16 John Lindstein's Lawsuit

-- UPDATE: SETTLED OUT OF COURT, DECEMBER 2010 --

Scientology leader David Miscavige has been targeted in a lawsuit by a former member who says he worked for the movement as a "virtual slave" from the age of eight.

A former Scientologist who says he worked for the movement from the age of just eight and was “a virtual slave” is suing Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige.

“Mr. Miscavige has apparently not taken a vow of poverty,” says the lawsuit.

“He runs the Scientology enterprise with an iron fist, according to his own rules, and enjoys the life style and job benefits of royalty while those at the bottom of the food chain live like slaves and inmates.”

The lawsuit cites the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude.

John Lindstein says he was doing manual labour for the movement between the ages of eight and 12; by the age of 10 he was working 15-hour days; and from the age of 12 was considered to have finished his formal education.

For several years Lindstein worked “as a virtual slave working 16-24 hour days with little or no sleep, no time off and no personal freedom,” says the lawsuit.

On average during his time working for Scientology he says he was paid less than a dollar an hour.

Lindstein “was coerced, deceived and manipulated into providing forced labor for the benefit of all Defendants…” says the complaint.

Lindstein, whose time in Scientology included a period at the International Base at Hemet, California, is suing the movement through the courts there.

He is represented by Barry van Sickle, who already this year has filed lawsuits on behalf of several other former Scientologists.

In this case, Sickle has filed alleging human trafficking, violations of the state’s employment laws and unfair business practices.

He uses the same no-nonsense language employed for the previous lawsuits.

The International Base is described as a prison camp and the workers there as inmates.

The lawsuit also speaks of a “captive” workforce and “forced labor”, arguing Scientology was violating the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution – which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude.[1]

The lawsuit targets Miscavige himself and the Religious Technology Center, the Scientology organisation of which he is chairman. It wants the case heard before a jury and is seeking payment of unpaid wages and damages.

And although Barry van Sickle signs off on the document, Graham E. Berry, another lawyer who has a long history of campaigning against the movement, is also named as an attorney in the lawsuit.

Recruited aged eight

From the ages of eight to 12, Lindstein did manual labour for Scientology at the “International Ranch” near Hemet, California. By the age of 10 he was working 15-hour days.

At 12, he was “deemed finished with schooling” and Golden Era Productions, an unincorporated division of Church of Scientology International (CSI) hired him as a messenger and errand boy.

But in 1997, at the age of 15, he was demoted to the post of dishwasher. “He worked 16-hour days cleaning pots, pans and the dining facilities,” says the lawsuit.

And soon afterwards, he was assigned to do construction at the base near Hemet, California.

“Plaintiff was a minor; however he was required to work long hard, hours for far less than minimum wage.”

Between the ages of 16 and 18, Lindstein worked at Golden Era Productions, one of the units at International Base, where the movement’s top executives including Miscavige work.

Part of that work involved digitally restoring films produced by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in the 1970s.

“This was tedious, frame-by-frame work that would normally cost more than $400,000 per movie to accomplish at industry rates,” notes the lawsuit.

Lindstein and the team of five that worked with him did it for only 50 dollars a week.
He – and presumably his team – worked 16-hour days, and sometimes around the clock to get the job done.

From 2002 and 2006, Lindstein worked on visual effects for various Scientology films, TV shows and advertisements.

At industry rates, this kind of work would have cost 80 dollars an hour or more; Lindstein got room, board and 50 dollars a week.

During this time, Lindstein “was working extremely long hours, frequently for days in a row with no sleep, and doing work that could have been contracted out to competing businesses and other vendors,” the lawsuit noted.

“By using ‘captive’ in-house labor,” it added, Scientology avoided paying legitimate companies for the work at market rates, saving huge sums of money and enriching themselves at the expense of Lindstein and his co-workers.

“The person in control of this incredible abuse of hard workers who deserve much better, and such flagrant abuse of basic human rights, is the ultimate boss of the Scientology enterprise, Defendant Miscavige,” says the lawsuit.

“Mr. Miscavige derives substantial benefit from the money making activities of the Scientology enterprise.”

Scientology’s corporate structure was “essentially a sham” designed to conceal “the absolute and unchecked control” of Miscavige and make litigation more difficult.

Scientology not only failed to post notices informing their staff of their employments, but actively misled them on this matter, the lawsuit added.

Lindstein also says he had to sign documents clearing Scientology of any responsibility or liability for wrongful conduct – which in itself is illegal under California law, according to the lawsuit.

Human trafficking, RPF

Addressing the issue of human trafficking, the lawsuit set out the various indicators, as listed in the California penal code:

• Signs of trauma, fatigue, injury, or other evidence of poor care.
• The person is withdrawn, afraid to talk, or his or her communication is censored by another person.
• The person does not have freedom of movement.
• The person lives and works in one place.
• The person owes a debt to his or her employer.
• Security measures are used to control who has contact with the person.
• The person does not have control over his or her own government-issued identification or over his or her worker immigration documents.

All these elements were present to some extent or another among the Int Base workforce, says the lawsuit.[2]

To reinforce its argument concerning the coercive and oppressive nature of the work regime at the Scientology bases, the lawsuit described conditions at the International Base (also known as Gold Base).

“Gold Base resembles a prison camp, the workers inmates. A razor-wire topped fence encircles Gold Base with sharp inward pointing spikes to prevent escape.

“The gates are guarded. Inmates cannot come and go as the please. Security guards patrol the grounds, motion sensors are place throughout, and surveillance posts are placed around the perimeter, all of which are intended to keep workers within the facility.

“One cannot leave without permission. There are usually three roll calls each day. One must be present or accounted for at each roll call, or a drill is put in place to find and retrieve the departed or missing worker…

“Floodlights are turned on if one is determined to be missing at night,” the lawsuit adds.

“A comparison to a minor security prison would not be an exaggeration.”

Lindstein was “deprived or normal liberties as a matter of course,” says the lawsuit.

There were tight restrictions on freedom of movement; there was no free or uncensored access to email, the Internet or television; and security officers opened residents mail opened, read and censored.[3]

Lindstein was subjected to this kind of control from the age of eight, says the lawsuit.

He “frequently worked all night and typically suffered from sleep deprivation” and “was kept busy, poor, tired, uninformed and in fear that things would get even worse if he did not work as ordered…”

Employees were also threatened with and sometimes subjected to punishment, it added.

“Workers who have been apprehended trying to escape have been physically assaulted and restrained,” says the lawsuit.

They could be sent to a punishment programme know as the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF, it added.

“Workers assigned to the RPF are subjected to a brutal regimen of manual labor, have no freedom of movement and are subjected to almost total deprivations of personal personal liberties.

 “Working conditions on the RPF are incredibly harsh.

“The RPF serves as a deterrent and intimidates workers… into a state of compliance and fear…”

The fear of being consigned to the RPF, helped coerced Lindstein and other employees into providing “slave-like labor,” the lawsuit added.

For much of the time, Lindstein worked for Scientology because he was ignorant of his rights and intimidated by his employers, says the lawsuit. He was also exhausted a lot of the time and resigned to his plight.

When he eventually found a way out after being “pushed to breaking point” Scientology declared him an enemy of the movement.

He was presented with “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.”[4]

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The US Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of religious belief does not exempt “purported religious organizations” such as Scientology from the laws regarding minimum wage and child labour laws, Van Sickle argues.

He has already argued in an ongoing lawsuit that Scientology’s religious status “is subject to serious dispute.

Scientology “intentionally, consciously and wrongfully made a tactical decision to ignore the labor laws, take its chances with a compliant and intimidated workforce,” the lawsuit continues.

The organisation and its leadership hoped that statutes of limitations “would in the long run save them millions of dollars.”[5]

But this case, the lawsuit, had been brought within all the relevant statues of limitations for the offences listed.

You can find a copy of the full complaint here.

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[1] The 13th Amendment reads:  1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
[2] You can compare the above list with my previous posting on Life at the Base. In addition, a number of former members have said that foreign workers had their passports confiscated when they arrived in the U.S. to work for Scientology.
[3] All these restrictions have been alleged by former residents including Jeff Hawkins, John Peeler – and Marc Headley, who Van Sickle is representing in another lawsuit.
[4] This presumably refers first to Scientology’s Freeloaders’ Bill and its policy of disconnection.
[5] The statue of limitation on a crime is the time after which it can no longer be prosecuted.

15 Former lieutenants denounce Miscavige

Hats off to the St Petersburg Times: by getting two of David Miscavige’s key former lieutenants to go public on the violence and abuse at the top of Scientology, they have taken the story mainstream.

Mark Rathbun and Mike Rinder, two former lieutenants of Scientology’s leader David Miscavige, have gone public on abuses at the top of Scientology.

Their revelations appear in the first of a three-part series in The St Petersburg Times, Florida, by Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin

Rathbun, Rinder and at least two other well-placed sources, go into key aspects of the movement’s workings: from Miscavige’s violence to the controversial IRS tax deal.

Rathbun was once the movement’s Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center (RTC) and for years Miscavige’s right-hand man.

Rinder used to be the movement’s chief spokesman and was a former Executive Director of the Office of Special Affairs (OSA).

As anyone who has studied Scientology knows, the OSA is among other things, the movement’s dirty tricks department.

In the 1980s it took over from the old Guardian’s office after 11 GO members – including Mary Sue Hubbard, the wife of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard – were jailed for a massive spying operation on the US federal institutions.

Figuratively speaking then, both men know where the bodies lie.

This first part of the series confirms the violence that Miscavige has meted out to senior officers: abuse that this site and others have already reported.

Mark Rathbun goes over the campaign of harassment that convinced the Internal Revenue Service to reverse its policy and recognise Scientology as a church, a non-profit organisation, for tax purposes.

And among the revelations promised in part two are details of how Scientologists “botched the care” of Lisa McPherson.

McPherson's death in 1995 was the subject of extensive litigation – and an unsuccessful criminal investigation that was itself mishandled.

Scientology of course, has done its best to discredit the messengers, drawing on past statements from Mike Rinder in which he vehemently denied Miscavige’s violence.

They have quoted written attestations from Rathbun in which he sings the praises of Miscavige, the man he is now denouncing.

(This sounds strangely familiar: at the recently completed Paris trial, the defence pointed to success stories written by the plaintiffs during their time in Scientology in a bid to undermine their subsequent complaints. They denied such testimonials were effectively compulsory.)

For Scientology, Rathbun and Rinder are simply embittered apostates trying to shift the blame for their incompetence on to Miscavige.

The problem with this line is that Rathbun admits that he does not walk away from the movement with clean hands.

“…I freely admit I got dirt on my hands, and I feel terrible about it,” Rathbun tells the Times.

Rathbun, unlike at least one of the more thuggish former members I can think of, appears to have misgivings about what he has done in the name of Scientology.

To a certain extent, his credibility – and that of Rinder’s – will rest on how much they are prepared to own up to themselves.

For both men were too high up in Scientology’s hierarchy not to be privy to some of its worst abuses.

But hats off to the Times: if anyone was going to get the big fish to talk it’s only fair that it should be this newspaper.


They have been covering Scientology since it arrived in St Petersburg in 1975.


They had to put up with its dirty tricks at a time when going up against the movement was a far more perilous proposition than it is today.


Times reporters Charles Stafford and Bette Orsini picked up a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage back in 1980.


And in 1998, the Times even managed to get a rare interview with Miscavige himself.


The man who pulled off that scoop was Thomas C. Tobin – one of the co-authors of this new series.

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Don’t miss the video report and interviews with Rathbun and Amy Scobee at the Times website.

5 A tougher regime

Life at Scientology’s International Base, at Hemet, California, got steadily more oppressive from the early 1990s, former Sea Org member Maureen Bolstad recalls.

From 1985 until well into the 1990s Maureen Bolstad spent a lot of time travelling doing film work for Scientology.

Her work shooting the special events that helped establish David Miscavige as the movement’s undisputed leader won her his respect. And that brought a certain status at the International Base.

But as she began to spend more time at the base in the early 1990s, she noticed that there was another side to Miscavige.

“He could be a hard task-master,” she said, recalling how tough he was on one man in particular. “Every time I saw them together DM [Miscavige] was yelling at him about something or other.”

And there were other changes in his behaviour. Sometimes it was just the odd sarcastic remark. Others times, he would lay down the law. “Nobody’s going home until this gets done,” he would tell staff.

“One time he got really snide and he handed out Hershey chocolate bars to everyone.” He was alluding to one of the policy letters written by the movement’s founder.

“L. Ron Hubbard’s theory about why there was so much trouble at the Hershey chocolate factory was that Hershey was treating his workers too well,” Bolstad explained. “They had it too good.

“So David Miscavige said, ‘Oh look, we’ve fixed up our dining hall and we have got all this great food – you have your exercise park and your sports fields… we have all of these things, and you’re not getting your work done. So here’s some Hershey candy bars for you.’”

In “Blow-Offs”, a December 1959 policy letter, Hubbard wrote: “Probably the finest working conditions in the world were achieved by Mr. Hershey of chocolate bar fame for his plant workers. Yet they revolted and even shot at him.”

But he added: “This in its turn led to an industrial philosophy that the worse workers were treated the more willing they were to stay which in itself is as untrue as the better they are treated the faster they blow off.”

Miscavige must have forgotten that passage: he started cracking the whip.

Getting tough

In the early 1990s, senior officers at the base were ordered to introduce a tougher regime, which involved military-style drills.

Now, in addition to their normal duties, hundreds of staffers found themselves marching around the compound.

This was no picnic in the blazing California sun, and many of them were already exhausted from their existing workload and from lack of sleep.

Workers were also obliged to attend three musters, or roll calls, a day – with strict penalties for no-shows.

“If you were late for muster twice in a row you would get sent to the RPF,” (the Rehabilitation Project Force) Scientology’s dreaded the punishment programme.

Bolstad however, got a certain amount of leeway.

Because she was still in Miscavige’s good books, she found she could get away with misdemeanours that would have spelt serious trouble for other members of staff.

If she failed to turn up in full uniform or forgot to deliver a report, her superior officer would turn a blind eye. “You get some sort of slack – and you need it – when you are working such long hours.”

At some time around 1993 or 1994, Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige, started holding briefings for everybody. The staff of the International Base – in those days, perhaps a thousand people – would be summoned to hear their leader.

“He would brief everyone about the state of affairs and he would say who he was mad at, and about what,” she recalled.

Suddenly, Miscavige was making a point of naming and shaming – and once Miscavige had publicly humiliated you, your stock was worth nothing at the base.

“He was bypassing normal ethics procedure,” recalled Bolstad. “He would denounce people in front of the whole crew as being a screw-up or a mess-up.”

Whatever outsiders might think of Scientology’s disciplinary code, there had at least been a recognised procedure, set out in detail by Hubbard.

Punishments could be harsh – in Hubbard’s day you could be thrown overboard from a ship or put on a forced labour programme – and sometimes whole divisions could suffer the same penalties.

But whatever happened, certain rules were meant to be followed.

Now however Miscavige appeared to be acting as judge, jury and executioner. Only Hubbard had claimed such powers in the past.

Gradually, Bolstad and her colleagues found they could not get anything done without Miscavige’s specific approval. “He was micro-managing more and more.”

And when things went wrong, Miscavige looked for someone to blame.

Hunting Suppressives

 “He had this thing where if a person made a mistake or did something wrong… that mistake was intentional,” said Bolstad.

“And so the way to deal with it was to single the person out who made the mistake and accuse them of having evil intentions or trying to sabotage things.”

Scientology’s literature is packed with examples of the same principle: believers are encouraged to learn how to shatter suppression.

And all this of course, came from the writings of L. Ron Hubbard.

“People making mistakes or doing stupid things is evidence that an SP exists in that vicinity,” he wrote in a March 1968 policy letter: an SP of course being a Suppressive Person – an enemy of Scientology.

This attitude was something all Sea Org members had drummed into them during training, Bolstad explained. “I actually started to think that way.”

She recalled one particularly troublesome shoot on which things kept going wrong,

“The film was going into overtime and lots of money was being spent on re-shooting and stuff like that and I found myself accusing or thinking that other staff were purposely trying to prevent the film from going out…

“There was even one time when I found myself accusing a fellow staff member ‘You’re purposefully trying to prevent us from getting this film done aren’t you? You are trying to stop Scientology dissemination.’”

She even wrote a list of people she thought might be suppressives – enemies of Scientology deliberately trying to sabotage their work – and sent it off to her superiors.

Looking back, Bolstad struggled to explain the mind-set. “I guess you could call it paranoia, a distrust of your fellow staff members.

“It is an explanation for things going wrong besides taking a look at the fact that the planning was all wrong and that people weren’t getting enough sleep.”

But that was how the system worked, she said. You did not question the oppressive work-load imposed from on high: when thing went wrong, you looked for the suppressive influence.

Bolstad was still much in demand as a camera operator: if she wasn’t getting put on a plane for a shoot abroad, there was plenty of work at the base or nearby.

She enjoyed her reputation as the go-to person, the one who got the job done. But by 1993, it was taking its toll.

“I realised I was only getting two and a half hours sleep. I realised that the only reward for doing all this great work – apart from getting a bit of slack from the disciplinary committee – was I just kept getting more and more work to do.

“The better I got, the more work I got to do – and at one point I thought, ‘You know, I don’t want to be the best at anything any more. I want to go home on time.’”

But the pressure just kept on increasing. And then her life started falling apart.

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3 Messenger training

Maureen Bolstad was sent to California to be trained to work beside the movement’s founder: but she wasn’t told the whole story about L. Ron Hubbard.

Maureen Bolstad was delighted when got the call to transfer from Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida to the International Base at Hemet, California.

For one thing, it meant she would get to go back to her home state. “Florida is nice for a visit, but California has always been my home.”

Her superiors also made it clear that this was a significant step up. Bolstad was “going over the rainbow”, which in Scientology terms meant she would be working closer to L. Ron Hubbard, the movement’s revered founder.

In Florida, Bolstad had already started training for work with the Commodore’s Messenger Organization, a group of teenagers who acted as Hubbard’s envoys and aides. But when she arrived at the International Base, she learned she was in line for an even more important post.

“I was told I was being recruited to be a Messenger on Duty.” That meant she would be working with Hubbard on a regular basis.

“Someone was always ‘on watch’ at any given time to tend to Hubbard's needs and to ‘keep distractions off of his lines’, so that he could do his research and write, etc,” said Bolstad.

But that was only half the story: anyone working with Hubbard also had to adapt to his various eccentricities: a complete intolerance of dust and smells, growing paranoia – and terrible rages.

Adell and Ernie Hartwell could have warned her. 

They only got involved in Scientology because of their daughter. Following her in when she joined in the late 1970s they found themselves being whisked to a secret desert location (Indio, California) where Hubbard and his crew were making movies.

Adell Hartwell did not mince her words about Hubbard when she testified in the 1982 hearings into Scientology in Clearwater Florida.

“I saw him throw fits. I actually saw him take his hat off one day and stomp on it and cry like a baby. I have seen him just take his arm like this and throw it wild and hit girls in the face.

“And one girl would follow him with a chair. If he sat down, that chair had to be right where he was going to sit. One girl missed by a few inches, he about fell off of it, and she was put in the RPF.”

Her husband Ernie agreed: “He was a screaming maniac the three or four times that I saw him," he told the hearings.

It was during this time of course, that the young David Miscavige worked at Hubbard’s side.

Back then however, Bolstad had no idea just how difficult Hubbard could be. Nor did she fully understand why Hubbard was living in seclusion.

“Being Fabian”

“I actually did not know that Hubbard was hiding from the law, I was never told this. I was just told that he kept his location secret because he was being ‘fabian’, which is a quality Sea Organization members are supposed to understand.

“It had to do with avoiding evil influences in society by being hard to aim at and find. It seemed all pretty cool, cloak-and-dagger, exciting.”

In the glossary to Hubbard’s Welcome to the Sea Org lectures, fabian is defined as “remaining elusive, hard to hit, refusing direct engagement with an enemy. From the name of a Roman general, Quintus Fabius Maximus (died 203 B.C.) who successfully employed such tactics.”

That definition indicated Hubbard’s real concerns.

In 1977, FBI raids on Scientology offices in the United States had uncovered Operation Snow White, an extensive spying operation on US federal government offices, which led to many senior Scientology executives being successfully prosecuted.

By the early 1980s 11 senior Scientologists, including his own wife Mary Sue, had received jail sentences over the affair.

Hubbard himself had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case and, fearing arrest, had kept his whereabouts a closely guarded secret.

But all that was about to change, Bolstad was told. Now he was ready to come out of seclusion.

“They needed Messengers on Duty… because the idea back then was that Hubbard was going to come back, he was going to be able to make the Hemet base his home, his office. They needed a new set of Messengers trained to be on duty with him, so I was one of those.”

It was a very specific training, designed to meet Hubbard’s particular needs, she recalled. “I had to learn how to carry a cassette recorder, a notepad and an ashtray and a bag full of things like sunglasses and sun tan lotion and gloves and things like that.”

They would role-play how to behave in front of Hubbard: their trainer played the Commodore and they had to be sure they responded correctly.

“We had to take notes on whatever she was saying and know when to turn the recorder on and know when to hold the ash-tray out so, learning how to basically be a super-secretary… to type really fast.”

Typing was not much of a problem as she had already learned that at school. But other skills were new to her.

“I had to learn how to duplicate a verbal message – meaning the person would say the message and I had to be able to remember the whole message exactly, word for word, and repeat it back to them – and then also go and tell another person that message without any alterations, including the tone that it was said in.”

Miscavige mimicked Hubbard

Bolstad’s account of the Commodore’s particular needs – which matches those of former messengers who worked alongside Hubbard – finds an echo in Miscavige’s later behaviour.

For once he was sure of his position at the top, he became just as demanding, just as intolerant of anything that did not meet his standards.

Int Base veteran Jeff Hawkins, who for years suffered verbal abuse and even beatings from Miscavige, remembers the panic that set in when Miscavige returned from a trip away.

“When he’s about to return to the Base, it’s a scene like the one at the beginning of The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly is arriving at the office and everyone is scurrying madly: ‘Gird your loins, everyone!’

“The Base is usually cleaned in a panic the day before, offices spruced up, and everyone on high alert,” he said.

“The day he arrives, he usually does a walk-through of the Base, visiting all areas. Everyone knows he is looking for ‘bad indicators’ – someone who tries to hide, or gives an inappropriate response, or doesn’t give a proper greeting, or appears too enthusiastic and so on.”

If you did not pass muster in Miscavige’s eyes, you could be hauled up before the Ethics Officers – Scientology’s thought police – said Hawkins. Their job was to correct any hint of dissent through lengthy interrogations and, if necessary, punishment details.

“Needless to say, there is an atmosphere of suppressed panic throughout the Base, while everyone assures each other ‘how great it is to have COB back on the Base.’”

COB, of course, is Miscavige: Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center.

Everywhere Miscavige went, he went with an entourage, said Hawkins.

“They always dress identically to DM. If he is dressed in all black (a favorite costume), then they are in all black. If he’s all in white, they are too. If he is dressed casually, they are too.

“They carry two small hand-held tape recorders. The minute he starts to speak, one of these is turned on, so that his every word is recorded.”

The tapes would then be rushed away to be transcribed and converted into memos, which when issued had to be given top priority.

“And one could not have or express any disagreement with these orders and reams of paper. To do so, even in the slightest, was to be hauled off by the Ethics Officers…”

All this, however, was two decades down road.

Hooray for Hubbard

Bolstad felt honoured to have been selected and happy she was finally going to meet Hubbard, the Commodore himself.

“I wanted to meet him because so many people absolutely adored him and they would always clap at his picture – hip-hip-hooray and all that stuff.”

In the early days of her membership, back at the centre in California, she had learned that praising Hubbard was part of the routine: it was, for example, a standard part of the graduation ceremonies when someone had completed a course.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘I had these had great wins on my course. Thank you L. Ron Hubbard,’ and they would turn around to his picture and everyone else would turn around to his picture and clap and stand up and say ‘Hip-hip hooray’…”

And Bolstad, at the time, felt the same sense of devotion. “I had this idea that he had discovered this great truth that was going to revolutionise the psychiatric field, I greatly admired and respected him…

“It was sort of like if you’re starving or in need of water and someone gives you a glass of water without you having to ask I mean that is sort of how I felt, like ‘Oh wow, you really understand these things in my life.’”

As things turned out however, she never got to meet him.

Hubbard stayed in hiding, accompanied by just a handful of followers, until his death in 1986.

And when it became clear that Hubbard was not, after all, going to be coming out of hiding, Bolstad was reassigned to other duties.

Before long, she had begun a hectic period of international travel as part of Scientology’s film unit.

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For more on the messengers, see Russell Miller's unauthorised biography of Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah.

13 The Story So Far...

Increasing numbers of once highly placed Scientologists are speaking publicly against the movement: and their accounts corroborate the claims of previous defectors.

By his own admission, Andre Tabayoyon was well versed in the more abusive aspects of Scientology management. In a detailed 1994 affidavit, Tabayoyon listed the techniques he had learned to apply to his fellow Scientologists. One in particular stands out.

“TOO GRUESOME TRAINING,” wrote Tabayoyon. “This training teaches a supervisor how to instil complete terror and abject fear in subordinates so that the subordinates will comply with the supervisor’s orders without question.”

Tabayoyon is a former U.S. marine who served in Vietnam. He became devoted to L. Ron Hubbard, the movement’s founder, in the early 1970s, even serving as his personal butler.

When David Miscavige took over, Tabayoyon became a senior figure at the Hemet Base, before the leader turned on him.

From having supervised the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), which he describes as “the Scientology gulag or concentration camp,” Tabayoyon became one of its inmates, before finally fleeing the movement.

Tabayoyon says he also witnessed Miscavige beat up another Scientologist. “Mark Fisher, who was severely beaten by Miscavige, repeatedly told Miscavige and others that he did not want to be at the Hemet base,” he wrote in his affidavit.

“As Miscavige and others beat Mark in my presence, Mark kept saying that his attackers could beat him all they wanted but he still wanted to leave. Finally, Miscavige expressed his contempt and disgust at Mark and left the guard house where Mark was being held.”

Fisher was once one of Miscavige’s most senior aides at the International Base at Hemet, California. The attack to which Tabayoyon refers happened in July 1990 and Fisher has since left the movement.

But more than a decade since Tabayoyon made his original allegation, other defectors have stepped forward to confirm his account.

“You should know that Mark is much bigger than DM [Miscavige], at least six feet tall – and maybe a good 60 pounds heavier,” says one source. “But he did not resist at all. He just went to the ground and covered up. And his head was bleeding at the end of it.”

Marc Headley, a more recent defector, has also confirmed the assault. Miscavige – or DM as he calls him – took care to hand his Ray-Bans to a colleague before starting his attack, he said.

“After DM was done he went back to ____ got his glasses back and told ____ to make sure the MO [medical officer] took a look at him [Fisher]. DM then left. That is what I remember.”

Critics of Scientology are delighted that a new wave of defectors is speaking out about abuses in the movement and confirming the accounts of those who left years earlier.

But Scientology’s spokesmen continue to dismiss their allegations. They portray the disillusioned members who speak out against them as weak characters who failed to measure up to the movement’s high ethical standards.

It is certainly true that some people who quit Scientology never accept responsibility for any abuses they might have committed during their time inside. But some former members who have gone public have also come clean on what they did while in positions of authority.

Andre Tabayoyon, for example, is quite explicit in his affidavit about the abuse he inflicted on his fellow Scientologists when he still enjoyed power. Some former members have still not forgiven him.

John Peeler, in going public about his experiences inside Scientology, owned up to – and apologised for – his actions during his time as an ethics officer at the International Base. This mea culpa appears to have been well received by the online ex-member community.

It is difficult to square this kind of behaviour with Scientology’s characterisation of former members as weak, “self-seeking” apostates acting entirely out of selfish motives.

Even before speaking out, many of these former members had paid a high price simply for quitting the movement.

Marc Headley has lost contact with his sister and mother, both still Scientologists. Andre Tabayoyon and his wife no longer have any contact with their son, who is still inside the movement.

Maureen Bolstad, although she writes to her twin sister regularly, has not heard from her since she found herself declared an enemy of Scientology – a “suppressive person” – for having criticised the movement.

Scientology’s policy of disconnection, forcing members to cut off all contact with anyone designated “suppressive” is one of the movement’s most controversial practices.

Scientology officials continue to deny that anyone is forced to break off from loved ones in this way. But there is no shortage of former members who will tell you that their friends and family cannot speak to them any more for fear of being cast out of the movement themselves.

Some former members who have managed to maintain contact with relatives inside the movement say the threat of disconnection is what keeps them from speaking out publicly.

And quite apart from the issue of disconnection, Scientology has a reputation for aggressively pursuing its critics: its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, issued detailed instructions on the “noisy investigation” of the movement’s enemies.

Today however, increasing numbers of once high-level Scientologists have had enough and walked away from the movement. They include senior executives who some observers are convinced hold highly compromising information on the movement.

Whether or not these key individuals will ever be willing to speak out is another question. Some of them may have to come to terms with what they did during their time at the top.

Peeler, Hawkins and Headley only went public in 2008. John Peeler is quite clear that he would never have had the nerve to do so on his own.

And Hawkins, in his blog Counterfeit Dreams, writes that he only made the jump after three women who had grown up in the movement launched the Ex Scientology Kids website for young people who had shared their experience.

“You could say they shamed me into it,” he wrote. “If they were willing to put their names on the line and face whatever Scientology dished out, then what was I afraid of?”

Increasing numbers of former members are swapping experiences on the Internet: and to judge from the news groups and message boards, they are becoming increasingly angry.

Peeler has talked about a “dream team” of defectors from Scientology’s International Base at Hemet, California: people who worked alongside David Miscavige and can testify to abuses that they witnessed and in some cases experienced.

Hawkins, Peeler and Bolstad have all declared in Internet postings that they are ready to back Headley in his legal action.

Supporting these public critics are friends and colleagues who for the moment have decided to remain silent. But one gets the distinct impression that, far from running scared, some of them are only keeping their powder dry.

There can be little doubt that more revelations are on the way.

Next: Laura DeCrecenzo's Lawsuit

9 Abuse in the Sea Org

To be in Scientology’s Sea Organization is to be part of the movement’s self-styled elite: but some former insiders have bitter memories of the harsh conditions and abusive treatment.

Workers at International Base are all members of the Sea Organization, which L. Ron Hubbard, the movement’s founder, once described as Scientology’s aristocracy.

Aristocrats or not, some former staffers at Scientology’s base near Hemet, California, say they suffered abuse from the movement’s leader David Miscavige and his lieutenants.

The original Sea Org served as crew members on a small fleet of ships that Hubbard sailed around the Mediterranean after quitting England in 1967.

Today, Sea Org members still wear naval-style uniforms, practise parade ground drilling and observe a strict disciplinary code. Recruits sign a billion-year contract in which they swear to work for Scientology in this life and millions of future lives.

The Sea Org’s motto is “revenimus”: we come back. There is even provision for a 21-year break at the start of each lifetime to allow time for loyal officers to grow up.

Sea Org members give up everything to devote their lives to Scientology. But life inside this supposedly elite cadre has little of the aristocratic about it.

Many former members have recalled working 14 hours a day or more, six or seven days a week for 50 dollars a week. Scientology provides meals and living quarters, which sometimes amount to little more than cramped dormitories.

But according to some former members, the military-style discipline is often gratuitously abusive.

Jeff Hawkins described something called Severe Reality Adjustments, or SRAs. “It means to forcibly get someone ‘with the programme’ by screaming at them, threatening them.”

Chuck Beatty, another former Base staffer, recalled overhearing someone being trained to deliver an SRA. “He was screaming and also slamming his hand on a table during the drilling I overheard,” he recalled. For a good 20 minutes the trainee bawled out his training partner.

And by the 1990s, former members recall, Scientologists were talking about delivering “face-ripping” SRAs.

Former Sea Org member Martin Ottmann was recruited into Scientology in his native Germany. But between August 1990 and July 1992, he served at Flag Base, in Clearwater, Florida, one of the movement’s biggest centres.

“We, the staff at the FSO [Flag Service Organization], worked the whole day and the whole week for $30 or less, and we got treated for that like we were criminals,” he wrote in an affidavit sworn out in April 19, 1996.

He recalled one incident in which an executive bawled out his junior in quite spectacular terms. “One day I saw her sitting at her desk and B___ standing directly in front of her.

“He was screaming at the top of his lungs directly in her face. I had never heard anyone scream like that. It sounded as if he wanted to blast her against the wall behind her.”

Just as Ottmann’s superiors screamed at him, so he screamed at his subordinates, he wrote. And he also described incidents in which Sea Org members physically attacked the people working under them – something he had done himself, he admitted.

In February 2002, Ottmann submitted a detailed citizen’s complaint about Scientology’s activities to the U.S. Attorneys Office. A letter acknowledging receipt was all the official response he got, he said.

More than 10 years on, the regime at Clearwater had not changed, according to two other former members. In 2005, Donna Shannon and her husband served briefly in the Sea Org there.

Shannon saw colleagues delivering SRAs on a regular basis. Four of five senior officers would gang up on one person, she recalled. “They’d get right in his face. This would last anywhere from five to ten minutes to half an hour.”

This kind of behaviour was the norm in the Sea Org, she said: “You get bullied, you bully the guy under you, who is supposed to bully the next guy down.”

Some people folded under the pressure, she said: but others thrived. “Some people take to it like a duck to water.” After a few months of that, she and her husband left the Sea Org – and Scientology – for good.

Bruce Hines, a former Sea Org member at the Hemet Base, recalled an incident involving David Miscavige. One summer in the early 1990s a storm caused a flash flood through the base. “Some of the buildings sustained some minor damage from water and mud,” he said.

Miscavige summoned all the personnel to a meeting and bawled out the staff responsible for maintaining the grounds.

“He said that they had not responded fast enough or well enough or something like that. He berated them for many, many minutes, his voice booming over the PA system in the meeting room. At one point he yelled at the top of his voice, "F___ you! F___ you!”

“Ranting and raving,” was how another witness described Miscavige’s behaviour. “That’s when I went – ‘No, this has gone too far,’” he added. He left soon afterwards.

Other punishments meted out at the Hemet base included being thrown, fully clothed, into the lake. This is a throwback to one of the punishments handed out by the movement’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard in the late 1960s and early 70s. Back then, it was known as “over-boarding”.

In those days, Hubbard and the original members of the Sea Org were sailing around the Mediterranean. When a ship was docked in harbour, crew members deemed to have failed in their duties would be thrown overboard as punishment.

The only ship out at the land-locked Base is a folly built in Hubbard’s honour: a full-scale replica of a clipper – complete with a sauna, jacuzzi and swimming pool. So for years people were over-boarded at the lake.

As Master at Arms, John Peeler used to supervise such over-boardings. Whoever was to be punished would be pushed into the lake from a bridge that went from the shore over to a small island in the lake, he explained.

“The crew member is allowed to take off his shoes, jewellery or watch and that's it,” he said. “You get pushed in by the MAA [Master at Arms] with the Chaplain reading something about leaving your sins to be washed away by the sea.”

Whole divisions working at the base – up to 30 people – could be over-boarded in a single ceremony if their results were not considered satisfactory, he recalled.

One occasion he recalled vividly. “An elderly lady froze up in the water and couldn't swim herself to the side.” He had to jump in himself and help her to the shore. The last he had heard, they had switched the punishment to the swimming pool.

Another punishment involved being made to run around buildings for hours in the summer heat, which in California can exceed 100 degrees.

Hawkins remembers that after one such punishment his feet were so badly blistered they got infected and he was laid up for a week with blood poisoning.

Another Hemet veteran remembers seeing people out running in the summer heat in full uniform wearing hard leather shoes. “One person was even being pushed around the pole in a wheelchair. They were all in uniform and that was in the middle of July, in the middle of the afternoon when it was the hottest.”

Both over-boarding and the running program were introduced by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard when he ran the movement. In his day, the crew of Scientology’s ships got thrown into the harbour in their clothes. Sometimes they were loosely tied up and even blindfolded.

But the most severe punishment inside Scientology’s Sea Org is known as the Rehabilitation Project Force: the RPF.

Next: The RPF: Scientology's Gulag.