The Church of Scientology runs a program under the orders of leader David Miscavige called the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF for short. The RPF is a work program where members of the church are ordered to attend to and wear grey, do back breaking work for no pay and suffer degrading treatment and live and sleep in unsanitary conditions. While the workers often do this voluntarily for fear of losing their salvation, the program remains firmly against the US constitution. Voluntary workers are submitting to a form of indentured servitude to the Church of Scientology and it's upper ranking members such as David Miscavige and high ranking members such as actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta. The US constitutions 13th amendment paints indentured servitude with the same brush as slavery, forbidding both and declaring both abolished and illegal within the United States.

However in the Big Blue building in Los Angeles, RPF members in ragged grey serve celebrities to atone for their sins against the church for no pay. In nearby Hemet many more work for David Miscavige and other leaders of the Church inside an armed compound. The compound has armed guards both at the gates an on patrol in SUV's and motorcycles outside. Vehicles passing by are tracked from a sniper nest in the hills, a powerful loaded rifle pointed at the driver and passengers as they pass the compound. Razor wire tops the fences, angled inwards to keep the victims inside form escaping, the ones who don't want to be there. The ones who are not indentured servants but prisoners and slaves to the Church of Scientology. The stories have been on the net for years, but now TV station KESQ has interviewed some who were kept prisoner and abused inside. Several lawsuits are now underway against the Church of Scientology for keeping members against their will inside the compound and other properties, and for giving less than minimum wage to acting staff members and none at all to those forced into the RPF.

How such a thing can go on in America under the nose of an African American president is anyone's guess. However the media and the courts are finally taking a new look into Scientology and more and more ex members are coming forward to tell their stories.

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church's belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

Why did we work so hard for this organization, Ms. Collbran said, and why did it feel so wrong in the end? We just didn't understand.

The Church of Scientology won in federal court when a judge dismissed two lawsuits that accused the church of labor law violations, human trafficking and forced abortions.

Claire and Marc Headley, who left Scientology in 2005, said the church controlled them with threats of harsh punishment and other tactics that prevented them from leaving the Sea Organization, Scientology's religious order.

But U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer ruled that the Sea Org is protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion.

The judge ruled that the Headleys performed religious duties and that the Sea Org falls within the ministerial exception commonly granted to religious groups in employment cases. The exception prevents the court from prying into the church's internal workings to get to the bottom of the Headleys' allegations.

Continuing the case, the judge wrote, would require the court to analyze the reasonableness of the methods used to discipline Sea Org members and to prevent them from leaving.

As for Claire Headley's allegation that she was forced to have two abortions, Fischer said the court would have had to review Scientology's doctrine prohibiting Sea Org members from raising children: Inquiry into these allegations would entangle the court in the religious doctrine of Scientology and the doctrinally motivated practices of the Sea Org, wrote Fischer, a judge in the Central District of California.

The Headleys said that the blanket dismissals surprised them, and they plan to appeal.

Paul Haggis is making headlines around the world for denouncing the Church of Scientology, but the Oscar-winning director doesn't think the rebuke will affect his career, the Canadian Press reports.

A lengthy New Yorker article details Haggis's complaints with the church, which the filmmaker left in 2009 after nearly 35 years and now denounces as a cult.

The Church of Scientology is viewed by many as a destructive cult, in part due to its disconnection.

Disconnection is a practice in Scientology, in which a Scientologist severs all ties between themselves and friends, colleagues and/or family members that are deemed to be antagonistic towards Scientology.

In the New Yorker article, authored by investigative journalist Lawrence Wright, Haggis predicts that his revelations regarding the Church of Scientology will not be without consequence: My bet is that, within two years, you're going to read something about me in a scandal that looks like it has nothing to do with the church.

A former Scientologist has claimed on television she was imprisoned for 12 years on board a cruise liner after her family denounced the religion.

Valeska Paris says she was held against her will aboard the church's luxury cathedral ship The Freewinds from the age of 18.

Ms Paris, who now lives in Australia, alleges she was forced into hard labour and was never allowed to leave the ship without an escort.

Ms Paris had claimed in an interview with the ABC News Lateline program that Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige sent her to the ship to stop her family from pulling her out of the organisation. She said:

I was basically hauled in and told that my mum had attacked the church and that I needed to disconnect from her because she was suppressive.

He decided the ship, and I found out two hours before my plane left, I was woken up in the morning and I was sent to the ship for "two weeks".

Instead of the promised two week stay, Ms Paris said she was forced into work on the lower levels of the ship for 12 years:

They take your passport when you go on the ship and you're in the middle of an island. So it's a bit hard [to escape] and by that time I was 18, I'd been in Scientology my whole life, it's not like I knew how to escape.

In a statement, the Church of Scientology denied Ms Paris' claims.

Scientology, has a secret Rehabilitation Project Force compound in the heart of suburban Sydney -- and this week Australian TV viewers were horrified by a report that exposed degrading and inhumane treatment meted out to those held captive in what was described as a gulag.

Shane Kelsey, who was brainwashed and brutalised in a Scientology gulag

The report centred on 21-year-old Shane Kelsey, who was held captive in the RPF base from the age of six until he was 20. He was put there by his Scientologist parents.

According to expose, by the age of fifteen Shane was living a nightmare even he now struggles to believe. He told reporter Bryan Seymour: As soon as I turned fifteen I was working seven days a week, 14 hour days.