by Leah Remini
Eventually, after some time, Todd came back to me and said, “It’s done,” and that I would get the $300,000 credited to my account. I believed him, never bothering to check my accounts. Why would I? To me Todd’s word was that of my church.
Todd went on to encourage me to get back onto my OT levels, but I decided that I wanted to continue pursuing the auditor training path because I liked the idea of helping people, working with preclears, counseling them. With the church’s seeming admission of having messed up the wedding fallout, and its agreeing to return my money, I began to re-engage, dedicating myself in the weeks that followed to moving ahead in my training as an auditor. But one thing still nagged at me: the fact that no one would tell me where Shelly Miscavige was. When I would ask Todd during our sessions, he would take me outside where there were no recording devices and say, “Shelly is a Sea Org member and you’re asking about the leader’s wife. How do you expect people to react? I can’t call COB and ask him.” When I flat out asked if she was dead, he responded, “I’m sure she’s not dead, but you and I are not in a position to ask where the leader’s wife is. I think it would be in your best interest to stop asking.”
In requesting my $300,000 back, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that if this kind of problem with money happened to me, an outspoken celebrity in the church, similar things must be happening to so many others who suffered in silence. That just wasn’t right. Having grown up a Scientologist, I knew firsthand the financial sacrifice that the church demands of its ordinary practitioners. I had met one man who said he was in foreclosure because of a sec-check—and a mom who told me she had drained her daughter’s college fund after she was sent to Flag. On a more personal level, I had watched my whole family struggle to move up the Bridge. They were $250,000 in debt at this point. The fact that people making average salaries of $50,000 a year somehow find a way to pay the $500,000 necessary to get on their OT levels—frankly, it’s a superhuman task. The level of dedication is astonishing and admirable, but over the long term it means financial destruction for a lot of people and families.
When anyone arrives at Flag, one of the first places he or she is sent is to the IAS (International Association of Scientologists). It’s one of the various wings in charge of getting donations out of parishioners. But the IAS is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of extracting money from Scientologists for the church’s monumentally important causes. Before you’ve even had time to go to your hotel room, they’ve looked up how much money you’ve donated to the church and immediately started to question it: “Do you really think you’re going to get onto OT VII with this donation?” No matter what you say about the state of your finances, the fund-raisers of the IAS can always find a way for you to give more. They’ll ask for your credit card number and its limit. Then they “help” you call Visa or Amex and they know exactly what to say to get your limit upped. And once they’ve helped you get that $10,000 or $25,000 credit limit increase, you end up charging that amount to your card as a donation. Either you’re an able being, or you’re not. Able beings make major donations. And of course, any “good” Scientologist is expected to be able.
I wondered how many Scientologists with far fewer resources than I had were in debt to the church because they had spoken out about something they saw that wasn’t right and were punished with a costly security check or a course of reprogramming. I also continued to wonder why parishioners had to pay for the same things over and over again. Why we had to keep purchasing new or revised textbook editions and CDs of the same policies/courses we had already bought. Forced to repeat courses if we wanted to move up the Bridge. Redo auditing actions over and over again, all at our expense. If we were made to abide by the same rules of “you are responsible for all,” why didn’t the church say, “Hey, we fucked up on that process, so we are going to have you do it again at our expense”? Instead, there was just no end to what was required of a parishioner.
The response I would get whenever I voiced my concerns to someone in the church was, “We just have to do it,” or some other runaround excuse. No one was willing to challenge these financial practices, instead just accepting them as the status quo. Even more infuriating was my original complaint that as parishioners we had to make financial and spiritual amends for our wrongs, but the leaders of our faith took no responsibility for anything ever. How could that be?
Here was Tom Cruise, being rewarded for being the most dedicated Scientologist on the planet, but you know who should actually get that reward? The guy who makes $75,000 a year and donates $250,000.
Soon after my various conversations with Todd, I got a call from my handler, Shane, who worked with Todd on my service. “You know what, Leah? I’m looking at things in your folder from over the years, and there have definitely been some issues in regards to your speaking up. Why don’t I come over and I can help you write up some Standard Request for Withdrawal Reports.” (Apparently the previous ones I had submitted to have earlier Knowledge Reports on me from people like Katie Holmes pulled from my file had been rejected due to the fact that I showed too much emotion in the language I used. I had found out that the requests were essentially ignored for years.) I agreed to meet with Shane, and together we worked on the new requests.
As we were working I once again broached the subject of Shelly. I told Shane that I found it surprising and concerning that I hadn’t gotten a holiday card or thank-you note from her after I sent her a gift that past Christmas, something she had always been diligent about in the past. It wasn’t like her. Shane, like Todd, responded with “I don’t know, I can’t ask where the leader’s wife is.”
I figured as long as Shane was here trying to help me with the requests for withdrawal, why not have him help me try to get a letter to Shelly, to which he agreed. I wrote the following note and gave it to him for delivery:
Dear Shelly,
It has been some time that I have seen or heard from you. I have sent you a few Christmas cards and gifts. It was not like you to not write back right away. I had asked about you and was told you were on project. Out of respect I didn’t want to say “Are they (meaning you and Dave) not together?” or “Is she on the RPF?” I let it go for a bit. But, it has been way too long now that I have not seen or heard from you.
I have come across some letters from you to me, my family, my daughter and I just feel as someone who I considered a friend, I needed to know that you were indeed ok.
I get it that you might be busy and might very well be on project, but you were there for me when I needed you and I don’t take that lightly. Further, you were always in comm. with us.
I am sure you can understand why I would write.
My cell is XXX-XXX-XXXX.
With Love,
Leah
A week or so passed and I called Shane to see if he had been able to get the note to Shelly or if he had gotten any response. He told me, “Honestly, Leah, I never sent the note. It was inappropriate the way you referred to COB’s relationship.” He told me to write a new note with a more appropriate tone and language. And so I did:
Dear Shelly,
It has been a while since we have spoken or seen each other. I came across a few letters that you had written to me and my daughter and I thought “I really love & miss Shelly.” What better way to show someone you love them than to not write them for 6 years! (That’s a joke.) So, I decided to write! I think of you often, Shelly—you were really there for me when I needed you and I will always consider you a friend.
I would love to hear from you and have a coffee with you!
Call me.
With Love,
Leah
XXX-XXX-XXXX
Once again, I received no response. I later received word back that my letter to her was considered “entheta,” meaning bad energy, sarcastic, angering, upsetting, and was basically thrown away. By this point Shelly had been missing for more than six years.
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A few more weeks passed and I’d yet to hear any responses from the MAA about the requests for Knowledge Report withdrawals that Shane and I had submitted. I asked Shane about it, and he responded with “Let me check on it.”
When a request for withdrawal of a Knowledge Report is reviewed and accepted, formal paperwork and documentation accompany the agreed-upon withdrawal so that the parishioner knows the request has been granted. When I asked Shane to provide me with the formal paperwork, he instead forwarded an unofficial email from an MAA stating that the requests had been accepted. I knew this wasn’t on policy. I was getting the runaround. And now I was starting to get pissed.
I asked Shane for a full review of all of my accounting with the church as I had not yet received the $300,000 credit I had been promised. Shane in turn accused me of asking for a refund. I once again told him, “This is not a refund. This is a credit. A credit for all of the shit you guys have screwed up. When will you accept accountability?”
And with that, I received a personal call from none other than COB, David Miscavige, asking if we could meet. I told him there was no point, but he insisted, offering to clear out the Celebrity Centre for me, Tom Cruise style. I declined but agreed to see him that night so I could confront this issue once and for all.
Angelo, who was worried, said, “Babe, do you want me to go with you?” I refused. The last thing I wanted COB to think was that I needed backup. I was after all, taller than David Miscavige.
David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology, greeted me. His longtime assistant Laurisse (whom I had seen with him at Tom and Katie’s wedding) was also there. He immediately told me he had been traveling and was not aware of what was going on with my situation.
I repeated everything I had already said to others many, many times, plus I went on to ask why wasn’t anyone seeing Tom Cruise the way I saw him? Why with his three failed marriages and couch-jumping antics was he considered to be the epitome of a great Scientologist? Why was he not treated as an SP who should be in session twenty-four hours a day? And why couldn’t I get an answer as to where David’s wife, Shelly, was? He told me that Shelly was okay and that he had to keep her away because SPs are constantly trying to have her subpoenaed. It was so out of left field that I didn’t know how to respond.
We talked a bit more, and all the while he continued saying he knew nothing about my problems but that he would look into things for me. I agreed to have him investigate further and get back to me.
I wasn’t sure that I believed his offer to look into things. So, frustrated with the constant runaround I was getting, I started making phone calls. I broke another one of the cardinal rules of Scientology and began reaching out to those who had been deemed Suppressive Persons. I knew I was yet again stepping outside the bounds of what was acceptable to my church, but given my recent experiences, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to these people, who had been very high up on the Org board, to make them give up everything and everyone in their lives.
I reached out to Mike Rinder, who had left the church in 2007. I was honest with him that I wasn’t a big fan of his because of the way he had acted toward John Sweeney during the BBC documentary fiasco and a famous interview he gave to Dateline in which he blatantly lied to all of America when he said there was no policy of disconnection in Scientology. But for the man who was head of OSA for twenty-five years, a Sea Org member for forty years, and a Scientologist for fifty years to leave? Something must have happened to him. I listened to what he and another former top executive had said, that Scientology’s management—themselves included—was continually subjected to, and inflicted physical beatings on, other Sea Org members. I questioned him how this could possibly be. What about LRH policy?
“What you don’t understand is that we were backed up by policy,” Mike said to me.
I was stunned.
There were seemingly some secret flag orders and dispatches that Mike said he had seen that permit hitting and abusing people if it is in the course of getting someone to comply with policy, which would make it acceptable. According to several eyewitness accounts, in the Hole—a set of trailers on Gold Base (International Base), a remote 500-acre compound in Southern California—fallen executives are kept separated, humiliated, and often beaten. Mike said that at the direction of and by the hand of David Miscavige, leaders of my church, including Mike, were subjected to punishments like being made to lick bathroom floors or being doused in cold water, punishments that were so bad they felt they had no other choice but to flee. Mike decided enough was enough, choosing to leave the church and speak out; as a result he lost contact with his son, his daughter, and his wife of thirty-plus years, his mother and brother and sister and everyone else in his family.
My assumption up to this point—that terrible things like what was happening in the Hole were not an indictment of my church but bad Scientologists misusing policy—was wrong. Mike was saying that if David Miscavige was beating people, he wasn’t misguided; he was following LRH policy—which is what all good Scientologists are taught to do. “That’s why at the time I thought it was okay,” he told me.
Of course, the Church of Scientology has always denied that any of this is true—the church says there is no Hole, no abuse, no beatings, at least not by David Miscaviage. But then why were so many former executives leaving Scientology and telling consistent stories of abuse?
I also reached out to Debbie Cook, the woman who was the captain of the Flag Service Organization (FSO), which meant she ran Flag, which she did for seventeen years. She had also been in the Hole, but she wouldn’t talk to me. The church was suing her for violation of a contract after the famous New Year’s Eve email that she wrote and disseminated on December 31, 2012. In it, she described herself as “dedicated to the technology of Dianetics and Scientology and the works of LRH…and I absolutely know it is worth fighting to keep it pure and unadulterated.” But she went on to say, “I do have some very serious concerns.” Those concerns could be summed up in two words: David Miscavige. “There never was supposed to be a ‘leader’ other than LRH,” she wrote.
The church charged that the email violated the terms of the agreement she made back in 2007 after spending seven weeks in the Hole. But as Debbie testified in court, after the abuse she experienced in the Hole, “I would have signed that I stabbed babies over and over again and loved it.”
Scientology made the mistake of suing Debbie Cook, and in a Texas courtroom under oath, she described her experience in the Hole, stating that she had watched David Miscavige punch people, and that for twelve hours she was made to stand in a trash can with a sign that read “Lesbo” hung around her neck. During this twelve-hour period, cold water was periodically poured over her head while people screamed at her to admit she was gay. (In Dianetics, LRH explicitly called homosexuality a “perversion.” Then later, he put being gay on the Tone Scale as “Covert Hostility,” which registers at 1.1 on the scale of human emotions, which is considered by Scientologists to be a person avoided at all costs.)
Reading Debbie’s email started me on an Internet search. In Scientology you are told to stay away from the Internet or other forms of media or intelligence that might be against Scientology. I broke away from this long-held rule and looked at hundreds of stories about my church and just sat there and cried. Not just for me, but for the many who believed in something that they thought was bigger than themselves and dedicated their whole lives to sustaining it. How could I have been blind to the stories that the rest of the world knew? Scientologists are hardworking, dedicated, and caring people, albeit misinformed people, and I was no exception. The reason for their blind faith lies in their core belief that they alone have the answers to eradicate the ills of humanity. You run back to the safety of the group that shares your mentality, and in this way your world becomes very insular.
During my crisis of faith I did what most people do in similar circumstances—I reli
ed on my friends and family as a sounding board. But when I brought up my discoveries of abuse with John and Val Futris, my dear friends, former employer, and closest confidants for the last twenty-five years, I was surprised by the reaction my concerns elicited.
After confessing that I had read Debbie Cook’s email and tried to contact her, I asked them why no Scientologists would read it.
“Why would I read entheta?” Valerie said.
“How do you know that it’s entheta?” I asked.
“Because it’s from somebody who’s against our group.”
“It was somebody in our group, Valerie. And not just a somebody but a trusted member. Debbie Cook was the captain of the FSO, on the front lines of Scientology, for a very long time. Why wouldn’t you give her the time of day, to even look at what she has to say?”
Debbie and many of the others whose information and statements I was looking at were considered to be among the chiefs of our church. These weren’t just some ex-parishioners, bitter apostates, kicked-out members, looking for fame or a quick payout. These were men and women who were respected leaders in our church, who dedicated their lives not only to our church but also to the Sea Org, signing billion-year contracts. They essentially gave up their lives for the church.
“Why would I go out of my way to read an enemy’s email?”
“It makes me wonder what you would do if I wrote an email like that.”
“I wouldn’t read it.”
“That kills me inside. I mean, you wouldn’t read an email from me? Are you kidding me, Val? You’ve known me since I was fucking sixteen.”
Once I opened myself up to the outside world, I heard so many terrible things. I learned what had happened to Sherry’s brother, Stefan, years after he came to me for help in getting his wife, Tanja, back from Gold Base, where she was kept for two years. At one point she was even put into isolation after she scaled an eight-foot wall topped by razor wire and jumped to freedom, only to be returned by Scientologists who found her walking along the highway.