Hana Whitfield's Rede
am 26.03.2010
Hamburg, Deutschland

Part 1


Part 2



Transcript von Part 1:

My name is Hana Eltringham Whitfield and, just to give you a brief biography, I was a Scientologist and a Sea Org member for over twenty-two years. I captained two of Hubbard's ships and ran many of his organizations. He took on the title of Commodore in 1967 and I served as Deputy Commodore under him in the United States for two years. I held many subsequent positions.

The account of my personal disillusionment and departure from Scientology is another story, but since I left the group in 1984 my husband and I have helped hundreds of families retrieve their children, their spouses and their parents from this group. It was our way of giving back [1:00] and that work continues.

I'm speaking today to offer my insight on this organization. When Hubbard released his first book, Dianetics, and then started Scientology, he created a unique culture, a totalitarian culture based on his claims: these being that he alone was perfect; he never made mistakes; everything he said and wrote was correct and he was the source of the only technology that could deliver mankind from its problems. Everyone else was less evolved or, as he put it, "raw meat," and in need of the salvation that only Scientology could provide.

All ideas and methods that opposed his own were wrong or evil and had to be destroyed. This same culture permeates Scientology today and we hear it repeatedly [2:00] from its spokespersons. Hubbard's policy of "Always attack, never defend" makes it impossible for the organization to admit wrongdoing, and it is as if Hubbard actually were still alive. It is this culture that has everything to do with what is going on in Scientology today and it will continue unless other forces can be brought to bear.

I joined Scientology in 1965. I did some basic training, I was a registered nurse, I was looking for some answers. I went to England and I trained there, in 1966, to the highest levels available. And, I don't feel so good about it now, but I was 'Clear' number sixty. Throughout that training I became... my aculturization to Scientology began. It took the training, it took some processing [3:00], it took those experiences -- both the knowledge and the personal experiences in the auditing -- to make me become a true believer. I now regret the years I spent in Scientology but there's no going back, so this is a way of helping.

Very soon after that Hubbard started the Sea Project, in August of 1967, in Las Palmas. I was one of thirty-five people invited to join, simply because of my training and expertise level. There was nothing special about me, but thirty-five of us joined him in Las Palmas to form the Sea Project and to help him better the world and salvage the planet. I found very quickly that he did not live up to his claims in his books and tapes at all. [4:00] I found he angered easily; he had temper tantrums that went on for hours and hours. Sometimes he would throw things against the side of the ship.

I did not see the contradictions at that early time. I did not see -- between his writing and his acts -- I could not see the contradiction. I was already in love with the ideal that Hubbard presented. I was in love with the goals of his organization. And I was in love with what I thought I could contribute to bettering mankind. And let me tell you that that sets up a state of mind in a person, well, you know what it's like to be in love. You see nothing wrong with your girlfriend or your boyfriend. They're perfect. It's the same phenomena that happens in Scientology when someone [5:00] joins. You cannot see the wrong, and that is what is so bad about this organization, and I think -- from a retrospective point of view now -- that Hubbard knew that and that's why he set it up the way he did.

Hubbard did have some good points; he had many good points. For example, he helped me to achieve the positions I achieved and did in Scientology. However, on the dark side, he also introduced all of us -- and indeed he thrust us -- into his practices of cruelty, inhumanity, abuse and punishment, all of which he systematically reframed as positive and as requirements for enlightenment.

On the ship he soon appointed me as Master at Arms, which is like an Ethics Officer, a person in charge of ethics and morals, [6:00] and my first assignment came very quickly; I received a hand-written about an electrician, an Australian called Terry Dickinson. Terry had failed to get a radio to the ship within a certain period of time, and this order said that Terry was to stay awake until the radio was on board and operating. If he fell asleep he would never again eat with the crew, talk with the crew, or sleep below deck. He would be literally excommunicated -- by that time we had signed billion-year contracts -- so, for a naive person, he would be in that state for a billion years.

I was so shocked; I could not let Terry fail and I vowed to stay awake with him, because he was my responsibility, for as long as it took to get that radio on board. [7:00] When it got very bad after the third day I would sometimes push food down his throat; I would make sure he had water and in the middle of the night, when he cried and said he could not go on, I made him walk up and down the beach. So I put Terry -- I'm guilty in my first little assignment in the Sea Org, of great abuse on Terry Dickinson and I hope that someday he can forgive me. We did make it; the radio came on board and I sent Terry off to sleep.

During this time LRH, as we called him, or Hubbard, lived in a villa outside Las Palmas. Yvonne Jentzsch, another Sea Org member, lived with him; she was in charge of his public relations. And Yvonne told me later on that Hubbard, many many times, approached her sexually and wanted to have a sexual relationship with her even though [8:00] she was married and even though his wife, Mary Sue, came to visit from time to time. Eventually, to get away, Yvonne requested an assignment ashore somewhere in an organization away from the ship, and she was sent to Los Angeles to start the first Celebrity Center.

Soon after that Hubbard appointed me as captain of the 150-foot trawler called the Avon River, and almost immediately OT III was released. I think you all know OT III, with the body spirits on you and the evil ruler Xenu who sent us all to this planet; I won't go into the story. All of us were ordered to read the material and apply it. And I opened the pack and I read the material and I could not believe that I was supposed to apply this to myself. [9:00]

From that point on, until I left in 1984, I struggled with that material. I struggled day by day by day, because I could not apply it. Of course, the fault wasn't Hubbard's; the fault was mine, and I had to keep looking within myself for the fault that was keeping me from understanding the materials and applying them correctly. And that's when my headaches started.


Transcript von Part 2:

And from that point on they got worse and worse and worse and I was, finally, never without a headache for the rest of my Sea Org career. They are now gone. I mean, they started to go after I left. And I associated with the mental trauma one has to go through in applying some of those techniques when they do not apply to you. And the most important thing about this is that we... our right to speak out was taken away in Scientology. Our right to express an opinion was not just limited by Hubbard's policy; it was totally obliterated. Everything you find fault with in Scientology is put back on you; it is not a fault of the organization.

A little bit later, after that, one of our crew members was assigned the condition of Liability -- the first time [1:00] in the Sea Org. She had to wear a grey rag. She had a great big black mark on her cheek. She was excommunicated from the crew. She had to eat her food on deck -- if the cook would give her any -- until she had met certain conditions and she could come back into good standing with the rest of the crew.

A little while after that Hubbard assigned his big ship, the Apollo, the condition of Liability for the entire ship and all the crew. And those crew sailed out of Valencia Harbor with a grey material tied around the funnel of the ship, all the crew with grey rags and those grey marks on their cheeks, and the ship had to go out on its own and make good what it had done wrong; it was not allowed to communicate with Hubbard or the other ships. It was on its own. And I [2:00] remember seeing that ship sail out with that grey material around the funnel and I said to myself, "This is going to cause a lot of trouble in the port with the Spaniards, and the people in the harbor who do not understand what's going on." And sure enough, from that point on, our little ship went around after the big one cleaning up all the messes in each port, the misunderstandings of what Hubbard was creating.

Then came the chain lockers. I don't know if you all know what a chain locker is. It is a big steel compartment, in the front of the ship, where the anchor chain is curled up when the anchor is out of the water. And it's dark in there; it is cold, and when you're out on the ocean it's freezing and it's damp. Hubbard started putting people in there for punishment. The first one he put in was a four-year-old boy, Derek Greene. Derek [3:00] had to be in there for five days and five nights, and the little boy was put in with just his normal clothes. He was not given extra blankets, extra clothing, and the worst thing of all -- he was given food -- he was not allowed to go to the bathroom. He was left in there like that for five days and five nights.

It brings on a... excuse me. I was there when it happened. [pauses for about 10 seconds]

Even worse, Felice Greene -- Derek's mother -- was on deck pleading with Hubbard to let her child out and all he said was... [accepts a glass of water] ... all he said was, [4:00] "Children are really adults in children's bodies. They know what they've done. He knows what he's done," and he turned away from the mother. You would say to yourself "Why didn't you do anything? Why didn't you speak out?" You see, I was a true believer. I believed that Hubbard knew what he was doing. I, unfortunately, believed that he knew what it was going to take to help everyone in the world and that, even though I didn't understand, it was my duty to follow and support what he was doing and none of us spoke out. None of us did anything.

I have many more things to talk about; I think my time is almost up. I will go through a few very quickly. The overboards -- throwing people overboard -- started soon after that. The first [5:00] person who did something stupid was thrown from the flying bridge, four stories down, into the water. Shortly after that in Corfu, Greece people were thrown overboard in a ceremony every day; it became a normal thing -- ninety-two, ninety-five meters down into the dirty harbor water. When LRH, Hubbard -- who watched every day -- saw the "sinners" enjoying themselves -- they would march to the, they would march up and jump into the water -- and when he saw them enjoying themselves he ordered their hands tied behind their back. Then, a week later, he ordered their feet tied as well. And then maybe a week later he ordered them blindfolded as well. And I watched as a sixty-year-old lady was thrown overboard, and she screamed all the way down into the water. And when the sound stopped Hubbard looked interested [6:00] for the first time and sent two deck hands overboard to make sure she was ok and help her back on board.

His rages continued. At times I heard from his cabin sounds like dishes, objects being thrown against the bulkhead. He started physically beating people as well, which I've heard is something David Miscavige does. There was one young man who was assigned to the bottom of the ship, into the bilges where the waste oil and water collects from the ship, from the engine room, and Hubbard liked to send people down there to clean out the mudboxes, as they are called. And again, Michael Douglas was down there for several days, not allowed any sleep, not allowed to go to the bathroom, not allowed any toilet paper, and he was fed meager meals. Allowed no sleep.

Did one of us question [7:00] how denying someone going to the toilet would help their salvation? Did one of us ask how denying somebody toilet paper would help? Not one, and I'm truly ashamed to tell you that today. And the only thing I can tell you is that this is the totalitarian organization that Hubbard created. This is the culture he created. Once you are in that culture you do not think logically. Your logical thought processes are turned off; you are committed to his ideals, his vision of the future, and you pardon everything he does.

And I'm going to end it off at that point. I would like to say that, a final word about people who do manage [8:00] to get out of the organization. When I walked out of the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater in 1982, I had no one to go to. I had no family in the United States. I had no friends. I was a Declared Suppressive. I had no money. I did not drive a car. And that is what kept me from leaving for years, because I constantly had the thought in my background for years: "I need to leave. Something is not right."

But the fear of going out on my own to no one, nowhere, with nothing, kept me from doing that. The only thing that pushed me into that, finally, was the fact that I thought I was going crazy. The pain in my head was so bad I could not work, and I was starting to get what I call almost "two Hanas." There were two parts of me. Once a little... at one time [9:00] I would be one, at one time I would be another and in agreement with Scientology, and then I would flip back to the other one who knew I had to leave. And that scared the hell out of me. And that was when I finally said "I'm out of here" and it took me three months to leave; it was very arduous.

Thank you so much. I want to thank Ursula; I want to gratefully thank the state of Hamburg and thank you to the wonderful Anonymous people who are here. You are a joy to see. Thank you.