Los Angeles

Sea Org children based in Los Angeles, California, lived in a number of facilities including a building on Fountain Avenue, another on Melrose Avenue and two three-story buildings at 811 Beacon Street. One of them, Tonja Burden, spent three months at Beacon Street in 1973 at the age of 13. She later testified that at the facility, which housed 400 children,

[m]y duties were to care, clean and feed the children. Myself and another girl my age were the two oldest children at the Cadet Organization. The living conditions were squalid. Glass from broken windows lay strewn over the floors. Live electrical wires were exposed in areas where young children played. We received little food. On several occasions spoiled milk with maggots was served to children. The maggots were removed by hand before the milk was served. In addition to caring for the children, I cleaned toilets daily. I wrote to L. Ron Hubbard explaining the conditions, but nothing improved. Children were not allowed to live with their parents. Scientology permitted one visit every other week, and only for 45 minutes during mealtime.^[9]

By the Church's own admission, the Fountain Avenue facility was illegal, as it flouted local child safety regulations. It violated several building codes – it was not the right type of construction for group care of children, children under five were cared for above the first floor, and the children's rooms did not all have exits directly to the outside of the building. The illegalities were discovered by the Los Angeles County and State authorities following a hepatitis outbreak in February 1979. The church was tipped off that it would be raided by California state agents. This gave it time to move the children into an annex building that was hurriedly made to confirm with legal requirements. By the time the raid took place, a church official reported, "there was nothing they could do to us."^[10]

One of the nannies, Sheila Huber, said that at the age of sixteen she was put in charge of around thirty children aged under three, all housed in a single one-bedroom apartment: "I couldn't believe it. It was wall-to-wall cribs. There were just under 30 children and they were under my sole care. I had no training."^[11] Perhaps not surprisingly, the children had very restricted lives, according to Huber. She later recalled:

They never got outside. Actually, they got out once – in eight months, they got out once. And that ... took three months to get that approved. ... We took them in a van, the children, and took them to the park and they spent so much time in their cribs, day after day, night after night, that they wouldn't go in any space larger than the size of their cribs. They were terrified. They were terrified of sunlight.^[11]

PAC Ranch

Some of the children of Scientologists working at the Church's Pacific Area Command (PAC) base in Los Angeles were housed at Canyon Oaks Ranch near Santa Clarita, California, north-west of the city. According to former Scientologists Saina Kamula and Mirriam Francis, who lived at the PAC Ranch in the mid-1990s, it was a "military-esque" facility that operated "like Lord of the Flies".^[12] Francis described it as "a bunch of trailers plopped down on a few acres in desert SoCal area and that's where we studied more Scientology and worked and lived amongst each other."^[13] Kamula and Francis say that children were punished by being made to eat lunch behind maggot-infested dumpsters. Similar to other Cadet Org facilities, the children living at the PAC Ranch were made to carry out hard physical labor including demolish possibly asbestos-laced walls or laying bricks on L. Ron Hubbard Way in Los Angeles. Kamula says that she was made to work for 60 hours a week as an underage teen and suffered severe stress as a result, which led to her being placed on a suicide watch on several occasions. The facility was shut down in 2007.^[12]

Int Ranch

In the 1990s, the children of Sea Org members working at Scientology's Gold Base in California were housed in a facility called the "Int[ernational] Ranch". This was located on five hundred acres of land in the San Jacinto Hills in Riverside County, adjacent to the Soboba Indian Reservation about 20 miles from Gold Base. A cluster of buildings called the Motels occupied the center of the site, with six or seven other buildings scattered around nearby.^[4]: 37 When Jenna Miscavige Hill was sent there at the age of six in March 1990, she was one of fifteen other children of senior Scientology executives who lived at the site – a figure that eventually grew to around 80.^[4]: 38

The site was dilapidated, overgrown and presented fire risks, so the children were put to work renovating it. Although electrical and plumbing work was carried out by adults, virtually all of the other renovation work was carried out by the children.^[4]: 41 The children were divided into three groups: Children, Precadets and Cadets. The grouping was determined by both age and how advanced they were in their Scientology training. The youngest, the Children, were generally under six years old, Precadets were seven to nine and Cadets nine to sixteen. It was possible for particularly advanced younger children to be Cadets, or for older children who were behind with their studies to still be Precadets. It was also possible for children to be demoted to a lower group as a punishment.^[4]: 48

Later in 1990 an increasingly regimented regime was put in place in which the children's activities were scheduled down to the minute. It became more like a military boot camp in which children were made to do what Miscavige Hill describes as "grueling drills, endless musters, exhaustive inspections, and arduous physical labor that no child should have to do."^[4]: 49 A rigorous system of punishments and internal surveillance was implemented to keep the children in line. Any infractions resulted in being issued a chit, a kind of written demerit, which was kept on record. The children were instructed to report on each other's activities and speak up if they saw any infractions, otherwise they would be considered an accessory to the offense and would receive the same punishment as the offender. This, Miscavige Hill says, "made it difficult for anyone to trust anyone else".^[4]: 50-51

Life for a Cadet or Precadet followed a set, and lengthy, daily routine, overseen by the children themselves in accordance with L. Ron Hubbard's instructions. They wore uniforms consisting of khaki shorts with a red t-shirt or polo shirt with the Sea Org emblem embroidered on it. They also had sweat pants, dress pants and a vest but were not permitted to wear any of their own clothes, with the exception of pajamas.^[14]

They were roused at 6:30 am and given half an hour to carry out cleaning assignments. At 7 am they were formed up into seven different Divisions, each under a Division Head, for a morning muster in front of the Commanding Officer Cadet – a fellow Cadet. The children stood to attention with the Division Heads saluting while the Master-at-Arms, another child, read out a military-style report on each Division's status. Uniforms were inspected and the personal hygiene of each child was checked, with their breath and armpits smell-tested and their hair inspected for lice.^{[4]: 52–53}

Punishments were imposed for lateness or failing inspections. Lateness was particularly harshly punished, ranging from being issued with a chit to having a bucket of ice water poured over the offender's head. Failing a berthing inspection would result at the very least in receiving a chit. An offender might alternatively be ordered to white-glove the room (cleaning it so well that a person wearing white gloves could run their hands over the surfaces without getting them dirty) or in extremis being ordered to sleep overnight in Pig's Berthing, an old mattress in a rat- and bat-infested derelict building on the site.^{[4]: 52–53} Zoe Woodcraft, who was there at the same time as Miscavige Hill, wrote that she recalled "two girls about nine years old who were forced to spend the night there and in the middle of the night they ran screaming and crying from the building. One of the girls afterward told me that they had been terrified by the bats and couldn't stand it anymore."^[14]

After the morning muster, a period of Scientology training was followed by work on the children's assigned posts. Miscavige Hill was made a groundsman at the age of six, responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of part of the grounds, which involved physical labor. A few months later, when she was seven, she was made the Medical Liaison Officer – in effect the site doctor – with responsibility for identifying and treating any medical conditions reported by the children. She was also responsible for doling out vitamins and formulas as specified by Hubbard, which every child was required to ingest daily.^{[4]: 54–55} No matter how sick a child was, no drugs were allowed other than antibiotics, but visits from real doctors were rare. In the entire time that Miscavige Hill was at the Int Ranch, she did not go to a doctor once despite several periods of sickness.^{[4]: 56–57}

Breakfast took place between 8:30 and 9 am. A "table captain" was assigned for each table to supervise the delivery of food.^[14] This followed by fifteen minutes for the children to clean the dishes and dining room, and then a second muster. Between 9:15 am and 12:45 pm, Monday through Friday, and all day Saturday, the children went to decks or labor-intensive projects. Deck time formally lasted 25 hours per week but work more realistically lasted for at least 35 hours per week for all the Precadets and Cadets, from ages six upwards. They were divided into labor units which were assigned to specific projects, many involving hard physical labor. There was some lighter work such as doing the laundry or cleaning the swimming pool, but the children were also responsible for rock hauling, weeding, planting trees, digging irrigation trenches, landscaping the site and renovating buildings. On Saturdays the children had to carry out intensive cleaning of their berthings and the buildings. The adults at the Int Ranch issued project orders and inspected the results to make sure they were satisfactory, but only rarely intervened to help out the children. The work took place in all weathers, ranging from rain and hail to temperatures upwards of 100 °F (30 °C), with only occasional five-minute breaks permitted. There was no protective equipment and the children often had to wear inappropriate clothing, such as shorts in the winter, as there was no funding for new clothes.^{[4]: 58–60}

Scientology put forward a number of justifications for making the children do such work. They were told that the labor was an exchange for being able to live on the Ranch, earning their way rather than getting things for free, which was something that only criminals sought. The hard labor was said to be a way to train the children to take pride in their work, face tough situations and handle MEST (the physical world), which would make them better Scientologists. If their work or conduct was repeatedly deemed unsatisfactory they would be sent to the HMU, the Heavy MEST Work Unit, where they would be required to do the hardest forms of physical labor such as deep trench digging. Offenders were also physically isolated from the rest of the children.^{[4]: 60–61}

Miscavige Hill notes that "we were a group of children who devoted hours of every day to doing the kind of physical labor that no child should have to do." The work was physically taxing:

We got callouses and blisters. We had cuts and bruises. Our hands lost feeling when we plunged them into the frigid water of the creek bed for rocks. When we pulled weeds from the scorched summer earth, our hands burned from the friction and stung from the nettle. The conditions we worked under would have been tough for a grown man, and yet any complaints, backflashing [talking back], any kind of questioning was instantly met with disciplinary action.^[4]: 63

Deck time ended at 12:45 pm and was followed by clean-up and lunch. An hour later at 1:45 pm, schooling began in a range of typical academic topics, which the children taught themselves using textbooks and checksheets.^[4]: 65 There was no teacher but the children were instead overseen by a course supervisor who tested them on an E-meter to see if they had misunderstood anything. This continued until 6 pm, with a fifteen-minute break and a snack. Dinner and another clean-up took place from 6 to 6:45 pm, followed by Scientology training until 9 pm.^[4]: 68

Finally, the children were required to fill out Student Point Slips, a kind of progress report for the day, in which various activities were assigned point scores for completion. This was used for the "management by statistics" system implemented by Hubbard across Scientology: the points were tabulated and marked on a graph, which had to show an up-trend each day. Each day ended with an adulation period for L. Ron Hubbard, whose portrait was displayed on the wall of the course room. The children would face his picture, chant "Hip! Hip! Hooray", and applaud the portrait for a couple of minutes. After a short period to get ready for bed, lights-out came at 9:30 pm sharp, ending a thirteen-hour day.^{[4]: 71–72}

The children had no free or play time,^[14] but there were three breaks to the routine during the week. On Thursday afternoons, the children were required to spend two hours tallying up their daily statistics to determine their status in accordance with Scientology ethics and justice codes. Depending on the outcome of the graphing, the children would have to take particular steps to improve or maintain their statistics. If the trend was down, potentially negative consequences would follow, such as having privileges revoked or being given only rice and beans to eat. The children were also given weekly E-meter checks to determine whether they were concealing secrets or transgressions, and had to write weekly reports to their parents. On Friday evenings a graduation ceremony was held for course completions and Scientology media presentations were shown, followed by the disbursement of a five-dollar weekly allowance.^{[4]: 73–77}

Contact with parents was extremely limited. Jenna Miscavige Hill's father visited once a week for twenty minutes during his lunch break, and was unusual for being one of only a few parents to do so.^{[4]: 45–46} At 10 pm on Saturday nights, she was allowed to go to her parents' apartment to stay with them overnight.^[4]: 78 She was also given two or three days off over Christmas.^[4]: 97 Letters to and from parents were monitored to ensure that nothing negative was said. Any complaints would be treated as "nattering" and punished.^[4]: 76 Weekly phone calls were also permitted.^[4]: 79 The children were occasionally let out to attend special events, when Miscavige Hill says they were "dressed up in cute outfits in front of our parents and Int crew to make it seem as though Scientology were creating a normal and joyful childhood, when in fact we were all being robbed of it."^[4]: 80 Zoe Woodcraft, by contrast, spent over a year there but, she says, "we never went into town for a field trip; never went to a movie, shopping or anything. We were totally isolated. The only time I ever left was when I was allowed once to take a leave of absence to visit my father at Christmas."^[14]

In the absence of parental support, Miscavige Hill writes,

[W]e practically were each other's parents, taking care of each other when we were sick, consoling each other when we couldn't sleep, disciplining each other when we acted out, feeding each other meals when we were hungry and helping each other with schoolwork when we were confused. Yes, we were responsible for our post work, deck work, academic work, Scientology course work and cleaning – but, more than anything else, we were responsible for each other.^[4]: 81

Apollo Training Academy

Some children were sent to the Apollo Training Academy (ATA), located on Fountain Street opposite the offices of Scientology publishing house Bridge Publications. Mike Rinder, a former high-ranking Scientology official, describes it as "a cinder block building, with a double-wide trailer in the front, six-foot fence around it with a top on it so outside people couldn't see".^[13] It was originally run by a Scientology entity called the Cadets Estate Organization, which was later separated from the Cadet Org. Woodcraft was sent there after returning from a stay in New York in 1992, when she was nine years old, as there was no more room for children at the ranch. She later wrote that the conditions there were the worst that she ever encountered as a child:

[T]he pool was covered over with plywood and we were instructed not to walk on it, as it was flimsy and unsafe. Children played on it anyway as we were often unsupervised. The carpets were old and smelly and there were a lot of cockroaches. We slept in metal bunk beds with chipping paint. There was no proper bedding; not one of us had a complete sheet set, blanket and pillow. I slept without a pillow for many months.

All of the furniture was very old and decrepit. For light, we had bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The kitchens had also been ripped out to make more room for people so there were exposed pipes everywhere ... This building was in an unsafe area of Los Angeles and I often heard gunshots at night. It was a very frightening place for me to live.

The bathrooms .... were also not fully functional and we often had no warm water, the tiles in the shower were moldy and we had no soap or towels. In addition, the elevators in this four-story building never worked so we always had to use the steps.^[14]

The ATA operated as a Scientology school for about two hundred children. They studied a mixed Scientology and mainstream curriculum comprising L. Ron Hubbard's works plus math, reading and spelling. Unlike the ranch, there was no strict regimentation and the children were able to go to the beach or the park on Mondays. According to Woodcraft, they "would often go to a park and spend the whole day there, also. They would also take us to a fifty-cent swimming pool, however a lot of the kids did not have the money to swim so we just sat around all day. If we asked the teacher for money, she said no and told us it was too bad for us we had no money."^[14]

Although the location did not allow for the kind of hard outdoor labor performed at the ranch, the children were nonetheless put to work cleaning the building. Woodcraft recalled being assigned to an activity they called "chicken picking" the carpet. She wrote:

Since we had no vacuum cleaner, we children were instructed to get down on our hands and knees and pick dirt out of the carpet. This dirt included paint chips and we were expected to leave our section in perfect condition. This was very hard to do, especially in the small space between the carpet and the wall. There would be all sorts of small trash in there including paint and staples that hurt my fingers.^[14]

There were also problems with the staff at the ATA. Saina Kamula, a former member of the Sea Org, has said that an older member of staff at the ATA repeatedly sexually abused her during her stay there in the 1990s. When she reported the abuse to a teacher, she says, she was punished for being "counter-intention" – acting against the interests of Scientology. The abuser was never punished and remained an "active and respected member of the Church" as of August 2017.^[12]