Testimony of Mrs. Hartwell. To view the RealMedia® testimonies from this trial, look for the "Clearwater Hearings" page at
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L. Ron Hubbard believed that anybody that was ill was a double threat to him: number one, he couldn't --- they couldn't produce, so they were no good to him; number two, he was terrified of a germ of any kind, and so they were locked up in, I'd say, about a ten by twelve room. And at one time there was thirteen boys and girls in this room, running high fevers and all of them smoking. I mean, you could hardly see within there, it was so terrible. And you were treated -- they were treated like an enemy in this room, and because they were. Hubbard, I saw him throw fits. I actually saw him take his hat off one day and stomp on it and cry like a baby. I have seen him just take his arm like this and throw it wild and hit girls in the face. And one girl would follow him with a chair. If he sat down, that chair had to be right where he was going to sit. One girl missed by a few inches; he about fell off of it, and she was put in the RPF. [The Scientology prison, where inmates are put to forced, slave labor.]
And the other girl would carry an ashtray, catching his cigarette ash. They had to pop the cigarettes in his mouth when he wanted it. He had one man that would just wash his clothes and tended them, changed his clothes for him. He had a nurse. He had one woman who did nothing but clean the house. And he had one man that did nothing but cook his three meals a day. It took him from about six in the morning till about ten at night to get those three meals prepared.
I was with Hubbard every day for about a month. I should say, every night. We would start -- our daily job would start about twelve o'clock, and we would go at noon, and we would go until the sun came up the next morning, and a lot --- most of the time without anything to eat after six o'clock at night. And so, we were working almost around the clock, except for the evening meal.
They said that they couldn't -- no way could they give me any auditing because of my illness, because Ernie was upset and had me upset and that, as soon as Ernie left, why, then, they would start and give me real auditing and get me to the doctor.
By the way, when they came to sign us up, I explained to them my trouble and I told them that I needed a good doctor and I did think that, maybe, auditing. would help, and which they promised me both. And -- so this is one of the -- they showed me a picture of-the hotel and said that "Do you think-that Hubbard would live in anything any worse than this?" So, naturally, that's where we expected to come.
Okay. The RPF down there didn't function like it did over here because they had no place for the RPF. Another thing, when we went out days, we were schooled that we had to -- it was a bad place for rattlesnakes, scorpions, and, of course, black widow spiders. We had to wear boots and carry flashlights at night. The RPF had their clothes in boxes, and their mattresses were thrown out on the ground with the spiders and the scorpions. They had to run everywhere; you couldn't talk-to them. I was written-up several times for talking to Fredawn.
I also saw her one day -- every time I would go by on my way to work, I would see her dragging her mattress from one shade tree to the other. I said, "Why are you doing this?" And she was ill and she couldn't be in with the others, and so she was hunting shade and keeping out of the sun; it's 117 degrees, and she was hunting shade because she was ill.
I was worked one day -- ironed out in the heat -out in, I mean, in the shade. And it was 102 degrees then and without any food the whole day. And by five thirty I just got deathly ill, and I told them I had to leave. And I staggered quite a ways -- it's about three blocks from where we were shooting to where we -- up to where we -- where the dorm was. And I was staggering. I fell first in the -- then, in the ditch; it was like I was drunk. But anyway, I made it to the bunk and just crashed.
They came in and woke me up and said at seven o'clock I had to go down because Hubbard was going to be on the set. And I wouldn't do it. And I was written up because I took a three-hour nap. So, this -- and another time I complained I had to go home because I wasn't being treated. I was thin and bleeding and in quite severe pain, and they took me right in and put me on the Meter, said I could go home -- or go right to the doctor. And the next night they had us scrubbing the barn. We started at six o'clock and we scrubbed that barn until four o'clock in the morning, and they had me carry the buckets of water.
And this -- nobody -- anybody that run a fever was immediately put out of commission. But anybody that was ill and. not running a fever, they were made fun of and ridiculed because they thought more of their body than they did of Hubbard's work.
There was no unity; there was no working together. It was, like, if you were going over here and somebody was coming this way, you couldn't stop and say, "Hello," because, then, that would stop you and slow you down so you might not get your work done.
And one day we were laughing and joking on the job, and the supervisor told us if she ever caught us doing .that again we'd go in the RPF. It was strictly work, no pleasure.
If you were in the lower conditions, all money stopped coming in, what little of it there was. You didn't get any pay and you didn't get any lib; you were just held prisoner.
While I was there -- when we first got there, about two days after we left home, which was about a five-hour trip, my nephew drowned. And we didn't get word -- it took ten days for them to notify us that my nephew had died. And this was by a letter from my sister that went to Clearwater and then back to where we were, because they wouldn't give us a telephone call. All our mail was read before it got to that base. I wrote three letters to Ernie before I got through, and I finally said everything was going great because everything else came back and I had to rewrite it. All the mail, like I said, had to come here and then go to Clearwater.
Nearly every time I went to the phone after Ernie' left, I had to be -- there was a guard with us. I could never be alone after that.
Oh, by the way, too, when my nephew did die and I got word of it, I demanded that I go into Palm Springs and make a phone call to my sister. And it took us from seven o'clock in the morning till-about six-thirty that night. And they finally give us this broken-down truck. We had to buy the gas. They gave us two hours. if we weren't back in two hours, they were going to call the police and have us arrested for stealing the truck.
I saw a man -- I don't know how many were at the base while I was there, but it was quite a few. I saw a grown-man, such as my husband -- he cried for days, maybe two to three days. And they were under constant guard before they were allowed to leave. They drove people so close to suicide before they were allowed to leave that base. The women was just constantly crying, and it was -- it just tore me up.
I also, the last month I was there, was following Hubbard's orders, and I read this one that - I don't know how many times I had to read it before it could really sink in - was that Elaine Wright was going to commit suicide. And Hubbard -- this is what the order said, "I don't care if Elaine Wright is going to commit suicide or not, but get her off of my land before she does." Where was the help?
You know, where was the religious counseling?
The only time that the word "God" was used was in vain, and I mean, it was used constantly. There was no civil talking to each other. It was all cussing and swearing.
I know one night I had to cry, and crying would take me into Ethics. So, I laid out on the diving board where I could see all around me and I had me a cry.
Another thing that was shocking, too, was that Ernie wrote me a most wonderful letter, and I was so thrilled because he was taking -- he was on the horse and he was doing so great, and I thought, "Well, gee, I'll show them." So, I showed it to one of the girls, and she said, "You can go right down into Ethics." And she said, "And you get this straightened out right now." They don't want you to be happy. They don't want you to be united; it's just individualism.
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)...this is from that same Ron the Humanitarian and it is so fitting I wanted to let one read the whole thing here:
