St. Petersburg Times - March 5, 2011
Lawsuit claims Church of Scientology violated child labor and wage laws
By Thomas C. Tobin and Joe Childs | Times Staff Writers
A runaway from the Church of Scientology's restrictive religious order, the Sea Org, alleges in two lawsuits filed Friday that the church violated California laws regulating child labor, wages and school attendance.
Daniel Montalvo, who turns 20 today, also contends his parents, who remain in the Sea Org, neglected him and breached their duty to protect him from harm by ceding his care to the church.
Church spokesman Tommy Davis said Friday night the church had not been served with the suits and could not comment on them. He noted Montalvo took Church of Scientology property — computer hard drives — when he left valued at tens of thousands of dollars. Then, with the help of church defectors Montalvo moved them across state lines.
Born in Ecuador, Montalvo moved with his parents to the church's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater when he was 5. He stayed there until age 15, when he was transferred to Los Angeles, where he worked at church facilities until leaving last September.
The lawsuits filed in state court in L.A. include allegations that Montalvo:
• Was permitted to attend school about one day a week because working for Sea Org took priority.
• Spent his childhood working at least 40 hours a week, and often more than 100 hours a week for pay that ranged from $35 to $50 a week.
• Had no work permits required of minors.
• Was made to work back-to-back 12-hour days in the fall of 2007, when the church was pushing its staff to produce and sell a new book release.
• From 2008 to 2010, was punished along with other workers for lack of production. He was made to run laps wearing a jacket and tie, clean grease traps and do push ups.
• Worked past midnight for two months in 2009 after rising at 6 a.m. each day, and was made to do push ups and dig ditches for lack of production.
• Suffered an accident at age 16 while cleaning a "notching" machine at the church's printing unit, Bridge Publications. Half of his right index finger was cut off and no ambulance was called, the lawsuit asserts. It says Montalvo was taken to the hospital but told by the Sea Org to tell doctors he was a volunteer. He was not to mention Scientology.
According to one of the two lawsuits, Montalvo's parents "effectively abandoned" him, and his caretakers in the church failed to adequately educate him or provide sufficient care, including medical treatment.
"Intentionally deprived of the basic skills needed to permit him to become a functioning adult member of society, Daniel now comes before the court a 19-year-old man with an eighth grade education, without assets, without a resume despite having labored for hundreds of hours per week over the last five years," the lawsuit states. "Every adult in Daniel's childhood failed him.''
Montalvo also has filed a wage and hour claim with the state's Division of Labor Standards seeking more than $150,000 in back wages for the three years — 2007 to 2010 — he worked for Bridge Publications. Davis called the claim "absurd.''
Other Sea Org members have taken the church to court in recent years, making similar claims. But Montalvo's case differs in that it invokes laws protecting children, said his lawyer, S. Christopher "Kit" Winter.
In one notable case, Claire and Marc Headley of California sued in federal court, contending they were victims of forced labor. Claire Headley's suit also alleged she was pressured to have two abortions to remain in good standing.
The church denied all claims and said Headley's abortions were her decision.
A federal judge dismissed the Headleys' suits last year, citing in part a "ministerial exception" that generally prevents courts from prying into the affairs of any church.
But Winter argued that Montalvo would not be considered a church minister because he never conducted Scientology's core religious practice of "auditing" and had little formal religious training in the church.
Even if he were to be deemed a minister, that "does not excuse you from having to attend school," Winter said. "There is nothing in the case law that says the ministerial exception overrides child labor laws and compulsory school attendance laws."
He also addressed remarks by the judge in the Headley case, who stated that the Headleys knew what they were getting into when they joined the Sea Org and could have left at any time.
Winter noted Montalvo was 5 when his parents entered the Sea Org with him in tow and he could not have been expected to leave the group on his own. The lawsuits seek unspecified damages.
The Headleys are appealing.
Their allegations and those of Montalvo echo the claims of former church members who recently disclosed that they have been interviewed at length by FBI agents specializing in human trafficking. The FBI has said it will not confirm or deny whether an investigation is taking place. Asked Friday whether Montalvo had been interviewed by the FBI, Winter would not comment.
Montalvo ran away from the Sea Org on Sept. 24, 2010, aided by former executives of the church whose accounts of abuse in the Sea Org were published by the St. Petersburg Times in 2009.
Two defectors picked him up in a car near a church headquarters building on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. He flew to Florida and moved in to the Palm Harbor home of former Sea Org executive Tom DeVocht, whom Montalvo had known as a child when his father worked for DeVocht at church facilities in Clearwater.
The plan was for Montalvo to work for DeVocht. But Montalvo's parents intervened by phone from California, DeVocht said, as did an aunt, who lives in Clearwater and also is a Scientologist.
After conversations with church lawyer Kendrick Moxson, Montalvo agreed to return to L.A. A church staffer met Montalvo at the airport, his suit says, and took him to church attorneys who questioned him about five missing church hard drives. He then was taken to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Montalvo was arrested on grand theft charges in connection with the hard drives, which Winter says were returned within days, and briefly jailed until bailed out by former church members. He has not been charged. One of the lawsuits filed Friday accuses Moxon of false imprisonment for luring Montalvo back to L.A. with deceptive statements.
Montalvo has been living since then on a secluded, 12-acre estate in Malibu owned by actor Jason Beghe, a former Scientologist who told the Times on Friday: "I thought that he would need to have a little space and have a safe environment.''
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Scientology Forced Labor Claims Hit the 9th Circuit
ReplyDeleteBy MATT REYNOLDS, Courthouse News Service February 13, 2012
PASADENA, Calif. (CN) - Two former Scientology ministers want the 9th Circuit to let them sue the church for forced labor, rejecting application of the First Amendment's ministerial exception.
Husband and wife Claire and Marc Headley each filed complaints against the Church of Scientology under the Trafficking Victims Act after leaving the Sea Organization, an order of Scientology in which members work long hours and perform hard labor without pay.
The Headleys worked at the church from the early 1990s until 2005. Claire Headley claimed that the church prohibited her from having children and was coerced into having two abortions. She also alleged that members who tried to leave the church were followed, brought back, and deprived of food and sleep, among other punishments.
In his complaint, Marc Headley said ministers at the church physically abused him. He also claimed that he was told that he would be excommunicated from his family if he left the church without first going through a "routing out" process that requires members to continue their duties for free and perform hard labor.
Marc Headley has published a book about his experiences at the church, "Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology."
In 2010, U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer threw out the Headleys' complaints because he found their claims failed under the First Amendment's ministerial exception. On Thursday, a three-judge appeals panel heard arguments to revive the case
"The simple fact is that where a religious organization does not have a religious justification for the conduct at issue it cannot avail itself of the protection of the First Amendment," the Headleys' counsel, Kathryn Saldana of Kendall Brill Klieger, told the panel.
Asked whether the court could consider the claims without first reading the doctrine of the church to determine psychological compulsion, Saldana said the Scientology church had been "subversive of good order" and had violated fundamental constitutional rights.
The church's attorney, Eric Lieberman, countered that the Headleys' claims related only to their "participation in the religion."
A forced labor claim is barred, "based upon psychological factors which relate to the beliefs: the religious upbringing, the religious training, the religious practices, the religious lifestyle restraints, religious order, and the rules and customs and discipline of a church," Lieberman said.
In her five-minute rebuttal Saldana continued tying the case to constitutional rights, rather than religious doctrine. "This country was created on the basis of freedom," Saldana said. "The 13th Amendment was enacted to ban involuntary servitude and slavery, and Congress in enacting the forced labor statute recognized that the definition they've given for forced labor is a crime of involuntary servitude," she added.
Judges Dorothy Nelson, Diarmuid O'Scannlain and Norman Smith presided over the hearing.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/13/43831.htm
Australia's child labour camp
ReplyDeleteBryan Seymour, Today Tonight February 14, 2012
In the middle of suburban Australia is a secret compound that's labelled 'degrading' and 'inhumane', with allegations of keeping children prisoner.
Right in the middle of a quiet suburb is a place where children are separated from their parents, and forced to work full time for no pay, and live in squalid conditions.
Those who've survived this place say they were brainwashed into believing they could not leave, and that they deserved the shocking treatment dished out.
A young man who escaped the place with the help of his father, Shane Kelsey says “I lived in that garage for about a year and a half, maybe two years.”
Shane is now 21-years-old. Until just over a year ago he had never used the internet, watched television or followed the media.
“You're not allowed to read any books other than scientology books, you can't read newspapers, no radio, no movies, nothing,” Shane said.
Shane says he was held captive and groomed to see all of us on the outside as pathetic, useless and stupid.
“So I lived in a garage until that got flooded by a storm, and my mum got really pissed off and said 'what the hell' and so I got moved into a closet. It is a closet under the stairs - maybe two metres long and a metre wide,” Shane said.
The true Australian headquarters of the Church of Scientology are located in the Sydney suburb of Dundas. The RPF base - which stands for Rehabilitation Project Force - is where Scientologists are sent for punishment and training, for crimes that most of us would regard as trivial.
More than 50 requests for interviews on camera with representatives from the Church of Scientology have been flatly refused.
The bottom line is they don't want people to know what's going on inside the centre, and those who've lived in there, like Shane, say it's like a gulag, or a prison. Yet it's in the middle of a suburb, which could be any suburb in Australia.
People would he horrified to know what has been going on in there for so many years, and continues to this day.
Shane Kelsey's mother and father were dedicated Scientologists in Sydney, so they put their son Shane into its highest core at the age of six - little Shane moved into a tiny room with eleven other children.
By the age of seven Shane says “we'd go down the streets and there'd be eight of us, ten of us, young as, and we'd go down and pledge people up to ‘drug free lives’.
“I signed my contract when I was eight-years-old. It was a billion-year contract, which means you're volunteering or servicing the Church for the next billion years,” Shane said.
“We used to do marching, close order drilling, things like that. Just because it was a form of discipline,” he said.
Shane saw his parents once a week. His mother and father would soon separate, and his dad Adrian moved overseas, and then left Scientology.
Meanwhile, the work schedule for children was fulltime, hard and without reward.
Working 35 hours a week when he was eight-years-old, by the time he was fourteen, the work changed to kitchen duty.
A military muster every morning required marching and saluting to the cause of saving mankind from the intergalactic ravages, described by the Church’s science fiction founder L Ron Hubbard.
The kids wore all black uniforms, and were always required to run, never walk.
So-called home schooling was provided in fits and starts, taking a back seat to hard labour and brainwashing.
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ReplyDelete“As soon as you turn fifteen, anyone, you're straight out of school. It doesn't matter what grade you're in, what level of maths, what level of anything, you're straight out," Shane said.
The mess hall served food priced at 30 cents per meal, mostly beans and rice. The adults ate first.
“They would all come in and eat whatever they wanted, and then we went after them to take what's there - sometimes there wouldn't be much, so you'd get little bits of food, and it wasn't really sufficient,” Shane said.
Those who dared question the brutality of this place were dealt with swiftly and severely.
“They used to live under our squash courts - it's a mud, dirt floor,” Shane recalled.
“We put people in there and they live in there, when they're on the RPF they'd sleep down there, and they'd study down there.”
Why would you put people in a dank, mouldy, sinking foundation underneath a squash court?
According to Shane it’s “because you're a bad person, you have to be segregated from everyone.”
By the age of fifteen Shane was living a nightmare even he now struggles to believe.
“As soon as I turned fifteen I was working seven days a week, fourteen hour days.”
That's 100 hours a week spent in a commercial kitchen. Shane and other children slaved away - cooking meals all day, every day, studying and snatching what little sleep they could.
“We'd get anywhere between $4 pay to $35 a week,” Shane said.
Among those who needed to be fed was billionaire James Packer. For several years beginning in 2002, Packer came to the Church of Scientology in the early mornings to receive auditing and instruction.
There is no suggestion Packer had any idea who was preparing his meals, or their work conditions.
Packer left scientology around 2008. It would be more than two years until Shane made his break for freedom.
In late 2010, Adrian Kelsey decided to rescue his son.
He invited us to document his attempt, and informed police of his plans to go to the compound and demand his son's release. He had protest signs ready if they refused to let him come out. When Shane came out to meet his father it was the first time they’d seen each other in four years.
Shane and Adrian were followed by Scientology ‘enforcers’, so Shane reluctantly returned to the compound to avoid trouble. One week later he was sent to work near the compound's boundary, and made a break for it.
“Scientology have no right to mess with family,” said Adrian Kelsey.
It took Shane fourteen months to shake off Scientology, discover the truth, learn about the real world and tell his story.
“One thing that would be good is if they actually just stood up and said ‘sorry, it wasn't right, we're going to change it’, but that is just not going to happen,” Adrian said.
Peta Obrien, who lived at the RPF base between 1997 and 2000 confirms Shane's account of the appalling conditions.
“You do two hours of work, then you go and study for two and a half hours in the RPF. It was five hours, and then you go to work again - hard labour, picking with a rock pick, chipping away at rocks till they erode,” O’Brien said.
Now a successful architectural designer, O’Brien believes Scientology has nothing of value to offer the community.
“Close it down, doors shut and all the staff members going back to their families, and living their lives,” O’Brien said.
“I was there for ten years all up in the Church of Scientology as a staff member, and how could I inflict that on my children? Which I'll forever feel like I have to make up,” she said.
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ReplyDeletePerth-based lawyer Grainne O'Donovan has devoted her time and expertise to helping survivors of the cult seeking justice.
“There's not a law in New South Wales that makes it illegal to work a child for those hours. That's extraordinary, but that's the case,” O’Donovan said.
O’Donovan has also campaigned with the internet-based activist group Anonymous that has raised awareness about Scientology.
“This is degrading and inhumane treatment,’ O'Donovan said.
“At some level they (Scientologists) have become convinced, I suppose, that it's appropriate, and that the group is more important than the individual,” she said.
RPF bases like the Sydney compound exist in other countries. Those who've escaped from them tell similar stories – of having fingers broken on the orders of the leader of Scientology, screamed at, and slapped for twenty hours straight, whilst having cold water poured over their head, and much more.
Independent Federal Senator Nick Xenophon has championed a campaign to shed light on the darkness at the heart of this group.
“Shane's story is one of shocking abuse, child abuse, it's one of a child being enslaved,” Senator Xenophon said.
“The authorities need to investigate this urgently. This is something that requires police investigation,” he said.
“What makes this worse is that this organisation is being subsidised by Australian taxpayers because it doesn't pay any tax.”
Meanwhile Shane has his father back, yet his mother Lesley remains inside Scientology.
“I hope she hears word of this and sums up the courage to actually find it and watch it,” Shane said.
“She will have to escape. They won't let her go. Leaving's not an option, so she will have to escape,” Shane said.
The Church of Scientology refused to be interviewed for this story. In a written response scientology denied any mistreatment of its members.
The response also declared that anyone on the program is there because they want to be there, and that they are completely free to withdraw at any time during induction or later.
“When Shane left the church in late 2010, he simply got his bag and walked out the door,” said the statement.
The celebrities used to advertise Scientology likely have little idea that people like Shane Kelsey even exist, but now they do.
Adrian and Shane hope they do something about it for the sake of other families.
Senator Xenophon says he's taking this story to Bill Shorten, the Federal Minister for Workplace Relations.
If you have any information we should know about Scientology, let us know.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/latest/article/-/12905379/australia-s-child-labour-camp/
Scientology did not violate forced labor law, appeals court rules
ReplyDeleteLos Angeles Times July 24, 2012
Scientology did not violate a labor law by failing to pay for the work of two former members of the church’s Sea Organization -- a wing that restricts participants’ outside communications, marriage and children, censors mail and monitors phone calls -- a federal appeals court said Tuesday.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Marc and Claire Headley, who sued the church, knew that joining the group, known as Sea Org, required largely unpaid labor and failed to take many opportunities to leave.
The Headleys sued the church under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a federal law primarily intended to prohibit the forced labor of immigrants. A district court ruled for Scientology, and the Headleys appealed.
The former Sea Org members grew up in Scientology and joined the elite religious order while in their teens, Marc in 1989 and Claire in 1991. They married in 1992 and remained with the group until 2005.
“In keeping with church disciplinary policy, the church censored the Headleys’ mail, monitored their phone calls, and required them to obtain permission to access the Internet,” Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, an appointee of former President Reagan, wrote for the court.
Marc and hundreds of others had to hand clean human excrement from an aeration pond in 2004, and Claire had to subsist on protein bars and water for six to eight months in 2002, O’Scannlain wrote. But the court said the evidence overwhelmingly showed that the Headleys voluntarily worked for the Sea Org “because they believed that it was the right thing to do” and “enjoyed it.”
Although the couple faced the risk of being declared “suppressive persons” and possibly losing contact with family and friends if they left, that potential did not qualify as “serious harm” under the human trafficking law, the court concluded.
The panel suggested that the Headleys might have fared better had they sued on different grounds.
“They did not bring claims for assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or any of a number of other theories that might have better fit the evidence,” O’Scannlain wrote.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/scientology-federal-appeals-court.html
Parents learn the hard way how bad Scientology is for their kids
ReplyDeleteby Tony Ortega, The Underground Bunker October 13, 2024
Bruce Hines is back with another devastating look inside Scientology…
For many years, up until the late 1990s, Castile Canyon School was located in a valley nestled among the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains. The canyon itself meanders for roughly four miles in a southwesterly direction from that valley down to the San Jacinto River. To my way of thinking, ‘river’ is a bit of a misnomer, as most of the time it is just a dry creek bed. In some years during the winter months when there is relatively more rain, water flows in it. Every so often the rain can be heavy and then it really is a river that sometimes floods. The amount of precipitation varies a lot from year to year.
The ‘river’ travels northwest through the town of San Jacinto, along the southern border of Gilman Hot Springs, and eventually into Mystic Lake, which grows and sometimes shrinks to nothing depending on rainfall. Gilman Hot Springs is the location of Golden Era Productions, a part of the sprawling international network of Scientology, and was for years where all of the top management units of that cult resided. The valley where the school sat was a flat area amongst hills where four creeks converge. It occupied something like 500 acres. Again, those creeks were usually dry and could be more accurately described as drainage channels during rainy periods.
The cult referred to this property as Happy Valley and it was generally called HV. In the early 2000s, Scientology sold the property to the Soboba Native Americans, who renamed it as The Oaks.
All right, enough of that. I can get pretty geeky about geography sometimes. I actually wanted to write about the Castile Canyon School. I wouldn’t say that it was actually a school as most people would think of one.
In 1988 I think it was, it was decreed by the powers that were that Sea Org members could no longer have children. The reasoning was that they should be able to focus on the vital task of saving the world without the distraction of offspring. This was stated in an issue that was ostensibly written by Guillaume Lesevre, who had the post of Executive Director International at the time. But I’d be willing to bet that he was acting on orders from David Miscavige. Lesevre had two kids and Miscavige had none. Prior to that edict, Sea Org couples were allowed to have children, and the various Sea Org bases around the world had child care facilities, albeit poor ones.
Afterwards, if a woman in the Sea Org got pregnant, she was strongly encouraged to get an abortion. If she refused, the couple got sent out to a lower organization to become staff there. They would find themselves in a so-called “small and failing org,” trying to survive on pay derived from the miniscule income of such a place. Still, though no new babies would be supported by the Sea Org, there were many members who already had children of various ages, which included staff at the International Headquarters at Gilman Hot Springs in California. So, it had to be decided what to do with these kids. It would have been sensible and humane to have living quarters in which parents could live with their children. But no, that would have cut into the 100+ hour workweeks required of the workers at the base. And what’s more, it would have cost more money.
The solution was the Castile Canyon School. It took 15 or 20 minutes to get there from the Int base by car. The kids were confined to that property 24/7. Kind of like a boarding school, but not really. Parents who had transportation (they might have had their own car or could get a ride with someone else) were allowed to see their children for a few hours on Sunday morning.
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This was during the time referred to as CSP (for Clean the Ship Program, a holdover from the time when the Sea Org was located on a boat), when the parents were supposed to be cleaning their living areas, doing laundry, and buying (out of their meager pay) essentials, such as toothpaste, shampoo, etc. However, there was often some kind of ‘emergency’ on the base that cut into this routine.
ReplyDeleteThe creation of this place for the children of Int base staff also solved another problem. Previously, they lived in facilities for kids in LA. There had been an existing practice that their parents would, most weeks, travel to LA on Saturdays to spend time with their kids, returning by lunchtime Sunday. The parents would have to get excused from ‘Saturday renos’ (short for renovations), which was a weekly time when almost all of the Sea Org members on the Int base did manual labor in an effort to spruce up the property. Moving those children out to HV put an end to that ‘off-purpose’ custom of having some semblance of a family.
Being able to spend some time with one’s kids became possible during a milder and relatively bit more civilized era in the Sea Org. Miscavige became the top guy at the Int base in 1987, and after that the atmosphere became more and more draconian. The ban on new kids and greatly cutting down on parent visitation were examples of that transformation.
The idea was promoted that this ‘school’ was the ideal place for a child to grow up. They would be educated using Scientology’s ‘study technology,’ which was viewed as a far superior way to learn. As if. They would not be exposed to the outside world with all its ‘false data’ and ‘psych influences’ and other evils of ‘wog’ society. They would not accumulate ‘misunderstood words’ that would cripple their ability to be competent and smart. They would learn the basics of Scientology ‘management tech’ and the organizational structure of the Sea Organization. They would learn Sea Org etiquette (like, for example, one should always address a person with a senior position with ‘sir’ even if that person is female), and marching and saluting and other paramilitary stuff. They would become effective and obedient. They would learn discipline. They would learn to adhere to a strict schedule. They would be the future executives of the Sea Org. Nothing could be further from the truth.
These children spent much of their time doing manual labor. They were organized into groups with a hierarchy of authority. These groups were given ‘projects’ to complete. Their work included such things as hauling rocks from the nearby creek beds which would be used to build low stone walls; picking and processing olives from some trees that were on the property; cleaning to ‘white glove’ standards various areas; gathering and packaging vegetables that grew in the fields, for use in the kitchen (or galley, as it was called) on the Int base; laundry; washing dishes; and many other things the Sea Org supervisors dreamt up.
There were times during the week when the kids were supposed to study or be in school. They were given a series of courses to complete, which varied according to the child’s age and previous studies. In Scientology there is no teacher. They are supposed to read things at their own speed, and do a lot of demonstrations and drills, all according to their ‘checksheet.’ And of course they spent a lot of time looking up words in a dictionary using a prescribed lengthy procedure. There was one older person that was supposed to stand around in the course room and supervise them. In addition to courses on things related to Scientology, there were others that were supposed to teach the three R’s.
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I happen to know, because my son was one of those kids, that for most of them the progress was very slow and they would get out of going to ‘study time’ if they could. The kids there had to be warned about various dangers in the immediate physical environment. Tarantulas and black widows were common. So were rattle snakes and scorpions. One could hear coyotes howling most every night, and they would approach the living areas often in search of food. It was also a mountain lion area. The surrounding vegetation included a lot of cactus and poison oak. They weren’t supposed to venture out alone or go out after dark.
ReplyDeleteThe ‘school’ had that property more or less to themselves after the late 1980s when it was formed. But in 1995 it had to co-exist with the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), the euphemism for the detention and correction camp for supposedly wayward Sea Org members. There had been earlier iterations of the RPF out at Happy Valley (for Int base staff who had gotten in trouble), but when the property was converted to the Castile Canyon School, the workers who were deemed to have messed up had to be ‘handled’ elsewhere.
However, in 1995 it was deemed that there was again a need to have an RPF out at HV for inadequate Int base staff. So a compound in a far corner of the property was constructed some distance from the ‘school.’ I had the misfortune of being assigned to that RPF. Our routine included eight hours of manual labor every day, performed in carrying out various projects around the property. These projects included things like digging ditches and running water pipes for irrigation lines, building greenhouses, erecting a barn-like structure to house farming equipment, planting an apple orchard, and many more such tasks.
We had to run everywhere, as per the policies governing the RPF. Of necessity, on occasion we went near the children who were involved in their own activities. My son, who was ten years old at the time, had to see his father trotting by, in a formation like a military platoon moving in double time. We were not allowed to interact with the children and they had been instructed to stay away from us. I had to basically ignore my own child, though a few times I was able to surreptitiously give him a quick smile.
Everyone was supposed to act as though it was a perfectly normal state of affairs. While on the RPF, I wasn’t allowed to see my wife and son at all. Then, in 1998 I apparently completed the program and went back to the Int base. My son was happy that he could see me again, even if it was only on Sunday mornings. To my lasting regret, I had a run-in with David Miscavige at the Int base and got sent back to the RPF again. My son happened to see me doing ‘grueling’ work (Miscavige’s term) in RPF clothes. That’s how he found out. He was understandably upset. By this time he was 13 years old. Later he told me how he and another kid sneaked out, crept up one of those dry creek beds to the RPF site, and tried to peer through bushes behind a shack, where a security guard was posted, to hopefully see what I was doing. He ended up getting in trouble for that.
The next year a decision was reached by the authorities on high to terminate the ‘school.’ By then the youngest child was about twelve. All of the kids were told to sign Sea Org contracts (you know, the ones for a billion years, literally). I think they all did. I don’t know if there was any other option for them. Possibly they could have been sent to live with some relatives or friends, away from their parents. I believe they all had to get security checks (interrogation while connected to an E-meter). Then they got sent to be staff in a Scientology organization either in Los Angeles or Clearwater. My son got posted, as a fourteen-year-old, in an org called ASHO Foundation in LA. The RPF took over the buildings and areas that had been the ‘school.’
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A few turbulent years ensued for both of us. His mother left the Sea Org (via their standard routing-out procedure). That meant that he was by himself, living in a dorm, and trying to make it in the very challenging life of a Sea Org member. I got sent to New York in 2001. He decided he wanted to leave and and made this known to the appropriate people. As usual, they did everything they could to convince him to stay.
ReplyDeleteFinally, he was offered to be sent to New York to be with me, and he agreed. I remember taking the subway and a bus to pick him up at La Guardia. I was allowed to do so because he would be a new staff member in the org where I was posted. It was sometime in 2002. I hadn’t seen him for over three years and had not spoken to him for over six years. I was happy about it and so was he.
He turned eighteen later that year. He started working in the unit where I did and was hoping that this would continue. But in the typical instability of Sea Org existence, he kept getting sent out on projects to lower orgs in the eastern U.S. So, he actually wasn’t able to work with me as he had been promised. His last project was working on the central files in Buffalo, as part of making it the first ‘Ideal Org.’
In February 2003, he sneaked away by bus and left the Sea Organization. Two months later I did the same from NYC. The fact that my son was gone made it easier for me to take off. I had felt some responsibility for him when he was in the Sea Org, even though I had zero say in what was done with him.
Fortunately, and it really was a lucky thing, we ended up together in Denver. That in itself is a complicated story. The so-called education that he got at the Castile Canyon School truly sucked. He was semi-literate. He struggled with the simplest arithmetic. He knew nothing of history or civics or literature or science. I tried my best to help him learn enough to get a GED, which he eventually did. Then we got him enrolled in a community college, where he was tested and put in classes that brought him up to the level of a high school graduate. He was then able to transfer to a university where, after much persistence, he earned a bachelor’s degree.
After all was said and done, that was a happy outcome. But I don’t think he has ever fully recovered from his awful upbringing in that cult. He had known nothing else until he finally left.
Happy Valley has a certain high-desert beauty about it. It is quiet. It is surrounded by mountains. The air is clear and the sky is very blue. Sage brush with its varying coloration covers much of the hillsides. Prickly pear cactus dot the area, with gorgeous red and yellow flowers that blossom in the spring, and bearing tasty fruit (once the spines are carefully removed). Oak trees of a certain type line the creek beds, where fresh water flows during rainy spells. Some earlier tenants had planted many century plants — these are a kind of giant agave, typically 6 to10 feet across and just about as tall. After something like 20 or 30 years they spectacularly put out a giant flower stalk that reaches up to 30 feet in height (which several of them did while I was there).
Sadly, all that beauty was an unlikely setting for all the horrors that went on there while Happy Valley was in the possession of the cult of Scientology. Castile Canyon School was a nice-sounding front for far more nefarious goings-on.
https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/parents-learn-the-hard-way-how-bad