Jenna Miscavige Hill has an important story to tell, and although the writing in her memoir Beyond Belief is less than literary, the details were equally fascinating and disgusting to me. Born into the Church of Scientology, and the niece of David Micavige – the head of the CoS then and now – Jenna's childhood was one that no child should go through, and most especially, not in the name of some so-called religion.
Jenna's parents proudly joined the elite Sea Org division of the CoS when she was two, and as they were expected to work crazy long hours, she would spend her days in a church-run nursery and only see them for an hour of family time every night before they would need to return to work. Eventually, even this time was taken away and Jenna would see her parents only on Sunday mornings. When she was six, Jenna was sent to live on “The Ranch” – the Sea Org's boarding school in the California desert. Living in dormitories, the children would be awoken at 6 am, 7 days a week, to get dressed in cadet uniforms and make their beds before inspection. After a quick breakfast, all of the children would spend their mornings on MEST work – which, as the ranch was initially a dilapidated compound, involved hauling rocks, weeding for firebreaks, digging trenches, repairing buildings; essentially hard labour, in all weather. Academics weren't emphasised in the “Chinese School” method espoused by founder L Ron Hubbard, and reading and writing was seen as a tool primarily to be used to understand Hubbard's writings. When Jenna was seven, she was finally old enough to properly join the Sea Org cadets, and she was presented with a billion year contract to sign.
At seven, she was also expected to take on a more active role, and she became the children's sole medical officer; dispensing vitamins based on the packages' instructions and using therapeutic touch to heal ailments. For the next several years, she saw her father sporadically, but as her mother had been reassigned to the Clearwater, Florida flagship base – called “Flag” – Jenna didn't see her at all until she was finally invited out for a visit. During this visit, Jenna realised that her mother lived a luxurious lifestyle with a beautiful apartment, nice clothes and a personal staff – a far cry from Jenna's life of hard labour and military-level discipline. But seeing this lifestyle convinced Jenna that she was working towards a decent reward and reinforced her own commitment to the church. When she was given the opportunity, at 12-years-old, to transfer to Flag, Jenna jumped at the opportunity – without being told that her mother would be transferring back to California at the same time.
Even though she no longer had to perform hard labour, Jenna's experience at Flag was also abusive – with long hours spent at course work (entirely Scientology-based), her every action monitored and controlled, and excruciatingly long sessions of auditing – in which an interrogator tried to root out subversive thoughts and actions while Jenna was hooked up to an E-meter. Usually, Jenna would need to make up transgressions to end these sessions, and take the resulting punishment. Unbeknownst to her at the time, when Jenna was 16, her parents were trying to leave the church, and as a result, her uncle David had ordered days-long security checks on Jenna to find out what she knew. Being completely brainwashed, when Jenna's parents tried to force her to leave the church with them, she refused – why would she trust a mother whom she had only seen for one half-hour visit in the past four years? – but instead of being rewarded for her loyalty, Jenna was signing herself up for added abuses and micromanagement.
Jenna didn't escape until she was 20, and although this is described as “harrowing” in the book's subtitle, it was difficult but not dangerous. Nearly immediately, Jenna and her fellow-escapee-and-husband Dallas began educating themselves on Scientology and they were astounded by what they learned: that the Wogs (“well and orderly gentlemen” as Hubbard sneeringly described non-Scientologists) didn't regard Hubbard as an important and saintly figure in the history of the world; that Jenna's childhood was shocking to the people who heard about it; and what I found to be most interesting – that they had no idea about the space-aliens-were-stacked-up-at-volcanoes-around-Earth-75-million-years-ago-by-the-evil-galactic-overlord-Xenu-before-being-blown-up-with-H-bombs story that most of us Wogs use to dismiss even the idea of Scientology.
This Xenu story is apparently “OT-III” level information that a Scientologist works his whole life toward eventually being told. Scientologists are warned repeatedly that learning this information before completing all of the courses before it should be revealed can have devastating physical effects, so even though they had already left the church, even Jenna and Dallas were hesitant to risk reading this information themselves. Jenna contends that, since a person who lives outside the Sea Org must spend countless years and at least $100 000 to take the courses leading up to this revelation, anyone at OT-III would have dug himself in too deep to see the crazy sci-fi nature of the Xenu story when it is finally revealed.
And that in the end is what I found to be the most fascinating: the brainwashed inner circle of Scientology – those living in a cult-like environment every bit as harmful as the Moonies or Jonestown – don't even know about the central tenets of their “faith”. And those who are “Public Scientologists” – like Tom Cruise and John Travolta – see the shiny face of the organisation, and so far as Jenna could tell, they had no idea what life in the Sea Org was about. I remember watching an interview with Tom Cruise a very long time ago, and he said that although he's dyslexic, Scientology gave him a special pair of glasses and told him to print 0ut his movie scripts on coloured paper and Cruise found he no longer had a reading problem. I remember another interview with Kirstie Alley and she said that one auditing session with a Scientologist broke her drug addiction. If these stories are true, then maybe L Ron Hubbard did discover some useful tools along the way. But if Tom Cruise also tells Brooke Shields that using drugs to combat postpartum depression is “irresponsible”, and if he thinks that at the site of a car crash, only a Scientologist can help – that's bizarre. It was wonderful when John Travolta responded to the Haitian earthquake by flying his own jet in with supplies, but a little weird that he also brought Scientologists to provide "assists" (in which the power of touch purportedly reconnects nervous systems shaken by trauma).
Jenna today is an anti-Scientology activist; finding ways to use her horrible history to help others. Beyond Belief is an important document, and although I learned a lot, I just wish it was better written. For the essentials it contains, here's a summary of the “juiciest bits” from The Daily Beast and the video from Jenna's Nightline interview.
It was probably because of all of the recent Scientology "Truthers" coming out with their stories that I read something a few years ago and commented to Dave, "You know that Scientologists believe that 75 million years ago, some galactic overlord killed a bunch of aliens on Earth and their souls are haunting us and L Ron Hubbard found a way to make them go away?" Dave answered, "Sounds about as believeable as raising the dead and turning water into wine..."
Okay, I know there's no way to convince someone like Dave that there's a difference -- even when I countered with that quote from LRH himself about creating a religion is the best way to get rich, Dave was able to point out the Vatican and papal excesses -- but come on. How is the widely available knowledge that LRH was essentially a con man not enough to torpedo this "religion"?
And on another note: We were talking over dinner the other night about this Facebook quiz that the girls and I took and I was amazed at how just choosing your favourite out of three pictures, seven times, gave us these amazingly accurate personality results. Kennedy's said that she was a lone wolf who didn't care what anyone else thought of her (so true!) and that she can't stand to see people arguing, always needing to act as a mediator and defending underdogs (and that is her in a nutshell -- if there's one thing she can't stand it's Dave and Mal butting heads at dinner; it will put Kennedy in tears). Then Mallory's said that she's a livewire and natural entertainer, but that although she can't stand when someone criticises her publicly, she can often make it go away playfully, without seeming to be arguing (and she and I agreed that this is totally her). I tried to remember mine -- something about being spiritual and down-to-earth -- and when Dave was done doing the quiz, he had the exact same results as mine:
You are Spiritual, Emotionally-Intelligent, Charismatic and Down-to-earth. You are someone who needs to get to the bottom of things. There's no question you haven't asked, and no answer you haven't been 100% satisfied with. Your understanding of people and your extensive knowledge is not from the books. You are someone who likes to observe things and make your conclusions. That gives you this mysterious touch that others are so fascinated about.
And while I thought it was a meaningful result for me, and the whole point of our conversation was that everyone who I saw do the quiz got different -- and spot-on -- results, the girls both started laughing when Dave was reading his: You? Spiritual?
And Dave was really offended by that, saying, "I may not believe in any so-called religions, but I'm probably more spiritual than any of you."
I put an end to the sport when I saw how serious he was, but...Dave...spiritual? More than any of us? I've never seen any evidence of spirituality. When we first started dating, I was impressed that he had a copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet -- until I realised that it was a book that Elvis found meaningful (was it the book he was reading on the toilet when he died?), and besides that, I never saw Dave reading it. I would love to know what he means by "spiritual". What inner life could Dave have that I'm wholly unprivy to?
