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RPF's RPF, Sea Org in the earlie '70s

Dave

Patron
When the Church bought the Cedars complex in LA, I was in charge of the EPF PAC (Estates Project Force) Coordinator. I had only just graduated the EPF myself. We were housed in the Chaplin mansion then.

I was of the first group of SO recruits who trained on dry land, learning to do renovations. I was part of the mission to move SO staff from several local homes into the chateau back in 73.

Then we moved into the Hollywood Inn Hotel (the building with the famous Scientology sign on Hollywood blvd).

I was thrown into the RPF like so many back then for having List 1 RSes. The real reason seemed to be the need for a huge force of manpower to renovate the cedars complex.

In the beginning, or when I entered, there were perhaps a dozen folks on the RPF, and I imagine they did their correction and graduated.

Everything changed when Wayne Marple arrives in the PAC area on mission direct from God (Ron) and starts sending everyone to the RPF. There are no com-evs or ethics. People just disappear off post.

Wayne circulated an interrogatory looking for counter intention to his mission. I knew nothing and that is all I had to say. My wife at the time Janadair Hockaday Griffin, an EPF recruit, (there is a blast from the past) said that she told me things in her interrogatory that they said I had withheld. There were no meter checks being done.

I had recently been sent to the RPF so I was already there. I was the EPF coordinator one day and the next I was being told that I had List one R/Ses and that I was to report to the RPF which was 6 flights straight above my birthing room.

I reported to my room and sat on my bunk waiting for some one from ethics to route me but no one came. So I simply walked upstairs to the RPF and signed up. I was never officially routed onto the RPF but I really spent the next two years there.

Back to Wayne Marple; the penalty for not coming clean on this interrogatory was to be sent to the RPF. I was already on the RPF so I was sent to the RPF's RPF. I guess I was a danger even to the RPF

The RPF was a vacation from post for many. It was a time for dedicated staff to get the personal care, auditing, training that they had missed by skipping staff training and auditing. It was self-help and 2 of the most exciting years of my life. I witnessed what 100 focused OT beings can accomplish even in disgrace.

The RPF’s RPF was not “what we made it” and it was not “where we made it”. It was made to be hell for the purpose of breaking a beings spirit. I actually thrived on it, believing as I did that I was a real suppressive person. I actually believed that I belonged there and I saw it as my final hope and chance of redemption.

Here were the basic conditions

We slept even less than the RPF, so we were always tired. We worked all day with no breaks other than to run laps, which were a relief from the enclosure we endured during our work-day. Running laps gave one fed up SO member the opportunity to make a break for it but was caught climbing the fence on the ASHO side and drug back and locked up.

We slept in the morgue of the otherwise empty Cedars hospital Complex. The RPF’s RPF MAA slept with his bed blocking the door and a Samaria sword at hand. There were no windows and no light 2 stories below street level. I woke more then once in a panic, on the floor, not knowing where I was, in total darkness.

I could not see my own hand if I put it inches from my face. Fortunately there was an electric clock on the other side of the room with a tiny red light on it and that allowed me to get some anchor points and not go completely mad.

We slept in pitch darkness. We washed our bodies after crawling around in muck by washing standing in a mop bucket in cold water. I went to bed filthy.

We ate sitting on the floor inside a chain link cage, backs against the cage. We ate with our hands like animals.

Since the RPF only eats after the regular crew, RPFs RPFers ate the RPFs scraps, which were brought down in used coffee cans. We were always hungry.

They didn't let us use silverware or plates. Everyone kept to themselves while making sure nothing was left uneaten.

We scrubbed (to white glove) pipes in 3' crawl spaces of the hospital and wrote up endless and daily overts and withholds.

Janadair went from the EPF to the RPF soon after me, where we both spent the next 2 years. We had just gotten married but our marriage did not survive the RPF.

Some of us felt we had not so much gotten into a self help group but fallen into a black hole. I never expected to actually graduate and had no idea how I would ever get off the RPF. It seemed a life sentence but I took advantage of it and like I said I had a glorious time.

This is the time when the RPF grew from a dozen or so to over 100. I remember being proud to be part of that group of outcasts. We could brag that at that time we had more highly trained auditors and CSs more OTs than any org on the planet. We considered ourselves better than every one else since the RPF is what you make it. The funny part of this story is that when it came to the renovations it was the RPF that set the schedule that caused our own stress. We were just that good and that arrogant.

We also had in our ranks reno-tech. We had engineers and what is little known is that the RPF boson took over control of the mission to renovate the complex.

They marched to our tune for a while. I remember calling he missioners to meet around our tables and we set timetables. RPFers even changed designs of structures when we felt it was not adequate or made up building tech on the spot to solve problems. The Church used our timetables to determine when to move the churches and open doors.

So during this critical period in Scientology history, during a most dangerous period of the AOLA org. (a major move of both staff and public at one time) (“three moves is a good as a fire”… LRH) including the timetables for this highly top-secret announcement was orchestrated by a bunch of “not to be trusted List One R/Sers and suppressives.

After LA Org and ASHO we, as a group during a muster decided, with no dissenters, that we could and would accomplish the AOLA renos in 30 days.

The org opened on time, as there were no choices. It was published fact and dates were set that could not be changed. It was so tight that when the HGC opened the D of P had to schedule sessions based on RPFers completing the auditing rooms. We were still laying tile in the halls and still laying carpet. The D of P had to wait on us to finish a room so she could schedule a session.

I was part of the RPF team that figured out how to build the complex, and we trained every one else. It was our team that experimented with lead and created the sound proof auditing rooms of the AOLA HGC. I had over 40 people under me to complete the electrical of AOLA and nearly got electrocuted on that job. I think I was awake for 96 hours straight and it was normal to work 24 hours a day and we had to submit a CSW to sleep at all.

At the end, competing the last of the details things begain to fall apart and it became a joke. People were falling asleep on ladders. One guy painted the same touch up detail on a graphic corner 3 times because each time he would touch the brush to the wall he would interiorize and fall asleep. The paintbrush would paint a line from the corner to the floor. He would be woken, clean up the paint mess and try again with the same results.

It became a bit like the keystone cops. One guy slept with an electric orbital sander vibrating on his knee.

Once the renovations were complete it was discovered that most of us had been assigned to the RPF for List one and there began a rash of verification checks and guess what, nearly all of the reads were discovered to be wrong and we were all reprieved. None of us had been sent for performance issues at all. One day I was there, and the next all was to return to normal, all forgiven right?

I was sent to Celebrity Center to run their EPF after 2 years in a Scientology Gulag treated like a suppressive (I took it serious at the time).

I believed I was an SP. I used to say "You don't know what it is like being suppressive" It was my lifelong fear proven and in my face.

By 1981 it was clear that I was no longer involved in something that at all looked like what I signed up for. I was willing to fight, lie, cheat, die for Hubbard, not some arbitrary WDC for what seemed more and more to be a game of money and more money.

It seems that old timers like myself have been cut off least we revile what policy really says or how things were meant to be.

Now the Church of SCN is in the same boat as all other churches. Not to be trusted.

WE ended up with a lot of folks, like Jessie Prince, who went from being recruited, to the EPF, to flag missions and then ended on the RPF. As I write this I slowly begin to recall those old names and faces. John Segota, Bobby Shaffer Janadair and Linda Crooks and now so many faces I can’t put names to.

Scratching the surface

Dave
 

Tim Skog

Silver Meritorious Patron
Thank you for your post Dave. It's interesting to hear from someone who was there and how you survived the whole injustice of the List 1 RS'ing infamy. I guess no one said life was fair, least of all life in the SO. I'm glad you're here.
 
Welcome Newbie Dave!

Good Golly, Miss Molly... :no: :nervous: :bigcry: :grouch:

I'm so sorry you had to go through that, but so glad that you survived it and are now telling us about it.

We have a Celebrity Center history thread, and you might meet some old friends or co-workers here.

Welcome to the Board, I'm very glad you joined us.:thumbsup:

Tell us more! :D
 

Kutta

Silver Meritorious Patron
That's one hell of a story Dave. It sounds like hell on earth, but you reveled in it. i can sort of see how a group pride in abilities and accomplishments could develop, but I doubt i could have survived the prolonged sleep deprivation. And I can't for the life of me figure out how keeping people in disgusting conditions and feeding them like animals could 'rehabilitate' anybody. So glad it didn't break your spirit as was no doubt the true intent.
 

Blue Spirit

Silver Meritorious Patron
Suggestion

Suggestion: Consolidate all of your threads into one as your story. It would

make reading your very interesting story easier. The moderators can do it.

Thank you.
 

SteptInIt

Patron
Thank you for your post Dave. It's interesting to hear from someone who was there and how you survived the whole injustice of the List 1 RS'ing infamy. I guess no one said life was fair, least of all life in the SO. I'm glad you're here.

Yeah, had guys in our field who would show up periodically from the List 1 R/S time period and would work on recovering them by letting them tell their story to me and ack it, get them to see how off policy and out tech it was and tell them how much different it was now. (It wasn't any better in the SO at that point either!) They took out all the Class XII's at Flag with this.
 
G

Gottabrain

Guest
Hi Dave,

Thanks so much for your post. You guys in the RPF in the mid to later 70's had it much rougher than those of us who went in the 80s. Yes, you were the renos experts! I was on the EPF and we were all trained by the RPFers.

When I was on the RPF in '85, we heard storiesabout people being locked up in the walk-in crematoriums around your time period. Can you shed any light on that? Any personal experiences that you remember of that happening?
 
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