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Cult Friction

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THEY ARE LEGION Members of Anonymous take to the streets (Photo: Sam Comen)

Some former Scientologists attribute the delay—for which the Church has been receiving daily fines of $250 from the city—to the Church's fund-raising prowess. Donna Shannon, a former member who donated a total of $50,000 toward the construction of the facility, says that as long as the Church can appeal to members for donations, ostensibly to help finance the building, it will remain incomplete.

Scientology's new building will include an antigravity simulator; a human-size gyroscope; oversize furniture to help determine spacial relationships; and a circular track to run around, over and over againBut others say that the Church is still perfecting the secret training regimen the structure was intended to house—the super power rundown, a course that will give Scientologists, well, superpowers. The building's amenities will include an antigravity simulator; a human-size gyroscope to teach students how to orient their bodies; television screens that move around, rapidly flashing images to drill members on how to perceive subliminal images; a facility for producing a variety of odors to train the olfactory sense; oversize furniture to help determine spacial relationships; and a circular track to run around, over and over again. The rundown is a new course that even OT VIII's will want to pay for.

Matt Feshbach, a billionaire hedge fund manager and devoted Scientologist, is one of the lucky few who has experienced a pilot program of the super power rundown. Apparently, it works. "I'm not dependent on my physical body to perceive things," he told the St. Petersburg Times in 2006, adding that he had already saved the life of a young boy with his new abilities by stopping him from running into the street.

One Scientologist who has apparently forsaken his superpowers is Mike Rinder, formerly head of the Office of Special Affairs and chief spokesman for Scientology. In what many ex-members describe as a significant black eye for the Church, Rinder blew last summer and now lives in Williamsburg, Virginia. Rinder was one of the most powerful men in the organization; it was his Australian baritone that proclaimed on ABC's 20/20 in 1998: "Every few thousand years a man comes along who is so extraordinary he changes the course of history, and L. Ron Hubbard is one of those men."

"Rinder leaving Scientology is like Goebbels leaving the Nazis," says Beatty, who speculates that Rinder couldn't put up with Miscavige any longer. Miscavige is notorious, former Scientologists say, for mistreating and screaming at underlings.

(Church spokeswoman Karin Pouw "categorically denies" any allegation that Miscavige has mistreated anyone: "Mr. Miscavige is a beloved and respected leader. Your question is offensive in the extreme." As for Rinder's current status in the Church, she says, "Religious membership is personal." Efforts to reach Rinder through another ex-Scientologist who has been in contact with him were unsuccessful.)

Miscavige, for his part, is having trouble keeping his own family in the Church, let alone his henchmen. In 2000, his brother Ron and Ron's wife, Bitty, left Gold Base—a formerly top-secret facility roughly 90 miles east of Los Angeles that serves as the Church's international headquarters—for Virginia. Both Miscavige brothers were raised in the Church by their father, a Polish-born musician who joined Scientology while living in Philadelphia. (It was David, however, who caught Hubbard's eye and served as his assistant from the age of 14.)

Ron Miscavige has remained silent since his defection. He did not return Radar's phone calls or e-mails. But his daughter, Jenna Miscavige Hill—David's niece—caused an uproar in February by writing an open letter to Pouw denouncing the Church's policy of "disconnection," in which followers are forced to forgo contact with anyone declared a suppressive person, even family members. Pouw had previously issued a statement in response to Morton's book, claiming that disconnection is "the opposite of what the Church believes and practices."

That, Hill says, is not true. "If they're so arrogant that they can completely lie when people know the truth, they're not going to change," she says. "I felt like I had to say something."

Hill says the Church tried to keep her from talking to her parents from 2000, when they left the Church (she was 16 at the time), until 2005, when she followed suit. Moreover, she describes a harrowing childhood as a third-generation Scientologist, in which, even as a small child, her life was heavily regimented and she was required to do manual labor.

From the age of six, Hill lived at Castile Canyon Ranch, a private Scientology-run boarding school near Hemet, California, about 20 miles from Gold Base, where her parents lived and worked as Scientology staff. (Scientology is divided into "staff" and "public" members; many of the staff are under total control of the Scientology hierarchy and receive courses for free or at a discount, while public members like Greta Van Susteren and Tom Cruise are free to do as they please and pay for courses.)

"I saw my parents once a week," Hill says. Along with 80 other children of staff at Gold Base, she says, she woke up every morning at 6:30, put on a uniform, and cleaned her room until inspection at 7 a.m. Then she worked handing out vitamins to other kids. After that, she says, "We'd do rock hauling and demolition, dig trenches, plant trees." When the grueling physical chores were done, she would study academics and Scientology materials until 9:30 p.m. "It's kind of weird when you're six or seven years old to have to study until 9:30 at night," she says. "We had units, we had to call people Sir, we did close-order drilling. It was run like a military organization."

Hill has fond memories of her uncle David from her time at Gold Base. Her family often spent Christmas holidays with Miscavige, she says, and he would take her to movies and even once to a hockey game. Things changed when, at age 12, she was drafted into the Sea Org, an elite cadre of Scientology staff. Hill recalls, "I went to Clearwater to visit some friends, and they said, 'Here's your uniform. You're in the Sea Org.' After that, it wasn't the same. He wasn't my uncle anymore. He was Sir. He's like God there."

In Clearwater, Sea Org recruits sign a contract promising one billion years of service to the organization; in the event of death, inductees are allowed 20 years to "grow the body" after they are reincarnated, at which point they are expected to report for duty. They are also required to fill out an exhaustive questionnaire bearing this quote from Hubbard: "You can't be shot for what you have done, you can only be shot for what you haven't told us." The Church asks whether applicants have ever been affiliated with the CIA or Mossad or have ever held a security clearance, and requires them to fill out a detailed sexual history, including "any perversions" and "who, what was done, and how often—be as complete as you can."

During her four years in Clearwater, Hill says she went to school once a week. She spent the rest of her time studying Scientology and performing administrative work. Her parents stayed back at Gold Base, and Hill says she saw her mother "once for about a half-hour" and her father "three times for at most a half-hour each time" over those four years.

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WE CAN HAZ XENU? Masked protestors (Photo: Sam Comen)
Nicholai Allen, a classmate of Hill's at the ranch, corroborates her story. "I was seven when my mom took a job at Gold Base," he says. "She had no idea that she wouldn't be living with me when she got there—she wasn't given a choice. Almost immediately I was put to work cleaning bathrooms, harvesting vegetables, and building rock walls."

One day, when Hill was 16, the local head of the Religious Technology Center, the body in charge of enforcing Church doctrine, told her she needed a "sec check," or security check—a lengthy inquest using an E-meter. "I was interrogated eight hours a day for six weeks," she says. "I couldn't talk to my friends. I had to put on a grubby uniform, and when I wasn't being interrogated, I had to clean the bathroom. When I slept, there was always someone guarding the room." She was never told why.

Jenna Miscavige Hill, the estranged niece of David Miscavige, describes a harrowing childhood in which, even as a small child, her life was heavily regimented and she was required to do manual laborAfter six weeks, she was flown to L.A. When she arrived, she was told to go to the Office of Special Affairs' boardroom, where she found Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun, Miscavige's second-in-command. "[Rinder] said, 'Your parents are leaving, and you're going with them.'" The sec check was standard operating procedure for anyone—even a 16-year-old—leaving the Church. "They wanted to know if I had any evil intentions toward my uncle," Hill says. "They wanted to find out if I was going to speak out."

To the contrary, Hill chose the Church over her family. "I was brainwashed, so I didn't want to go," Hill says. She convinced Rinder, Rathbun, and her parents to let her stay on in L.A. and remain on the staff of the Sea Org.

Hill never attended school again. During her time in the L.A. Sea Org, she says, all of her parents' letters to her were intercepted, and she was forced to read and answer questions about them in the presence of Rinder. She eventually married a fellow Scientologist named Dallas. In 2005, after a particularly aggressive auditing session in which she was questioned for hours because she criticized her superiors for attempting to take away her cell phone—Hill's only mode of contact with her parents—she announced that she wanted to leave the Church. "It was after a culmination of a lifetime of things," she says, that the cell phone issue finally flipped a switch in her head. Dallas, who was more indoctrinated, took some convincing, and the couple put off the decision for a few months. Hill later found out that during that time, Rinder and other people in the Office of Special Affairs were covertly interrogating Dallas. "They were secretly talking to my husband," she says. "Mike Rinder was telling Dallas bad things about my family, [encouraging him] to reevaluate, and telling him that he wouldn't be able to talk to his parents. Not to keep Dallas, but just to fuck with me."

Finally, after Dallas broke down and told Hill about the secret interrogations, the couple agreed to leave. "We went and stayed at a Travelodge," Hill says. "They showed up the next day with a U-Haul full of our stuff. The guy delivering it told Dallas, 'I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure your family disconnects from you.'"

"We had no money," she says. "No credit. I didn't have a driver's license. No nothing. I was 22. There are a ton of people like me."

Hill and her husband now live in San Diego. She declines to talk on the record about her current relationship with her parents, but says of her upbringing, "I wouldn't even let that happen to my dog."

"Jenna Miscavige speaking out is probably the most devastating thing to happen to them so far in terms of long-term damage," says Carnegie Mellon's Dave Touretzky. "To hear that [David Miscavige's] own niece left the Church and is accusing him of breaking up her family—that's huge."

Asked about Hill's account of her childhood, Pouw said: "The Church does not comment on how parents choose to educate and raise their children. Children were never forced to engage in manual labor." According to Pouw, "Facilities provided by the Church for the children of staff at [Gold Base] were nothing short of spectacular. In addition to a boarding school, facilities included swimming pools, basketball courts, football fields, baseball diamonds, and even horse stables. Citrus orchards and organic gardens, maintained by professionally trained gardeners, were also provided."

"Yeah, there was a stable," Hill says bitterly in response. "And we were the ones who built the horse corral. We were the ones who hauled the horse shit every week. I rode a horse one time in the six years I was there."

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