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Part 3: Inside the Church
Defectors Recount Lives of Hard Work, Punishment
Doris Braine says the transformation of her Patty Jo was heartbreaking.
"It was," she said, "like my darling daughter had died."
Before Patty Jo went to work for the Church of Scientology at the age of 20,
she had been "fun and pretty and a joy to be with," recalled her 72-year-old
mother. "Suddenly, she became a totally different person, shooting fire from her
eyes."
There were those hateful looks, and the dozens of letters that Patty Jo
returned unopened. For two years, she would not even speak to her mother, who
had criticized Scientology and refused to hand over $2,000 for church courses.
And Patty Jo had taken to calling Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard her
father.
"I would cry all the time," recalled Braine, a retired college dean. "I had
to psych myself up to go to work, be charming and do a good job. But all day
long I thought about her. I prayed my head off that someday she would be able to
get out of it.
"It took 15 years, but I think it was worth every prayer I said."
In 1982, Patricia Braine left Scientology, disillusioned with the church and
disappointed with herself for succumbing to an environment that, she said,
twisted her thinking and isolated her from a world she had hoped to make better.
Scientology, she said, "promises you euphoria but ends up taking your body,
heart, mind, soul and family…. We were so brainwashed to believe that what we
were doing was good for mankind that we were willing to put up with the worst
conditions."
Over the years, defecting Scientologists have come forward with similar
accounts of how their lives and personalities were upended after they joined the
church's huge staff. They say the organization promised spiritual liberation but
delivered subjugation.
In interviews and public records, former staffers have said they were
alienated from society, stripped of familiar beliefs, punished for aberrant
behavior, rewarded for conformity and worked beyond exhaustion to meet
ever-escalating productivity quotas.
"Slave labor" is how Canadian authorities in 1984 described the Scientology
work force.
Worldwide, there are nearly 12,000 church staff members, many of whom are in
Los Angeles, one of the organization's largest strongholds. They have kept
Scientology afloat through a turbulent history that, arguably, would have sunk
any other newly emerging religion.
Day and night they labor single-mindedly at jobs ranging from the meaningful
to the menial. Some work in administrative areas such as promotion, legal
affairs, finance, public relations and fund raising. Thousands of others deliver
the church's religious programs. Still others proselytize on city sidewalks,
sell books and wash dishes.
Scientology spokesmen insist that the staff is treated well and not
exploited. They say that the detractors simply lacked the devotion to advance
the religion's aims and the morality to abide by its high ethical standards.
Current staff members say their lifestyle is no more unusual or harsh than
that of a monk. Joining the Scientology staff, they say, was the supreme
expression of their devotion to create, in Hubbard's words, "a civilization
without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper
and honest beings can have rights."
The elite of Scientology's workers, at least 3,000 of them, belong to a
zealous faction known as the Sea Organization and are given room, board and a
small weekly allowance.
They sign contracts to serve Scientology in this and future lifetimes — for a
billion years. Their motto is: "We come back."
Dressed in mock navy uniforms adorned with ribbons, they bark orders with a
clipped, military cadence. They hold ranks such as captain, lieutenant and
ensign. Officers, including women, are addressed as "Sir."
Hubbard called himself "The Commodore," a reflection of his infatuation with
the U.S. Navy. "The Sea Org is a very tough outfit," he once said. "It's no walk
in the park…. We are short-tempered, but we do our job."
Scientology staffers enter a clannish world of authoritarian rules and
discipline based on Hubbard writings. His works govern every detail of the
operation, from how to disseminate his teachings to how to cook baby food.
When staffers observe transgressions of Hubbard's dictums, they are required
to inform on each other. The church says "knowledge reports" help the
organization correct problems and ensure a high standard of operation. But
critics contend that the practice works to stifle expressions of discontent or
doubts about the church, even between husbands and wives.
To break the group's rules or fall below work quotas can subject even top
Scientologists to grueling interrogations on a lie detector-type device called
the E-meter, and perhaps land them in the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF.
The Rev. Ken Hoden, a church spokesman in Los Angeles, once described the RPF
like this: "You just do some grounds work for a few weeks. That's all."
Others, however, have called it in hindsight the most degrading ordeal of
their lives — although one that they believed at the time was leading them to
spiritual salvation.
RPFers, as they are called, are separated from their family and friends for
days, weeks, months or even longer. They cannot speak unless spoken to, they run
wherever they go and they wear armbands to denote their lowly condition.
The RPF provides the church with a pool of labor to perform building
maintenance, pull weeds, haul garbage, clean toilets or do anything else church
executives deem necessary for redemption.
Former Sea Organization member Hana Eltringham Whitfield said in an affidavit
that she once saw an RPF work crew eating like "unkempt convicts," digging their
hands into a large communal pot of food because there was no cutlery or plates.
"The Church of Scientology, which was dedicated to saving the planet from
insanity, had succeeded in turning these human beings into savages," said
Whitfield.
Bill Franks, the church's former international executive director, said that
he once lived in a crowded garage for seven months while assigned to the RPF.
"We were indoctrinated on a continuous, daily basis that we were suppressive
people, that we were anti-social people, that we were criminals," said Franks,
who had a falling out with the church in the early 1980s. He was accused by
senior Scientologists of engineering a coup to wrest control of the church from
them.
The Church of Scientology says the RPF was established in 1974 so that errant
Sea Organization members would have a place to both work and study Hubbard's
writings without distractions or substantive duties.
But Hubbard's former public relations officer, Laurel Sullivan, testified in
a Scientology lawsuit that Hubbard told her the RPF was created because "he
wanted certain people segregated" whom he believed were "against him and against
his instructions and against Scientology."
In Scientology, a staff member is evaluated based on his or her productivity.
Hubbard made it clear in a 1964 directive that there is no excuse — short of
death — for missing work.
"If a staff member's breath can be detected on a mirror," Hubbard said, "he
or she can do his or her job."
Measuring weekly productivity, Hubbard said, eliminates personality
considerations from staff evaluations. Critics, however, say the system is
dehumanizing.
"There is no time for anything else, for compassion, for talking or going
out," said Travers Harris, who left the Sea Organization 1986 after nearly 14
years. "The only communication is about work. When work is finished you are too
tired (and) you have to go to bed."
Several years ago, some branches of the church initiated a program to boost
productivity even higher.
Under the so-called Team Share Program, staffers who repeatedly failed in
their jobs could be exiled to cramped living quarters called "pigs berthing" and
fed only rice and beans. Those who kept their productivity up would be afforded
special privileges and the distinction of wearing a silver star.
Staffers become so consumed by their jobs that their children sometimes get
lost in the shuffle, according to former staff members who had youngsters and
those who cared for them.
At best, they say, children see their parents one hour a day at dinner and
perhaps late in the evening. Sometimes, according to ex-staffers, youngsters
have gone for days without a visit from their parents, who believe that their
work for the group is transcendent.
In 1984, a British justice cited the case of a staff member who left her job
to seek medical help for a daughter who had broken her arm.
"She was directed to work all night as a penalty," the justice noted.
He recounted the case of another woman who refused to take a church job that
would have separated her from her daughter for two months.
"She was shouted at and abused because she put the care of her child first,"
the justice wrote in connection with a child custody battle between a father who
was a Scientologist and a mother who had defected. The mother was awarded
custody.
Former staff members say they tolerated the harsh conditions for many
reasons. They say they were captives both of their dreams of creating an
enlightened world through Scientology and of their fears of leaving the
organization.
Staff members are continuously told that there is no safe refuge for them
outside the group because society is a breeding ground for criminals, the insane
and people too ignorant to see that Scientology is the answer to mankind's
problems.
In the church, non-Scientologists are derisively called "wogs," defined by
Hubbard as "a common ordinary run-of-the-mill garden variety humanoid…. Somebody
who isn't even trying."
A recruitment flyer for a school run by Scientologists exemplifies this
mind-set:
"If you turn your kids over to the enemy all day for 12-15 years, which side
do you think they will come out on?" the flyer asks rhetorically. The enemy, in
this case, is public education.
The organization's fear of hostile outside influences is so institutionalized
that potential staff members are grilled about whether they are government
agents or reporters or whether they harbor critical thoughts of Hubbard. Their
answers are monitored on the E-meter.
Security around church buildings is elaborate and sophisticated. Remote
cameras sweep the streets outside. Scientologists with walkie-talkies scout the
perimeters.
In time, the staff member's world orbits ever more tightly around one man —
Hubbard.
"You finally are to the point where you do not examine, logically,
Scientology," said former Scientologist Vicki Aznaran, who until two years ago
was one of the most powerful figures in the church and is now locked in
litigation with Scientology.
"You are cut off from anything that might give you another viewpoint," she
said.
Some stay because they fear calamity will befall them if they are denied
church courses they have been told are vital to spiritual and physical
stability.
Former Sea Organization member Janie Peterson, for one, once testified that
she was "so indoctrinated into Scientology that I felt … I would die" upon
leaving.
Other former members said they felt trapped by the church's "freeloader debt"
policy.
Many Scientologists join the staff as a way to obtain the church's expensive
services for free. But should they leave before the expiration of their
employment contracts — ranging from two years to 1 billion years — they must pay
for the programs they had received at no cost. This "freeloader debt" can reach
thousands of dollars.
And on top of all this is the haunting fear that they will be ostracized by
family and friends for shunning the religion.
"For those like myself who had been in Scientology for years, Scientology was
our entire life, our friendships, our work, our home," said ex-Sea Organization
member Whitfield, who spent nearly two decades on the staff. "The organization
had made us grow so entirely dependent on it, it was almost inconceivable to
leave.
"After all, we had no job skills, no jobs and we believed we would be
immediately hit with thousands of dollars of freeloader debt."
Whitfield said that she, like others, defected after reaching the conclusion
that the church seemed "only interested in controlling" its members.
"I have looked back and said to myself, 'What an indoctrinated fool I was.
What a fool.'"  Previous Table of Contents
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