Free to shine
Shiny & Free
Village Voice on Valeska and the Freewinds prison
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runni..._paris_chris_guider_scientology_freewinds.php
A really excellent article from Tony Ortega, here is just a snippet. Click the above link for the full story.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runni..._paris_chris_guider_scientology_freewinds.php
A really excellent article from Tony Ortega, here is just a snippet. Click the above link for the full story.
But every June, the ship would fill up for the annual "Maiden Voyage," a celebration of the vessel's actual first voyage. Executives would travel to the ship and would stay for weeks, into July and even August. And one July, in 2004, was especially significant.
"We were all pulled down to the cinema," Valeska says, remembering the special announcement when they were told that Tom Cruise was coming to the ship for his birthday, which is July 3. "We were all told we can't ask for his autograph, or we'd get a comm ev." (A "committee of evidence" is a sort of Scientology disciplinary trial.) "We can't tell anyone that he's coming to the ship or that he'd been to the ship, or again, a comm ev. And we had to call him 'sir.' It was like he was David Miscavige's deputy or something."
As the date for the party neared, however, Valeska committed a grave error.
She got a cold sore.
"David Miscavige saw that I had a cold sore, and I was assigned to lower conditions and I was put in isolation for 4 days," she says. She explains that she was assigned the "condition" of "Treason," which is below "Enemy" but above "Confusion."
"I was in Treason. So I wasn't allowed to go to Tom Cruise's birthday." [Note: I misunderstood what Valeska told me last night about the particular condition she was assigned, and have corrected it. -- T.O.]
By the time Cruise arrived, her cold sore had gone away, but she was still in the doghouse. She remembers that before he arrived, Miscavige was eating a meal and addressed her and a few other workers.
"He said, 'Tom Cruise is coming and I need really good service, so who's going to serve him?' A woman spoke up. 'No, no, it can't be a woman, because he's so good looking, any woman would fall for him.' So a guy had to take the job," she says.
The first morning after Cruise arrived however, the male worker assigned to serve Cruise and his guest, Penelope Cruz, slept in, and Valeska ended up doing the job.
Cruise and Cruz were staying in the best cabin on the ship, which Valeska says was actually a violation of Freewinds rules -- unmarried "publics" (non-Sea Org Scientologists) were never allowed to sleep in the same cabin. But the rule was bent for the famous actor.
"They had a yacht specifically for him," she says, referring to a smaller boat that Miscavige and Cruise used for diving. "Everything was free. They'd go diving and on motorbikes in Bonaire. When they went on the yacht, they had the best service, the best food. Tom was on a special diet. A chef, maybe from New York, a Chinese chef, was flown in to cook for him," she remembers.
Meanwhile, back on the ship, preparations for the big birthday were in full swing. "There were posters for every single movie he'd been in except for the one he made with Nicole Kidman [1999's Eyes Wide Shut, directed by Stanley Kubrick], because she's a big old SP."
Still in lower conditions for her now-vanished cold sore, Valeska was unable to attend the party, but she heard plenty about it. "The band did all the songs from his movies, except the one he did with Nicole." And she says three young women from the IASA -- the administration of the International Association of Scientologists -- were disciplined after the party. "They were trying to get Tom's attention. So they were put in the engine room."
The party itself was all about lavishing Miscavige's attention on his buddy Tom. "It was all set up by David Miscavige. All done by the church. And all about Tom Cruise. It was really weird. I mean, who wants to have posters of that stuff everywhere? And music playing from his movies."
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