Colorado Anonymous

Bruce Hines is a former Scientologist who spent 30 years in the Church of Scientology. Six of those years were spent imprisoned in the RPF, a forced labor camp that uses inhuman levels of abuse and interrogation to keep its inmates psychologically imprisoned.  Bruce has shared some of his story before. As incredulous as his story is, there are many others like it.  After you’ve read Bruce Hines’ story, I recommend that you also read Jeff Hawkins’ story here

‘RPF’ stands for ‘Rehabilitation Project Force’. It is a supposed correctional program for members of the Sea Organization of the Church of Scientology (C of S). I was a member of the Sea Organization for 24 years, from mid-1979 to mid-2003. I spent 6 years in the RPF, 1995 – 2001, on the ‘Happy Valley’ ranch in the high desert of southern California. It is located in a remote area next to the Soboba Indian Reservation near San Jacinto, CA. This is just a few miles from the international headquarters of Scientology at Gilman Hot Springs, CA.

Offered a Second Chance?

First, I will offer my view of what the C of S promotes the RPF to be. They say that when a staff member in the Sea Org makes serious errors in the performance of their duties, rather than firing them the offending person can be rehabilitated by doing this program. They say that it is voluntary. They believe that the errors stem mainly from personal aberrations that the person has, which can be eradicated by application of the practices of Scientology.

I take issue with this description. It is not voluntary. When I began the RPF program in 1995, I was a true believer. I believed that Scientology offered the only road to salvation for all people and that it was the only thing in the world that could save mankind from a horrible demise. I no longer hold these beliefs, but none-the-less, that is what I thought at the time. Anyone in the Sea Org holds similar beliefs. Otherwise, they would not sign a billion-year contract and give up many personal liberties in order to live the tightly controlled and highly disciplined life of a Sea Org member. So, had I refused to do the RPF program (it is not like you are asked if you want to do it), there would have been serious consequences, or so I thought. When one declines the ‘chance’ to do the program, the only alternative is to leave the Sea Org, either by a long and involved ‘routing out’ procedure, or by possibly escaping. And I am not using the word ‘escaping’ lightly.

In either case, one would be deemed to be psychotic. In an official writing by L. Ron Hubbard issued in the mid-1970s, he stated that anyone who would want to leave the Sea Org would have to be psychotic. And, it must be remembered that anything that Mr. Hubbard wrote was not open to question. It is a serious offence to disagree with him. Anyone leaving the Sea Org would encounter numerous attempts on the part of various Sea Org personnel acting in official capacities to persuade one to not leave – to give up that crazy idea. The person wanting out would be reminded that leaving is psychotic, that life on the outside would be horrible, that one would be forfeiting any possibility of personal salvation, that leaving would be a betrayal of mankind, and be presented repeatedly and forcefully with these and other such arguments.

If one is able to endure through the routing-out procedure, which took usually several months during the time I was there, one is officially labeled as a ‘freeloader’. Before one can then take courses or receive counseling from a Scientology organization, or even attend Scientology events, one must pay off their ‘freeloader debt’. This is a bill presented to the person for all of the training and counseling they received while in the Sea Org. Depending on how long he person had been in the Sea Org and what sort of training they received, this ‘debt’ is usually tens if not hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars. If the person wishes to continue to participate in Scientology, they must pay this bill. If a person succeeds in escaping from the Sea Org without going through the routing-out procedure, they are officially declared to be a ‘suppressive person’ (SP). Once that happens, you are excommunicated and shunned by members of the C of S. This means that if you happen to have a family member who is a Scientologist, they must ‘disconnect’ from you, meaning that they refuse all further contact with you.

The routing-out procedure mainly consists of a lengthy ‘security check’ (this is the official name of it within Scientology), whereby one is pressured to confess to any and all misdeeds, no matter how private and no matter whether the supposed transgression occurred in the performance of one’s duties or not, that one may have committed both while being a staff member and priorly. This activity consists of sessions lasting some hours, in which one person (the one who, in this case, wants to leave), who is connected to an electronic device called an electrometer, is asked questions from a long list by another person (the security checker). The electrometer has an indicator that supposedly, according to the theory, reacts when one is guilty of the transgression being asked about. In this situation the device is much like a lie detector. If the electrometer shows a response, the security checker then doggedly plies the person with questions to dig out the details of what the transgression must have been. The person receiving the security check has to search around in his or her memory to uncover some misdeed that fits the question and tell all about it. These confessions are faithfully written down in detail in so-called Knowledge Reports (KRs), which are placed in one’s ‘ethics file’ and made available to various persons within the organization. I know of at least one case where some of the confessions of a former Sea Org member were made known on a public Internet forum.

Escaping from the Sea Org, either to avoid having to do the RPF or after one was on the RPF, is not an easy matter. In my case, I was told one day in February 1995 that I was being assigned to the RPF. From that point on I was under close, full-time supervision. I had to surrender my passport and my driver’s license. For the first several months I, along with 8 or 10 other people who were in trouble, were kept on the Gilman Hot Springs property at the remote west end away from other staff (other Sea Org members who were posted at the Gilman complex). During the day we were required to perform strenuous manual labor while being watched by two of the Sea Org personnel who were assigned to supervise us. The work consisted of such things as digging out bushes and weeds by the roots and hauling large rocks (roughly 20 to 200 pounds) by hand or by wheelbarrow. This was all day, 7 days a week. Frequently, I encountered rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and Black Widow spiders. One particular day a close friend of mine had a lunging rattlesnake miss his leg by an inch or two. In the evening we were required to study the Scientology system of ethics and justice, write down our transgressions, and perform other actions that were supposed to make us more ‘ethical’. At night we slept in trailers, one for the males and one for the females. These had 3-high bunk beds with something like 9 people per smallish trailer. At one point all of us who slept in the trailer for men suffered the effects of an infestation of bed bugs. Every morning we woke up with new lines of extremely itchy bites. All night long there was a night watch, or guard, who was a member of the base security force, stationed outside the only exit from our trailer. The area where we slept, ate, showered, and studied was surrounded by a fence at least six feet tall, which had motion sensors on it. The main security guard booth would be alerted if anyone touched the fence. Generally, at prescribed times of the day, the entire group of us (those enroute to the RPF), were marched to the one toilet we were allowed to use. One at a time, one was allowed to go in to use the toilet, while the rest waited outside under the watch of one of the security guards.

Eventually we were transported in locked vans to ‘Happy Valley’, the site of the actual RPF camp. During the nearly six years I was there, various changes to the setup took place. It is beyond the intent of this account to detail all of these. Instead, I will provide some snap shots.

One day at Happy Valley, shortly before we began the official RPF program we were all made to sign some kind of waivers. We were lined up outside a room. One at a time we were brought in. When my turn came, someone led me to a table and had me sit down. A video camera was on me the whole time. I was told to read over a set of legal papers and put my signature on various lines. I guess the video recording was to be evidence that I actually did sign. I don’t remember all that the papers said, but it included that the C of S was not responsible for what happened to me on the RPF and that I would not sue. There was a statement that I was agreeing to do the RPF on my own decision, but in my opinion this signature was obtained under coercive circumstances. If I had chosen not to sign, that did not mean that I could then get up and leave. I would have been kept incarcerated in the RPF site and made to do manual labor. I would have lost my wife and son, who were also in the Sea Org (a Sea Org member cannot have a spouse who is not also in the Sea Org.) I would have had to go through the ordeal of leaving, as described above. One person I knew did refuse to sign and was then subjected to various interviews. He eventually relented and signed. A little over a year later he finally did leave the Sea Org.

For about 3 or 4 years starting some time in 1996, the area where the people in the RPF slept, ate, studied, received their ‘counseling’, and took care of their personal hygiene was surrounded by motion detectors. Thus, the Security Guard on duty, of which there was at least one 24 hours per day, would be immediately alerted if an RPFer attempted to leave the area. This area was at one end of the ‘Happy Valley’ ranch, up against some hills. It was about a five-mile walk through rugged terrain to the nearest town. To get to the nearest town, one would have to cross the Soboba Indian reservation. We had all heard numerous stories about some of the Native Americans who lived on the reservation being hostile towards Sea Org members on their land. Other directions would take one into the wilderness, where there were, without exaggerating, coyotes, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas, Black Widows, poison oak, and a lot of cactus.

The dorms where we slept had three-high bunk beds with aisles a couple of feet wide. All night long at least two people would be on watch outside the trailers.

No one had a car. No one had a radio. No one could receive any magazines or newspapers. No one had a television. No one had a mobile phone. Such things were strictly forbidden. While engaged in manual labor, walking was not allowed. We had to run everywhere. Everyone was assigned a ‘buddy’. You and your buddy were supposed to stick together at all times while working. For example, if one had to use the toilet, their buddy was supposed to accompany them to the w.c., wait outside until they were done, and then go with them back to the work site. All mail sent to or from an RPFer was read by one of the security personnel before it could be received or go out. If for some reason you encountered a Sea Org member who was not on the RPF, you could not speak to them unless they spoke to you first, in which case you had to address them with ‘sir’, whether they were male or female. There were no telephones. For some months during 1996, I was allowed to see my wife for about 2 hours once a week. After January 1997, I was not allowed to see my wife at all. Any written communication to or from her was read by security personnel. Meal times were 20 minutes long. The number of people in the RPF while I was there grew to about 120.

I can recall a few times when someone tried to escape from the RPF during the time I was there. I won’t give their names out of respect for their privacy. In one instance, a young man and a young woman handcuffed themselves together, snuck away so that they were out of others’ sight, and then started running. Somehow the person in charge of the RPF (called the Bosun) realized what was happening and took off after them. He caught up to them and was able to grab on to the lady’s belt and, being a burly kind of guy, was able to hold on. Others had become aware of the situation and soon arrived at that scene. After a lot of talking and persuasion, the two people who had been trying to run away agreed to go back. Another time a different young woman found a way to run off, but was eventually caught up to by a Sea Org member over the RPF, who proceeded to tackle her, literally, and forcibly drag her back to the RPF site. She tried to resist. Later that day I saw the guy with scratches on his face and he confirmed to me that he had physically stopped her from leaving.

When the RPF was begun in 1974, people could often complete the program and ‘graduate’ from it in a few months. I personally knew one person who completed it in one month. When I was on the program, I was on it for six years. Actually I completed it in three years, was put on a post back at the main base, and was then sent back to the RPF for another three years. This length of time was not unusual. I know of some who were on it for 7 or 8 years. 4 or 5 years was common.

Study and “Religious Counseling”

The C of S says that on the RPF, the person who had messed up as a Sea Org member participates in study and religious counseling. ‘Counseling’ is a public relations label given to the Scientology practice of auditing. It is not really counseling in the sense that one is offered advice or guidance. There are many, many ‘processes’ (this is the Scientology term) that make up the practice of auditing. The main thing that one has to do in order to complete the RPF program is to get through a number of prescribed processes to the satisfaction of higher authorities within the Sea Org.

The C of S says further that the purpose of the ‘counseling’ is to address areas of difficulty in the personal lives of the RPFers. I consider this to be very misleading. The bulk of the counseling that one receives in the RPF has to do with evil purposes. In Scientology it is taught that all people walk around with evil purposes or destructive intentions that were formed, in the main, during times of stress in their earlier lifetimes. In present time, any person can act on one of these evil purposes, which causes them to commit a harmful act. It is believed that a Sea Org member ends up on the RPF due to carrying out destructive intentions, resulting in harm to the group. The typical RPFer spends on the order of hundreds of hours of auditing geared towards finding out what these evil purposes are and supposedly getting rid of them. In the course of the RPF program, and RPFer might come up with a hundred or more evil purposes that they supposedly have carried out.

The first such auditing or ‘counseling’ that an RPFer receives used to be called the Truth Rundown (maybe it still has that name). This is addressed to what the C of S terms ‘black propaganda’ or black PR. This is defined as a false and derogatory statement about a well-intentioned person, institution or group. The effort is to find and deal with times the RPFer spread or forwarded black PR. What this boils down to is the search for instances where the RPFer said something that was critical about Scientology, one of its principals or leading people, a Scientology organization, or L. Ron Hubbard. These are culled from various files that are kept on the person the whole time they have been in Scientology and also asked for directly. An example would be Sea Org member ‘A’ observing David Miscavige loudly reaming out some person and making a disagreeable face to Sea Org member ‘B’. This would imply, in the C of S view of things, that Sea Org member ‘A’ was conveying the idea to Sea Org member ‘B’ that what Mr. Miscavige was doing was wrong or bad. This would of course be black PR because David Miscavige was certainly acting for the good of the group and the good of mankind. Once one of these instances of spreading black PR is found, in a ‘counseling’ session (which is not confidential, by the way – what one says in such a session is considered to be actionable or punishable), the auditor demands to hear the serious harmful action that the RPFer must have committed priorly. After a lot of questioning to nail down the details of that severe transgression (the theory is that it would have to be something severe in order to bring the person to spread black PR), a chain of earlier and similar destructive acts is followed back to the first such act, getting the details of each one. After all that the RPFer is asked for the evil purpose or destructive intention that prompted him or her to commit the harmful act.

In short, it is drilled into a person over and over that if they expressed some disagreement with Scientology or its main people or its organizations or their actions, then that person must have seriously sinned and have evil purposes.

A person who spreads black PR is considered to be deluded. One of the stated purposes of the Truth Rundown is to get rid of the person’s delusion or false perceptions. If the RPFer conveyed some negative idea about the top Scientology people or management, then that RPFer must have been falsely perceiving what the top people or management were actually doing. The top Scientology people are of course considered to be well-intentioned and a derogatory comment about them is of course false. So the RPFer must have simply been deluded about that, and behind the delusion are heavy transgressions and destructive intentions. An RPFer is indoctrinated into these ideas heavily and then has to undergo extensive ‘counseling’ in order to ‘cure’ their ‘delusion’.

This surely sounds like mind control to me.

After the Truth Rundown auditing, which often takes some months and requires on the order of a hundred hours in session to complete, the RPFer is given a kind of auditing called the False Purpose Rundown. This is essentially the same procedure done in security checking, described above, with the addition that the auditor asks for the evil purposes that prompted the transgressions that are uncovered. There are long lists of questions covering the RPFers life as a staff member and all areas of life, all asking for specific harmful (or embarrassing) acts that the RPFer may have committed.

Personally, I received literally hundreds of hours of auditing in the Truth Rundown and False Purpose Rundown. In an effort to get back in good graces and to make the grade, I actually invented harmful acts (or twisted ordinary acts into something much worse than they actually were), turned things that I had said or implied into black PR when they in reality were not, and came up with evil purposes that I did not have. I now know that some of the things I said in those sessions were made up. At the time, still having bought in to the Scientology mindset, I felt there must be some mental things hidden from me that would account for the disagreements I was experiencing about my life in the Sea Org. Also, there was no other way, or so I believed, that I could get out of incarceration and the severe living conditions that were my daily life. I do not believe that this was conducive to a good state of mind for me.

A basic tenet of Scientology, especially in auditing such as the Truth Rundown and False Purpose Rundown, is that if one person is critical of another person or thing, or feels done wrong by that person or thing, the one person must have done something bad to the other person or thing. So, an RPFer is deflected away from actual wrongnesses in Scientology and the Sea Org, and focused on his or her own ‘evil’ side.

The study part of the RPF program consists mainly of learning how to do the same auditing actions on another RPFer. One is supposed to audit another through the entire RPF program. I believe that this also tends to make the RPFer accept the Scientology and Sea Org worldview.

Complete Rehabilitation?

In the RPF one must receive and must give to another a relatively long list of auditing actions that are required to be completed. These actions are quite technical and subject to error. All supposed errors must be corrected. It is actually much more complicated than what I have laid out here. After it is all done, the records of the actions, that have to be meticulously kept, are sent to senior persons in the C of S (at the international headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs) who review everything. They have to be satisfied that it was all done correctly to the required result, a fully ‘rehabilitated’ Sea Org member. This means that the person sees totally eye-to-eye with Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, management, and the way the C of S conducts its affairs. Only then would one be let out, but only on a probationary basis. I never saw someone graduate the first time they applied for it. The application would invariably get sent back with points to correct, often several times, which would entail additional auditing.

Hard Labor

Manual labor is part and parcel of the RPF. We did such things as dig trenches, lay irrigation pipe, build structures, pour concrete, carry things, organize a warehouse, move trees, harvest vegetables, take care of pigs and chickens, build and paint movie sets, and various other odd jobs. This kind of work was required 8 hours every day, 7 days a week. The study and auditing had to be done 5 hours per day. So far that is 13 hours. Add one hour total for three meals, about 20 minutes for showering and personal hygiene, about one hour where everybody cleaned, four musters daily of 5 to 15 minutes when everyone was accounted for and tasks were handed out, and some time each day for paper work. This added up to 16 or 17 tightly controlled and scheduled hours day in and day out.

While working, one was expected to work hard and move fast. One was always expected to have a quota, meaning how much work (like how many feet of trench dug or pieces of wood cut) in the next half hour or so. If you did not meet your quota, you had to take a lap. A lap was a course around the work site that one had to run, which would take a couple of minutes. One would then have to get back to work. Sometimes instead of running you would have to do sit-ups or pushups. If one did not have a quota, a lap was assigned. If one was moving slowly, a lap was assigned. If one was disrespectful to some higher-up in the RPF, a lap was assigned. If one complained, a lap was assigned. If there was something wrong with a piece of work, a lap was assigned.

Much of the work was done outside. Sometimes in the California desert the temperature was 115 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the baking sun. Sometimes it was raining. Sometimes it was quite cold. The work had to be carried on regardless.

Some particular personal experiences

Above I have tried to describe some aspects of life on the RPF for an RPFer in general. Actually, I have only scratched the surface. There are some things that happened to me personally that stand out.

In August 1998, I got sent back to the RPF after having graduated from it a few weeks earlier. I was put on the ‘RPF’s RPF’, as it was called. A person on the RPF’s RPF is segregated from the other RPFers, has to do about eleven hours of the hardest, dirtiest and most unpleasant manual labor, and has to complete certain actions that are supposed to make one more ethical. You have to get the signature of every RPFer approving you to rejoin the regular RPF. This particular time, since I could not sleep in the same room with other RPFers, I had to sleep on a concrete floor in a small shack. This shack was maybe about 8 feet wide and about 10 feet long. It had one door and no windows. It had an aisle down the middle about two and a half feet wide, with shelves on either side for holding paper files. I slept on the floor in the aisle with some blankets. I don’t recall having a pillow. Being August, it was quite hot and uncomfortable in that little shack. The door to the outside was kept closed. A large and heavy metal baking pan was leaned against the door from the outside so that if I tried to open the door it would fall with a loud clang against the ground. Two people were on night watch outside, guarding me. During the day I worked in the hot sun with one RPFer assigned to watch me full-time. After several nights of this, some other people were assigned to the RPF’s RPF. My sleeping place was moved to another shack where clothes got washed. Again, myself and one other guy had a very tight section of concrete on which to sleep. Again, the only way out was through a door that had large stones against it to keep it from being opened. A guard was posted outside all night long to keep an eye on me and a few other RPF’s RPFers.

During that time, I verbally told one of the security personnel who was assigned to guard us that I did not wish to continue with the program and that I wanted to leave. He ignored me. Also one time during the night I tried to leave. I got a few steps away from the shack where I was supposed to sleep, and was confronted by the person who was guarding us. In a few seconds other people appeared, persuading me to get back in the shack. They said we could talk about it in the morning. Feeling pretty beaten down at that point, I acquiesced. After a few days of ‘discussion’ I agreed again to carry on with the program. I accepted the same arguments of not giving up my eternity, not betraying mankind, not losing my family, becoming cause over the evil part of my mind that was telling me to give up, etc.

Another time in about September 1996, I ended up on the RPF’s RPF with three other people. We got the job of digging up the leach field of the sewage system of the ranch (Happy Valley). We had no special masks to prevent breathing in harmful microorganisms. It was smelly and dirty. At one point we were supposed to repair a broken sewage pipe while waste was running through it.

Another time in the summer of 2000, the RPFer who audited me (and also the person whom I audited) was a 50-year-old lady. She had allegedly made an error the day before in her auditing on me. We were both assigned to run five laps around an area of the RPF site, a total distance of maybe a kilometer, on an incline. We dutifully did this. About half way through, the lady started wheezing. She kept going. Near the end of our run, the wheezing had gotten worse and there was a distinct rattling sound coming from her throat. At the end, we went inside, when she promptly went into the rest room and vomited. She felt ill the rest of the day and evening. While there was apparently no serious damage, it gives a flavor of the life we lived.

The C of S objects to words like incarceration. They claim that a Sea Org member participates in the RPF program voluntarily and have all kinds of justifications as to why the program is run as it is. The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives as a definition of ‘incarcerate’: “to subject to confinement.” There is no question that we were in confinement. There is also no question that the program was designed to make us into obedient, unquestioning workers for the Sea Org.

A Bit about Myself

I was born in Denver, Colorado in 1951. I was involved with Scientology for over 30 years: July 1972 – April 2003. Since I left the Sea Org and Scientology I have gotten a degree in physics (Bachelor of Science with Distinction) from the University of Colorado Denver. I am currently working on a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering, which I should complete in 2008.