Stephen A Kent
University of Alberta, Edmonton/Alberta, Canada
Department of Sociology
eMail: skent@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca
Abstract
Although some social scientists insist that Scientology is a religion,
the more appropriate position to take is that the organization is
a multi-faceted transnational corporation that has religion as only
one of its many components. Other components include political aspirations,
business ventures, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practices,
pseudo-psychiatric claims, and (among its most devoted members who
have joined the Sea Organization), an alternative family structure.
Sea Organization’s job demands appear to allow little time for quality
child rearing. Most disturbing, however, about Sea Organization
life is that members can be subject to extremely severe and intrusive
punishments through security checks, internal hearings called "Committees
of Evidence," and a forced labour and re-indoctrination program
known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) and its harshest
companion, the RPF’s RPF. Taken together, these harsh and intrusive
punishments likely violate a number of human rights clauses as outlined
by two United Nations statements.
This is a revised and corrected version of a shorter presentation
given at the 27th Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, June 20, 1997,
Leipzig, Germany)
* 1) Introduction
* 2) Is Scientology a Religion?
* 3) Scientology as a Multi-Faceted Transnational
* 3.1) Politics
* 3.2) Business
* 3.3) Cultural
* 3.4) Pseudo-Medicine
* 3.5) Pseudo-Psychiatry
* 3.6) Scientology as an Alternative Family Structure
* 4) The Rehabilitation Project Force — Forced Labour and Reindoctrination
* 5) The RPF’s RPF
* 6) Brainwashing
* 7) Scientology and Probable Human Rights Abuses
* — Bibliography
————————————————————————
1) Introduction
Rarely, if ever, in the post-war period have diplomats from the
superpowers troubled themselves over questions about the alleged
religious nature of a transnational organization. Consequently,
the recent debate between Germany and the United States over the
alleged religious nature of Scientology is remarkable. The fact
that German officials, institutions, and citizens are seeking additional
information about this organization is understandable, and perhaps
this article will provide additional insights that may help to clarify
the issues in this debate.
For the record, I did not have any contact with German parliamentary
officials before I prepared this article, which I originally presented
as a talk in a session of the 1997 Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag.
While in Canada and writing the talk, I spoke by telephone for about
ten minutes with one German professor who was involved with the
German government investigation (called the Enquete Commission),
but we only touched briefly on issues related to Scientology. The
German Kirchentag &91;a bi-annual, week-long, Lutheran Church event&93;
paid my air fare and my hotel in Leipzig, and Berliner Dialog &91;a
‘counter-cult’ Christian-based magazine&93; covered some of my expenses,
but no person or institution paid me a fee or honorarium. I prepared
my talk while in Canada, and did not consult with anyone in Germany
or elsewhere about its content. I had complete freedom to write
whatever I wanted around the general topic of the debate about Scientology’s
religious claims.
As a person trained in religious studies, I find the debate about
Scientology’s alleged religious nature to be an interesting and
important one. It should not be, however, the only issue over which
we evaluate the German-American debate over Scientology’s religious
claims. Intimately related to the religious question are human rights
questions. Some people assume that religious practice is a guaranteed
human right, but even a superficial examination of world events
shows that many atrocities occur in the name of God or religion.
Universally, therefore, religious belief must receive absolute protection,
but religious practice stemming from that belief must receive protection
only until it begins to violate the rights of its members or nonmembers.
Following from this last point, I argue that even if Scientology
contains a theology and cosmology that some members interpret religiously,
its organizational actions and behaviours raise serious human rights
questions. Without wanting to review the pronouncements from all
German officials about the organization, I conclude that the German
government had good reason to investigate Scientology’s activities
in its country. It also had compelling reasons to inquire about
the well-being of German citizens in Scientology facilities in the
United States and elsewhere. I will share just a few of the documents
that led me to these conclusions, and some of them are available
in numerous world wide web sites on the Internet. While I am aware
of the historical and cultural context in which the debate about
Scientology in Germany is occurring (see Hexham and Poewe, 1999),
I remain convinced that German officials and others based their
concerns about the organization primarily upon analyses of the organization’s
stated policies and sanctioned practices (including many of the
ones that I am about to discuss).
PAGE 2
2) Is Scientology a Religion?
For a number of my social scientific colleagues around the world,
the debate between Germany and the U.S. revolved around the question
of Scientology’s religious claims. Many of my social scientific
colleagues had examined some Scientology documents and possibly
participated in some Scientology events, and they had deduced that
the organization is religious in nature. Bryan R. Wilson (b. 1926),
for example, who is a respected British sociologist of religion,
concluded "that Scientology must indeed be regarded as a religion"
(Wilson, 1990: 288). He reached this conclusion after comparing
Scientology’s belief system with twenty characteristics usually
found within what he called "known religions" (Wilson,
1990: 279). Significantly for the current debate in this country,
he dismissed historical information from the early 1950s about Dianetics
presenting itself as "a mental therapy and Scientology a science."
Specifically with these early self-representations in mind, Wilson
insisted that "even if it could be conclusively shown that
Scientology took the title of ‘church’ specifically to secure at
law as a religion, that would say nothing about the status of the
belief-system, and it is with the belief system that we are specifically
concerned" (Wilson, 1990: 282-283).&91;1&93;
1)Note: — Undoubtedly because of this interpretation, Wilson
has become a champion of Scientology’s religious claims (see also
Wilson, n.d.: 35) and the organization alludes to him ("&91;t&93;he
foremost sociologist in the world") as an academic who concluded
"that Scientology was setting the trend for the 21st century
for all religions — as it offers practical solutions for people’s
problems in the real world" (International Association of Scientologists,
1995: &91;10&93;). Scientology also employs his opinion in arguing before
an American court that the organization has the right to keep secret
its upper level materials (Wilson, 1994: 11).
In fact, I have made precisely the argument that Wilson dismisses.
In a study that &93;Berliner Dialog (Heft 1-97) translated into German,
and in another study that I hope to publish soon, I show that L.
Ron Hubbard (Scientology’s founder) claimed that Scientology was
a religion because he saw the claim as a marketing device to make
money and avoid taxes (Kent, 1997b: 25ff; Miller, 1987: 199-203,
220) as well as a way "to reduce the likelihood of governmental
interventions against it for allegedly practising medicine without
a license" (Kent, 1996: 30). Moreover, Scientology denies its
reputedly religious nature if it is attempting to enter a country
that might react adversely to religious proselytization (such as
Japan or Greece &91;Kent, 1997a: 18-19&93;). Nevertheless, the historical
reasons behind Scientology’s religious claims, as well as the organization’s
selectivity in making the claims, do not diminish the probability
that many Scientologists view their commitment as a religious one.
From a social scientific perspective, and probably from a legal
one as well, the objective "truth" of an ideology is not
the determinant of a group’s "religious" designation.
Mere belief in supernatural beings or forces may be enough to get
an ideology designated as religious, even if the origins or doctrines
of the belief system are highly suspect. Along these lines, the
inspirational figure in the sociology of religion, Max Weber, refused
to exclude charlatans from his identification of charismatic figures,
since the devotion of followers was a far more salient fact than
authenticity. After mentioning two types of charismatic figures,
Weber added that "&91;a&93;nother type is represented by &91;the founder
of a major faith&93;, who may have been a very sophisticated swindler
(although this cannot be definitely established)" (Weber, 1968:
242). Similarly, from a social scientific perspective, a belief
system is religious if it contains supposedly supernatural elements,
regardless of the accuracy of those elements. Perhaps unlike the
religious founder whom Weber named, Hubbard’s sophisticated swindle
has been exposed by a number of researchers (for example, Atack,
1990; Kent, 1996; Miller, 1987) who have shown that his religious
alignment was purely expedient. Now, however, many of his followers
see their lives in the context of the doctrines that he developed.
PAGE 3
3) Scientology as a Multi-Faceted Transnational
Even if we grant the point that Scientology cosmology and soteriology
have supernatural elements that classify the belief-system as religious
(regardless of these elements’ suspect history), neither government
officials nor society at large should necessarily grant Scientology
religious status for purposes of receiving societal benefits. Rather
than struggling over whether or not to label Scientology as a religion,
I find it far more helpful to view it as a multifaceted transnational
corporation, only one element of which is religious. Coinciding
with supernatural claims are equally important secular dimensions
relating to political aspirations, business operations, cultural
productions, pseudo-medical practice, pseudo-psychiatric practice,
social services (some of which are of dubious quality), and alternative
family structures. A few examples of each dimension will suffice,
but countless examples of each one exist throughout both Scientology’s
literature and the social behaviour of its members. The most salient
aspect of Scientology, however, is the totalitarian, some would
say fascistic, use of power that holds the organization together.
I will speak about some of these totalitarian uses of power, and
in doing so it will be very clear that the German government took
the only appropriate avenue open to it.
3.1) Politics
Scientology’s political aspirations have surfaced at various times
throughout its nearly fifty year history, with the organization
involving itself with politicians or political structures in Rhodesia
(in 1966), Greece (in 1968 to 1969), Morocco (in 1972), and in the
Russian city of Perm (where it was training city officials in Hubbard
Management ideology). Observers wondered about the fate of Scientology
training to Albanian government officials after the recent popular
uprisings and social collapse in the late 1990s (see Kent, 1997a:
17-18).
3.2) Business
At times related to its political aspirations (as in Perm) are
Scientology’s programs designed to train business executives and
professionals, often specifically targeting personnel in medically
related areas. Through an organization named WISE (World Institute
of Scientology Enterprises), Scientology offers a business consultancy
and management program. A recent publication claims that "WISE
&91;m&93;embers form a network of highly trained consultants in Hubbard
Management Technology who can provide you with tailor-made training
programs to suit your company’s needs" (WISE International,
1994b). WISE programs target various clients through numerous companies,
and in Germany and other parts of Europe the best known WISE company
is U-Man (see, for example, WISE International, 1994a). For all
practical purposes, this dimension of Scientology is secular, regardless
of how the organization portrays it.
3.3) Cultural
Culturally, Scientology has an entire industry devoted to the
production and dissemination of Hubbard’s writings and ideological
material to both members and outsiders. The Scientology owned and
operated (and now tax exempt) Bridge Publications, for example,
produced a volume solely dedicated to The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard
(Widder, 1994), which discusses his writings of Westerns, adventure
stories, mystery and detective stories, romance, fantasy, science
fiction, plays, and screenplays (among others), and makes little
if any mention of his supposedly "religious" writings.
The actor and Scientology public relations officer, John Travolta
(Anderson, 1980: 3; Church of Scientology International, 1994),
is working on a movie version of Hubbard’s science fiction work,
Battlefield Earth, while a team of Hollywood producers is developing
a film version of the Hubbard pulp novel, To the Stars (Reuters,
1997).
As these current film productions suggest, Scientology is eager
to be involved with projects that disseminate its ideology to nonmembers
through high profile cultural undertakings. One vital aspect of
this dissemination effort involves cultivating the conversion and
support of society’s cultural celebrities. Beginning in 1955, Hubbard’s
"Project Celebrity" targeted what he called "prime
communicators" with the hope that they would "mention"
Scientology "now and again" (&91;Hubbard&93;, 1955). By 1992,
thirteen "celebrity centres" existed around the world
(Church of Scientology International, 1992: 353), and their purpose
was "&91;t&93;o fully utilize opinion leaders and Scientologists
to permeate society and get all the different publics utilizing
LRH’s Technology in every aspect…" (Jentzsch and Foster,
1977: 1). This organizational push to get everyone using Hubbard’s
so-called technology has dramatic secular implications for such
issues of how to organize an office, how to generate and handle
money, and how to measure office growth. It presumably also may
have implications for people’s supernatural belief systems, but
it is understandable that critics see Scientology celebrities as
participating in the dissemination of secular Scientology goals.
In addition to free publicity for Scientology, celebrities also
give large financial contributions back to the organization. Had
Scientologist Chick Corea, for example, received money from the
Baden-Wurttemberg state culture ministry for performing at state-sponsored
events, then some of that income may have become part of his contributions
to the International Association of Scientologists. The avowed purpose
of this organization is "&91;t&93;o unite, advance, support and protect
the Scientology religion and Scientologists in all parts of the
world, so as to achieve the Aims of Scientology as originated by
L. Ron Hubbard" (International Association of Scientologists,
1995: &91;back cover&93;). In one of the Association’s 1995 magazines,
both he and actress Kirstie Alley each appeared as having contributed
(US) $100,000 (Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International,
1995: 8; International Association of Scientologists Administration,
1995: 49, see 60). By comparison, the $2,000 contribution that John
Travolta made seems small (Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre
International, 1996: 8; see International Association of Scientologists
Administration, 1995: 60). What many Germans know, however, is that
this organization provided grants to the Church of Scientology International
in order to fund the series of anti-Germany ads in the New York
Times and the Washington Post (both beginning, I believe, on September
15, 1994). Utilizing cultural productions and prominent cultural
figures, therefore, to disseminate all aspects of Hubbard’s so-called
tech is an intimate aspect of the organization’s overall public
relations and (it would seem) financial strategies.
PAGE 4
3.4) Pseudo-Medicine
A glimpse into Scientology’s pseudo-medical practices — in this
case one that also relates to a social service effort of dubious
effectiveness — is its Narconon program. This program purports
to rid the body of drug and radiation residues, and a 1996 Scientology
publication told a story about an American Gulf War veteran suffering
from Gulf War Syndrome who "arrived to do the detoxification
program… complain&91;ing&93; of disorientation, dizziness, memory loss
and muscle and joint pain. He finished the program and has no more
dizziness, memory loss OR muscle and joint pain — ALL his symptoms
have been handled TOTALLY" (Church of Scientology International,
1996: 68 &91;original emphasis&93;). Recently Scientologists applied the
Narconon program to children suffering from radiation-related illnesses
in Chernobyl (Bev, 1997).
Regardless of how Scientology portrays these claims, they are
medical ones that purport to offer a social service, but one about
which experts remain highly critical. In the American state of Oklahoma,
for example, a 1991 mental health board examined a Narconon program
and concluded that "there is substantial credible evidence,
as found by the Board, that the Narconon Program is unsafe and ineffective"
(Mental Health Board, 1991; reproduced in Lobsinger, 1991: 58).
3.5) Pseudo-Psychiatry
Another dimension of pseudo-medical claims are pseudo-psychiatric
ones. Scientology’s hatred of psychiatry is worthy of a study in
itself, and some of its own documents very clearly indicate that
Scientology’s primary social purpose is the destruction of psychiatry
and its replacement with Scientology techniques. In, for example,
a confidential document written for Scientology’s intelligence branch
(then known as the Guardian Office), the unidentified author, who
most certainly was Hubbard himself, had a section entitled "The
War." The text in this section stated that "&91;o&93;ur war
has been forced to become ‘To take over absolutely the field of
mental healing on this planet in all forms.’" The next sentences
have significant implications for the current religious debate.
"That was not the original purpose. The original purpose was
to clear Earth. The battles suffered developed the data that we
had an enemy who would have to be gotten out of the way and this
meant we were at war" (&91;Hubbard&93;, 1969: &91;5&93;). The central target
in Scientology’s efforts to "take over the field of mental
healing" is psychiatry. Indeed, several Scientology organizations,
including the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, the International
Association of Scientologists, and Freedom magazine are working
diligently in attempting to achieve the goal of "Eradicating
Psychiatry" (Weiland, 1990: 21).
One aspect of Scientology’s efforts to eradicate psychiatry and
replace it with its own techniques is that members can take a course
(called a rundown) that claims to teach members how to cure psychosis.
Called the "Introspection Rundown Auditor Course," this
course supposedly "factually handles the last of the ‘unsolvable’
conditions which can trap a person — the psychotic break. And end
forever the ‘reason’ psychs were kept around with their icepicks
and shock machines" (Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization,
1992: &91;2&93;). This course is based upon what Hubbard described as
"a technical breakthrough which possibly ranks with the major
discoveries of the Twentieth Century." The consequence of this
alleged breakthrough was that "THIS MEANS THE LAST REASON TO
HAVE PSYCHIATRY AROUND IS GONE" (Hubbard, 1974: 346). The self-proclaimed
"breakthrough" involved isolating the person having the
psychotic breakdown while not speaking to the person, giving the
person particular vitamins and minerals, determining what incident
triggered the illness, then putting the person through a long and
complex series of Scientology "counselling" sessions (called
auditing) that focus on the triggering incident Hubbard, 1974: 353).
Currently this course is at the centre of controversy involving
the December 5, 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson in Clearwater,
Florida. After a minor car accident, McPherson exhibited bizarre
behaviour — publicly undressing, speaking in monotone with a fixed
stare, exhibiting forgetfulness and confusion, and crying. Against
medical advice, she signed herself out of a hospital and into the
care of visiting Scientology "friends" who took her to
the organization’s Fort Harrison Hotel. Seventeen days later, Scientologists
took her back to a distant hospital where a doctor was working who
was a Scientologist, and he pronounced her dead. A State Attorney
for Florida laid two felony charges &91;unauthorized practice of medicine
and abuse and/or neglect of a disabled adult) against a Scientology
organization as a result of the death (Circuit Court…, 1998),
and McPherson’s estate launched a lawsuit that accused Scientology
"of allowing McPherson to languish in a coma without nutrition
and liquids while she was in isolation as part of an Introspection
Rundown" (Tobin, 1997: 12A). In this context, a Scientology
lawyer acknowledged "that the Introspection Rundown remains
‘part of church services’" (Tobin, 1997: 12A). Undoubtedly,
therefore, Scientology practices pseudo-psychiatry, and the lawsuit
over McPherson’s death may establish the extent to which at least
one of these practices can have potentially fatal consequences.
PAGE 5
3.6) Scientology as an Alternative Family Structure
Finally, Scientology is an alternative family structure, at least
as it is lived by its most devoted followers who are members of
a Scientology organization called Sea Org&91;anization&93;. Scientology
portrays the Sea Org as "a fraternal organization existing
within the formalized structure of the Churches of Scientology.
It consists of highly dedicated members of the Church &91;who&93; take
vows of service" (Church of Scientology of California, 1978:
205). (The organization downplays the fact that these people sign
billion year contracts.) Many indicators point to the fact that
Scientology structures the Sea Org in a manner that damages parent-child
relations if not the well-being of children in general. In essence,
Sea Org becomes one’s new family, often at the expense of spouses
and children.
Indication of organizationally influenced damage caused by Sea
Org parents to their children formed the basis of a critical article
that appeared in a major newspaper of the Florida city near to where
the Scientology organization called Flag is based. In November,
1991, the St. Petersburg Times ran a long article entitled, "Scientology’s
Children," and it contained an excerpt about a German mother
and her son:
* Eva Kleinberg moved from Germany to Clearwater with her 9-year
old son, Mark, in 1986. She had joined a group of Scientology staff
members called the ‘Sea Org.’
* Eva was told she would have two hours a day for family time.
But with her travel time from work, she said she actually had only
one hour with her son. Because of the 12-hour workdays, she couldn’t
always stay awake for the full hour
* ‘I would compromise with my son,’ she said. After eating, she
and her son would divide the remaining half-hour of their family
time. ‘I would play a game with him for 15 minutes, and I would
go to lay down for 15 minutes and sleep.’
* While Eva worked, Mark cleaned up around the motel or played
with friends.
* About a year later, Eva and Mark left the church.
* Asked what he thinks of Scientology, Mark, now 14, said, ‘I
don’t think it’s good ’cause the people… they don’t get to spend
time with their family and it’s real expensive.’
* Church spokesman Richard Haworth said staff Scientologists actually
spend three or four hours a day with their children, which he said
is more than the average family (Krueger, 1991: 12A).
I believe the Kleinbergs’ account rather than the one by the Scientology
spokesperson because I had heard the same scenario (about parents
having little time to spend with children) during an interview with
a former Sea Org member that I conducted in December, 1987. At Flag
in Florida during the late 1970s and early 1980s, infants apparently
stayed in a Scientology-run nursery during the day when parents
worked, and usually parents would return from work at about 6:00
in the evening and spend about an hour-and-a-half with their children
before taking them back to the nursery at 7:30 for bed. Parents
then caught a bus back to the Sea Org, and finally did not leave
for the night until 10:30 or later. My informant told me that, in
the morning, they would pick up their children from the nursery,
have them dressed and in the dining room by 7:30 AM, drop them back
at the nursery, and be on the bus going to work by ten minutes past
8. This former member added, however, that "there’d be some
people who had kids who didn’t go home for two or three days in
a row. They’d be working all night" (Kent interview with Fern,
1987: 44, see 43).
The Kleinbergs’ account about limited family time also rings true
because of a series of internal memos (of which I have copies) from
Scientology’s Pacific Area Command (in Los Angeles, California)
beginning in early November, 1989. These memos centre around an
Executive Directive that the commanding officer issued which abolished
the one hour nightly family time. He cited two reasons for doing
so. First, he claimed, "&91;a&93; thorough research &91;sic&93; revealed
that there is no LRH &91;L. Ron Hubbard&93; reference covering Sea Org
members taking 1 hour family time per day. Also to have such break
in schedules in the middle of production has been found to be detrimental
to production…." Instead he wanted people to work the extra
hour a day in order to build up their production output so that
they would receive a "liberty day" (Gouessan, 1989) once
every two weeks (Shapiro, 1989).
Several parents objected, and their objections were revealing.
One person asked rhetorically, "&91;h&93;ow can one keep track of
one’s child without even an hour a day with the child? I HAVE seen
staff distracted by NOT caring for their children and this time
could be well utilized for this" (Swartz, 1989). Another person
cited the text of a Hubbard tape where Scientology’s founder complained
about a condition that he had seen (and which he said had existed
in the Pacific Area Command): "I wish somebody would tell me
why we consistently had to ORDER parents to see their children when
they hadn’t seen them for weeks" (Hubbard, Transcript of LRH
Taped Briefing to CS-& and Pers Comm 22 Sept 73; attached to
Shapiro, 1989). This same person acknowledged in his letter of protest
that "&91;i&93;n the 19 years I have been in the Sea Org in PAC this
condition (parental neglect, etc.) has several times been the source
of major upset and enturbulation &91;agitation&93; on Church lines"
(Shapiro, 1989 &91;round brackets in original&93;). Taken together, the
interview material, media accounts, internal policy directive, and
responses point to the fact that parents’ time with their children
is severely constrained and sometimes eliminated because of the
organizational pressure and job demands under which Sea Org members
work. It seems that Scientology, in its Sea Org manifestation, becomes
something akin to an alternative or "fictive" family structure
to its members (see Cartwright and Kent, 1992: 348-349), receiving
more time and commitment than their own children.
PAGE 6
On a related point, the new Sea Org family to which adults devote
their lives may at times place children in medically detrimental
situations. This fictive family may not always be a medically responsible
one. The informant whom I interviewed in 1978, for example, complained
to me that "the nursery conditions were terrible." She
related that, in one nursery room, "there were, I think, sixteen
babies in the room, all under a year old, and throughout the whole
day, there were three nannies who did shifts in that room, looking
after sixteen babies all under a year old" (Kent interview
with Fern, 1987: 48). Under these conditions, children developed
medical problems (according to my informant, Fern), because the
facility did not have an isolation nursery. Consequently, common
childhood illnesses (such as ear infections) spread rapidly among
the children and remained in the nursery population for a long time.
To support her assertion, this informant showed me medical records
that she kept of her child’s visits to doctors while the child was
under nursery care, and compared them with similar records from
after the time that she and her child left Sea Org and the nursery
arrangement. The child made seventeen visits to the doctor’s office
during an eight month period while in the nursery, then only four
visits in the twenty-nine months following the family’s departure
from the organization (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 49-50).
Researchers always must be cautious in accepting as fact the account
of a single person, but I heard similar stories about the condition
of children’s facilities in Scientology’s child care program on
the other side of the American continent — Los Angeles, California.
The person who related the account had occasion to visit the children’s
facility (called the Cadet Org) in the late 1970s or early 1980s,
and she saw an infant who was the child of a man she knew. This
child, she stated:
was very, very ill and she was laying in a urine soaked crib
and she was — she just had her diaper on…. She had lots of,
like, little fruit flies and gnats on her body and she had been
so ill that she had tremendous amounts of mucous plugging her
nose and her eyes were, like, welded shut with mucous and I, I
just snapped in my head (Kent Interview with Pat, 1997: 34).
After this incident of allegedly witnessing severe child neglect,
the person began plotting how she would leave the organization.
The final example of alleged child neglect is documented in a
report filed by the commanding officer of the Cadet Estates Organization
in late October, 1989, concerning the hygiene of three children
— ages 4, 8, and 10 or 11. Two of the children had lice, and for
one of them it was a recurring problem. A guardian was in charge
of them, but she "is herself on mission quite often."
&91;That is to say, the organization frequently sent her away on assignments.&93;
The report continued by stating that, "&91;w&93;hile the guardian
was on a mission, the kids were picked up at night by another staff
member that &91;sic: who&93; lives next door, and the little one would
be brought in in the morning while the other two older once &91;sic:
ones&93; would walk to the Cadet Org by themself &91;sic&93;. The children
would dress themself &91;sic&93; and we have no data who does the laundry
or room hygiene for the children" (Gabriele, 1989: 1). We must
be careful when interpreting this data on possible child neglect
or endangerment, since none of it is current. Sufficient indicators
exist, however, that investigative officials in the United States
and elsewhere should examine Scientology’s treatment of Sea Org
children.
Because the attitude among some Sea Org leadership appears to
be that children hinder adults from performing their vital assignments,
researchers should not be surprised to learn of pressures that Sea
Org women felt to either abort pregnancies or give-up children for
adoption. My 1987 informant told me that when Sea Org operated on
ships during the mid 1970s, women knew that they were not allowed
to raise children on the vessels. Consequently, they experienced
pressure to have abortions. She told me that, "on the ship,
I know of a lot of people that &91;sic: who&93; had abortions, because
they didn’t want to leave the ship. It wasn’t like anybody said
‘You have got to get an abortion.’ It was more an implied thing.
If you don’t you’re going to leave" (Kent interview with Fern,
1989: 41-42). Years later I saw the same pressures described in
a 1994 legal declaration by Mary Tabayoyon, who became a Scientologist
in 1967, joined Sea Org in 1971, and stayed in it until her departure
in 1992. She stated that in 1986, while on the Scientology base
in Hemet, California, "members of the Sea Org were forbidden
to have any more children if they were to stay on post&91;,&93; and the
Hubbard technology was applied to coercively persuade us to have
abortions so that we could remain on post" (M. Tabayoyon, 1994:
2). The pressure came partly through what Scientology called "ethics
handling," which involved the organization pressing people
to conform to Hubbard’s policies and the organization’s directives.
Tabayoyon herself "gave up my child due to my greatly misguided
obligation and dedication to the Sea Org" (M. Tabayoyon, 1994:
4). She relinquished her child after being "indoctrinated to
believe that I should never put my own personal desires ahead of
the accomplishment of the purpose of the Sea Org" (M. Tabayoyon,
1994: 5).
Taken together, the interviews, legal declarations, media accounts,
and internal documents present troubling glimpses into the lives
of Scientology’s most committed members. Sea Org obligations override
many personal and family obligations and responsibilities, and devotion
to the Scientology cause often appears to take priority over the
needs of children. Equally disturbing, however, are accounts that
some older children and teenagers have had to endure, along with
Sea Org adults, the abuses of Scientology’s forced labour and reindoctrination
programs. Although several labour and intensive instruction programs
have operated within the Scientology organization over the years,
among the most intense ones is the Rehabilitation Project Force
— usually just called the RPF.
PAGE 7
4) The Rehabilitation Project Force — Forced Labour and Re-indoctrination
When Sea Org members commit what the organization considers to
be serious deviations (such as dramatic E-meter readings, unsatisfactory
job performance, or job disruption &91;including challenges to senior
officials&93;), then they likely wind up in the RPF. Even discussing
the policies and techniques that Hubbard wrote by using ideas other
than his own was called "verbal tech" and apparently was
a punishable act (see Hubbard, 1976: 546). Begun in early 1974 while
Hubbard and his crew still were at sea, it now operates in several
locations around the world. Currently RPFs are running at the Cedars
of Lebanon building in Los Angeles; on Scientology property near
Hemet, California; in the facilities in Clearwater, Florida; in
the British headquarters at East Grinstead, Sussex; and in Copenhagen,
Denmark. I cannot confirm the existence of RPFs in several other
locations.
In a phrase, the RPF program places Scientology’s most committed
members in forced labour and re-indoctrination programs. The operation
of these programs raises serious human rights questions, and their
continuation reflects badly on nations that allow them to operate
unchecked. Particular blame must be placed on American state and
federal authorities, since at least three RPF programs have operated
for years on American soil. Moreover, the American Internal Revenue
Service granted Scientology tax exemption despite what almost certainly
are illegal conditions under which RPF inmates must work, study,
and live. Extensive material about RPFs in the United States has
existed for years in various court cases, and now most of this information
is readily available on the World Wide Web. German government officials
know about the RPF, and almost certainly this knowledge played a
major role in the government’s continued opposition to the Scientology
organization.
Getting assigned to the RPF is a traumatic event for most people.
Procedurally, what is supposed to happen is that leaders call a
hearing, known as a "Committee of Evidence," to evaluate
a person’s performance or attitude. A former member described this
body as "a Scientology trial, where the Committee &91;members&93;
act as prosecutors, judges and jury rolled into one" (Atack,
1990: 306). Committees sometimes obtain evidence against the person
from security checks (called sec checks &91;see Kent interview with
Young, 1994: 49&93;), which the organization portrays as "Integrity
Processing" or "Confessional Auditing," but which
is really a form of interrogation (Atack, 1990: 147). In fact, in
1960, Hubbard wrote a policy called "Interrogation" about
how to use the device known as an E-meter as an interrogation device
rather than merely as a spiritual aide in counselling or auditing
sessions as the organization represents it to the outside world
(Hubbard, 1960).
Hubbard had used security checks on his followers since 1959,
but the most notorious sec check probably was the "Johannesburg
Security Check," published April 7, 1961. It consisted of over
one hundred questions, almost all of which inquire about previous
or current participation in a wide range of deviant and criminal
acts including spying, kidnapping, murder, drugs, sex, and Communism.
The most revealing ones, however, involved people’s thoughts about
Hubbard (called by his initials, LRH) and his wife, Mary Sue Hubbard.
The sec check specifically asked, "Have you ever had any unkind
thoughts about LRH?," and "Have you ever had any unkind
thoughts about Mary Sue?" Not only, therefore, were people
forced to reveal personal information about serious transgressions,
but also they were forced to reveal the existence of any negative
thoughts about the leader or his wife. One former member-turned
critic, Robert Vaughn Young, reported that he was sec-checked for
several hours a day for about two weeks (Kent Interview with Young,
1994: 50).
An even more severe form of sec check was the "gang bang
sec check," a process that presumably takes its name from group
rape (a slang term for which is gang bang). Gang bang sec checks
involve two or more interrogators rapidly firing questions and verbal
abuse at a victim who is hooked up to or holding an E-meter. A brief
description of this practice occurs in a legal declaration (sworn
under oath) by former member Stacy Young. She declared that her
repeated protests about the way that (the now-current head of Scientology)
David Miscavige treated staff led Miscavige to send her to the RPF
in September, 1982 (S. Young, 1994: 8, 65). The specific incident
that triggered her assignment was that Miscavige learned that Young
had reacted to his (alleged) screaming fits by telling someone that
he was "a brutal, tyrannical bully" (S. Young, 1994: 65).
In response, Miscavige:
* ordered me to submit to what was known as a ‘gang bang sec check.’
Two very large, strong men… locked me in a room and interrogated
me for hours. During the interrogation, they screamed and swore
at me. They accused me of crimes against Scientology. They demanded
that I confess to being an enemy agent (S. Young, 1994: 66).
* Soon Young found herself in the RPF’s ‘Running Program,"
which involved "running around an orange pole for 12 hours
a day" (S. Young, 1994: 66).
When Committees of Evidence find Sea Org members guilty of serious
crimes, then they send many of them to RPF programs. Inmates are
not sentenced to the programs for specific lengths time. Instead,
they remain in until they complete a rigorous program of hard physical
labour, constant verbal abuse from immediate superiors, social isolation,
intense co-auditing and sec checking, and study of Hubbard policies
and techniques.
PAGE 8
A series of policies about the RPF began appearing in January,
1974 when Hubbard was aboard ship, and a few revised versions of
them have leaked out of the organization. One of these early documents
revealed the totalistic nature of the program when it said that
"&91;a&93; member of the RPF is a member of the RPF and of nothing
outside of it, till released" (Boards of Directors of the Churches
of Scientology, 1977: 3). Part of the program consisted of hard
physical labour — building structures, cleaning, renovating, garbage
disposal, and moving furniture. Typically work projects of this
nature took about ten hours a day, since people were supposed to
get "around 7 hours sleep, 5 hours study or auditing, 30 minutes
for each meal, and 30 minutes personal hygiene, per day" (Boards
of Directors of the Churches of Scientology, 1977: 4). They wore
dark worksuits and were prohibited from speaking (unless necessary)
with persons outside the RPF, and they ate and slept separate from
other Sea Org members (Boards of Directors of the Churches of Scientology,
1977: 10). They had to run everywhere they went, and often they
had to run extra distances for punishment. On a ship, running punishments
usually meant laps around the deck (Pignotti, 1997: 18-19). On land,
running punishments sometimes meant running around a pole for hours
at a time, often in hot sun (see Kent Interview with Pignotti, 1997:
22; S. Young, 1994: 66). Severe restrictions were placed upon visitation
rights with spouses or children (Boards of Directors of the Churches
of Scientology, 1977: 10).
Accounts from former inmates indicate that RPF life can be extremely
harsh, degrading, and abusive. Certainly experiences varied somewhat
according to year and location, but Hanna Whitfield’s description
of RPF at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida in 1978
captures many common elements from other accounts that I have heard
and read:
Some of us slept on thin mattresses on the bare cement floor.
Some had crude bunk beds. There was no place for clothes, so we
lived out of suitcases and bags which were kept on bare floors.
Some privacy was maintained by hanging sheets up between bunk beds
and between floor mattresses. The women and men had separate bathrooms
and toilets but they were small. We were not allowed to shower longer
than 30 seconds. We had only to run through the shower and out the
other end. There was no spare time for talk or relaxation. We awoke
at 6:30 A.M. or earlier at times, did hard labor and heavy construction
work and cleaning until late afternoon. After &91;a&93; quick shower and
change of clothing, we had to audit each other and ‘rehabilitate’
ourselves until 10:30 P.M. or later each evening. There were no
days off, four weeks a month. We ate our meals in the garage or
at times in the dining rooms AFTER normal meals had ended. Our food
consisted of leftovers from staff. On occasions which seemed like
Christmas, we were able to prepare ourselves fresh meals if leftovers
were insufficient (Whitfield, 1989: 7-8).
A similar, but more passionate, description exists of the Fort
Harrison RPF in the account written by a woman using the pseudonym
Nefertiti (1997), who in turn reproduces excerpts from ten other
former Scientologists who related RPF experiences aboard two Scientology
ships, FLAG at Clearwater, Florida, Pacific Area Command in Los
Angeles, and Happy Valley near Hemet, California.
Certainly the amount of work that RPF members performed varied
according to era and circumstances, but in some instances conditions
became unbelievably bad. For example, In a California RPF, former
inmate Pat reported that her RPF crew "worked shifts of thirty
hours at a time" (Kent Interview with Pat, 1997: 25). Her RPF
team would "start working in the morning and we would work
all night into the next morning and then we worked through the next
day until we got our thirty hours and then we’d go to sleep"
(Kent Interview with Pat, 199: 25).
The most extensive description of the RPF at Scientology’s facility
near Hemet, California appears in a sworn declaration by former
Sea Org member Andre Tabayoyon (1994). From comments that Bavaria’s
Minister of the Interior, Dr. Gunther Beckstein, made in a January
15, 1997 press release, it is clear that he is familiar with this
declaration. Tabayoyon stated that he spent approximately six years
in the RPF during his 21 years in the organization (A. Tabayoyon,
1994: 7, 8). In the RPF program that he was on beneath Scientology’s
Cedars Sinai Hospital building in Los Angeles, he allegedly slept
on "a slab inside the vault of the morgue." In the RPF
in the property near Hemet, he stayed in "the chicken coop
dormitory… which still smelled of chicken coup droppings &91;sic&93;"
(A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 18; see Kent Interview with Young, 1994: 20).
While nearly all RPF accounts speak of guards who were posted
to prevent people from escaping the program, Tabayoyon reported
that the guards at the Gilman Hot Springs facility (where Sea Org
staff lived and an RPF operated) were armed (A. Tabayoyon, 1994:
25). Indeed, he helped to construct the facility’s security system,
which included "the perimeter fence, the ultra razor barriers,
the lighting of the perimeter fence, the electronic monitors, the
concealed microphones, the ground sensors, the motion sensors and
hidden cameras…." He also said that he trained guards in
the use of force, including the use of weapons, many of which had
been purchased with "Church" money and are not registered
(A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 15, 16).
This facility (which sometimes is called "Gold" and
other times "Hemet" in various documents) is less than
a two hour drive from Los Angeles and Hollywood, and on its property
apparently are a number of facilities that Scientology’s celebrities
use. Part of the labour used to build an apartment for Scientologist
and actor Tom Cruise allegedly was from the RPF (A. Tabayoyon, 1994:
53). As Tabayoyon himself stated, "&91;u&93;sing RPFers to renovate
and reconstruct Tom Cruise’s personal and exclusive apartment at
the Scientology Gold base is equivalent to the use of slave labor
for Tom Cruise’s benefit" (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 53). In one
instance, when Cruise’s apartment was damaged by a mud slide, "prison
&91;i.e., RPF&93; slave labor" personnel allegedly were "worked
almost around the clock" to repair it (A. Tabayoyon, 1994:
53).
PAGE 9
5) The RPF’s RPF
More extreme than the RPF is the RPF’s RPF, an institution even
described in one of Scientology’s own dictionaries. According to
the dictionary definition, the first inmate sent to the RPF’s RPF
was because the person "considered their &91;sic&93; RPF assignment
amusing" (Hubbard, 1976: 451). Various accounts, however, also
suggest that people who did not perform according to acceptable
RPF standards ended up in this extreme program.
Hubbard succinctly outlined the ten restrictions under which inmates
on the RPF’s RPF operated. Six of the ten were:
(1) segregated from other RPF members with regard to work, messing
&91;eating&93;, berthing &91;sleeping&93;, musters &91;group assemblies&93; and any
other common activity.
(2) no pay.
(3) no training.
(4) no auditing.
(5) may only work on mud boxes in the E/R &91;engine room&93;. May not
work with RPF members. &91;Elsewhere Hubbard identified mud boxes as
"those areas in the bilge which collect the mud out of the
bilge water" (Hubbard, 1976: 341)&93;.
(6) six hours sleep maximum (Hubbard, 1976: 451).
Andre Tabayoyon, who spent 19 days on the RPF’s RPF, summed up
the program by saying that it "is designed to totally destroy
any individual determinism to not want to do the RPF" (A. Tabayoyon,
1994: 9).
Accounts both about people who were on the program, and from inmates
of the program itself, are chilling, and they reinforce Tabayoyon’s
summation. Monica Pignotti, for example, spoke to me about her five
days in the RPF’s RPF in 1975. She related that:
&91;A&93;t that point I was in a horrible depression and I was crying
almost all the time all day long and I’m sure I was in a state where
I probably would have been hospitalized if… any mental health
professional had seen me then ‘cuz I was severely depressed. But
they sent me to the RPF’s RPF and I was made to go down and clean
muck from the bilges. That was my job all day long was to do that,
getting up at four in the morning and — it was all day long. And
then I was allowed a short meal break to eat by myself and then
I had to go right back down there and I had to clean all this sludge
out and then paint, paint it…. &91;The person in charge of the RPF’s
RPF&93; would make the prisoners write these essays until they got
it right, until they were saying what the group wanted them to say.
So that was where I really snapped — where I went into this state
of complete — where I didn’t feel anything any more after that.
I was completely numbed out and I’d do whatever they said and I
didn’t rebel any more after my experience on the RPF. I stopped
rebelling for a while (Kent Interview with Pignotti, 1997: 26; see
Pignotti, 1989: 28-29).
Nefertiti reported speaking with a woman in her ‘thirties on the
RPF’s RPF whose ankles were chained together while she was performing
a "nasty" job in the basement of the Fort Harrison Hotel
in Florida (Nefertiti, 1997: 3). Finally, Dennis Erlich reported
that, for the first day or two of his time on the program in the
basement at the Fort Harrison, he was locked in a wire cage and
had a guard outside the room (Kent Interview with Erlich, 1997:
8).
A final word must be said about the RPF, the RPF’s RPF, and children.
Some evidence exists that children may be subject to these programs.
Monica Pignotti, for example, reported to me that she was an RPF
inmate along with a twelve year old girl (Kent Interview with Pignotti,
1997: 30), and a posting in the <alt.religion.scientology>
news group by Steve Jebson stated that he had seen children on the
RPF and one child (whom he named) on the RPF’s RPF (Jebson, 1997).
Finally, a poorly reproduced document from Scientology’s Pacific
Area Command (circa 1989) spoke about the "need to re-institute
the Children’s RPF" (Cohee, n.d.).
One hardly has to point out that the RPF and the RPF’s RPF are
brainwashing programs. Scientology operates them to break the wills
of, and correct deviations of, its most committed members, and then
to reformulate them into persons whose personalities directly mimic
the organizational mould. That mould is itself a reflection of Hubbard’s
troubled personality. I am fully aware that many of my social scientific
colleagues insist that researchers should restrict using the controversial
brainwashing term only to situations where there is incarceration
and physical maltreatment (Anthony, 1990 :304). The RPF and the
RPF’s RPF, however, meet these criteria. These two programs also
used forced confessions, physical fatigue, intense indoctrination
through extended study of the leader’s policies and teachings, humiliation,
and fear. Persons familiar with the early history of Scientology
are not surprised to see that Hubbard sanctioned a brainwashing
program for his followers, since he almost certainly is the author
of a brainwashing manual that Scientology printed and distributed
for years beginning in 1955.
PAGE 10
6) Brainwashing
The manual that Scientology distributed was entitled, Brain-Washing&91;:&93;
A Synthesis of the Russian Textbooks on Psychopolitics (&91;Hubbard?&93;,
1955). Purported to be an address by the noted Soviet secret police
chief, Lavrenti Beria, it was exposed as a fake in 1970 by debunker
Morris Kominsky (1970). As Kominsky noted, much of the book was
"a vicious attack against the sciences and professions of psychology
and psychiatry, as well as against the entire legitimate mental
health movement" (Kominsky, 1970: 538). Attacks of this nature
remain a central element in Scientology’s secular activities, and
one former member-turned-critic was almost certainly correct when
he stated that the brainwashing book or manual "&91;w&93;as secretly
authored by L. Ron Hubbard in 1955…." The former member also
was absolutely correct about the importance of the brainwashing
manual when he concluded that Hubbard "incorporated its methods
into his organization in the mid 1960s and beyond" (Corydon,
1996: 107). One thinks automatically of the RPF, but we know for
certain that Hubbard had the manual as required reading for members
of the Guardian Office (Anonymous, 1974).
One chapter of the brainwashing book is especially pertinent to
understanding Scientology’s contemporary tactics against Germany
and its officials. The organization’s attacks on the national character
of the country; its continual attempts to paint current events in
the context of 1930s Nazism (for example, Freedom Magazine, &91;1996?&93;);
its efforts to discredit current German government officials by
linking them to Nazism through (so I was told) their older relatives;
and charges that German churches campaign against Scientology for
fear of losing members to it (Church of Scientology International,
1997: 101); all seem to have general parallels with tactics advocated
in the brainwashing manual.
I will read the relevant passages, but I will do so making similar
substitutions of words in the text that Kevin Anderson made in his
1965 report to the Australian Parliament (Anderson, 1965: 198-199).
By doing so, Anderson dramatically illustrated his claim that "a
great part of the manual is almost a blue print for the propagation
of &91;S&93;cientology" (Anderson, 1965: 84). Whenever the manual
says "psychopolitics" or "psychopolitical,"
I will say "Scientology." I replace "psychopolitician"
with "Scientologist," and I replace "Communist Party
Members" with "Sea Org members." With these substitutions
in mind, I now quote excerpts form Chapter VIII entitled, "Degradation,
Shock and Endurance:"
Defamation is the best and foremost weapon of &91;Scientologists&93;
on the broad field. Continual and constant degradation of national
leaders, national institutions, national practices, and national
heros must be systematically carried out, but this is the chief
function of &91;Sea Org Members&93; in general, not the Scientologist
(&91;Hubbard?&93;, 1955: 41).
….
The officials of government, students, readers, partakers of entertainment,
must all be indoctrinated, by whatever means, into the complete
belief that the restless, the ambitious, the natural leaders, are
suffering from environmental maladjustments, which can only be healed
by recourse to &91;Scientology&93; operatives in the guise of mental healers.
By thus degrading the general belief in the status of Man, it
is relatively simple, with co-operation from economic salients being
driven into the country, to drive citizens apart, one from another,
to bring about a question of the wisdom of their own government,
and to cause them to actively beg for enslavement.
….
As it seems in foreign nations that the church is the most ennobling
influence, each and every branch and activity of each and every
church must, one way or another, be discredited…. Thus, there
must be no standing belief in the church, and the power of the church
must be denied at every hand.
The &91;Scientology&93; operative, in his programme of degradation,
should at all times bring into question any family which is deeply
religious, and should any neurosis or insanity be occasioned in
that family, to blame and hold responsible their religious connections
for the neurotic or psychotic condition. Religious must be made
synonymous with neurosis and psychosis. People who are deeply religious
would be less and less held responsible for their own sanity, and
should more and more be relegated to the ministrations of &91;Scientology&93;
operatives.
By perverting the institutions of a nation and bringing about
a general degradation, by interfering with the economics of a nation
to the degree that privation and depression come about, only minor
shocks will be necessary to produce, on the populace as a whole,
an obedient reaction or an hysteria (&91;Hubbard?&93;, 1955: 43-44).
With only a little imagination, one can see that the brainwashing
manual seems to provide an outline for Scientology’s battle plan
against Germany.
Through, for example, innumerable publications such as Freedom
magazine, Sea Org members and other Scientologists produce a barrage
of material that denigrates the nation and its leaders. German Scientologists
are now able to label its political leaders as violators of human
rights, thanks in part to criticism that the United States Department
of State levelled against the country’s attempts to curb the organization
and boycott films starring American Scientologists (Lippman, 1997).
On the economic front, critics might see events in the Hamburg real
estate market as evidence of Scientologists’ attempt to cause what
the brainwashing manual called "privation and depression"
among apartment renters. Reportedly Scientologists bought rental
properties and turned them overnight into cooperatives. The chairperson
of the Hamburg branch of the German real estate agents association,
Peter Landmann, told the New York Times that these Scientologists
were "’using disreputable methods to frighten and coerce the
renters into buying them back at high prices’" (Whitney, 1994:
A12). Finally, of course, Scientology continues to blast psychiatry,
attempting to link it with both Nazism and current German efforts
against it. Hubbard, or whomever wrote the brainwashing manual’s
instructions about how to degrade a country, undoubtedly would be
proud of his followers’ public relations successes thus far.
Indeed, from a public relations perspective, Scientology may be
winning the battle, at least back in North America. When, for example,
the prestigious New York Review of Books published an article on
"Germany vrs. Scientology," the German reporter (who writes
for the Suddeutsche Zeitung) strongly implied that government officials
were scapegoating Scientology. His argument seems to be that attacks
against the group have become part of a moral panic, when in fact
other social issues, such as double-digit unemployment, declining
state generosity, tensions over European union, and problems with
national identity, should be the real areas of concern (Joffe, 1997:
20). This argument, however, as well as the American State Department
human rights criticisms, shows a profound and increasingly inexcusable
ignorance of disturbing if not dangerous abuses that occur as routine
Scientology policy against many of its members.
PAGE 11
7) Scientology and Probable Human Rights Abuses
Even to concede that Scientology may be a religion to many of
its adherents, the basis for German governmental opposition to it
has nothing to do with what people believe. It has everything to
do with what German government officials know that the organization
does. Consequently, this presentation concentrated heavily on the
organization’s social-psychological assaults on many of its most
committed members, and I barely mentioned Scientology’s ideological
system. The assaults that I described are ones that German government
officials know about, and with that knowledge they have no choice
other than to see Scientology as a threat to the democratic state.
Were officials to grant Scientology religious status, then even
more citizens than already now do would increase their involvement
to the point of becoming Sea Org members, and then at least some
of them would be subject to the brutal conditions and programs that
I described. With Germany’s unique experiences with both National
Socialism and Communism, it is unthinkable that responsible officials
would facilitate the operation of a totalitarian organization that
throws its members into forced labour and re-indoctrination programs.
One of the tragedies in this debate is that normal Scientologists
will feel persecuted and threatened. These people likely know nothing
about RPF conditions, and they genuinely feel that Scientology involvement
has benefited them. The organization to which they belong, however,
appears to be committing serious human rights abuses. Consequently,
I conclude my article by highlighting areas of concern raised by
examining the United Nations’ 1948 resolution entitled The International
Bill of Human Rights (United Nations, 1996b), and the 1996 International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations,
1996a).
First, Scientology’s procedures involving committees of evidence,
sec checking, gang bang sec checking, and the two RPF programs almost
certainly violate Articles 9 and 10 of the Bill. Article 9 protects
people against "arbitrary arrest, detention or exile"
while article 10 guarantees "a fair and public hearing by an
independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his
&91;sic&93; rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against
him" (United Nations, 1996: 23).
Second, Scientology’s punishment of members for merely discussing
the merits of Hubbard’s teachings, as well as its invasive probing
into people’s thoughts though sec checking, almost certainly violate
Articles 18 and 19 of the Bill that deal with both "the right
to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and "the
right to freedom of opinion and expression" (United Nations,
1996: 25).
Third, the various Scientology practices and procedures that I
discussed may violate Article 17 of the Bill, which states that
"&91;n&93;o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference
with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful
attacks on his honour and reputation" (United Nations, 1996:
49).
Fourth, the conditions of the RPF and the RPF’s RPF almost certainly
violate Article 7 of the Covenant, which discusses "the right
of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of
work…" (United Nations, 1996a: 38). The article specifically
identifies fair wages, "&91;a&93; decent living for themselves and
their families…, &91;s&93;afe and healthy working conditions…, and
&91;r&93;est, leisure, and reasonable limitation of working hours and
periodic holidays with pay…." (United Nations, 1996a: 38).
Indeed, many Sea Org jobs themselves may not meet these reasonable
standards of propriety, safety, and fairness.
Fifth and finally, the extreme social psychological assaults and
forced confessions that RPF and RPF’s RPF inmates suffer almost
certainly violate Article 12 of the Covenant, which recognizes "the
right of everyone to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard
of physical and mental health" (United Nations, 1996a: 18).
These and probably other serious human rights issues swirl around
Scientology programs that have tax exemption and operate within
the boundaries of the United States. With these serious issues in
mind, the American human rights criticism of Germany’s opposition
to Scientology is the height of diplomatic arrogance. By granting
Scientology tax exemption, the United States government is cooperating
with an organization that appears to put citizens from around the
world at significant mental health and perhaps medical risk. While
in no way do I want my remarks to be taken as a blanket endorsement
of the German government’s rhetoric or tactics, on the battle with
Scientology the government has the high moral ground.
————————————————————————
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