For nearly a decade at the Int Base I was on Ethics as well as Qual Division lines. I was an MAA (Ethics Officer), the Chief MAA Gold as well as the De-PTSer for the entire base. As De-PTSer I was responsible for handling all of the people who had PTS situations on the base. I think the reason why I did so well on these posts is because I trully loved and cared about my fellow staff members and wasn't there to just "investigate" or dig up dirt like some MAA's are notorius for. I honestly felt like I could make a difference. As the De-PTSer I really did feel that disconnection was a last resort and in fact had underlying disagreements with the policy in the first place, regardless, there were many situations where disconnection was ordered by upper terminals in RTC i.e., if someone had a family member who was declared or if someone was not "handling" on the subject of Scientology at all. For the most part, I got along with practically everyone at the base, especially when I moved off of being an MAA to being the De-PTSer.

After years of hard work, 12-15 hour work days, 7 days a week, little pay and no sleep, I was offered the opportunity to go onto the Technical Training Corps at Int to get trained to be an auditor, sec checker and ultimate "case cracker" so that I could further help the other staff at the base. Remember, back then, I trully believed in the Tech and to me at that time this was an absolute honor only given to a chosen few. To be on the TTC and get trained is any SO member's dream come true.

I finally felt like all of my years of hard work as an SO member was paying off on a personal level now. To me it was like good karma finally taking place and life was being good to me.

Everyone at the Int Base was so excited that there was finally a TTC in training and there were regular promisses from David Miscavige and other executives at various briefings to the base that a fully manned Tech unit would be there to audit everyone up to Clear and OT. After YEARS of NO auditing for the crew, finally there was hope and now a full team in training had emerged.

The entire base was ecstatic. This had never happened before. We had about 20 people on the TTC being prepared and trained by Ray Mitoff (Snr C/S Int) and upper RTC terminals, all on a personal, hands-on basis. We were going to be THE BEST auditors in the world and that ever existed PERIOD. At least that was the standard we were going for and what was expected.

Looking back on it now, Ray Mithoff, who was LRH's auditor for quite a while seemed to really be involved in this with his heart on a personal level. Same goes for Dan Koon (main actor in the original PRO-TRs film) who was there every day to coach us through our TRs, so that they were perfected.

It felt like LRH was right there with us the whole time ensuring that we were getting it right. I look back on this now and am like puleeeze, but realize that I was indoctrinated to the fullest and knew nothing else really. I was living the highlight of my entire SO career at this point.

Months and months go by of rigorous training. Our metering is video'd, watched and had to be passed by Ray Mithoff and RTC. All of our student auditing sessions were video'd and critiqued by Senior C/S Int and RTC. If we even miscalled an F/N (Floating Needle) we were assigned a condition of Liability and had to do lower conditions.

The one time that I miscalled an F/N was when our vidoes were being reviewed in the RTC conference room by a senior RTC Tech terminal. My video was played and I was screamed at and assigned Liability in front of the entire TTC. I felt so bad, but I knew it was right after seeing it on video for myself, but I rapidly got through my lower conditions and right back into the swing of things.

I got all the way up through Class IV and was about to get onto the next level and then something happened...

A lightning bolt pretty much came down and struck myself, Tal Whitaker and Winston Mellor down in a flash.

We were considered THE cream of the crop of the TTC until one of Tal's preclears blew from the base (God bless that person for getting out when they did). This was not good for Tal who was a very good friend of mine at that time. The next thing we know, Tal is being sec checked and interrogated by RTC to find out what crimes HE had for "missing his PC's withhold" because in Scientology, the only reason one leaves or blows is because they have undisclosed crimes or overts. And a missed withhold is one that is "nearly found out about."

Tal was now on the major shit list, is on the decks doing hard labor and going in for his sec checks every day.

A few days later, Vince Trent the TTC I/C calls myself and Winston over after a muster and tells us that we are to report up to RTC immediately. Winston and I run up to RTC and Lana Mitchell starts screaming at us that we totally fucked ourselves and that we had mutual crimes with Tal. She told us to report over to OGH (Old Gilman House) for hard labor and that we were restricted to the base.

We asked her what had happened and she said that COB (David Miscavige) had called an all Base briefing and that it was about us. She told us that we would find out at the briefing.

By now as you can imagine I am literally shitting bricks. I have absolutely NO CLUE what the fuck is going on and the fact that DM was having an all base briefing about us was probably the scariest moment of my life.

Winston and I were then escorted over to OGH by a Security Guard and there was Tal working away at pulling weeds in the scorching sun, and we joined him.

We started whispering to Tal to tell us what was going on and he said that he thought it had to do with Joking and Degrading the Tech. I was like WTF are you talking about? However, as we were being watched by Security, we were told to shut up, keep working and we were seperated.

That night we were escorted down to the dining area (MCI) and told to sit in the very back. The entire base was already seated when we came in. Everone was dressed in their uniforms and we were in dirty blue boiler suits. People who I'd been friends with for years would look at me and mouth "what's going on?" And I could only shrug, because even I didn't know.

Finally David Miscavige (that fucking midget punk) comes in and everyone stands at attention. You could hear his little pitter patter sounds coming down the side of the isle, but he's so damn short, you could only hear him.

"Have a seat!"

Dave commences and tells the whole base that Tal Whitaker's pc blew, and in sec checking Tal it came up that he had been miscalling F/Ns, and engaged in other out-tech, etc... Dave really ripped Tal a new asshole and painted him to be a criminal auditor. I was in disbelief and knew that something was brewing for Winston and I.

During this briefing all of the staff on the base were gasping, there were people who were angry as hell and some of them were even crying.

Finally Dave gets to the part about Winston and I.

"Winston Mellor and John Peeler were involved in Joking and Degrading the TECH with Tal. One night on the bus they were laughing about how we should do a Tech film trailer to the theme of Mission Impossible with a dirty needle and Rock Slam on the dial (these are e-meter needle readings)."

In my own mind I was like, "Yeah, we did talk about that, but it wasn't to degrade the Tech, it was an idea for a film trailer that would show that standard auditor training would help you get through difficult or 'seemingly impossible' sessions or meter manifestation. And it was to end in a FLOATING NEEDLE with a happy precear!" Which was all left out.

David Miscavige twisted this and painted it as though we were absolute criminals.

"These three Tech criminals will be restricted to the base and will be going through some heavy Ethics programs. They will also be required to confess ALL of their crimes to the entire base after we discover what these 3 have really been up to."

After the briefing we were the absolute SHIT of the base until I blew a couple years later. We were restricted to the base for months at OGH. Every day we went in for rigorous sec checking and heavy duty labor.

We were finally assigned to work in the galley and our first job was to scrub out the dumpsters that the crew leftovers are dumped in with tooth brushes and green scrubbies. There was an inch thick coating of rot and a stench that made me vomit and gag constantly. We had to scrub the floors of the galley daily. Our in-charge, Leslie Epstein was told to give us the most grueling dirty work she could think of. Which she did and which there was no lack of.

I was later promoted to being the Cleaner of the Dining Hall which included toilet scrubbing. Months later David Miscavige came into the restroom while I was cleaning to take a leak. He looked at me and could see in my eyes that he had actually destroyed me. I really think at that moment there was a tiny bit of simpathy for me, but then he went back to his normal self and said, "John, did you confess your crimes to Gold yet?" And I said "No Sir." He then told me that I had to do it and that I couldn't get away with non-compliance. He also said that I would feel much better after doing so. I think that last part he really believed.

The next Gold staff meeting was when we had to face the group. And that was probably one of the worst days of my life.

It was really hard for me to work all those years and work up to where I had gotten to suddenly be crushed instantly like an ant. I never did recover after that as an SO member. In fact, that incident is what made me realize that there was something very wrong.

The TTC soon started diminishing and everyone's dreams of going up the Bridge faded away.

Davey loves to dangle that carrot to keep people in production, but then he'll eat the carrot himself and give nothing to anyone else.

BTs2Free

John....

I have to ask because, in a way, I hate incomplete stories... On the other end of the spectrum, my needing to know may assist you with a bit of catharsis... I'm not asking to be a prick, I'm not asking for the lulz, I'm asking out of genuine sense of... "in-exchange", if you will; you have my attention, in exchange, I ask you that you satisfy my curiosity in this. Be aware that I do NOT ask this of people often, if at all.....

John... When you were in front of the group....

What did you say?

If you chose not to answer, you'll lose no respect from me. I think you're a great guy, but I think the education people can garner from what happened there could go a long way. However I respect your "comfort zones" and if there's a space where you wanna say "bugger off", that's alright. Ya dig?

Thanks for this the more I read about Miscavidge the less and less I like him...

I am sorry that you and countless others have to face his petty tyrrany time and again...

and for the above question I could completely understand if you froze, heck knowing how the tech works you would have been really in the shit if you had tried to explain your point of view...

I'm glad you got out though, and are able to share your experiences with us...

Johnboy,

Thanks for sharing stories like these. You've really demonstrated how cruel and thorough the mind-fuck is. Someday, someone is gonna give that evil lil' troll a beatdown. It's inevitable. I'm hopin' it happens in Lompoc State, personally. No Club Fed for you, Davey. No. Way. Of course, in no way do I promote physical violence. No. Way. Davey should never be the victim of something HE would NEVER do. No. Way.

Two questions:

-If you can say, what happened to Tal and Winston? Are they out or, presumably still at Gold in the Hall?

-How tiny, I know it can only be measured in millimeters, is Davey's schwanstucke? Did you catch a glimpse when he whipped that tiny stack of buttons out to pee?

John I'm so sorry this happened! Thank you for sharing. It is disgusting what really goes on there.

Wow. What a story!! Thank you for sharing.

Tal Whitaker, wasnt he Mr conservative from CCI? Super polite, nice boy?

Winston Mellor? Is that Josie's boy?

I think I know them both.

Do you know what happened to them?

John,

Did he really believe YOU would feel better after 'confessing your crimes to Gold' or HE would feel better?

THat you blew 'a couple years later' made me spit my coffee. John, you're not a stupid person, although I'm sure a lot of wogs like me find it hard to understand how an intelligent person could fall into that trap. It must be like a battered-spouse-who-keeps-going-back kind of relationship that Scientology, Inc. provides its adherents.

I for one am really glad you got out, and you're speaking out about it.

WTM, when your ass in on the line and you're being sec checked up one wall and down the other, when you've been degraded by public humiliations and hard and degrading labor, but you want to somehow make things right again with "your group", you'll sometime "make up shit" to say in session.

The whole process of confessing your alleged crimes, first to an auditor, then to an MAA, and then to the public, is humiliating beyond belief.

LISTENING to them (as a person in the audience) is embarassing and uncomfortable.

I implore that BTs2Free does NOT tell us what was said there, unless he wants to emphasize the ridiculum of how petty the crimes are that you have to pull out of your imagination just so the auditor feels good that they actually got some sort of crime out of you while you're pretending that you're actually "doing the program" so you can get back in good graces with Herr David Miscavige.

John, man that sucks, but you sum up his character and persona perfectly.

John, that is a mind-bending post. It is a scene in a movie. I admire the courage it takes for you to make these posts. The reality factor that you, and others, give us here at OCMB is that DM takes his best and brightest people and destroys them for often trivial reasons.

DM is stuck in "Confess Your Crimes!" because he hasn't.

DM reduces his best people to backbreaking labor, humiliation, sleep deprivation, and other torments and then he concludes that they have crimes when they blow. DM and his system of MindFuck is why Scientology will keep producing failures as its product until it has failed enough times across the dynamics to collapse.

////

Wow..

That was riveting story...

Hard to understand how people could be subjected to that...

So..if someone blows....someone pays?

Thank you for telling what has to be emotional memories.

Love

Hoot

When I read this, it sunk in that you allowed yourself to be subjected to this kind of treatment for months (maybe years?) after being accused. The cult clearly has such a powerful grip on minds that the common sense response of escaping is not an option for many.

"What kind of people tolerate this?" is a common question asked by those who have never been in.

Amazing story John, and it took courage to tell it.

I remember that briefing. One of many, many briefings by DM where staff were utterly trashed. In retrospect, you can see the pattern in it. He wanted to be a "hero" to the crew so announced the forming of a TTC. Yet he had no intention of actually doing it. The last thing he wanted was for any crew to become more aware of things, particularly his motives and actions. So of course he found a way to nuke you guys.

It is hard for anyone who wasn't there to understand the control mechanisms that are in place at that Base. When you have an entire group, hundreds of people, all your friends, treating you like dirt, it is a terrifically degrading experience. Your first impulse is that you want to "make amends" and do whatever you have to to get back in the good graces of the group. It puts people under very effective control, which DM is very well aware of. Anyone he can't "break" in this way (and he uses that exact term) he gets rid of in one way or another. He has to have complete control of everyone at that Base, every aspect of their lives.

As to what you "confessed" to - who cares? We know it was either invented or exaggerated. It's a control mechanism, pure and simple. If you read Lifton's book on Chinese mind control, they used confession heavily. They would have people confess their "crimes" to the group, and the pressure was on to come up with all kinds of "crimes against the proletariat," and confess to being an "agent of the West" and so on. It was all BS, as were those Gold group "confessions." You were yelled at and harassed by the group until you came up with something lurid enough to satisfy the blood-lust. Not a pretty picture. But staff, under those conditions, could be very cruel and abusive to each other.

When I left in 2005, Winston was still there, still in the galley.

Jeff

It's not a question of stupidity or intelligence as to why people get sucked in. In fact, the brighter a person is, the easier it is to hypnotize and brainwash them.

A simple psychological truth is that when people invest time, money and effort into something -- the more they do this, the more inclined they are to believe in what they are doing. This is one of those "mind traps" that Jason Beghe talked about.

Scientology starts out small, in terms of the need for commitment to it. It slowly and carefully draws you in deeper and deeper...

If ANYTHING, I think all the re-working of the Tech is designed not to clear people but to make them more obedient, compliant and tractable so they will swallow without questioning - the next bit of malarky.

Think about it -- The first Scientology tech came out in what - 52? They have had over 50 years to perfect the con -- to tweak it... Think about the obsession with stats -- that is so they can measure how well the con is proceeding. They can measure where it is that people's breaking point is -- and tweak the tech a little further to stop others from blowing at that point.

I do not believe for a second that Hubbard didn't know it was a crock of sh*t. I do not believe that David Miscaivage thinks that the tech actually works. Let me clarify. The TECH does work - it works to strip individuals of their free will, and make them into obedient slaves.

I think that Scientology is probably more insidious today than it was in 1952 - since the perpetrators of these crimes have had so much time to fine-tune the brainwashing techniques

I am glad you are out of there BTs2Free! I am ex military and I never saw or heard of anybody having to go through such ridiculous servitude (unless they were a prisoner of war in Asia)!

No wonder the Karmic vortex (as J. Swift mentions of) is so enormously strong with things like that going on within scientology!