Inside Scientology

by Janet Reitman

  Even the grand new RTC building Miscavige built on the base in 1999, a fifty-five-thousand-foot structure of imported sandstone, now stood empty. The only people who worked there were Miscavige and his personal staff, which by the time of the infamous musical chairs had reportedly dwindled to just half a dozen people; the rest had been demoted or declared SPs.*

  Such purges had, of course, happened before. In the early 1950s Hubbard had denounced and expelled those in the Dianetics movement who opposed him; by 1959, the Founder would declare his own son an SP. But Hubbard, while a tyrant in his worst moments, also had the capacity to forgive. "Once he got over his tirades and tantrums, he'd follow it up with some justice measure"—often by granting sweeping "amnesties" to those he'd committed to the RPF, said the former Scientologist Glenn Samuels, who was purged from Scientology in 1982.

  But Miscavige didn't seem to believe in absolution, nor, as many saw it, in justice. By the mid-2000s, the leader's way of denouncing staffers as Suppressive Persons had become staggeringly random. No longer was a defection, a leaked document, or some other treasonous act a prerequisite for being deemed an SP, though only serious offenses like those would seem to merit such severe condemnation. It meant, after all, expulsion from the church and the loss of salvation—a severe penalty. But now anyone who expressed even the smallest criticism of church policy or leadership was in danger of being cast out.

  For people like Marty Rathbun, the promise of eternal freedom, Scientology's core doctrine, kept them hanging on during Miscavige's oppressive regime. But ultimately, even Rathbun decided he'd had enough. One afternoon in December 2004, having witnessed Miscavige physically attack Tom De Vocht during a meeting, Rathbun felt himself hit an invisible wall. If he didn't remove himself from the situation, he realized, he might kill Miscavige out of pure hate. Later that evening, Rathbun retrieved his Yamaha 650 motorcycle from the bushes where it was parked, wheeled it downhill, and waited for the back gate to open. When it did, just as a car drove through, "I gunned it and headed out down the road." That was the last he'd ever see of the base.

  Within a few weeks, De Vocht was gone as well, in much the same manner. By that spring, so was Jeff Hawkins. Not one of these executives, nor those who followed, including Mike Rinder, who departed Scientology in 2007, made a move to suggest that Miscavige should be the one to leave, though both Rathbun and De Vocht later said they thought about it. "We had a tacit agreement that something needed to be done about this guy ... but you couldn't go there, because if you got caught going there, you'd be declared [an SP] forever," said Rathbun, who would never relinquish his belief in L. Ron Hubbard's technology, despite losing faith in the management of his church.

  Hawkins knew that opposing Miscavige would be futile. He'd been in the Church of Scientology for thirty-eight years, had seen the movement's leadership evolve from idealistic to authoritarian to, as he saw it, Orwellian in mindset. Through it all, he'd fought to maintain his own integrity in what became a permanently hostile and intimidating environment. Finally, Hawkins accepted as pointless his hopes that things might change. What was happening at the base, said the onetime marketing chief, "was an irreversible trend. And when I realized that, I said, 'I'm out of here.'"

  Throughout the Sea Org rank and file, many other members were making the same decision.

  On January 10, 2005, Stefan and Tanja Castle were legally divorced. Five months later, Tanja left the trailer by the Old Gilman House that had become her home and returned to Int proper, where she was given a bed in a dormitory and a new job: helping to build sets for Golden Era Productions. The internal struggle she'd gone through for nine months, poring over LRH's teachings to see if she could find some justification for what had happened to her, was over. Stefan was an SP. Nothing else mattered. "Once the group has agreed that something is a certain way, one person can't change it on her own," she said.

  It had been five years since Stefan had been separated from his wife, and less than one year since he had fled from the PAC Base, a far easier place to leave, he knew, than Int. He had tried everything he could think of to communicate with Tanja, even filing a missing person's report with the Hemet police department; nothing had worked. The detectives couldn't prove that Tanja was being held against her will. His lawyer informed him that there was no legal way to force Tanja to speak to him, unless it could be proved that she was being held captive. Desperate, Stefan contacted the church a few weeks after he fled, offering to come back to Scientology if they would let him be with Tanja. Maybe there was a place where they could go. Australia, he offered. Even the RPF, provided they could do it together.

  But Scientology didn't want him back. Instead, Stefan received a call from the Office of Special Affairs, summoning him to Scientology's large Mother Church building on Hollywood Boulevard. When he arrived, Elliot Abelson, the Church of Scientology's general counsel, handed Stefan a thirty-page document stating that he would never sue or denounce the church to the press, and asked him to sign. Then Abelson wrote a check for $25,000. "This will help you get started," he said.

  The money petrified Stefan. Scientology often made cash settlements with its defectors, particularly those the church worried might speak to the press or testify against it in court. Several of these former officials, after reportedly receiving payments, had in fact retracted the negative statements they'd previously made. But no one, to Stefan's knowledge, had ever been offered as much as $25,000 to simply keep quiet, unless the person posed a particular threat.

  What the fuck is going on? he wondered. Then he realized what it was: his wife had been Miscavige's secretary. What does she know? Stefan didn't have a clue. Tanja had never shared RTC secrets with him.

  But clearly the church feared that she had. Stefan tried to bargain with Abelson: what if he and Tanja stayed in the movement and simply minded their own business? Abelson said it was too late. "Take it." He pushed the check toward Stefan. "We'd like to rest at ease that you aren't going to talk to anyone."

  "I didn't think I had a choice," Stefan said. So he signed the agreement and took the check, but didn't cash it. The following day, his lawyer, Ford Greene, sent a strongly worded letter to the church, accusing its leaders of coercion and demanding that they rescind the agreement. The church, remembering the tenacity with which Greene had successfully litigated against them on behalf of Wollersheim and several other Scientologists, agreed. Then all went quiet.

  Stefan tried to move on with his life. He found a job working in production design and soon started his own company. He began to read the critical material about Scientology on the Internet. He reached out to former Sea Org members he met online, many of whom, he discovered, had been hauled into OSA headquarters, confronted by lawyers, and offered sizable monetary inducements to keep their mouths shut, just as he had.

  Toward the end of 2005, Stefan reconnected with Marc and Claire Headley, who'd escaped from the Int Base shortly after the musical chairs incident. Marc had gone first, in the early hours of January 5, 2005, on his motorcycle, ultimately making his way to Kansas City, Missouri, where his father, who had long ago left Scientology, now resided.

  Claire followed a few weeks later, having finagled a trip into town to refill a contact lens prescription. From there, she'd called a taxi and hightailed it to the nearest bus station.

  Sitting with the Headleys in the back garden of their snug, bungalow-style house in Burbank, Stefan knew he had to rescue Tanja. He'd continued to dream about her, which was reaffirming. There was still a connection. She was the only woman he'd ever loved. If she had moved on, he believed he would have sensed it.

  And Tanja felt this too. "All this time I'd been wondering, 'Is Stefan surviving, is he doing okay, what's happened to him?'" she said. "There was always a side of me that was out there with him. I never stopped thinking about it."

  In her former life as an obedient RTC staffer, Claire Headley had helped convince Tanja to file for divorce. Now she was plagued with guilt. "I felt like the shitti
est person," she said. "I thought to myself, anything I could do to somehow make things right I had to do."

  The answer came to her in a dream. She had sent Tanja a letter in a Victoria's Secret box. Lingerie items, which RTC women ordered online, were the only packages that were never opened by security staff at the base—a rule that was passed after some security guards had gotten in trouble for opening several Victoria's Secret packages. Excitedly, Claire shook Marc awake. "I know how we can free Tanja."

  The following day, Stefan ordered Tanja some items from the Victoria's Secret catalog. Then he sat down and composed a letter. "I love you and know you still have love for me too," he wrote. "Regardless of everything, I have no regrets of having left the Sea Org. I am free. I have my dignity."

  Stefan then tucked the letter into a pair of jeans and put a cell phone in the box as well. He taped the package securely and, for good measure, "kicked it around to make it look like it was coming from Ohio. And then I sent it by UPS." Then he waited.

  A few days later, Tanja received the package. Knowing she hadn't ordered anything, she took it as a message. "It was surreal," she said. "But there was a calmness about me." She opened the package and read her husband's letter. "Call me!"

  Tanya wavered. She wanted to be with Stefan, of course. But after all she'd been through, how could she leave? She considered all the ways in which people had escaped from the base: They'd driven off in a car or motorcycle—Tanja didn't have either. They jumped the fence—exhausted from working long hours and eating rice and beans, Tanja was too weak. Simply walking down the highway would be easiest, but that hardly ever worked: only three people she'd ever heard about had successfully blown using that technique.

  She wrote Stefan a letter telling him she didn't see how it would be possible. But she couldn't stop thinking about her husband. "I knew once I had sent the letter I had crossed a line," she said. One night, summoning every ounce of her courage, she called him.

  Overjoyed, Stefan urged Tanja to communicate with him by voice mail and text message, methods he knew would be hard to trace. Through these furtive exchanges, Tanja learned about her husband's new life. He was making over $100,000 per year as a production designer. He had a house in the San Fernando Valley and a car. Were she to join him, they could have children, he promised her. Finally, after several weeks, Stefan convinced his wife to risk escape.

  On August 5, 2006, Tanja took a ladder and walked toward the wall near the Castle, the only spot on the base not surrounded by an electric fence. It was just after midnight. Outside the wall, Stefan sat in his dark blue Mustang, waiting. His friend John, in a separate vehicle, drove down the road to an area where it was possible to pull onto the base. This, they knew, would alert the security guard, who would immediately go to investigate, at which point Tanja would jump over the wall. Even if she happened to trip the wire at the top, setting off an alarm, she would still have at least two minutes to run.

  Stefan had painstakingly organized the plan. He and John stayed on the phone as John parked on the base. A few minutes later, a roving security guard walked toward his car. John hung up—the agreed-upon signal. Then Stefan called Tanja. "Go baby, go!" he said. "Now!"

  "I'm going!" Tanja said, and taking a deep breath, jumped over the wall into the darkness. She saw her husband's waiting car and ran toward it. Then, with no one behind them, they sped off down Highway 79, out of the dust-choked San Jacinto Valley, and toward Los Angeles, and freedom, unleashed from the bonds of Int, David Miscavige, the Sea Organization, and the Church of Scientology.

  The Scientologists who have left the church since the mid-2000s, a group from all strata of the organization, form part of what some have called the Second Great Exodus. There is a significant difference between this generation and those who were part of the exodus of the 1980s, largely thanks to the Internet, which has enabled former members, both Sea Org and public, to find one another and unite over their shared experience. "You don't tend to blame yourself when you see that others went through the same thing," commented Jeff Hawkins, who has become an outspoken critic of Scientology's current management. "It's made for a strong, well-informed, and coordinated group of ex-members, which the church has never had to face before."

  Hawkins has helped this group develop, writing about his personal experiences in a memoir and blog, called Counterfeit Dreams, and creating a second website, Leaving Scientology, intended to help current, as well as former, Scientologists see beyond the church's hyperbolic speeches and marketing strategies. He advised his readers to look at their local org. "How many people are in the org? Are there more people in the org than there were ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Or are there less? What about events? Are there many more people now at events than there were ten years ago? You would think that if Scientology had been experiencing 'unprecedented expansion' for the last 10 years"—as the church often claims—"they would need bigger and bigger event venues. But the LA Events are still at the Shrine, as they were 20 years ago. And they have trouble filling that. So where is this expansion?"

  One answer is Scientology's real estate portfolio. Since the early 2000s, Scientology has been running what former church executives say is a very profitable building and renovation scheme called the Ideal Org program. Indeed, according to numerous reports from within and outside of the church, real estate may now be Scientology's principle cash cow.

  A comparable model for the Ideal Org program would be one used by another franchise-based operation, McDonald's, which is also one of the most successful real estate corporations in the country. McDonald's earns most of its income not from the sale of Big Macs, but from the money its franchise owners pay in rent on their properties. Scientology too has used this formula, assigning a special division of church management, the International Landlord Office, to purchase choice buildings around the world, often through third-party corporations, and paying for them in cash, with IAS money raised from Scientology's parishioners.

  In some cases, these buildings have reportedly been leased to the local orgs, which are expected to raise the money for rent, and for renovations, from their congregation. This buys the Church of Scientology, as a business enterprise, significant autonomy. No longer is the church dependent on services—sales of auditing and course packages—for income; the onus is now on the local organizations to succeed, and if they don't, the Church of Scientology, whose investment in the Ideal Org was minimal, is none the poorer.

  The New York Org, which I visited in 2005, was one of the original Ideal Orgs. As the Church of Scientology already owned the West 46th Street property, it did not need to purchase a new building, but the church nonetheless spent $18 million on renovating the structure, installing skylights, building a full-service spa for its Purification Rundown program, redoing the ornate lobby, and adding other plush features. Tom De Vocht, who'd run similar building projects in Florida, was tasked with overseeing the renovations, which, he said, were far from complete as the grand opening ceremony, slated for September 25, 2004, approached. To address the problem, some four hundred Sea Org members descended upon midtown Manhattan the day before the ribbon cutting, to finish the cosmetic renovations.

  After the ceremony, said De Vocht, many of the refurbishings had to be redone, having failed to meet certain building codes, which drove the local organization only further into debt. "It was a disaster. The org already owed $1.8 million to contractors who were banging on the door every day, saying, 'Where the hell's my money?' They had not paid the building off as yet, and so they were regging the public like crazy. But hey, on the face of things, it looked like a beautiful new organization." (In Scientology parlance, regging means "soliciting money from members.")

  The theory behind the Ideal Org program is "If you build it, they will come." By most accounts, however, it hasn't worked out that way. Montreal, for example, has always had a small congregation and roughly fifteen people on staff. Yet the Church of Scientology recently decided to open an Ideal Org there. Members were
convinced to donate $4 million to purchase the building and then another $4 million to renovate it. While the membership was pressured for the money, sometimes holding all-night fundraising sessions, the new building sat empty, and the original organization struggled with debt, because the parishioners had spent all their money on the building and thus could no longer afford to pay for services.

  But it is likely that this problem did not affect the Church of Scientology as a corporate entity. "As a money-making scheme, the Ideal Org plan is pretty good," said Mat Pesch, a former Sea Org official who was an executive in the International Landlord Office. Though he lacks current financial data, which remain confidential (Pesch left Scientology in 2005), he said, "What I would expect to find based on the indicators and data that I have is that cash and real estate are growing by leaps and bounds. On the other hand, the staff and public and structure of the church, other than real estate, are breaking down ... even the best PR will not be able to cover it up or slow it down."

  In the summer of 2010, Mike Rinder conducted an online survey of former Scientologists to find out what had motivated them to leave the church. Of the hundreds of respondents, most cited the unremitting pressure, sometimes called "crush regging," to donate to various Scientology causes, like the Ideal Org program. Rinder dubbed it the "vulture culture."

  Mike and Donna Henderson, onetime Scientologists from Clearwater, were victims of this culture. OT 7 and OT 8 respectively, they were nearly bankrupted by their involvement with the church. Today they are two of a growing number of ex-Scientologists who predict that in these dark economic times, Scientology's "unvarnished demand for money," as Mike puts it, may lead to its demise.

  Mike joined the Church of Scientology in 1971, as a nineteen-year-old in Los Angeles. By 1973, he'd signed a billion-year contract with the Sea Organization and was sailing with L. Ron Hubbard aboard the Apollo. When Hubbard moved onshore, Mike, eager to strike out on his own, went through the appropriate steps to leave the Sea Org. He moved back to L.A. and became a public Scientologist, ultimate reaching the very top of the Bridge to Total Freedom, as did Donna, his second wife, whom he married in 2003.