Hard labour, harsh discipline and scarely any time with her parents: the niece of Scientology's leader David
Miscavige has just published a memoir on her childhood inside the
movement.
When
Jenna Miscavige Hill first broke cover in 2008, growing numbers of
former members were beginning to talk about their experience inside
the Sea Organization, Scientology's elite cadre.
For
the most part however, they were talking in the chat rooms, on the
message boards – and they were using pseudonyms. Even those of them
who had spoken to journalists and academics were not yet ready to be
identified: they feared the backlash from Scientology.
Hill's
open letter, initially published on the Internet then picked up by
the mainstream news media, helped change all that.
Jenna
Miscavige Hill is the niece of Scientology's current leader David
Miscavige. Her father, Ronald Miscavige, is the Chairman of the
Board's older brother.
So when she spoke up, she was difficult to
ignore.
At
one point in her 15-page denunciation, she dismissed any suggestion
that Scientology “encouraged” – as she put it –
disconnection.
“This
allegation is not only false,” Pouw insisted, “it is the opposite
of what the Church believes and practices...”
Disconnection
is the movement's policy obliging members to cut off all contact with
anyone declared an enemy of the movement: friends, family –
anyone.
Pouw's
blanket denial was too much for Hill. In her response, she pointed
out she had personal experience of disconnection, for when her
parents had quit the movement and she, at first, had stayed behind.
Not
only that, she added:
I can name at least
five friends off the top of my head whose family members are not
allowed to speak to them without being themselves ousted from
the Church and prevented from communicating with other members of
their family and even their children still involved in the Church
lest THEY too be ousted!...
This is a widespread practice and if
you dare deny it I have a list of all of their names together –
these people's families are crying every day because they can't speak
to their children who did nothing but leave the Church of their own
free will.
Following Hill's
broadside, the floodgates opened and other former Sea Org members
started speaking out on the record.
I covered Hill's
open letter at the time and soon afterwards she provided me with more
details of her childhood inside Scientology. At the time, I
did not have an outlet for that material (it was a year before the
2009 launch of this website).
Happy Valley
Hill wrote that
while in her letter to Pouw she had focussed on the issue of
disconnection, “...the real issue goes far beyond that.
“Even when I was
not 'disconnected' my interaction with my family was blighted to say
the least. From the
age of five, I was only allowed to see my parents once a week,” she
wrote.
Hill's parents were
in the Sea Organization, Scientology's elite cadre.
As Sea Org members,
they had signed a billion-year contract to serve the movement in this
life and for countless generations thereafter. Nor was
this in any way symbolic.
Scientology
founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that we all have immortal souls that
travel from one “meat body” to the next. So once you were done
with one life you would be expected to report for duty in the next.
And her
parents were not the only ones to have signed up.
“I
signed a billion-year contract when I was seven years old – and
again when I was 12,” wrote Jenna.
“There
was a Ranch about 20 miles away from the Scientology Headquarters in
Hemet. This was known as 'Happy Valley' or later renamed as 'Castile
Canyon Ranch School'.
“The
property was many acres, it just had a couple of building when I
first got there, no roads even, just a dirt road. The children of all
of the members went there. It was a boarding school. We all lived
there in adjoining dormitories.
“There
were seven girls in my dorm and it was adjoined to another dormitory
of seven girls by a communal sink and single shower. We shared these
facilities. The children who were there ranged from age 5-18.
“We
wore uniforms with red shirts and khaki pants. We were there all week
and all weekend aside from the few hours on Sunday morning where we
were allowed to spend time with our parents...”
Ethics and ice water
This
was their daily schedule, wrote Jenna:
6:30 – Wake up time.
Clean berthing, get dressed.
7:00 – Muster.
We would all stand in
lines according to what unit we were in. Each unit had an in-charge
whom we would call “sir”. They would take roll.
Taking roll consisted
of someone at the front of the group going to each unit and saluting
the unit in-charge and saying, "Unit ____ report!" to which
the other child would salute back and say, "all present and
accounted for sir" and then they would move on to the next line.
Bear
in mind that some of the kids here were as young as five years old.
During
the muster, wrote Jenna, they would have to stand at “attention”,
unless it was “parade rest”.
Their
uniforms would be inspected. Their dormitories would be inspected.
And if you were late, if you failed an inspection, you would be
hauled up in front of the group.
“Sometimes
if you were late for the muster you would be dumped with a five-gallon
bucket of ice water. You would also get a chit in your ethics folder
– everyone had an ethics folder.”
An
ethics folder in Scientology, is a little more than the
gold-star/black-mark report card in a regular school.
In
Scientology, your ethical standing inside the movement is crucial
because there are severe penalties if you slip too low down the
scale.
Another
former Sea Org member John Peeler recalls that during his childhood
inside Scientology, when he attended a Scientology-approved school,
they had an ethics officer keeping them in line.
Not
only that, the children themselves were enouraged to write Knowledge
Reports denouncing any of their peers they thought had broken
Scientology's rules.
“These are children being taught at a
very young age to write knowledge reports on other students and keep
a ‘watchful’ eye on others,” Peeler told Infinite
Complacency. “Kids would even be heard saying, ‘Ohhhh, you’re
going to Ethics!’.”
And
all of this was set out in Hubbard's writings, said Peeler.
Drill time
7:00 -7:30 – Drill
time.
We would literally do
military drills during this time, known as "close-order
training", where we would stand in lines, march, salute and
stand in different military positions, do "right face!",
"left face", "march!", "company halt!".
There
were also fire drills, for which everyone had an assigned duty:
evacuate the buildings, operate the fire hoses, roll the hose back up
again afterwards.
“We
were required to do this within certain time limits, or we had to do
it over and over again. Sometimes we were told to line up by age,
height, shoes size, etc., and we were timed.”
7:30-8:30 - Post.
Everyone had a different post. Mine consisted of making a list of
every illness anyone had whether is was a cold or the flu. Then I was
supposed to hand out vitamins to everyone.
8:30 - Breakfast. We
ate in a mess hall and everyone had assigned seating and your table
was called a mess.
Each mess has a mess
president and a treasurer. Each week someone at the mess would be the
steward, which means that you would show up early to set up the table
and were responsible for making sure all the food was at the table.
8:30-8:45 - Clean up,
we all had assigned cleaning stations for the dining hall. Some
people were responsible for cleaning dishes - I was responsible for
sweeping the floor in one of the halls. These cleaning stations
frequently changed, but everyone had one.
If all
of this sounds little more than Hogwarts without the spells, wait up.
Hard labour
8:45-9:00 - Another
muster with roll. At this muster we were assigned labor projects in
units.
9:00-12:45 - Projects.
These projects consisted of such things as rock hauling from the
creek in order to make rock walls, weeding large fields, planting ice
plant, digging rows for large fields, irrigating large fields, raking
the horse coral for the horse manure, etc.
“This is how the
Ranch became a very beautiful place,” wrote Jenna.
“But we did all
the work.
“From lacquering
our own dressers and beds, to planting the gardens and trees,
harvesting the crops, building the green houses, etc.
“About once a
week these projects included going to the main Scientology
headquarters and helping out in the crew galley or the bakery and at
one point even helping in the manufacturing of the
electropsychometers... [the devices Scientologists use during their
auditing, or therapy sessions].
“Each project was
assigned an in-charge and was written out in exact steps that had to
be completed.
“We responded to
the project in-charge as "sir" or "Mr….." even
if it was a female and even if they were 9 years old.”
12:45-1:00 - Muster. We then met up
in our lines in our units and took roll and everyone announced where
they stood on their projects.
1:00-1:30 - Lunch.
1:30-1:45 - Dining room clean-up
time.
1:45 - Class roll call. Our names
were all called out here to which we were to respond “Aye Sir!”
or else we would be screamed at. "Here Sir" was also
acceptable.
Study Tech
“We had several
adult teachers who were not certified teachers, they were just
members of the Church who had been assigned to the Ranch...,” wrote
Hill.
“We all had a
curriculum that we had to complete before we would graduate and join
the organization as members with our parents.”
But they used
Hubbard's own system of learning: Study Technology, or Study Tech,
which was geared more to Scientology's needs rather than those of the
children.
“We had what were
called 'checksheets': these are lists of materials to study and
practical exercises we had to, in order to complete a certain grade,
so to speak,” wrote Jenna.
“These were such
checksheets as – 'How to make a bed course'; 'How to ride a bike
course' (you had to pass a driving test with all hand signals before
you were allowed to ride one); 'Shakespeare Course'; then of course
Math, Geography and so on.
“There were no
grades.”
And like any good
Scientologist, they never went past a misunderstood word. For one of
the golden rules in the Hubbard's system of learning, which he called
Study Tech, is the following axiom.
The only reason a person gives up a
study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has
gone past a word that was not understood.
And that applied
just as much to the kids, Jenna recalled.
“After we read
some material, we had to get a checkout which meant another child
would ask us what the definitions of various words were in our
textbook or material including small common words such as 'it',
'the', etc.
“If we so much as
hesitated one second or about the meaning of the work, we had to look
up the word, definition by definition – use it in several sentences
to improve our understanding and then look up the derivation of the
word.
“Then we would
have to re-read the entire book or article again and receive another
checkout.”
The trouble with
this kind of mind-numbing rote learning is it is just that:
mind-numbing.
Dave Touretzky and
Chris Owen, veteran critics of Scientology, put it best in their
critique of Hubbard's Study Technology.
Study Tech’s focus on
misunderstood words is not just some arbitrary bit of educational
dogma. It is an intentional and effective device for suppressing
critical thought. In effect, it atomizes language, divorcing words
from concepts.
The same words might appear in a
Shakespearean sonnet or an L. Ron Hubbard bulletin but their
collective meaning might be very different. The words themselves may
be perfectly comprehensible but their meaning may not be. The context
is stripped away, leaving the words to be studied in isolation.
But a student cannot ascertain
context from isolated words, any more than she could ascertain the
design of a house from individual bricks. The most outlandish
concepts can thereby be presented in a way that compels word-by-word
acceptance.
A good example of this jumps off the
page at the end of Chapter 1 of Going Clear, Lawrence Wright's
new book on Scientology.
Wright explains Paul Haggis bewildered
reaction when he finally got to study OT III: when he broke through
the Wall of Fire to discover the space opera at the heart of
Scientology.
After a few minutes, Haggis returned
to the supervisor.
“I don't understand,” Haggis
said.
“Do you know the words?”
“I know the words, I just don't
understand.”
“Go back and read it again,” the
supervisor suggested.
Haggis did so. In a moment, he
returned. “Is this a metaphor?” he asked.
“No,” the supervisor responded.
“It is what it is. Do the actions that are required.”
Maybe it's an insanity test, Haggis
thought – if you believe it, you're automatically kicked out...
If only.
Clay models
As part of their
education, Jenna and her fellow Sea Org children also employed
another feature of Hubbard's Study Technology: the use of clay
models.
“Someone would
have to come over and guess what it was – and if they could not
guess then we would do it again,” Jenna wrote.
Here again, Hubbard
manages to reduce a common-sense idea to absurdity: Owen and
Touretzky put their finger on the problem.
“In secular terminology we would call
this 'making a model',” they write.
And while such activities are
certainly beneficial at times, the authors of the Study Tech books
[approved Scientology texts drawing on Hubbard's writings] seem to
have no clue about when models are appropriate and when they’re
not...
Whether religious or not, the use of
a clay table is a clearly a simple-minded approach to understanding
abstract concepts. Rather than promoting understanding, it seems much
more likely that clay tables work – assuming that they work at all
– as a visual memory aid...
That is fine if the only goal is the
accurate recitation of rote-learned facts. This is, in fact, the only
goal that Hubbard was interested in with his Scientology students.
But it is useless in developing the
critical skills that are so necessary in the non-Scientology world,
and that Hubbard was so conspicuously uninterested in encouraging.
And on into the night...
If the morning's
labours had not been enough to keep them in shape, the Sea Org kids
also had physical education in the afternoon, Jenna recalled.
4:00-4:45 –
PE, This was where somedays we played sports, but twice a week we
were all required to run a mile and pass a physical fitness test by
doing a certain amount of push-ups and pull ups, etc.
4:45-5:00 –
Break. This is where we could go to the canteen and get food. But
no sugar was allowed, so everything there was 100% sugar free, even
the chewing gum. We would have to pay for the food out of our
allowance which was $5 per week. But they also gave out oranges, etc
for free.
5:00-6:00 – Class continues.
6:00-6:30 – Dinner.
6:30-6:45 – Clean up dining room.
6:45 – Class roll.
6:45-9:00-
Scientology studies. Here we would take the communications course and
other such courses that taught us about Scientology and how to do
volunteer minister assists, etc., and we would practice these on
stuffed animals, etc.
Jenna took care to
underline this point: “We would study until 9:00 at night when we
were under 12!”
9:00-9:30 – Take showers, get ready
for bed.
9:30 – Lights out!
“This was every
single day of the week, with the exception of Saturday and Sunday,”
wrote Jenna.
Weekends
So what did they do
on their time off?
“On Saturday we
had no class and instead in the morning we were required to, 'white
glove' our rooms, which meant that we were to do such a thorough
cleaning that we had to pass an inspection with one of the adults
going over all surfaces with a white glove – literally.
“We had to pass
this inspection by one of the teachers before we could have
breakfast.”
In the afternoon,
it was back doing hard labour instead of study (such as it was),
wrote Jenna.
“Then in the
evening instead of scientology studies we would have to white-glove
all of the other buildings on the property such as the mess hall, the
offices, the school house, the maintenance shed, etc.
“They would have
to pass an inspection before we could go to sleep.”
The white-glove
inspections were an echo of the early days of the Sea Org, when it
was actually at sea under Hubbard's command. It also reflects what
became Hubbard's increasing obsession with cleanliness.
And then there was
family time.
“On Sunday
morning until noon we were allowed to see our parents,” wrote
Jenna.
“During this time
we were allowed to wear civilian clothes or 'civvies' as we called
them. We had to change back into our uniforms at noon and the rest of
that day continues as usual.
“We all had
assigned jobs and assigned 'seniors' who were also children. We were
required to keep exact specifics of our completed jobs as a statistic
and mark it on a graph.
“We were also
required to write down all transgressions and withholds which is
basically any time we did something bad or similar to a sin in the
Catholic religion.
“After writing
them all down we would receive a meter check (on the
electropsychometer) to make sure we weren't hiding anything and you
would have to keep writing until you came up clean.
“This is from the
age of 5 until I was 12,” she wrote.
“What happened
after that is equally unbelievable.”
And doubtless
that's all in the book.
Other voices
The sad thing about the details Jenna
related here is that former members have been denouncing these
practices – and worse – for years now.
“Children are being kept at camps,
away from their parents for weeks at a time. Parents who ask to see
their children more than this are frowned upon; children are
considered 'distractions' to production.”
But nobody in authority was listening.
Former members who grew up in the
movement such as John Peeler have had similar
stories to tell about their youth inside the movement.
So too has Astra Woodcraft, who with
Hill and Kendra Wiseman set up the Ex-Scientology Kids website.
In a statement there, she summed up
what she and many other children had had to endure.
“My experience as a child growing up
in the world of Scientology is not something that I would wish on
anyone,” wrote Woodcraft.
No child should be subject to sleep
deprivation, grueling physical labor and intense psychological abuse.
No child should be denied an education or denied contact with their
family.
Unfortunately, all of these things
were the norm for me and other kids who grow up in Scientology's
military like organization called the Sea Organization.
I was forced to work 80+ hours a
week. I was regularly yelled at and threatened. I was not allowed to
make phone calls or leave the building without permission. I was not
allowed to see my family.
I was married at 15 and ran away,
pregnant with my daughter at the age of 19. Scientology officials
chased me down and attempted to convince me to have an abortion.
My own family, as well as many
others has been torn apart due to Scientology's practice of
disconnection.
My daughter's father who remains in
Scientology has never been a part of her life because of his beliefs.
She... has grown up without a father because of Scientology.
My mother and grandmother have
refused contact with me since I left the organization.
Which brings us full circle back to
disconnection, the practice that Scientology Pouw denied existed
inside the movement.
Old souls in young bodies
Why
would any parent accept this kind of life for their children?
Partly
because of what Hubbard taught about the nature of children – and
how to treat them.
Hubbard
said that children should be treated like adults because they are old
souls in young bodies. And one way he put this into
practice was setting
up children over adults.
Hubbard's
Messengers, teenage acolytes who ran his errands, were trained to
deliver his orders – and other Scientologists were expected to
behave as if Hubbard in person had commanded them.
But the flipside of
letting children act like tyrants, was robbing them of their
childhood.
To date, the authorities in the United
States have taken no action to stop what, on the face of it, looks
like the criminal neglect of children inside Scientology.
Jenna's book will at least make it that
little bit harder to ignore.
---
Proposals he has submitted to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on how to protect children from the excesses of “sects” have provoked the wrath of a small army of lobby groups.
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