Introduction

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds

Scientology is today paying the price for its aggressive campaign launched in the mid-1990s to shut down its earliest online critics.

Its use of law suits and court-authorised raids on critics’ homes only succeeded in creating fresh waves of opposition.

These new activists pooled the existing information on Scientology and generated new material through original research, all the while subjecting the movement to a barrage of derision.

It is this rolling campaign that has, in part, encouraged defectors from the movement to come forward and relate their experiences.

When in January 2008 Andrew Morton published his unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, more former members stepped forward to denounce Scientology.

The same month, the niece of the Scientology’s leader David Miscavige, Jenna Miscavige Hill, went public on how the leadership tried to cut her off from her parents when they quit the movement: a practice known as disconnection.

Hill helped set up Ex-Scientology Kids, a website for people who grew up in Scientology, which has proved to be a fresh source of damaging stories about the movement.

Other former members also started to speak out, alleging that they had been victims of Miscavige’s violence.

Also in January 2008, “Anonymous” -- a new wave of critics whose numbers included a group of young hackers -- emerged.

They attacked Scientology’s websites, organised worldwide protests against the movement and leaked embarrassing material: from a promotional video featuring Tom Cruise to compromising internal documents.

Scientology denounced Anonymous as a "cyber-terrorist group" perpetrating "religious hate crimes" (in its response to a March 2008 article in Radar Magazine).

It regularly dismisses statements made by former members turned critics as self-seeking claims from people who were unable to live up to the movement's high ethical standards.

But the deluge of information from former members broadcast across the Internet shows no sign of weakening.

Now a former Scientologist Marc Headley has filed suit against the Church of Scientology International, a case that could have implications not just for the movement as a whole but for its leader, David Miscavige.

Next: 1 Marc Headley's lawsuit.

1 Marc Headley's lawsuit

Scientology leader David Miscavige has been targetted in a lawsuit from a former member who says he and fellow workers were subjected to “assault, threat and menace.”

Scientology’s leader David Miscavige – a close friend of Tom Cruise – has been accused of violence and intimidation in a lawsuit filed by a former member.

And former member Marc Headley has also alleged that the regime at the movement's base in Hemet, California resembled "a prison camp" in which workers were subjected to sometimes "severe" punishment.

Headley says he was beaten up by Miscavige during his time as a staff member with the organisation. Headley, 35, says he also saw several of his colleagues assaulted.

And he claims the multi-million-dollar organisation illegally employed child labour.

Headley worked for Scientology from the age of 16, between 1989 and 2005, at Golden Era Productions, in Hemet, California, making films, videos and promotional materials for the movement.

Workers were intimidated by “assault, threat and menace”, says his complaint, which was filed against the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology International (CSI) on January 5 and amended the following month.

Scientology “worked its employees to exhaustion” to ensure a “compliant workforce,” says the complaint.

“For example, to keep him in line, [Headley] was assaulted by the leader of the Scientology enterprise. This was a show of power and domination. [Headley] observed such heavy-handed tactics used against his co-workers…

“Scientology controls its workers by depriving them of a living wage and keeping them dependent upon the Scientology enterprise for the basic necessities of life,” says the complaint.

It also argues that because CSI illegally employed children there, some of the Scientology products “may be subject to seizure as ‘hot goods’ under the child labor laws.”

Miscavige, 48, is a close friend of celebrity member Tom Cruise and served as best man at his November 2006 wedding to actress Katie Holmes.

He works out of the high-security compound where Golden Era Productions is based, and Cruise has often visited him there. The site is also known as Gold Base, and the International Base.

“Gold Base resembles a prison camp,” the complaint alleges. “A razor-wire topped fence encircles Gold Base with sharp inward pointing spikes to prevent escape. The gates are guarded at all times, preventing employees from freely coming and going.

“Security guards patrol the grounds, motion sensors are placed throughout, and surveillance posts surround the perimeter, all of which are intended to keep workers in the facility. One cannot leave without permission and permission is seldom granted except to a select few.”

Workers’ mail was opened and foreign employees had their passport taken from them, it adds.

The complaint also describes a punishment camp known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF). “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 liberties.”

“Working conditions on the RPF are so horrible that its mere existence serves as a deterrent and intimidates workers … into a state of fear and mindless obedience …” says the complaint.

“The RPF is arguably more severe in punishment and violations of personal liberties than solitary confinement in prison... Sleep deprivation and poor nutrition were routine.”

Headley says staff at Gold Base often worked seven-day weeks totalling more than 100 hours for far less than the minimum wage.

In California, the minimum wage is currently eight dollars an hour: between 1989 and 2005, when Headley worked for Scientology, it rose from $4.25 to $6.75. Headley calculates he was earning about 39 cents an hour during this period.

But the complaint says: “Workers such as Plaintiff Headley were told that Scientology does not have to pay them minimum wage or give them any rights because it's a church, and/or workers have waived rights.’”

In 1993 the US Internal Revenue Service decided that Scientology and many of its affiliated organizations were operating “exclusively for religious or charitable purposes” and granted the movement tax-exempt status.

But attorney Barry Van Sickle, who filed the complaint on behalf of Headley argues in the complaint: “Defendant CSI misconstrues what it can get away with in the name of religion.”

The movement's religious status, which itself “is subject to serious dispute,” does not trump California's employment laws, he says.

“There is no constitutional right to exemption from minimum wage and child labor laws.”

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Headley’s allegations echo those made in the past by other former Sea Org members about the use of under-age workers. In a 2001 affidavit for example, Astra Woodcraft, who grew up in a Scientology family, told how she was recruited at the age of 14.

“They told me that if I joined their group, I would get paid minimum wage (which was several hundred a week, a lot of money for a 14 year-old); that I would not have to wear a uniform like most Sea Org members; and that I would go to school and finish my education.”

None of these promises were honoured, she wrote. She never completed her high school education and from age 14 she was working a minimum 14-hour day, seven days a week.

During one three-week period in 1995, “when I was still a minor”, she and other staff had to work around the clock on a special project. In 1995 she would have been 16 or 17 years old.

Although she was given the task of waking up colleagues to get them back to work, she too was struggling to stay awake, she said.

“I got approximately two hours of sleep a night during this time, but many times got no sleep for two or more days.

“I was ordered to drive around even though I was falling asleep and incoherent due to no sleep. One time I parked my car and accidentally fell asleep and woke up three hours later because a meter attendant was knocking on my window.”

Maureen Bolstad, another former Sea Org member, also says that promises made to her when she was recruited were never honoured.

Her mother agreed to let her and her brother join the Sea Org in Clearwater, Florida, on the understanding that they would finish their high school education, she said.

She was 16 when she left her California home for Florida; her brother was only 14. “As soon as we showed up in Clearwater I said ‘Okay, I need to go to school,’” said Bolstad.

“The person that was assigned as my immediate senior there said ‘Oh, you don’t want to go to Clearwater High School, they’ll just throw eggs at you and call you a ‘Scieno’ [Scientologist], they’ll just try to brainwash you – you don’t need public school. Just work with us.’

“I was a little bit confused and my Mum got upset because nobody asked for my school records and the school was confused because nobody sent for my school records (but in the end nobody actually did anything).”

In the end, they both ended up working for Scientology and neither got their high school diploma. Her account of the hours worked at the International Base tallies with the statements made in Marc Headley’s lawsuit.

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Van Sickle has introduced the complaint as a test case, aimed at clearing the path for other workers inside Scientology to get proper compensation.

He has asked for a jury trial, payment of back wages for his client and appropriate measures to be taken against Scientology for any breach of the employment laws.

But Headley is not alone in alleging violence and abuse inside the movement.

For a legal analysis of this lawsuit, see Scott Pilutik's blog here.

Next: Accusing Miscavige

5 Marc Headley's Story

Former Scientologist Marc Headley’s September 2008 speech in Germany marked a significant development in the campaign against the movement.

On September 4, 2008, Marc Headley adressed an invited audience in Hamburg, Germany about his experiences inside Scientology. Headley, in his mid-30s, explained that he had spent most of his life in Scientology: his mother had got involved in the early 1980s, when he was six years old.

From the ages of 12 to 16 he had been enrolled at a Scientology school before being signed up for what he called the “paramilitary branch of Scientology”, the Sea Organization. He worked in increasingly senior positions at Scientology’s International Base, in California, alongside the movement’s current leader, David Miscavige.

“During my 15 years working at the Scientology headquarters I witnessed and was exposed to many things that I will never, ever be able to erase from my mind,” he told the audience.

Headley talked about the long hours; he talked about the poor nutrition and the lack of basic medical care; and he described the abuse that executives routinely heaped on their staff: from bawling out subordinates to physical assaults.

For the entire time he was there he and many of his fellow workers, who included children as young as 14, were working on average 100 hours a week.

“When I left in 2005 I was averaging three to four hours' sleep a night and in some weeks I was putting in over 130 hours a week working.” He and his co-workers – sometimes as many as 100 people – would sometimes stay up three or four nights in a row to get the job done.

If Headley's figures are accurate, 130 hours a week on a seven-day week comes to 18.5 hours a day, which makes three to four hours' sleep about right. Jeff Hawkins, another veteran of the International Base, has also said that in his last four years at the Base, he was averaging four hours a night.

Headley continued: “This is not some deep, dark secret … It's a way of life there: everyone there is working those many hours. When you work at the facility at the International headquarters you can’t just say ‘I’m tired, I want to go home’ … You are there until you are done, and if that means you stay there all night you stay there all night, you don’t have any choice in the matter whatsoever.”

After he left, he sat down and worked out how much he had been getting paid during his time there: by his calculations, it came to an average 36 cents an hour, perhaps as little as 1,000 dollars a year (revised to 39 cents in the lawsuit he filed in January 2009). "When you get paid a thousand dollars a year and you want to leave, it's very hard because you don't have any money."

The exhausting schedule, the lack of sleep and the poor nutrition affected his health, said Headley. At one time, at 5’10” (1.78 metres) in height he weighed little more than 100 lbs (45 kilos), having lost more than 60 lbs over six months due to the work rate and lack of sleep.

Headley also talked about the lack of medical care. When recruited, staff members were routinely told that their medical expenses would be paid: but this was simply not the case, he said. If staff members wanted even basics such as prescription contact lenses or spectacles, they would have to join a waiting list of as many as 300 people.

If you were really sick, it was treated not as a physical sickness but as a mental or psychological problem, he said. You were told you were a Potential Trouble Source (PTS), a Scientology term that means that you are in contact with a Suppressive Person, someone hostile to Scientology. You needed to handle that to deal with your illness. Former members believe that this approach to physical health helps explain why some Scientologists with serious, sometimes terminal illnesses sought medical attention far too late.

Headley also accused the movement's leader of violence. “I myself on at least 10 different occasions have witnessed David Miscavige actually physically strike other staff members to the ground, strike staff members so many times – or damage them physically – that they actually needed medical attention or that a medical officer from the facility would have to come and bandage them or treat them.”

Towards the end of his presentation, Headley said: “I have been to many Scientology organisations around the world as well. I have been to I’d say at least 100 different Scientology organisations in my 15 years of working for Scientology and I can tell you that I have witnessed the abuses that I have mentioned above in every single one of these organisations.”

Everything Headley said that day has been confirmed by other former members of Scientology’s self-styled elite, the Sea Org: by Jeff Hawkins and John Peeler on the record, and by other former members not yet ready to go public.

But Headley’s decision to speak out was especially significant.

For more than two years already, he had been posting under the pseudonym “Blownforgood” on one of the main message boards for critics of Scientology: Andreas Heldal-Lund’s Operation Clambake.

When he first appeared in February 2006, Blownforgood – or BFG as he became known – quickly impressed the growing ranks of former senior Scientologist executives with his knowledge of life at Gold, or the International Base. Other recent defectors posted to confirm the details of his reports.

Generally acknowledged as among the best informed of the former members posting there, his reports became eagerly awaited events.

Sprinkled among the insider gossip and in-jokes, BFG revealed glimpses of the increasingly oppressive regime at the Base. He chronicled – almost in passing – the broken marriages as one partner was forced to abandon another when he or she fell from grace; Miscavige’s screaming rages; and how young women at the base were pressured into having abortions if they fell pregnant (it is either that or they quit the Sea Org).

Similar allegations had already been made in affidavits from previous defectors, some as far back as the mid-1990s. And here again, the new wave of Sea Org defectors confirmed BFG’s reports in their own Internet postings.

While Headley had already been speaking to journalists on a non-attributable basis, it was only in 2008 that he started to speak out publicly – and it was only the day after his Hamburg speech that he unmasked himself as BFG in a posting to Operation Clambake.

Headley and two other former Scientologists who spoke in Hamburg were the guests of the Scientology Task Force, which is headed up by Ursula Caberta, one of the movement’s most vocal opponents.

The last time comparable hearings were held in the United States was in 1982, in the city of Clearwater, Florida, when the authorities responded to the growing influence of the movement there.

Since then, so far as the United States is concerned, there has been very little official scrutiny of the movement – except inside the courts.

For more on Marc Headley/Blownforgood, see his website here.

Next: Jeff Hawkins' Story

7 John Peeler's Story

For Scientologists who grew up in the movement walking away from it and adjusting to the outside world can be a traumatic experience. John Peeler tells his story.

John Peeler, now 37, did not actually choose to be a Scientologist: he grew up in the movement.

His mother was Scientologist and they sent him to a Scientology-approved school where the teachers used the techniques set down by the movement’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. “There was even an Ethics Officer,” he recalled – a kind of moral policeman who ensured they followed Scientology policies to the letter.

The children were encouraged to write Knowledge Reports on each other: to denounce their classmates if they thought they had broken Scientology’s rules. And if someone did report you, you could end up having to explain yourself to the ethics officer, he recalled. All this was as set down in Hubbard's writings.

Looking back, Peeler can scarcely believe it. “These are children being taught at a very young age to write knowledge reports on other students and keep a ‘watchful’ eye on others. Kids would even be heard saying, ‘Ohhhh, you’re going to Ethics!’.”

Peeler recalled how the founders of one such school were suddenly declared ‘suppressive’ by the movement’s leadership: enemies of Scientology. His mother and other Scientologists at the school immediately withdrew their children from the establishment.

Suppressive persons, knowledge reports and ethics officers: these key elements of the movement’s thinking were all part of Peeler’s early environment. “Scientology conditioning started at a very young age back in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” he said.

And this is still going on today. At one point Peeler’s job was to sign up new members of Scientology’s Sea Organization and he considered the schools he had attended a perfect recruitment pool.

As a young adult, he decided to take a break from Scientology life. “I decided just to live a normal life, go to normal schools, have ‘wog’ friends,” he said.

“Wog” is a Scientology term for non-Scientologists that was coined by Hubbard. One Scientology dictionary defines a wog as “a common ordinary run-of-the-mill garden-variety humanoid.” Another official definition is: “A wog is someone who isn’t even trying.”

Peeler got a regular job and his own place and for a while he led an ordinary life. “This is where I got some semblance of what people in the real world do and I liked it.

“But I also still believed that the planet needed to be ‘cleared’ (converted to Scientology's principles) and that we were in big trouble if we didn’t do it soon. Scientology being the ‘only answer’ was always stuck in the back of my mind.”

Scientologists believe Hubbard developed an unparalleled range of therapeutic techniques that bring previously unheard of levels of freedom and power in mind, body and spirit. They believe these powers are the only thing that will stop mankind from destroying itself.

So Peeler was eventually persuaded back to work for Scientology the Sea Organization, which is acknowledged by Scientologists as the movement's elite cadre.

Between 1990 and 2000 he worked at the Int. Base, a 500-acre, high-security compound near Hemet, California, where Scientology’s leader David Miscavige works. Now Peeler was an ethics officer: he served as a “Master at Arms” (MAA), enforcing security at the base.

His duties included making sure staffers were not in contact with anyone hostile to Scientology – and that involved checking their mail and listening in on their phone calls.

If a staffer’s family was hostile to their involvement in Scientology, he would coach the person concerned on how “handle” them. Since it was so hard for staffers to get leave from the base however, this was no easy task, he said. “Most staff at the Int. Base hardly ever got time off to be able to visit their families.”

If a staffer failed to handle a hostile relative, then they would have to “disconnect”, said Peeler. He had the power to order a staffer to cut off all contact with a hostile friend or relative, a policy known as disconnection.

Scientology continues to deny that it practises enforced disconnection.

He was also responsible for disciplining staffers judged to be unproductive. One punishment was known as over-boarding: it involved throwing staffers, fully clothed, into the freezing waters of the lake at the base.

Peeler eventually tired of the harsh discipline and the increasingly aggressive atmosphere. “Weekly staff meetings became scream fests, finger pointing and pure rage ... David Miscavige was beating people up.”

Other senior executives, taking their cue from Miscavige, were also beginning to use violence. “I even found myself at times displaying this attitude and had to put myself in check because that was never me and not what I ever wanted to become.

“But I realized that to most people at the base, DM (Miscavige) was the leader and so had the ‘winning attitude’ … The bottom line is that it just started to get out of hand and I didn't see conditions getting any better any time soon. So I left.”

Another reason he left was he could not stand having been separated from his wife. After she got sent away from the base on a mission he simply never saw her. “I was separated from my own wife for four years ... I only got to see my family, who lived two hours away, a total of six days in 10 years … I just couldn't take it anymore.”

Adjusting to the outside world was not easy, he admits. “It took me a good four years after getting out, to finally get used to the real world and start thinking and feeling like a regular person again.

“I had nightmares for years, and occasionally still have one ... dreams where I'm back in the organization and having to escape again…,” he added. His ex-wife is still in the Sea Org.

Next: Life at the Base

3 The Case against Miscavige

High-level defectors from Scientology are beginning to speak out about the movement’s leader, David Miscavige and the beatings they say he hands out to fellow executives.

Jeff Hawkins says he had no idea about David Miscavige’s violence until he was himself attacked for the first time in 2002 – and he had been working at the base for more than 10 years.

“People don’t say ‘Oh did you hear that Miscavige beat up so-and-so?’ – it is just not mentioned,” he said. It was only once he started attending regular meetings with Miscavige – or DM as he is known – that he says he found out the hard way.

“We were at one meeting – there must have been 50 people in the room,” said Hawkins, who at that time was a senior marketing executive inside Scientology. “And DM was reading out a report I had written, and he didn’t like it at all. He was reading it and making fun of it.” DM is what many Scientologists call David Miscavige, Scientology’s current leader.

“Then he started looking at me and then he started saying: ‘Look at how he looks at me, look at how he looks at me’. And everybody else is telling me ‘Stop looking at him like that!’ – and I’m like – ‘What?’ I was just there, you know?

“He got madder and madder and madder and all of a sudden he just jumped – he literally jumped up on the conference room table, launched himself at me, started hitting me on the head, knocked me on the ground … grabbed my shirt and just ripped buttons off… and then he knocked me on the ground and then he walked away.

“And the people around me were just – I guess they were petrified, but they were whispering to me to get up and to straighten myself up and to not make him [Miscavige] wrong.”

Another former member, who did not want to be named, confirmed the details of the attack. “I remember afterwards, somebody collected up the buttons and change that fell out of his pockets and gave it all back to him. He was really shaken.”

John Peeler, a former security officer at the base, said he had seen two other attacks by Miscavige on Hawkins.

Peeler recalled that whenever Miscavige singled somebody out for this kind of abuse, the base’s security officers would take that person down for interrogation to find out what their “crimes” were, said Peeler. “The same happened after DM beat up Jeff.”

Looking back at that first beating, Hawkins said he realised now that he had been guilty of what George Orwell, in his dystopian novel 1984, called “face-crime” – wearing an improper expression on one's face. This was one of Miscavige’s obsessions, he said.

Another of Miscavige’s assaults took place when Hawkins was touring one of the buildings at the base with fellow executives, he said. As Miscavige was leaving one room he suddenly rabbit-punched Hawkins in the stomach.

“He just punched me in the gut to the point where I couldn’t talk. I was just croaking because he hit me so hard in the stomach … and he said to the other people, ‘I can smell black PR a mile away,’ and walked off.”

One Scientology dictionary defines black PR, or black propaganda, as "a covert attack on the reputation of a person, company or nation using slander and lies in order to weaken or destroy."

Miscavige is 13 years younger than Hawkins. He prides himself on keeping in shape: he even had a gym installed at the base. “I was 56 when Miscavige beat me up for the first time,” said Hawkins.

Over the years, he added, he witnessed between 10 and 15 of Miscavige’s assaults on at least four other executives. He would slap them punch them, wrestle them to the ground, he said.

And other senior executives, following Miscavige’s lead, started assaulting their subordinates, said Hawkins – a point confirmed by John Peeler.

Hawkins remembered one executive with particular distaste: “[He] used to routinely come by my desk take my head and shove it into my keyboard, just as his way of saying hello.”

As soon as Miscavige called a conference, said Hawkins, staffers would have to run to the venue. Once there, they might wait 20 to 30 minutes for Miscavige and his entourage to arrive.

“He would usually launch straight into an attack on someone. Everyone is hoping it’s not them. It’s usually whoever has submitted something to him – a script, a programme, a marketing proposal, an event proposal, whatever.

“He would rip the proposal to shreds, and the person along with it,” said Hawkins. “I never saw him do other than this. “Anything submitted to him was ‘sh_t’. He would invalidate the person and tear them to shreds in front of the group.”

Miscavige would run these meetings for up to six hours, well past midnight, said Hawkins. “And during the meeting, he would dictate exactly what had to be done ‘and have on my desk when I get up’.”

For one period of several months, said Hawkins, he had to work all-nighters only to have his latest proposal “ripped to shreds” at the meeting the following night. But this was the norm for senior executives.

“No one could do anything right. DM had to do everything himself. This was the constant mantra he would repeat and repeat at these meetings … He would always say he was ‘surrounded by SPs.’”

SPs, or suppressive persons, are enemies of Scientology.

And on top of that, he added, there was the violence. “I saw him beat people to the floor, shove them out of their chair to the floor, slam them up against a wall and so forth.”

In July 2008, Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw dismissed Hawkins' claims as “classic apostate behavior” in a written response to an article in The Portland Mercury.

“He grossly mischaracterizes the church, its purposes, and activities in an effort to harm its reputation,” she added. And she took personal offence at the allegations against Miscavige. “I know him personally, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the disgusting claims made by Mr. Hawkins could not be further from the truth.”

But Hawkins is far from being the first person to make such allegations. In many cases, these stories were first aired on a private Internet message board called XSO for former members of Scientology’s Sea Organization: its most dedicated followers. It was only later that they leaked out on to Internet news groups and message boards accessible to anyone.

Most of those who posted such accounts remain wary about revealing their identity. Some say they fear harassment from Scientology, while others worry that loved ones still inside the movement might suffer reprisals. Increasing numbers however are going on the record, and their stories appear to match.

Hawkins recalled Miscavige’s question after another assault. “He said ‘Do you know why I beat you up?’ And I said ‘No Sir’, and he said, ‘To remind you who’s boss.’”

For a detailed account of his time in Scientology, see Jeff Hawkins' blog: “Counterfeit Dreams”.

Next: A History of Violence

2 Accusing Miscavige

Former Scientology executive are speaking out against the movement’s leader, David Miscavige, accusing him of ruling through violence and intimidation.

For at least two years, it was one of the main topics of conversation on the Internet news groups and message groups devoted to exposing Scientology. But nobody was ready to go on the record.

Then in 2008, a handful of senior former members of the movement began speaking out in public to whoever would listen. Their stories were shocking but consistent.

They alleged that David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology, had for years been subjecting senior executives at one of the movement’s California bases to an abusive regime that ranged from expletive-filled tirades to physical assaults.

One of the new wave of whistleblowers is Jeff Hawkins, 62. Once a senior marketing executive with Scientology, he quit the movement in 2005 at the age of 59 after more than three decades.

Hawkins said Miscavige harangued his staff, often singling out individuals for a humiliating dressing down and sometimes physically attacking them. He saw a number of fellow executives assaulted and was the victim of several such attacks himself.

Two former Scientologists who worked alongside Hawkins have publicly confirmed his account, and other witnesses are waiting in the wings.

Much of the reported abuse took place during late-night meetings at the International Base, Scientology’s 500-acre, high-security compound at the north end of California’s San Jacinto Valley, about 90 miles east of Los Angeles.

Celebrity member Tom Cruise used to visit there regularly in the 1990s with his then wife Nicole Kidman.

Miscavige is a close friend of Cruise and served as best man at his November 2006 wedding to actress Katie Holmes. He is revered by many inside the movement.

But Hawkins said: "The International Base in Hemet, California, is run by fear, threats, and physical and emotional abuse.” Hawkins only left after experiencing what he calls "the dark side" of organised Scientology.

Hawkins described being assaulted on five separate occasions by Miscavige himself. "I was slapped repeatedly, punched, and knocked to the ground by him. That was in addition to his constant stream of profanity, threats and verbal abuse."

Other senior executives got the same treatment, he said. "He likes to keep those around him in fear and terror. It is ironic that while Scientology publicly preaches communication and tolerance, its leader, Miscavige, practises just the opposite."

John Peeler, who used to work as a security officer at the base, has confirmed Smith’s account. Peeler, 36, described two of the assaults on Hawkins by Miscavige, or DM as he called him.

“DM was grabbing and shoving him against a wall over and over and screaming in his face about how he was an SP [suppressive person] and deliberately not following his orders. He also punched him in the chest. DM was so mad he was red.”

A suppressive person or SP is what Scientologists call an enemy of the movement.

Marc Headley, another former member, has also confirmed Miscavige’s assaults on Hawkins in Internet postings and media interviews. In a speech in Hamburg on September 4, 2008, he said he had seen Miscavige assault several other executives.

And he has repeated the allegation in his lawsuit, filed in California on January 5, 2009.

Hawkins, Peeler and Headley are among a new wave of defectors speaking out about the abuses they witnessed and experienced at the California base.

Scientology’s representatives have dismissed them as embittered drop-outs from the movement and vehemently denied reports of Miscavige’s violence.

But their accounts echo previous allegations contained in court testimony and affidavits from former members stretching back over the past 20 years.

For years now, defectors have described how executives get training in how to scream abuse at subordinates; and how security officers routinely open members’ mail and monitor outgoing calls.

Former members have also testified to the bizarre punishments practised at the base. Staff members can be thrown, fully clothed, into the lake there. They can be forced to run for hours in the hot California sun in full dress uniform and city shoes.

They also say that those considered the worst offenders in the movement are held in a work camp known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) for years at a time.

Miscavige, 48, rose to power in the early 1980s when Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, appointed a group of young executives to reorganise the movement.

When Hubbard died in 1986, Miscavige was one of the most powerful figures in the movement. Ex-members say he is now Scientology’s undisputed leader.

The former members' campaign against Scientology was boosted by the appearance in January 2008 of a group of young Net-based activists known as “Anonymous”.

This group, which has also declared war on what it says is Scientology’s abusive behaviour, has developed new websites critical of the movement and organises regular pickets of the movement’s offices worldwide.

Next: The Case against Miscavige

4 A History of Violence

For celebrity member Tom Cruise, Scientology’s leader David Miscavige embodies everything that is good about the movement: but some former colleagues insist he has a darker side.

For actor Tom Cruise, Scientology’s leader David Miscavige is a shining example of all that is best about the movement: a paragon of compassion, tolerance and intelligence.

In October 2004, at a special event in England, Tom Cruise paid this tribute to Miscavige, Chairman of the Board (COB) of Scientology’s Religious Technology Center.

“Thank you, Sir: Thank you for your trust and your confidence in me. I've personally been privileged to see what you do to protect and help and serve all of us.

“I have never met a more competent, intelligent, tolerant, compassionate being, outside of what I have experienced from LRH [L. Ron Hubbard: Scientology’s founder]. And I've met the leaders of leaders. I've met them all.

“So I say to you, Sir, COB, we are lucky to have you. Thank you.”

Many of those who once worked alongside Miscavige however, recall him as a tyrant and bully. For some of them, he is the main reason they quit the movement.

In a rare 1998 interview with the St Petersburg Times, a Florida daily that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Scientology in 1980, Miscavige was asked about his rise to power.

“People keep saying, ‘How’d you get power?’” he replied. “Nobody gives you power. I’ll tell you what power is. Power in my estimation is if people will listen to you. That’s it.”

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David Miscavige grew up in Scientology: it is all he has ever known.

As an 18-year-old in 1978, he sat at the feet of the founder himself, as L. Ron Hubbard worked on a film project at La Quinta, one of Scientology’s properties in the southern California desert.

Hubbard was by then 67, and the years of conflict with the authorities in several countries were beginning to tell.

Some former members who knew Hubbard during this period recall him as a tyrant who screamed abuse at his minions and continually called for more blood in the film’s increasingly lurid action scenes.

By 1979, some of Scientology’s top executives – including Hubbard’s own wife, Mary Sue – were on the way to jail for an extensive spying operation on the U.S. government. Hubbard himself was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Hubbard chose new people to run the movement from his personal staff and David Miscavige was among them. But as Miscavige and his colleagues took power in the 1980s, in the years running up to Hubbard’s death in 1986, tales of abuse began to emerge.

Respected, senior Scientologists found themselves forced to perform humiliating punishments at one of Scientology’s desert compounds in California, ironically known as Happy Valley.

David Mayo, once a personal counsellor to Hubbard himself, left Scientology after what he said was six months as a prisoner under the new regime. In a 1987 affidavit, he said he had been subjected to lengthy night-time interrogations and threatened personally by Miscavige.

“During that six-month period of captivity, I was forced to run around a tree in the desert in temperatures of up to 110 degrees for 12 hours a day, seven days a week for three months,” he added.

“I was under tremendous coercion and duress I was refused medical and dental treatment … I was not permitted to make or receive phone calls and all letters I wrote were read by Scientology security guards.”

Homer Schomer, another Scientologist who fell foul of the new regime, also described lengthy overnight interrogations in a 1986 affidavit. “I was punched, spat upon, threatened, intimidated and completely humiliated as a human being,” he declared.

And in court testimony, he said that Miscavige and another Scientologist had spat tobacco juice in his face during this time.

Larry Brennan was a senior Scientology executive in the 1980s. He used to travel every week from Los Angeles to the Hemet Base to write up reports for Hubbard. One such visit, in 1982, he remembers vividly.

“I just happened to walk into the office and there were three guys standing up at attention,” he recalls. “I saw him [Miscavige] punch one guy hard on the mouth, slap another as hard as he could and then choke another guy until he was red in the face.”

Brennan saw one of the victims later the same day. “One of those poor guys came up to me at Int [the Hemet base] and he was totally a broken man and he asked me if he was going to jail as he was told he would be.

“My heart went out to him … The poor guy committed no crimes whatsoever but DM [Miscavige] got them to believe that those who opposed him were criminals and would be going to jail for a long time … It was a total horror show from the mind of a madman as far as I am concerned.”

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By the time Hubbard died in 1986, Miscavige and a few others had effectively taken control of the movement. During this period, hundreds of veteran members were either expelled or resigned.

Some of Miscavige’s onetime allies later fell foul of the new regime themselves and ended up quitting the movement.

Don Larson was one former Miscavige ally who fell from grace. He told the BBC’s Panorama programme in 1987 how he saw the young leader rough up a Scientology official.

“David Miscavige comes up, grabs him by the tie (makes punching motion with his right arm) and starts bashing him into the filing cabinet,” Larson told Panorama. “And he’s thrown out in the street; his tie is ripped off.”

More than 20 years on, Larson stands by his story. He still believes that some Scientology techniques offer real benefits. “There are a number of truths that are quite amazing.

“On the other hand,” he adds, “the organisation itself is quite psychotic and dangerous.”

Scientology has dismissed all such allegations as the self-serving accusations of embittered defectors.

Tom Cruise’s devotion to Scientology may have a lot to do with his friendship with Miscavige. Former members say that in the 1990s in particular, Cruise did a lot of his training on Scientology’s upper levels at the California compound where Miscavige is based.

Over the years, he and Miscavige have raced motorbikes, practised clay-pigeon shooting and enjoyed the base’s facilities together. In November 2006, Miscavige was best man at Cruise’s wedding to Katie Holmes in Italy, rubbing shoulders with the likes of David Beckham and Will Smith.

But some of Miscavige’s former colleagues say he has installed a reign of fear inside the movement. And they say he is dragging it towards disaster.

Next: Marc Headley's Story