In the middle of suburban Australia is a secret compound that's labelled 'degrading' and 'inhumane', with allegations of keeping children prisoner.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/lifestyle/article/-/12905379/australia-s-child-labour-camp/
On Youtube, Thanks to Zhent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78XZEPOhptA
Brian Seymour interviewed on Seven Sunrise: Zhents channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ZhentSydney
Right in the middle of a quiet suburb is a place where children are separated from their parents, and forced to work full time for no pay, and live in squalid conditions.
Those who've survived this place say they were brainwashed into believing they could not leave, and that they deserved the shocking treatment dished out.
A young man who escaped the place with the help of his father, Shane Kelsey says “I lived in that garage for about a year and a half, maybe two years.”
Shane is now 21-years-old. Until just over a year ago he had never used the internet, watched television or followed the media.
“You're not allowed to read any books other than scientology books, you can't read newspapers, no radio, no movies, nothing,” Shane said.
Shane says he was held captive and groomed to see all of us on the outside as pathetic, useless and stupid.
“So I lived in a garage until that got flooded by a storm, and my mum got really pissed off and said 'what the hell' and so I got moved into a closet. It is a closet under the stairs - maybe two metres long and a metre wide,” Shane said.
The true Australian headquarters of the Church of Scientology are located in the Sydney suburb of Dundas. The RPF base - which stands for Rehabilitation Project Force - is where Scientologists are sent for punishment and training, for crimes that most of us would regard as trivial.
More than 50 requests for interviews on camera with representatives from the Church of Scientology have been flatly refused.
The bottom line is they don't want people to know what's going on inside the centre, and those who've lived in there, like Shane, say it's like a gulag, or a prison. Yet it's in the middle of a suburb, which could be any suburb in Australia.
People would he horrified to know what has been going on in there for so many years, and continues to this day.
Shane Kelsey's mother and father were dedicated Scientologists in Sydney, so they put their son Shane into its highest core at the age of six - little Shane moved into a tiny room with eleven other children.
By the age of seven Shane says “we'd go down the streets and there'd be eight of us, ten of us, young as, and we'd go down and pledge people up to ‘drug free lives’.
“I signed my contract when I was eight-years-old. It was a billion-year contract, which means you're volunteering or servicing the Church for the next billion years,” Shane said.
“We used to do marching, close order drilling, things like that. Just because it was a form of discipline,” he said.
Shane saw his parents once a week. His mother and father would soon separate, and his dad Adrian moved overseas, and then left Scientology.
Meanwhile, the work schedule for children was fulltime, hard and without reward.
Working 35 hours a week when he was eight-years-old, by the time he was fourteen, the work changed to kitchen duty.
A military muster every morning required marching and saluting to the cause of saving mankind from the intergalactic ravages, described by the Church’s science fiction founder L Ron Hubbard.
The kids wore all black uniforms, and were always required to run, never walk.
So-called home schooling was provided in fits and starts, taking a back seat to hard labour and brainwashing.
“As soon as you turn fifteen, anyone, you're straight out of school. It doesn't matter what grade you're in, what level of maths, what level of anything, you're straight out," Shane said.
The mess hall served food priced at 30 cents per meal, mostly beans and rice. The adults ate first.
“They would all come in and eat whatever they wanted, and then we went after them to take what's there - sometimes there wouldn't be much, so you'd get little bits of food, and it wasn't really sufficient,” Shane said.
Those who dared question the brutality of this place were dealt with swiftly and severely.
“They used to live under our squash courts - it's a mud, dirt floor,” Shane recalled.
“We put people in there and they live in there, when they're on the RPF they'd sleep down there, and they'd study down there.”
Why would you put people in a dank, mouldy, sinking foundation underneath a squash court?
According to Shane it’s “because you're a bad person, you have to be segregated from everyone.”
By the age of fifteen Shane was living a nightmare even he now struggles to believe.
“As soon as I turned fifteen I was working seven days a week, fourteen hour days.”
That's 100 hours a week spent in a commercial kitchen. Shane and other children slaved away - cooking meals all day, every day, studying and snatching what little sleep they could.
“We'd get anywhere between $4 pay to $35 a week,” Shane said.
Among those who needed to be fed was billionaire James Packer. For several years beginning in 2002, Packer came to the Church of Scientology in the early mornings to receive auditing and instruction.
There is no suggestion Packer had any idea who was preparing his meals, or their work conditions.
Packer left scientology around 2008. It would be more than two years until Shane made his break for freedom.
In late 2010, Adrian Kelsey decided to rescue his son.
He invited us to document his attempt, and informed police of his plans to go to the compound and demand his son's release. He had protest signs ready if they refused to let him come out. When Shane came out to meet his father it was the first time they’d seen each other in four years.
Shane and Adrian were followed by Scientology ‘enforcers’, so Shane reluctantly returned to the compound to avoid trouble. One week later he was sent to work near the compound's boundary, and made a break for it.
“Scientology have no right to mess with family,” said Adrian Kelsey.
It took Shane fourteen months to shake off Scientology, discover the truth, learn about the real world and tell his story.
“One thing that would be good is if they actually just stood up and said ‘sorry, it wasn't right, we're going to change it’, but that is just not going to happen,” Adrian said.
Peta Obrien, who lived at the RPF base between 1997 and 2000 confirms Shane's account of the appalling conditions.
“You do two hours of work, then you go and study for two and a half hours in the RPF. It was five hours, and then you go to work again - hard labour, picking with a rock pick, chipping away at rocks till they erode,” O’Brien said.
Now a successful architectural designer, O’Brien believes Scientology has nothing of value to offer the community.
“Close it down, doors shut and all the staff members going back to their families, and living their lives,” O’Brien said.
“I was there for ten years all up in the Church of Scientology as a staff member, and how could I inflict that on my children? Which I'll forever feel like I have to make up,” she said.
Perth-based lawyer Grainne O'Donovan has devoted her time and expertise to helping survivors of the cult seeking justice.
“There's not a law in New South Wales that makes it illegal to work a child for those hours. That's extraordinary, but that's the case,” O’Donovan said.
O’Donovan has also campaigned with the internet-based activist group Anonymous that has raised awareness about Scientology.
“This is degrading and inhumane treatment,’ O'Donovan said.
“At some level they (Scientologists) have become convinced, I suppose, that it's appropriate, and that the group is more important than the individual,” she said.
RPF bases like the Sydney compound exist in other countries. Those who've escaped from them tell similar stories – of having fingers broken on the orders of the leader of Scientology, screamed at, and slapped for twenty hours straight, whilst having cold water poured over their head, and much more.
Independent Federal Senator Nick Xenophon has championed a campaign to shed light on the darkness at the heart of this group.
“Shane's story is one of shocking abuse, child abuse, it's one of a child being enslaved,” Senator Xenophon said.
“The authorities need to investigate this urgently. This is something that requires police investigation,” he said.
“What makes this worse is that this organisation is being subsidised by Australian taxpayers because it doesn't pay any tax.”
Meanwhile Shane has his father back, yet his mother Lesley remains inside Scientology.
“I hope she hears word of this and sums up the courage to actually find it and watch it,” Shane said.
“She will have to escape. They won't let her go. Leaving's not an option, so she will have to escape,” Shane said.
The Church of Scientology refused to be interviewed for this story. In a written response scientology denied any mistreatment of its members.
The response also declared that anyone on the program is there because they want to be there, and that they are completely free to withdraw at any time during induction or later.
“When Shane left the church in late 2010, he simply got his bag and walked out the door,” said the statement.
The celebrities used to advertise Scientology likely have little idea that people like Shane Kelsey even exist, but now they do.
Adrian and Shane hope they do something about it for the sake of other families.
Senator Xenophon says he's taking this story to Bill Shorten, the Federal Minister for Workplace Relations.
If you have any information we should know about Scientology, let us know.
Tony Ortega of the Village Voice:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/scientology_shane_kelsey_rpf.php
If anyone reading this thinks this kind of thing is just happening on the other side of the world in Australia, they are sorely mistaken. It is happening all around the world in every Scientology "church".
http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/lifestyle/article/-/12905379/australia-s-child-labour-camp/
On Youtube, Thanks to Zhent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78XZEPOhptA
Brian Seymour interviewed on Seven Sunrise: Zhents channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ZhentSydney
Right in the middle of a quiet suburb is a place where children are separated from their parents, and forced to work full time for no pay, and live in squalid conditions.
Those who've survived this place say they were brainwashed into believing they could not leave, and that they deserved the shocking treatment dished out.
A young man who escaped the place with the help of his father, Shane Kelsey says “I lived in that garage for about a year and a half, maybe two years.”
Shane is now 21-years-old. Until just over a year ago he had never used the internet, watched television or followed the media.
“You're not allowed to read any books other than scientology books, you can't read newspapers, no radio, no movies, nothing,” Shane said.
Shane says he was held captive and groomed to see all of us on the outside as pathetic, useless and stupid.
“So I lived in a garage until that got flooded by a storm, and my mum got really pissed off and said 'what the hell' and so I got moved into a closet. It is a closet under the stairs - maybe two metres long and a metre wide,” Shane said.
The true Australian headquarters of the Church of Scientology are located in the Sydney suburb of Dundas. The RPF base - which stands for Rehabilitation Project Force - is where Scientologists are sent for punishment and training, for crimes that most of us would regard as trivial.
More than 50 requests for interviews on camera with representatives from the Church of Scientology have been flatly refused.
The bottom line is they don't want people to know what's going on inside the centre, and those who've lived in there, like Shane, say it's like a gulag, or a prison. Yet it's in the middle of a suburb, which could be any suburb in Australia.
People would he horrified to know what has been going on in there for so many years, and continues to this day.
Shane Kelsey's mother and father were dedicated Scientologists in Sydney, so they put their son Shane into its highest core at the age of six - little Shane moved into a tiny room with eleven other children.
By the age of seven Shane says “we'd go down the streets and there'd be eight of us, ten of us, young as, and we'd go down and pledge people up to ‘drug free lives’.
“I signed my contract when I was eight-years-old. It was a billion-year contract, which means you're volunteering or servicing the Church for the next billion years,” Shane said.
“We used to do marching, close order drilling, things like that. Just because it was a form of discipline,” he said.
Shane saw his parents once a week. His mother and father would soon separate, and his dad Adrian moved overseas, and then left Scientology.
Meanwhile, the work schedule for children was fulltime, hard and without reward.
Working 35 hours a week when he was eight-years-old, by the time he was fourteen, the work changed to kitchen duty.
A military muster every morning required marching and saluting to the cause of saving mankind from the intergalactic ravages, described by the Church’s science fiction founder L Ron Hubbard.
The kids wore all black uniforms, and were always required to run, never walk.
So-called home schooling was provided in fits and starts, taking a back seat to hard labour and brainwashing.
“As soon as you turn fifteen, anyone, you're straight out of school. It doesn't matter what grade you're in, what level of maths, what level of anything, you're straight out," Shane said.
The mess hall served food priced at 30 cents per meal, mostly beans and rice. The adults ate first.
“They would all come in and eat whatever they wanted, and then we went after them to take what's there - sometimes there wouldn't be much, so you'd get little bits of food, and it wasn't really sufficient,” Shane said.
Those who dared question the brutality of this place were dealt with swiftly and severely.
“They used to live under our squash courts - it's a mud, dirt floor,” Shane recalled.
“We put people in there and they live in there, when they're on the RPF they'd sleep down there, and they'd study down there.”
Why would you put people in a dank, mouldy, sinking foundation underneath a squash court?
According to Shane it’s “because you're a bad person, you have to be segregated from everyone.”
By the age of fifteen Shane was living a nightmare even he now struggles to believe.
“As soon as I turned fifteen I was working seven days a week, fourteen hour days.”
That's 100 hours a week spent in a commercial kitchen. Shane and other children slaved away - cooking meals all day, every day, studying and snatching what little sleep they could.
“We'd get anywhere between $4 pay to $35 a week,” Shane said.
Among those who needed to be fed was billionaire James Packer. For several years beginning in 2002, Packer came to the Church of Scientology in the early mornings to receive auditing and instruction.
There is no suggestion Packer had any idea who was preparing his meals, or their work conditions.
Packer left scientology around 2008. It would be more than two years until Shane made his break for freedom.
In late 2010, Adrian Kelsey decided to rescue his son.
He invited us to document his attempt, and informed police of his plans to go to the compound and demand his son's release. He had protest signs ready if they refused to let him come out. When Shane came out to meet his father it was the first time they’d seen each other in four years.
Shane and Adrian were followed by Scientology ‘enforcers’, so Shane reluctantly returned to the compound to avoid trouble. One week later he was sent to work near the compound's boundary, and made a break for it.
“Scientology have no right to mess with family,” said Adrian Kelsey.
It took Shane fourteen months to shake off Scientology, discover the truth, learn about the real world and tell his story.
“One thing that would be good is if they actually just stood up and said ‘sorry, it wasn't right, we're going to change it’, but that is just not going to happen,” Adrian said.
Peta Obrien, who lived at the RPF base between 1997 and 2000 confirms Shane's account of the appalling conditions.
“You do two hours of work, then you go and study for two and a half hours in the RPF. It was five hours, and then you go to work again - hard labour, picking with a rock pick, chipping away at rocks till they erode,” O’Brien said.
Now a successful architectural designer, O’Brien believes Scientology has nothing of value to offer the community.
“Close it down, doors shut and all the staff members going back to their families, and living their lives,” O’Brien said.
“I was there for ten years all up in the Church of Scientology as a staff member, and how could I inflict that on my children? Which I'll forever feel like I have to make up,” she said.
Perth-based lawyer Grainne O'Donovan has devoted her time and expertise to helping survivors of the cult seeking justice.
“There's not a law in New South Wales that makes it illegal to work a child for those hours. That's extraordinary, but that's the case,” O’Donovan said.
O’Donovan has also campaigned with the internet-based activist group Anonymous that has raised awareness about Scientology.
“This is degrading and inhumane treatment,’ O'Donovan said.
“At some level they (Scientologists) have become convinced, I suppose, that it's appropriate, and that the group is more important than the individual,” she said.
RPF bases like the Sydney compound exist in other countries. Those who've escaped from them tell similar stories – of having fingers broken on the orders of the leader of Scientology, screamed at, and slapped for twenty hours straight, whilst having cold water poured over their head, and much more.
Independent Federal Senator Nick Xenophon has championed a campaign to shed light on the darkness at the heart of this group.
“Shane's story is one of shocking abuse, child abuse, it's one of a child being enslaved,” Senator Xenophon said.
“The authorities need to investigate this urgently. This is something that requires police investigation,” he said.
“What makes this worse is that this organisation is being subsidised by Australian taxpayers because it doesn't pay any tax.”
Meanwhile Shane has his father back, yet his mother Lesley remains inside Scientology.
“I hope she hears word of this and sums up the courage to actually find it and watch it,” Shane said.
“She will have to escape. They won't let her go. Leaving's not an option, so she will have to escape,” Shane said.
The Church of Scientology refused to be interviewed for this story. In a written response scientology denied any mistreatment of its members.
The response also declared that anyone on the program is there because they want to be there, and that they are completely free to withdraw at any time during induction or later.
“When Shane left the church in late 2010, he simply got his bag and walked out the door,” said the statement.
The celebrities used to advertise Scientology likely have little idea that people like Shane Kelsey even exist, but now they do.
Adrian and Shane hope they do something about it for the sake of other families.
Senator Xenophon says he's taking this story to Bill Shorten, the Federal Minister for Workplace Relations.
If you have any information we should know about Scientology, let us know.
Response to Today Tonight from the Church of Scientology: SHANE KELSEY
Shane was always treated with care and respect during his time with the Church. When Shane came to live with his mother, sent here by his father Adrian who had full custody, it was apparent that whilst under his father's guardianship, Shane's education suffered a setback when he was living in Mexico and he was at least two years behind in his education.
This is detailed in a letter that Adrian Kelsey wrote to Shane's mother in 1996, a copy of which was just provided to the Church. When Shane came to his mother, his reading and writing were substandard and he had other personal problems. Shane was then home schooled and his literacy improved drastically and he undertook several programs to improve his study.
When Shane did decide to leave the RPF, he simply walked out, with absolutely no barriers and caught a plane. There are no gates and the Church facilities are on a wide open property, highly visible from the street and anyone can leave and enter the property at any time. The Church has toured members of the Australian media through our premises as well as other officials (including the police). Shane simply left (as a grown adult) and other than his mother being in contact with him who was understandably concerned for his welfare and whereabouts, no Church staff member originated any communication to Shane after he left.
He was not followed, visited, or called. He sent several emails to the Church a few months later and was assisted with his personal requests.
Whilst Shane was on the RPF, he agreed that he would do the program and this included not watching TV or movies or reading novels. This was only for the set time of the program and this is not unlike other religious programs. Prior to his joining the RPF program, Shane read any novel, watched any movie, or whatever he chose. Shane had a short holiday with family mid the program and went to the movies and fishing as well as other activities.
Proper meals are provided to all Church staff on the premises at numerous times in the day. There is ample food and a varied and nutritious menu.
Other children who were brought up in the Sea Org have gone on to earn degrees with high literacy and competence exhibited.
THE REHABILITATION PROJECT FORCE (RPF)
The Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) is a voluntary religious program of spiritual rehabilitation to provide a "second chance" to those who have failed to fulfill their ecclesiastical responsibilities as members of the Sea Organization, the religious order of the Church of Scientology. It represents a free religious commitment by the individual to a spiritual discipline. The word "force" in this context means a group of people acting together.
The RPF is based upon one of oldest and most fundamental concepts in religion--a religious retreat in the form of a cloister focusing on intensive spiritual introspection and study and balanced by some form of physical labour. This practice is common to the religious orders of many other world religions in addition to Scientology including Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and the monastic orders of the Roman Catholic Church.
The RPF was created during the 1970s at the request of Sea Organization members in order to be given a second chance. As with any religious program requiring high spiritual and ethical standards as well as dedicated service, some Sea Org members stumble in their effort to maintain such high standards and a few members commit serious breaches of ecclesiastical rules governing their conduct as a member of this order.
In such a situation, the individual is given the choice of either leaving the Sea Organization or participating in a religious program designed to provide the individual with an opportunity to progress spiritually and remedy past shortcomings -- the Rehabilitation Project Force religious program.
The program is done voluntarily for purposes of penance and amends. It consists of 5 hours scripture study and counselling per day and extroverting physical actions. The program is devoid of luxuries, to motivate the individual to improve himself and get through the program to once again be a capable and contributing member of the group. It is conducted in the Church facilities which contain grounds, gardens and the property is open to the street with free access to and from the property.
Every Sea Organization member who does the RPF is only permitted to do so after reading all relevant Church policies, so they can give fully informed consent for their participation. It is a voluntary religious program of spiritual rehabilitation. This is expressed in the expertises of J. Gordon Melton, Professor of Religion at the University of California; Frank K. Flinn, Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; Juha Pentikäinen, Chair of the Department of the Study of Religions, University of Helsinki, et al., who have studied the RPF and provide the true and scholarly information on this subject.
There are many accounts from those who have undertaken the program, expressing the countless benefits they have experienced from doing so, and also expressing their gratitude that they were given the opportunity. People do leave the program without completing it and leave the religious order.
Before participating in the RPF, any applicant for the program signs an "Acknowledgement of RPF Assignment and Election to Proceed" which states the following:
"LASTLY, I FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTAND that I need not sign this Acknowledgement and Election to Proceed and I need not proceed to the introductory and preparatory stages of the RPF, as this entire religious atonement process is designed and intended to be totally voluntary, and I MAY NOW OR AT ANY TIME DURING MY PARTICIPATION IN THE RPF CHOOSE TO DECLINE TO PARTICIPATE AND TERMINATE MY MEMBERSHIP IN THE SEA ORGANIZATION."
Tony Ortega of the Village Voice:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/scientology_shane_kelsey_rpf.php
If anyone reading this thinks this kind of thing is just happening on the other side of the world in Australia, they are sorely mistaken. It is happening all around the world in every Scientology "church".
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