The Hole (Scientology)

The facility known as the Hole is located on the Church of Scientology's Gold Base, built on the site of a resort called Gilman Hot Springs in the California town of San Jacinto. The base covers bisected by a public highway, Gilman Springs Road, just off California State Route 79. It was secretly acquired by Scientology in 1978 under the alias of the "Scottish Highland Quietude Club". Scientology established a secret base there which was staffed by members of the Sea Org, an inner core of Scientologists which is said to number some five to seven thousand people. There are now two Sea Org bases in the compound: Gold, which houses the Church's in-house film studio Golden Era Productions, and Int, the Church's international headquarters, though in practice the whole site is usually called Gold Base. Members of the Sea Org are subject to a rigid code of discipline known as "Scientology ethics and justice" which is enforced by Ethics Officers. Scientologists are encouraged to look out for any fellow members violating ethics codes and to submit "Knowledge Reports" on any violations they spot. If the ethics codes are violated, a "trial" by a Committee of Evidence can lead to punishments such as assignment to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF). Such punishments, which can last for months or years, typically consist of a regime of physical labor and lengthy daily confessions of "evil purposes". Such assignments can also be received for performing work poorly, showing negative personality indicators (doubts, hostility etc.) or causing trouble. Individuals assigned in this way are kept isolated and prohibited from having contact with other members of Scientology and the public. According to Marc and Claire Headley, two Scientologists who left the Church in 2005, residents at the base are not permitted to leave without the permission of a supervisor and have to work at least sixteen hours a day, from 8:00a.m. to past midnight, with shorter hours on Sundays and little time for socializing. Communications with the outside world are effectively cut off; cellphones and Internet access are generally banned, mail is censored and passports are kept in a locked filing cabinet. The perimeter of the base is closely guarded around the clock. It is ringed with high fences that are topped with spikes and razor wire and monitored by inward-facing motion sensors to detect anyone trying to climb out of the compound. The Tampa Bay Times reported that dozens of workers tried to escape from the basesome of them repeatedlybut were caught and returned by Sea Org "pursuit teams". The escapees are said to have been subjected to isolation, interrogation and punishment on their return to the compound. ==Origin==

, the current leader of the Church of Scientology Defectors from Scientology say that from around 2002, Church leader David Miscavige began to publicly slap, kick, punch or shove executives at the base who had angered him. John Brousseau, the estate manager at Gold Base and a veteran Sea Org member, said that Miscavige repeatedly faulted his subordinates' work, "constantly berating them, nitpicking everything they're doing, pointing out inadequacies, ineffectiveness, lack of results, blaming it all on them and their inability to do anything right, and on the other hand saying how he's got to do everything himselfhe's the only one who can do anything right." High-level meetings became tense affairs punctuated by "profane, belittling rants". and "YSCOHB" (meaning "You suck cock on Hollywood Boulevard"). A practice called "overboarding" was reintroduced as a further method of enforcing discipline on the base. It had been devised during the 1960s when Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, was living aboard a former Irish Sea cattle ferry Royal Scotman [sic] (later Apollo), in which he roamed the Mediterranean at the head of a small fleet of ships crewed by Sea Org members. In response to perceived violations, Scientologists were thrown over the side of the ship; sometimes they were bound and blindfolded before being tossed overboard. Scientology spokesmen describe the practice as "a Sea Org ritual akin to traditions in other religious orders" and "part of ecclesiastical justice". Some Scientology churches (or "orgs") adopted a land-based version of overboarding by making staff members stand against a wall while other Scientologists threw buckets of water at them, but the practice was largely abandoned in the 1970s. According to author Janet Reitman, Miscavige reintroduced it in the 2000s and ordered dozens of senior executives to go outdoors in the middle of the night and assemble at the base's swimming pool or its muddy lake. They would then jump or be pushed into the water, often in freezing conditions, while fully clothed and with Miscavige watching. Scientology acknowledges that overboarding took place but characterises it as part of its "ecclesiastical justice" system for dealing with poor performance. ==Life in the Hole==

From 2004 to 2007, the number of people confined in the Hole increased from 40 to up to 100. They slept in cots or sleeping bags, squeezed into every available floor space or on desktops. Men would sleep around the conference table while women slept in cubicles and small offices around the main conference room. They were so crowded that there was barely any room to move, according to one of those present: "Everyone sleeping with only about six inches on either side. Above you. Below you. Getting up in the middle of the night, you'd disturb everyone." Brousseau commented that when he visited the Hole occasionally, "you could smell that people live here, people sleep here." Sometimes executives were allowed out for a short time to attend Scientology events, but many ended up spending months or even years in the Hole. Rinder told the Tampa Bay Times that interrogations "would be carried out by whoever happened to be theretwenty people, thirty people, fifty people, all standing up and screaming at you, and ultimately it sort of devolved into physical violence, torture, to extricate these 'confessions' out of people." What was happening in the Hole took place out of view of the other staff members at Gold Base, but it was clear that it would not be a good thing to be sent there. According to author Lawrence Wright, "the entire base became paralyzed with anxiety about being thrown into the Hole. People were desperately trying to police their thoughts, but it was difficult to keep secrets when staff members were constantly being security-checked with E-Meters." Wright reports that Miscavige's statements were transcribed for the executives in the Hole, who would then have to repeatedly read them out loud to each other. " in the middle of the night can be seen at the far left of the photo. Former Scientology members have said that conditions in the Hole worsened in 2006 after several executives had escaped. Security was tightened to prevent the confined executives from "blowing" (leaving). Brousseau says that he was ordered to fasten steel bars across the doors of the building, and the windows were modified so that they could only be opened a few inches. Another staff member objected, pointing out that any outsider could see the bars. They were removed after a few weeks, but the building was guarded around the clock to prevent further escapes. From 2006, according to Rinder, executives undergoing "group confessions" were made to stand in big trash cans in the middle of the floor with signs around their necks on which various derogatory statements were written. Rinder described how it became "relatively routine" for people to be "slapped, punched, kicked, pushed, shoved, thrown up against the wall" in order to make them confess. Cook told the court that another Scientology executive, who had not been sent to the Hole, had objected to what he had seen there on a visit. According to Cook, the executive was given a two-hour beating and ordered to lick a bathroom floor for at least thirty minutes. She testified that Yager and Lesevre, two of Scientology's most senior executives, were pressured to state that they had had a homosexual affair and were beaten until they "confessed". According to De Vocht, Miscavige pushed Yager to the ground and told a black executive, "By the way, [Yager] thinks black people are niggers, and he doesn't want Scientology to help blacks. Go kick him.' So [Yager] is down on the ground and she's kicking him." Both Yager and the other executive have denied this account. ==Leaving the Hole==

Rathbun spent only four days in the Hole in 2004 but says that he left after seeing his old friend, De Vocht, being physically beaten by Miscavige. According to Rathbun, one night the incarcerated executives were ordered to jog to a building 400 yards away and back. As they were herded back to the Hole, he broke away and hid in bushes until the group had disappeared from sight. He retrieved his motorcycle, hid in the brush and drove out through the Gold Base gates when they were opened to let a car in. De Vocht left Scientology in May 2005 after he was allegedly attacked by Miscavige. According to De Vocht, he told his wifea Miscavige aidethat he would fight back if it happened again. He was subsequently declared to be a "suppressive person" and announced his intention to leave. The compound's guard refused to open the gate, so he climbed the fence and walked to Hemet, six miles away. He was later sent a $98,000 "freeloader bill" by the Church. Rinder spent almost two years in the Hole between 2004 and 2007, leaving it occasionally to deal with public relations matters such as dealing with the BBC journalist John Sweeney's documentary Scientology and Me. Rinder says that Miscavige was furious with the way that Sweeney had been handled and ordered Rinder to go to Sussex to dig ditches on a Scientology property there. He defected instead, eventually settling in Denver, Colorado. Cook left the Hole in May 2007 after spending seven weeks there, when she was sent back to Clearwater, Florida, to organize a major public event involving Miscavige. According to Cook, she was driven to downtown Clearwater, along with her husband, by another staff member, to eat at Scientology's dining hall. The couple took the opportunity to flee when the staff member went inside to get breakfast; Cook jumped into the driver's seat, drove with her husband to the nearest car rental outlet and hired a car to drive up to her father's house in North Carolina. Before they got there, they were intercepted by Scientology officials and ordered to return to Clearwater. She spent three weeks under guard, at one point writing in a letter to her mother that if she was not released she "would take whatever steps necessary, like slitting my wrists" before finally signing a severance agreement. She later said that by that point, "I would have signed that I stabbed babies over and over again and loved it". Brousseau was not sent to the Hole, but what he saw of it made him decide to leave Scientology in 2010 after 33 years in the Church. He was struck by how "dozens of these people [in the Hole], they were just so alive, but I looked at them now and they were just husks. They wouldn't say or originate anything, they seemed to have no purpose, they were just like sheep. There's no way 100 people could be evil horrid [suppressive persons] and DM's the only [ethical] one. No way." He had known and been friends with some of those in the Hole for decades and could not bear what he was seeing. As he put it, "I can't stop it, but I can at least stop supporting it. So I left." He left a note in his room for his colleagues to find: "By now you've noticed I'm gone. I couldn't stand to see my Sea Org friends so mistreated. I won't support it anymore. Goodbye." ==Media exposure and legal inquiries==

From 2009, several former Scientology executives began to speak out about the Hole, both to the media and to the FBI. Rathbun wrote in the New York Daily News in July 2012 that he had "decided that [he] had to speak out before someone was killed in the Hole". In June 2009, the Tampa Bay Times published a series of articles on the internal workings of Scientology titled "The Truth Rundown", detailing accounts of beatings and other episodes of violence between Miscavige and other top Scientology executives. In 2009, the FBI opened an investigation into potential human trafficking offences by the Church of Scientology, after the accounts of defectors from Gold Base were published. The Tampa Bay Times reported that FBI aerial surveillance of the property showed columns of executives being escorted to and from the Hole. However, no action was taken against Scientology. The investigation ground to a halt after a ruling by a U.S. District Court judge in a case concerning Marc and Claire Headley's complaints against Scientology over their treatment at Gold Base. Scientology acknowledged that the rules under which the Headleys lived included a ban on having children, censored mail, monitored phone calls, needing permission to have Internet access and being disciplined through manual labor. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a ruling given in July 2012 that Marc Headley had been made to clean human excrement by hand from an aeration pond on the compound with no protective equipment, while Claire Headley was banned from the dining hall for up to eight months in 2002. She lost as a result of subsisting on protein bars and water. In addition, she was coerced into having two abortions to comply with the Sea Org's no-children policy. The Headleys also experienced physical abuse from Scientology executives and saw others being treated violently. However, the court found that Scientology enjoyed the protection of the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment, and that it could use the "ministerial exemptions" in employment law to deflect litigation over its treatment of its members. The judge ruled that the First Amendment disallowed the courts from "examining church operations rooted in religious scripture". Bringing Scientology to account for how it disciplined its members was "precisely the type of entanglement that the religion clauses prohibit". However, the Ninth Circuit did suggest that other types of claims would withstand appellate review, such as assault, battery or "any of a number of other theories that might have better fit the evidence". The ruling has effectively meant that it is impossible to bring charges against Scientology based on claims of "trafficking in persons". As one attorney has put it, "Here is a court saying, albeit in a civil situation ... that there is nothing improper with this type of conduct and no ill motive can be imbued to the church." The lawsuit against her was quickly settled without payment by any side on April 23, 2012, after Cook was permitted to testify for three hours regarding her description of conditions at the Hole. == See also ==