The Hole is a Scientology facility on Gold Base, near Hemet, California. Dozens of senior Scientology executives are said to have been confined there for months or years. Church of Scientology has denied that the Hole exists and says that nobody has been held against their will. However, it acknowledges that its members are subjected to religious discipline.
About The Hole (Scientology) in brief
The Hole is a Scientology facility on Gold Base, near Hemet, California. Dozens of senior Scientology executives are said to have been confined there for months or years. The Church of Scientology has denied that the Hole exists and says that nobody has been held against their will. However, it acknowledges that its members are subjected to religious discipline, a program of ethics and correction entered into voluntarily as part of their religious observances. The Hole is located on the site of a resort called Gilman Hot Springs in the California town of San Jacinto. It was secretly acquired by Scientology in 1978 under the alias of the \”Scottish Highland Quietude Club\”. Scientology established a secret base there which was staffed by members of the Sea Org, an inner core of Scientologists which is said to number some five to seven thousand people. Residents at the base are not permitted to leave without the permission of a supervisor and have to work at least sixteen hours a day, from 8 am to past midnight. Communications with the outside world are effectively cut off; cellphones are banned, mail is kept off and passports are locked in a locked filing cabinet. The perimeter of the base is closely guarded around the clock and topped with spikes and razor-facing motion sensors. Defectors say that Scientology leader David Miscavige began to return to the compound around 2002. Some of them repeatedly tried to escape from the base—but were caught and returned by Sea Orgs. The escapees have been subjected to isolation, interrogation and punishment on their return to their compound.
They have also been subject to physical labor and lengthy daily confessions of \”evil purposes\”. Such assignments can also be received for performing work poorly, showing negative personality indicators or causing trouble. If Ethics are violated, a Committee of Evidence can lead to punishments administered by a body called the Rehabilitation Project Force. Such punishments, which can last for months and years, typically consist of a regime of physical labor. The Tampa Bay Times described it in a January 2013 article as: a place of confinement and humiliation where Scientology’s management culture—always demanding—grew extreme. It consists of a set of double-wide trailers within a Scientology compound, joined together to form a suite of offices which were formerly used by the Church’s international management team. After a few managed to escape the Hole and Scientology, they gave accounts of their experiences to the media, the courts and the FBI, leading to widespread publicity about the harsh conditions that they had allegedly endured. Scientology says that it does not exist and never has and states that nobody had been held in the Hole against theirwill. It also acknowledges that members are subject to a rigid code of discipline known as \”Scientology Ethics\” which is enforced by Ethics Officers. There are now two Sea org bases in the compound: Gold, which houses the church’s in-house film studio Golden Era Productions, and Int, the Church’s international headquarters, though in practice the whole site is usually called Gold Base.
You want to know more about The Hole (Scientology)?
This page is based on the article The Hole (Scientology) published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 11, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
