A day at the Sea Org Daycare
I was 13 years old and already signed a Sea Org billion year contract. I was assigned to work in a department that collected all of the forms, reports and statistics and put them onto microfilm for permanent records. This was before the days of computers, of course.
I was told to go to the Sea Org daycare, which was located where the current garden pavilion is at Hollywoods Scientology Celebrity Centre, and pick up some papers from the front desk and come back.
There was a shuttle that went there every 30 minutes or so, so the trip should have taken no more than an hour or an hour and a half.
When I arrived there, it was pandemonium. All of the kids including the babies were all being shoved down a hallway into the basement. I got caught in this crowd and ended up in the basement with about 150 other kids of all ages.
One of the adults confirmed all the kids had been corralled into one room, then he locked us all in.
It was a tight space for so many kids. We were stuck there for about an hour with the babies screaming from being hungry or having a full diaper, to the older kids who were climbing up on the ceiling pipes, swinging around and playing tag.
Finally an adult came in. I tried to get as close as I could to him, as he yelled out to all the kids that one of the male adult nannies had been caught inappropriately touching a young kid. He went on explaining that we would all stay locked in the room until everyone who had been involved came forward.
It sounded like all these kids were in big trouble. But also, it was said as if it were THEIR fault that they had allowed themselves to be violated by a nanny.
I stopped for a second, looking around, the only way in or out was through this one door. And everyone could see it. What child would want to come forward like that? Every other child would see them leaving and know exactly why…. It meant they had been violated. Well this sucks for them.
As the man turned to leave, I tried to stop him to tell him I was on post and needed to get back. He interrupted me and said “nobody leaves”. He shut the door in my face and locked it again.
I turned around, seeing babies screaming, kids fighting, kids playing, kids hiding under tables and in corners, trying to figure out what to do.
Looking back, many of those kids were super-triggered. Many of them did not like being locked up and were screaming to let them out. But back then, I knew better. Those kids just had to get used to this type of thing. I normalized it.
I didn’t even know the nanny they were talking about. I did see him when the man had opened the door. It was a larger guy with red hair. That was all I knew.
I ended up being stuck in that room for several hours while they took, one by one, each child from that nannies group and interrogated them using the Scientology lie-detector, the e-meter.
Finally, after three hours, they let us all out. I ran upstairs, grabbed the papers I was supposed to pick up and got back on the shuttle out of there.
I finally made it back to big blue, and went to the office I worked in.
As I came in, one of the other, older kids came to me to collect the papers. “Took your sweet time, didn’t you?”, they said, jokingly.
It was clear he thought I had goofed off for a few hours. There was no point in getting into what really happened. Complaining only resulted in interrogations. No thanks.
I just shrugged, smiled at him and went back to my work.