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Hana Whitfield (formerly Hana Eltringham)

Former scientologist, left after 19 years.


XenuTV: " 20/20 (1998): Scientology"

VO: According to Whitfield and others, Hubbard ordered rule-breakers confined to the ship’s chain locker for days at a time, including once a 4-year-old boy. On another occasion, witnesses say, Hubbard ordered wayward crew members to be shoved overboard while the Apollo was docked in port. A Scientology magazine at the time depicted the ceremony.

Channel 4, United Kingdom: "Secret Lives - L. Ron Hubbard", Nov. 1997

I saw one woman, Julia Lewis Salmon, from the United States, thrown overboard. This woman must have been in her fifties. She was - had her hands and I think her feet tied, maybe only her hands tied and a blindfold, but she went over. She was so panicked by the thought of being thrown over this way - she was standing on the edge of the deck, panicked, beside herself, shouting. And I was standing on the A deck with Hubbard and his other aides, watching this going on. And Julia didn't jump over, she had to be pushed over, because she was incapable, she was in such a fit.

Affidavit of Hana Eltringham Whitfield (8 March 1994)

14. I then began a long recovery, searching for answers as to why I joined Scientology and gave it twenty years of my life only to end up suicidal and in chronic ill health. [...]

53. I experienced this in 1968, when both the "Avon River," the ship I captained at the time, and the "Royal Scotman," Hubbard's Flag ship, were in Bizerte, Tunis, in North Africa. Two Sea Org Officers and I spoke on the dock one evening. They were both flying out the next day to Los Angeles, on a Hubbard assignment. They told me that Hubbard ordered them to shoot up Jack Horner, who lived in Los Angeles, a suppressive person whom Hubbard had personally declared some years earlier. Both men had hand guns and would travel with them. They left ... and then returned some weeks later. After their debrief they told me that Horner had indeed been shot at multiple times, while he and his family were in their home one evening. Fortunately, no one had been hurt. [...]

147. An example of this occurred in the early 1980s at the HQ in Clearwater, Florida. A painter from New York was at the HQ getting auditing. While he was in session one day, his small child, under the supervision of a nanny, fell into the pool in the garden and drowned. The painter was told about the tragedy after his session. He was shattered. Instead of an investigation being held into how and why the young child fell into the pool and why it was left there long enough to drown, the only action that was taken with any of the people involved, was to put the father back into an auditing session immediately. He was then audited on what sins or transgressions he had done that caused his young child to drown.

The Psychiatric Times: Prozac Frees Ex-Scientology Leader from Depression

A personal aide to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for eight of her nearly 20 years with the group says that fluoxetine (Prozac) and therapy have finally stopped the depression and suicidal ideation she had suffered since 1976. "I have to speak out" Hana (Eltringham) Whitfield told The Psychiatric Times, "The Scientologists choose the most prominent psychiatrists and the most successful drugs to attack, That's why they attacked Ritalin, and that's why they are now attacking Prozac."

Although trained as a nurse in South Africa. Hana said she didn't realize that she had a mental block toward seeking therapy because of the hatred for psychiatry taught by Hubbard and maintained by his followers. "It took me five years to get over the fear of going to a counselor. therapist, or anyone connected with the psychiatric field.- she said. Then, in 1989, she and her husband, Jerry, also a former Scientologist read 'Combating Cult Mind Control' by Steven Hassan. "Suddenly we realized that there was such a thing as mind control, that it was practiced by Scientologists and that we had been subjected to it." she said.

Affidavit of Hana Eltringham Whitfield (8 August 1989)

I was in Scientology for 19 years from March 1965 to August 1984. The majority of those years, particularly the last 10 were filled with great emotional, mental and physical trauma. This experience was the most humiliating and degrading one I've ever experienced. I still suffer from frequent nightmares, emotional distress and severe headaches because of it.

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

In summary, we have been subjected to:

[...]

J. Creation of "dead agent" packs of information designed to destroy my husband's and my reputations. Innumerable copies of these, each different from the last, have been mailed to friends and colleagues, and even persons we did not know, and handed out at conventions, conferences and meetings of former Scientologists and/or former cult members. Dead agent packs on myself include three different, and false, charges that I killed my father thirty years ago, that I masterminded his murder by another, and that I attempted the murder myself. The packs contain photographs of a severely battered, bruised and unrecognizable dead man's face. They contain my younger sister's 1946 affidavit which detailed incest she experienced while growing up. They contain memos written in the early 1990s by my former husband Guy Eltringham, an active Scientologist, to OSA, giving them information about me under the headings, " Possible means to reduce her influence or effect," and "Other information which possibly would not be in her ethics or pc ("preclear," auditing, or "pastoral counseling") files."

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