Before David Miscavige, the Rehabilitation Project Force was a program that took a few weeks to complete. It was meant as an alternate to firing someone: a way to clean up a staff member who had really goofed.

In the early ‘80s Miscavige transformed it into a heavy program of mind control: a gulag for Scientology executives mowed down in his coup as Miscavige seized control of Scientology. These rivals had not really done anything wrong, so they had to be convinced of it through the application of very heavy ethics.

Thus David Miscavige perverted the RPF into an incredibly long and indescribably difficult "program", during which one had no time off AT ALL. This means that one does not get a day to go to the movies or an hour to sleep in or any kind of personal time. Even prisoners are allowed to visitation: we didn’t even get that.

I was sixteen when I was sent into the RPF without the choice of leaving as both my parents were in the SO and I would have had nowhere to go.  At a time when I should have been playing sports and dating in high school -- I was restricted against my will doing in most cases back-breaking physical labor.

RPFers got paid seven or eight dollars a week and for the most part I was not paid even that.

All incoming and outgoing communications for the RPF were screened by the RPF I/C and by security guards. NOTHING but happy, cheerful communications were allowed to pass.

RPFers were not allowed to talk to staff not in the RPF, and were constantly reminded of this by staff or sadistic executives who didn't think we were running fast enough. We were not allowed to walk in the RPF.

Physical intimidation was heavily used in the RPF, shoving and slapping were not uncommon.   

I slept in a room with no air conditioning with 40 men on bunks piled three high. It stank. We were given second or third or fifth-hand hand-me-down uniforms and boots. I remember the first pair of boots I was given would "flap" because they were torn and I had to glue them repeatedly as my pleas for boots were the last priority in my org’s financial planning body.

I owned no clothes other than my uniform as I was growing, so nothing fit. I got a horrible case of athletes foot for lack of clean socks and got ingrown toenails because my shoes didn’t fit. We in the RPF were literally forgotten medically.

Perhaps initially people had a choice in choosing to do the RPF program. I did not. In the program which was perverted according to David Miscavige’s orders, we were watched at all times and not allowed to leave. In fact, guilt was used: each person was twinned -- assigned a partner through the entire program.  Should you blow (make an unauthorized leave) or in any way screw up, your "twin" would get himself in a world of trouble and be hurt as he would be assigned to the infamous RPF's RPF, or R’s R for short.

I was sent to the R'sR three times. This was far worse than the RPF. In the R’s R, we not only had no liberty, but also less sleep, 15 minute meal breaks -- we ate the leftovers of the leftovers. In the RsR we were screamed at constantly.  Malnourished, with never enough sleep, we had to do the most excruciating labor to be found.

Examples of common work assignments included “rats alley.” This was a couple thousand square-foot crawlspace, four feet high, beneath the four 55 gallon massive pots used for making soup, spaghetti, rice, beans and so on that would leak down and feed an army of rats, mice and thousands upon thousands of very large palmetto bugs.

The task at hand was to get in this crawlspace with de-greaser spray bottles to shoot large roaches and with metal dustpans fill up hundreds of five gallon buckets with maggot-infested rotten food slime at the bottom of this crawlspace.

The smell alone made me puke the little food I had in me. The job took weeks -- working sixteen-hour days, we had 2.5 hours of “redemption time” to write up our "crimes" and do ethics conditions. No one was allowed more than six hours of sleep. I was in for three weeks one time. When I completed I was gaunt, pale and mentally beaten.

TWICE we had to dig up the “rose garden” at the manor -- an area the size of a tennis court filled with dirt, six feet deep. Water was leaking into underground office spaces below the rose garden so we were made to remove the dirt using only shovels and wheelbarrows. That meant shoveling dirt sixteen hours a day with less than poor nutrition and little sleep. Unrealistic deadlines were assigned to every small chore and if you didn’t meet your target, a maniac I/C made you to 20 pushups.

To say it was exhausting was beyond understatement. Everything hurt. It was downright dangerous and irresponsible. But one got used to being "less than" everyone else and I began to believe that. Sleep-deprived, sick, half starved, being screamed at -- and all against one’s will, does mess one up. It WAS torture in every sense of the word. And it WAS brainwashing.

Most Scientologists with more than 40 PC folders have moved up the bridge to OT VII or VIII; I have more than that and have not even made it to clear. 99 percent of all the auditing I ever received under David Miscavige’s regime were security checks.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the RPF was that it was full of the most competent people in the Sea Org. Because they were targeted by David Miscavige and they took the most responsibility, they went first. Thanks to that alone my sanity was held intact. There were a few psychos, but the vast majority of the people in the RPF were highly capable creme de la creme type people that were fascinating to be around. In fact if any org was manned with those in the RPF, that org would have had some of the most trained, most experienced Sea Org members in the world.

Despite the intense personal injustice of being assigned to the RPF without any choice, the high production alone boosted morale. But don't get me wrong: there wasn't an hour in the day that I didn't wish not to be there. But the regular RPF work was fun. Having said that I cried myself to sleep many a night wondering what in the world I had done that had landed me in this mess. And I saw many a grown man in tears wondering the same thing.

Written by Arthur Doyle