Valuetainment - January 01, 1970


“Billion-Year Contracts” - Inside Scientology’s EXTREME Loyalty Rituals & SeaOrg Control


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

145.71031

Word count

2,303

Sentence count

172

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Ron talks about his experience as a Sea Org employee and how he became involved with the Church of Scientology. He talks about the structure of the organization and how it relates to celebrities such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.460 Scientology.
00:00:01.440 You know, I've worked with Scientologists,
00:00:04.200 and I will tell you from my experience,
00:00:06.920 I've never had a bad experience with Scientologists.
00:00:11.660 They work very hard.
00:00:13.360 I recruited people from the C organization.
00:00:15.820 They would work 16-hour days.
00:00:19.240 They were not my agents.
00:00:20.780 We shared an office together selling insurance.
00:00:22.860 So they ran their own agency.
00:00:24.140 I ran my own agency, but we were overlapping each other,
00:00:26.520 and I would help them grow their business
00:00:27.680 because one of the guys, you know, became a friend,
00:00:31.780 and when we're at the office late at night, midnight,
00:00:36.180 you know, 11 o'clock, I'm finishing up my day,
00:00:39.120 and I would say, well, you know, do you know what a cyst is?
00:00:41.640 We do something called a cyst.
00:00:43.820 We do something, and I went to the facility.
00:00:46.480 I got some of the books.
00:00:47.560 I read some of the material, Dianetics and other things.
00:00:49.760 I probably have a couple of Dianetics copies in my office,
00:00:53.780 and you see some things that are interesting.
00:00:56.640 Then you read about the founder.
00:00:59.580 Then things get a little bit suspicious.
00:01:01.240 You're like, wait a minute.
00:01:01.900 And then you read Leah Remini and watch the stuff she did,
00:01:06.220 or Presley.
00:01:07.700 Is it Leslie Presley, if I'm saying it correctly?
00:01:09.560 One of the Presleys, right?
00:01:10.680 Who was the one that was put?
00:01:11.980 Priscilla Presley joined,
00:01:14.460 and she brought in Lisa Marie Presley, her daughter.
00:01:17.160 That's right.
00:01:17.620 So what patterns do you notice with Scientology like this?
00:01:23.800 However, they've never gotten in trouble.
00:01:26.660 Not they've never gotten in trouble.
00:01:28.060 They're still around.
00:01:29.060 They're still there.
00:01:30.140 They still have their religion exemption.
00:01:32.220 They still have the tax benefits.
00:01:33.940 What patterns do you notice there?
00:01:36.160 Well, I think what you see is worship of the leader.
00:01:40.360 I mean, L. Ron Hubbard is considered sacrosanct, really,
00:01:45.600 and his writings are sacred.
00:01:48.120 In fact, they have them written in metal
00:01:53.520 and stored in a mountain to preserve them.
00:01:56.740 So I think what you see typically is a kind of worship
00:02:00.340 of L. Ron Hubbard, though he is dead.
00:02:03.480 He was succeeded by his secretary, David Miscavige,
00:02:07.160 who now occupies a similar position in Scientology.
00:02:11.120 Very powerful.
00:02:11.780 He's a virtual dictator, in my opinion.
00:02:16.520 Have you ever met him?
00:02:18.060 No, I have not.
00:02:19.060 Never met him.
00:02:19.600 I've met their lead counsel, Kendrick Moxon.
00:02:23.580 I've met quite a few Scientologists over the years
00:02:26.840 and former Scientologists.
00:02:28.900 There's a division of who is what could be called a public
00:02:35.000 or a member of Scientology, but they are not a full-time member.
00:02:39.540 The people that are in C-Org, the C-Organization, are full-timers.
00:02:46.020 There are thousands of them, and they staff buildings and so forth.
00:02:50.280 I would question the way those people are treated
00:02:52.960 because I've talked to former C-Org members,
00:02:56.080 and what is their health care benefit?
00:02:59.320 What is their retirement benefit?
00:03:01.040 How much are they actually paid?
00:03:02.660 Why do they have to sign billion-year contracts
00:03:06.860 for this life and successive lives?
00:03:10.360 You know, are they or are they not treated fairly?
00:03:13.900 There are allegations that they're not
00:03:16.120 based on what people have said that have left.
00:03:19.440 Then there's the whole celebrity crowd.
00:03:22.140 You know, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Jenna Elfman,
00:03:25.660 the people who are treated very well within Scientology.
00:03:31.960 Scientology has celebrity centers to cater to celebrities.
00:03:36.660 So I would say that you could divide Scientology up,
00:03:41.180 and you could say, well, the celebrities are treated in one way,
00:03:45.080 in which they would say Scientology is great.
00:03:48.640 We're being treated very well.
00:03:50.600 And then at the bottom, you have these C-Org members,
00:03:54.140 many of them brought into Scientology as children
00:03:57.280 raised within Scientology, schooled by Scientology,
00:04:00.640 and they become the backbone of Scientology,
00:04:04.820 you know, the worker drones that keep everything going.
00:04:11.340 So Scientology also, the families that call me
00:04:17.500 will talk about how a loved one became involved in Scientology,
00:04:21.720 and the deeper they became involved,
00:04:24.340 the more control Scientology had over their life.
00:04:29.220 And as the family questioned that
00:04:31.820 and questioned what was happening
00:04:33.920 and how it was affecting their life,
00:04:36.340 Scientology would say, well, they're a suppressive person,
00:04:40.740 and you need to disconnect from them.
00:04:43.300 So I have done interventions to get people out of Scientology,
00:04:47.160 in one case, which I recount in my book,
00:04:50.080 Cults Inside Out,
00:04:51.300 was a man who had been in Scientology for 27 years.
00:04:56.900 He was almost 50 when I met him.
00:04:59.660 And he had a wife, he had two children.
00:05:02.860 He had always functioned as someone
00:05:06.000 who would take courses and be active with Scientology,
00:05:11.160 but had his own home, his own life, his family.
00:05:15.000 And his wife would take courses and his children
00:05:18.580 to humor him, as they would tell me.
00:05:21.780 But they never became fully immersed.
00:05:24.540 At one point, Scientology says to this guy,
00:05:28.760 we want you to become a full-time Sea Org member,
00:05:31.880 divorce your wife, leave your family, 1.00
00:05:34.380 move into Sea Org housing.
00:05:36.160 Because Sea Org members, you know, 1.00
00:05:38.000 they eat, sleep, breathe Scientology.
00:05:41.440 And he was going to do that.
00:05:43.900 And then his family contacted me.
00:05:46.960 We did an intervention.
00:05:48.660 And he decided to leave Scientology,
00:05:51.960 which for him was really very difficult,
00:05:55.260 because all of his friends were Scientologists.
00:05:58.600 And he had grown up in this organization.
00:06:00.980 So when he walked away, he thought,
00:06:03.760 can I still have these friends?
00:06:05.700 Or will I have to let them go?
00:06:08.080 And it ended up where he had to let them go,
00:06:10.500 because they kept trying to pull him back in.
00:06:13.240 And he had to leave.
00:06:15.200 And I can remember at one point,
00:06:17.100 his children literally getting on their knees
00:06:20.840 in front of him.
00:06:21.920 He was sitting in his living room.
00:06:25.140 And they were crying.
00:06:26.340 And they were saying, Dad, don't do it.
00:06:28.620 Don't go into Sea Org.
00:06:29.720 Don't leave us.
00:06:30.740 We love you.
00:06:31.840 We want you in our lives.
00:06:33.900 Please don't do this.
00:06:35.240 And of course, his wife was crying.
00:06:37.160 He started crying.
00:06:38.980 I think what finally helped him
00:06:41.720 to get out of Scientology
00:06:43.380 was realizing that the writings
00:06:45.860 of L. Ron Hubbard were flawed.
00:06:48.900 Hubbard believed that toxins
00:06:52.340 could reside in the fatty tissues
00:06:54.720 of the body indefinitely.
00:06:56.920 And so Scientology has a routine
00:06:59.960 called the purification rundown,
00:07:02.880 in which you go through saunas.
00:07:05.360 Lake Arrowhead is one of their main facilities.
00:07:07.760 And you take large doses of niacin and so on.
00:07:11.580 And you're supposedly going to sweat out
00:07:13.860 whatever toxins are in your body.
00:07:16.140 And Hubbard would propose,
00:07:20.740 or he wrote,
00:07:22.280 that let's say you at one time did LSD,
00:07:26.540 or at one time you took antidepressants,
00:07:30.200 or whatever.
00:07:31.140 They're in your fatty tissue indefinitely
00:07:33.780 until you do the purification rundown,
00:07:36.200 which of course Scientology collects money for.
00:07:39.840 You know, they can collect thousands of dollars
00:07:41.840 for somebody doing the purification rundown.
00:07:43.900 At one point, they were through an organization
00:07:47.920 called Narconon, which is, in my opinion,
00:07:51.800 a front for Scientology.
00:07:53.520 It's an anti-drug program,
00:07:55.160 and Narconon runs drug rehabs,
00:07:57.740 but it's based on Scientology.
00:08:00.140 And it's controversial.
00:08:02.540 And so Narconon approached
00:08:04.660 the California school system,
00:08:06.280 and they said,
00:08:06.820 let us do an anti-drug program for your schools
00:08:10.200 to help kids say no to drugs.
00:08:13.100 And they asked them specifically at that point,
00:08:16.560 is this religion?
00:08:19.220 Because we can't have you teaching religion to the kids. 1.00
00:08:22.540 And they said,
00:08:23.340 no, no, Narconon is separate from Scientology,
00:08:26.300 and this is not us teaching Scientology.
00:08:29.240 So they let them in,
00:08:30.480 and then they had complaints,
00:08:31.780 and they brought them back in.
00:08:33.400 And they said,
00:08:34.080 we're getting complaints.
00:08:35.380 The kids are having nightmares.
00:08:37.120 They're telling their parents
00:08:38.300 they've got drugs
00:08:39.420 in the fatty tissue of their bodies
00:08:41.820 that could be let out at any time
00:08:45.500 without warning
00:08:46.660 and could cause them harm.
00:08:49.680 Why are you teaching that to kids?
00:08:52.000 It's not true.
00:08:53.560 Science has proven
00:08:54.580 that drugs do not reside indefinitely
00:08:57.360 in any part of the body,
00:08:58.860 and that they are dispelled
00:09:00.260 from the body
00:09:01.500 in a certain period of time.
00:09:03.020 And you know that
00:09:04.080 from people taking drug tests.
00:09:06.280 How many days before did you use drugs?
00:09:09.680 It's going to come up in the test.
00:09:11.280 And if it's distant,
00:09:12.740 it won't come up in the test.
00:09:14.660 So Scientologists said,
00:09:16.800 well, this is a truth.
00:09:18.800 This is what we say is the truth.
00:09:23.260 And the school said,
00:09:24.320 no, it's not the truth.
00:09:25.640 It's a belief.
00:09:27.900 And now you're teaching religion.
00:09:29.860 You're not doing
00:09:30.940 a typical drug,
00:09:32.540 anti-drug program.
00:09:33.920 You're teaching something.
00:09:35.880 And so I shared this
00:09:37.400 with the man
00:09:38.120 who had been in Scientology
00:09:39.480 for 27 years.
00:09:40.980 And I said,
00:09:41.980 I can understand
00:09:43.120 that L. Ron Hubbard
00:09:44.680 had some quaint beliefs
00:09:46.500 that seemed valid
00:09:48.600 at the time that he wrote,
00:09:50.220 which was in the 1950s
00:09:52.120 and 60s.
00:09:54.920 So he wrote
00:09:56.340 and he thought
00:09:57.720 that this was true.
00:09:59.060 But science has proven
00:10:01.120 it is not.
00:10:02.140 So it was a theory
00:10:03.320 that was disproven.
00:10:05.020 And if what you believe in
00:10:07.560 is science
00:10:08.680 and the name of the organization
00:10:11.520 is Scientology,
00:10:13.660 implying it's kind of scientific,
00:10:16.540 why can't the group
00:10:18.180 acknowledge
00:10:18.940 that this was a mistake,
00:10:21.800 this theory has been proven false,
00:10:23.660 and then move on,
00:10:25.420 which is what science does.
00:10:27.780 Science through evidence
00:10:29.440 will move beyond a theory
00:10:31.540 that has been disproven.
00:10:33.500 And he really struggled with that
00:10:35.760 because he realized,
00:10:38.460 yeah,
00:10:38.720 what he's saying is true.
00:10:40.120 And I showed him
00:10:41.000 the documentation
00:10:41.720 and everything
00:10:42.640 and what had happened.
00:10:44.360 And he realized,
00:10:45.720 well,
00:10:45.960 if when Hubbard
00:10:47.720 is wrong about something,
00:10:49.360 what do we do with that?
00:10:50.740 can't we realize
00:10:54.100 that that theory
00:10:54.920 has been disproven
00:10:55.840 and move on?
00:10:56.860 And so that was the crack
00:10:58.980 that opened up,
00:11:01.020 that let everything else in,
00:11:03.760 and then he left Scientology.
00:11:06.080 Yeah,
00:11:06.260 the last time he did an interview,
00:11:08.080 Miscavige,
00:11:08.780 was with Ted Koppel.
00:11:10.660 And I believe it's in 94,
00:11:12.600 something like that.
00:11:13.520 It could be.
00:11:13.800 Rob,
00:11:14.020 can you see what year
00:11:14.760 that was,
00:11:15.180 the Koppel interview?
00:11:16.640 It's a long-time interview,
00:11:17.480 and people have had a hard time,
00:11:19.100 have had a hard time
00:11:21.720 finding his wife.
00:11:22.700 They don't know
00:11:23.020 where his wife is.
00:11:24.480 She's been located.
00:11:25.920 She,
00:11:26.200 she is in relatively
00:11:27.760 comfortable setting.
00:11:30.320 Good shape?
00:11:30.920 Yeah,
00:11:31.580 in northern,
00:11:32.640 in northern California.
00:11:35.120 I think,
00:11:36.140 somewhat near.
00:11:37.340 She was missing
00:11:37.800 for 20 years though,
00:11:38.840 15 years though.
00:11:39.580 Not really.
00:11:40.800 I,
00:11:41.020 I think,
00:11:41.720 I think there was a point
00:11:43.020 where people question,
00:11:44.340 where is she,
00:11:44.980 where is she?
00:11:45.700 But eventually,
00:11:46.740 it would be established
00:11:47.900 that she had been assigned
00:11:49.440 to a Scientology branch
00:11:52.260 in California.
00:11:53.980 And that's where she works 0.96
00:11:55.720 and she lives.
00:11:56.840 And it's relatively secluded
00:11:58.920 and she is somewhat isolated.
00:12:00.680 And you could even go so far
00:12:02.700 as to say,
00:12:03.320 well,
00:12:03.860 David Miscavige
00:12:05.360 did the equivalent of,
00:12:08.000 woman, 1.00
00:12:08.520 get thee to a nunnery.
00:12:10.820 I mean,
00:12:11.220 it says,
00:12:11.600 since her disappearance
00:12:12.560 in 07,
00:12:13.180 she has been the subject
00:12:14.980 of speculation
00:12:15.860 and inquiries
00:12:16.740 with her whereabouts.
00:12:18.800 In 2012,
00:12:19.540 attorneys who said
00:12:20.220 they represented her
00:12:21.340 responded by saying
00:12:22.160 she was leading
00:12:22.760 a private life
00:12:23.360 devoted to the Church
00:12:24.100 of Scientology.
00:12:25.640 In 2013,
00:12:26.860 Leah Romani,
00:12:27.480 a former Scientologist
00:12:28.400 and critic
00:12:28.860 of the organization,
00:12:30.600 filed a missing person
00:12:31.680 reporting miscavige
00:12:33.240 with the LA Department.
00:12:34.640 The LAPD
00:12:35.940 closed the investigation
00:12:36.840 within hours
00:12:37.420 and described the report
00:12:38.340 as unfounded.
00:12:40.400 Has she showed herself?
00:12:42.240 Have people seen her?
00:12:43.540 Yes.
00:12:44.020 She has?
00:12:44.560 Yes.
00:12:44.920 Okay.
00:12:45.380 Yes.
00:12:45.660 And what,
00:12:46.560 where has that been documented?
00:12:49.500 I think she was seen
00:12:51.340 at a restaurant
00:12:52.100 eating out
00:12:53.240 outside of the-
00:12:54.060 That's great news.
00:12:54.960 Outside of the compound.
00:12:56.580 She also has,
00:12:58.280 the compound that she's in
00:13:00.440 is in Northern California.
00:13:02.640 It's relatively secluded.
00:13:04.920 It's actually quite nice
00:13:06.780 from what I've heard.
00:13:08.240 So she is basically
00:13:10.440 comfortably living,
00:13:12.160 devoted to Scientology,
00:13:13.920 in seclusion.
00:13:15.660 And you could argue
00:13:17.860 that David Miscavige
00:13:19.160 wanted to get rid of her,
00:13:20.540 that he put her there
00:13:21.400 to take her out
00:13:22.860 of the limelight,
00:13:24.040 that he didn't want
00:13:25.100 to share the limelight with her,
00:13:27.500 and that he wanted her
00:13:28.680 out of his life.
00:13:30.440 Be that as it may,
00:13:31.900 she's not unaccounted for.
00:13:34.780 She lives in this
00:13:36.340 relatively comfortable place
00:13:39.080 in Northern California,
00:13:41.200 albeit a full-time
00:13:42.560 Scientology facility
00:13:44.160 where she's working
00:13:45.520 for Scientology
00:13:46.800 day in, day out,
00:13:48.700 and this is her life.
00:13:49.740 Is that it, Rob?
00:13:51.380 This is the only Scientology
00:13:52.840 in Northern California
00:13:53.840 I could find.
00:13:54.320 The Petriola?
00:13:55.600 Is that correct?
00:13:58.340 They say it's a giant compound
00:14:00.100 with a hidden bunker underneath.
00:14:02.260 And says what?
00:14:03.120 That she is there?
00:14:03.940 That's the only
00:14:04.660 Scientology headquarters
00:14:06.240 that I could find
00:14:06.920 in a remote,
00:14:07.660 secluded location
00:14:08.560 in Northern California.
00:14:10.700 I am not,
00:14:11.780 I'm not really sure
00:14:13.260 which facility it is
00:14:14.980 by name,
00:14:15.940 but, you know,
00:14:17.500 it is in Northern California,
00:14:19.140 and it's not a huge facility,
00:14:22.760 but it's where she is.
00:14:24.160 That may be the facility,
00:14:26.100 in fact, there.
00:14:27.560 But she's,
00:14:29.620 people know where she is.
00:14:31.580 I mean, it's not a mystery.
00:14:32.840 She has been there
00:14:34.840 for a number of years.
00:14:37.140 Yeah, the niece
00:14:37.820 was on News Nation
00:14:39.140 just a few months ago.
00:14:40.460 Did you see that interview?
00:14:42.220 Yeah, I'm aware of it.
00:14:44.600 Yes.
00:14:45.300 She claimed that she has been seen
00:14:49.060 but doesn't want to give proof.
00:14:51.680 So the, you know,
00:14:53.400 obviously she was critical
00:14:54.860 of Scientology,
00:14:55.820 but, you know,
00:14:58.520 the niece herself says,
00:15:00.660 I'm not sure.
00:15:03.380 Let me just have this, Rob.
00:15:04.680 I'm going to send this to you
00:15:05.420 if you want to take a look at this.
00:15:07.060 But if you're telling me
00:15:08.320 this is breaking news
00:15:09.340 for a lot of us
00:15:10.040 because, you know,
00:15:11.260 most people didn't know
00:15:12.300 if she was
00:15:13.000 out there or not,
00:15:15.960 but that's phenomenal news
00:15:17.100 that she is good.
00:15:17.980 Hi, I'm Rick Allen Ross,
00:15:21.160 cult expert,
00:15:23.140 intervention specialist,
00:15:24.820 author of the book
00:15:25.600 Cults Inside Out.
00:15:27.600 You can find me
00:15:28.700 on Manect.
00:15:30.020 If you enjoyed this video
00:15:30.960 and you want to watch
00:15:31.460 more videos like this,
00:15:32.400 click here.
00:15:32.780 And if you want to watch
00:15:33.480 the entire podcast,
00:15:35.120 click here.
00:15:35.560 And if you'll see
00:15:47.400 you then.