Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology

by Leah Remini

  Julian continued to press me about doing a sec-check and I continued to refuse. Then he ordered sec-checks for my mother and George, which they agreed to. My mother didn’t want to believe me about what was going on. That this was a witch hunt. “I’m telling you; it’s all leading up to me,” I said to her. “So if you want to submit yourself to a sec-check, Mom, you’re going to be really fucking sad when you’ve realized that they just want intel on me. But go ahead and do it.”

  She did just that, and in the process, Julian pulled the wool over her eyes to get her to doubt me. He said that David Miscavige offered to get me onto OT VII in L.A. instead of Flag—which is unheard of. I mean, everyone spends huge sums of money and up to six months to get onto OT VII at Flag, and Julian was claiming that I would get to magically do it in L.A.? He also told her that I basically told him to go to hell. “Leah needs help. We need you to help her,” Julian said to my mother. “She’s connected up with some pretty heavy SPs. She’s making mistakes. She’s making bad decisions.”

  Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with my mother knows she can’t keep a secret. Anything she is feeling shows immediately on her face. So as soon as Julian fed her that lie, she began acting weird. And anyone who knows me knows that I’m going to call you out on it the minute you are acting weird. “Mom, you’re doing that thing. What’s up?”

  “What thing?” she said.

  My mom’s resistance didn’t last long. She finally let it out. I told her immediately that this invitation to do OT VII in L.A. wasn’t true, but I knew I had to prove it to her or she would always have doubts.

  I wrote David Miscavige a letter right away, asking about his offer for me to do OT VII in L.A. and not in Florida, and I had the letter messengered to his office, where it was rejected. So I brought it to Julian directly and taunted him by saying, “David Miscavige’s offer was so gracious. I misunderstood you. I’d love to get onto OT VII here in L.A. Let’s do it.” Julian just glared at me.

  I showed my mom the letter I had written saying how I would be thrilled to do OT VII in L.A. and how it was rejected by David Miscavige’s office and Julian didn’t seem to have anything to say about the offer.

  And if that wasn’t proof enough, after my mother did her last sec-check, she said, “You were right. It was bullshit.” Just like with my stepfather’s sec-check, none of the questions were about her. They were all about me: what I knew; what they knew about me and Debbie Cook; what they knew about me and Mike Rinder. As I knew, it was all just to gain intel on me.

  On top of all this, Julian had spread the word that my family and I were under investigation, which made us look horrible to everyone in the church. People averted their eyes when we walked by and refused to acknowledge us.

  As a last effort to take us down, Julian threatened to take away all of my mom’s certs (credits earned, thus she would have to throw away thirty-plus years of training and start at the bottom of the Bridge) and claimed that he had enough evidence of suppressive acts to get my stepfather, George, declared an SP.

  I in turn responded with “I’m not going to have a church tell me who I can and cannot talk to. That day is done. Where does it stop? What if my mother was an SP? Should I disconnect from my mother? Do you think I’d disconnect from anyone after the way you and the church have treated me?”

  His response was “I’m not telling you to disconnect. LRH is.”

  And with that, I decided I was done. I decided to sever ties with Scientology permanently.

  I could have just let it go. I could have simply walked away, before being declared an SP. Then if I ever wanted to come back to the church, they would have me. But I didn’t want to leave that door open. I knew if I filed a police report about Shelly Miscavige, I would be declared an SP and that would be the end. That was the step I had to take. So I called the LAPD and asked, “How do I officially file a missing person report?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY IS known not only to pay big money to off-duty LAPD officers who work as security at the Celebrity Centre and its other locations, it also employs a practice known as “safe pointing,” meaning inviting members of various police and sheriff’s departments that surround its churches to speak at events, presenting them with awards, or donating money to their charities. So you never quite know who is in tight with the church.

  I met Detective Kevin Becker when he worked security on the set of The King of Queens, and we became fast friends. When I had brought Kevin to a Celebrity Centre event as my date about a decade earlier, he was already familiar with the building’s security systems. His precinct was located nearby and one time when they were trying to find surveillance footage of the surrounding area for a recent crime that had been committed, they came to the church and asked to see their video feed. “They have a better surveillance system than the police department does,” Kevin remarked.

  When I decided I wanted to file a missing person report for Shelly, thus officially severing my ties with the church, I asked Kevin to help me, but I was concerned that it might put him in a bad position with the LAPD. If he took the report, he would be labeled an SP and therefore might not be able to cover church events for the force or work there in an off-duty capacity.

  Fully aware of the risk he was taking, Kevin stood by me all the way. No questions asked. He came to my house to take down the information for the missing person report (knowing that if I had gone into the police department, there might have been a person there who would alert the church). I explained to Kevin where I thought Shelly had been held for all of these years, but of course I couldn’t confirm it. I also asked that if they did find Shelly in Hemet, California, at Gold (where she was rumored to be), they try to pull her away from her handlers and give her a letter from me. Then I gave Kevin my letter.

  August 5, 2013

  Dear Shelly,

  It is NOT normal for you to be so out of communication. It is NOT normal for you to not be with your husband at the wedding. For years, I have been trying to get confirmation that you were okay. I was met with such resistance that it has caused me enough concern to go to extreme measures to make sure you were in fact, OK. My letters were not sent to you and I was told that I “did not have the fucking rank to ask about Shelly.”

  That is not human.

  Shelly, this is not right. I don’t care what you think you are doing; this is NOT LRH. And you need to do something about it. You need to go with this gentleman now. I will take care of you, I will give you a home and the protection you need. From there, you can do what you need to do, but you need to leave right now. Do not worry about clothes, money, lawyers and what this will do; this will all get worked out later.

  All you need to say to this person who has come to get you is, “I want to leave with you now.”

  If you don’t do it now, you probably won’t have another chance to get out. So I beg you to take this step, for you. It is the right thing to do.

  Leah

  Kevin went directly to the head of his division, Deputy Chief Beatrice Girmala, and asked if he could handle my missing person report himself. But his boss ordered him to send the report on Shelly over to LAPD’s Missing Persons Unit. Despite Kevin’s protests, Chief Girmala, who didn’t want to make waves, wouldn’t budge on her original decision.

  After a few days, Kevin called over to Missing Persons to check on the status of the report. That’s when a detective told him that someone from the unit had spoken to the church’s lawyer, who said Shelly was fine and didn’t want to be found. Kevin asked the detective if anyone had spoken directly to Shelly. “No,” the detective answered. “We spoke to the attorney.” Then she cut the conversation short and said she couldn’t answer any more of his questions. “We’re done here,” she said.

  The LAPD didn’t find Shelly, but it did release a statement on August 8, 2013, that the case was closed and my report had been “
unfounded,” which the Church of Scientology used to discredit the reason for my report in the first place. I called Lieutenant Andre Dawson, who oversaw the “investigation” as the person in charge of the Detective Support and Vice Division, which encompasses Missing Persons.

  “Hi, Lieutenant. I was wondering why you guys did nothing about this case but still took the time to say that my report was unfounded.”

  “I am sorry, but I can’t discuss it with you,” he said.

  “You can’t discuss the friggin’ report I filed?”

  “We looked into it and she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Did you see her with your eyes? Did anyone see her? Did you pull her aside and give her my note when you were alone like I asked? I mean, I told you the only way to do this was to get to her first, pull her aside, and give her my note. Did you do that?”

  “Ma’am, I am sorry, but the case is closed and I can’t disclose any information to you.”

  And there you have it. Case closed.

  Later on, a friend of Shelly’s explained to me that on numerous occasions Shelly told her that she believed that when you get to the top of Scientology, you forgo your right to escape. Her friend was convinced that Shelly truly believed this. That same friend had seen several high-up people try to leave, only to be tracked down and brought back to the church. She thought that even if someone reached Shelly, she would not want to leave. Typical for this situation, she likely had been indoctrinated since early childhood to believe that whatever circumstances she finds herself in are her doing. That she is responsible for being sent away to live in isolation from her family for years, and that only when she has resolved her own transgressions will all be well.

  All the people that I had considered my extended family—like John Futris, Susan Watson, and so many more—turned their backs on me. Even those who at first said they would stand by me eventually disconnected. Stacy Francis, the woman whom I had introduced to Scientology and taken into my home when she needed a place to stay, whose daughter I witnessed being born and was Godmother to, wrote me around the time of my problems with the church: “You have been the only family I have ever known and I don’t give a fuck what these motherfuckers have to tell me.”

  But I never heard from Stacy again.

  A couple of years back, when I turned forty, I had a big birthday party that all my good friends from the church came to, people I had known since I was a teenager. Each person gave me a letter to commemorate the milestone. When I looked back over the thirty-five letters I received on that birthday I realized that I had lost every single Scientology friend who had written me a letter.

  As much as I tried to shield Sofia from what was happening to me, one day she saw me crying. “Mommy, I know you’re done with psychology”—ironically she confused the word “Scientology” with “psychology”—“in here,” she said, pointing to my head. “But you have to be over psychology in here.” And then she touched my heart with her finger.

  I couldn’t have loved my daughter more in that moment. How she knew what she was saying, I have no idea, but her words were wise way beyond her years.

  While my so-called “friends” had turned on me, my family, amazingly, showed me nothing but support. Whatever I had felt I might have lacked in a “traditional” family during my upbringing, my ideas profoundly changed when the chips were down and my immediate family had to make a decision between the church and me.

  There was no discussion. It was not something they had to consider—they simply chose me. To some people that may sound like a no-brainer, but where this particular church is concerned, it was in no way the norm. A simple search on the Internet will reveal the thousands of stories of disconnection, where mothers, fathers, children, husbands, wives, and more have been torn apart because they were convinced they had to choose the church over their families, that their “eternity” was at stake if they failed to do so.

  So for me, knowing that my family was willing to “lose it all,” including their eternity, and everything they had dedicated themselves to for more than thirty years, by choosing family instead, was enough for me to feel overwhelmingly grateful and loved.

  My husband, whom I sheltered from many of the truths of what I believed to be the real practices of Scientology, had to deal with most of the fallout from my decision. For months after leaving the church, every day and every night I unburdened myself to him, revealing more than thirty years worth of complaints and heartbreak. He, like my family, put aside his own concerns to take care of me. While I doubted many decisions in my life, it was in these moments with Angelo that I realized I, in fact, had made one really good one. He is my Prince Charming.

  My team that keeps me going (nanny, assistant, housekeeper, makeup artist, handyman) are not Scientologists. Some would consider them just employees, but to me they are everything. They too had to deal with the repercussions of my choice to publicly leave the church. But rather than hold this decision against me, they stood alongside me, always concerned with how I was doing and if I was okay. Everyone lost something in this fallout. My assistant Raffy, who was recommended to me by a former assistant and a Scientologist, was disconnected from half of his family because he refused to abandon me after I was declared a Suppressive Person by the church. This group supported me and were protective, loving, and caring, not only to me, but to my whole family. Without them I don’t think we would have made it out as well as we did.

  So while my team and my immediate family supported me, there were, however, some other family members who did disconnect from me. I had no good answers for Sofia, who at nine years old asked me: “Mommy, why doesn’t Auntie Catherine talk to me anymore?” Shannon, my sister, and her husband, William, were constantly giving money to his sister Catherine, who was broke and without a job. One night they even drove to Portland, where Catherine lived, to get a dog she could no longer care for and bring it back home with them. This was a woman who when she got pregnant didn’t have food or blankets for her bed. I called her father, a Scientologist on the upper levels, to tell him the situation his daughter was in, and he didn’t care. “She got herself pregnant,” he said. To me that’s not how family acts, but our being there for Catherine in her time of need meant nothing now that we were all SPs.

  “She can’t talk to us because we left the church,” I told Sofia.

  “I don’t understand that,” she said.

  “And you’re exactly right not to. You shouldn’t understand it, because it doesn’t make sense, and it’s not okay.”

  That sums up my problem with Scientology—despite its claims to the contrary, the practice doesn’t help you better the world or even yourself; it only helps you be a better Scientologist. “Scientology works 100 percent of the time when it is properly applied to a person who sincerely desires to improve his life,” the church states. “As Scientologists in all walks of life will attest, they have enjoyed greater success in their relationships, family life, jobs and professions.” Well, it didn’t work for me or anyone I knew. All those years of applying LRH didn’t make me any less flawed, hurt, aggressive, or insecure. And that was only the emotional part. The economics of Scientology often seemed to come at the expense of its parishioners.

  Once when the church wanted me to donate a million dollars, my business manager, who was a Scientologist, advised me against it because he didn’t think I had the money. Trying to put a stop to the donation was not looked at kindly. He was immediately pulled into a sec-check by church officials and quit working for me. He appeared to be punished for simply doing his job.

  Most Scientologists are in the church because their hearts are in the right place and they really believe they’re helping the planet. That was certainly the case with Tom Cruise’s longtime assistant when she decided after more than a decade of working with the star that she wanted to move on to spend more time with her husband and newborn child. Who knows whether Tom complained
about her leaving or the church decided on its own to put her through the wringer. Someone decided that she had done something wrong, and she had to undergo a sec-check that she says cost her so much that she lost her house. Instead of viewing this process surrounding her leaving her job as cruel injustice, she felt a huge sense of accomplishment when she finished her sec-check. She took pride in the fact that she left Tom in good standing with the church.

  I was once a big fan of Tom’s—before I got to know him. I’m sure many people could say the same thing about me or any other celebrity. But this is different; most actors are not in charge of your faith.

  I don’t doubt that Tom is in Scientology because he believes in it, but to me he has simply been given too much power by his church.

  My disaffection wasn’t a result of Tom receiving preferential treatment, it was a response to what I saw as church rules being broken for him and, as a result, families were torn apart, and people’s lives were altered forever.

  Tom didn’t just use his position within the church to hold sway with parishioners who worked for him, he also flexed his muscle with fellow Scientology celebrities. One former Sea Org member, Marc Headley, told me about an encounter with David Miscavige in which David had been thrilled that Tom was urging other Scientology celebrities to become more active in the field and use their celebrity to disseminate Scientology in the press. Tom had even called a meeting essentially preaching Scientology to his fellow Scientology celebrities, reading LRH policies to them and even suggesting that it would not be good for their careers in Hollywood if they did not start actively promoting Scientology. Marc recalls that David specifically told him that he did not ask Tom to make this strong push. He did it on his own. He did not ask permission. He just did it. Dave told him that if he could, he would make Tom Cruise the number two in Scientology. He said that Tom Cruise was a more dedicated Scientologist than anyone else he knew.