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Wrenched from her mother, denied an education and sent alone to perform hard labour aboard a ship in squalid conditions...that, Danielle Chamberlin claims, was the horrifying reality of her childhood inside Scientology.

Founded by American science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, the controversial movement promises followers they can unlock their immortal potential and free themselves from the burdens of past trauma.

But while abuse in other religious institutions has been exposed through inquiries and investigations, Danielle says the mistreatment she suffered inside Scientology has remained largely hidden, with the Church working to silence critics and discredit survivors who speak out.

Now 64, Danielle has told the Daily Mail how she endured years of emotional and sexual abuse as a child inside Scientology, was subjected to life-threatening punishments ordered by Hubbard, and later watched helplessly as the movement denied her mother life-saving medical treatment.

Danielle was born in 1961 in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and spent her early childhood in South Africa, where her parents became heavily involved in Scientology.

After her father was expelled from Scientology for acting as a spy for South Africa's mental health organisation, her mother moved Danielle and her siblings to England.

Her father was declared a Suppressive Person, a term Scientology uses for someone it considers an 'antisocial personality' who seeks to 'harm, undermine or suppress other people or groups'.

Members are prohibited from maintaining contact with anyone given the label. As a result, Danielle lost almost all contact with her father.

Danielle was sent alone to Lisbon, Portugal, to board Scientology's flagship, the Apollo

While Danielle was on the ship, it sailed to Madeira, Oporto, Las Palmas, Tenerife and Cadiz

The family settled near Scientology's UK headquarters at Saint Hill in East Grinstead, West Sussex.

But Danielle, aged 11 at the time, had been at school for only a month before she was sent alone to Lisbon, Portugal, to board Scientology's flagship, the Apollo, and begin training for the Sea Org – an elite inner order whose members sign billion-year contracts pledging their lives to Scientology.

Sea Org members receive little, if any, pay, leaving many dependent on the organisation for food and shelter.

'The Sea Org members are considered the elite organisation of Scientology, and they work day and night. They're basically pawns in the whole thing,' Danielle said.

'At the time, they worked both on land bases and on ships. They wore naval-style uniforms. They did the cleaning, the cooking, ran the courses, effectively everything they could do to make as much money as possible for Scientology.'

She recalled: 'I arrived in Lisbon, and from there we sailed to Madeira, then Oporto, Las Palmas, Tenerife and Cadiz.'

'I was sent there to train as a Commodore's Messenger, one of the messengers who carried all of L Ron Hubbard's messages. Anything he wanted done, they would do.'

Hubbard was known for recruiting very young girls as Commodore's Messengers. Former member Doreen Smith has alleged that he once said he had taken the idea from Nazi Germany.

According to Smith, Hubbard said: 'Hitler was a madman, but nevertheless a genius in his own right, and the Nazi Youth was one of the smartest ideas he ever had. With young people you had a blank slate and you could write anything you wanted on it and it would be your writing.'

She said Hubbard believed young people could be molded into 'little Hubbards' and preferred girls because, in his view, women were more loyal than men.

For Danielle, the move to the Apollo came after an already traumatic childhood, having lost contact with her father and having endured sexual abuse by her stepbrothers.

'From the very first day I joined the ship in Lisbon, I didn't want to be there,' she said. 'I desperately wanted to go back to my mother.'

Danielle felt extremely alone, and said she couldn't even write letters to her family because they would be censored by Sea Org members.

According to Danielle, Scientology considers children to be 'adults in a child's body' from the age of 11.

Rather than attending school, she says she was deprived of an education beyond Scientology's teachings and put to work doing hard labour aboard the ship.

'When I arrived, I was taken down to a dormitory in the aft of the ship, and it was overcrowded beyond belief. There were bunk beds everywhere, very little lighting. It was dark, dim, and it stank.

'A typical day began with what they called the Deck Project Force, where you learned to scrub decks.

'Hubbard had policies for absolutely everything, how to sweep, clean windows, polish brass, scrub the decks. He was paranoid about smells, so we weren't allowed to use chemicals with strong odours.'

She was forced to work day and night with little to no rest. She was even made to look after people with STDs.

Danielle was forced to work day and night with little to no rest at just 11 years old

The Church of Scientology headquarters at Saint Hill in West Sussex

'One of the jobs I had involved feeding people who had developed crabs. There were quite a few sexually transmitted diseases on board, and those people were kept in isolation in small cabins near the galley.'

With little to no pay, Danielle says she couldn't even afford basic necessities such as sanitary towels or soap.

When she wasn't scrubbing the decks of the Apollo, she was subjected to Scientology practices including auditing and bullbaiting.

Auditing, which Danielle describes as one of the more benign aspects of Scientology, is a form of counselling in which participants are asked structured questions while holding an electronic device known as an E-meter, which the Church says helps identify and clear emotional trauma.

Bullbaiting, however, was a different matter entirely. The training exercise is designed to teach members to remain calm and unemotional while being deliberately provoked.

Participants are screamed at, taunted and, Danielle said, can even be subjected to physical violations.

'During one of those sessions, a man sitting opposite me undid my bra and pulled it off through my sleeves,' she recalled. 'To me, that is physical abuse.'

Danielle described a climate of fear aboard the ship, where Hubbard regularly screamed at crew members and flew into uncontrollable rages.

She said his strict rules meant even the smallest infractions were punished.

'It could even be something as simple as somebody being clumsy and dropping things repeatedly. They'd be sent for training or auditing to find out why they kept dropping things.'

Hubbard reportedly even ordered people to be thrown overboard as punishment to frighten them, before having them pulled back aboard.

Danielle decided to be as troublesome as possible so she would get offloaded from the ship and sent back home to her mother.

'While I was there, they created something called the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF. It was effectively a forced labour camp. We had to wear black boiler suits and black armbands, and we weren't allowed to speak to other crew members unless they spoke to us first.

'During the day you do physical labour and you have to run everywhere - from A to B all the time. At night we studied Scientology materials, all of L Ron Hubbard's policies.'

Danielle says she still rebelled, leading Hubbard to order her imprisonment in the ship's chain locker – one of the most dangerous rooms for a person to be in on a vessel.

'I was kept there for three days and three nights. I was fed like an animal through the hatch. Someone would take me out to use the toilet and then put me straight back inside.

'By that point, I was so numb you could have pinched me or thrown me overboard and I wouldn't have cared.'

Years later, as an adult, Danielle recalled meeting a marine engineer who was shocked when he heard her account of being shut in the chain locker.

'He said I was incredibly lucky to have survived. Even today, people die after entering the enclosed metal space because the iron depletes the oxygen.'

After being taken out of the chain locker, she was made to stay in the laundry room before being deemed a liability and finally returned to her mother in England.

Danielle was taken to Scientology's headquarters to work as a secretary until late into the night

Danielle pictured at the Scientology Flag Land Base in Florida where she went to train

After returning to West Sussex, Danielle went back to school. But once classes finished each day, she was taken straight to Scientology's headquarters to work as a secretary until late into the night.

During her time there, she said she was groomed by a man in his twenties who raped her when she was 14.

Feeling overwhelmed by shame, she did not report the incident. It only came to the church's attention after the man later confessed what he had done to his wife.

'I got hauled in and told it was my fault and that I had to make reparation for it. I was assigned what they called a "condition," where you have to go and do physical work again, write down all your overts and withholds, and go through the whole process,' she recounted.

'Then they give you what's called a security check, where they ask what crimes you've committed.'

In Scientology, an 'overt' is considered a harmful act or moral transgression, while a 'withhold' is an overt that a person conceals or refuses to disclose.

She was not allowed to report the rape to the police, and says the perpetrator faced no consequences.

Danielle said her turning point came when her mother suffered a stroke at the age of just 42 and was denied medical treatment.

'My mother was the editor of a Scientology paper called The Auditor magazine. She worked for three weeks straight, day and night, getting maybe two or three hours of sleep each night. Then she had a stroke.

'She was taken to hospital, but Scientologists arrived before she could receive any medical treatment. They took her out of hospital, saying Scientology processes could heal her and that she wasn't to receive any medical treatment.

'When I went to see my mother, she looked dead. I was absolutely aghast. She couldn't move. She couldn't feed herself, stand, walk or even go to the toilet by herself. She'd received no medical treatment whatsoever.

'Eventually my sister called the GP. He came out, was completely shocked, and had her readmitted to another hospital. At that point the Scientologists wanted nothing more to do with her, so they basically offloaded her, as they called it.'

Danielle and her siblings left Scientology soon afterwards. Nearly 50 years later, she says they are still living with the lasting effects of their experiences.

Although Danielle went on to build a successful career in IT and raise twin daughters, she says the trauma never truly left her.

'I had issues because of the sexual abuse I'd suffered while I was in Scientology. I was married when I was 20, but the marriage was annulled because I couldn't have penetrative sex.'

She believes the impact has also taken a toll on her siblings. 'My sister has fibromyalgia, for example. I do think some of these conditions are deeply trauma-related.'

Danielle, who now lives in Sunderland, says there are still thousands of people in the Sea Org, working without pay and completely isolated from their families in places like the UK and US.

'The biggest question is why aren't the authorities doing anything? We've seen action taken over the grooming gangs in the north of England. Action has been taken over abuse within the Catholic Church, why is nothing being done about Scientology?'

Danielle, now 64, lives in Sunderland and has been petitioning the Government to take action against Scientology

A few years ago, Danielle finally reported her rape to the police but says she has not received a response.

She also wrote to Jess Phillips, who served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls until May of this year, outlining what she described as systemic abuse within Scientology.

'This is about an organisation engaging in psychological torture, human trafficking, modern slavery and child abuse,' she wrote.

'The lack of government oversight means the abuse is still on-going and victims are left shunned by society, unable to seek justice and pushed away by Police who have told us they can't take action due to the abuse being historic.'

Danielle said she later received a reply from Phillips' office expressing sympathy for her experiences, assuring her she would hear back soon. She says she never did.

In a statement to the Daily Mail, the Church of Scientology strongly denied Danielle Chamberlin's allegations, saying there is 'no evidence corroborating' her claims and arguing they are contradicted by contemporaneous Church records.

The Church said records show Danielle later petitioned to return to the Sea Org after leaving, and cited previous comments in which she described aspects of her time aboard the Apollo as enjoyable.

It also disputed her claim that she was confined in a chain locker, citing a declaration from a former senior officer aboard the ship saying no child was ever put in the chain locker, and said Church records show she was removed from staff for misconduct.