We are faced with an interesting conundrum in the current Church of Scientology. One that is not as apparent to its parishioners as it to those of us who worked on the inside ranks of the Sea Org and saw the level of hypocrisy of the current church. Unfortunately, none of this should reflect on Scientology itself, but in the real world out there, people have a hard time distinguishing between fiction and fact.

The fiction is the hypocritical aspect of the Church of Scientology. Let's define the term first to make sure we all understand the parameters. Hypocrisy comes from the Greek word "hypo" which means "to act on stage" and "krinein" which means "to decide." In other words, hypocrisy means to act out, by decision. And sure enough, Websters defines the word as: "a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not: especially the false assumption of an appearance or virtue or religion." The Oxford American Dictionary puts it, "The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense."

With that, let's take a look at why we disagree with the cover-up operation of the current Church's administration.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- is a campaign being avidly pushed by the Church. It's a great campaign. It needs to be said. But -- if you haven't read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as presented by the United Nations, which I suggest you do (just click on the words), you will find that the Church of Scientology is very avidly violating those rights while pretending to be entirely for them. Let's take a few examples:

Article 13 states: • Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Anyone who has been in the Sea Org, at the bases in Los Angeles or up at the international base in Hemet California, knows full well that security procedures are engaged to make sure that staff do not have freedom of movement. In fact, security guards, cameras, fences and the like prevent movement, dissuade people from walking or going where they want to. One can be detained and actually put under watch for months and prevented from moving about, or even seeing one's own spouse. I personally was put under watch one for 3 months and then again another 6 months because I disagreed.

Article 16 states: • Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

Organizations in Los Angeles and at the international base had mandates imposed on them years ago, and enforced by the Senior HCOs and other management ranks, actively prohibiting Sea Org members from talking to, and particularly engaging in any kind of relationships with people from other Scientology organizations than one's own immediate base. I personally observed a number of people who were actually factually told NOT to marry someone that they had chosen as a spouse, because and ONLY because it violated orders from David Miscavige wherein he decried an intermingling of the organizations at different locations. One woman I know was actually engaged, wedding plans were in progress, family had been informed and she was told by organization executives that she could NOT marry that person because he worked three miles down the road from where she did. It was not "permitted". So she canceled the wedding and destroyed a relationship.

Article 17 states: • Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

Sea Org members were not permitted to buy or own their own cell phones. Were not permitted to own and watch a television or to watch DVDs or movies on their own time, unless it was their authorized day off (which did not happen). They were not permitted to have access to internet, which in effect denies them ownership to knowledge and interaction with other human beings.

Let's not forget also that the Sea Org members make about $46 a week, assuming they get that amount every week. While we were all reminded that we were not working for money, and we certainly knew that, we were told it was only an allowance. In truth, the amount of that allowance barely permits one to buy their essentials each week, and makes it nearly impossible to save money to visit family, to travel or indeed to have any freedom of movement at all. In other words, one does not have the means to get away.

When my wife and I left the Sea Org, we had clocked some 52 years of service to the Sea Org between us. We were each handed $500 severance pay on our way out the door. We had nothing else. If it had not been for our families who came to our rescue, we would have been stranded on the streets, without credentials, without jobs, money or a place to live. That is inhumane and a violation of everything that the declaration of human rights stands for.

Article 24 states: • Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

In the last 4 years I was in the Sea Org (until recently) we never saw a day off, 52 weeks of the year, and worked 7 days out of 7 days. Holidays were rare, if indeed they happened at all, and as to reasonable working hours, we worked every day from 9 AM to midnight with barely enough time to get home, get in 7 hours of sleep -- assuming one did nothing else in their lives -- and return to work the next day. This was compelled, enforced, driven and demanded and there was no choices in the matter.

I could go on, the violations are not small, and they are many.

Let's take a look another aspect of this hypocrisy. California Penal Code 236.2 states that "the 'indicators' of human trafficking are as follows

a) Signs of trauma, fatigue, injury or other evidence of poor care.
b) The person is withdrawn, afraid to talk or his or her communication is censored by another person.
c) The person does not have freedom of movement.
d) The person lives and works in one place.
e) The person owes a debt to his or her employer.
f) Security measures are used to control who has contact with the person.
g) The person does not have control of his or her own government-issued identification or over his or her worker immigration documents."

Let's break that down:

"a) Signs of trauma, fatigue, injury or other evidence of poor care." Look at any Sea Org member, and you will see fatigue and trauma. The trauma is probably seriously buried and they wouldn't possibly reveal it to you unless they were gotten to a safe point where they could say it. The mental trauma that Sea Org members at upper middle and international management are subjected to is inhumane. In the early days of the Sea Org we all lived with a lot of demand and expectations -- none of that ever traumatized us as it was never done oppressively or suppressively. However, David Miscavige's regime sees fit to invalidate, nullify and make nothing of staff members as a routine to aggrandize their own image in some perverted power trip. It's all designed to make people submissive and cowed and obedient to David Miscavige and his people.

"b) The person is withdrawn, afraid to talk or his or her communication is censored by another person." You will find, as I did, that many or most Sea Org members are afraid to say what they really think or have observed. For the simple reason that if you do so, you will be labelled disaffected, anti-management, you could end up losing your job, being put under watch, going to the RPF or even worse, having your name slandered so badly that no one would dare to post you in anything but a menial job for fear of going up against the powers that so labeled you. The ultimate threat is that you will be cut off from Scientology -- your future immortality. Even those of us outside the Sea Org, who consider ourselves Scientologists are afraid to speak up against some illusion (brainwashing) that has been instilled in us. It is technically part of the Stockholm Syndrome (look it up) - whereby the hostages inadvertently defend the terrorist in spite of the violence and damage done to them.

"c) The person does not have freedom of movement." Sea Org members at management bases in Los Angeles, Flag and International level, and possibly other bases are subjected to tight surveillance, security cameras and inspections, mustering several or more times a day to keep them corraled and accounted for, prevented from walking to most places and required to take Church buses, and are generally not permitted to go out on their own at night should they chose to go for food or drink or to socialize -- this being heavily frowned upon or outright prevented as it is considered "out-ethics," "slack," "off-purpose," "frying other fish" and any number of descriptions all of which discourage personal freedom of movement.

"d) The person lives and works in one [the same] place." SO members in most locations work and live at the same base, or very nearby, and considering they take buses to and from work, one never considers that he or she is really free to move anywhere on his own. And in fact -- they are not. I have been repeatedly stopped by security personnel demanding that I take a bus instead of walking down the street to work. At the Int base staff are all forced to live in berthing on the base premises. No one is allowed to leave without written permission. When they are allowed to leave, they usually must have an escort to make sure they don't take off.

"e) The person owes a debt to his or her employer." Sea Org members, in spite of their years or even decades of contribution, are aware of the fact that if they chose to leave, they will owe horrendous amounts of money to the Church for courses and counseling received. This in spite of the fact of clear-cut policy by the Founder, which states that freeloaders are people who come on staff only to get expensive training and auditing without paying for it, is still applied to ANYONE who chooses to leave, whether they have contributed 5, 10 or 35 years of their lives to the Sea Org. The threat is levied and kept there as a means of controlling people. As of 2004, the average Freeloader's debt for most people leaving Int was in excess of $80,000 even for Sea Org veterans who had been on staff for more than 20 years. Steve Hall published his freeloader's debt he received in 2006 in the amount of $82,191. Tommy Davis tried to collect this debt from Steve Hall in February 2008 but Hall refused to pay a single penny.

"f) Security measures are used to control who has contact with the person." At the Int base for example, starting in the early 1990s, every phone call to relatives or friends off the base had a security guard or MAA (Matt Butler or Jenny Butler) silently listening in on the call from an adjoining room in HCO on a telephone with the microphone removed so as not to be heard. On special holidays like Christmas, someone was usually on post all day so that staff could call their parents. The rest of the time it was very difficult to even get someone to listen in, hence calls were few. All incoming and outgoing mail was screened by Kenny Campleman, meaning he opened and read every incoming letter (withholding any of it at will) and read every outgoing piece of mail. All incoming phone calls were routed through a receptionist (Mary Williams) who was not allowed to let any calls through. 

g) The person does not have control of his or her own government-issued identification or over his or her worker immigration documents." One's passport and legal documents are collected from you and kept in a safe which only the Port Captain has access to. Naturally, policy is quoted on all of this, but the truth is, that without your passport and legal documents, you can't leave the country, so once again, you are restricted from exercising your human rights.

That technically is called human trafficking. It's a form of enslavement against one's will.

The purpose of this rendering is not to engender hate for the Church, because in truth most of us still love Scientology and we want to see a real Church of Scientology which is true to its own words, it's own tenets and most certainly if they are going to promote and stand behind THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as put out by the United Nations, then it is time that Church management dropped all the hypocrisy, all the acting, all the cover ups and all the bullshit, and started acting like a real Church. One that doesn't have to hide behind a veil of virtuosity and one that doesn't even have to defend itself because it has nothing to hide. If the current management of Scientology were so pure, as their PR spin doctors and attorneys proclaim, then why are thousands of us standing on the side lines saying otherwise? Are the 25,000 former Sea Org members all SPs and bad people? I don't think so. Hitler murdered millions of people over a few years. Does that make the millions bad or just one suppressive person at the helm? I think the statistics are quite clear in the matter.

Read the Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations site (link included above), don't just read the Church of Scientology's PR version. Read the penal code I quote above. If you have something to say, say it. It's time to put the pressure on David Miscavige to relinquish his death grip on Scientology and it's time for everyone to demand real Scientology.

Hell -- look what happened to Germany. When Hitler went down, so did his Third Reich. It crumbled overnight.

Time for Miscavige to move over. We're done with dictators.

Written by Outside the Box