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ABC NIGHTLINE: INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY -- ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEW |
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[Bruce Hines] I was assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force, it's called, or generally known as the RPF. *
[Martin Bashir] The RPF is a disciplinary program for Sea Org members --
which Hines says includes manual labor and intensive counseling.
[Bruce Hines] The question they ask, "Was there an evil purpose or destructive intention that prompted you to commit that overt?" After many hours of this, you start to come up with things like, "Oh, I guess I must really want to destroy mankind."
Whoosh. When I think about that.
Six years of that was a lot.
[Tommy Davis] It is a program that members of the Church's religious order do voluntarily, and are given the opportunity to do if they are found to have failed in their duties. [Martin Bashir] Bruce Hines says that when he was in the RPF, that there were periods of time when he could not see his son. [Bruce Hines] In this case, where the RPF was, was also where the school was. And I would get to see him sort of run by in the distance sometimes. And we'd kind of wave to each other.
But I'm not allowed to actually talk to him.
[Martin Bashir] I asked Tommy Davis what the Church's current policy is on the RPF, and the family.
Q. If somebody is married, and they are sent to the RPF, are there controls placed on how much they can see their family?
[Tommy Davis] Um, there are specific policies which apply to the Rehabilitation Project Force, which govern how the person doing the program, you know, what they do, what their schedule is -- [Martin Bashir] And how much time in a week would an individual be allowed to see their family in the schedule?
[Tommy Davis] I don't know. I don't know off the top of my head. [Martin Bashir] Once a week?
[Tommy Davis] Probably, yeah, I would imagine once a week. That sounds about right, yeah. [Martin Bashir] Does that sound appropriate?
[Tommy Davis] I think so. Yeah. Sure. [Martin Bashir] During his time in the RPF, Bruce Hines says he received some sad news about his marriage.
[Bruce Hines] At that time I was married to another Sea Org member who was not in the RPF, and she decided she wanted to divorce me. This was very, very common. Someone in the RPF, their spouse would divorce them because they would receive pressure to do it.
[Martin Bashir] The Church says it does not pressure couples to divorce. Bruce Hines left the Church in 2003.
He and his son, who also left, say they are considered to be suppressive people by the Church, a Scientology term for anti-social personalities. As a result, they say close family members still in the Church, are no longer talking to them. [Martin Bashir] Did you lose family members?
[Bruce Hines] I have two nieces who live in Clearwater, Florida, who won't talk to me. My sister's former husband, he won't talk to me. And my son, who was born in the Sea Org, he can't speak to his brother or his mother because they refuse it. He's out. He's now left. And because of that, he's now suppressive. And so they are required to disconnect.
[Martin Bashir] Bruce Hines's ex-wife told ABC News she disconnected from him and their son, because she didn't want to have anything to do with anyone who lied about her church.
Scientology told us they never force anyone to disconnect. Rathbun says that after he saw David Miscavige attack his friend Tom De Vocht, he finally cracked.
The Church of Scientology has strenuously denied that its leader, David Miscavige, has ever been violent toward any staff members. But after spending 27 years within the organization, one senior staff member says he could no longer withstand the climate of violence that he says was created and encouraged by its leader. Marty Rathbun says he decided to end his long career in the Church of Scientology after he saw a longtime friend attacked by David Miscavige.
[Marty Rathbun] Martin, I swear to you, I was there, and it was that moment of truth for me where I either am going to put this guy's lights out for good, or I'm going to remove myself from the environment so I don't. And that is literally what was going through my head. I cannot stand to watch this. I cannot live with this anymore. [Martin Bashir] Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis says that is a lie.
[Tommy Davis] These are all people who were removed, either by Mr. Miscavige or by their peers, for gross misconduct and malfeasance in their positions. We were glad that they were gone. And on top of that, the Church has literally taken off, explosively, since they were gone, and frankly, to a large extent because they are gone.
[Martin Bashir] Since leaving the Church, Marty Rathbun has said little about his experience --
until he gave a series of interviews to the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, published this summer.
He set up a website, inviting other Scientologists to make contact if they too are considering defection -- _______________ * Testimony of LaVenda Van Schaick, City of Clearwater Commission Hearings Re: The Church of Scientology The RPF was at — in the stairwells, the floors, at the very end, not on the upper floors because all the public was on the upper floors, but on the bottom floors at the very far end. It's like a closet cubicle that ten to fifteen people were stacked up on each other. It smelled; it's like a sweatbox; it looked like a small concentration camp. There was, basically — I tried to talk to someone that was in the RPF — we were old friends — and he couldn't talk to me. They're not allowed to talk, constant running, chipping paint — at that time they were chipping paint off of cement. And when they finished that, someone would come down and drop some more paint on the cement and they would chip paint off of the cement. And that was the big project at that particular time. It was how much paint they could chip off the sidewalks. And this was their major project. And as far as — it didn't matter whether they were female or men, it was — the same thing was going on. But the conditions were really gross. No cleanliness, smelled bad. At that time they were wearing all green — and I remember that really stuck out in my mind — and dark blue to signify that we were not allowed as public people to talk to these people. It was just one of the conditions. We were screened when we came in, and we were told that anybody in the RPF was going through heavy conditions orders and were not allowed communication. Testimony of Lori Taverna, City of Clearwater Commission Hearings Re: The Church of Scientology When I was at the Fort Harrison, there was a thing called the RPF, which is the Rehabilitation Project Force. I never felt good about this. There's a lot of things in Scientology that I never felt good about. I saw them and kind of just didn't understand them, especially, when I saw some of my friends in this RPF, very nice, good people. One day they would be fine and smiling and, then a good friend of mine, the next day, she was in this RPF. She was -- everyone in it has to wear blue. They wear blue shorts and shirts. They're not allowed to speak to anyone. They had to always run; you're never allowed to stop. If you stopped running, you're punished or put into something more severe, which is called the RPF's RPF, if you break the rules. That's something that most Scientologists don't know about. I didn't know that much about it at the time. But all I know is what I saw. I saw a few people who looked very sick. One woman had sores all over her body, open sores. I went into my friend. I asked her if I'm allowed to speak to her. She said, "You can speak to your friend, but in the RPF they're not allowed to communicate to anyone outside the RPF." So, I went to her, and she kept her head down. And when I addressed her, I said -- her eyes were all swollen, she had been crying. And I said, "What happened?" She said she couldn't talk about it, and she said -- she called me "Sir." As a matter of fact, this is the person who recruited me for that Operation Z, a very bright, beautiful, young girl. And in the RPF, if anyone speaks to you, you have to address them as "Sir." And I felt very upset for her. I cried, thinking that she was calling me "Sir." But she just said, "It's going to be fine," you know, through tears in her eyes. And I don't know the details of why she got in there. People in the RPF are not allowed to eat with the rest of the people. After we finished eating, they would come and eat whatever, you know, was left, you know, same food, though, but never sit at the table with another person. They're considered a lower -- you know, a lower level. And the purpose of it is to rehabilitate them because they have become so degraded and so psychotic that they have to be separated and go through this particular physical work. They work for half a day and get audited or processed for half a day until they come up to the next level. Testimony of Scott Mayer, City of Clearwater Commission Hearings Re: The Church of Scientology MR. MAYER: [RPF?] Well, you could be assigned to a — primarily, it has to do with a lot of crimes against Scientology. And those crimes could be things like not applying the policy letter when you should have, not having a good gross income for the week, not having it go up steadily, maybe it went down for six weeks or something like that. So, you could be pulled off of a post and put on the Rehabilitation Project Force. You were held up to ridicule by literally everybody in the organization, you were not allowed to communicate to or — communicate unless you were first communicated to by somebody. I spent time in bilge one time for being late from coming off liberty, and I spent twelve hours in bilge water that deep in the bottom of one of the ships, cleaning the scum off of the hull because I was late. And I went without sleep at that particular time for about thirty-six hours giving my amends to the Church for my crime of not being on post in time. I observed people in a chain locker on this ship for a week on bread and water. A lady named Holly Judd in a place called American Saint Hill Organization in Los Angeles spent something like nine or ten days in a closed room on bread and water, writing up all of her crimes against humanity for the last trillion years, and the Ethics Officer would throw them back into her and say that wasn't enough. Testimony of David Ray, City of Clearwater Commission Hearings Re: The Church of Scientology [E]ventually — this was right before I left — I wound up in the RPF, Rehabilitation Project Force. And was I in for a surprise. What it is is a group of people that have done something, what they consider, against the Church of Scientology, okay? The Rehabilitation Project Force is the last thing they do to try to save your being before they kick you out, okay? And I was scared to death to be kicked out, because me, along with everybody else who's there, has a basic need inside to do something good for somebody else, okay? And we were led to believe that we were doing something good for a whole lot of people, and — we didn't want to lose that. I didn't want to lose that. So, I said, "Okay. I'll go into the RPF." So, I went in there. And basically, what it is is emptying all the garbage out of the restaurants, okay? Restaurant garbage is wet; it's old food; it's got flies and all kinds of bugs crawling around in it. And we would pick up the cans, take them down to the garbage dump, dump them into the garbage dump. And then, at the end of the day, we'd have to go in there in our shoes and stomp it down. And I don't know what kind of diseases we were exposed to, but we were getting some really weird ones, okay? And you'd get inside there and this restaurant garbage would be just like quicksand. You'd go all the way to the bottom. You'd be, you know, more than waist deep in this stuff, all right, and it smelled awful. And then, you'd have to go back and clean up, okay? And the food that they served the RPFers was just rotten. They served all the leftovers after all of the staff on the whole base, all the buildings, ate, okay? Then, we ate alone, whatever was left over. And it wasn't very good. And it didn't give us the nourishment that we needed to keep our bodies going. Good grief. It would be pieces — sometimes, pieces of meat, pieces of beef or chicken or pork, usually a salad and a drink. But the salad was wilted and it smelled rotten, like, it had been — you know, somebody had dumped sour milk on it. The cheese was no good. It was all molded, but molded to the point it was fuzzy, you know, like a peach. And one time they had french fries there, and I picked up a handful of french fries and started eating them and I found a french fried palmetto bug in my french fries. And I wondered how many I had eaten, you know, when I saw that one. So, I threw that out. So, my diet, my personal diet — I'd run across the street and get myself a handful of cookies, and that's basically what I lived on, cookies, because that's the only decent thing that they had to eat, in my opinion. Testimony of Adell Hartwell, City of Clearwater Commission Hearings Re: The Church of Scientology I saw my daughter very little because she, first, was in the RPF. Then, they got -- they put her in isolation again. She got ill; her fever went up one degree and down one degree, and she was in there for about two and-a-half months in this one room, not allowed to see anybody. You can imagine what that has done to her brain. ... The RPF had their clothes in boxes, and their mattresses were thrown out on the ground with the spiders and the scorpions. They had to run everywhere; you couldn't talk to them. I was written up several times for talking to Fre-Dawn. I also saw her one day -- every time I would go by on my way to work, I would see her dragging her mattress from one shade tree to the other. I said, "Why are you doing this?" And she was ill and she couldn't be in with the others, and so she was hunting shade and keeping out of the -- it's 117 degrees, and she was hunting shade because she was ill. Declaration of Andre Tabayoyon, Church of Scientology vs. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz As a Sea Org member, I received thousands of hours of training in basic Sea Org policy. In 1977 I was assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force for 18 months. In 1980 I was assigned to the RPF for another 2 1/2 years. In 1987 I was again assigned to the RPF for another 18 months. Accordingly, I spent approx. six years in total on the RPF. During these six years I also spent time — 19 full days — on the RPF's RPF. The RPF's RPF is designed to totally destroy any individual determinism to not want to do the RPF. RPF is a totally involuntary type gulag or concentration camp. In order to get out, and stay out, you must prove that you have altered the ideals, morals, social and emotional and attitudinal values of another member of the RPF of a long duration as evidenced by the physical actions and motions of the person so altered. One must also prepare written evidence in the form of success stories of how wonderful and voluntary the RPF was... I observed, participated in and was victimized by coercive and manipulative thought control processes designed to shape the thinking of the individuals upon whom these procedures were imposed. These practices are particularly prevalent in the Rehabilitation Project Force ("RPF") , a brainwashing and penal operation very similar to what I had been trained to expect from the Viet Cong, North Vietnamese and Red Chinese during my tour of duty in Vietnam.... My observations were direct and personal. I am a highly trained RPF auditor. When I had responsibilities for overseeing how the Scientology auditing technology is applied to cases of Scientologists assigned to the RPF, I received orders directly from Miscavige, Marc Yeager, Ray Mithoff, Sandi Wilhere and Hansuli Stalli, and others, to misuse the Hubbard Tech to create extreme mental and emotional distress and insanity in persons I was instructed to 'security or sec check'. We used the Hubbard Tech, including security checking on the E-Meter, in conjunction with well used coercive mind control techniques of sleep deprivation, starvation, dehydration and denial of decent accommodations. As an example of the appalling conditions to which RPFers are sometimes exposed, on one occasion when I was on RPF, my sleeping facility was a slab inside the vault of the morgue of the old Cedars Sinai Hospital. While on the RPF at Gold, I also occupied the chicken coop dormitory. This was an old chicken coop which still smelled of chicken coop droppings. However, it was not only RPFers who were deprived of adequate food and sleep. At Gold, hundreds of Sea Org members would be deprived of adequate sleep and put on a diet of rice and beans sometimes for six weeks at a time — and their weekly pay of approximately $30.00 would be cut in half. This would be punishment for lower ethics conditions such as poor production. However, when this occurred, David Miscavige would still eat his bacon, eggs, sandwiches and steak dinners. The response of human beings to these conditions is somewhat predictable. I saw many people undergo psychotic breaks. By psychotic breaks I mean being reduced to incoherent babbling, stripping off clothes, crawling around on the ground, banging heads, limbs and other body parts against furniture and walls, barking, losing all sense of one's identity and intense and persistent suicidal ideation. This is what Scientology calls the PTS type III phenomena. There is a policy which describes this, Exh O. I have seen many PTS type III cases. General Report on Scientology, by Jon Atack The RPF is virtually a labour and thought reform camp. Members are forbidden communication with any but their "bosun" (the head of the RPF); they have to comply immediately with any order; they sleep even shorter hours than other staff; they eat even poorer food than other staff (often rice, beans and porridge for weeks. For some time in Florida, "RPFers" were fed left-over food); they sleep in "pig's berthing", i.e. without beds; they do hard labour and menial tasks, including toilet and sewer cleaning; they are rarely permitted time off; they receive one quarter of the already derisory pay of other staff; and they have to write down detailed "confessions", which may be published by the organization. Finally, an RPF sentence is open-ended and may last for as much as four years. Failure to comply leads to posting to the "RPFers RPF", which according to witnesses has consisted of false imprisonment. False imprisonment or "isolation" is a part of the "technology" of Scientology. There are hundreds of former members who suffered the RPF. The move time to Cedars came. All nine buildings had been totally renovated and painted inside like a psychedelic amusement park. Each floor was painted in weird, brilliant colors, with all kinds of abstract designs. The inside of the place looked like a circus. I'll never forget the week preceding the move. I don't know how we all did it. We were told there was not enough money to buy new furniture for Cedars. So from 12 a.m. till 8:00 a.m. right up until move day, all the Sea Org was up all night refinishing all the furniture at ASHO. Sanding, varnishing, repairing like mad. The senior executives never did anything, they went home early. It was real slavery and awful work. Then, in the morning we would have to go over to Cedars and put finishing touches on all the buildings. I was as always on the diet of very little food and with the speeded up schedule I would get very weak, but I kept going. Moving was incredible. I got no sleep at all for four days. Neither did many others. We started moving on a Friday night. You have to understand the extent of this move. ASHO had been set up in 1968. Therefore, it had 10 years of papers, pc folders, course packs to move, plus 300 file cabinets and over 2,000 of Hubbard's books. All the furniture, all the documents in HCO -- everything. We had five of the biggest moving vans that Mayflower makes and between ASHO and Cedars, we had to get everything to Cedars in vans, then follow the vans to Cedars and take everything out, then put everything in its proper place in the vast hospital complex. I can't begin to describe what it was like. I am only left with the impressions. ASHO Fdn had a crew of about twenty then, ASHO Day about thirty five. Fifty-five people to do all this work, actually make that forty as executives did none of the moving. I remember loading 20 lb. boxes of books in and out of moving vans all night long with no breaks, loading desk after desk from ASHO to Cedars, 300 filing cabinets weighing 90 lbs. each into the vans and out again, thousands and thousands of pc folders, chairs, course tables, lamps, telex machines, ASHO was stripped bare. I remember the morning of the third day, standing in ASHO HCO and catching 100 lb. boxes of ethics folders and documents that were being thrown at me from under the eaves. When we got all of ASHO empty, moving all of it into Cedars, all of it, I remember the ash grey faces of the crew the morning of the fourth day. I remember IBM typewriters being hurled at me off the moving van. One every minute or so. It was absolutely insane. Mad. Finally on the fourth day everything was moved in. Cedars was ready to go. The enormous complex was so big we couldn't even begin until all of it was ready for the public. The CO's called us together and said we could go to the Inn and sleep. I was about to leave when the ASHO Ethics Officer came up to me. He said there was no door on the room where all the OT folders were and that I would have to guard that door for four hours. Silently I followed him to the very bowels of the Cedars, the morgue where the folders were. I felt as if I was now dreaming, I couldn't believe this was happening. I wasn't even an OT, yet I had to guard all the OT folders. Let me describe the morgue. It had not been cleaned out. There was the scale for weighing the bodies, the huge stone table where the autopsies were done. Drains for blood, etc. There were no lights. I was left to sit on a milk crate in the dark, with racks and racks of OT folders all around me. The floor was covered in trash and there was no fresh air. It smelled of death, really stank of death and chemicals and dissection. For the first hour I just sat. Then I realized it was very cold down here. So I walked back and forth for the second hour. My mind was blank. I knew I could look in all the folders but I didn't care. I couldn't have cared less what was in them. Suddenly during the third hour I was aware of shadows in the corridor beyond me, they were people. Slowly I realized that an entire group of people lived and worked down here. I was so tired it took me a long time to realize who they were. Then it hit me. The Cedar's RPF. They lived and worked down in this stinkhole. This was their Org. Then I really found out what had happened to them. Filthy, tired, skeletons appeared before me and started begging to see the OT folders. I thought I looked bad, but I looked beautiful compared to them. They crowded around me pushing and shoving, then the mood turned ugly. They started hitting each other to get into the room behind me. I realized then what had happened. They had been totally broken. They were animals, not humans. I saw four of my friends, one a Class Nine OT6 fighting to get by me. They were punching each other in the face, pulling hair, kicking. And way down in this cellar, no one could hear them, no one cared. Someone suddenly hit me hard. I realized they were turning their anger on me, they would beat me up to get to the folders. I guess in periods of deep stress we all go a little insane. Survival of the fittest. From somewhere inside my tired brain, strength came. I stood up and with all my TR's as in as they had ever been, all my training on control of groups came back. "Friends", I said, "Believe me, I am your friend. By some strange fate I am not with you on the RPF. But believe me if you don't get out of here right now, I know you will be punished. Go now before it's too late." And they ran away into the dark. When I sat down, I was trembling all over. Because the real intent of my message had been for them to get out of the hospital. Leave Cedars. But I don't think any of them got the message. At Cedars, the routine was the same. I was still on the PTS course, still running, still stuffing letters. I hated that Complex so much. Our uniforms were changed to cutesy outfits and the entire operations was money motivated. The GO still watched me like hawks. They were right, I was breaking down. But not in the direction they wanted. My last week in the Sea Org was like a dream. One night I was told to go to the basement and stuff letters. I did this in a little room with no ventilation and moisture dripping down the walls. There was never anyone around. I was left alone most of the time at night now. That was their mistake. It gave me time to think. This night I started stuffing my 2,000 letters. The old innocent days of the Sea Org seemed very far away. The idealistic girl who had come here in '74 with dreams of new found powers and increased understanding had died. All the money I had paid had brought me nothing. Far above me the Org hummed with activity. Everyday someone else like me, gullible and hungry for answers was being drawn into Scientology. Every day someone joined the Sea Org looking for security within the group, not knowing the total control of their personality they were handing over. Every day someone got sent to the RPF. These were my thoughts as I stood there. Suddenly I flung the letters down. I needed to walk. Underneath the nine buildings were long tunnels that connected each building. Great steam pipes ran along the sides of the tunnels. It was like being in the engine room of a ship. The public didn't even know these tunnels existed. I walked for miles thinking. I knew now that I was going to die. My body was completely emaciated, my mind had developed frightening blank periods when I could remember nothing at all. I had very few emotions I could feel anymore. Things were breaking down. I walked and walked through tunnels I had never been in. Then I heard it. Inhuman screaming and ranting. It was coming from my right. There were four doors and someone was pounding on one of them. I ran over and tried to open the door. It was locked. I yelled, "Are you alright?" I got more screams. Suddenly someone touched my shoulder. I turned and looked at a man in clean overalls. "Hello", he said. "I'm the Ethics Officer for the RPF". "What are you doing to her?" I said. "Oh she's just blowing off charge. When someone flips out on the RPF, we lock them up for a couple of hours. They calm down after a while." He smiled. I was stunned. "You lock them up in here?" "Sure, you know the tech. The tech always works." I looked at him. Totally triumphant, with Scientology tech on his side. I felt sick to my stomach, the corridor started spinning around me. So this was it. The final answer. Cold, calculated, step by step -- a progression to stamp out anyone who questioned, rebelled, criticized, disliked Scientology. Break them, all of us. You don't agree, you make a mistake, you are a staff member and you flip out. No mercy -- just Scientology tech. Pure Ron Hubbard, turned insane. He was still looking at me. "Sure", I said, "maybe she'll drop her body and pick up a new one. She'll get regged again and come back for another try. Death doesn't exist does it? Suffering doesn't exist either. Only the tech sent from another galaxy". "Wow", he said, "what OT level are you?" "None you'd want to know about", I said. I turned and left him there by the locked door.
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