Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  During the filming of the program, Mike Rinder had been assigned to help Tommy Davis handle John Sweeney. In the documentary, Rinder looks gaunt and shell-shocked. He had just been released from ‘The Hole’, the prison for Sea Org executives where he had been detained for almost two years.

  By early 2004, Mike Rinder had fallen out of favour with Scientology’s leader. According to Rinder, Miscavige was upset at how he and other Scientology executives handled a special New Year’s event. ‘He’s like, “Fuck you all, you’re all a bunch of cock sucking arseholes. Security, take them back to the base and lock them up in OGH.”’11

  Eventually OGH, otherwise known as Old Gilman House, was overflowing with Scientology executives and they had to be moved to what became known as ‘The Hole’, a set of double-wide trailers inside Scientology’s International Base. At times there were over a hundred of the most senior Scientologists in the world working and sleeping in the ant-infested offices.12 To prevent them from escaping, bars were placed on the doors and security guards controlled the only exit.13

  Conditions inside ‘The Hole’ were oppressive. Former Scientology executive Debbie Cook would later testify that senior Sea Org members slept on the floors, ate slops and screamed at each other during bizarre confessionals. At one stage Cook was made to stand in a rubbish bin for 12 hours while fellow executives poured water over her, yelled at her and draped a sign over her declaring she was a lesbian. The punishment came about after she objected to the treatment of her fellow executives Marc Yager and Guillaume Lesevre. Cook later testified that Miscavige wanted the pair to confess to having a homosexual affair and were beaten until they made forced admissions.14

  At one stage, when Mike Rinder was accused of withholding a confession from the group, he was taken outside and beaten up.15 No-one escaped the perverse punishments. During one hot summer Miscavige had the electricity turned off in the trailers so the executives could sweat it out without air conditioning as temperatures soared over 40°C.16 John Brousseau witnessed the pale and lifeless executives shuffling to and from the showers in the garage. He described them as looking like ‘prisoners of war’.17

  ‘The Hole’ was the scene of the infamous game of musical chairs depicted in Alex Gibney’s award-winning documentary Going Clear. Miscavige had arrived one evening at around 8 pm and demanded that the conference table be removed and replaced by around 70 chairs. Miscavige explained that in this version of musical chairs they would be competing to stay in ‘The Hole’. While the last person standing would get to stay, everyone else would be sent off to various far-flung places. Mike Rinder was threatened with being sent to ‘the furthest outreach of Western Australia’.18 Those with spouses outside ‘The Hole’ would be forced to divorce them.19

  As ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ played out over the ghetto blaster, Scientology executives fought and scrambled for the remaining chairs. As players dropped out, Miscavige had airline tickets printed out to prepare them for their imminent departure. Trucks waited outside ready to haul their personal belongings away. It was a game of mental and physical torture. Finally, at 4 am, Lisa Schroer secured the final chair. But nothing happened. It was all a game. Miscavige never carried out his promise to send the others to Scientology’s outposts.

  As one of Scientology’s most senior executives, Mike Rinder had over the years delivered his fair share of unpalatable orders. This made him a target inside ‘The Hole’, in an environment where executives were being bullied by their colleagues and forced into confessions. One night Marty Rathbun grabbed him in a headlock and threw him to the ground. With Rathbun sitting on top of him Rinder whispered to his long-time friend and colleague: ‘Marty I’m not playing this game no more.’20

  Over the two years he was stuck in ‘The Hole’, Rinder was released periodically to attend press conferences, appear at Scientology galas and to work on editing new versions of Hubbard’s old books. He was released from ‘The Hole’ for the final time in 2007 to help handle BBC reporter John Sweeney and to report back to Miscavige about how Tommy Davis was dealing with the documentary crew.21

  Tommy Davis had replaced Rinder as chief spokesman for the Church of Scientology while the Australian was stuck in ‘The Hole’. The son of Fatal Attraction star Anne Archer and wealthy real estate developer William Davis, Tommy had joined the Sea Org after dropping out of Columbia University.22 His first assignment as spokesman was to deal with the veteran BBC reporter Sweeney.

  Tommy and Mike became key figures in the BBC documentary. Davis goaded Sweeney on camera, and the reporter took the bait, screaming at the Sea Org member in an unhinged fashion. At one stage during filming for the program, Sweeney door-stopped Rinder outside a Scientology building in London and asked him if he had been beaten up by Miscavige. Rinder denied it. ‘Those allegations are absolute utter rubbish,’ he said.23 The exchange did not make it to air in that program. Rinder threatened to sue and the BBC’s lawyers backed down. But Sweeney’s question changed Rinder’s life forever.

  Former Scientology marketing executive Jeff Hawkins had told Sweeney that Miscavige had beaten Rinder up and thrown a chair at him. ‘John’s shorthand name for that program became “The Thumping Pope of Scientology”,’ says Rinder.24 But the BBC’s lawyers were nervous that they did not have enough evidence at that time to back up the allegations against Miscavige. The stories of violence would have to wait for another program.

  Rinder’s intervention may have kept the allegations of violence out of the BBC program, but Sweeney’s question had cut to the core of Rinder. He was used to fudging answers or telling lies based on the justification that it was for the greater good of Scientology. It was much harder to justify covering for someone he felt deep down was poisoning the well of the organisation he had dedicated his life to. ‘That really got to me,’ says Rinder, ‘because as much as I was willing to defend Scientology from someone that I thought was out to do it harm, the fact that I was blatantly denying something that was absolutely true. That was hard to take.’25

  Miscavige helped Rinder to make the decision to leave the Sea Org forever. Instead of being grateful that his spokesman had managed to prevent the allegations of violence against him from being aired on the BBC, Miscavige ordered he be sent to the English countryside to dig ditches.26 Soon after, Rinder left the Scientology office in Fitzroy Street in central London, turned off his two BlackBerries and vanished. ‘I was 52 years old, with no resumé, with no money, no car, nothing. I walked out of the Church of Scientology in London with this briefcase with basically nothing in it,’ says Rinder.27

  London is Rinder’s favourite city in the world. For three to four days he walked its old streets and visited its finest art galleries. He stayed in cheap rooming houses and planned his next move. Rinder had no money, but relied on an American Express card he’d acquired through his parents. After a few days Rinder rang former Scientology executive Tom DeVocht at his home in Orlando and asked him if he could come and stay. DeVocht agreed. Rinder hopped on the tube to Heathrow airport. To avoid detection from Scientology spies he booked a flight at the last minute to Washington, DC, where he got a connecting flight to Orlando.

  Rinder knew there would be severe repercussions. He faced disconnection from his wife, his son, his daughter, his mother, his brother and his sister. After arriving back in the US he wrote to Cathy, his wife of 31 years, asking if he could see her. According to Rinder, he received a handwritten note that said: ‘Fuck you. I should have put your ethics in long ago. The divorce papers will be sent and I will tell the kids.’28

  After settling temporarily in Virginia, Rinder moved to Denver where he worked as a car salesman in a Toyota dealership. It was there that a producer from the BBC’s Panorama program tracked him down. Rinder agreed to be interviewed by John Sweeney for his follow-up program ‘The Secrets of Scientology’. Sweeney would finally be able to run his program about the ‘Thumping Pope of Scientology’.

  ‘Is it true that David Miscavige hit you?’ Sweeney asked the fo
rmer head of the Office of Special Affairs on camera.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you denied it?’

  ‘Yes. That was a lie.’

  ‘How many times did he hit you?’

  ‘Fifty.’29

  Marty Rathbun later confirmed that ‘Mike Rinder was beat on the order of 50 times by David Miscavige’.30 The Church of Scientology denies all allegations of abuse made against its leader. Rinder may have taken his fair share of beatings, but now he was landing a series of telling blows against Miscavige and the Church of Scientology.

  Over the next five years, Rinder became a thorn in the backside of Scientology. Not only did he give a revealing interview to John Sweeney, he did a series of TV interviews around the world, contributed significant details to the ongoing and highly influential reporting of Joe Childs and Thomas Tobin at the St. Petersburg Times and featured heavily in the book and documentary Going Clear. He set up a blog, was regularly quoted by Tony Ortega in his daily reporting on Scientology and was available for legal advice for ex-members involved in litigation with the church.

  In July 2010, Mike flew home to Australia to be interviewed by television journalist Bryan Seymour. As part of the trip he drove to Melbourne to try and visit his mother, Barbara. Mike had been able to write to his mother up until 2009 when he agreed to be interviewed for the St. Petersburg Times’s ‘Truth Rundown’ series. Soon after publication, the Church of Scientology gave Barbara an invidious choice. She would have to choose which son she wanted to stay in contact with. If she did not disconnect from Mike she could no longer see her other son, Andrew, and his children who lived nearby in Melbourne.

  From that point on Mike was unable to contact his mother. When he visited Australia in 2010, private investigators followed him and Christie around, filming them for much of their trip. When he tried to visit Barbara in her nursing home, they were told she had gone away for nine days. Mike believes the Church of Scientology made sure she moved out of town when he visited.

  Mike’s father, Ian, had died in a car accident almost 20 years earlier. Barbara was driving at the time. With his mother grief stricken, injured and alone in a country hospital, Mike was unable to leave International Base and see her. ‘It is one of the biggest regrets of my life that I didn’t just abandon my post and get on a plane to join her when she really needed me the most,’ says Rinder. ‘I didn’t understand the insanity of my callous lack of concern for her until nearly 20 years later after I had well and truly broken free from the brainwashing. This was the single thing I most wanted to tell her, face to face, when I tried to visit her in Melbourne, along with a simple “I love you Mum, and always will.”’31

  Back in the country of his birth, Rinder was able to see firsthand the pressure Scientology was under in Australia. A few months earlier, ABC TV’s Four Corners had dedicated a 45-minute program to documenting abuses inside the organisation, including the first TV interview with former first-grade rugby league player and Sea Org member Joe Reaiche. Over at Channel Seven, Bryan Seymour was well into a run of what would grow into over 80 stories on Scientology for Today Tonight and Seven News. At Lateline, I had just completed my first two stories on the organisation – including allegations that Scientology executive Jan Eastgate had covered up child sexual abuse, and an interview with Scarlett Hanna, the daughter of the head of the church in Australia, who described it as a toxic organisation that tore families apart.

  According to Mike Rinder, the reporting coming out of Australia at the time had an influence on how the US media started to cover Scientology. While Thomas Tobin and Joe Childs at the St Petersburg Times and Tony Ortega at the Village Voice were ahead of the pack in their brave and bold reporting, the broadcast media in the US had been unusually timid.

  I believe that the press in Australia and in particular the TV reporters paved the way for a lot of other people to recognise that they don’t need to sit cowering in fear of threats from the Church of Scientology. The stuff you have done and the stuff that Bryan did and the original Four Corners were pretty serious allegations made by individuals and you took those allegations and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to run what they say.’ In the US, the church had managed to persuade a bunch of journalists that they shouldn’t do that because we have 27 people who say in affidavits that they’re a liar.32

  Much of that reporting in Australia was generated by the advocacy of Nick Xenophon, the Independent Senator for South Australia. On 17 November 2009, Senator Xenophon shocked the parliament and the country by accusing the organisation of widespread criminal conduct. ‘Scientology is not a religious organisation,’ he told the Senate. ‘It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs.’33

  Xenophon’s interest in Scientology had been triggered by a simple question from journalist Bryan Seymour about tax exemption for groups like the Church of Scientology. By this stage Seymour had already done over 20 stories on the organisation. After Xenophon’s comments were broadcast on Today Tonight, his office was inundated with letters and emails from former Scientologists alleging widespread abuse and criminal activity and asking if he could do something to help.

  Xenophon was elected to the Senate in 2007, but his first taste of public office came in 1997 when he was voted into the South Australian parliament on an anti-poker machine platform. As a personal injury lawyer working in a suburban legal practice in the 1990s, he had been exposed to the damage gaming machines caused to individuals and families. As an advocate for victims’ rights, he found it hard to turn away from the personal stories of abuse relayed by former Scientologists.

  Senator Xenophon sat down with his senior adviser Rohan Wenn and discussed what they should do. Wenn already knew his way around Scientology – as a former TV journalist he had reported on abuses inside the organisation. His first encounter was back in his university days when he wrote a piece about the aggressive recruiting tactics of the Scientologists on campus at the University of Queensland. Soon after publication someone broke into his apartment and rearranged his furniture. Wenn had no proof who did it, but he saw it as a warning to stop investigating the organisation. Wenn was not deterred: he ended up doing a series of stories on Scientology for both Channel Nine and Channel Seven.

  Taking on Scientology was not at the forefront of Nick Xenophon’s mind in 2009. He is one of the busiest politicians in Australia. As an independent senator he does not have the party infrastructure or staffing levels that many members of parliament are able to rely on. He gets personally involved in a range of causes and policy areas and finds it hard to say no to an individual or group who he thinks needs help. Back in 2009, he shared the balance of power in the Senate with the Greens and Family First. He took it upon himself to carefully look through every piece of legislation that passed through the parliament. It was a gruelling time for him and his three full-time staff.

  Becoming embroiled in a battle with one of the most litigious and vindictive organisations in the world was the last thing Xenophon needed at the time, but he felt like he had no choice. Xenophon and his advisers met face to face with former Scientologists and heard dozens of horrifying testimonies. ‘We were all deeply affected by the stories we heard,’ he says. ‘These were decent people who hadn’t had a voice up until that time. There was something systemic and pathological about the way the church treated them – the way they could crush people, split families apart and cause so much destruction. I thought it was unconscionable and that they needed to be held to account.’34

  Rohan Wenn drafted a speech for Xenophon laying out the litany of abuse that had been relayed to his office by the witnesses who had come forward. The senior adviser was concerned his boss would not be prepared to go as far as he hoped for when it came to condemning the organisation. He was in for a surprise. ‘Nick said we should go harder,’ says Wenn. ‘He wanted to go in boots and all.’35

  On the evening of 17 November 2009, there was a sense of anticipation inside Parliament House. Journalists had b
een tipped off that Xenophon was going to deliver something big in the Senate. Rumours were bouncing around the house about what explosive allegations were about to be aired under parliamentary privilege. ‘We were nervous,’ says Wenn. ‘There was this feeling in the office that we were about to drop a bomb.’36

  At 8.09 pm, Senator Xenophon rose to speak on what he called ‘an issue of utmost seriousness that I believe deserves a great deal of scrutiny by law enforcement agencies and by this parliament’.37 The Church of Scientology, which had for so long been able to control the information flow about what went on inside their organisation, did not know what was coming. Xenophon did not mince his words:

  What we are seeing is a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality. On the body of evidence this is not happening by accident; it is happening by design. Scientology is not a religious organisation. It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs. What you believe does not mean you are not accountable for how you behave.

  The letters received by me which were written by former followers in Australia contain extensive allegations of crimes and abuses that are truly shocking – crimes against them and crimes they say they were coerced into committing. There are allegations of false imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of church funds, physical violence, intimidation, blackmail and the widespread and deliberate abuse of information obtained by the organisation. It is alleged that information about suspicious deaths and child abuse has been destroyed, and one follower has admitted he was coerced by the organisation into perjuring himself during investigations into the deaths of his two daughters.38

  ‘It was a momentous speech,’ says Rohan Wenn. ‘No-one has said the kind of things Nick said in such a formal setting like parliament. He delivered it in a beautifully understated way and it was treated seriously because Nick is considered a truth teller.’39 Wenn believes the speech had a global impact. ‘It was a game changer,’ he says. ‘Everyone suddenly got brave. It was like we can now call them a criminal organisation because a respected senator had done just that.’40