Was it really voluntary? and wasn't it grunt work to "make ammends"? and wasn't there a lot of public shaming?
I’m trying to give you a little window into the mindset of other crew members when they see somebody they know disappear from post and suddenly you are now having to interact with them as an RPFer. In 1977 Jesse Prince was physically forced into confinement for 3 months until he agreed. We all had the understanding that it is voluntary and I never knew the circumstances of his RPFing until he told his story on the internet. But if you pay a ransom to a kidnapper I guess from a certain perspective that can be considered voluntary. Look at all the things that will happen to you if you don’t agree to volunteer for the RPF. You get kicked out of the Sea Org and a humiliating goldenrod is distributed to your coworkers many of whom may be friends and family or know you and your family closely outside of the SO. You have little if any money or possessions. You may be far from any place where you can beg to sleep on a couch. You probably don’t have a car because you couldn’t afford the maintenance, gas or insurance. You need to get a job and start all over with Scientology to show on your resume as your last employer knowing they will either deny knowing you or give you a bad review. You might have other family members or close friends in the SO or as public Scientologists who could be adversely effected or who may have to disconnect if you get declared an SP, which is highly likely. If you are a true believer then this equates to losing your spiritual freedom forever, cancellation of all certs and awards, denial of the Bridge, you have to do A to E steps to get back in good standing, pay off your freeloader debt and redo all your auditing and training.
If they sense that you have even the slightest willingness to cooperate and stay in good standing but you resist going to the RPF then they will send you to the RPF’s RPF.
Jesse was RPFed in 1977. LRH was 2 hours away in La Quinta. Wayne was on an LRH mission answering directly to LRH. When Jesse was RPFed I think there were about 40 people on the RPF but it would soon go up to about 170 suspiciously coinciding with the need for laborers to renovate the Complex.
After Wayne was tossed under the bus Captain Bill took over, again answering to LRH, during the AOLA renovations and put both EPF and RPF onto a 30 hours on 3 hour off schedule.
So very early on you can see where people working very closely under LRH would put people on the RPF without any hearing, comm-ev or other internal judicial policy procedure or meaningful recourse, and even though the RPF was supposed to be a tightly run work/study/auditing program it could be turned completely into a slave labor camp on a whim. And conversely, if they discovered that they needed somebody back on post or for something else then they could be reprieved from the RPF just as quickly.
This kind of thing defined the organization under LRH. You learn that
this is SOP not the green vols. When I read about what is going on in the Church after LRH I find that it is all completely consistent with my experience and what I would expect of anyone who would become LRH’s successor. There were times when I had thought that his successor might be someone like Heber or Karen or Terri but in retrospect all of my personal experience showed that it was more likely to be like what we see now. The PR side of Hubbard was just that - PR. He lifted people up only to better serve him. The real driving force behind the organization was capricious cruelty.
http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/transcript-of-jesse-princes-speech-march-26-2010/
///
I was probably asleep for fifteen minutes [3:00] before someone came. “You must come and see, you know, Wayne Marple,” he’s the … Dead L. Ron’s henchman or whatever he was, you know. He’s connected to Dead L. Ron and he has the power. So they woke me up and they sent me down, and his name was Wayne Marple and he said, “You know, you’ve been doing kind of a good job around here but you weren’t supposed to go to sleep. You sleep when the job is finished.” Well, I used some rather colorful language on him and told him, “You know what? And on top of that, I’m out of here. Go to hell.”
I turned to leave. He said, “Oh, you really think you’re gonna go somewhere, huh?” And as he’s speaking I’m being surrounded by these… people; I’d never seen them before but they were certainly larger than me. And he said “As a matter of fact, you’re going to the RPF.” [4:00] And I’m like, “What is that? Rehabilitation Project Force. I don’t want to rehabilitate anyone’s project. I’m outta here.”
No.
Literally, for the next three months, the people that grabbed me — physically, we were tussling — and they put me in a room, and locked the door and they had a guard on the other side. And for three months, somehow, I had become incarcerated. Not only incarcerated, now I’m in solitary confinement. And I’m just kicking the walls and I’m just going nuts and they’re coming in there, “You stop it, and you do this…” and this went on for almost three months. And finally, I’m like, “What do I have to do to get out of here?” And he said, “You must learn Dead L. Ron’s technology perfectly and apply it to yourself, and once you’ve done that and you still want to leave then you can go.” [5:00]
///
