going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

night. Part of his work was shoveling up asbestos that had been removed during the
renovation of the Fort Harrison Hotel. He says no protective gear was provided, not
even a mask. He rarely saw his parents. While he was at Flag Base in 2005, when he
was fourteen, he guarded the door while Tom Cruise was in session. The sight of
children working at a Sea Org facility would not have been unusual. They were
separated from their parents and out of school. According to Florida child labor laws,
minors who are fourteen and fteen years old are prohibited from working during
school hours, and may work only up to fteen hours a week. Daniel said that he was
allowed schooling only one day a week, on Saturday.
When Daniel was fteen, he was assigned to work on the renovation of Scientology’s
publications building in Los Angeles, operating scissors lifts and other heavy equipment.
According to California child labor laws, fteen-year-old children are allowed to work
only three hours per day outside of school, except on weekends—no more than eighteen
hours per week total. Sixteen is the minimum age for children to work in any
manufacturing establishment using power-driven hoisting apparatus, such as the scissors
lift. Daniel graduated to work at the church’s auditing complex nearby, called the
American Saint Hill Organization; then from six in the evening until three in the
morning he volunteered at Bridge Publications. He was paid thirty-six dollars a week.
Daniel’s work at Bridge Publications was suciently impressive that he was posted
full-time in the manufacturing division there the following year. The church had issued a
new edition of Hubbard’s books and lectures called The Basics, which was being
aggressively marketed to Scientologists. One of Daniel’s jobs was to cut the “thumb
notches” that mark the glossary and the appendix in these handsomely made books, like
the notches one would nd in an unabridged dictionary. A machine with a guillotine
steel blade slices through the pages to produce the half-moon indentation. California
law specically forbids the operation of the machine by anyone under the age of
eighteen. Daniel noted about twenty other minors working at the plant, all of them
sleep deprived and working around heavy equipment. One night Daniel chopped o his
right index nger on the notching machine. A security ocer picked up his nger and
put it in a plastic bag with ice, then took Daniel to the children’s hospital in Hollywood.
He was instructed to tell the admitting nurse that he had injured himself in a
skateboarding accident. The doctors were unable to reattach his finger.
After that, Daniel was sent to the sales division of Bridge Publications. Sales had been
declining since The Basics had rst been published in 2007. The Basics included eighteen
books and a number of Hubbard lectures on CD; the complete package cost $6,500. Sea
Orgs all over the world had call centers set up to sell them. In Los Angeles, there were
hourly quotas to be met, and those who failed suered various punishments, such as
having water dumped on their head or being made to do push-ups or run up and down
the stairs. There were security guards on every oor. A salesperson had to get a slip
verifying that he had made his quota before he was permitted to go to bed.
Often it was simply impossible to make the quota legitimately, so people ran
unauthorized credit cards. Members of the Sea Org sales force would break into the
church’s nancial records and pull up the credit card information of public members.