From: krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de (Cornelius Krasel) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: 17-year-old member of the Sea Org escapes from Saint Hill Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 20:14:52 +0200 Message-ID: Both the SPIEGEL and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung report this week on the escape of a seventeen year old Sea Org member from Saint Hill (SPIEGEL, pp. 94 ff, Sueddeutsche Zeitung from Monday, p. 3). Tanya (which is not her real name) was born in Simbabwe and grew up in Rhodesia. Her mother died when she was four. Both her father and her stepmother were Scientologists. Since she didn't have a good relation to her stepmother, she did a Scn communication course for childs in Johannesburg when she was eight. It didn't help. The son of the stepmother was audited when he was seven; he hated it. When Tanya hurt herself as child, she was not comforted, but instead asked for her overts. There seems to be a special Sec Check for six- to twelve-year-olds, with questions like: "What were you forbidden to tell?", "Did you ever disappoint your parents?" or "Have you ever done something with your body which you shouldn't have done?". Apparently the family moved to Germany later on. Tanya was not very happy at home. Once she asked her father: "What would you do if I killed myself?" His answer: "You are responsible for yourself." Tanya followed this advice and left her home for Saint Hill. She was 16 years old. Why did Tanya go to Saint Hill? It appears that she believed she would enter a loving community. Therefore she signed the billion-year contract. She was promised wages amounting to 30 UKP a week and every second Saturday free. According to Tanya, there are about 300 Scientologists in Saint Hill nowadays, of these are 77 children and teens. The number of children is increasing, says Tanya. It turned out to be different. She had to work 8 to 10 hours a day, plus five hours of study of Hubbard spew. It was rare for her to go to bed before midnight. The first time, she had to do hard menial labour: building a sauna for the purification rundown and digging a deep ditch trough the garden. Apparently the children worked throughout the night for some time. Not too surprisingly, she wouldn't get the promised wages either. If the situation was good, she would earn 3 to 6 UKP a week; if it was bad, she wouldn't get anything. Tanya had to work even when she was ill. Once she was physically assaulted by another female which resulted in a concussion. When Tanya proved herself in the Sauna project, she was routed into the HCO, the Hubbard Communication Office, one of the seven divisions of any org. Tanya reports that all letters were routinely opened. Some others of HCO's tasks are the distribution of advertisements, recruitment of new people and the fetching of fugitives. According to Tanya, the number of fugitives is higher than assumed by the public, but most of them won't talk about their experiences, because Scientology has their ethics folders. Tanya decided to flee from Scientology half a year after she had been promoted to the HCO. Her first attempt was rather naive: she told the security officer that she would leave. Result: she was locked up and had to write down all her "overts". Thereupon, she changed her tactics and told that she needed some days off to visit her dad who had suffered an alleged heart attack. The holiday is granted, and Tanya is off for a couple of days. After that, she goes back to Saint Hill to pick up some personal belongings. But Scientology has become suspicious. Only with the help of Ursula Caberta (the Hamburg commissary for Scientology) and the British police she can leave Saint Hill two days later. This was in August 1996. Tanya also reports a kidnapping attempt in Hamburg shortly after her escape. The offenders have not been found. Tanya claims to be terrorized since three weeks by telephone (wouldn't it be a good idea to read OT3 to the callers?). Her parents have disconnected from her. Scientology has sent a dead-agent file on Tanya to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. It contains allegations such as an angry letter from an aunt because Tanya drank 9 liters of coke, stole 20 marks and phoned for more than 400 marks from the aunts' telephone. Interestingly, Scientology confirms that Tanya had to work hard; her working hours, according to the file, were from 8:30 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. --Cornelius. -- /* Cornelius Krasel, U Wuerzburg, Dept. of Pharmacology, Versbacher Str. 9 */ /* D-97078 Wuerzburg, Germany email: phak004@rzbox.uni-wuerzburg.de SP3 */ /* "Science is the game we play with God to find out what His rules are." */