"All the problems of the world -- child labor, corruption - are symtoms of a spiritual disease; lack of compassion." Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

My parents joined the SO in 1980. Before that I spent a day with my mother and father each week. As things were in the seventies, my parents worked all day in a class IV org.

At the beginning of their SO career, things were alright. We had breakfast and dinner together every night. I remember there were these cooks in PBC (Pac Base Crew) in the morning, who would ask you how you wanted your eggs, and they'd make them in front of you, super fast.

We had an hour for family time, in addition to the 45-minute dinnertime, all of which was spent with family. In PAC we'd walk up Vermont to Thrifty's (now Rite-Aid), and get a double scoop of ice cream for 30 cents. Other times we'd go to Barnsdale Park and hang out or walk south on Vermont and get a doughnut or something.

The Cadet Org was an adventure, though. We used to work all day after school. We even had some playtime which was spent playing warball at the ATA (Apollo Training Academy, a school that the kids in PAC attended located across Fountain Ave from Bridge Publications).

In 1983 I did my EPF. I was eleven at the time and the materials were, to say the least, way too difficult for a child. I spent seven months on the EPF. It was designed to take three weeks! I was fortunate that, at the time, families had their own berthing and I lived with my mother and father. This made everything worthwhile. I saw my mom and dad at night for a little while before going to sleep, and that precious little contact with my parents would make a world of difference.  

I remember when Benjamin Rinder was born in the Fountain Building. I also remember when many kids were brought into this world and how incredibly theta that was. And while conditions were far from ideal, families in the early eighties were encouraged to have kids.

There was the CEO (Cadet Estate Org) that took care of babies and small kids. It was far from ideal, but it really could have been perfected as opposed to destroying it altogether.  The CEO was demolished by the PAC RPF in 1990 to make way for the Celebrity Center event structure. There were some great plus points with it. Babies got their barley formula and so on.

There were many outpoints with this system, too, but it was better than no system and no children.  

At the time of LRH's death in 1986 (I had been in the SO since 1983), I was in CMO. In '87 family time was cancelled. This was a huge upset, I was still a kid after all.

After that, all the way to the present, I have had a grand total of ONE day off with my mom and dad. That is ONE DAY in 27 years.

There are many people who really never got to know their own parents, as they spent so little time with them! If you watch Jenna Miscavige's ABC interview, this resonates in her words.

I am no longer in the Sea Org and today my wife and I have a baby. I have spent more time with my baby than all the time my parents ever spent with me. And while they were good parents and meant well, they did not get to see much of me at all.

But that was only the beginning. Far worse was yet to come.

Beyond 1984

One of the single most suppressive "policies" of the Church of Scientology came out on September 28, 1986, as Flag Order No. 3905. It was not written by LRH, but by Guillaume Lesevre, ED Int who acted on the order of David Miscavige. This was the infamous Flag Order that stopped Sea Org couples from having children.

[Note from Thoughtful: Haydn James (T Paine) was the Commanding Officer PAC Base Crew at the time. ED Int wrote to him and gave him the problem of how to handle the growing number of kids in the Sea Org (400 in PAC and climbing) plus elsewhere. He said Sea Org resources shouldn't be used for the raising of kids (which if the Geico Caveman were told that, he would say indignantly, “Why not?”) and furthermore Guillaume said since Haydn was responsible for one of the largest concentrations of Sea Org kids he could solve the problem.

[It was clear from Guillaume’s comm that he was not the originator of the cycle. Plus all later evidence regarding kids and families in the Sea Org (canceling of family time, etc.) showed the origination point was David Miscavige without any shadow of a doubt.

[Anyway Haydn made up his analysis and proposed an issue. ED Int (aka, Miscavige) shot it down and forced ED Int to write his own -- the Sept 86 issue. No doubt DM set the direction and the boundaries.

[Haydn’s analysis showed a lot of kids in PAC were from parents on minor posts and who produced little -- some had up to 5 kids; what was missing was the normal function of routine Fitness Boards. Haydn argued that producing Sea Org members working 70 or 80 hours a week for $30 pay were valuable and that the Sea Org should foot the bill to help them raise their kids. Non producers could be eased back into civil life by use of existing and standard means -- Fitness Boards.

[Obviously Miscavige didn’t like Haydn’s idea at all.]

On April 3rd, 1991 the issue was reissued under Guillaume’s name shortly after he sent his two beautiful children to live with their grandmother in Italy, never to see them again. (You can see the full issue at the bottom of this article).

This Flag Order is, I believe, one of the single most vicious policies the "church" has ever adopted. Not only did it denigrate and degrade the institution of marriage, it resulted in the neglect and abuse of hundreds of children, the outright abortion of hundreds more. Here’s a quote from that horribly-written issue:

"The Sea Org is not set up to handle or take care of children. Sea Org members getting [sic] children has resulted in an unpractical burden on the Sea Org units and inhibited their efficiency. No SO installation has the job of making SO members for twenty years from now."  Flag Order 3905-1 CHILDREN, SEA ORG MEMBERS AND SEA ORG ORGS, 3 April 1991

"GETTING children"????!!  “Making SO members for twenty years from now”? This is the language used to virtually abolish the second dynamic?

It is unbelievable! The results from this: Hundreds of forced abortions. The horrors of "persuaded" abortions and the horrific stress and guilt on mothers-to-be. But it gets worse. Miscavige and Guillaume with a clever twist of phrase turned the action of having children into a “crime” to be “hidden” in secrecy:

"... withholding the fact that there are pregnant SO members in the org, will result in a Committee of Evidence on the org PCO, Dir Routing and Personnel, HAS, Supercargo and Captain/CO as well as the SO members concerned."  

Yes, let's Comm-Ev pregnant women!

David Miscavige and Guillaume Lesevre, the shame of all those young lives never lived is upon you! No wonder you Guillaume find it impossible to throw off the yoke of Miscavige and come out of the Hole. And you said Marty had a "violent streak"? With one order you virtually murder how many children?

"The overt doth speak loudly in accusation, Shakespeare re-written." LRH, Study Tapes, Lecture #2

From then on many, many men and women in the Sea Org were denied their human right to have children. This vicious policy denies families and degrades marriage and violates one of the most basic LRH principles: that we each survive through eight Dynamics which includes the having and rearing of children.

What could possibly justify the eradication of children you ask?

Oooh, lack of "efficiency"! Plus, the Sea Org was not “set up to handle or take care of children.” Huh? Every human being is set up to create children. If you don’t believe it, just look between your legs.  

Does this start to sound just a tad "Third Reich" to anyone?

Instead of just throwing togerther some fitness boards, fixing up an org board, firing a mission or two... just eradicate all Sea Org children. It’s David Miscavige’s Final Solution: exterminate every fetus since fetuses are small and cannot fight back. Why go to the trouble of gassing people like Adolf Hitler when you can just take care of them when they are only about an inch long?

I am not looking for sympathy here. These are simply facts. But woven through these facts is the plight of hundreds or even possibly thousands of children who really deserved much better. Kids need love, patience and care. Perhaps this sounds a little soft, but it isn't. To deny this in families is cruelty of the first order.

Imprisoning Children

Like most marriages in the Sea Org, when my father moved up the org board, he was coerced into divorcing my mother. I was fifteen at the time and it was a huge loss.

Shortly thereafter I got into trouble and was assigned to the RPF.

I was sixteen when I was in the RPF and I had lots of company! There were about 40 minors at the time in the PAC RPF, all of whom were unjustly assigned. But I was a good student. I was a good worker, as most minors were. I spent 2 years in the RPF! Many kids spent much more time in the "R" as it was called.

A key injustice of the RPF (besides being there at all), is that if you're a minor you have no choice but to do the program. You cannot leave the Sea Org, as your parents are in the Sea Org.

So, this is false IMPRISONMENT of CHILDREN. This is Final Solution #2: If you can’t kill them when they are a fetus, imprison them when they are a child.

I remember one occasion where a young man who worked in the same org as me announced at the dinner table, "I don't like RPFers because they're f__k-ups."

One month later, he was in the RPF, and one month after that, he blew.

Kids didn't have the luxury of escaping/blowing. Children toiled doing the same labor as adults from 6:00  AM 'till 5:00 PM.  And, same as adults, any kind of infraction was immediately punished by running laps or doing push-ups, or worse yet, getting assigned to the RPF's RPF, where one slaved in "Rat's Alley" all day and well into the night.

I suddenly found myself there, and I remember being covered with the horrific smell of rotten food slime. And I do mean covered! I thought, "What the hell am I doing here?" But, then again, I had no choice.

In the RPF there is absolutely no time off and no liberties (read my other article on the RPF in this site). There were no exceptions for children. In fact, as we were smaller, some children were brutalized by some adults (there was a small group of people in the RPF with their share of psychotic tendencies).

At 5 PM we had dinner and "redemption" time and lights out at 11 PM. This was tough but we got some auditing and I did experience gains from auditing despite the fact that I needed more rest and food. Despite the fact that I did not want to be there. Despite the fact that I saw very little of my mom and dad. Despite the fact that the RPF I/C was a total Nazi, and despite the fact that I had been unjustly assigned to the RPF in the first place. And despite the fact that no child should be forced to do hard labor.

The application of actual Scientology gave me some very big wins on the RPF. Those were the last wins I had with Scientology during my career in the Sea Org, however.

Unbelievably, life would get even worse than my 2 years in the PAC RPF.  

Like I said though, unbelievably, the Sea Org would get far worse.

At the Int Ranch, kids worked for most of the day. Parents had very little time with their kids. It was mainly hygiene-time on Sunday mornings. But kids (from ages 4 on up), spent their nights in dorms at the ranch.

Many kids missed their mothers greatly and were restimulated in this environment. It was militaristic in that there were musters like at Gold, and kids would have to do heavy MEST work without a choice.

Sea Org children never had a choice to be there at all. This violates the very core of Scientology and the philosophy of self-determinism.

As does Flag Order 3905.

If your blood isn’t running cold by now consider this: There was an instance when Justin Miscavige and Matt Price accidentally injured a staff member at the Ranch and Miscavige assigned them the condition of "Child."

This was considered far worse than Confusion. (Goes to show you how he felt about children). In his book, Science of Survival, LRH explained what a low-toned person does to the second dynamic:

At the tone level of Covert Hostility you can expect: "Use of children for sadistic purposes"

At the tone level of Anger you can expect "Brutal treatment of children"

"At 1.5 we enter the band of brutal treatment of children, heavy corporal punishment, the forcing of the child into a mold with pain, breaking his dramatizations, upset about his noise or clutter.

"At 1.1 on the Tone Scale there may be two reactions to children. There may be an actual and immediate desire for children as a manifestation of sex, but we also may have the use of children for sadistic purposes. And we may find both of these in the same individual. We have a long-term general neglect of children, with an occasional sporadic interest in them. We have very little thought for the child's future or the culture in which the child will grow up." -- LRH, Science of Survival

And there’s more:

"It is notable, as one glances down this column, that an interest in children includes not only in the bearing of the child, but in the child's well-being, happiness, mental state, education and general future. We may have a person on the 1.1 level who seems very anxious to produce a child. Very possibly this person is following an engram command to have children. Once the child is born, we may have, in this 1.1 bracket, an interest in it as a plaything, or a curiosity. But following this, we get general neglect and thoughtlessness about the child and no feeling whatsoever about the child's future or any effort to build one for it. We get careless familial actions, such as promiscuity, which will tear to pieces the family security upon which this child's future depends. Along this band, the child is considered a thing, a possession.

"A half a tone above this, in the anger band, the child is a target for the dramatizations which the individual does not dare execute against grown-ups in the environment -- a last-ditch effort to be in command of something. Here we have domination of the child with a constant warping of its character.

"The whole future of the race depends upon its attitude towards children..." -- L. Ron Hubbard, Science of Survival

Call it what it is: Human Trafficking

In about 1996, the Cadet Org and the Int Ranch were disbanded and all children were suddenly and ruthlessly sent thousands of miles away to be posted in orgs. The point being that, hundreds of children were robbed of a childhood, their families, and in most cases, their education.

I have been making this argument for years. I refuse to accept Miscavige’s medieval prohibitions which redefine a “child” as a criminal act punishable by Comm Ev and banishment.

I’d love to hear Tommy Davis -- that wicked and braying jack ass -- trying to hee-haw out some kind of an “acceptable truth” designed whitewash his boss’s felonious behavior. He can’t tell the real truth because that is punished in the “church.”

Written by Arthur Doyle