Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology

by Leah Remini

  Stefan never gave up on getting Tanja back. Eventually he came up with a plan that included sending her a Victoria’s Secret box, which he knew the security guards wouldn’t open because they wouldn’t want to risk being caught going through lingerie, which would certainly be considered aberrated behavior. In the box Tanja found a letter from Stefan and a cell phone so they could communicate. In 2006, seven years after they were first separated, Stefan pulled up at Gold Base in a car, and in the middle of the night Tanja jumped the wall again and the pair drove off to freedom.

  Not long after I spoke to John and Val, Shane called me into the Celebrity Centre, but when I arrived at my course room, I found him standing with two men I had never heard of or met before. Shane introduced me. “This is Mike Sutter and Hansuli Stahli. They are executives from the church. They were sent here to talk to you.” The two of them, I later found out, were infamously referred to as David Miscavige’s “henchmen.”

  “We wanted to sit down and answer any questions you might have,” they said.

  “Great. Where’s Shelly?”

  Rather than answer my question, they responded by showing me some policies they had on hand. I quickly dismissed them.

  They then went on to say, “We got a report that you’re asking about Shelly and hooking up with the Debbie Cooks of the world.”

  “Well, let me see the reports, because as per LRH policies you just showed me, I should have gotten a copy of the reports.”

  “Well, it was a verbal report.”

  “A verbal report? Why don’t you show me the LRH policy that says that’s okay? You can’t, because you know it’s not policy.”

  They stared at me. I turned my attention to Shane.

  “Shane, did you not know that I asked about Shelly? Did you not know that I was questioning what was going on?” Shane nodded that he did. “You’re all acting like I’m hiding something that I’ve been asking about for years. What the fuck kind of bullshit is this?”

  Sutter and Stahli started in on a presentation of the expansion of Scientology and all the buildings the church had recently purchased. Pointing to images of millions of dollars’ worth of Scientology’s real estate holdings, Stahli said, “This is what we’re doing, Leah.”

  “When you connect up with a Debbie Cook or a Mike Rinder,” Sutter said to me, “you’re cutting across the survival of mankind and impeding what we’re trying to do here.”

  That’s right—according to Sutter, just talking with an SP means you’re trying to destroy Scientology by proxy. And if Scientology is humanity’s only hope for salvation, well, I was on the wrong side.

  “Listen, guys, I really appreciate the eighth-grade presentation, but I could give a shit about buildings,” I said. “What I care about is myself, my family, and the people who are getting fucked by a church that doesn’t give a shit about the truth but rather buildings, which represent not only my millions of dollars but the millions of people who don’t have that kind of money but continue to remain dedicated and contribute.”

  As I went on and on and on, it was clear they had no idea what to do. They weren’t prepared for this.

  “I want answers as to why Tom Cruise seems to be running our church; I think he’s an SP. I want answers on why we have to spend hours and hours in session for minor transgressions, but you people, the embodiment of ethics and morals, don’t have to take responsibility for anything. I mean, what the fuck is going on here?…I want answers about Shelly Miscavige. So, do you have answers to where she is or anything else I’m asking about?”

  No answers. They just “acknowledged” me, like every Scientologist learns in the introductory communication course. There were no human qualities to any of this.

  “You’re going to acknowledge me, and I’m going to want to throw you out that window,” I said. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to. But you only acknowledging me is not the way you’re going to handle me. So if you want to handle me, come straight, and come with some fucking answers. Other than that, we’re done.” I then turned my attention to Shane. “You honestly thought having these guys work on me would be a good idea? Well, it wasn’t. And as I asked before, I want a full accounting of all of my finances within the church. How much money have I spent in total on Scientology?” I honestly had no idea up until that point. “How much has my family spent? I want all of it.”

  And with that I walked out the door and left.

  Two days later Shane and the Commanding Officer of the Celebrity Centre, Dave Petit, showed up at my house unannounced. Angelo answered the door even though I said not to let them in, because I knew this was just going to amount to more bullshit.

  “Do you have answers as to where Shelly Miscavige is?” I said to Dave. “Otherwise I’m going to slam this door in your face.”

  “I do,” he replied.

  So the four of us went into my office, where Dave and Shane began taking out all these LRH policies from Dave’s briefcase.

  “Oh no. I’m not going to read policy,” I said.

  “You’re refusing to read LRH policy?” Shane said.

  “Shane, I have read more policy than you. I’m higher than you on the Bridge; I’m also higher trained. You’re not going to school me on LRH. Okay? So back to my original question: Where’s Shelly?”

  “I just need you to read this policy before we start,” Dave said, sliding the paper across the table to me as if it was too much trouble for him to stand up and hand it to me. I slid it right back and stood up myself.

  “Listen to me, Dave Petit. You can take that policy and shove it up your ass. Where’s Shelly?”

  “She’s at Gold.”

  “Get her on the phone,” I said.

  “We don’t have the number.”

  “You don’t have the number, Shane? Really, you want to play games?” I walked over to the phone near my computer. “Okay, let’s call Tom De Vocht. Maybe he has the number?”

  Tom, a former Sea Org officer who dealt intimately with David Miscavige, would have the number to Gold.

  “Leah, Leah,” Shane said, “what’s happening to you?”

  “You’re playing games with me,” I said, then turned to Angelo. “You see what is going on here? Didn’t they say they had answers about where Shelly was, and now he doesn’t even know the number to Gold?”

  Then I turned to Shane and said, “If I don’t get answers, an apology, and the money I’m owed, I’m going to call the cops and the FBI. I know you’ve known me to make empty threats in the past, but mark my words, Shane: This one will happen. So I’d better get some fucking answers.”

  “Leah, Leah, Leah,” Shane continued.

  Angelo interrupted him. “Actually, stop. Just give her the answer you said you had. Where is Shelly?”

  “Leah,” David said, ignoring Angelo, “what’s happening? Why are you talking to Debbie Cook?”

  “Why don’t you make Tom Cruise disconnect from Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, both of whom you declared to be SPs? Everybody else in the world has to suffer and cut ties, but when it’s Tom Cruise, your god, policy doesn’t apply to him. Families are being destroyed every day by this. But not Tom Cruise. Never Tom…So you’re bullshit. And the church is bullshit.”

  “You’re a fucking bitch,” Shane said.

  Angelo jumped up out of his seat, slammed the door to the office shut so Shane couldn’t escape, and cocked his fist.

  “Listen, man,” Shane stammered.

  “You don’t call my wife a fucking bitch in front of me in our house,” Angelo seethed.

  Like a trapped animal, Shane didn’t know what to do.

  “Apologize to my wife,” Angelo said.

  “Angelo, please…,” he said.

  I didn’t lift a finger to stop Angelo. I wanted him to bust Shane’s ass no matter what the consequences were. I mean, I was full on ready t
o be arrested; you know, I’d just put on a little lipstick, mug shot ready. I’d take that bullet to see this asshole go down. I was so hyped up I wondered if I could take Dave Petit. But my fantasy was interrupted when Shane said, “Sorry, Leah.” Then he ran out of the house with Dave not far behind.

  Shortly thereafter I was called in to meet with David Miscavige again.

  We talked about what I knew to be my bad auditing at Flag. He was trying to justify what had happened to me and claimed that it was Jessica who was the one who had sent a written communication on his behalf to get me handled. That Jessica called the code red on me, not him.

  “Dave, it’s not just about me. It’s about the whole thing. Families are being destroyed, people are in debt, OTs are leaving, highly trained auditors are leaving. Something is not right.”

  He asked me to give him names.

  “Dave, come on. How about at the next event you ask to see a show of hands from all the people who are in debt because of this church.”

  He laughed as if I was being ridiculous, but I wasn’t kidding.

  “My whole family is in financial ruin. I mean, it’s happening every day.”

  He questioned the fact that I had reached out to people like Debbie Cook and Mike Rinder, referring to them as his enemies.

  “I don’t know that they’re your enemies. I know that they left the church and I know that they’re claiming to have been abused by other Sea Org members.”

  He dismissed what I was saying and tried to move the conversation along and “focus on the good.”

  Sick of the many dismissals and runaround I was getting, I refused to focus on the good. Instead I started talking to him about my concerns with Tom Cruise and what I perceived to be his overwhelming role in the church.

  “Tom needs to shut his fucking mouth and stop representing Scientology,” I said.

  Miscavige then directed the conversation toward getting me onto my OT levels. Not what I wanted to hear.

  I was surprised when I got a call shortly thereafter from Laurisse informing me that after nearly six long years, the $300,000 due to me was finally going to be credited to my account. I in turn asked for it to be provided to me in the form of a check, which she agreed to. I had Angelo pick it up at the Celebrity Centre and it was deposited into my bank account.

  The church had finally done right by me. But my newly restored faith was quickly squashed when Susan Watson, the president of the Celebrity Centre, called a week later and ordered me to come in right away with my mom and Angelo. The “mother of the church,” the woman who hugged me whenever I came in for auditing, who married Angelo and me, who loved my daughter, now treated me like I was a criminal. As I walked through those doors, it was like all of a sudden this place where I had spent most of my life—on course, helping others move up the Bridge, fundraising, catching up with friends—was no longer my home, my refuge, my sanctuary.

  I was taken upstairs to my former auditing room, another space in which I had spent countless hours and gone through all kinds of emotions and experiences, but waiting there for me was not my auditor, but the MAA Julian Swartz and Cassie Woodruff, Shane’s wife. They were both glaring at me when I walked in.

  David Miscavige made the call, and now I, like those before me who had questioned what was going on, was an enemy of the church.

  Looking at Cassie, I hostilely said, “You don’t speak now? What are you even doing here anyway?”

  “I’m here to chaperone,” she said and then I was shown the policy that states there must be a witness on hand when a parishioner is going to be severely reprimanded. Okay, I was ready for it. It was at this point that Julian started showing me more than a dozen reports that my so-called “friends” had written up about me. I later learned that as a result of my association with SPs like Debbie Cook and Mike Rinder and my speaking out against David Miscavige and Tom Cruise, Julian had reached out to all of my closest friends in the church and requested that they write Knowledge Reports on me regarding any disaffection toward the church that I might have expressed, or anything negative I might have said about COB, or any mentions I had made about reaching out to SPs and Squirrel groups. Squirrel groups are those who collectively practice Scientology beliefs and techniques independently of the Church of Scientology.

  He showed me a few examples of the Knowledge Reports my friends had written, including those from John and Val Futris. Their reports pretty much just recapped what I had already said or expressed, including that after Tom and Katie’s wedding I thought I was “unjustly sec-checked and investigated,” that I was talking to John about Sea Org members being “held against their will” in the “Hole,” and that I was continually asking people where Shelly was. Also that I had read Debbie Cook’s New Year’s Eve email. They went on to reveal that I felt that too many people doing their OT levels were “completely broke and in debt,” and that I “disagreed” with all of the money being spent on new buildings and design, as this was “not what LRH would want,” and instead suggested that it should be spent “getting people up the Bridge and paying staff.”

  Michelle Workman, a friend of twenty years, wrote about what I had revealed to her in my meetings with COB. That I thought the denials coming from COB about his knowledge of what was going on was “bullshit,” and that I “might have said” that Tom Cruise was an SP and “running the church.”

  “What’s all this?” I fired back.

  “You tell me,” Julian said.

  “What do you mean, me tell you? The fact that other people regurgitated my own story and wrote it in a report is meaningless. I reported it myself! Are you crazy?”

  They might have been crazy, but I was stupid. Despite everything that had happened over the past weeks, I still didn’t think I was leaving Scientology. Even while making a stink about subjects that most Scientologists wouldn’t dare address; while confronting the church’s leader, who was said to administer beatings; while personally declaring Tom Cruise, a pillar of the community, to be an SP; and while facing down Julian Swartz and the many reports of condemnation—I still naively hoped that someone would step up and prove me wrong. I prayed that this belief system I had submitted to for most of my and my family’s life wasn’t, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, evil.

  Make it right. Please, make it right, I thought. Get Shelly, who has now been missing for more than six years, on the phone for me. Do something.

  I was actually naive enough to believe that all my carrying on, all my “fuck you”s and threats would lead to resolution. That David Miscavige would say, “You were right!” That all my friends who wrote reports on me would apologize. Or at least that somebody would see the truth.

  But of course that never happened.

  All Julian—and the church—focused on at this point was for me and my family to do a sec-check, an interrogation by an Ethics Officer to make sure a person hasn’t thought or acted in a hostile way toward the church. But I refused to bend. I wasn’t going to submit to more scrutiny, more fines, and more punishment when I wasn’t the one who did anything wrong.

  “I’m not going to do it,” I told Julian.

  Instead, for four weeks, I went in every day, reading every policy Julian wanted me to read. He wanted to break me, to have me recant what I had said, to admit that I was wrong to have done any investigating on my own. But I refused to acknowledge this. He also wanted to know which other celebrity parishioners were disaffected, a term Scientologists use to describe someone who is no longer willing to support certain church initiatives. Again, I refused to tell him. Finally, he asked me who I considered my friends to be. When I refused to include David Miscavige’s name in the few names I had given, he tried to insist that I include it. I told him what he was asking was off policy, as this was not my realization, but rather something they were trying to force upon me.

  “COB is not my friend by the very actions he’s taken against
me. And why does he even care if I like him?” I said, calling his bluff.

  “You should be able to produce policy on this and you can’t,” I went on. “So I can only surmise that you’re taking your orders from COB, because I know you don’t have the balls to talk to me that way unless you’re being told to from above.”

  And speaking of friends, during this time, many of my friends in the church started calling me, crying, “I’m not going to disconnect from you. I know that your heart’s in the right place,” and then, little by little, after hearing from Julian, they would write me emails that read, “You have to get yourself handled.”

  I was devastated when my friend Michelle Workman told me that after speaking with Julian she believed that I was a liar.

  “By calling me a liar, what you’re about to do is destroy a thirty-five-year friendship,” I responded. “Our children, who were born and raised together, will not know each other because you don’t have the balls to stick up for what’s right.”

  After I revealed to another longtime Scientology friend what I had found out from my investigating, she replied that she was on my side, claiming, “You were on the right side of the tech. I know you’re not an SP.”

  “You’re saying that now, but your whole family is in the church,” I said. “I understand if you need to disconnect.”

  “There’s no way I would ever do that,” she said.

  A few days later she called me hysterically crying.

  “I was with Julian.…” she sobbed.

  “You don’t have to say another word,” I said, sensing what was coming next. “I love you and understand why you’re calling me. If circumstances change, I’m here.” We both said I love you once more and hung up, knowing we would probably never speak again.

  These types of exchanges became too heartbreaking for me. In response I blocked everybody in the church from writing, texting, or calling me. To be potentially branded a Suppressive Person by a whole group I dedicated my life to and have all its adherents turn their backs on me was incredibly sad, but not at all unique. It’s something that happens to Scientologists every day. I wrote counterreports on all of them and told them not to contact me.