Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  Masters does not have fond memories of the time when the Church of Scientology tried to recruit his players from under his nose. He declined to be interviewed for this book, stating: ‘It caused me some aggravation at the time and I don’t want to have any more.’61

  While Masters resisted Scientology’s recruitment strategy, Chris Guider was well and truly in. He underwent the ‘Purification Rundown’, a detoxification program involving intense exercise, lengthy stints in the sauna and high doses of niacin and other vitamins. Hubbard developed the course while on the Apollo as a means of dealing with Sea Org members who were suffering from acid flashbacks brought on by previous LSD use.

  The young footballer felt the ‘Purification Rundown’, which has been heavily criticised by the medical establishment,62 did help relieve his high blood pressure. But in the age before player managers and team counsellors, it was the sense of backing Guider received from Scientology that most helped him.

  ‘It was basically a support group,’ says Guider. ‘To have people around you that want you to do well and would help you deal with things outside of the game, that to me was the best thing I got out of it. I had celebrity status and they were very interested in having me there, so I didn’t have any bad connotations about Scientology at that time.’63

  While Guider and Jarvis felt like they were benefiting from Scientology, some of their teammates were not happy with the growing influence of Steve Stevens. Guider and Jarvis were well liked and respected by their fellow players, and their beliefs were tolerated, but Stevens was an unwanted presence. ‘We all treated Pat the same,’ says Graeme Wynn, ‘but that Scientology bloke hanging around Pat, we didn’t like him.’64

  It is no surprise that the likes of Graeme Wynn did not approve of Scientology’s gun recruiter. Before games Stevens would isolate Pat Jarvis from his teammates and run Scientology drills with him in the grandstand. ‘Rugby league is a very tribal sport,’ says former St George centre Brian Johnston. ‘By having Pat separate from the team before the game, it was quite divisive.’65

  Before long Stevens started to encroach on the players’ inner sanctum, turning up inside the dressing room after games. The move was not well received. ‘Roy put a stop to that,’ says Johnston. ‘Roy’s a sharp man and understood what he was up to. He was looking for a weakness or vulnerability in a player, offering friendship or support, and then advice. It was part of their hard-core recruiting.’66

  The St George captain Craig Young was not impressed by Scientology. The burly front rower worked as a detective in the NSW Police’s infamous armed hold-up squad and was alert to suspicious behaviour of any kind. Young offered to rescue Chris Guider from the cult. ‘Craig told me, “Listen, if you need some help getting out of that group, you tell me.” He offered to bust me out of there if I needed it. He was concerned about me.’67

  Complaints were made about the Scientologists’ recruiting methods to the sport’s highest levels. John Quayle, General Manager of the New South Wales Rugby League at the time, remembers club officials expressing their anger and frustration to him. ‘We were getting complaints from the clubs. St George came to us at one point and said, “They are trying to control our footballers. Can you get them to stop?” I said that’s a decision for the players. It didn’t become an issue for the league.’68

  The influence of the Scientologists, which coach Roy Masters described as an ‘aggravation’,69 did not appear to undermine the club’s performance on the field. In 1985, St George made the grand final in all three grades, winning premierships in under 23s and reserves, before losing a gruelling contest 7–6 to Canterbury in the top grade. Saints had been favourites to win, but opposition coach Warren Ryan devised a set of tactics that starved St George of possession. The Bulldogs’ halfback Steve Mortimer relentlessly bombed fullback Glenn Burgess in his in-goal area, forcing a series of line drop-outs and pinning the St George team in their own half. The following season, the rules were changed to prevent Ryan’s tactics from being employed again.

  On that day, Chris Guider entered rugby league folklore. He became the first and only footballer to play in all three grand finals. After playing a full game in under 23s, he came on as a replacement in both reserve and first grade. It is a record that is unlikely to ever be broken.

  By the end of the 1985 season, Steve Stevens’s interest in St George had evaporated. ‘Steve was really pissed off with Roy after the end of ’85,’ says Guider, ‘because Roy didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I didn’t have any support group in ’86 because by then Steve had spat the dummy.’70

  Stevens and other Scientologists in the Sydney organisation felt that St George had lost the 1985 grand final because Masters had failed to embrace Scientology. ‘I know they were all blaming Roy for the fact that the team didn’t win the premiership,’ says Guider.71

  Chris Guider became a key member of St George’s first-grade team in 1986. But by then football was not his only focus. Soon after the beginning of the season he joined Scientology’s Sea Org. The indefatigable hooker who had played three grand finals in one day was now combining the unthinkable twin roles of professional footballer and Sea Org member. He had signed a one-year contract with St George and a billion-year contract with L. Ron Hubbard.

  ‘It was like living two lives, being both these things at the same time,’ says Guider. ‘In the Sea Org I was a full-time student and was able to leave and go to training anytime I needed to, and on match day I was just gone the whole day. I even remember taking a call from a radio station in the reception of the Sea Org facility. It was before we played Canterbury in a Monday night game at Belmore.’72

  Guider played 23 games in first grade that season.73 When Craig Young was injured towards the end of the season, the Sea Org member took over as captain. It was to be his last season as a professional footballer. The Scientologists, who encouraged him to return to the field in 1985, ended his career just over a year later. ‘I was basically told by the head of the organisation that I was attached to at that time, that I had to give away the rugby league. No real reason, just I had to devote more time to the church.’74 At the age of 24, with his best football in front of him, Guider’s billion-year contract with Scientology trumped his contract with St George.

  Eventually Guider moved to the US, where he rose to become Master at Arms at the Religious Technology Center, the most senior ‘Ethics Officer’ in the Church of Scientology in the world. Joe Reaiche had returned permanently to the US in 1985, signing up to the Sea Org in Clearwater, where he married Carol Masterson. Her two children from her previous marriage, Danny and Chris Masterson, later became TV stars, Danny in That ’70s Show and Chris in Malcolm in the Middle. Joe and Carol had two children together, Jordan and Alanna, who both followed in their step-brothers’ footsteps. Alanna starred in The Walking Dead and Jordan became best known for his role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

  Joe was in the Sea Org for two years and became Scientology’s go-to man in Florida for solving disputes with disgruntled parishioners who were demanding their money back. Pat Jarvis continued his football career before he too joined the Sea Org. Another league player, Errol Hillier, a front rower with Cronulla and North Sydney, ended up a Scientology staff member in Sydney. No elite sporting competition in the world had delivered so many recruits to Scientology and the Sea Org at the one time as the Sydney rugby league competition in the 1980s.

  Pat Jarvis remained committed to Scientology, but not St George. At the end of the 1986 season he signed to play for Canterbury, but his new club was not about to become a recruitment ground for Scientology. ‘When Pat went to Canterbury,’ a former St George official disclosed to me, ‘he was told by Peter Moore we don’t want to have anything to do with Scientology at this place.’75

  Peter ‘Bullfrog’ Moore was the heart and soul of the Canterbury Bulldogs. A Catholic and father of nine, Moore was the Chief Executive of the club for 26 years. He died in 2000, having dedicated most of his adult life to making t
he club a success. Steve Mortimer, who was the Bulldogs captain at the time, says the story of Moore’s intervention with Jarvis has the ring of truth to it. ‘I don’t know if he sat him down or not,’ says Mortimer, ‘but it makes sense that he would’ve told him to keep it to himself.’76

  While Roy Masters found pressure from the Scientologists to be an ‘aggravation’, Jarvis’s coach at the Bulldogs, Warren Ryan, had nothing to complain about. ‘I didn’t realise he was a Scientologist,’ says Ryan. ‘I just thought he was a good clean-living fella.’77 Whether Peter Moore intervened or not, Scientology’s experiment with actively targeting rugby league players was over.

  Chris Guider and Joe Reaiche eventually left the Sea Org and Scientology. Showing the same courage they displayed on the football field, both blew the whistle on what they saw as the culture of abuse, lies and greed at the heart of the Church of Scientology.

  When Joe Reaiche looks back at the time he was recruited as a young footballer he feels he was misled and duped about what Scientology was really selling and what it could really deliver:

  I just had this idea that Scientology was the only answer and if you followed it 100 per cent and committed to it your goals would be realised. As a result, I had the misconception that my talent didn’t need any more improvement and that I just needed to have a stronger mind to do metaphysical actions and that Scientology was the answer to that. I don’t believe that anymore. Scientology is the greatest mind-fucking maze trap ever created via a religion on Earth.78

  In 2005, while still a member of Scientology, Joe was issued with a declaration order labelling him a ‘Suppressive Person’, expelling him from the church. When he got the order in the mail, he picked up the phone and tried to call his children, Jordan and Alanna. It was too late. They had already been told that the best thing for their spiritual freedom and happiness was to follow church doctrine and ‘disconnect’ from their father.

  The organisation that had promised to improve Joe Reaiche as an individual and help him to attain superhuman powers and eternal life had now separated him from his own children. He has not heard from them in over a decade despite repeated phone calls and birthday cards. He says the indefinite separation from his children ‘breaks his heart each and every day’.79

  At the time of writing, Pat Jarvis was still a committed Scientologist. The durable front rower’s toughness and stamina saw him play over 300 games across 16 seasons in rugby league’s toughest competition, in its most physically demanding position.

  Jarvis is still doing the hard yards for Scientology. When I first rang him to ask for an interview for this book, he said he would be happy to talk to me.80 When I followed up to arrange a time, he had become cagey, finally responding to my request via email:

  I am actually not interested in taking part in this assignment. I do not see the value in this as a worthwhile story. As a scientologist I am very focused on seeing others do well in their lives and help them change conditions towards an improved society. I do not believe your story is of such intention. I would like to see people gaining knowledge and information which will assist them live life better and be more successful.

  We have some great life improvement courses for the public and also provide some vital education with The Truth About Drugs. This is an area which I see as a major stumbling block for our youth and adults. As a parent I know there is not a more concerning issue here today than the harmful effects of drugs.

  Scientology has made me more aware of my responsibility to others, my family of course and the next-door neighbour. I wish you well but doubt that your venture would be of any value to my goals of achieving a better society.81

  CHAPTER 16

  THE GILLHAMS BLOW

  TERRI GILLHAM GAMBOA1 KNEW Scientology had changed forever when David Miscavige asked her to spit in the face of her Treasury Secretary, Homer Schomer. As a 13-year-old she had been one of Hubbard’s original messengers on board the Royal Scotman/Apollo. In 1981, Hubbard made Terri, at the age of 26, head of Author Services Inc., a for-profit company staffed by Sea Org members. But the young Australian was no longer taking direct orders from Hubbard. She was now answerable to David Miscavige, the man who would soon take over Scientology.

  Hubbard had been in and out of hiding in various locations for years. With the FBI raids of 1977 and Mary Sue’s criminal conviction in 1979, Hubbard knew it was wise to make himself scarce. But by 1980, he had to deal with a whole new threat. Hubbard was under increasing pressure from disgruntled former Scientologists who were suing him. He was now facing 48 lawsuits and three grand jury subpoenas.2

  In the second month of the new decade, Hubbard went into hiding for good. A white Dodge van with velvet curtains and a built-in bed whisked him away. The Dodge was then ditched, destroyed and replaced by an orange Ford, which was in turn replaced by another Dodge. Hubbard swapped his hideouts like his getaway cars.3 He stayed first at Newport Beach in a one-bedroom apartment, before taking up residence in a Blue Bird motorhome that was driven to various locations in the Sierra Mountains.

  Hubbard was angry about having to go into hiding and blamed everyone but himself. His parting words to his most senior executives were, ‘To hell with you all, to hell with everybody.’4 As his personal messenger on board the Apollo, Terri had seen Hubbard at his darkest. Her mother, Yvonne, who had set up the Celebrity Centre and worked closely with Hubbard, had also put up with his fits of fury, but the tirade he delivered before he left was one of his most ferocious. ‘He was livid,’ says Terri. ‘Oh, my goodness, he was so mad, this was one of the worst.’5

  According to Terri, who took on her married name Gamboa in 1979, many of the lawsuits were Hubbard’s fault. ‘He would make people stay up all night to get something done,’ she says. ‘There were some people who couldn’t deal with that, there were elderly people and they got upset, left and filed lawsuits and that made him furious.’6

  Just as he took no responsibility for Operation Snow White, instead letting his wife Mary Sue take the fall and go to prison, Hubbard was after a scapegoat for the lawsuits. ‘He wanted an “all clear”,’ Terri says, ‘and my job and Norman Starkey’s job was to get an “all clear” and that meant no lawsuits, so that he was invincible and nobody could ever sue him.’7

  Hubbard assigned Terri Gamboa to the newly formed ‘All Clear Unit’ and special lawyers were hired to kill off all litigation against him. It was an absurd assignment. ‘Any attorney will tell you it’s impossible,’ says Terri. ‘Anybody can sue anybody for anything!’8 Hubbard was furious that his executives could not somehow inoculate him from the US justice system.

  When Hubbard went into hiding, he was looked after by two of his messengers, Pat and Annie Broeker. Eventually the three of them settled on an old 160-acre horse ranch in Creston, California. Hubbard grew a beard, assumed the pseudonym of Jack Farnsworth and, by his own admission, took on the appearance of Colonel Sanders.9 Angry and isolated, his only conduits to the outside world were Pat and Annie at the ranch, and his ambitious former cameraman and mission operator, David Miscavige, who was back at Scientology’s International Base near Hemet, California.

  Miscavige had grown up in Willingboro’s Pennypacker Park neighbourhood in New Jersey in the 1960s and early ’70s.10 His father, Ronnie, a salesman and trumpet player, thought Scientology might help his son with his chronic asthma and allergies. According to Miscavige, he was in the midst of an asthma attack when his father took him to see a Scientologist. Father and son both said the auditing session stopped the attack and changed their lives forever. ‘From that moment I knew this is it,’ said David. ‘I have the answer.’11 [Miscavige continued to use asthma medication after becoming a Scientologist.] Soon after, Ronnie took his four children out of school and moved to the UK to be close to Hubbard’s headquarters at Saint Hill in the Sussex countryside.

  Miscavige became something of a child prodigy within Scientology. He learned how to audit by the age of 12. He went ‘clear’ by 15. When he and his
family moved back to the US he dropped out of high school and joined the Sea Org. He became one of the Commodore’s Messengers, working under the organisation’s commanding officer, Terri Gillham. She remembers him as a hyper-ambitious, arrogant teenager. ‘I think Miscavige was trying to get power from the day he came in at 16 years old,’ she says.12

  Soon after Miscavige arrived, Terri found out just how ruthless he could be. She had been sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) for defending her then husband, Gerry Armstrong, who had been placed on the RPF. ‘Miscavige was sent on a mission to oversee and handle the RPF,’ she recalls. ‘He’d come and stand with his arms crossed in his full uniform while I was scrubbing a wall and then he’d go and report to my seniors that I was slacking off. They’d tell me off and I’d start scrubbing harder and faster. He’d come back and cross his arms again while watching me work and then disappear again and my bosses would come back and say the Mission in Charge says you’re not working fast enough. This happened three or four times. He wanted me in trouble.’13

  Miscavige did not lack confidence. Even as a teenager he was not the type to bow down to senior Scientology executives like Terri. He soon caught Hubbard’s eye through his mixture of energy, enthusiasm and sheer will. Scientology’s founder assigned him to work as a cameraman on his training videos and around the same time appointed him to the position of Action Chief to oversee and manage the missions. At that young age Miscavige had already developed a reputation for arrogance and violence. Mike Rinder remembers him as an ‘abrasive obnoxious teenager’.14