Beyond Belief (7 page)

This added regimentation was not a good thing; almost overnight the tone of the Ranch changed. Earlier, when there had only been a few of us younger kids and a lot of older kids, we had a fair amount of freedom, but suddenly they began to schedule us down to the minute. In a matter of weeks, I went from enjoying life there to loathing it.

Several additional adults arrived as well, including two new teachers: Melissa Bell, Mr. Bell to us, who was an intimidating chain smoker, and Mr. Cathy Mauro who was kind enough, with short brown hair and glasses.

Traditional education was not viewed as crucial to success in Scientology. Neither my mother nor my father had finished high school, and they were both respected senior executives in the church. Even Uncle Dave had dropped out at age sixteen, and he was the head of all of Scientology. Given my family’s history with school, I was under the impression that dropping out was kind of cool; my mom always sounded proud when she told me about her schooling and how she had decided that the Sea Org was more important than finishing high school.

The kids were separated into three different groups: Children, Precadets, and Cadets. Children were generally the youngest kids, six years old or younger. Precadets were mostly seven to nine, and Cadets nine to sixteen. The grouping wasn’t determined exclusively by age, but also by how far along you were in your academic and Scientology studies. There were some eight-year-old Cadets and some twelve-year-old Precadets. When I first came to the Ranch, I was a Precadet, but as I neared my seventh birthday, I graduated to Cadet.

One of the first things I did as a Cadet was sign the billion-year contract pledging my commitment to the Sea Org. It was the same contract that was signed by the adult members of the Sea Org, because Cadets were considered Sea Org members in training, and thus were supposed to pledge with equally binding loyalty.

At first, I didn’t know much about the contract. I’d heard bits and pieces when I was younger, but it wasn’t until that day that they explained what the contract was all about. Signing it was part of our curriculum, part of becoming a Sea Org member and moving through our training as future Sea Org members. Even though it was for a billion years, I felt no hesitation—they asked me to do it and it was my job to follow their lead. Besides, at seven, any large number feels pretty unfathomable, whether it’s a thousand or a billion, and the irrational magnitude of that time frame simply didn’t register with me. Sure, we were making a long commitment, but it was the same long commitment that our parents had made.

On signing day, all the kids stood in a single-file line at tables where the contracts were laid out. One by one, we each signed. I really didn’t have anything else I wanted to do in life except to be a Sea Org member, so it would have been silly to pause and consider my options, as I wouldn’t have even known what they might have been. All I wanted was to be with my parents and work with them every day. I knew that if I graduated from the Cadet school and became a full-fledged Sea Org member and was ethical and compliant, I would have a post at the Int Base, and I’d see my parents more than once a week. That alone was enough to make me eagerly sign the document in the blank space.

W
ITH THE NEWLY IMPLEMENTED REGIMENTATION ON THE
Ranch, the Cadet Org became a lot like a military boot camp, with grueling drills, endless musters, exhaustive inspections, and arduous physical labor that no child should have to do. From the moment we woke up to the time we went to bed, there was little downtime; the only real break we’d get was seeing our parents Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. Between drills, chores, duties, posts, and studies, we were scheduled to the minute. The fact that my uncle was the head of Scientology didn’t protect me or offer me any special treatment.

In truth, it was around this time that my serious indoctrination into Scientology began. Until then, my parents had been the ones in the Sea Org, and my life had been dictated by their schedules and service to the church. Now I began to have my own schedules and responsibilities. However, the changes were more than strictly organizational; they were about learning the Sea Org point of view. Much of this indoctrination was aided by the extreme separation that existed between us and the outside world. Except for a few rare occasions, we were completely isolated from non-Scientologists and had no interaction with anyone of a different faith. The trips we took off Ranch were most often to the equally isolated Int Base, which of course was stocked with Scientology’s most ardent defenders, including all of our parents.

Even if we’d been allowed to travel into the outside world, it wouldn’t have mattered much. Few of us possessed curiosity about life beyond our borders, because we had been led to believe the outside world was filled with ignorant people whom we called
Wogs
, short for “Well and Orderly Gentlemen.” From what we were taught, WOGS were completely unenlightened; after we’d been trained in auditing and Scientology, it would be our job to “clear” them. Wogs were to be avoided because they were unaware of what was really going on, and their unawareness was reflected in their shallow priorities. Wogs liked to ask a lot of questions. We were led to believe that they would find our lifestyle alarming, so we had to be careful that, when speaking to them, we spoke in terms they could understand.

Questioning attitudes and nonconforming behavior was kept in check through threats, punishments, and humiliations in front of the group. Any time you were late, flunked an inspection, or behaved in a way that was not considered ethical, you would get a chit, sometimes several chits a day, depending on how many people had decided to write one. A chit was a kind of written demerit; one went to you, and a copy went into your ethics folder. Every child had an ethics folder, which was kept locked in the Cottage to prevent any file tampering. A Master-at-Arms was responsible for keeping our ethics files in order, doing inspections, and making sure we toed the line. In order to graduate from the Ranch, we had to have great Ethics and Production records to receive clearance for the Int Base.

Virtually all of the chits issued had nothing to do with an adult observing bad behavior, but rather another kid in the group reporting it. The rule was that we had to speak up if we saw or knew of anyone who was “out-ethics,” or unethical, or else we would be considered an accessory to their crime and would receive the same penalty. Self-policing inside the group made it difficult for anyone to trust anyone else. LRH believed that a group’s success depended on all its members enforcing a code of mores, and making each other accountable.

Chits and humiliations were an essential part of keeping Cadets of all ages in line and cooperative. It was amazing how quickly even young kids would find themselves captive to this system, making even the most unruly eight-year-old eager to please. While teens were more resistant than the younger kids, if given the proper set of embarrassments and punishments in front of the group, they too would fall in line quickly.

On the occasion that a chit was written on me, an anxiety always built in my chest. The chit was usually for something unfair or an exaggeration of the truth because someone was angry at me, but no matter how misguided the reason behind the chit might have been, getting one was always enough to make me think twice about doing or saying something that was in any way contrary.

The sense of order these punishments created was incredibly important to life on the Ranch, because, whether you were seven or seventeen, nearly everything you did was about the group.

E
ACH MORNING, WE WOKE AT SIX-THIRTY TO THE SOUND OF AN
alarm clock. As soon as one of us was up, we would go to the courtyard and yell, “Wake up time!” We had until seven to get ready and complete our various cleaning stations in our dorms, such as laundry, sweeping, and trash collection. My assignment was cleaning the bathroom. We also had to prepare our uniforms for daily inspection, which meant shining our shoes, tucking in our shirts, and trying to hide holes in them by wearing a sweater.

Seven o’clock was muster time, when all our various units would line up. The Cadet group had a structure slightly different from the Children and the Precadets. One of us was named the Commanding Officer, or CO, Cadet. The rest of us were divided up into seven different Divisions, each led by a Division Head. Each Division had three departments. Different divisions had different duties they were to carry out. I was assigned to Division 5.

At the morning muster, each Div Head would account for each member of his or her division. The Commanding Officer would direct us to stand at attention, then a formal military-style report was done by the Master-at-Arms, also a kid. Each division head had to call out his group’s accountability with a salute.

“Div One, all present and accounted for!” would begin the roll call, and so it continued for each unit. Throughout the day but especially at morning muster, lateness was unacceptable and every instance was reported. In addition to it being embarrassing, the penalties for lateness were stiff, varying from having a bucket of ice water dumped on your head in front of everyone at the muster to having a chit written on you.

Our division accountability reports were finished in about two minutes, and we were then given a “Left face!” command. We all turned left so our Div Head could walk down the line and do a uniform inspection. Hygiene was also crucial, so our breath and armpits were smell-tested and our hair routinely checked for lice.

Next, we were given a “Right face!” command, so we would return to facing front. We would be asked to raise our hand if for some reason we had flunked our inspection. As with lateness, an inspection flunk would cause a chit to be written for our ethics folder.

After personal inspections, we would receive the results of our berthing inspections. If your berthing flunked inspection one time, you would be given a chit. The penalties, which increased with each consecutive flunk, ranged from being required to white-glove the room (cleaning the room so well that a person inspecting the room could run their white-gloved hands across all surfaces without getting them dirty) before going to sleep, to being ordered to Pigs Berthing, which meant spending the night on an old mattress in the shell of the Big House, which was filled with bats. I was never assigned to Pigs Berthing, but my friend told me about it in horrifying detail, like how many bats flew near her head and the shrieking sounds they made that kept her up all night. My room, which was now Room 9, would actually wake up fifteen minutes early each day to allow for extra cleaning time to make sure that we never wound up in Pigs Berthing.

When all inspections were finished, we went to Chinese school. Chinese school was parroting; we had to repeat everything we heard exactly as we heard it. L. Ron Hubbard had originally called it Chinese school because he had observed a Chinese classroom and was very impressed with how the students engaged with the instructor.

During LRH’s version of Chinese school, quotations from him were written in large letters on butcher paper, so that we could all read them when they were held up at the front of the muster. Someone would yell out a part of the quote, then say, “What is it?” We would then be required to repeat it in unison, loudly and clearly and eventually by memory without glancing at the butcher paper. One in particular was the lesson on “backflashing,” which was the Scientology word for talking back. “Backflashes, by definition, are an unnecessary response to an order . . .” We would chant this drill/policy together until everyone said it flawlessly.

The monotony was overwhelming, but it had the impact they wanted. Often, it was hard enough to think about what these slogans meant in order to recite things correctly, let alone question what you were saying. The LRH quotes were also changed frequently, which enabled us to memorize many of them. The whole process was designed to teach us policy by heart. Looking back, however, it was more about teaching us not to question, not to think for ourselves, and to accept without skepticism. We were young enough to sponge up everything we learned, and naive enough not to understand the trouble with trusting everything you’re taught.

Sometimes, there were older kids who were willing to take the risk and challenge authority by doing their own thing. Like many Cadets, I struggled to understand why they couldn’t just follow the rules. They were asking for trouble, and they were always hauled off and dealt with. Every time it happened, I’d watch them be reprimanded.

At the completion of Chinese school, the morning muster was over, and the next part of the morning—fulfilling our posts—began, lasting until breakfast. No matter what age you were, you had an assigned post, which sometimes changed and was commensurate with your responsibility level. When I first became a Cadet as a six-year-old, I was given the post of groundsman, responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of an assigned area of the grounds. This post entailed physical labor, but not every post was physical; some involved helping the group in other ways. After several months, I was given the Medical Liaison Officer post, MLO for short, even though I was only seven. This post required me to visit each child at the Ranch and make what was called the “Sick List.” This meant I had to walk up to everyone and ask him or her, “Do you have any sickness?” Sickness could mean anything from a common cold to poison oak, from dry skin to athlete’s foot.

I would write down all the information. Then, I would try to treat them. An adult at the Ranch had given me basic information, such as athlete’s foot cream was for athlete’s foot, and lanolin was for dry skin.

In addition to daily care, doling out vitamins was a large part of my responsibility. It was my job to make individual vitamin packets for all the kids. Because I knew how to read very well at that point, I learned the definitions of various vitamins and their purposes. It might sound complicated, but in fact it was a lot easier than some of the other materials we were required to read for Scientology. I knew what all the vitamins were and that certain ones, like vitamin A, could be overdosed. I also knew there was some sort of vitamin balance, but I was never sure how to achieve it, so I just did the moderate thing and gave people one of each. The packets I prepared were usually a combination of vitamins A and D, B, C and E, and garlic. On the trace minerals, I just followed the instructions on the bottle. People with colds would get zinc, alfalfa, goldenseal, extra garlic, and echinacea. Before breakfast, I would dump extra vitamin C powder into the orange juice and squirt liquid trace minerals into everyone’s cup.