Despite such physical and mental abuse, perhaps the most shocking aspect of Scientology’s employment practices is in relation to pay. Headley estimates that in the 15 years he spent working there he was paid just 39 cents per hour, and as such he is currently suing the Church for violation of the California labour code. He told me that throughout his time at the base, the prospect of receiving reasonable pay was used as an incentive to try and meet production quotas. “For a few years, we didn’t even get paid at all,” he says. “But we were promised that if we met the quotas, we would get $3,000 of back pay, which to us would have been as good as winning the lottery. Inevitably though, somebody would always screw up, and everybody would be back in the crapper.” Yet when Headley and his wife Claire eventually left (she escaped several weeks after him), they were hit with a bill for $150,000, ostensibly for on-the-job Scientology training received at the base. “They make you sign all sorts of legal documents while you’re there,” he explains. “So when we got the bill we actually thought it was legally binding and we would have to pay. I’d worked for them for 15 years, in which time I’d made about $29,000, and they sent me a bill for $150,000.”
This financial manipulation is just one of the techniques Scientology uses to ensure employees don’t leave. Of course, to an outsider the idea that they are practically imprisoned seems implausible, and I put that point to Headley – how, in a free country like the US, can a place possibly exist where the employees are not free to leave of their own volition? “Well, first of all, the property is locked,” he says. “It’s not like you can just walk out. They have motorised gates controlled by the guards. The entire perimeter of the property is covered by what is called ultra-barrier razor wire. If you climbed over, you could very possibly die from wounds. Secondly, if you do get out, you’re going to get hunted down like an animal. If you leave, they will bring you back. Period. But if you do get away, what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? You don’t have any money. You don’t have anything. You literally do have to find somebody who will take you in, or go to a shelter.”
