Church of Scientology Goes On The Defensive, Reveals Tactics Used To Control Staff, Members
Scientology’s last remaining sentries are trying desperately to discredit the disturbing, illegal, and immoral allegations being lodged by ex high-ranking officials who’ve finally agreed to speak out against the Church’s leader David Miscavige, but in doing so, the Church is also revealing their own twisted and warped process of terror.
When I first began investigating the Church of Scientology I was overwhelmed with information. The hierarchy and structure of the organization is designed with deception and prevarication at its core. A side effect one might suggest from running an organization designed solely to dupe followers out of large sums of money. When running a ponzi scheme of this magnitude, it’s essential to keep people in line and in check, and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and later sucessor David Miscavige, used fear, manipulation and psychological and physical intimidation to keep staffers close and “on board” with the game plan. And the game plan was to create a world dominate organization which dispensed pseudo-spirituality, while creating billions and billions in profit.
Two names which surfaced time and time again as I researched and spoke with critics and ex-members alike were Miscavige’s high-ranking cronies, Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun. When I asked my most inside sources how to track these folks down, I was hit with “no way, they will never talk, they know too much and were too deeply entrenched in the most nefarious of Scientology’s illegal actions.”
Time has changed since then, and now with the safety of numbers in their favor and perhaps an internal need to right their wrongs, these two men are speaking out, and even more telling is Scientology’s official response to their heady allegations against Miscavige and Scientology.
From the St. Petersburg Times:
This account comes from executives who for decades were key figures in Scientology’s powerful inner circle. Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are speaking out for the first time….
Rinder and Rathbun speak:
Now they provide an unprecedented look inside the upper reaches of the tightly controlled organization. They reveal:
• Physical violence permeated Scientology’s international management team. Miscavige set the tone, routinely attacking his lieutenants. Rinder says the leader attacked him some 50 times.
Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht admit that they, too, attacked their colleagues, to demonstrate loyalty to Miscavige and prove their mettle.
• Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multilayered system of “ecclesiastical justice.” It includes publicly confessing sins and crimes to a group of peers, being ordered to jump into a pool fully clothed, facing embarrassing “security checks” or, worse, being isolated as a “suppressive person.”
At the pinnacle of the hierarchy, Miscavige commands such power that managers follow his orders, however bizarre, with lemming-like obedience.
• Church staffers covered up how they botched the care of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist who died after they held her 17 days in isolation at Clearwater’s Fort Harrison Hotel.
Rathbun, who Miscavige put in charge of dealing with the fallout from the case, admits that he ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence. He and others also reveal that Miscavige made an embarrassing miscalculation on McPherson’s Scientology counseling.
• With Miscavige calling the shots and Rathbun among those at his side, the church muscled the IRS into granting Scientology tax-exempt status. Offering fresh perspective on one of the church’s crowning moments, Rathbun details an extraordinary campaign of public pressure backed by thousands of lawsuits.
• To prop up revenues, Miscavige has turned to long-time parishioners, urging them to buy material that the church markets as must-have, improved sacred scripture.
Church officials deny the accusations. Miscavige never hit a single church staffer, not once, they said.
On May 13, the Times asked to interview Miscavige, in person or by phone, and renewed the request repeatedly the past five weeks. Church officials said Miscavige’s schedule would not permit an interview before July.
At 5:50 p.m. Saturday, Miscavige e-mailed the Times to protest the newspaper’s decision to publish instead of waiting until he was available. His letter said he would produce information “annihilating the credibility” of the defectors. Beloved by millions of Scientologists, church spokesmen say, Miscavige has guided the church through a quarter-century of growth.
Scientology’s response:
The church says that Rinder, Scientology’s top spokesman for decades, is an inveterate liar. In its ethics files, the church says, Rinder admits that he lied 43 times over the years.
“It was a real problem, Mike’s propensity to lie ….Obviously he had an issue with the truth,” said Davis, Rinder’s successor as spokesman.
After denying Miscavige hit him or anyone else, Rinder is lying now, Yingling said. “He left because he was demoted … He is bitter now and he has in his bitterness latched on to the one allegation he so vehemently denied for so many years.”
Added Davis: “One of the things he was known for saying was, ‘Well, if I’m so bad, why keep asking me to do things?’ You know the answer to that question?… The ultimate answer to that question is ‘Mike, you know what, you’re right. Why keep asking.’ And we stopped asking. And then he left and nobody came for him.”
Like the other defectors, Rinder says he’s sure he wrote whatever is in the ethics files, but he says the admissions are meaningless, they were just whatever his superiors wanted to hear. “All of these things were written to try and get into good graces or curry favor.”
Davis said Rinder has not been able to deal with his fall from spokesman for an international church to his current, workaday job.
“Mike left. I think we can all agree he is bitter,” Davis said. “This is a guy who ran with the big dogs in the tall grass … it’s a very exciting life. And now he is selling cars, and it must be a hell of a shock.”
The church released numerous pages of files it kept on Rathbun. Among them: a 1994 letter that said he had completed a Truth Rundown — one of many types of confessionals — and apologizing for leaving the church briefly the year before; three confessions for striking and verbally abusing staff dozens of times; and documents where he admits that he mishandled situations.
In a 2003 document, Rathbun writes a “public announcement” detailing two decades of flubs, including: making himself out to be more important than he was, making more work for Miscavige, mismanaging staff and messing up major assignments, including the church’s long-running battle with the IRS.
Rathbun says he wrote what Miscavige wanted to hear.
The church made special note of an affidavit dated June 6, 2009 — after the Times asked the church about Rathbun — authored by a Sea Org member whose name the church blacked out. She criticized Rathbun for being violent and abusive and playing a role in her family’s recent effort to wrest her out of Scientology.
Rathbun says yes, he tried to help the family, because the woman voiced strong doubts about returning to Scientology.
Like De Vocht’s, many of Rathbun’s confessions are marked by bountiful praise of Miscavige. He writes, for example, that the leader “single-handedly salvaged Scientology.”
Scientology’s international management cadre lives and works on the church’s 500-acre compound in the arid hills opposite Mount San Jacinto from Palm Springs.
Rathbun orchestrated a “reign of terror” there in 2002 and 2003, church representatives say, masquerading as an ethics officer while Miscavige was in Clearwater handling legal and other matters. They say the leader returned in late 2003, summarily demoted Rathbun and began to clean up his mess.
Rathbun says he was away from the base for almost all of 2002 and 2003, handling lawsuits and other sensitive matters at Miscavige’s behest. When he returned to the base in late 2003, he said, it was Miscavige who had established a “reign of terror.”
The church said Rathbun has inflated his importance in Scientology; they say that after 1993, he never had a title.
But in a 1998 Scientology magazine, Rathbun is featured as the main speaker at a major event at Ruth Eckerd Hall attended by 3,000 Scientologists. The magazine said he was “inspector general” of the entity charged with safeguarding Scientology. Also, the church provided the Times a court document from March 2000 that listed Rathbun as a “director” of the same entity.
If Rathbun’s responsibility was as limited as the church says, the Times asked, how did he get people to submit to a reign of terror? Davis, the church spokesman, erupted.
“He’s the one who’s saying that Dave Miscavige beat these people,” Davis screamed. “And he’s saying that Dave Miscavige beat the exact same people that he beat. And that’s what pisses me off. Because this guy’s a f—— lunatic and I don’t have to explain how or why he became one or how it was allowable.
“The fact is he’s saying David Miscavige did what he did … And now I’m getting a little angry. Am I angry at you? Not necessarily. But I’m g– d— pissed at Marty Rathbun. Because he knows that he was the reign of terror.”
I am only pasting partial excerpts from Part 1 of the series to illustrate what is so obvious to those looking from the outside in. Scientology, despite being run by an evil genius, can no longer continue to defend itself. It’s defectors, risking incriminating themselves for heinous crimes, are coming out and saying “Yes, these events happened. I witnessed them and yes, I took part in them.” Even more ironic, those of us who’ve followed the unraveling have heard these stories retold many times by lesser ranking individuals, and in fact, I have interviewed several of the people who were abused themselves, including Jeff Hawkins, Marc Headley and Maureen Bolstad. Sadly, the stories of abuse are not new to me, but the level of individuals coming forward to lend credibility are monumentally important.
Miscavige’s mouth-piece, Tommy Davis, already known for having a hair-trigger temper and a face which buckles under the weight of his own lies, may finally break down and completely lose it. No one man, despite his fervent loyality, can withstand the pressure of keeping this many lies straight. If men like Rinder and Rathbun are willing to come forward and take responsibility for their part in abusing members and breaking the law, there is virtually NOTHING Miscavige, Davis or Scientology’s billions in ill-gotten gains can do to prevent the flow of truth from spewing forward.
From my perspective, it’s all over but the crying.
Stay tuned for more on this story.
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