Hubbard's Camp
"Missing in Happy Valley?"
from: "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"
February 25, 1999, Feuilleton, page 50Wibke H. was far ahead of the crowd. She directed the destiny of her enterprise for all of Germany. The first few years she was in power, she could always report increasing income to the headquarters in the United States. Her sudden fall neared as new disciples dropped out. That earned her a trip to Happy Valley, where she can probably still be found today, and where, according to Peter Reichelt and Ina Brockmann, things can hardly be very pleasant. Happy Valley, according to the findings and statements of the two television journalists, is a re-education camp in which members fallen from the grace of the Scientology organization are kept as slaves and are exposed to sick torture.
Up to the end of their documentary, the researchers were not able to find the Scientologist woman from Germany for whom they were searching, but they came away the wiser for it. Even the audience does not find out how things have finally gone for Wibke H., but they can easily picture it from the descriptions of several former Scientology members. A former security chief of the organization reported, for the camera, the manner in which the Chief of the Scientology Security Police "Sea Org", David Miscavige, takes care of unfavored staff members and how he saw to the building of a small, round, sandy area. In the middle of this area is a palm tree, and around this palm run delinquents who have been brought to the punishment camp, as various ex-Scientologists have testified, hour upon hour in the burning sun. Or they are ordered to perform, as repeatedly stated by various witnesses in the film, to heavy, demeaning work, practically without a wage and poorly fed.
The critics of her organization, a European Scientology spokeswoman responded to this film, do not upset her. They are bothersome specters of the times. "We will always be here," she said full of confidence, and probably meant it, as presented in the film about Scientology's alleged contract duration, for one billion years. For the brother of the missing Wibke H. "who does not want to look up his sister as long as believes that she is voluntarily staying in Happy Valley, although he thinks of Scientology as an autocratic association," the authors summed that up with a look on methods of Scientology they had described, "We've already done that." miha.