These pictures reveal the headquarters of Scientology's higher order where members pledge their allegiance for one billion years - and which may have cost Tom Cruise his marriage.

The prospect of sending six-year-old Suri to the Sea Organisation, or Sea Org as it is known, is what is said to have been the final straw for Katie Holmes before she filed for divorce.

The clergy like group is run like a military clique from the Scientology Gold Base in California which has a sniper-style nest bunker on the site.

Members are banned from having children, are paid just $50 a week and can be punished for simply looking at somebody the wrong way by being thrown in ‘The Hole’ - two trailers set aside for punishment.

It has been investigated by FBI agents looking into human trafficking and one member claimed he was locked in a ship’s hold for 18 hours a day with no food.

Holmes is also said to have been alarmed at her daughter being pushed into an academy partly paid for by Will Smith which acts as a feeder to a school popular with Scientologists.

And according to interviews with former Scientologists and former Sea Org members, her fears appear to be well founded.

Sea Org is the Scientologist equivalent of a religious order and is thought to be around 6,000 strong.

In recent years ex-members including Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis have spoken out about the brutal regime which operates inside.

The one billion year pledge is supposedly to ‘symbolise their eternal commitment to the religion' but is made by children as young as 10, something Haggis likened to the treatment of ‘child slaves in Haiti’, he has told the New Yorker.

Members are paid just $50 a week and banned from leaving their base or they are tracked down by a special team who use emotional pressure or physical force to make them come back.