Zoe Woodcraft Declaration
This was posted on OCMB by Snow White recently. It is a very long read ( about 10 pages) so I have only posted the first part here.
I don't know if it answers some questions as I get confused about locations, but the story is universal.
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=23536
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 9:01 am Post subject: Zoe Woodcraft Declaration
I, Zoe Woodcraft declare as follows:
1. I am 16 years of age.
2. The statements herein are of my own personal knowledge and if called upon as a witness, I can testify competently thereto.
3. In 1986, when I was two years old, my parents and 15-year-old brother joined the Sea Organization at the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida. My seven-year-old sister and myself were put into the care of the Cadet Organization at this time. My family and I lived at a building on U.S. Highway 19 called the "QI" which was an acronym for Quality Inn. This building was once a Quality Inn hotel. The cadet organization was located there.
4. The room we were assigned to live in was very small, approximately 12'X 20'. It was one room and one bath; very shabby, infested with cockroaches and smelling of mold. All five of us were in this room so it was very cramped and nearly unlivable.
5. My parents were shocked when we were first shown these living quarters. When they had been recruited to come into the Sea Organization to work for Flag they had been promised a new, two bedroom apartment in the Hacienda Garden complex; that we children would go to private school and that they would get one day off every two weeks. We soon found out none of this was true.
6. After about a year we returned to England to take care of our visas. I remember being in England and playing with a cousin and not wanting to return to Florida and our horrible living conditions.
7. I also remember my father being suddenly sent away and I had no idea when he might return. This frightened me, as I feared I would never see him again. I was told he had been sent to the ship but no one could tell me when he would return. He did return after 6 months.
8. We lived in Florida for about two years and then my mother was transferred to Los Angeles.
9. In Los Angeles I was placed in the "CEO" which stood for the "cadet estates organization." This was a building located next to Celebrity Center International. This is where I lived, by myself, for the next two years. My parents and brother were placed in adult living quarters and my older sister into the Cadet Org down the street. This building housed only younger children. We did not live with our parents, but were assigned to the care of "nannies."
10. Eventually my father had to take a leave of absence from the Sea Org to further take care of visa problems. He rented an apartment at this point and our family moved in. He then began working for a company owned by a Scientologist. He was supposed to work in this company for one year in order for our family members to obtain green cards. Technically, I lived in this apartment with my parents, however because both of my parents worked such long hours I would be taken to the CEO in the early morning and then picked up by my parents late in the evening. This was my basic schedule until I was six years old.
11. When I was six I was moved to what is called the "Int Ranch." This is a compound in Happy Valley, CA. We were told that this was a secret location and I was instructed not to tell my father where it was as he and my mother were now divorced and my father was no longer in the Sea Org.
12. I was placed in a dorm that was acceptable; i.e. nice carpet, neat etc. However, neither of my parents lived on premises and there was a sixteen year-old boy named Sterling Thompson who was in charge of about twenty of us younger children, known as "pre-cadets." All together there was a staff of about six or eight adults who ran the compound and about one hundred children living there.
13. My schedule at the ranch was: wake up at 7:00 a.m., take one half hour to get dressed for the day then go to breakfast. Meals were highly regulated. We were assigned seats and each table had a "table captain" who made sure the assigned steward brought our food from the kitchen to the table. It was placed on the table and we served ourselves. Afterward we cleaned our own tables. We had half an hour to eat.
14. After breakfast we worked, dumping trash, mopping floors, sweeping etc. We were assigned cleaning stations throughout the compound. All our work was supervised by Sterling. We worked for about 20 minutes.
15. We then went to school for four hours with one fifteen minute break. Often, the school schedule was changed. Sometimes we did four hours in the morning and two at night, after working in the afternoon, and sometimes we did six hours straight.
16. Most of what I studied was Scientology materials. I remember doing the Basic Study Manual when I was six or seven years old and it was very difficult for me. This is a course geared for adults. When I did not score well on the final test, the instructor first told me to redo sections of the course and then told me to redo the entire course. I then had to start all over on this course. The only other subjects studied were reading and math.
17. After school, we had half an hour for lunch, and then we lined up and did group drills. We did "left/right/left marching, chanting of Scientology doctrines, and relay races to increase our "particle flow" so we could work faster. Then we received our work assignments for the afternoon.
18. The work consisted of such things as collecting rocks from a stream, putting them in a wheelbarrow and taking them to where a stone wall was being built; raking the football field after it had been mowed; and weeding. Most of the time we pulled weeds as the appearance of the compound was very important. We were often told how lucky we were to be allowed to live here. We worked all afternoon from lunch to dinner.
19. Before dinner, we showered. After dinner, we went to study for two more hours.
20. One thing that occurred some months after I had been there was that one afternoon we were all gathered up and directed to go to a house that was for what we called the "big boys." This was the house that Justin Miscavige lived in with several other boys. It was a very nice place, much better than the dorms. They had art paintings on the wall, whereas in our dorms we were only allowed pictures of L. Ron Hubbard or the Apollo ship. They also had different colors on the walls and the bedding, whereas the dorms were in nautical colors: navy and gold. There was no house for the big girls. Older girls just lived in the dorms with us younger children.
21. The day we were taken to the big boys house we were told to stay inside. I was told by the adult watching us that what was happening was we had too many kids at the ranch and a health inspector had come to check on us. So, we were hiding until he was gone.
22. In describing my bedroom, I again state all bedrooms were done in dark colors. Bedspreads were navy with a gold Sea Org symbol imprinted on them. The curtains were navy; the carpet was blue. We had brown dressers upon which we were not allowed to place personal items or family photos. We were not allowed to hang any personal photos or pictures; only the LRH or Apollo pictures.
23. One of the courses I had to do soon after arriving was the "make the bed" course. I had to learn how to fold the sheet corners so the bed was perfectly tucked and no wrinkles on anything. The final drill was making a perfect bed in less than five minutes.
24. At the ranch we dressed in uniforms. These consisted of khaki shorts with a red t-shirt or polo shirt with the Sea Org emblem embroidered on it. We also had sweat pants and dress pants and a vest. We could not wear our own clothes ever while on the ranch with the exception of pajamas.
25. As far as free or play time, there was none. Every aspect of our time was scheduled and controlled. Sometimes in the summer we were given twenty-five minutes to swim but that is all.
26. At the ranch there is also a form of punishment called "pigs berthing." This is levied against those who had a dirty dorm or dorm area. The punishment varies in different cadet orgs, but in this one offenders had to spend the night in what was called "The big house." The big house was an abandoned building with rotting floorboards and broken windows filled with insects, rats and bats. I clearly recall two girls about nine years old who were forced to spend the night there and in the middle on the night they ran screaming and crying from the building. One of the girls afterward told me that they had been terrified by the bats and couldn't stand it anymore.
27. This ranch was hours away from normal civilization. In the year plus that I lived there we never went into town for a field trip; never went to a movie, shopping or anything. We were totally isolated. The only time I ever left was when I was allowed once to take a leave of absence to visit my father at Christmas.
28. At the age of seven I was also made an MAA. This is a person who watches out to make sure no one is slacking in his or her work and to write reports when other children are misbehaving. For example one incident I had to write up on myself was when I had snuck into a snack shack and taken a bite of someone's candy bar. Another boy was made to stand up in front of the group and list off things he had stolen, such as a pen from a teacher. He listed about thirty such incidents of having taken or borrowed things without asking. This was extremely humiliating for him - he was about ten years old - and the next day he was kicked off the ranch.
29. Every Friday night my mother came at about 2:00 in the morning to pick me up in a car. We would return to her housing about half hour away and I would visit her until 12:00 noon the next day. This was the extent of my time with her. On alternate weeks, when I was to visit my father, my mother arranged for a friend of hers to pick me up and take me to my father's house as my father was forbidden to come to the ranch. I would stay there with my dad over night until 10:30 a.m. then I would have to return to the ranch. I often asked to stay longer, but I was always refused permission. This often upset my father and me. I felt like I had spent a lot of my life saying goodbye to my father.
30. The last few weeks I was at the ranch, I learned my mother had been sent to New York on a mission. After she was gone about three weeks, I was sent to be with her.
31. I was now in Manhattan. Here, I lived in a room with my mother. There was a bunk bed and I slept on top and she on the bottom. This room was relatively clean and nice as my mother was an "Int Missionaire" which meant she was highly ranked and the other staff members were frightened of her authority.
32. My schedule here was to hang out all day with six or seven other kids also in the building. I did no schooling during the entire time I was in New York, which turned out to be eleven months. My mother once asked me if I wanted to go to public school, but I thought public school was horrible and "the enemy" as this is what I had been taught all my life. I told her I didn't want to go and she said ok. While in New York, I turned eight.
Follow the link to read much more -
http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?t=23536
