion for assignment. His 1976-78 L-1 R/S witch hunt, as those of us who were there well know, completely dwarfed his other periods of R/S paranoia.

It was during this period, of course, when Hubbard invented (and didn’t discover) the “Jokers and Degraders” bulletin. And in the bulletin, the first item or criterion he invented for his categorizing of J&Ders is “rock slammers.”

Some time after I got out of the RPF, I heard that the original “joker” who, as you say, pissed Hubbard off, was John Ausley.

I had known John on the “Apollo” in the early 1970’s, when he was, I believe, pretty well the whole time, in the Tech Div. I think he was a Class 8, OT 7, and for some time the Tech Sec. And he was a funny guy.

His sister was Liz Ausley, now Liz Gablehouse, who was for some time a Hubbard Personal PRO on board. The Ausleys, I believe, came from a prominent family in Tallahassee involved in Florida State politics.

John escaped from the cult a couple of years before I did. I met him once or twice I think in southern California when both of us were out in the early 1980’s. Free from Scientological suppression, he was funnier than ever, and we shared some laughs over the history and horror.

One of the ironies for J&D aficionados is that John’s wife Paulette Ausley, originally Paulette Fisher, a Flag Class XII and auditor of Hubbard himself, was the person the Fat Fraud sent on mission to find all those R/Ss and route all those R/Sers to the RPF.

To read Gerry’s post go here: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/ars/ars-2003-09-22.html

We could use a bit of humor at this point.  This is true, but still funny as hell.

Ex-Scientologist Story #402, Turkeys in the RPF, Slaves of the “Dirty Needle.”

 

This story takes place during one of the most bizarre times in a crazy cult that has come to light in recent history.  One the basis of a single reaction from the Scientology “E-meter” -a fraudulent device that served to make Scientology look scientific, people were hauled off, sometimes by main force and sent into the cult’s prison system.  This is perhaps the single most cynical event in the history of L. Ron Hubbard’s life.  And that is saying a lot.  Skip gives us an inside view of the terrible event.  Welcome to  the wonderful world of Scientology.

In 1977 I was a staff member of the $cientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. It was determined that I was a troublemaker based on really nothing – my department had higher statistics than most, and we put the central files of the organization into “present time” (meaning that all the filing was up to date on a daily basis, which had never before been done in a $cientology organization, at least in the southern California area.

So I was given a choice of going to work with the $cientology slave labor force known as the Rehabilitation Project Force, which was concentrated at the former Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, a complex which is now known as ASHO and AOLA on (ridiculous) L. Ron Hubbard Way south of Hollywood, or I would be kicked out of the so-called church and declared to be a “suppressive person.” That was the standard choice given staff members picked for slave labor in those days. I didn’t have any friends who were not $cientologists – which the organization very carefully arranges for as many members as possible. I had alienated my family over $cientology. I had no money. So I chose to be a slave, slightly buying into the chance that I might actually be a messed-up spiritual being in need of rehabilitation.

Curiously enough, a lot of executives like myself, who were high achievers for the organization despite receiving only room and board and a few measly dollars a week from which we had to buy our clothes and everything else, were there on the “RPF” for the same reason I was put there. And I watched a lot of them fall apart mentally and cry and emote about their errors, some of which occurred in past lives. One guy bawled at the top of his lungs at the weekly group confessional which was the RPF equivalent of “sharing wins.” He was convinced he had been a Nazi tank commander in his past life and had run over people with a tank and enjoyed it.

After a day of watching this, I decided that, options or not, the place was ridiculous and this was just a cheap construction force to fix up the buildings for free, which using the ruse of making the people think they needed rehabilitation. It was one of L. Ron Hubbard’s more evil and greedy moves – and I saw a lot of them during my years as a staff member. Of course, I kept denying what my eyes saw and what my logic told me, and buying into the “great spiritual truths ahead” bullshit propagated by Mankind’s greatest enemy, the greedy vicious liar Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.

So I told the person in charge one day that I didn’t belong on the RPF and that I wanted to leave. “Come with me,” she gleefully said with a Cheshire cat smile on her face. And she lead me to the basement of the “complex” where the “RPF’s RPF” was located.

Until they encountered it personally, no one knew it existed. It was an even more demeaning slave labor force who cleaned out the bowels of the old buildings. Think of coal miners or New York sewer workers in the 19th century, and that’s about how most of them looked. You were allowed to shower only once a week, to do your laundry in the shower, and otherwise you had to do hard labor which was mostly cleaning the filthiest of places all day long.

You were also supposed to be given an exit “security check” which involved being grilled relentlessly with an electropsychometer to uncover your supposed deep dark secret crimes that had led you to fall into such a state of disgrace. The most heinous “crimes” would be having a “List One Rock Slam” which was a jerky needle reaction on the “E-meter” when a number of things were mentioned, like the name L. Ron Hubbard.

Of course, at this time a woman named Paulette Ausley was in charge of the quality of all the so-called “technology” of $cientology as the head of the Qualifications Division worldwide under L. Ron Hubbard. She was on the ship Apollo with Hubbard and consulted with him regularly. Ausley did not know the difference between a “rock slam” and a “dirty needle” (the latter of which supposedly arose at, say, a nagging thought). How do I know this? Because her former husband John told me later, and I verified it (without mentioning John had told me) with Nikki Merwin, who was Mary Sue Hubbard’s secretary at the time. Nikki told me “Everyone knew Paulette had that misunderstood, so what.” (A “misunderstood” is in $cientology terms a misconstrued meaning for a word or phrase in someone’s mind.)

So let’s stop for a moment here. Hubbard bought a giant building for cash – $13 million I believe (Nikki’s husband Rick was in charge of “estates” and buying property at the time, that’s what he told me it cost). He needed it renovated. Hubbard was a cheap, greedy bastard so here was a woman who thought a dirty needle was a rock slam, and if you read off a list with Hubbard’s name on it, active executives who were constantly thinking of ways to keep people buying $cientology, some of them would get what Paulette Ausley thought was a rock slam. Which meant those people could be seen as “List One R/Sers” and need great rehabilitation which, according to obese lazy bastard Hubbard would include strenuous physical activity.

How convenient.

Back to my story. When I got to the RPF’s RPF I learned there was a group with even less esteem called “the turkeys.” These were people who refused to do the slave labor and said screw it. They were left with a guard or two in a small room, to simply sit there all day doing nothing but talking amongst each other, if that. After a few hours sitting with the turkeys, who were either freaked out or sullen and silent, I tried to figure out an escape route. But there were enforcers around like Andre Tabayoyan, who was supposedly a black belt martial artist.

When I saw one of the guards browbeat a formerly respected “case supervisor” (a person who looks over the supposed spiritual progress of people who buy $cientology and get “auditing” or $cientology counseling) into a psychotic rage that resulted in the person saying he was going to get a lawyer and sue the “church” I relented about working. Why? Because if you threatened to sue $cientology, ever, staff or “public,” you were declared a Potential Trouble Source Type C and never ever again allowed to have $cientology “counseling.” In short, a $cientology death sentence.

For the uninformed, this is the continual control mechanism developed by the evil Hubbard. Everything within $cientology is calculated to convince you that no one else, ever, has developed a way to spiritual freedom other than Hubbard. Every issue of Advance magazine at the time (the publication of the organization where the top levels of $cientology were done then) would have a story about some other religion or philosophy and explain the basics of it, then at the end have a few paragraphs about how that religion or philosophy had failed in its mission and Mankind had been saved (hallelujah!) only due to the persistence and benevolence of L. Ron Hubbard.

It didn’t matter than getting to the supposedly top exalted states cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and once you’d spent that and done all the “training” and counseling available, you would be endlessly browbeat to join Hubbard’s slave labor force, the Sea Organization. To do otherwise would be “off purpose” from Hubbard’s idea of “clearing the planet.”

Which basically meant – all you Earth people’s give me, Ron the Space Emperor Xenu reincarnated, all your bucks and devotion.

Ah, but I digress.

So I left the “turkeys” and went to work on the RPF’s RPF. I had worked in a foundry at one point in my life prior to this. I had worked on a water and sewer crew for a city. I had dug ditches. I was never so filthy as I was cleaning out the bowels of the “complex” and we were only allowed to shower once a week.

And when we went to shower we had to had a “buddy” along. That’s how it worked at all times – you had another person watching you and reporting back to “superiors” if you got out of line at all.

Sound like Nazism? Gee, wonder why. What are the “case folder” written records of each “auditing session” but the Hubbard equivalent of Nazi dossiers? And the organization has used them like that, repeatedly.

We were allowed a few personal possessions, so I packed mine in a pillowcase along with my clothes. When my “buddy” was taking a shower, I found a staircase. It led upstairs to a roof. I found a grassy area below and jumped. It was night-time – I had no idea until I got outside – and I took off running across a parking lot and hurried down Sunset Boulevard as pursuers yelled threats at me from the roof where they’d pursued me.

And I would’ve stayed gone except for one problem. I had an expensive Martin guitar back in my former room at the Wilcox Hotel in Hollywood where the Celebrity Centre staff members stayed. After a few days I called the Celebrity Centre and told Harry Kaneer, then the “Master at Arms” or “ethics officer” (the one who had given me my ultimatum in the company of a 6’4″ “Class 8” auditor named James Fiducia) that I simply wanted to part ways, but I wanted my guitar.

Coercion followed and I agree to meet with a woman named Diane Marple in the lobby of the Wilcox Hotel. I explained to her that I was sick of all the mess, that I wanted my guitar (which she had with her) and that I planned to become a successful musician. She launched into a standard “the Earth is doomed within a few years unless $cientology succeeds” mantra which tapped into the reason I joined $cientology in the first place; I thought it would help me help people.

Yvonne Jentzsch, the founder of Celebrity Centre, thoroughly believed this mantra. Of course, she also told a staff meeting that Henry Kissinger was a Russian KGB member, but I didn’t know how crazy she was at the time. How could I? I was exhorted by Hubbard to not read newspapers, to not watch TV, to ignore anything from “wogs” (his oft-used term for anyone not a $cientologist).

So there was Diane Marple and two 6’3″ muscle-bound goons (one of whom I knew) who had come along with her to forcefully take me back to the RPF if necessary. I wanted that guitar, it had cost me a lot of money prior to joining the Sea Org. So with her promise that she would deliver my guitar to a former staff member friend of mine (which she did, I later learned), I went back to the RPF.

During the time I’d been gone, I’d done some construction work with my former staff member friend (the ONLY person I knew who would take me in) and I had some money.

This time I did the RPF’s RPF “program” which basically consisted of writing out how awfully wrong you’d been using one of Hubbard’s bullshit “ethics formulas.” I “graduated” to the RPF.

By this time, the word had leaked out of the $cientology community about the despicable conditions the slave laborers were working under. Non-staff $cientologists weren’t happy about some of their former favorite staff members who were suddenly “evil and in need of rehabilitation.”

And the bulk of the work on the “complex” was about done.

So Hubbard suddenly “discovered” that awful things were going on and dispatched a “missionaire” to straighten it out and get anyone who didn’t want to be on the RPF or staff off of it and back into public life.

Of course, every single course they’d taken while working at room and board, a few dollars a week if that, and often eating rice and beans for all their meals, and all the “auditing” they received would have to be paid for at full price, which could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “freeloader debt.” You see, Hubbard felt that if you didn’t uphold your Sea Org contract and work your billion years (no kidding, that’s what it read) you were a “freeloader” just there for “free services” and you should pay through the nose.

Later, they changed that (due to public non-$cientology pressure) and began giving people credit for time on staff — if you did five years, no charges applied. 20% for one year, etc.

And there I was, getting my “exit security check” by a Class 8 auditor who had formerly run the Advanced Organization. Dang, he just couldn’t find any of those awful evil crimes Hubbard was sure was there. So he tried to beg me into staying because he thought I was a cool guy. “Sorry, Gary,” I told him. “This scene here is bullshit, and you know it.”

Myself and a number of people were “routed off” while being treated like evil alien space cattle. But there was a catch. We had to sign a document that stated that if we ever revealed to ANYONE what had occurred on the RPF, we would get a $Scientology death sentence and additionally pay a FINE to the “church” of $50,000.

What the hell, we all figured. Anything to get the hell out of that psychotic zoo.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just one of the many, many horror stories of being involved in $cientology for far, far too long.

Had I not been a disillusioned, impressionable, very young baby boomer without a good stable family, I might never have fallen and continued to fall for the continual lies, delusions and hypnotic mantras of L. Ron Hubbard and his eager minions.

Gee, wonder if they’ll try to enforce the $50,000 fine on me now?

All of the above is just the tip of the iceberg of what I went through with these jerks. Their problem is, I have a photographic memory and some decent writing skills.

Forward this story, but only completely unchanged, to anyone you wish. And tell everyone you know that $cientology is the most evil cult on planet Earth, and that it will be finished within a couple of years. It is a dying beast staggering to its knees, and no one will rescue from the filth it created, in which it will choke into nothingness.

Skip Press

For more by Skip Press go here: http://www.themortonreport.com/discoveries/stranger/death-by-devotion/

Ex-Scientology Story #368, Life below decks on the cult’s slave ship.

The Ramana Dienes-Browning story.

While big-name star Tom Cruise partied and danced with wild abandon in one of the lounges aboard the Scientology ship Freewinds, below decks there was other activity going on.  Activities that are not at all party related.  Besides catering to the whims of super-stars and Scientologists who came aboard for upper level courses there was the mundane running of the ship; there were rooms to clean, food to prepare, laundry to wash, engines to keep running and bilges to clean.  This was more intense than on any ordinary cruise ship; being Scientologists they had to deal with punishments for “ethics” violations; not to mention the many upsets from unhappy members that needed to be dealt with or maybe even sort out somebody’s “disconnection.”  There could also be unpleasant “flaps” for financial reasons; not everyone gets thrilled at the idea of coming into port owing ten’s of thousands of dollars to Scientology for books or services  they didn’t know they needed.   The friction caused by getting a sizeable number of Scientologists together in one place; worse yet because they were on a ship and couldn’t duck out a back door, was enormous.  The stress produced from high-pressure sales is something nobody in their right mind would want; anger and tears must have been frequent results of this treatment.

Age is no bar to hard work and responsibly and the frequent punishments in Scientology.  It is a scandal on shore the way Scientologists treat their children; at sea without any fear of laws Scientology can have its way with their followers with virtual impunity.  Mere teenagers are worked and treated like slaves.

Here is what the “Village Voice Blog” had to say, excerpts are taken from this story:

Scientology Cruise Ship as Hellhole: The

Ramana Dienes-Browning Story

By Tony Ortega, Sun., Dec. 4 2011 at 6:04 PM

Last week, Steve Cannane of Australia’s ABC network and its program Lateline broke the story of Valeska Paris, a woman who says she was held against her will on Scientology’s private cruise ship, the Freewinds, from 1996 to 2007.In that story, Cannane also talked to Ramana Dienes-Browning, a former senior executive on the ship who backed up Valeska’s claims. “She had been sent to the ship so as not to be in contact with one of her parents and that’s not what she wanted. She was very, very distressed,” Ramana said of Valeska. “Do you consider it now it to be imprisonment?” Cannane asked her. “Yes, yes, I would definitely consider it imprisonment because there was no choice in the matter,” she answered. . . “Basically, I was raised in it,” she says. “I went to a Scientology school. I started on course at the org in Sydney probably from about 7.””Because I was so young, I didn’t have any other reference points. My dad lived in Tasmania, and I would visit him on school holidays. But Scientology was everything, and there was nothing to compare it to. It was a slow and steady brainwashing. They really are control techniques,” she says of the “communications” classes that Scientologists start out with in their careers. “You don’t even realize it when you’re in, but it’s what happens as soon as you step in and do these communications courses.”[ She went on the Freewinds with her mother and got the hard sell to join the Sea Org.  Being raised as a Scientologist she found it impossible to say no.  Her mother went along with it; so at age 15 this girl was a member of the paramilitary force, the “Sea Org,” that runs Scientology.  Life is the Sea Org is one of privation.  The only people who seem to enjoy it are the sadists who get off on making others miserable.  Like all SO members she had to start at the Estates Project Force.  She soon got married to another SO member.  But even marriage could not prevent her superiors from snooping into her sex life.  Scientology is priggish on the subject of sex; Hubbard was not in sufficient health for sexual activity when he wrote the majority of his “tech” so he took a sour view of the hanky-panky that he himself could no longer enjoy.  While on the ship she learned about several women who were being held there as prisoners in the RPF, the internal prison system of the cult.]

Ramana Dienes-Browning, happy to be out of Scientology [Photo: Jason Sinclair

I  asked Ramana what EPF training was like. “It’s like training for the Army, but you don’t get to use guns. You run everywhere. You do heavy labor — I remember breaking through walls with sledgehammers, and the person who runs it is like an Army sergeant,” she says.

“It took me about three months to do the EPF. I was pretty homesick, but I was caught up in the excitement of the adventure I was on. Just before I turned 16, I completed it and was flown to the ship,” Ramana says.

She was assigned to the Commodore’s Messengers Organization (CMO) because it was the division that had recruited her. The CMO had been created when Hubbard was plying the Mediterranean in 1969 and assembled a group of young sailors to carry his dispatches and generally run errands for him. Decades later, it was now one of the more powerful Sea Org divisions, and oversaw services on the ship, making sure church members paying those high prices were pleased with their experience. . .

Ramana says that her husband was the ship’s “LRH Host,” a member of the CMO who made sure the highest level of services were being delivered to guests of the ship. His “statistics” declined at some point, and she says it could have been from a number of different causes — perhaps fewer church members had decided to fork out for the expensive ship packages and attendance was lower. She can’t really be sure. But for whatever reason, her husband’s statistics were down, and that meant he had to be interrogated by ethics officers.

During such interrogations, questioners assume that a church member is hiding dark, sinister problems from Scientology, and so the interview subject is put on the spot about his or her most personal experiences. As many ex-Scientologists have told me, ethics officers seemed most interested in their sexual practices, and, while they were being monitored on the e-meter, they were asked to confess to sexual aberrations.

When her husband was interrogated, Ramana says, he admitted that he’d been masturbating.

“It’s hard to talk about it, but it’s important for me to tell this because it happens in the Sea Org,” Raman told me as she explained what happened next.

“He was masturbating because I wasn’t satisfying him. So I was hauled in before six or seven Sea Org members and humiliated because I wasn’t satisfying him,” she said.

“When your stats are down, nothing is private. The subject of sexual aberrations is very fascinating to Scientology auditors, when you’re not producing as much as you’re supposed to be. So when you get investigated you get put on the meter and any kind of sexual activity will be brought up.”

Ramana says when she was brought into the room with half a dozen Sea Org members, the first thing said to her was by her superior, the Commanding Officer of the CMO, a woman named Pilar:

“She said, ‘You little fucking bitch.’ She proceeded to tell me that he was found to be masturbating, and that he was touching me but I wasn’t touching him back, and that I was forcing him to masturbate because I wasn’t doing it for him. That I was evil, and how could I do that to him.”

Her husband was also in the room, she says. “He was just numb. We didn’t talk about it between ourselves. Pilar assigned me to Lower Conditions, and she sent me on my way. I can’t remember if I was sent to the engine room, but I think I was.”

Ramana believes that she was assigned the ethical condition of “Treason,” which is below “Enemy” but above “Confusion” on Hubbard’s scale.

Soon afterwards, her husband was sent away from the ship for training. “We probably didn’t see each other for a year. Later on, our relationship broke down and we got divorced,” she says. They were married at the end of 1995, and split up at the end of 1998, she remembers. . .

The Rehabilitation Project Force is Scientology’s punitive detail for members who have fallen out of favor. (The church insists that the RPF is voluntary and members go there for spiritual rejuvenation. Every ex-Scientologist I’ve talked to describes the RPF as anything but voluntary, a hellish sentence of hard labor and humiliation.) Two women had been assigned to the RPF on the ship before she arrived, Ramana remembers, and a third woman was added later. “They were there almost the whole time I was on the ship — five years,” she says. After a suicide attempt, the third woman was moved to a more standard RPF facility in either Los Angeles or Clearwater, Ramana recalls.

“They were heavily guarded. It was completely confidential that there was an RPF on the ship. I didn’t have any conversations with these women — you aren’t supposed to talk to people on the RPF — but I can’t imagine that they were happy to be on the ship,” she says. . .

[After a failed attempt at leaving she was thrown into the engine room in an attempt to break her down for good.]  “It was intensely arduous work, cleaning inside the engines. You’d get covered in engine oil, which you’d have to clean off with diesel, and then you’d get that off with a special soap. So you’d stink of diesel all the time. Anyone who stunk of diesel, you’d know they’d been in trouble. So it was kind of a stigma of stinking like diesel,” Ramana says.

“A lot of the work I did was in very small, confined spaces. It was quite scary. There was a fear of getting stuck under the deck plates or in the piping. So I struggled with that. And I worked by myself most of the time. I found that quite depressing. You’re working in really hard conditions, you’re confined in claustrophobic conditions, and you didn’t know when it would end. It was an open-ended punishment, and the only way it would end was if you were reformed. That’s why I say these were mind-control techniques.”

I asked her if she wore special clothing or equipment in that kind of environment.

“We just wore normal cotton shorts and overalls,” she says. “I was working one time in a very small pipe, having to clean the rust out from the inside. It was pitch black and I had a small lamp. I could hardly move. I got industrial paint chips in my eyes, and had to move incrementally to get out” before she could wash out her eyes.

Eventually she got off the ship and out of Scientology, thank God.  For the rest of the story go here:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/12/ramana_dienes_browning_scientology_freewinds.php

For the related story of Valeska Guider Paris go here:   http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/11/valeska_paris_scientology_freewinds.php

Or here for the Daily Mail version of the above story.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068284/Valeska-Paris-claims-Church-Scientology-imprisoned-cruise-ship-12-years.html

For another related story of Don Jason,  a top-ranked Scientologist who used a home made roller pin to help him escape from the Freewinds, https://androvillans.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/ex-scientologist-story-238-don-jason-jumps-ship/

Scientology were fools for buying this ship in the first place as naval architect Lawrence Woodcraft tells.  The ship was filled with blue asbestos, the most lethal variety.  Woodcraft suggested sinking it in deep water, but Bitty Miscavige and the tech of L. Ron Hubbard thought otherwise.  The ship should be renamed as the “Mesothelioma.”  For this story go here: https://androvillans.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/ex-scientologist-story-139-asbestos-death-ship-ots-not-to-worry/

Ex-Scientologist story #351, Child abuse in Scientology, Hell at St. Hill.

Above is CMO ED 411 that tells about a “Childrens RPF” in other words the nasty internal prison system of Scientology known as the “Rehabilitation Project Force” has been extended to include children.  There is nothing in Scientology more fiercely attacked, with good reason I might add, than their infamous RPF program.  The abuses have been told over and over; yet it takes something like this to drive home the fact that Scientology is the product of a deranged man who was nobody’s friend except his own.  To see this document in an easier to read format go here:  http://warrior.xenu.ca/Children/CMO_ED_411.jpg

Morag Bellmain worked in a nursery near St. Hill Manor, the headquarters of Scientology in the UK.  For six years she watched the systematic abuse of children; when funds ran short the children were put on a diet of rice and beans.  This had long been used to punish Sea Org members for not producing enough income.  But worse treatment for the offspring of the Scientologists were found when they were made to live without heat or hot water, or sometimes, without electricity.  This is one of the great advancements of Hubbard’s teachings: to have children shiver in the dark.  This suffering did not stop money from being sent to the Scientology headquarters in LA, they always got their slice first regardless of what happened elsewhere.  Welcome to the wonderful world of Scientology.

Here is more on the wonderful world of L. Ron Hubbard.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c11nxa8H2U

Ex-Scientologist story #278, A Prisoner Escapes.

There are a couple of positive aspects to this otherwise horrific story of Scientology abuse and they are that love, in the end, did conquer all and also that Gene and his wife finally both got out of this nasty and dreary cult.  This story can be found on Marc Headley’s “Blown for Good,”  October, 2009 and can be seen at web site at http://blownforgood.com/

REUNITED
By Gene Decheff

I have told my story of leaving the Gold/Int base at various times to various people over the last 19 years and decided to put it out there for anyone who is interested. I also decided to refuse to be intimidated, and use my real name, as the story makes it obvious who I am anyway. I have also already been part of an investigation by a private investigator sent by the Church and they found nothing. This is a factual account of my experience, not an attack on the Church or anyone in it. The Church should have nothing to fear from the truth of what occurred.

In the fall of 1990 I was a Gold staff member working in Estates after getting off the RPF for the third time. My wife had been approved for RTC after several successful years as CO CMO IXU in PAC. DM found out about this and cancelled the approval and put her in HCO Gold. She had also recently done a successful recruit mission that got a lot of people approved and sent to Gold from PAC.

In September of 1990 it was decided to send her back to PAC to recruit more people for Gold. She was given a quota and a time target to do this. This time it did not go as well. On October 8th she was ordered back to Gold. She knew she would end up digging ditches or worse. At that time we were sharing a two bedroom apartment at the Devonshire Apartments in Hemet. The couple we were sharing with just happened to be the CO Gold, Wendell Reynolds and his wife. Getting the recall was the final straw for my wife. We were one of the lucky few Gold/Int staff who had a car. She left LA, drove to the apartment, packed some clothes and hit the road.

At this time we had already been married for 10 years. Our marriage had survived through thick and thin, including my 3 RPF assignments when I would not see her for months at a time, missions all over the world, transfers, etc.
This is where it gets interesting. At the time my wife was on her way to freedom, I was chosen to go on a project ordered by DM to complete the security fencing around the Base. I was in briefing for this project in CMO Gold when I was told my wife had blown. This was a shocker, to say the least. I knew she had not been happy since being transferred to Int/Gold, but I did not expect her to blow.

Anyone reading this that is familiar with “Mission Tech” knows that before you fire on a mission or project, you have to be approved by HCO and Qual. This means you have to be in a good state of mind, with no “case” issues, no ethics issues, and no PRESENT TIME PROBLEMS in your life. Well, after a phone call to my wife at her parents’ with Security present, I was fired on the project. Security and everyone else I talked to assured me that she would be back. I knew different.
This was the point I decided I was done. I continued on the project, with Andre Tabayoyn as the Project In Charge, and Kevin O’Hare.

One night after work I returned to the Devonshire Apartments. They had an outside pay phone and I used it to call my wife. That is when told her was done and was going to join her. I continued to call her from that pay phone a few times a week for a couple weeks. I was very afraid someone would see me and report it. They never did. I figured either everyone really did think she was coming back, or they really were clueless of what was going on.

I started quietly packing a few small boxes of personal belongings at night and hiding them in my closet. I don’t even remember how I got the boxes as this would have been a dead giveaway if I had been seen.  I decided on the date I would leave and made the last call to my wife.

Here is another amazing key part of the story. One obvious factor in leaving the Sea Org after 11 years is MONEY. Few SO members were able to accumulate any savings, myself included. Somehow a few months earlier I received a pre-approved letter from Discover Card. I accepted the card and it made it to me through Security. This was especially odd since I had previously had a Visa card while at Flag that had to be charged off due to months in the RPF and no way to pay off the balance.

On the morning of 22 October, I got up at about 4am and with Discover Card in hand, quietly slipped out of the apartment and walked about 5 miles to the Ryder truck rental store in Hemet. I waited until they opened and rented a box van. I drove around Hemet until I knew the last bus had left to take the crew to the Base.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before I was missed and someone would come looking for me. I was loading everything I could, as fast as I could, into the truck when Andre arrived. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was leaving. Of course he tried any way he could to get me to change my mind. I continued loading the truck. Then, knowing it was also HIS ass if I were to succeed in leaving, he asked me to stay until he called Security. This is where everyone is going to think I was nuts. I agreed. I guess I figured that if I cooperated, they would eventually let me go, as opposed to fighting them.

About thirty minutes later, Jackson [Gary Morehead,left Scientology, to read his story go here https://androvillans.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/ex-scientologist-story-216-gary-morehead-witness-of-abuse/  ] from Security arrived. He also tried every possible way he could think of to get me to stay. Finally as a last resort got me to agree to come back to the Base so Security could go through the truck. Again, I agreed, for the same reason. My biggest fear about this was that I would no longer be in a public area like the apartments if I needed help. I would now be on private property behind a fence with gates and no way to get help.

I arrived back at the Base between noon and 1pm. I was met by two security guards. They got into the back of the truck and got busy searching everything that I had.
They went through every page, of every book I had. They took any photos out of my albums that had ANY Scientology significance, i.e.; anyone in SO uniform, any Church buildings, etc. After being in the CMO for a total of 4 years, I had some gifts that I had received from LRH that were given on special occasions, like Birthday, SO Day, etc. Those were also confiscated. At one point I sensed that they were getting frustrated about not finding enough booty to confiscate. One of the guards happened to look down at my feet and said; “are those uniform issue?” He was referring to the work boots I was wearing. They had been issued to me as part of my Estates uniform. He told me I would have to leave them as they were Church property. I took off the boots and handed them to him. I dug through some things in the truck and came up with an old pair of cowboy boots I had and put them on.

Now it was about 4pm, and after over 3 hours of searching the truck, to my surprise and relief I was allowed to leave the Base. I drove to the Denny’s in Beaumont and called my wife. I was free. I had lunch and hit the road and never looked back. I reunited with my wife at her sisters’ in Vancouver, Washington and we started rebuilding our life. We will celebrate our 29th anniversary this December.

What amazes me is that he let himself be taken back to the base.  Of course they stole his photographs.  He was too conditioned by the Sea Borg, which include three stints in the RPF, to put up a fuss.

Ex-Scientologist story #269, Medical neglect, Abuse in the RPF.

“The evil men do lives after them, . . .”

The story of Peta O’Brien is one that covers some of the usual subjects of Scientology abuse.  For starters we have the non-care of people who get sick in the Sea Org and need medical attention.  Not only will the Sea Borg not do anything to help an ill member, they actually blame that person for getting sick in the first place.  After all, why waste money, that should be going uplines to keep superiors off your back, on people who are clearly out ethics and most likely downstat ?  In Scientology sick Sea Org members get no sympathy; at best they are ignored; often they are held in contempt.   Not only was Peta in deep trouble with her health, but she was thrown into the RPF, the nasty penal system in the cult.

The following quotes are from the blog Infinite Complacency; this is a superior bit of writing that I can’t improve on so I will just cite some of it, the link to it follows.

Medical neglect in Scientology was so serious that staff members with cancer were left to die untreated at their post, according to one letter to Senator Xenophon.Some staff members with cancer worked untreated until they died while others too weak to do anything received no palliative care, a former Scientologist wrote in her letter to Senator Xenophon.Peta O’Brien’s allegations echo earlier accounts from other defectors from the movement’s Sea Organization cadre.Similar concerns were also expressed in an official Australian report published as far back as 1965.Scientologists are taught to consider Sea Org members as an elite; the movement’s most dedicated members.But despite what her recruiters had promised her, O’Brien soon learned that the movement would not pay for urgent medical care for her and her colleagues.

She gave several examples of how this worked in practice.

Two involved people refused the money for urgent dental work (her own son and a senior Scientology executive).[1]

But the third incident, drawn from her own experience, was far more serious.
She got the results of a smear test back that showed abnormal cells lining her cervix. This showed that she was at the C.I.N. 3 stage, the worst on a scale of three: while she did not necessarily have cancer, she nevertheless needed further treatment as soon as possible.

O’Brien knew she had two options. One was to have an immediate biopsy, with follow-ups every six months; the other was to have a hysterectomy, an operation in which her womb would be removed, which of course meant she would be unable to have any more children.

“I knew the CofS [Church of Scientology] methods of encouraging abortions so the thought of having any more children was unlikely,” she wrote.[2]

“I thought I had no choice, being a staff member of the CofS … to settle for the…hysterectomy.”

It was not just Scientology’s policy on having children that affected her decision; she made it clear that their failure to finance basic medical had also played a role.

“I also knew I would never be able to afford an operation every six months and certainly would not be assisted by the CofS financially or medically,” she wrote.

But she could not even afford the 5,000 dollars for the hysterectomy.

Two of her superiors made it clear they would not finance the intervention – they even advised her against having it, she wrote: “…they both disapproved of having any sort of having any sort of operation or surgery at all, to handle the cancer.”

She eventually came to an arrangement with the doctor by which she repaid the cost of the operation by doing an architectural rendering of his home (O’Brien is a trained architectural designer).

According to O’Brien, this was not the only time Scientology’s management ignored a serious, or potentially serious medical situation.

“There were three other CofS staff members diagnosed with Cancer when I was there… One continued to work at his desk until he died. There was no support or palliative care at the CofS, although there was a medical officer… not medically trained.

O’Brien said her final two years inside the Sea Org were spent on its Rehabilitation Project Force (RFP) a punishment programme for those members deemed to have failed to live up to the movement’s ethical standards.

The level of medical neglect there was if anything even worse, she wrote.

“On the RPF I was concerned about a bedridden elderly staff member who had cancer, who had seeping open chest wounds that needed to be cleaned and bandages change daily.

“Somehow I made time to do this for her, and even put up some curtains and cleaned her room.”

O’Brien was put on an even tougher programme as punishment for having put up curtains in the women’s dormitory: this was considered “idle” behaviour. She heard later that her bedridden colleague had died.

To read more go here: http://infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com/2010/01/9-peta-obriens-letter-medical-neglect.html

Scientology:
Scientology’s dark secrets
BARNEY
ZWARTZ
The Age
November 21, 2009  

Here is a link to this story which mentions Peta and others. 

http://www.cifs.org.au/dark.php

Update 2/15/12  Here is Peta giving her insights on the RPF.

Ex-Scientologist story #268, Enslaved by the cult as a boy. More RPF.

Man says Scientology Enslaved him as a Boy.

by Tim Hull. 

     LOS ANGELES (CN) -[12-9-09] A man claims the Church of Scientology forced him to work as a “virtual slave” for 16 years at jobs ranging from washing pots and pans to restoring old films produced by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. John Lindstein says he was kept “busy, poor, tired, and uninformed” by Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige at the church’s ranch in Hemet, and feared that “things would get even worse if he did not work as ordered.”
     Lindstein’s Superior Court complaint alleges human trafficking and violations of hour and wage laws at the church’s “Gold Ranch” compound near Hemet, a semirural area east-southeast of Los Angeles.
     Lindstein says that from 1990 until 2006, starting when he was just 8 years old, he “performed this work as a virtual slave, working 16 to 24 hours days with no sleep, no time off and no personal freedom” at Gold Base, a mysterious and once-secret headquarters that “resembles a prison camp,” with razor wire, security guard patrols, surveillance posts and three roll calls each day.
     By age 16, Lindstein says, he was working for Golden Era Productions, Scientology’s film production company, restoring Hubbard’s films from the 1970s. He says he often worked 24-hour days at the “tedious, frame-by-frame work that would normally cost more than $400,000 per movie to accomplish at industry rates.”
     Lindstein and his crew of five were paid $50 per week, he says.
     Lindstein says Miscavige and others “intentionally, consciously and wrongfully made a tactical decision to ignore labor laws, take [their] chances with a compliant and intimidated work force, and hope that the running of the statute of limitations would in the long run save [them] millions of dollars.”
     Lindstein says that Miscavige “runs the Scientology enterprise with an iron fist, according to his own rules, and enjoys the lifestyle and job benefits of royalty while those at the bottom of the food chain live like slaves and inmates.”
     Those who tried to escape from Gold Ranch and were caught were assigned to the “Rehabilitation Project Force,” in which workers faced “a brutal regime of manual labor, have no freedom of movement and are subjected to almost total deprivations of personal liberties,” according to the complaint.
     Church of Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw said the church would not comment on the allegations.
     “The complaint filed by John Lindstein against the Church of Scientology International and others has not been served,” Pouw said. “We do not comment on cases to which we are not a party.”
     In his complaint, Lindstein says he was eventually “pushed to his breaking point and he found a way out.”
     He says he has since been “declared an enemy of Scientology, given a large illegal bill for his purported scientology training, and cut off from friends and family who are still under the control of the Scientology enterprise.”
     Lindstein wants the church to pay him at least minimum wage for his years of work. He is represented by Barry Von Sickle of Roseville, Calif.

This is the wonderful world of Scientology.  This is what this evil, nasty, and smug cult wants for the rest of us.  Too bad for you, Scientology, that we have the net. now, you can’t do very well when out in the open.

 Note,  This case has apparently been settled by the cult.   This is from the Blog infinite Complacency.  http://infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com/2009/11/16-john-lindsteins-lawsuit.html

Ex-Scientologist story #260, Missing in “Happy Valley.”

If Happy Valley had a more realistic name it would be something on the order of, “Vale of Tears.”  The German government and their journalists are not so easily fooled as our own when it comes to Scientology; they know it for what it is.  This segment includes the story of Susanne Schernekau, a Sea Org member who was put in the RPF, the Scientology penal system.

Ex-Scientologist story #250, Family ripped apart by Scientology.

Join Hubbard’s bathtub navy today!!

 This is the story of the Anderson family and how one daughter has disconnected from them.  See how they wasted their time and their money as members of a greedy, money-grubbing cult.  James and Liz got out; so did Jordan.  But one daughter was left in the bowels of Clearwater Scientology, a very long, long way from mom and dad.

Church of Scientology Accused of Slave Labor Camps, Forced Abortions

by Amanda Kloer · March 09, 2010 [excerpts from Change.Org]

 

These days, accusations against the Church of Scientology are rolling in faster than Xenu’s spaceship strapped to a jet pack. The latest accusations are coming out of Australia, where former church members have accused the organization of using slave labor as a punishment, exploiting children in their offices, and forcing some members to have abortions against their will. These are by no means the first accusations that the Church of Scientology is guilty of human traffickingand related crimes. The question is, how many more former church members will need to step forward before someone launches an investigation?Liz and James Anderson recently came forward with their story of how Scientology tore apart and abused their family. Their daughter, Jordan, worked as an administrator for the church when she was 15. While she worked there, she was once forced to work for 72 hours straight with no sleep. And for a minor on-the-job error, this young girl was forced to scrub a Sydney dumpster as a punishment. Such inhumane hours and dangerous and degrading punishment for a 15-year-old worker is hardly the treatment you’d expect from a religious organization. The Andersons and Jordan left the church, and have now been severed from their one daughter who remains a member.Others in Australia have recently come forward to accuse the Church of operating slave labor camps. The camps, they claim, are set up as a punishment for members. They are allegedly run by the church and sanctioned by church officials. Also, individual members have complained of being imprisoned and enslaved in their own homes due to rule-breaking within the church. Several female church staff have also reported being forced or coerced into having abortions against their will. They claim that upon their pregnancy being discovered, they were taken into an office and threatened with expulsion from the church and being alienated from their families if they didn’t end their pregnancies. One woman was so frightened of the church she reportedly used a coat hanger to give herself the abortion the church required. The paperwork from that incident was apparently destroyed.For the rest of the story go here:  http://news.change.org/stories/church-of-scientology-accused-of-slave-labor-camps-forced-abortions

Here is the Anderson family on YouTube: