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

spoke with a broad American accent. A golden glow seemed to emanate from his large
head. Mary Sue struck Ferradj as “gorgeous,” with long, curly hair and piercing eyes,
but he thought she was “the most secretive person in the world.” When the ship sailed in
July, Ferradj was aboard, having signed his billion-year contract with the Sea Org.
Ferradj became close to Hubbard’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Diana. She had
developed into a glamorous young woman, with owing red hair and pale skin
showered with freckles. She played the grand piano in the family dining room on the
ship. Some saw her as imperious, a princess, but Ferradj, who was four years older than
Diana, was smitten. When Hubbard found out about the relationship, he summoned
Ferradj to the poop deck. Ferradj said Hubbard greeted him with a blow to the jaw. “I
hit the bulkhead of the ship and slumped to the deck,” he recalled. “I don’t know if it
was because I was an Arab or what. I left in disgrace.”
When Otto Roos, a Sea Org executive from Holland, failed to lash a steel cable to a
bollard on the dock during a terrible storm in Tunisia, Hubbard ordered him thrown
from the ship’s bridge into the sea, a height of about four stories. Hana Eltringham
wrote a concerned report to Hubbard that night, explaining that the storm had been so
furious that Roos simply couldn’t hang on when trying to secure the ship. The report
was returned to her with the comment “Never question LRH.” 5
Roos survived his punishment, only to set a dismal precedent. After that,
overboardings became routine, but mostly from the lower poop deck. Nearly every
morning, when the crew was mustered, there would be a list of those sentenced to go
over the side, even in rough seas. They would be shed out and hauled back onboard
through the old cattle doors that led to the hold. The overboardings contributed to the
decision of the Greek government to expel the Scientology crew from Corfu in March
1969. That didn’t stop the practice. None except Hubbard family members were spared.
John McMaster, the second “rst Clear,” was tossed over the side six times, breaking his
shoulder on the last occasion. He left the church not long afterward. Eltringham had to
stand with Hubbard and his aides on the deck when the punishments were meted out. If
the crewman seemed insuciently cowed by the prospect, Hubbard would have his
hands and feet bound. Whitfield remembered one American woman, Julia Lewis Salmen,
sixty years old, a longtime Scientology executive, who was bound and blindfolded before
being thrown overboard. “She screamed all the way down,” Eltringham said. “When the
sound stopped, Hubbard ordered a deck hand to jump in after her. Had he not, I think
Julia may have drowned.”
Hubbard chose a dierent punishment for another of the older members of the crew,
Charlie Reisdorf. He and two other Sea Org crew were made to race each other around
the rough, splintery decks while pushing peanuts with their noses. “They all had raw,
bleeding noses, leaving a trail of blood behind them,” a senior auditor recalled. The
entire crew was ordered to watch the spectacle. “Reisdorf was in his late fties,
probably. His two daughters were Messengers; they were eleven or twelve at the time,
and his wife was there also. It was hard to say which was worse to watch: this old guy
with a bleeding nose or his wife and kids sobbing and crying and being forced to watch
this. Hubbard was standing there, calling the shots, yelling, ‘Faster, faster!’ ”