Authors: Jenna Miscavige Hill
Beyond Belief (4 page)
Two years after he discovered the Church, he took a leap. He decided to sell his three cars and use the money to move the entire family to Saint Hill Manor in Sussex, England, where the Church’s main headquarters had been located for more than a decade.
In 1959, L. Ron Hubbard and his family had moved to Sussex and bought a fifty-acre estate with a mini-castle from the Maharajah of Jaipur, which became the headquarters of the Church of Scientology. Saint Hill soon became a gathering place for Scientologists from around the world. LRH was often there, always continuing and discussing his research, which gave people the feeling they were at the forefront of something new and important.
Despite Grandpa Ron’s desire to be close to the center of the Scientologists’ world in Saint Hill, my fourteen-year-old father was skeptical. Understandably, he wasn’t that interested in moving from Pennsylvania to England and leaving his friends in the middle of high school. More important, he would have to give up his gymnastics and his dream of getting to the Olympics. However, my grandpa was doing what he felt was best for the family, and reluctantly, my dad went along with it.
Those couple of years in England succeeded in fully committing my father to Scientology. After being surrounded almost exclusively by Scientologists, he became increasingly devoted to the cause, so much so that, at seventeen years old, he enlisted in the Sea Org and moved to the Flag Land Base in Clearwater.
Uncle Dave joined him there in 1976, after quitting high school on his sixteenth birthday to devote himself to the religion. In Clearwater, Uncle Dave began to work closely with L. Ron Hubbard and was rewarded for his efforts with important posts. Eventually, he was based at the international headquarters in Hemet, California, where he quickly rose through the ranks to the point that, during L. Ron Hubbard’s self-imposed exile, Uncle Dave had become a powerful figure in Scientology. Now, with L. Ron Hubbard’s death, he was more than just the face of the Church—he was the head of it all.
A
BOUT A YEAR AND A HALF AFTER MY UNCLE TOOK OVER THE
Church, the Fountain Building where we lived was severely damaged in an earthquake and subsequently condemned. My family moved nearby to the Edgemont Building on Edgemont Street, where the apartments were much nicer. Each had two bedrooms, a small dining area, a kitchen, and a small living room, but even though they were bigger, each apartment was occupied by two families or two couples, so they were crowded.
We shared our apartment with Mike and Cathy Rinder, old friends of my parents who were also dedicated Sea Org members. Mom and Dad occupied one bedroom, and Cathy and Mike had the other. Justin and I shared the living room on bunk beds and couches with Mike and Cathy’s daughter, Taryn, and their son Benjamin James, B. J. for short. Taryn was around ten, a little younger than Justin. B. J. was a few months older than I but, by then, we were both two.
My mom had met Cathy when they were both teenagers and stationed on the
Apollo
, where they became good friends. While it was a bit odd to suddenly have another family around, I enjoyed Cathy’s great sense of humor and the fact that she drew silly cartoons in which everyone looked like a pig. Mike was a bit different. An Australian, he was quiet and, like my parents, rarely in the apartment.
We had no reason to complain that the apartment was crowded. It was fun having so many people around, especially so many kids. Because the earthquake had taken out the Fountain Building, B. J. and I had to go to a large day care/kindergarten center for children of Sea Org members located on Bronson Avenue, next to what is now known as the Celebrity Centre. It was far enough that we had to take a church-provided bus. About eighty to one hundred kids went there, from infants up to age six. We were divided into different classes, not so much by age, but by our parents’ status in the Church.
Most afternoons, I rode the bus home with Justin or Taryn, who was also in the ATA. They boarded when we stopped at the academy to pick up the students there. On some days my brother would take me off when we stopped at the ATA and we’d walk back to the apartment together, stopping for Push Pops from George’s General Store across the street from the ATA. While Justin was a little young to be watching me, the Edgemont was a Scientology building, and perhaps my parents took comfort in knowing that there were other Scientologists in close proximity and that their offices were right on the block. Additionally, there was a roving nanny on duty in the building who would stop by the various apartments and check on the children and was available in case any emergency arose.
Over the months, B. J. and I were becoming really good friends, despite the fact that he was into bugs and robots, and I was into Barbies and baby animals. He wasn’t a big talker, but I was fascinated by him. He was always teaching me some new fact about bugs or doing a new magic trick. We did pretty much everything together, and it didn’t take long for B. J., as well as Taryn, to become like family.
Shortly after we all moved in together, we started to see less and less of Mom. Because she was getting the
Freewinds
going, she was often on location in Curaçao, British West Indies, where the ship was to be based. If she wasn’t in Curaçao, she was at the International Base in Hemet. She would visit when she could, and bring me presents from her travels. Although I loved the gifts, especially the small painted musical jewelry box with a tiny spinning ballerina, they didn’t make her absence any easier. Family time was when I missed her the most. Usually it was just Dad and Cathy who came to the apartment for the hour. Dad would bathe me, read me stories, and we would play.
That was how the routine went for about a year. The four of us—Justin, Taryn, B. J., and I—formed a makeshift family of our own. Although they weren’t yet teenagers, Justin and Taryn were babysitters to B. J. and me. Together, we hung out, had snacks, and played around. They generally looked after us until our parents came home for dinner or had a day off. All that changed, though, one day in early 1988 when Cathy came home at family time.
That particular evening, I saw her speaking privately with B. J., who looked upset. From where I sat on the couch, I could hear Cathy tell him this would be their last daily family time together. From now on, she and Mike were only going to be able to see him once a week, on Sunday mornings, since the rest of the week they were going to be somewhere very secret doing important things for the Church.
Even though we were just four years old, B. J. and I were both used to the Scientology explanation that our parents gave us about why they had to work so much. They would explain how they had to help lots of people and sacrifice personal time for the Scientology cause. We nodded our heads that we understood, pretending that the explanations would make us miss them less.
Now, though, looking at B. J.’s face, I knew there was no way he could pretend to not be devastated. He didn’t talk a lot, and as his mother carefully laid out what was going to happen, he just listened and stared at the floor. Afterward, I tried to comfort him by putting my arm around him and telling him how sad I was for him, but all I could think was how unlucky he was to lose this cherished hour with his parents. That’s when Cathy told me that my parents would no longer be coming home at family time, either.
“I don’t believe you,” I told her defiantly, but when I paused to think about it, I realized I had only been seeing my parents less and less during the week for the past few months. While my mom was often traveling, my dad, bit by bit, had been coming less and less frequently in the evenings on weeknights. From what Cathy was telling me, this separation was now official.
As it turned out, my parents had already relocated, and I hadn’t even realized it. A series of new policies had been enacted by the Church that severely restricted the amount of time Sea Org families could be together. For instance, Sea Org couples were no longer allowed to become new parents. If a Sea Org woman did become pregnant, the couple had to leave the Sea Org and go to a non–Sea Org mission, which was a demotion. There, they would still be on staff and work at a Scientology church, but they wouldn’t be allowed back in the Sea Org until the child was six years old, and even then, they would have to reapply. For Sea Org members who already had children, there were changes as well. On the positive side, their kids would be accommodated with improved facilities for care and schooling, but on the negative side, the nightly family hour was essentially canceled, and children over the age of six would be raised communally at locations close to Sea Org bases.
While Uncle Dave hadn’t written these policies, it was impossible for him not to know about them. They weren’t the kind of changes that could have happened without his approval. It was hard to say why they did happen. Uncle Dave never had kids himself, which probably played a role; I’ve always believed not having children was a conscious decision on his part, as he had married Aunt Shelly before this rule was put into effect. Perhaps, through other Sea Org members, he saw how much work kids were and the facilities and personnel they needed. Most likely, though, it was because kids were a distraction that caused the parents to become less productive and more emotionally invested in something other than the Church.
I never doubted that my parents loved me. I accepted that the time they had for me was extremely limited. Even now, looking back on their dedication to the Church, I have no doubt that its teachings played an enormous role in their putting their Sea Org responsibilities before their family at all times. In many ways, they sacrificed family for what the Church considered to be for the “greater good.” In Scientology, we said, “The greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics,” meaning that when making decisions, Scientologists had to use a basic Scientology principle called
The Dynamics of Existence
to determine exactly who and what any decision would benefit. There were eight dynamics of supposedly equal importance:
1. Self
2. Family, children, and sex
3. Group
4. Mankind
5. Plants and animals
6. MEST Universe, MEST being Matter, Energy, Space, and Time; the physical universe
7. The Spirit
8. God or Supreme Being
When my parents reenlisted in the Sea Org, they knew their service would mean focusing on dynamics three, four, six, seven, and eight. They believed their work would serve each of those areas. Had they chosen their family, they would only have satisfied the first and second dynamics. As a result, because the Sea Org satisfied five dynamics and their family satisfied only two, it meant joining the Sea Org was the right decision. It offered the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.
In truth, this dynamic system meant that families and children were usually unable to compete with the Church’s larger mission. In most religions, families and children were a central part of the religion’s quest; in Scientology, they were subjugated by it. Similarly, the long hours and low wages of Sea Org employees were for the greater good of Scientology, and as long as the greatest number of dynamics was served, then it was right, even if children and families became collateral fallout.
Being four years old, I wasn’t sure how to deal with the idea that Mom and Dad were no longer living with us. They had already moved to the International Management Headquarters, also referred to as “Int,” the “Int Base,” or the “Gold Base.” The only thing I knew about it was that Uncle Dave and Aunt Shelly lived and worked there. Located in Hemet, California, about two and a half hours east of L.A., the Int Base was shrouded in mystery to the point that its actual location was kept secret even from family members of those who worked there. Only people who received special clearances were allowed to go there.
The Church said the security and secrecy were to protect the Int Base from any outside enemies who might try to hurt Scientology. They said that these “suppressive persons” hated that we helped others, so they had to keep it confidential. In actuality, I think it added a sense of superiority to those who were important enough to know its location. Also, with the intrigue, there was an air of importance to the subject matter of Scientology.
Mom and Dad told me they had their own quarters in an apartment complex near the Base for the time they lived there during the week. On Saturday nights, my parents would drive back to L.A. to visit. They’d only stay until Sunday morning, because they had to leave around eleven for their drive back to Hemet. Every week, I would be upset to see them go, although I tried hard not to show it. Justin never cried, so I tried to behave like him.
My mother used her executive clout to arrange for a regular guardian for me. Her name was Pat, and she was a member of the Sea Org. A lot of kids with parents at Int stayed in the after-school nursery overnight, but because I had Pat, I was allowed to sleep at the apartment. During the day, Pat worked at the Manor Hotel on Franklin Avenue, which was part of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre.
With Mom, Dad, and Cathy and Mike Rinder no longer home on a daily basis, our schedule changed a bit. B. J. and I still took the bus to and from the nursery every day, but we didn’t go straight to our apartment in the afternoon. Instead, our teachers would take us to another apartment two doors down from ours that served as an after-school nursery. Eventually, my brother or Taryn would pick us up when they got home from the ATA to take us to our apartment. The roving nanny was still on duty, so there was an adult available to us, if we needed anything. Pat would arrive there sometime after seven and spend the night with the four of us. By default, she became B. J.’s nanny, as well as mine.