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Former Scientologists Level Accusations - Crime Library Message Boards

Ex-Members Say Leader David Miscavige Hit Subordinates;

Church Denies Accusations By MARTIN BASHIR, ETHAN NELSON and MAGGIE BURBANK Oct.

23, 2009 Some call it a manipulative cult.

Others say it's a well-established religion that helps people reach their potential. Since its inception in the 1950s, the Church of Scientology has rarely been far from controversy.

And now the Church is under attack again.

Former senior insiders claim the Church's current leader, David Miscavige, has created and encouraged a climate of violence within senior staff and was frequently violent himself. Marty Rathbun was an "Inspector General," a top lieutenant to David Miscavige, and oversaw the Church's legal affairs. "[Miscavige] viciously beat him, knocked him to the ground," said Rathbun, describing one attack. Amy Scobee was a Church executive who helped expand Scientology's outreach to celebrities. "And then [Miscavige] knocked him down in his chair.

Um ... to the ground, and he fell down on his back and he was laying on the ground," she said. Bruce Hines says he was a high level auditor, a kind of therapeutic counselor. "[Miscavige] just walked up and he hit me on the side of the head..." Hines said. And supporting their allegations is Mike Rinder, who for many years was Scientology's main spokesman.

He is now speaking out against the Church, the same Church he defended to ABC News in 1998. "I think that there isn't a person on this earth that couldn't benefit from the teachings of Scientology," he said at the time. The Church's current spokesman is Tommy Davis. "Nightline" met with Davis at Scientology's New York Church, where he granted us a rare interview. "Is Mr.

Miscavige violent towards Scientologists and has he been physically violent in the past?" we asked. "Absolutely not," said Davis.

"Absolutely not. He is not.

He is not and ...

It's not in his character, it's not in his nature, and it is not the kind of person he is." Miscavige spoke at a 2004 Scientology ceremony. "One quality that has always set us apart is that we are unselfish," he said.

"Yes we have an utter monopoly on workable solutions, but we share those solutions with anyone who reaches for them." In 2004, Miscavige awarded the Church's biggest star and his close friend, Tom Cruise, the "Freedom Medal of Valor," at an elaborate ceremony touting service and good works. But the private face of Miscavige, according to these former Scientologists, is very different. "I'll just say it outright.

I consider him to be a sociopath," said Hines. "I think the man's stark-staring mad," said Rathbun. Energetic and charismatic, David Miscavige quickly moved up the ranks after joining the Church, and became outright leader after Scientology founder L.

Ron Hubbard's death in 1986. Just a few years into his leadership, David Miscavige and Marty Rathbun were battling back against detractors, and after a devastating article in Time magazine, which referred to Scientology as a "thriving cult of greed and power," they decided to go on the offensive. "I was very much involved in ...

Litigation that was goin' on on ongoing cases," said Rathbun.

"But also, intelligence side of it." Miscavige agreed to appear live on "Nightline" in 1992.

It remains his only television interview. "If you really looked at the big picture of what's happening in Scientology, it isn't really controversial, certainly to a Scientologist," Miscavige told host Ted Koppel. The interview included the following exchange: Koppel: There's a little bit of a problem in getting people to talk critically about the Scientology because, quite frankly, they're scared. Miscavige: Oh, no, no, no, no. Koppel: Well, I'm telling you-- Miscavige: No, no, no, no.

Let me tell you-- Koppel: I'm telling you people are scared. Miscavige: Let me explain something to you.

The most disingenuous thing is that you have those people.

Now, let's not give the American public the wrong impression. 'Utterly, Completely, Totally Ridiculous' Rathbun described the atmosphere in the studio that day.

"It was pretty -- electric..." he said. "Quite frankly," Miscavige told Koppel, "from my view, a lot of the people who have written stories on Scientology are doing it from a certain pitch, they already have their story somewhat made up." But these former senior Scientologists say as Miscavige's leadership progressed, he became increasingly eccentric. "He got his beagle and he literally had somebody tailor a blue vest sweater for his beagle dog and made up epaulets, these Sea Org ranks in the Sea Organization," said Rathbun, referring to the religious order within the Church.

"And he had four stripes put on, captain, for the dog.

And he would bring the dog in.

And if those guys didn't salute the dog, he would just viciously berate them and invalidate them." Amy Scobee gave her account.

"[Miscavige] comes with his dog, with a sweater, with commander stripes.

And, the dog let out a little bark when she saw me.

And, uh, David Miscavige said, you know ...

'You've got somethin' goin' on.

Because sh ... she is detecting out ethics.

And you have something going on.' I think what the dog was really saying is, you know, 'You look like the only halfway sane person to me.

Help me outta this outfit.'" Continued...

We asked Davis about the story: Nightline: One former member says that Mr.

Miscavige had a vest tailored for his dog with epaulets similar to those that would be worn by SeaOrg members, and he would order staffers to salute the dog. Davis: That is utterly, completely, totally ridiculous. Nightline: Your own reaction was one of complete disbelief, I think it's fair to say. Davis: Totally, because it's unbelievable. Nightline: And yet, there are consistencies between individuals who observed the dog, dressed in a particular way ... Davis: Uh-huh. Nightline: ...

And a particular breed.

Amy Scobee also confirms that Mr.

Miscavige would bring his dog around dressed like a uniformed member and if the dog barked, she says, he would suggest that the individual towards whom the dog barked was behaving badly, had some kind of negative problem.

Is that true? Davis: I don't know.

I mean maybe we should have the dog come in here and see if it barks at you, Martin.

(Laughs.) Marty Rathbun, who spent 27 years in the Church of Scientology, says it was more serious than a uniformed dog.

He says he personally saw its leader, David Miscavige, strike subordinates on numerous occasions, including senior colleague Tom De Vocht. "Miscavige walks in and goes -- asks Tom some question and there's the slightest lag in his response," said Rathbun.

"Miscavige just takes off across the room in front of 80 people and get -- delivered -- just a ...

Beating to the guy.

I mean, beat him up bad." Tom De Vocht, who left the Church in 2005 after 28 years, recounted this event to ABC News, saying David Miscavige hit him, knocked him to the ground and kicked him a number of times.

According to Rathbun, Mike Rinder was also a victim of numerous attacks by Miscavige. "I saw him ...

Attack him while he was sitting in a chair and hitting him upside the head," said Rathbun.

"And then -- in -- and then wrestling him around the neck and ...

Throwing him to the ground...

I saw at least a dozen times, this happen." Amy Scobee says she also witnessed Miscavige attack Rinder. "David came right behind him, just out of the blue ...

And grabbed him ...

Around the neck, and was throttling, squeezing hard to the point where David's face was shaking, and arms were shaking that he was squeezing so hard," said Scobee. Mike Rinder, who left the Church in 2007, corroborated these specific incidents and told ABC News he was the victim of repeated acts of random violence at the hands of Miscavige. Bruce Hines said he himself was physically struck by Miscavige. "I had been called up from Los Angeles ...

I was kind of in trouble," said Hines.

"So I'm sitting there at my desk and so I hear his voice booming out in the hallway ...

He said, 'Where is that mother f ?' ...

And he just walked up and he hit me on the side of the head.

It was a ... he didn't have a closed fist.

But it was an open hand.

But it was ... it definitely hurt and it definitely knocked me back." Why didn't Hines react by hitting back? "So say I did that.

He hits me and I just go bam.

And, you know, sock him in the jaw or something.

That would mean, um, I had just forfeited my hope for eternity," said Hines.

"... Because it's drilled in over and over and over again, that Scientology has the only route to freedom." So Miscavige has the power over eternity? "Yes." 'I Broke Down' The Church provided ABC more than a dozen affidavits from current Scientologists, including some of the supposed victims, saying allegations that Miscavige struck subordinates are "false and ridiculous" ...

He "is not a man violence." Tommy Davis, Scientology's spokesman, says the former staffers are bitter and disgruntled liars. Nightline: ...

Tom De Vocht has described being personally hit ... Davis: Tom De Vocht, if he was personally hit, then why in his 20 years of marriage to his wife did he never say anything to her about it?

... Why did Mike Rinder, who was married for 35 years, why has his wife made it very clear that never did he come home with any bruises, any marks, nor did he ever mention ever being attacked by Mr.

Miscavige, struck or hit by him?

... The fact of the matter is, is both Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun are on record as having denied those exact allegations.

... Mike Rinder to the BBC stated repeatedly allegations of his ...

His having been physically attacked by Mr.

Miscavige are, "Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!" In 1998, Rathbun told the St.

Petersburg Times, "I have never known David Miscavige in 20 years to hit anyone." Nightline: "So, were you lying then, or are you lying now?" "Then," Rathbun insisted.

"Because at the time, I perceived that this guy was -- of the importance that we had to do that.

... If I told the truth [at the time] to a newspaper reporter on something like that ...

I could have been expelled from Scientology forever." Davis says not only has David Miscavige never been violent towards anyone, he says it was in fact Marty Rathbun himself who was the violent one. "The only person I know of who was abusive and cruel was Marty Rathbun," said Davis.

"He was an abusive, cruel, and violent man." Rathbun admits he was violent on many occasions, but says it was because Miscavige urged him to be physical, an allegation the Church denies. "I have admitted that I have engaged in stuff," he said.

"...It wasn't in my nature, whatsoever." "[Miscavige] created an environment where he was getting others to do the same," said Rathbun.

"And I broke down and I punched Mike Rinder pretty hard a couple of times.

... a man I had known for decades ...

And that's precisely the thing.

It made me feel terrible.

It made me sick to my stomach." Mike Rinder corroborated to ABC News that he was a victim of abuse at the hands of Rathbun.

But violence, according to Bruce Hines, wasn't the only tool used to discipline staff. Continued...

"I was assigned to the ...

Rehabilitation Project Force it's called," said Hines.

"Or generally known as the RPF." The RPF is a disciplinary program for Sea Org members, which Hines says includes manual labor and intensive counseling. "The question they ask -- Was there an evil purpose or a destructive intention that prompted you to commit that overt?" Hines said.

"After many hours of this you start to come up with things like, 'Oh, really ...

I guess I must really want to destroy mankind.' Phew, think about that.

Six years of that was a lot." Davis described the program. "It is a ...

A program that, uh, members of the Church's religious order, uh, do voluntarily and are given the opportunity to do if, uh, they're found to have failed in their duties," he said. Hines says when he was in the RPF there were periods of time when he could not see his son. "In this case, the child -- where the RPF was also where the school was.

... I would get to see him sort of run by in the distance sometimes," said Hines.

"And we could kind of wave to each other.

But I'm not allowed to actually talk to him." We asked Tommy Davis what the Church's current policy is on the RPF and family. Nightline: If somebody is married and they're sent to the RPF Davis: Uh-huh. Nightline: ...

Are there controls placed on how much they can see their family? Davis: Uh, there ...

There's ... there's specific policies which apply to the Rehabilitation Project Force, which govern, uh, how the person doing the program, uh, you know, what they do, what their schedule is. Nightline: And how much time in a week would an individual be allowed to see their family in the schedule? Davis: Oh, I don't know.

I don't know off the top of my head. Nightline: Once a week? Davis: Probably, yeah, I would imagine once a week would ...

Sounds about right.

Yeah. Nightline: Does that sound appropriate ... Davis: ...

I think so. Yeah.

Sure. During his time in the RPF, Bruce Hines says he received some sad news about his marriage. "I was married to another Sea Org member who was not in the RPF, and she decided she wanted to divorce me," said Hines.

"This was very, very common.

Someone in the RPF, their spouse would divorce them because ...

They would receive pressure to do it." The Church says it does not pressure couples to divorce.

Bruce Hines left the Church in 2003.

He and his son, who also left, say they are considered to be suppressive people by the Church -- a Scientology term for "antisocial personalities." As a result, they say close family members still in the Church are no longer talking to them. "I have two nieces who live in Clearwater, Fla., who won't talk to me," said Hines. "My sister's former husband, he won't talk to me.

And my son, he was born in the Sea Org, he can't speak to his brother or his mother because they refuse it.

He's out, he's now left.

And because of that, he's suppressive and so they ...

They're required to disconnect." Hines' ex-wife told ABC News she disconnected from him and their son because she didn't want to have anything to do with anyone who lied about her Church.

Scientology told us they never force anyone to disconnect. 'I Cannot Stand to Watch This' Marty Rathbun says he decided to end his long career in the Church of Scientology after he saw a longtime friend, Tom De Vocht, was attacked by David Miscavige. "I swear to you," said Rathbun.

"I was there and I was -- it was that moment of truth for me where I either am going to put this guy's lights out for good or I'm gonna remove myself from the environment so I don't.

And that literally was what was going through my head.

I cannot stand to watch this.

I cannot live with this anymore." Before the accusers left, Davis says, they were removed from their positions of responsibility. "These are all people who were removed either by Mr.

Miscavige or by their peers for gross ...

Misconduct and malfeasance in their positions," Davis said.

"We were glad that they were gone.

And, on top of that, the Church has literally taken off explosively since they were gone, and frankly for a ...

To a large extent, because they're gone." Since leaving the Church, Marty Rathbun has said little about his experience -- until he gave a series of interviews to the St.

Petersburg Times in Florida, published this summer. Rathbun has set up a Web site inviting other Scientologists to make contact if they too are considering defection, or have already left.

He lives in an obscure location ...

Far away from the power centers of the Church. What would he like to see happen to Miscavige? "I would like to see him cease, cease his continuing abuses," said Rathbun. As for punishment? "I think he should have to pay the piper for what he's done and what punishment that is, I don't know," said Rathbun.

"Maybe the greatest punishment is the self-inflicted punishment of the recognition-- of what he's done." http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/scie...ahoo_pitchlist

Scientology: The Truth Rundown, Part 1 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology By Joe Childs and Thomas C.

Tobin, Times Staff Writers In Print: Sunday, June 21, 2009 Part ONE of THREE The leader of the Church of Scientology strode into the room with a boom box and an announcement: Time for a game of musical chairs. David Miscavige had kept more than 30 members of his church's executive staff cooped up for weeks in a small office building outside Los Angeles, not letting them leave except to grab a shower.

They slept on the floor, their food carted in. Their assignment was to develop strategic plans for the church.

But the leader trashed their every idea and berated them as incompetents and enemies, of him and the church. Prove your devotion, Miscavige told them, by winning at musical chairs.

Everyone else — losers, all of you — will be banished to Scientology outposts around the world.

If families are split up, too bad. To the music of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody they played through the night, parading around a conference room in their Navy-style uniforms, grown men and women wrestling over chairs. The next evening, early in 2004, Miscavige gathered the group and out of nowhere slapped a manager named Tom De Vocht, threw him to the ground and delivered more blows.

De Vocht took the beating and the humiliation in silence — the way other executives always took the leader's attacks. This account comes from executives who for decades were key figures in Scientology's powerful inner circle.

Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are speaking out for the first time. Two other former executives who defected also agreed to interviews with the St.

Petersburg Times: De Vocht, who for years oversaw the church's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, and Amy Scobee, who helped create Scientology's celebrity network, which caters to the likes of John Travolta and Tom Cruise. One by one, the four defectors walked away from the only life they knew.

That Rathbun and Rinder are speaking out is a stunning reversal because they were among Miscavige's closest associates, Haldeman and Ehrlichman to his Nixon. Now they provide an unprecedented look inside the upper reaches of the tightly controlled organization.

They reveal: • Physical violence permeated Scientology's international management team.

Miscavige set the tone, routinely attacking his lieutenants.

Rinder says the leader attacked him some 50 times. Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht admit that they, too, attacked their colleagues, to demonstrate loyalty to Miscavige and prove their mettle. • Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multi*layered system of "ecclesiastical justice.'' It includes publicly confessing sins and crimes to a group of peers, being ordered to jump into a pool fully clothed, facing embarrassing "security checks'' or, worse, being isolated as a "suppressive person.'' At the pinnacle of the hierarchy, Miscavige commands such power that managers follow his orders, however bizarre, with lemming-like obedience. • Church staffers covered up how they botched the care of Lisa McPherson, a Scientologist who died after they held her 17 days in isolation at Clearwater's Fort Harrison Hotel. Rathbun, who Miscavige put in charge of dealing with the fallout from the case, admits that he ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence.

He and others also reveal that Miscavige made an embarrassing miscalculation on McPherson's Scientology counseling. • With Miscavige calling the shots and Rathbun among those at his side, the church muscled the IRS into granting Scientology tax-exempt status.

Offering fresh perspective on one of the church's crowning moments, Rathbun details an extraordinary campaign of public pressure backed by thousands of lawsuits. • To prop up revenues, Miscavige has turned to long-time parishioners, urging them to buy material that the church markets as must-have, improved sacred scripture. Church officials deny the accusations.

Miscavige never hit a single church staffer, not once, they said. On May 13, the Times asked to interview Miscavige, in person or by phone, and renewed the request repeatedly the past five weeks.

Church officials said Miscavige's schedule would not permit an interview before July. At 5:50 p.m.

Saturday, Miscavige e-mailed the Times to protest the newspaper's decision to publish instead of waiting until he was available.

His letter said he would produce information "annihilating the credibility'' of the defectors.

Beloved by millions of Scientologists, church spokesmen say, Miscavige has guided the church through a quarter-century of growth. The defectors are liars, they say, bitter apostates who have dug up tired allegations from the Internet and inflated the importance of the positions they held in Scientology's dedicated work force known as the Sea Org.

They say it was the defectors who physically abused staff members, and when Miscavige found out, he put a stop to it and demoted them. Now they say the defectors are trying to stage a coup, inventing allegations so they can topple Miscavige and seize control of the church. The defectors deny it.

They say they are speaking out because Miscavige must be exposed. Rathbun says the leader's mistreatment of staff has driven away managers and paralyzed those who stay.

"It's becoming chaos because ...

There's no form of organization.

Nobody's respected because he's constantly denigrating and beating on people.'' "I don't want people to continue to be hurt and tricked and lied to," Rinder said.

"I was unsuccessful in changing anything through my own lack of courage when I was inside the church. "But I believe these abuses need to end … This rot being instigated from inside Scientology actually is more destructive to the Scientology movement than anything external to it.'' Continued..

BEATINGS: Random, whimsical At 49, Miscavige is fit and tanned, his chiseled good looks accented by intense blue eyes.

His frame is on the short side at 5 feet 5, but solid, with a matching, vise-like handshake. The voice, resonant and strong, can transfix a crowd of thousands.

Many call him "COB," because he is chairman of the board of the entity responsible for safeguarding Scientology, founded by L.

Ron Hubbard in 1954. "He is one of the most capable, intelligent individuals I've ever met," Rathbun said.

"But L. Ron Hubbard says the intelligence scale doesn't necessarily line up with the sanity scale.

Adolf Hitler was brilliant.

Stalin was brilliant.

They were geniuses.

But they were also on a certain level stark, staring mad." Rathbun, Rinder, Scobee and De Vocht say they participated in and witnessed madness, from musical chairs to repeated physical abuse. What triggered Miscavige's outbursts?

The victims usually had no clue. "If it wasn't the answer he wanted to hear, he'd lose it," De Vocht said.

"If it was contrary to how he thought, he'd lose it.

If he found it to be smart aleck, or it was a better answer than he had, he would lose it." Rathbun and Rinder list the executives they saw Miscavige attack: Marc Yager: At least 20 times. Guillaume Lesevre: At least 10 times. Ray Mithoff: Rathbun said Miscavige "would regularly hit this guy open-handed upside the head real hard and jar him.

Or grab him by the neck and throw him on the floor." Norman Starkey: "Right in the parking lot, (Miscavige) just beat the living f--- out of him, got him on the ground and then started kicking him when he was down,'' Rathbun said. He said he saw Rinder "get beat up at least a dozen times just in those last four years … some of them were pretty gruesome." Said Rinder: "Yager was like a punching bag.

So was I." He added: "The issue wasn't the physical pain of it.

The issue was the humiliation and the domination.

... It's the fact that the domination you're getting — hit in the face, kicked — and you can't do anything about it.

If you did try, you'd be attacking the COB. "It was random and whimsical.

It could be the look on your face.

Or not answering a question quickly.

But it always was a punishment.'' Scobee said Miscavige never laid a hand on her or any other woman, but she witnessed many attacks, including the time the leader choked Rinder until his face turned purple.

Rinder confirmed that account. De Vocht estimated that from 2003 to 2005, he saw Miscavige strike staffers as many as 100 times. Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht admit that they, in turn, hit others.

In January 2004, Rathbun pummeled Rinder and had to be pried off by several church staffers. "Yes, that incident happened," Rinder said.

"It wasn't the only time that Marty or I was involved in some form of physical violence with people." He recalled holding a church staffer against a wall by the collar and pressing into his throat. Rathbun said he attacked many people, many times, including throwing Lesevre across a table, boxing Starkey's ears, and tackling Yager down a flight of stairs — all, he said, on Miscavige's orders.

He said he threw another staffer against the hood of a cab at Los Angeles International Airport.

As a crowd gathered to watch, he cocked his fist and told him to improve his attitude. De Vocht said he "punched a couple of guys" during one of many sessions where managers confessed their wrongdoings to their peers, a gathering that got raucous and physical.

Embarrassed about it now, he says he easily rationalized it then: "If I don't attack I'm going to be attacked.

It's a survival instinct in a weird situation that no one should be in." The four defectors each said the leader established a culture that encouraged physical violence. "It had become the accepted way of doing things," Rinder said.

"If COB did it, it was okay for everybody else to do it, too." Rinder said Rathbun was Miscavige's enforcer.

"If Dave didn't want to go do any dirty work himself, he sent Marty to do it for him." Rathbun doesn't deny it.

It's difficult to get the truth, he said, "unless you talk to somebody who's got some dirt on their hands.

And I freely admit I got dirt on my hands, and I feel terrible about it.

That's why I'm doing what I'm doing." Rathbun wasn't exempt from Miscavige's attacks.

"He once grabbed me by the neck and banged my head against the wall.'' Nobody fought back. "The thing is, he's got this huge entourage," Scobee said.

"He's the 'savior' of everything because he has to bail everybody out because we're all incompetent a , which is what he repeatedly tells us. "You don't have any money.

You don't have job experience.

You don't have anything.

And he could put you on the streets and ruin you." Church spokesman Tommy Davis said the defectors are lying.

Responding to Rinder's contention that Miscavige attacked him some 50 times, Davis said: "He's absolutely lying.'' Yager, Starkey, Mithoff, and Lesevre all emphatically told the Times that Miscavige never attacked them. Davis produced court affidavits in which Rathbun and Rinder, while still in Scientology's top ranks, praised the leader as a stellar person and vigorously denied rumors he had abused staff. Davis pointed to a 1998 Times story in which Miscavige denied the same rumors.

Rathbun backed him, saying that in 20 years working with Miscavige, he never saw the leader raise a hand to anyone. Continued...

"That's not his temperament,'' Rathbun said then.

"He's got enough personal horsepower that he doesn't need to resort to things like that.'' Says Rathbun now: "That was the biggest lie I ever told you." Davis played video of a confrontation between Rinder and a BBC reporter in London in 2007, just before Rinder left the church.

The reporter repeatedly asked about the Miscavige rumors, which Rinder heatedly denied as "rubbish." Now Rinder says that he lied to protect the church, and that his loyalty to Miscavige was misplaced.

He said he did then what Miscavige's staff is doing today: "Just deny it.

Nope. Not true. Never happened." The Church of Scientology describes itself as working for "a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights." Scobee says Miscavige does not practice what Scientology preaches.

He liberally labels church members as enemies, which forbids any contact with family and friends still in Scientology. "You cannot call yourself a religious leader as you beat people, as you confine people, as you rip apart families," she said.

"If I was trying to destroy Scientology, I would leave David Miscavige right where he is because he's doing a fantastic job of it." Character assassination That's what the defectors are doing to Miscavige, according to a team of two church lawyers and two spokesmen. Rathbun, Rinder, De Vocht and Scobee: All of them failed at their jobs, broke Sea Org rules and were ethically suspect, the team said.

Stack these four failures against a man of Miscavige's stature and it's clear who is credible and who is not. "It's not a question of they have a version and we have a version.

It's that this never happened," said Monique Yingling, a non-Scientologist lawyer who has represented the church for more than 20 years.

"There is a story here, and it's not what you've been told." As the lawyers and spokesmen defended Miscavige and sought to discredit his detractors, they produced materials from the four defectors' "ethics files'' — confessions, contritions, laments that the church keeps to document their failures. The documents illuminate a world of church justice outsiders rarely see.

This ethics system keeps Scientologists striving to stay productive.

It relies on the notion that at any given time, every human activity can be reduced to a statistic and everything — a group, a person, someone's job or marriage — can be measured and placed in one of 12 "conditions." The lower conditions include "Confusion," "Treason" and "Enemy." The highest condition is "Power," followed by "Power Change" and "Affluence." Moving up the ethics ladder requires that the subject pen confessions or soul-searching memos called "formulas," which are said to better the individual as he or she examines what went wrong.

These memos also can give the church a ready source of written material to use against members who would turn against Scientology. More documents are generated when a person wants to leave, or "blow." In 1959, Hubbard wrote a policy stating that a person leaves as a kind of noble gesture when he can't help himself from injuring the church.

To justify leaving, Hubbard believed, the person thinks up bad things to say about the church. Anyone who leaves has committed "overts" (harmful acts) against the church and is withholding them.

The church is obligated to make such people come clean, Hubbard said, because withholding overts against Scientology can lead to suicide or death by disease.

They must write down their transgressions to remain in good standing when they leave. Yingling and Davis said the church doesn't relish using documents from ethics files.

But after the four defectors spoke out against Miscavige, the lawyer and spokesman said they had no choice. They produced documents showing Scobee violated Sea Org rules on "romantic involvement outside of marriage." Scobee said the church is exaggerating. She acknowledged violating the rules by committing a sexual act in a supervisor's room, but noted the man involved was her future husband.

Another document said she "started a relationship" with a man not her husband in 1988.

Scobee said it was a non-Scientologist electrician who asked her to run away with him.

She said she declined and reported it to a supervisor but was disciplined anyway. A document from July 2003 cited poor performance and declared her unfit to work at the California base. Scobee counters that the church kept her in positions of responsibility for more than 20 years.

She was pictured in a 1996 church magazine as one of the "most proven" and "highly dedicated" senior executives in Scientology. "The point is, it doesn't matter if I was God or if I was a sloppy janitor," Scobee said.

"What I saw is what I saw." De Vocht was in a condition of "Treason" when he authored a memo in 2004 saying he made a land deal in Clearwater that lost the church $1 million.

In a 2002 letter to Miscavige, he confessed to squandering $10 million in church funds through waste and overspending on two projects. Asked about those documents, De Vocht said the writings in the ethics formulas reflect the distorted culture created by Miscavige, not reality.

"You say whatever you have to, to appear to be cooperative.

It's not a voluntary action.

It's a cover your a--, get with the program thing or you're going to get beat up.'' Praising Miscavige was part of the formula, De Vocht said.

"He's our pope, our leader, and he can't do wrong.

… If you say, 'I'll do everything I can to get it right,' then you can be okay.

You don't have an option other than to bow down and say, You're right and I'm wrong.'' The church says that Rinder, Scientology's top spokesman for decades, is an inveterate liar.

In its ethics files, the church says, Rinder admits that he lied 43 times over the years. "It was a real problem, Mike's propensity to lie ….Obviously he had an issue with the truth,'' said Davis, Rinder's successor as spokesman. After denying Miscavige hit him or anyone else, Rinder is lying now, Yingling said.

"He left because he was demoted … He is bitter now and he has in his bitterness latched on to the one allegation he so vehemently denied for so many years.'' Added Davis: "One of the things he was known for saying was, 'Well, if I'm so bad, why keep asking me to do things?' You know the answer to that question?...

The ultimate answer to that question is 'Mike, you know what, you're right.

Why keep asking.' And we stopped asking.

And then he left and nobody came for him.'' Continued...

Like the other defectors, Rinder says he's sure he wrote whatever is in the ethics files, but he says the admissions are meaningless, they were just whatever his superiors wanted to hear.

"All of these things were written to try and get into good graces or curry favor." Davis said Rinder has not been able to deal with his fall from spokesman for an international church to his current, workaday job. "Mike left.

I think we can all agree he is bitter,'' Davis said.

"This is a guy who ran with the big dogs in the tall grass … it's a very exciting life.

And now he is selling cars, and it must be a hell of a shock.'' The church released numerous pages of files it kept on Rathbun.

Among them: a 1994 letter that said he had completed a Truth Rundown — one of many types of confessionals — and apologizing for leaving the church briefly the year before;

Three confessions for striking and verbally abusing staff dozens of times;

And documents where he admits that he mishandled situations. In a 2003 document, Rathbun writes a "public announcement" detailing two decades of flubs, including: making himself out to be more important than he was, making more work for Miscavige, mismanaging staff and messing up major assignments, including the church's long-running battle with the IRS. Rathbun says he wrote what Miscavige wanted to hear. The church made special note of an affidavit dated June 6, 2009 — after the Times asked the church about Rathbun — authored by a Sea Org member whose name the church blacked out.

She criticized Rathbun for being violent and abusive and playing a role in her family's recent effort to wrest her out of Scientology. Rathbun says yes, he tried to help the family, because the woman voiced strong doubts about returning to Scientology. Like De Vocht's, many of Rathbun's confessions are marked by bountiful praise of Miscavige.

He writes, for example, that the leader "single-handedly salvaged Scientology." Scientology's international management cadre lives and works on the church's 500-acre compound in the arid hills opposite Mount San Jacinto from Palm Springs. Rathbun orchestrated a "reign of terror" there in 2002 and 2003, church representatives say, masquerading as an ethics officer while Miscavige was in Clearwater handling legal and other matters.

They say the leader returned in late 2003, summarily demoted Rathbun and began to clean up his mess. Rathbun says he was away from the base for almost all of 2002 and 2003, handling lawsuits and other sensitive matters at Miscavige's behest.

When he returned to the base in late 2003, he said, it was Miscavige who had established a "reign of terror.'' The church said Rathbun has inflated his importance in Scientology;

They say that after 1993, he never had a title. But in a 1998 Scientology magazine, Rathbun is featured as the main speaker at a major event at Ruth Eckerd Hall attended by 3,000 Scientologists.

The magazine said he was "inspector general" of the entity charged with safeguarding Scientology.

Also, the church provided the Times a court document from March 2000 that listed Rathbun as a "director'' of the same entity. If Rathbun's responsibility was as limited as the church says, the Times asked, how did he get people to submit to a reign of terror?

Davis, the church spokesman, erupted. "He's the one who's saying that Dave Miscavige beat these people,'' Davis screamed.

"And he's saying that Dave Miscavige beat the exact same people that he beat.

And that's what pisses me off.

Because this guy's a f lunatic and I don't have to explain how or why he became one or how it was allowable. "The fact is he's saying David Miscavige did what he did … And now I'm getting a little angry.

Am I angry at you?

Not necessarily. But I'm g-- d--- pissed at Marty Rathbun.

Because he knows that he was the reign of terror." Landing in Clearwater Fall 1975.

An outfit calling itself the United Churches of Florida announced it would rent the Fort Harrison Hotel from the Southern Land Development Corp., a company with plans to buy the historic building. No one — not even lawyers for the seller — could find out anything about Southern Land.

Not even a phone number. When the sale closed on Dec.

1, Southern paid $2.3 million in cash for the landmark property, where for 50 years locals held weddings, New Year's bashes and civic events. The newcomers promptly closed the hotel to the public.

Uniformed guards armed with mace and billy clubs patrolled the entrance. On Jan.

28, 1976, a public relations team from Los Angeles came to Clearwater and announced that the real buyer was the Church of Scientology of California. The deception put a scare into the sleepy town with gorgeous beaches.

Clearwater Mayor Gabe Cazares was incensed by the group's evasive and then heavy-handed tactics. "The Fort Harrison has been here for a half century and now, for the first time, it is actually a fort," he lamented.

"It's frightening." Locals grew anxious as they heard that Scientology was a cult with a belligerent streak.

It had sued the State Department, the Justice Department, the IRS, the CIA, the LAPD — any agency that pried or denied its requests. Why did Hubbard choose Clearwater?

He had run the church for years from a ship, the Apollo, and wanted a "land base.'' He sent scouts on a mission: Find a big building, near a good airport, in a warm climate. A property in Daytona Beach made the short list.

So did the Fort Harrison. It was to be Scientology's "flagship." Hubbard sent dispatches on how "Flag'' should be run, everything from marketing plans to the staff's grooming and dress.

It would be "huge, posh and self-supporting,'' Hubbard wrote, "a hotel of quality that puts the Waldorf Astoria to shame." Hubbard trademarked a motto for the hotel: "The friendliest place in the whole world." He would die a decade later, but already the next generation of church leaders was forming. Continued...

The Young Turks Hubbard called it "fair game.'' Those who seek to damage the church, he said, "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist.

May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.'' Mayor Cazares raised questions about the new group inhabiting the Fort Harrison, calling it a cult and trading lawsuits with the church.

The Times and the Clearwater Sun investigated. Scientologists followed Hubbard's playbook and went after enemies.

They tried to frame Cazares in a fake hit-and-run accident.

They intercepted Times' mail and falsely accused the paper's chairman, Nelson Poynter, of being a CIA agent. By the spring of 1976, Hubbard — the "Commodore" — was realizing his vision for the Fort Harrison.

Scientologists from around the world checked in for long stays.

They spent thousands on counseling called "auditing," which seeks to rid the subconscious mind of negative experiences, leading to "higher states of spiritual awareness." Mike Rinder, a 20-year-old Australian, ran the hotel telex, sending and receiving dispatches from Scientology outlets around the world. David Miscavige, a 16-year-old from suburban Philadelphia, dropped out of 10th grade on his birthday that April and came to work at the Fort Harrison.

He tended the grounds, served food and took pictures for promotional brochures. In no time, the cocksure Miscavige was supervising adults.

In 1977, after just 10 months in Clearwater, he was transferred to California, where he joined the Commodore's Messenger Organization, an esteemed group of about 20 who took on "missions'' assigned by Hubbard. Late in 1978, Miscavige was put in charge of the crew remodeling Hubbard's home on a Southern California ranch.

Among the group was a 21-year-old former college basketball player who had joined the church a year earlier in Portland. Thirty years later, Marty Rathbun says he can picture the first time he laid eyes on the teenage boss, strutting about, "barking out orders.'' No mistaking David Miscavige. The early power plays In the mid 1970s, the IRS hired a clerk-typist named Gerald Bennett Wolfe.

What they didn't know was that he was a Scientology plant — code name "Silver.'' He broke into an attorney's office at IRS headquarters in Washington and copied government documents for months, with help from the Guardian's Office, the church's secretive intelligence arm. The IRS had revoked Scientology's tax exemption some 10 years earlier, saying it was a commercial enterprise.

Scientology fought back, withholding tax payments, unleashing its lawyers and using Silver to infiltrate the agency. But his undercover mission backfired.

On July 8, 1977, the FBI raided Scientology headquarters in Washington and L.A., seizing burglary tools, surveillance equipment and 48,000 documents. In October 1979, Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, who directed the Guardian's Office, and 10 other Scientologists were convicted on charges of conspiring to steal government documents or obstruct justice.

Her husband, named an un*indicted co-conspirator, went into seclusion at his ranch near La Quinta, Calif. By then, two of the young men from the remodeling detail were trusted aides to the self-exiled church founder.

Rathbun delivered Hubbard's mail and messages;

Miscavige was his "action chief.'' In January 1981, Miscavige asked Rathbun to join him on a road trip to the Super Bowl.

Driving eight-hour shifts from L.A.

To New Orleans, they got to know each other along the way. Later that year, Hubbard gave Miscavige a critical assignment: Resolve the crush of lawsuits and investigations that threatened the church.

Miscavige chose Rathbun and three others to help handle the job. Rathbun says he spent six months prioritizing cases and developing strategy. "I put together units to handle cases, one in Clearwater, one in New York, one in Boston, one in Toronto,'' he said.

"They would answer to me.

I was sort of becoming in charge of the legal operation.'' Miscavige, meanwhile, was disposing of internal rivals and building power.

At age 21, he talked Hubbard's wife into resigning. It didn't hurt to have Hubbard's approval.

His son had filed a lawsuit claiming that the company overseeing Hubbard's assets, headed by Miscavige, was siphoning his fortune.

Hubbard responded with a declaration stating that he had "unequivocal confidence in David Miscavige, who is a long-time devoted Scientologist, a trusted associate and a good friend to me." Rinder, in turn, became a trusted associate to the emerging leader.

Miscavige pulled his childhood acquaintance out of Clearwater to help dissolve the Guardian's Office, the arm of Scientology that had stolen the IRS files and committed other offenses. He installed Rinder as head of the new international Office of Special Affairs.

Part of Rinder's new job was to spread a revised narrative about Scientology: The church's new leaders were appalled to learn of the Guardian Office's dirty tricks.

That was not, they said, what Scientology was all about. Continued...

Besting his rivals On Jan.

27, 1986, thousands of Scientologists gathered at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, where a solemn Miscavige delivered the news: The founder had moved on to a new level of research that would be "done in an exterior state … completely exterior of the body.'' At 74, L.

Ron Hubbard was dead. Miscavige yielded the microphone to church attorney Earle Cooley, who did not mention Miscavige by name, but helped cement him as future leader.

Cooley disclosed that Hubbard, who had died of a stroke, left the bulk of his estate to Scientology, giving final instructions that were "his ultimate expression of his confidence in the management of the church.'' He left no explicit succession plan, leaving open the question of who would lead the church. Months later, Miscavige, Rathbun and another executive took control of the Religious Technology Center, the RTC, which Hubbard created as the highest ecclesiastical body in the church.

They dismissed the staff and pressured the head of the office to step down. Miscavige became the RTC's chairman of the board, a title he still holds.

Rathbun took the high-ranking post of inspector general for ethics. The last rivals for control of Scientology were Pat and Annie Broeker, who had assisted Hubbard in his last years.

The founder had elevated them to "loyal officer" status, a higher rank than Miscavige, a captain. The Broekers also had custody of Hubbard's last writings, the cherished upper levels of Scientology auditing that he wrote by hand while in seclusion.

For a church that depends in large part on auditing fees, the papers were a gold mine not only spiritually, but financially.

Miscavige wanted them. Rathbun reveals what they did: The day Pat Broeker and Miscavige flew cross-country to meet church lawyers in Washington, Rathbun positioned a team of about 20 men outside the Broekers' ranch in Barstow, Calif. During a layover in Chicago, Miscavige called with the signal for Rathbun to phone the ranch caretaker.

Rathbun told her that Miscavige and Broeker had called with a message: The FBI planned to raid the ranch in two hours.

If they didn't get Hubbard's papers out, they might be lost forever. The woman let Rathbun and his guys in. "It worked like a charm," he said. Miscavige's rise was complete.

At 26, he answered to no one in Scientology. For Rathbun, the point of the story is that Miscavige maneuvered his way to the top, he was not the chosen one.

But Scientologists believe he was anointed.

"And when they believe that, they're willing to do almost anything." [url]It was a conversation days after getting their hands on Hubbard's last writings that Rathbun says showed him that Miscavige saw himself not as a political climber but as a chosen leader. Miscavige seemed in awe of his new responsibilities, so Rathbun tried to buck him up.

"I said my basketball coach in high school had these inspirational sayings.

One, from Darrell Royal of the Texas Longhorns, stuck with me.

He said, 'I don't worry about choosing a leader.

He'll emerge.' '' "That's false data!'' Miscavige shot back. Said Rathbun: "He rejected that so fast.

Boy, when I suggested he was anything other than anointed, he jumped down my throat.'' Scientology vs.

The IRS By the late 1980s, the battle with the IRS had quieted from the wild days of break-ins and indictments.

But Miscavige was no less intent on getting back the church's tax exemption, which he thought would legitimize Scientology. The new strategy, according to Rathbun: Overwhelm the IRS.

Force mistakes. The church filed about 200 lawsuits against the IRS, seeking documents to prove IRS harassment and challenging the agency's refusal to grant tax exemptions to church entities. Some 2,300 individual Scientologists also sued the agency, demanding tax deductions for their contributions. "Before you knew it, these simple little cookie-cutter suits … became full-blown legal cases," Rathbun said. Washington-based attorney William C.

Walsh, who is now helping the church rebut the defectors claims, shepherded many of those cases.

"We wanted to get to the bottom of what we felt was discrimination,'' he said.

"And we got a lot of documents, evidence that proved it.'' "It's fair to say that when we started, there was a lot of distrust on both sides and suspicion,'' Walsh said.

"We had to dispel that and prove who we were and what kind of people we were.'' Yingling teamed with Walsh, Miscavige and Rathbun on the case.

She said the IRS investigation of Miscavige resulted in a file thicker than the FBI's file on Dr.

Martin Luther King.

"I mean it was insane,'' she said. The church ratcheted up the pressure with a relentless campaign against the IRS. Armed with IRS records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Scientology's magazine, Freedom, featured stories on alleged IRS abuses: lavish retreats on the taxpayers' dime;

Setting quotas on audits of individual Scientologists;

Targeting small businesses for audits while politically connected corporations were overlooked. Scientologists distributed the magazine on the front steps of the IRS building in Washington. A group called the National Coalition of IRS Whistleblowers waged its own campaign.

Unbeknownst to many, it was quietly created and financed by Scientology. It was a grinding war, with Scientology willing to spend whatever it took to best the federal agency.

"I didn't even think about money,'' Rathbun said.

"We did whatever we needed to do.'' They also knew the other side was hurting.

A memo obtained by the church said the Scientology lawsuits had tapped the IRS's litigation budget before the year was up. The church used other documents it got from the IRS against the agency. Continued...

In one, the Department of Justice scolded the IRS for taking indefensible positions in court cases against Scientology.

The department said it feared being "sucked down" with the IRS and tarnished. Another memo documented a conference of 20 IRS officials in the 1970s.

They were trying to figure out how to respond to a judge's ruling that Scientology met the agency's definition of a religion.

The IRS' solution?

They talked about changing the definition. Rathbun calls it the "Final Solution" conference, a meeting that demonstrated the IRS bias against Scientology.

"We used that (memo) I don't know how many times on them," he said. By 1991, Miscavige had grown impatient with the legal tussle.

He was confident he could personally persuade the IRS to bend.

That October, he and Rathbun walked into IRS headquarters in Washington and asked to meet with IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg.

They had no appointment. Goldberg, who did not respond to interview requests for this story, did not see them that day, but he met with them a week later. Rathbun says that contrary to rumor, no bribes were paid, no extortion used.

It was round-the-clock preparation and persistence — plus thousands of lawsuits, hard-hitting magazine articles and full-page ads in USA Today criticizing the IRS. "That was enough," Rathbun said.

"You didn't need blackmail." He and Miscavige prepped incessantly for their meeting.

"I'm sitting there with three banker's boxes of documents.

He (Miscavige) has this 20-page speech to deliver to these guys.

And for every sentence, I've got two folders'' of backup. Miscavige presented the argument that Scientology is a bona fide religion — then offered an olive branch. Rathbun recalls the gist of the leader's words to the IRS: Look, we can just turn this off.

This isn't the purpose of the church.

We're just trying to defend ourselves.

And this is the way we defend.

We aggressively defend.

If we can sit down and actually deal with the merits, get to what we feel we are actually entitled to, this all could be gone. The two sides took a break. Rathbun remembered: "Out in the hallway, Goldberg comes up to me because he sees I'm the right-hand guy.

He goes: 'Does he mean it?

We can really turn it off?' '' "And I said,'' turning his hand for effect, " 'Like a faucet.' '' The two sides started talks.

Yingling said she warned church leaders to steel themselves, counseling that they answer every question, no matter how offensive. Agents asked some doozies: about LSD initiation rituals, whether members were shot when they got out of line and about training terrorists in Mexico.

"We answered everything,'' Yingling said, crediting Miscavige for insisting the church be open, honest and cooperative. The back and forth lasted two years and resulted in this agreement: The church paid $12.5 million.

The IRS dropped its criminal investigations.

All pending cases were dropped. On Oct.

8, 1993, some 10,000 church members gathered in the Los Angeles Sports Arena to celebrate the leader's announcement: The IRS had restored the church's tax exemption, legitimizing Scientology as a church, not a for-profit operation. "The war is over," Miscavige told the crowd.

"This means everything.'' Recharged on the Freewinds The euphoria was short-lived.

With the tax cases ended, court records became public.

Newspapers wanted to know why Miscavige and his wife together made around $100,000 while at the time most church staffers made but $50 a week.

Miscavige was furious, and got angrier still when Rathbun argued it would be an insignificant story. Shortly after, Miscavige's wife, Michelle, came to Rathbun's office and, without a word, removed the gold captain's bars from his Sea Org uniform.

Miscavige called him an SP, a suppressive person, and Rathbun was forced to confess his sins before his own staff. Rathbun was done.

"I thought to myself: You know what?

That's it. What am I doing here?'' From the safe in his office at the California base he took three 1-ounce pieces of gold, worth about $500 each, slipped on a bomber jacket, ate breakfast in the mess hall and drove east toward Pensacola, to visit a friend.

Miscavige tracked him down and arranged to meet in New Orleans. "He begged me to come back,'' Rathbun recalled, adding that Miscavige offered the carrot of a two-year stint aboard the Freewinds, a Scientology cruise ship where parishioners get the highest levels of counseling while sailing the Caribbean. Rathbun said Miscavige told him: You've worked hard, you deserved a reward.

Go spend time on the ship.

Get yourself right, get in touch with what made you love the church in the first place.

Hone your skills, come back as the best auditor on the planet. It was just what Rathbun needed to hear: "I couldn't have been more thankful.'' He came aboard the Freewinds late in 1993.

He worked odd jobs, devoured Hubbard's writings and spent eight to 10 hours a day receiving counseling and training to be an auditor. After two years at sea, he reported to Clear*water, to Flag, where the church bases its best auditors and offers upper levels of training.

But the quality of auditing had slipped.

Rathbun's assignment was to help bring it back up. Late in the summer of 1995, a woman exited an auditing room at the Fort Harrison Hotel, raised her arms above her head and shouted with delight — a breach of the all-quiet protocol on the auditing floor. "Who's that?'' Rathbun asked a supervisor. "That's Lisa McPherson.'' http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012148.ece

Scientology's response to church defectors: 'Total lies' By Joe Childs and Thomas C.

Tobin, Times Staff Writers Posted: Jun 20, 2009 04:30 AM The Church of Scientology pressed vigorously Friday (June 19, 2009) to delay publication of the Times' Scientology story.

Its spokesmen and lawyers said that the few days the newspaper gave the church to respond to Mike Rinder, who only recently agreed to go public, was not enough time.

The church also said the Times needs to talk to more people. Church spokesmen, executives, attorneys and others flew in from around the country to meet with reporters in Clearwater.

The parade started with ex-wives of the three male defectors.

All three are Scientologists still.

Each praised Miscavige's visionary leadership and said their ex-husbands can't be trusted. Jennifer Linson said her ex, Tom De Vocht, had a reckless streak.

Anne Joasem said her ex, Marty Rathbun, "lives for war.'' Cathy Rinder said her ex is so out of touch with their children he doesn't know his 24-year-old son has skin cancer. Next came Norman Starkey, a church executive who knew Scientology founder L.

Ron Hubbard. He said Miscavige never attacked him.

"I know everything he is doing is exactly in line with what Mr.

Hubbard had in mind.'' Hubbard biographer Danny Sherman told a story of Miscavige spotting an injured sparrow, talking to it and checking back later to see if it lived.

"It was immensely tender.'' New York lawyer Eric Lieberman said he has represented the church 32 years and worked with Rathbun, who he said is aggressive and prone to ill-advised decisions. After eight hours, when reporters readied to leave, church spokesman Tommy Davis brought in nine senior members of the management team.

They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the exit and insisted they be heard.

Marc Yager, Guillaume Lesevre, Ray Mithoff, Mark Ingber, all said Miscavige never struck them. "I stayed up all night, scribbled notes on a piece of paper of things I had to tell you,'' Lesevre said.

"And obviously you don't want to hear me.

Fine. I want it on record that you don't want to hear what I've got to say." Ray Mithoff: "These guys are attacking — they're not just attacking him, they're attacking my whole religion and saying things about my base, the place I've worked for 27 years.'' Greg Wilhere, yelling, said, "Mr.

Miscavige never hit, abused anyone.

And I know it better than anyone because I've been by his side more than Rinder, Rathbun and the rest of them.'' David Bloomberg: "Do you not think that you are perhaps being used as a pawn in a very sick game?" Lyman Spurlock: "What they want to do is extort money from the church.

… and right now the St.

Pete Times is their extortion vehicle.

... you're just their lackeys.

They're using you." A 25-hour effort In 25 hours of meetings with reporters, the two church lawyers and two spokesmen extolled the accomplishments of David Miscavige and attacked the credibility of the defectors. The defectors are spewing "absolute and total lies,'' a church spokesman said, in an effort to tarnish Miscavige, a revered religious leader. The defectors are vengeful failures, said lawyer Monique Yingling, a non-Scientologist who represents the church. "They didn't leave because one day they decided they wanted a different life,'' she said.

"They left because they were removed from post, demoted and they couldn't handle it.

That's basically it. "And now they are out there bitter and disgruntled and attacking the one individual who is really responsible for what's happening to the church.

That's your story.'' Yingling and chief church spokesman Tommy Davis acknowledged that violence became part of the management culture.

"Some of them were beat up,'' Yingling said.

"But not by David Miscavige.

You know by who? Marty Rathbun.'' Davis said his own internal investigation found that Rathbun attacked 22 Sea Org members in the years before he left the church — 50 instances in all. The violence played out at the church "base'' outside Los Angeles in 2003 and 2004, the church says, when Miscavige was in Clearwater negotiating to end the wrongful death lawsuit that Lisa McPherson's family filed against the church. Back at the base, the church said, Rathbun instituted a "reign of terror.'' Yingling said Miscavige returned to California, put a stop to Rathbun's brutality and got back to expanding the reach of Scientology.

"When that (McPherson case) was wrapped up in 2004, he did go back to the base and essentially said ...

'I don't have to have my time and energy distracted to those legal lines.

So what we are going to do now is what I've always wanted to do and concentrate on the expansion of the church.

And either you're with me or you're not with me.' … "And it turned out these individuals you are talking to weren't willing to get on board.

And for that reason they were taken off post.'' Yingling cited another reason Rathbun and Mike Rinder were demoted: After McPherson died, they made mistakes when they worked with the church's legal team in Clearwater. "Unfortunately, the extent of their bungling was not discovered until afterward.

... They were removed from post and a lot of it has to do with McPherson.'' Rathbun's real agenda is to hijack Scientology, the church says, pointing to postings on Internet message boards from "T.

Paine'' — who the church said is Rathbun.

One post concludes Miscavige "has no right to his position in Scientology.

He was not appointed, elected or even nominated.

He just grabbed it.

It's time we grabbed it back.'' Said Yingling: "Marty is basically saying he wants to come in and set things straight in Scientology and all he has to do is get rid of Dave and then he's going to take over.'' Rathbun said he didn't write the posts;

The administrator of the Web site told the Times someone else wrote them. Continued...

Davis said Rathbun is hurting financially and, against all church rules, is conducting auditing sessions on his own.

"I will tell you exactly what this is about,'' Davis said.

"This is about money, plain and simple.

He (Rathbun) ran out.

... And what he is doing is drumming up business.

He is using your publication to do it.'' Davis and Yingling said church growth spiked in the years after the defectors left.

"I have represented this organization for more than 20 years,'' Yingling said, "and I've never seen such expansion.'' Scientology says: It's been a 'renaissance' Scientology has enjoyed unprecedented growth, spokesmen say, a credit to the "hands-on'' leadership of David Miscavige.

Church material has been updated and new churches opened. All of church founder L.

Ron Hubbard's books, lectures and course packs have been translated into the 17 languages spoken in Scientology's target markets. Nine new churches, called orgs, opened since 2004, plus four smaller test centers, including in downtown St.

Petersburg and Plant City.

Three orgs opened this year — Dallas, Nashville and Malmo, Sweden *— with five more to open before year's end, in Las Vegas, Rome, Brussels, Tel Aviv and Washington, D.C. In Clearwater, the church's signature property, the Fort Harrison Hotel, re-opened in March after a $40 million renovation. At the OT Summit 2007 at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Miscavige announced the release of a new edition of Hubbard's 18-volume basic texts.

Used by Scientologists for half a century, the volumes contained errors.

Miscavige corrected thousands of pages over three years and listened to a Hubbard lecture every night. Calling Miscavige "the author of the Renaissance,'' Davis said the church's numbers refute the defectors' claims of a slowdown.

"The fundamental problem in their allegations is apparent in that it's incongruent with the great growth experienced.'' Catalog of confessions The church prepared binders of indexed material that included confessions the defectors wrote during their time in Scientology. A key tenet of Scientology is that an individual who admits and takes responsibility for his bad thoughts and acts feels unburdened and joyful.

Church members write confessions, which go into "ethics files'' that are supposed to remain secret.

But to rebut the defectors' allegations about David Miscavige, church officials took the extraordinary step of releasing excerpts from the files.

In them, the defectors admit transgressions and praise the leader.

The church says the files undercut the credibility of those attacking Miscavige.

The defectors say the "confessions" are given under pressure, and writing them is the only way to survive inside Scientology. Following are some of the church's assertions about its former leaders. Marty Rathbun The church says Rathbun is a liar, a bully and an incompetent who screwed up task after task.

Church attorney Monique Yingling cites a "phenomenon in Scientology'' when the accuser has committed bad acts he attributes to another;

She says that's what Rathbun is doing. April 19, 1994: Communication.

"While I didn't spread any lies about you directly, it did become manifest to me that my actions over the past year have potentially created black PR on you.

... To me, worse than all the shortcomings and overt acts and their effects, is the potential effect they had of tarnishing your image and presence and power.

I say 'potential' only because I think it would be presumptuous of me to suggest I could do any real harm to you.

... I did want you to know that I have never regretted anything as deeply as I regret having betrayed you.'' 2001: Statement: Rathbun confesses to physical and degrading attacks.

"In May 2001 I grabbed Yager by the shirt and lifted him into a wall when he got caught out on outright false reporting to COB as I recall.

... In April or May 2001, Guillaume gave me some 1.1 backflash and I threw him across a table.

... On about 25 occasions I severely ripped into (name blacked out).

... I called her a 'f c---' and a "suppressive b----,'' and a "black PR infested criminal.

... I ordered her to Ethics on about 8 occasions to get her overts, withholds, BPR and evil purposes handled in lieu of cramming orders.'' Continued...

Dec. 8, 2001: Suppressive Person Declaration.

Referring to himself as "Marty,'' Rathbun said he had harmed and undermined colleagues.

"Marty took advantage of a number of false reports he had put in place over years giving a false picture as to his role in handling external attacks and the IRS in particular.'' "Marty then engaged in a campaign to covertly and systematically take out and undermine any executive or staff who might expose him.

He did this through abusing his privilege to act as a security checker.

... He began the out-tech practice of sec checking people with no formal session set up, and brow beating hair-raising confessions out of them.'' Sept.

28, 2003: Public Announcement: Quote: : "I have developed a slick false PR technique of positioning myself as having been integral in handling threats during and after the fact, when they are actually terminatedly handled by COB.

By calculation I have lost the Church 43 million dollars on losses and expenses that could have been avoided.... Miscavige "has single-handedly salvaged Scientology from potential external ruin ...

Had he not been here and done what he has, Scientology would have been lost.

... Rathbun writes that had he not wasted so much of the leader's time, "Scientology would be so big not a dime would have to be diverted to defense because no one would dream of fooling with it, and we would be very well on the way to a clear planet.'' "The motivation for these acts are a psychotic computation for self-preservation: keep enough chaos and threat stirred up in the environment, make myself appear to be a solution to it instead of the instigator of it, and lots of people go down and remain in turmoil while I go unrecognized as the source of it and survive. "I recognize my actions have been unfounded and ignorant and destructive in the extreme.'' Mike Rinder The church says Rinder is a habitual liar, noting one "Admission'' he wrote to Miscavige in which he said he lied 43 times over the years. February 2005: Apology.

"Dear Sir, I owe you something way beyond and, in addition to an apology, my gratitude for saving my life.

Your insistence for months and years that I get straight is the only thing that has actually brought me to my senses.

Several times in the past I pretended to myself, you and others that I had confronted my out ethics and gotten myself handled.

It was not true.'' June 4, 2005: Announcement.

"I recognize very clearly how Treasonous I have been towards you and Scientology.

This comm. is to inform you of my Step B and Doubt Announcement.

The announcement is to go to "persons directly influenced'' and that is most definitely you.

Your insistence that I get straight is what made me confront my suppressive acts.

I know that when you say something it is true and it is what has kept me going ...'' Amy Scobee The church says Scobee violated rules on "romantic involvement outside marriage.'' In her "confession" the 2D reference is for Second Dynamic but is used as slang for sex. Jan.

16, 2005: Reasons for leaving: "I have constantly been in ethics trouble,'' Scobee writes, to the point that she has become a "distraction to the group.'' Jan.

22, 2005: Specifics on 2D activity: In graphic detail, Scobee outlines everything from "holding hands'' to back rubs that "evolved into full out 2D'' and the time "we were in the C/S office and had sex.'' Tom de Vocht The church says De Vocht was demoted for overspending on renovation projects he oversaw. July 20, 2004: Treason report.

De Vocht writes that he blew a land deal in Clearwater that not only cost the church $1 million, it wasted the time of the Chairman of the Board — Miscavige — cleaning up De Vocht's mess. http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012138.ece

A letter from David Miscavige Posted: Jun 20, 2009 04:30 AM At 5:50 p.m.

Saturday (June 20, 2009), David Miscavige e-mailed this letter to the Times: Dear Mr.

Childs and Mr. Tobin, I have been advised that you have decided to move forward with your story without my interview.

This, despite the fact confirmed more than three weeks ago that I would make myself available on a date certain (6 July), after you spoke to other relevant Church personnel and toured Church facilities, and that I would provide information annihilating the credibility of your sources including the fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion that were the reasons for their removal from post.

You were advised that information would include addressing the extraordinary "admissions" of one of your sources regarding a long-settled legal matter. I was advised Thursday that you would only interview me on Friday, although you well knew it would be impossible for me to meet with you this week because of a long standing commitment to be aboard the SMV Freewinds for a week of religious events at the Church's annual OT Summit.

I am at a loss to comprehend how the St.

Petersburg Times can publish a story about me and the religion I lead without accepting the offer to speak with me, on the pretense that you cannot wait until after I have fulfilled my religious commitments. While you have already received unequivocal statements from more than a score of witnesses, along with documentary evidence, providing uncontrovertible proof that your sources are lying, I remain ready to sit down for the requested interview on the date previously confirmed.

If you decide not to avail yourself of this opportunity, I insist you do not misrepresent the fact that the decision was yours, not mine. Kind regards. Sincerely, David Miscavige Editor's note: The Times first requested an interview with Mr.

Miscavige on May 13, and offered to meet with him in person, or interview him by telephone at any time since. http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012140.ece

David Miscavige bio, and bios of Scientology officials who defected Times Staff Writer Posted: Jun 20, 2009 04:30 AM David Miscavige joined the Church of Scientology at age 16 and has been its leader since 1987.

Now, former top church officials have come forward to describe a culture of violence under Miscavige. Here is a brief look at David Miscavige. Born: Suburban Philadelphia Age: 49 Joined Scientology: As a child, with his parents;

Joined Sea Org at age 16. Family status: Married to Sea Org member Michelle Miscavige.

They have no children. Career highlights: The ecclesiastical leader of Scientology since 1987, when he became chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center.

The RTC is responsible for preserving, maintaining and protecting Scientology and ensuring that its practices hold true to the original "technology" set out by founder L.

Ron Hubbard. He dropped out of high school and joined Scientology staff in Clearwater, where among other jobs he delivered telexes and worked as a steward.

In early 1977 he was sent to La Quinta, Calif., to work with Hubbard, who was making Scientology training films.

By age 19, he headed the Commodore's Messenger Organization, responsible for sending out teams to investigate church problem areas. One such area was the Guardian's Office, the church's intelligence and legal unit.

Eleven of its members were convicted in 1979 for conspiring to steal government documents and cover it up.

David Miscavige broke up the "GO." In 1982, Hubbard appointed him to manage his fortune through a corporate entity outside the Scientology umbrella. After Hubbard died in 1986, David Miscavige rose to his current post by asserting himself over other church executives.

From 1991 to 1993, he worked to get the IRS to restore the church's tax-exempt status. Works primarily from Scientology's base outside Los Angeles and travels to church facilities worldwide, including its spiritual headquarters in Clearwater.

Church officials say he is leading a "renaissance" with new releases of Hubbard's books and a major expansion program. David Miscavige Quote: , from a 2004 speech: "While one can complain about the conditions we live in and it all can seem overwhelming, we take a different view that the most important commodity on Earth are people … So, yes: We believe in human rights and are doing something to make them an everyday fact." BIOS OF SCIENTOLOGY OFFICIALS WHO DEFECTED MARTY RATHBUN Born: California Age: 52 Joined Scientology: At age 20, in 1977 Left Scientology: 2004 Family status: Divorced from Sea Org member Anne Joasem.

They had no children. Career highlights: A top lieutenant to David Miscavige.

Key player in legal affairs unit.

David Miscavige's "detail guy'' during lengthy negotiations with IRS;

Among those who signed settlement agreement.

Inspector general and board member of Religious Technology Center, church's top ecclesiastical authority.

Says he audited Tom Cruise and other celebrities. Now: Lives near Corpus Christi, Texas.

Works as reporter for weekly and monthly newspapers.

He counsels and audits people who have left Scientology, accepting whatever they choose to pay. Quote: : "I had my share of people that I slapped around too.

I don't feel good about it.

And I seek them out and I try to apologize where I can.'' MIKE RINDER Born: Australia Age: 54 Joined Scientology: At age 5, when parents joined.

Joined Sea Org at 18, in 1973. Left Scientology: 2007 Family status: Divorced from Sea Org member Cathy Rinder.

They have an adult son and daughter, both Sea Org members. Career highlights: Head of Office of Special Affairs for 25 years, overseeing legal efforts, investigations and media relations.

Became the public face of Scientology, doing countless interviews with TV and print reporters, many in Tampa Bay area.

Was in first group of Scientologists to occupy Fort Harrison Hotel in late 1975.

Became chief administrator in Clearwater from 1978 to 1981, then ascended to executive strata of international church. Now: Sells cars in Denver. Quote: , on the church's contention that the defectors are plotting a coup: "They are saying that just so they can position this for the Scientology public.

... If they can keep saying: This is an attempt to take over or overthrow, then it is going to gain traction with Scientologists.

I have absolutely no intention of going back or taking over or anything.

None. It's just a PR positioning.'' TOM DE VOCHT Born: Belgium Age: 45 Joined Scientology: At age 10, in 1974, when mother joined. Left Scientology: 2005 Family status: Divorced from Sea Org member Jennifer Linson.

They had no children. Career highlights: Supervised numerous church construction projects in downtown Clearwater and, in later years, at the church compound in California.

From 1986 through 2000, had administrative authority over Clearwater operations.

Started working full time for church at 14, as bellhop at Fort Harrison Hotel. Now: Lives in Polk County.

Buys and sells used furniture. Quote: : "I was at it for 28 years.

... That was my life.

Those were my friends.

... I respect them.

I still consider the vast majority of them my friends.

I would love to hear from them.

... I've never really seen it (Scientology practices) do any harm to anybody.

That's for damned sure.

And I wouldn't have done it for all those years if I didn't think there was something good about it.'' AMY SCOBEE Born: Washington state Age: 45 Joined Scientology: At age 14, in 1978 Left Scientology: 2005 Family status: Married to former Sea Org member Matt Pesch.

They left the church together in 2005.

They have no children. Career highlights: Oversaw several operations sectors during 20 years as manager at the church's international base in California.

Built the network of Scientology Celebrity Centres, assembling and training staff to match four-star service levels.

Oversaw church's film and taping facilities.

As teenager, managed kitchen, housekeeping and grounds crews in Clearwater. Now: Lives in Seattle area.

Buys and sells furniture. Quote: : "I never had a job ...

No high school diploma because I started on staff when I was 14.

I had no bank account, no driver's license.

I knew nothing of the outside world because I had been there for so long.'' http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012137.ece

Scientology: Origins, celebrities and holdings Times Staff Posted: Jun 21, 2009 12:04 AM Scientology, which was established in Los Angeles in 1954, describes itself as the handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others, and all of life.

Following are details about Scientology's beliefs and history. In Scientology, a person is an immortal spiritual being — a "thetan" from the Greek letter "theta," meaning "spirit" — who has a body and a mind and lives on from lifetime to lifetime.

By following Scientology practices, a person can achieve spiritual awareness. Scientologists believe that the "reactive mind,'' the part that works on a stimulus-response basis — not under the individual's control — commands one's awareness, purposes, thoughts, body and action. A Scientology timeline Following is a timeline of Scientology's history: May 1950: L.

Ron Hubbard's book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, is published. 1954 : The first Church of Scientology opens in Los Angeles. Late 1975: The Southern Land Development and Leasing Corp.

Buys the Fort Harrison Hotel and old Bank of Clearwater in downtown, and leases it to a secretive group called United Churches of Florida. Jan.

28, 1976: It's announced that Scientology is the real buyer of the Fort Harrison Hotel. 1977: Scientology files the first of many lawsuits contesting its Pinellas County property tax bill.

In Washington and Los Angeles, federal agents raid Scientology offices.

According to FBI files, Scientologists arrived in Clearwater with plans to control civic leaders and discredit critics.

The files also reveal that Scientologists staged a phony hit-and-run accident with Clearwater Mayor Gabe Cazares in an attempt to discredit him. October 1979: Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, and 10 other church staffers are convicted of conspiring to steal federal government documents and cover it up. December 1979: An estimated 3,000 gather at Clearwater City Hall to protest the church coming to Clearwater.

Across the street, Scientologists stage a counter rally, dressed as clowns and wearing animal costumes. Jan.

24, 1986: L. Ron Hubbard dies of a stroke at his ranch in California.

He was 74. The honor of announcing his death falls to David Miscavige, who delivers the news to Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium.

Miscavige says Hubbard's body "had ceased to be useful, and had in fact become an impediment'' to the important work he has left.

"The being we knew as L.

Ron Hubbard still exists.'' May 1987: Establishing himself as church leader, Miscavige becomes Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center, which owns the religious trademarks of Dianetics and Scientology. Feb.

14, 1992: David Miscavige sits for his only television interview, with ABC's Nightline, hosted by Ted Koppel. October 1993: The IRS recognizes Scientology as a tax-exempt church, settling a 40-year battle.

It's a monumental victory for Scientology, not only for untold millions of dollars in taxes it would save, but for legitimizing it as a religion.

The New York Times story announcing the settlement identifies Marty Rathbun as "president of a Scientology organization'' that got the exemption and Quote: s him in the second paragraph: "This puts an end to what has been an historic war.

It's like the Palestinians and the Israelis shaking hands.'' October 2004: Tom Cruise receives Scientology's Freedom Medal of Valor.

Cruise effusively praises David Miscavige. MARCH 2007: The BBC program Panorama was preparing an expose on Scientology when reporter John Sweeney confronted Mike Rinder in London and repeatedly asked if Miscavige ever hit anyone, including Rinder. Rinder, far left, repeatedly called the allegations "rubbish" and "absolutely false, totally and utterly" and accused the reporter of ambushing him. During filming for the same documentary, a church spokesman interrupted a Sweeney interview and the reporter exploded, an outburst a Scientology videographer caught on tape.

Sweeney apologized and said he looked like an "exploding tomato.'' Scientology celebrities Scientology loves its celebrities.

The Manor Hotel, built in Hollywood in 1929 and restored in 1992, is the home of the church's Celebrity Centre International. In the 1930s and '40s the hotel was home to, among others, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Clark Gable. Today, the church says, the manor at 5930 Franklin Ave.

Caters to "the artists, politicians, leaders of industry, sports figures and anyone with the power and vision to create a better world.'' Continued...

Following are some of the church's most prominent current celebrities. Tom Cruise: The actor is probably Scientology's best known, most fervent supporter.

In 2004, Miscavige presented Cruise with the church's first Freedom Medal of Valor and called him "the most dedicated Scientologist I know." When Cruise married Katie Holmes in 2006, People magazine said "the best man was Cruise's best friend, David Miscavige.'' And who audited Tom Cruise?

Marty Rathbun says that Miscavige entrusted him with that task. John Travolta: He reportedly attributes his career success in large part to Scientology.

After he began auditing sessions in the mid-1970s, he landed a lead role on the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter.

He starred in Battlefield Earth, a movie based on a work of science fiction by L.

Ron Hubbard. Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, come to Clearwater often.

In March 2007, hundreds turned out to see the couple at the grand opening of the Scientology Life Improvement Center of St.

Petersburg. Chick Corea: The pianist posed at the Fort Harrison Hotel before he played at the 2002 Clearwater Jazz Festival. Other famous Scientologists: Kirstie Alley, Anne Archer, Beck, Jenna Elfman, Isaac Hayes, Chaka Khan, Jason Lee, Elisabeth Moss, Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley, Giovanni Ribisi, Greta Van Susteren. A Scientology glossary Out tech Anything that diverges from what Scientologists believe is standard Hubbard doctrine. Clear A "highly desirable state" in which a person, through auditing, gets rid of all the interference from troubling memories buried in the subconscious, or "reactive mind.'' RPF Short for Rehabilitation Project Force.

Scientologists describe it as a "second chance'' program that offers "redemption rather than dismissal'' for members deemed to have committed serious offenses.

Those in RPF receive intense religious counseling and must perform manual labor.

The program reportedly can last months or even years. Sea Org Short for Sea Organization, a religious order for those who dedicate their lives to the service of Scientology.

Paid $75 a week plus meals, lodging and medical care, members sign a 1 billion year contract, to symbolize their commitment to serve in this life and the next ones.

The Sea Org was developed when Scientology was largely based on ships, hence the name, and the maritime ranks. Suppressive person, or SP A Scientologist who "works to upset, continuously undermine, spread bad news and denigrate other people and their activities.'' Often applied to a member who speaks ill of the church.

An SP cannot have contact with other Scientologists, even family. Auditing "Helps an individual look at his own existence and improves his ability to confront what he is and where he is.'' The auditor asks questions and uses a device called an e-meter that is said to measure the person's reaction, allowing the auditor to locate areas of distress. Fair game A Hubbard policy that says church enemies "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist;'' and that the person "may be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.'' Hubbard canceled the policy in 1968, but critics say the church still uses it to justify harassment of opponents. Flag The Flag Service Organization in Clearwater is the worldwide spiritual headquarters for Scientologists.

The highest ecclesiastical organizations used to be aboard a flotilla of ships, and Hubbard's home, the Apollo, was the "flagship" of the flotilla, "Flag" for short.

In 1975, those operations moved to Clearwater, which is why it is still called Flag. Introspection Rundown A Scientology procedure Hubbard devised to calm a person in the throes of psychosis.

The person is isolated and not spoken to except for frequent auditing. Scientology's properties The church owns a staggering array of properties, from a college on 55 acres in England to a luxury cruise ship.

The church often buys historic buildings and refurbishes them in grand fashion. The Base: The 500-acre "Int'' base is in an arid area 80 miles east of Los Angeles.

It's home to top church executives, including David Miscavige, and Golden Era Productions, the church's media and publications division. Hollywood, Calif.: Scientology owns buildings in and around Hollywood, including this office building, which features a ground-floor museum, and the Celebrity Centre International, a restored hotel where celebrities study and receive Scientology counseling in a "distraction-free'' environment. The Fort Harrison: The church put $40 million into lavishly renovating the 82-year-old hotel, including the grand lobby.

Scientologists from around the world come to Clearwater, the church's spiritual mecca. The Flag Building: Across from the hotel, the "Super Power'' building has sat vacant and unfinished for six years.

It eventually will have 300 rooms for the church's core practice of auditing.

It's to be the only place in the world where a classified program called Super Power will be offered, thus the nickname. The 'Freewinds': Scientology uses its cruise ship as a religious retreat and for recreation.

The highest level of Scientology auditing, OT VIII, is offered exclusively on the ship. Sussex, England: The Saint Hill College for Scientologists, also called Saint Hill Castle, is on 55 acres of rolling hills outside Sussex.

Church founder L.

Ron Hubbard lived and worked at nearby Saint Hill Manor from 1959 to 1966. http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012139.ece

Death in slow motion: Part 2 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology By Thomas C.

Tobin and Joe Childs, Times Staff Writers In Print: Monday, June 22, 2009 The night after Lisa McPherson died, the leader of the Church of Scientology sent word for one of his top lieutenants to wait by a pay phone at the Holiday Inn Surfside on Clearwater Beach. When Marty Rathbun answered the ringing phone in the lobby, David Miscavige let him have it: Why aren’t you all over this mess?

The police are poking around.

Do something. “Yes sir,” Rathbun said. McPherson, a 36-year-old parishioner in apparent good health, had spent 17 days in a guarded room at the church’s Fort Harrison Hotel.

Scientology staffers tried to nurse her out of a mental breakdown, but she became ill.

She drew her last breaths in the back seat of a van as they drove her to a hospital in the next county. Her death on Dec.

5, 1995, triggered nine years of investigations, lawsuits and worldwide press coverage.

Alive on the Internet, it stains Scientology’s reputation still. Now, for the first time, comes an inside account from the upper ranks of Scientology — from the man who directed the church’s handling of the case. Rathbun, who defected from Scientology’s staff in late 2004, admits that as prosecutors and attorneys for McPherson’s family prepared subpoenas, he ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence about her care at the Fort Harrison. He and others who have left the church disclose for the first time that Miscavige was involved in McPherson’s Scientology counseling.

Just weeks before her mental breakdown, they say, it was the leader himself who determined that she had reached an enhanced mental state that Scientologists call “clear.’’ For years Rathbun was adamant that the church did nothing wrong.

Now he says that McPherson’s care was a debacle from the start.

It was a “perfect storm of incompetence and irresponsibility” within the church, he said.

“You couldn’t justify it.’’ He disclosed that the church was prepared to pay almost any price to make the case go away.

He said he sent an emissary to McPherson’s funeral in Dallas with authority to give her mother, Fannie, whatever she wanted.

The approach was rebuffed because the family didn’t trust the church. “Whether it was financially or any other thing, we’re taking care of that woman because it was on our watch.

If she needed $5 million, we would have come up with $5 million.” Church officials say Rathbun is a bitter ex-member who inflated his importance in Scientology and whose motives are suspect.

They say Miscavige demoted Rathbun in 2003 in part for missteps he made in the McPherson case. A settlement agreement with the woman’s family forbids them from providing specifics, said Monique Yingling, a long-time Scientology attorney and friend of Miscavige.

Still, she said that Rathbun botched the case from the start, and “possibly caused the whole thing.” A little fender-bender McPherson joined Scientology in Dallas, her hometown, when she was 18.

She worked for a marketing company owned by Scientologist friends;

The company moved to Clearwater in 1994 to be near the church’s spiritual headquarters, and McPherson came, too. Shortly before 6 p.m.

On Nov. 18, 1995, her Jeep Cherokee ran into a boat trailer stopped in traffic on S Fort Harrison Avenue. McPherson, frantic, walked up to the driver pulling the trailer, put her hands on his shoulders and asked, “Where’s the people?

Where’s the people?” Firefighters had her move her car to the side of Belleview Boulevard.

She signed a statement saying she did not want medical care.

As officers and paramedics tended to other duties, they saw McPherson had stripped off her clothes and was walking along Belleview. They took her to Morton Plant Hospital, where doctors discussed having her committed for psychiatric evaluation under Florida’s Baker Act. But Scientology considers psychiatry and psychiatric drugs evil.

The church believes it offers less intrusive and more humane treatment for problems of the human mind. Adamant that McPherson not be exposed to psychiatry, about 10 church members showed up at the hospital and said they would take care of her.

She said she wanted to leave with her friends and signed out against a doctor’s advice. Church staffers checked her into the Fort Harrison and assigned her to Room 174 of the cabanas, a group of less formal rooms facing the street behind the hotel.

Four members of the church’s medical office were assigned to watch McPherson.

Staffers from various departments were pulled in to help — including a payroll officer, a file clerk, a secretary, a personnel director, security guards and two librarians. Supervising was Janis Johnson, a doctor unlicensed in Florida, who was a church medical officer. For more than two weeks, they tried to calm, feed and medicate McPherson.

They gave her chloral hydrate, a mild sedative.

A staff dentist, unlicensed in Florida, mixed aspirin, Benadryl and orange juice in a syringe and squirted it down her throat. The staffers kept logs of what they did.

Trying to calm McPherson, a staffer tried to force three Valerian root caplets down her throat, but McPherson spit them out.

“My idea of closing her nose so she has to swallow so she can breathe through her mouth is only marginally successful,” the staffer wrote. McPherson slapped and screamed at her caretakers.

She babbled, she vomited her food.

She destroyed the ceiling lamp and broke glass in the bathroom.

She jumped off the bed, fell on the floor, ran around the room. She pondered a light bulb, saying, “You have to follow the light, as light is life.” “She was like an ice cube,” one caretaker wrote.

“She refused to eat and spit out everything she took.

Her breath was foul … had a fever to my touch.” By the evening of Dec.

5, McPherson had lost about 12 pounds.

Johnson, the church doctor, telephoned David Minkoff, a Scientologist and a doctor at Columbia New Port Richey Hospital.

Minkoff said to take McPherson to Morton Plant Hospital down the street. Continued...

But Alain Kartuzinski, a church counseling supervisor, told Minkoff he feared that McPherson would be exposed to psychiatric care at Morton Plant, and Johnson assured Minkoff that McPherson’s condition was not life-threatening. What they didn’t tell Minkoff: McPherson was limp and unable to walk.

Her breathing was labored, her eyes fixed and unblinking.

Her face was gaunt, a sign of severe dehydration. Minkoff agreed to see her.

With McPherson in the back seat of a van, her caretakers drove 45 minutes to the Pasco hospital, passing four other hospitals on the way. They rolled her into the ER splayed across a wheelchair.

She had no pulse, no heartbeat and was not breathing.

Minkoff pronounced McPherson dead. He took Johnson aside and yelled at her. “I was shocked out of my wits,” he said later.

“I really wasn’t in the mode of finding out what happened.

I was more in the mode of, ‘How could you bring this person up to me like this?’?” Miscavige’s role Scientology employs a unique brand of counseling called auditing.

In a quiet room, an “auditor’’ asks the parishioner prescribed questions while monitoring a device called an electro*psychometer, or e-meter.

Scientologists say there is a “charge” associated with areas of upset in a person’s life, such as marital conflict or a childhood accident. When such topics come up, the e-meter’s need*le responds.

The act of locating the troubling episode dissipates the charge and the needle floats back and forth.

The person is supposed to feel better. One goal is to reach “clear,” a state where the mind’s negative images are gone and the person is said to be rid of all fears, anxieties and irrational thoughts. John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Tom Cruise are among the celebrities who have extolled the benefits of Scientology.

Parishioners from around the globe travel to Clearwater to be audited by the best.

Scientologists come for the deluxe accommodations and the top-flight, “Class 12” auditors, whose services, Rathbun said, cost $1,000 an hour. But back in 1995, Rathbun says, even the church thought most of its Class 12 auditors were not worth the money.

They were burned out, their sessions rote and uninspired, like a doctor with a poor bedside manner. “These guys are all overweight, they’re obese, they’ve got back problems.

They don’t sleep enough,” he said.

“And one of the problems, I realized, is for 15, 20 years they’re cash cows.’’ He said they were “just getting milked nonstop.” Rathbun and others say Miscavige was in Clearwater in 1995 to launch “The Golden Age of Tech,” an initiative aimed at raising the quality and precision of auditing at Scientology’s mecca. Rathbun said he was assigned to help.

Miscavige would look in on parishioner auditing sessions from a control room with video feeds from multiple counseling rooms. One of the parishioners was Lisa McPherson. “He’s watching live with the videocameras every session that she’s in and (supervising), saying ‘Do this next, do that next’ and so forth,” said Tom De Vocht, a top church executive in Clearwater who has since left the church and is speaking out for the first time. The folder containing records of McPherson’s auditing history came in and out of Miscavige’s office, said De Vocht, whose office was next door and who had overseen a renovation of the leader’s living quarters. Don Jason, then a high-ranking officer at the Clearwater spiritual headquarters, said he saw Miscavige take off his headphones and say McPherson had achieved the state of clear in a previous session.

Jason, 45, said he saw the leader write a note that McPherson’s auditor would read to her, informing her of her new status. Scientologists who are “clear’’ don’t go psychotic, Jason said, so for a person to have a breakdown so soon after was a “huge problem.’’ Church officials say De Vocht and Jason are wrong.

“I can tell you that’s utterly, totally false,’’ said Angie Blankenship, a top administrator in Clearwater from 1996 to 2003. “I was here.

Chairman of the board (Miscavige) wasn’t even here at the Flag land base during that time.

He’s a liar. Never happened.” Yingling and church spokesman Tommy Davis also said Miscavige was not in Clearwater at the time, and they say they have minutes of meetings he attended in California to prove it.

They also question how De Vocht and Jason, almost 14 years later, could remember anything about a woman who then was just another parishioner. Jason said the moment stood out because staffers require special training and refresher training to be able to identify when someone becomes clear.

“So it did strike me as like, ‘Wow’?” that Miscavige had that expertise. Not only that, “I was standing right next to him when it happened,’’ said Jason, who left the church in 1996 but still finds Scientology valuable. “This is a huge deal,” De Vocht said of Miscavige’s involvement.

“There’s no way not to remember it.” De Vocht said he worked closely with Miscavige during that time.

He said the leader zeroed in on McPherson because she was having issues with her counseling and was the friend of a prominent church member. He said he saw Miscavige view McPherson’s auditing sessions through a video feed and write notations in her counseling folder. “I watched him personally,” De Vocht said.

“A whole bunch of people watched him personally.” The church’s representatives said there are no notations by Miscavige in McPherson’s file.

In any case, they say, Miscavige would have been qualified to supervise McPherson’s case had he been so inclined.

“He is an expert in every field,” said Jessica Feshbach, a church spokeswoman. Rathbun recalled walking through a hallway to the auditing rooms at the Fort Harrison and a woman bursting through a door. “She’s going, ‘ h!

Yahoo!’ She’s screaming at the top of her lungs,” he said. It was McPherson, cheering about the news that she had been deemed clear. Her accomplishment was celebrated in a ceremony at the Fort Harrison in September 1995.

By mid November, she would be back at the hotel, babbling to her caretakers. Introspection rundown When Rathbun learned that McPherson had died, he interviewed the 15 to 20 Scientologists who had cared for her. “It was like walking into a disaster area,” he said.

“They all looked devastated.

They lacked sleep.

Some of them had scratches and bruises from getting hit by Lisa.

All of them were extremely emotionally distraught because each one of them put it on their shoulders that they had done something wrong.” Continued...

Their feelings were justified, Rathbun said.

“The whole thing was done wrong.

I can’t tell you what a technical crime this was’’ in terms of Scientology methods. The caretakers had given McPherson an “introspection rundown,’’ a procedure created by Scientology founder L.

Ron Hubbard. The goal is to isolate and calm a psychotic person enough to be audited.

She is to be kept in a silent environment with no one around to “re-stimulate” mental images that might upset her. Yet church staffers came and went from McPherson’s room, as did guards using walkie-talkies, Rathbun said.

One staffer cried in a corner.

Others held McPherson down while trying to medicate and feed her. Instead of calming, McPherson grew agitated and self-destructive during her 17-day stay. Rathbun said he has participated in several introspection rundowns, and none lasted more than a day or two. He said it was obvious to him that McPherson was the victim of “out-tech,” a term for Scientology malpractice. Rathbun had another problem: Kartuzinski, the auditing supervisor, and Johnson, the medical officer, had lied to Clearwater police.

They said McPherson had not received an introspection rundown, and they said there was nothing unusual about her stay. “That’s the hand I’m dealt,” Rathbun said.

“I’ve got two false sworn statements to law enforcement agents’’ on top of how badly the Scientologists handled McPherson. It was such a “dog’s breakfast” of facts, he said, his first instinct was to do something entirely out of character. “I really truly, sincerely wished that I was in a position where I could just follow my heart,” he said.

“Because my heart in December 1995 was to go straight to the state attorney’s office and say, ‘My God.

There’s been a terrible accident … We want to take responsibility.’?” But that wasn’t in the playbook.

His nearly two decades immersed in Scientology culture had taught him: When under siege, close ranks, never admit fault. He said he wrote an internal report that concluded church procedures had been violated, but the mistakes did not contribute to McPherson’s death. He put the report in a manila envelope and sealed it the way he learned years earlier as a 20-something newbie handling Hubbard’s correspondence.

Slice the seams with a razor, cover them with tape and melt the tape so no one can open the envelope without tearing it.

Then off the envelope went to the church’s California base. For a year, not a word about McPherson’s death had appeared in the media. But in mid December 1996, details of the Clearwater police investigation leaked to reporters.

An autopsy report from Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Joan Wood concluded that McPherson died of a blood clot in her left lung caused by “bed rest and severe dehydration.” Rathbun coordinated the public response, which he now acknowledges began with lies.

Church spokesmen said McPherson had been at the Fort Harrison for rest and relaxation.

They said she could come and go as she pleased.

They denied that she had received an introspection rundown. McPherson “suddenly fell ill’’ and participated in decisions about her care, church officials said.

Her death was an unfortunate accident, unrelated to anything Scientology did. Wood spoke out, saying her autopsy contradicted the church’s statements.

The veteran medical examiner said there was nothing sudden or accidental about McPherson’s death.

Her health deteriorated gradually over about 10 days, and she probably was unconscious toward the end. The church sued Wood for access to her records.

A Scientology lawyer called her: “Liar.

Liar. Liar. Liar.

Liar. Hateful liar.” McPherson’s family sued the church for wrongful death. And the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office investigated whether to file criminal charges. Destruction of evidence In early 1997 as investigators closed in, Rathbun met with church staff at Scientology offices in Hollywood, Calif.

They combed the daily logs that McPherson’s caretakers kept during her 17 days at the Fort Harrison. Three entries particularly troubled Rathbun. One contained a bizarre sexual reference McPherson had made.

Another revealed that no one thought to remove the mirror from the room of a psychotic woman bent on harming herself.

The third was one caretaker’s opinion that the situation was out of control and that McPherson needed to see a doctor. Rathbun concluded the notes had to go. “I said, ‘Lose ’em’ and walked out of the room,” he recalled, adding that the decision to destroy the records was his own. “Nobody told me to do it and I did it,” he said.

“The truth is the truth and right now I’m going to confession, and I really think it’s something that hurt the church more than it hurt the people that were trying to get recompense. “But it is what it is, and I know it could potentially be a crime.” In a recent interview, State Attorney Bernie McCabe said it was clear the records were missing because the church handed over entries for every day of McPherson’s stay except the final two before she died.

That the church appeared to be hiding something only fed McCabe’s sense that something was amiss. Prosecuting Rathbun is not an option, because the time to bring destruction of evidence charges expires after three years, McCabe said.

“We’re done.’’ Continued...

Stress ratchets up On Nov.

13, 1998, McCabe’s office charged the church’s Clearwater entity with two felonies: criminal neglect and practicing medicine without a license. The church now faced the prospect of trials and embarrassing testimony in both criminal and civil court. Miscavige delegated dealing with lawyers and reporters to Rathbun and to Scientology’s chief spokesman, Mike Rinder.

But the church leader kept hold of the controls, working to forge Scientology’s message from behind the scenes. Rathbun revealed that while he and Rinder conducted phone interviews, Miscavige often was at their side, directing what to say and gesturing wildly when he thought they got it wrong. A key legal issue in the McPherson family’s wrongful death lawsuit was whether Miscavige could be added as a defendant.

Church lawyers argued that he should not be named in the suit because he dealt only with ecclesiastical matters.

The family countered that Miscavige “totally controls” and “micromanages all of Scientology.” In December 1999, a Tampa judge ruled that Miscavige could be added as a defendant. For the church leader, it was “a big snapping point,’’ Rathbun said. “That was like the explosion of all explosions that he was now potentially going to get deposed and his name would be embroiled in that litigation.

He became progressively more antagonistic, violent, irrational.” William C.

Walsh, a Washington, D.C., human rights lawyer who has represented Scientology for years, said the account is far-fetched. “One thing I do know is Dave Miscavige, and I’ve known him from December 1999 on and way before that,” Walsh said.

“And I never saw any change in his personality when he became a defendant in the case.

He didn’t become more antagonistic.

He did not become more violent.

And he’s never been irrational.” Said Yingling: “He wasn’t happy to be a defendant.

That’s true. But he took it in stride with everything else that was happening in the case.” Rinder and Rathbun recall an afternoon on the third floor of a small office building overlooking N Fort Harrison Avenue, when they say Miscavige attacked Rinder.

They say the leader shouted obscenities at Rinder, grabbed him and, while holding him in a headlock, twisted his neck and threw him to the floor. Of the dozens of attacks Rinder says he endured, this one was the most painful. “I remember my neck was out of place, and for maybe 30 minutes I couldn’t speak because my larynx had been squashed against the back of my throat,’’ he said. Clamped in the headlock, Rinder said his thoughts tracked a familiar arc: What did I do to cause this? When Miscavige dresses you down or, worse, punishes you physically, “You get into trying to figure out what you have done to him,’’ Rinder said.

“And that’s the thing with the beatings.

What did I do to cause this to happen to me?’’ Overprepare.

Attack, attack Reminiscent of how Scientology fought the IRS to restore its tax exemption, the church would not be outworked defending itself from the criminal charges in the McPherson case. Scientology spent millions of dollars, and church lawyers filed thousands of pages of medical studies and consultant reports that said McPherson’s care at the Fort Harrison could not have caused her death. The case collapsed after Wood, the medical examiner, unexpectedly changed her official finding on the manner of McPherson’s death.

Previously “undetermined,’’ she changed it in February 2000 to an “accident.’’ Prosecutors dropped the charges four months later, citing Wood’s conflicting and confused interpretations of the evidence. Conspiracy theorists suggested that the church somehow “got to’’ Wood. Rathbun denies it.

He says the medical examiner changed her conclusions in the face of the reams of scientific information from church experts. “There was no blackmail on her,” Rathbun said.

“There was no intelligence.

It absolutely was all evidence.

I swear to God.” Wood, reached at her home, declined to comment. McCabe said it was his impression that evidence and expert testimony swayed Wood.

“One thing you quickly come to realize when dealing with (Scientologists) is that they are persistent,” he said.

“And they were persistent with her.” In May 2004, four years after the criminal charges were dropped, the church settled with McPherson’s family, ending their lawsuit.

The terms remain secret. In a speech to the International Association of Scientologists, Miscavige proclaimed victory over government officials, over the press and over others who he said tried to use McPherson’s death to bring down the church. He said the roots of the attack stretched from the German government, which opposed Scientology, to the Clearwater police, which investigated the church for two decades. “They were just looking for anything to get us,” he told the crowd.

“We always knew we’d win.” Quoting Hubbard, he listed the qualities that would always hold Scientology in good stead.

“Constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back.” Winning but losing Though Scientology prevailed on the legal front, the McPherson case set back a long-running effort by the church to cultivate a benign, mainstream image. Among the details that emerged: In McPherson’s last five years, she had spent at least $176,700 on Scientology services and had $5,773 in the account she kept at the church.

She died with $11 in her savings account. The case reignited passions about Scientology and its practices, bringing pro- and antichurch protests back to the streets of Clearwater after years of relative calm. Some people paid a price. Minkoff, the Scientologist doctor who pronounced McPherson dead, was disciplined by the state of Florida.

Without having met McPherson, he had written prescriptions for her during her stay in the Fort Harrison. Kartuzinski, the supervisor in charge of her stay at the Fort Harrison, was banished for years to work in the church’s laundry in Clearwater. Scientology parishioners were called on to dig deeper into their pockets.

The church’s Clear*water entity, the Flag Service Organization, typically took in $1.5 million to $2 million a week, Rathbun and others said, providing a picture of Scientology’s revenues never before disclosed. Miscavige decided the exorbitant legal bills from the McPherson case were to be paid from the Flag operation, Rathbun said, so church registrars urged parishioners to come in for more auditing and other services. “It was a matter of, ‘Step things up, get people in,’?” he said.

“They brought in a lot of money during that period.” Yet another group would pay in a different way.

According to Rathbun and other high-ranking defectors, Miscavige grew more violent and erratic as the McPherson case wore on. Said Rathbun: “Working under David Miscavige from 2000 forward was a steadily deteriorating situation.” http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012234.ece

Lisa McPherson case: events leading to the death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson Times Staff Writer In Print: Monday, June 22, 2009 At a ceremony at the Fort Harrison Hotel in September 1995, Lisa McPherson was designated “clear,’’ meaning that through Scientology counseling, she had rid herself of all interference from troubling memories buried in her subconscious.

Two months later she had a nervous breakdown.

After 17 days in Scientology’s care, she was dead. LISA MCPHERSON TIMELINE: This is part of a St.

Petersburg Times special report on Scientology. 1994: Lisa McPherson, a longtime Scientologist, moves from Dallas to Clearwater with her employer, AMC Publishing.

The company is operated and staffed mostly by Scientologists who want to be close to the church's spiritual headquarters. September 1995: In a ceremony at the Fort Harrison Hotel, Lisa McPherson is publicly declared "clear," a state in which a Scientologist is said to be free of inhibitions caused by painful images in the subconscious.

In her last five years, McPherson spent more than $175,000 on Scientology counseling.

She is 36. Nov. 18, 1995: After a minor traffic accident, Lisa McPherson takes off her clothes and tells a paramedic: "I need help.

I need to talk to someone." She is taken to Morton Plant Hospital for psychiatric evaluation but signs out against a doctor's advice.

Church members take her to the Fort Harrison.

Supervising her medical care was Janis Johnson, who was not licensed to practice medicine in Florida and whose license was restricted in Arizona. Dec.

5, 1995: After 17 days, the Scientologists caring for Lisa McPherson worry that she has become seriously ill.

They drive her to a hospital in New Port Richey — past four closer hospitals — so she can be seen by Dr.

David Minkoff, a Scientologist who works in the ER.

McPherson is not breathing, has no heartbeat and is gaunt, bruised and unkempt.

Minkoff pronounces her dead.

There is no local obituary and no public police report of her death. Dec.

16, 1996: News of Lisa McPherson's death leaks out.

The church's version of what happened: She checked into the Fort Harrison Hotel for "rest and relaxation" and "suddenly fell ill." January 1997: The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement join Clearwater Police in the investigation.

Medical examiner Joan Wood tells reporters there is no way Lisa McPherson "suddenly fell ill." Feb.

19, 1997: In Tampa, Lisa McPherson's relatives file a wrongful death lawsuit against the Church of Scientology, alleging that Scientologists allowed McPherson to languish in a coma without nutrition and liquids while she was held in isolation at the Fort Harrison Hotel. Nov.

13, 1998: After reviewing the Lisa McPherson case for 11 months, State Attorney Bernie McCabe charges the Church of Scientology with two felonies: practicing medicine without a license and abuse of a disabled adult. February 2000: After reviewing medical information provided by Scientology, Wood changes Lisa McPherson's death certificate.

She amends the manner of death from "undetermined" to "accident." June 12, 2000: His review complete, McCabe drops the charges, noting that Wood's change of opinion undercuts the state's requirement to prove a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. May 26, 2004: The church and the estate of Lisa McPherson reach a settlement.

The terms are confidential. Continued...

LISA MCPHERSON CARETAKER NOTES: 17 days at the Fort Harrison in Clearwater From Nov.

18 to Dec. 5, 1995, Scientology staffers who monitored Lisa McPherson around the clock kept logs.

Marty Rathbun, who managed the fallout from the case for the church, now admits that he ordered the last two days of logs destroyed.

He feared they incriminated the church.

Here are excerpts from the logs that were not destroyed: Nov.

18 2:45 p.m. Lisa is talking since about 30 minutes: "I created time 3 Billion years ago and now I am dramatizing it since then … I am LRH and I didn't confront it because I didn't confront that power … I want to dance.

… I need my auditor … I need to confront my mom.'' 3:15 p.m.

She is still talking non stop.

She tried to go out of the door. Nov.

19 This afternoon Lisa walked like a robot.

What is new: if she starts talking she talks and talks, then she stares at a spot;

She also tries to push buttons on me (what she never did before).

She says I am her and she is controlling my body.

She kissed me on my mouth.

Once I let her sit outside for 5 minutes. ...

She took my arm and put it on her tummy and went with her tongue over my face.

I brought her back to bed. Nov.

20 She has difficulties even to swallow a bit of water.

She got 2 sip of protein drink down.

Right now she is again jumping out of the bed over and over. Nov.

22 I went into the room + she was totally Type III.

Blabbering, incoherent non stop.

Shaking, no warm clothes on — a bra top + shorts + shoes — no socks.

She fell asleep for 4 hours + got up.

I finally chased her around the place 50 times + got on slacks + tee shirt, jacket, socks + shoes.

She was like an ice cube. She talked incoherently hour after hour.

She refused to eat + spit out everything she took.

Her breathe was foul.

She looked like measles and chicken pox on her face.

Had a fever to my touch. After 1 pm she went violent + hit me a few times telling me in a rage she was to kill me #s of times.

I called in the "guard'' outside … He stayed with me during the rage— but she still smacked me around.

(I did cover + guard myself but she was out of control). Nov.

30 9 pm - 1 am. Awake.

On floor scooting around, moving arms + legs + speaking + groaning. 1:30 - 5:00.

I probably got the equivalent of 3 Valarian root caps into her.

It took 4 feedings over a 4 ½ hour period.

She will appear to be very cooperative — hold her mouth open, make eye contact, act as if she is there, then close the back of her throat + not swallow.

… My idea of closing her nose so she has to swallow so she can breathe through her mouth is only marginally successful. 9:15 am I got a small amount of the banana + shake mixture into her + about an ounce of tea.

She is much more physically strong this a.m.

She sits up frequently + for long periods of time.

Whereas yesterday I only saw her sit up once — she was lying on the floor scooting around.

She is using her legs to kick again.

Yesterday it wasn't much of a threat. P.P.S.

Lisa has come uptone — she was apathetic yesterday — physically + in her comm.

— just a couple spurts of anger + not very determined at that.

This a.m. she is deliberate + nasty — even evil. Dec.

2 1 am - 3 am I gave her 4 Valarian root capsules, 4 Orinthane (not positive of the name — haven't seen the bottle, but it is one of the herbal sleeping preparations) and approx 6 oz of cal mag. She has gotten drowsy from time to time but at 3 AM is still awake + talking. We also cut her fingernails.

This will reduce the risk of scratches to herself + us.

She has scratches and abrasions all over her body + on elbows + knees has pressure sores.

None of them are open + none of them look infected. 8 am.

... I will give her more of the herbal sleep preparations + will be in comm with Janice later about other measures to ensure she gets some serious sleep today. The finances for her protein drinks ran out last night.

I was in comm a security guard who said the source of the money was Lisa's employer + he thought he could get more this morning. Dec.

3 1:00 - 1:30 a.m.

Tried to feed her again but wouldn't take anything.

She thought we were psychos or other enemies who wanted to kill her. 10 a.m.

She slept most of the time — several hours of really good deep sleep.

When she awakened this a.m.

She was very confused + combative ... 2 p.m.

Appears to be awakening.

She has tried to stand several times but is not strong enough yet.

I am going to feed her some mashed banana + protein powder.

Have been in comm /c security re getting more money for her. 3 p.m.

She is resting now.

She originated that she knows we are trying to help her although she doesn't know our names and we don't talk to her.

The rest of her comm.

Is the usual confused stuff.

She also had a couple oz's of water.

Body wise she is very restful + gentle.

She has tried to stand a couple of times but is not strong enough. 6:30 p.m.

Fixing more bananna + protein powder + half + half. [Last modified: Jun 21, 2009 09:29 PM] http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012240.ece

Scientology: Ecclesiastical justice, Part 3 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology By Thomas C.

Tobin and Joe Childs, Times Staff Writers In Print: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 The four high-ranking executives who left Scientology say that church leader David Miscavige not only physically attacked members of his executive staff, he messed with their minds. He frequently had groups of managers jump into a pool or a lake.

He mustered them into group confessions that sometimes spun into free-for-alls, with people hitting one another. Mike Rinder, who defended the church to the media for two decades, couldn't stomach what was happening on the inside. The tactics to keep executives in line "are wrong from a Scientology viewpoint,'' said Rinder, who walked away two years ago.

"They are not standard practice of Scientology.

They are just not humanitarian.

And they are just outright evil.'' Church spokesmen confirm that managers are ordered into pools and assembled for group confessions.

It's part of the "ecclesiastical justice'' system the church imposes on poor performers. Rinder and the other defectors couldn't cut it in the tough world of Scientology's Sea Org, a group whose members dedicate their lives to service of the church, the church says.

Rather than accept their own failings, the defectors are putting a sinister twist on something that is normal. The Sea Org is a "crew of tough sons of es,'' said church spokesman Tommy Davis, an 18-year veteran of the group. "The Sea Org is not a democracy.

The members of it agree with a man named L.

Ron Hubbard. They abide by his policies .

. . and we follow it to the T, to the letter, to the punctuation marks.

And if you disagree with that and you don't like it, you don't belong.

Then you leave." A better thetan The order came about 10 p.m.

On a winter's night: Report to the swimming pool. From around the church's postcard-pretty base in the mountains east of Los Angeles, some 70 staff members turned out in their Navy-style uniforms.

David Miscavige was unhappy with the troops, again. The punishment the leader had in mind was not new to members of the Sea Org.

Hubbard, the church's late founder, "overboarded" Sea Org members in the 1970s when he ran Scientology from a ship named the Apollo. Miscavige had the staffers line up at the diving board in their uniforms, and one by one, jump into the pool.

Before each person went in, Norman Starkey, once the captain of the Apollo, called on them to be better spiritual beings.

He recited a traditional Sea Org saying: We commit your sins and errors to the deep and trust you will rise a better thetan. Miscavige ordered the group to go to an office in their wet clothes and stay put until they figured out where they had failed. Tom De Vocht says he can't recall what angered Miscavige that chilly night early in 2005.

But he well remembers the doubts that crept into his head as he sat wet and shivering. What am I doing here? De Vocht had joined the church with his mother when he was just 10 and rose to a top executive post at Scientology's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater.

But in the months after that mass dunking, he no longer recognized the organization. Neither did Rinder, who went into the pool that night with De Vocht. Two others already had acted on their doubts.

Marty Rathbun, one of Miscavige's top lieutenants for years, left in 2004.

Amy Scobee, who held several executive posts, left in 2005. The four defectors, speaking publicly for the first time, each served more than 25 years in the Sea Org. "Right, wrong or indifferent, I felt I was doing something for the good of man, and I'll never give that back," said De Vocht, who left in 2005.

"But the longer I was in it, it got crazier and crazier as Dave took over." Normal vs.

Abnormal Confession is ingrained in Scientology culture.

Admit all your bad thoughts and transgressions, leave nothing out, and you will feel free, unburdened, joyful. The four defectors say Miscavige took the practice to a new level.

They said he convened group confessions that came to be known as "seances." The executives would confess sins they had committed against Miscavige, reveal their bad thoughts about Scientology and make personal disclosures, including sexual fantasies.

If someone couldn't come up with a transgression, the others bullied him into admitting something.

Anything. "And Dave would sit there and listen to it and enjoy the hell out of it," said De Vocht, who recalled one seance when he said Miscavige struck executive Marc Yager and threw him to the floor, then singled out Faith Schermerhorn, a midlevel administrator who is black. "He goes, 'By the way, (Yager) thinks black people are n , and he doesn't want Scientology to help blacks.

Go kick him.' So (Yager) is down on the ground and she's kicking him,'' De Vocht said. "Everybody in that damned room — people are wild and out of control," he said.

"I punched somebody.

Everybody was punched.

And screaming and yelling.

It just got like, What the hell is going on here?

'' The church provided the St.

Petersburg Times with sworn declarations from Yager and Schermerhorn denying that the incident happened.

In Yager's declaration, he said he is not prejudiced and Schermerhorn is a friend. Continued...

Schermerhorn wrote that she has never heard Miscavige use the n-word: "As a matter of fact, I know that Mr.

Miscavige has been the person in Scientology who has done the most for black people.'' Rinder said a group confession early in 2004 stands out for him because Rathbun, his longtime friend, ended up attacking him. "You stand up and there's 50 people in the room all screaming and shouting, 'What did you do?

And you did this and you did that.' And I'm standing there saying, 'No, I didn't do that,' '' Rinder said. The group ganged up on him.

He had to have done something: Come on.

Own up. Come on. "And then when I said nothing, that's when Marty leaped on me,'' Rinder said.

"And that's psychotic.

There is a term for it in Scientology.

It's called Contagion of Aberration.

. . . "When you get a group of people together, they will stimulate one another to do things that are crazy." Davis, who succeeded Rinder as church spokesman, said the term "seance'' is not used in Scientology and Miscavige never encouraged violence.

But it's not surprising that Rathbun attacked Rinder, Davis said, because Rathbun physically attacked other managers all the time. Rinder said the ugly moment was an example of the corrosive atmosphere at Scientology's base near Los Angeles.

"There's an attempt to play people off, one against the other.

And you know that and you see it," Rinder said. Rathbun's attack "wasn't motivated by hatred toward me, it was motivated by some attempt at preservation for him." Davis cited church founder Hubbard's policy that encourages members to confront and "come clean" when they have done something to bring down their group.

It's one hallmark of a successful organization. "It's not for the purposes of punishment,'' Davis said, "and it's certainly never for the purpose of trying to make the person feel guilty for it." The church says Rathbun and De Vocht acted so inappropriately — roughing up staffers — that they were required to confess publicly.

"They were definitely guilty, definitely in violation of the mores of the group,'' said spokeswoman Jessica Feshbach. "And were they confronted by peers and asked, What's going on?

Absolutely. Because that is the responsibility of the group.'' Letting down the group also can result in overboarding, church spokesmen said.

It's a Sea Org ritual akin to traditions in other religious orders. Starkey, the 66-year-old former captain of the Apollo, said plenty of people have been overboarded in his 50 years in Scientology. If a Sea Org member messes up, "you throw him over the g-- d--- side of the ship," Starkey said. "He falls into the water, he swims around, climbs up the ladder, gets off at the dock, walks back in again.

He never does that again.

He knows that that is the way we operate.

That is what the Sea Organization is like." Church lawyer Monique Yingling said overboarding is part of ecclesiastical justice.

"They're not backing away from it or ashamed of it,'' she said.

It has been done hundreds of times, with precautions taken to make it safe. In the example De Vocht and Rinder recounted, church spokesmen said, the pool was heated, towels were provided, a lifeguard was present.

And Miscavige wasn't even there. De Vocht and Rinder say he was.

"He was standing right there, laughing,'' Rinder said.

"It was very entertaining for him." Rinder said he doesn't remember any towels at the ready, that night or any of the 10 or so other times he says large groups of staffers were escorted to the lake under guard and required to jump in fully dressed. He disputed Yingling's contention the "overboarding" incident as described, with a large group of people, is accepted church practice.

He said it's meant to address an issue with an individual. Which is how church spokesman Davis said he punished a subordinate. "It was a guy who was blowing it and kept blowing it and kept blowing it — making mistakes, underperforming," he said.

"It was my responsibility to uphold the ethical standards of the Sea Org.

Yeah, absolutely, I tossed the guy in.'' If the defectors could not hack such punishments, Davis said, they could have left years ago.

"The g-- d--- front door wasn't locked.

And if they had a problem with it they could have walked out." Intense and hands on The defectors were not only soft, they couldn't maintain the accelerated work pace Miscavige established, the church says.

Rathbun flubbed so many assignments, such as his handling of the Lisa McPherson wrongful death lawsuit, that Miscavige had to take over, distracting him from more important duties, spokesmen said. With Rathbun gone, Miscavige focused on growth plans: "2004 was a paradigm shift, the point where everything changed,'' Davis said.

"Where Mr. Miscavige was able to get on to what he always wanted to get on to.'' Davis played DVDs of Scientology ads now on cable TV.

He outlined a multimillion-dollar international expansion program to open an array of "ideal orgs," each with course rooms, displays that explain Scientology to the uninitiated, facilities for community outreach groups, and rooms for auditing, the core counseling of Scientology. The church revamped its Web site, improved the books that are the foundation of Scientology and restored the grainy films of Hubbard's landmark lectures.

All of this accomplished in the past four years, all led, planned, designed and created by Miscavige. The spokesmen described him as a "hands-on" leader working in video editing bays, proof*reading manuscripts, helping write scripts, staying up each night to listen to every one of Hubbard's 3,000 lectures and setting up a construction office to outfit the 66 new buildings the church has acquired since 2004. Miscavige is intense, church spokesmen said, but he never behaves in degrading, crude or violent ways, and he never altered church policy.

The church brought more than a dozen international managers to Clearwater to speak to the Times.

All said they worked with Miscavige for years and spoke of his kindness and compassion. All of them deny the defectors' allegations that Miscavige hit them. "They're such lies," said Ray Mithoff, his voice shaking.

"I've known the man for 27 years." Said Mark Ingber, a Sea Org member since 1968: "I've never been beaten to a pulp in my life.

Mr. Miscavige is my friend." Continued...

The best and worst One night before Christmas 1997, Miscavige's wife, Michelle, telephoned Rathbun and Rinder.

The leader wanted to see them.

Right away. From different parts of the California compound, they jogged to his quarters. They say Miscavige bustled through the screen door in a terry cloth bathrobe and without a word grabbed Rinder around the neck, slapped him, slugged him and threw him against a tree. Rinder ended up in ivy, mud on his uniform, his lip bleeding.

Miscavige led them to the officers' lounge, poured Rinder a glass of Scotch and said it would make him feel better. The leader of Scientology turned and walked toward his quarters. People would flinch when Miscavige walked by, De Vocht said. "That's how routine it was," he said.

"His whole entire outlook was that everybody was out to get him.

Anything and everything anybody else touched was going to be screwed up, and he had to do it himself.

He didn't trust anybody.'' Scobee described working in her office cubicle along the wall of a large conference room.

Miscavige was seated alone on one side of the table facing several staffers, including Jeff Hawkins. "So I'm not paying attention and all of a sudden I see David Miscavige jump up on top of the table — the conference room table," Scobee said. He lunged at Hawkins, she said, and the two of them landed at her feet.

Miscavige "stayed on top of him and was choking him and hitting him and grabbing his tie.

Buttons were flying and change falling out of Jeff's pockets.

And I'm sitting here going, 'Oh my God!' " Hawkins has spoken and written publicly about the 2002 incident. Church executive David Bloomberg tells a far different story.

Bloomberg said that he was seated next to Hawkins that day and that Hawkins became belligerent with the leader.

Hawkins fell out of his chair and ended up putting a scissor lock on Miscavige's legs. "Mr.

Miscavige did not touch Jeff Hawkins,'' Bloomberg said. At his best, Miscavige inspires staffers, Rathbun said, recalling times the leader invoked a dispatch Hubbard wrote in the 1980s: The planet's fate rests on the shoulders of "the desperate few." Miscavige used it to stir a sense of mission and make you feel special, Rathbun said. "He'd make you feel like you were really important.

And that's why you would do stuff for him.'' But the defectors said Miscavige's tendency to change plans, micromanage and undermine the chain of command paralyzed the management team and stifled growth in the years before they left.

To pump up revenue, Rathbun said, Miscavige repackaged old Scientology books and services and marketed them to parishioners as must-have, new products. He cited the church's recent blitz urging members to buy new versions of "the basics," a collection of Hubbard books that are the foundation of Scientology.

In 2007, Miscavige told Scientologists who had bought and studied the books for decades that the volumes were flawed, with whole passages missing, out-of-order or written by editors. No wonder people complained about not being able to understand them, the leader said.

The church put the volumes in their proper state and was selling them anew. Said Rathbun: "He's telling (parishioners) literally to their faces, 'You didn't understand the first thing about Scientology because you couldn't possibly have because the books were screwed up.' " The 18-volume set now sells for $450, down from the 1986 price of $738. Davis, the church spokesman, describes the reworked collection as a sensational development, a historic recovery of Hubbard's work comparable to the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. Said Yingling, the church attorney: "It was received with such joy by the Scientology public at large.'' Rathbun, De Vocht and Scobee said they were privy to weekly internal data reports that showed a gradual decline in key statistics, including the value of church services delivered and the number of auditing hours and courses completed. "These are the statistics that are supposed to matter," Rathbun said.

"All that stuff's been going down." De Vocht described Miscavige's decisionmaking as erratic.

He said the leader often changes course, resulting in situations like Scientology's multi*million-dollar "Super Power" building in downtown Clearwater.

The mammoth structure, finished on the outside, has sat vacant for six years. After repeated design changes, work on the interior restarted this month. Davis and Yingling trumpet Scientology's worldwide expansion.

The past five years, the church has acquired 80 properties;

Three new churches — called orgs — opened this year, with five more on track to open by year's end. Is this the real life? They called it the Hole. For months, the small building at the California base was like a prison for more than 30 of the highest-ranking officers in the Sea Org. They could leave only once a day, for a shower, otherwise they stayed put.

Food was brought in.

They slept on the floor, men around the conference table, women in the cubicles and small offices ringing the room. Miscavige called meetings at odd hours, 2 a.m., 4 a.m.

Day after day, the exhausted executives puzzled through management structure and the pricing system for church services, trying to guess what their leader wanted. He rejected their ideas, cursed them, branded them "suppressive persons" who put their church at risk.

He demanded they go back at it;

They could not leave until they got it right. Sometimes Miscavige would let someone out of the Hole or throw in somebody else.

Rinder says he was there from the start.

In January 2004, Miscavige added De Vocht to the mix. "Everyone gathered around the table.

He's throwing things, yelling at people, beating people up," De Vocht remembered.

"It was a weirdo scene, let me tell you." Later that month, Miscavige threw a bigger name into the Hole: Marty Rathbun. The leader told the others not to listen to a word Rathbun said, he was not to be trusted: I know you all have come to respect this guy over the years, but he is the guy that's f me up. A few days earlier, Rathbun says, Miscavige had pushed his head against a wall and slapped him hard across his left ear for not being tougher on the staff.

He figures that must be what landed him in the Hole. The building consisted of small offices and a conference room tucked into two double-wide trailers.

When Miscavige tramped down the corridor, the hollowness of the floor made a klunk, klunk, klunk sound. Four days into Rathbun's stay, the klunking signaled Miscavige's arrival, flanked as always by his wife, who took notes, and an assistant with a recorder so that everything the leader said could be transcribed and distributed across the base. Miscavige announced that they were going to play musical chairs to determine who among them was the most committed to the tasks at hand.

All but the winner would be reassigned to Scientology's far-flung outposts. Some staffers cried at the thought of being separated from family.

Others made ready, positioning chairs around the 30-foot long, maple conference table. Continued...

Miscavige used a boom box to play Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide No escape from reality When the music stopped, the uniformed Sea Org members jostled for chairs, knocking each other aside.

Two men fought so hard a chair came apart in their hands. Losers were told where they were being assigned, husbands and wives finding that they were to be thousands of miles apart.

Rinder said Miscavige taunted one husband for showing a soft side by consoling his tearful wife. "Oh yeah,'' Rinder said.

"It was fun and games.'' Again, church officials said, the defectors are making the normal seem abnormal.

Miscavige was merely trying to make a point, they said, citing a Hubbard policy that says frequent personnel transfers are like "musical chairs" and can harm a group's progress.

Miscavige wanted the group to see for themselves how destructive that can be. Yingling said Miscavige had been away from the base and returned to find that in his absence, Rathbun had transferred hundreds of staffers.

"That's why nothing was getting done," she said. Rathbun and Rinder said it was the opposite: Nothing was getting done because Miscavige took top managers from their posts and ordered them to the Hole.

Rathbun said Miscavige berated him for not transferring more people. From evening into the wee hours of the next day the game of musical chairs dragged on, sometimes interrupted by the leader lecturing the group on their incompetence. "It's like Apocalypse Now," Rathbun said.

"It's bizarre." The game ended with two women competing for the last chair. "It was definitely a physical struggle and they were grappling and wrestling," Rathbun recalled.

"Then (Miscavige) leaves and says, 'Okay, good.

We'll see you f tomorrow.' " Miscavige never carried out his threat of mass transfers. One beating too many The next night, Miscavige ordered his executives to jog from the Hole to a building where staffers made CDs of long-ago lectures by Hubbard. With the group still huffing from their 400-yard run, Miscavige grilled De Vocht, who had overseen renovations to the building.

He slapped De Vocht, threw him to the floor and began to choke him. De Vocht can't recall why he was attacked.

Maybe he hesitated with an answer.

Maybe he gave a look the leader didn't like.

Whatever the reason, he accepted his drubbing in silent, degrading submission. Miscavige grew angrier if you expressed pain or resisted, the defectors said. "You're literally sitting there thinking, I'm not going to hit this guy," De Vocht said.

"It happens so suddenly, what do you do?

And then if you want to go after him, how many other people are going to pummel you?

You've got to realize this place is so cultish it's scary." Scobee says the executives at the California base were trapped.

They dared not speak to each other about Miscavige's behavior, afraid they would be found out in confessions known as "security checks." A person who said something negative about Miscavige might withhold it in her own confession, Scobee said, but someone else would invariably report it in theirs. "So you don't want to go against him," she said.

"It wasn't even an option, as amazing as it seems.

Now, after being out, I would so do everything different." For Sea Org members, there's a personal struggle as well.

"You put your life into the church and you do think that is your route to freedom," Scobee said.

"There are a lot of great things about it … and you don't want to throw that away.

You don't want to risk it." Why not just leave? Easy to say, according to Rinder. Scientology preaches self-reliance.

You alone control your environment, your condition in life is no one else's doing but your own. But just as strongly, Scientology holds that if you leave the church, something is wrong with you.

Somewhere in your past is an "overt," a transgression. "It becomes a big sort of dichotomy," Rinder said.

Staying in an unhappy situation is no way to control your environment.

"But if I leave, I'm doing something wrong, too.

It's like a catch-22." For Rinder, the Scientology experience he knew and loved had become something foreign, a work climate increasingly strange and abusive. It also was at crosscurrents with the kinder, gentler public posture the church sought to build over the past 20 years, a message that Rinder, as chief spokesman, conveyed time and again: The church purged the lawbreakers and dirty tricksters of the 1970s and reinvented itself. "We just stopped doing things that I and others considered to be foolish and harmful and off policy,'' Rinder said. Except at home. "Now, the irony is what's being done on the inside is foolish and harmful and abusive,'' he said. Rathbun saw and delivered many beatings over the years.

But he said Miscavige's attack on De Vocht the night after the musical chairs game clarified his thinking. Four days earlier, when Miscavige put Rathbun in the Hole, he instructed everyone not to talk to him.

But De Vocht quietly defied that order, asking Rathbun to help them figure out what to do to please Miscavige.

Now De Vocht was being beaten. "I'm watching this go down, and I just had this incredible connection … this humanity connection with Tom," Rathbun said.

"I subscribe to the Popeye philosophy: 'I can take so much but I can't takes no more.' "I still have a thread of dignity and I see it being crushed in people around me.

What am I going to do?

Am I going to become one of them, too?" As the rest of the group herded back into the Hole, Rathbun broke off and ducked into some bushes.

He went for his motorcycle, a Yamaha 650, wheeled it to the back gate of the compound and hid in the brush for about 20 minutes.

When the gate opened for a car, he sped away. Rathbun said he felt rage and loss, mixed with an odd excitement. "I'm kind of exhilarated that I've made the step, and I'm hauling a-- because I'm thinking someone's following me." http://www.tampabay.com/news/sciento...cle1012575.ece

Leaving the Church of Scientology: a huge step By Thomas C.

Tobin and Joe Childs, Times Staff Writers In Print: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 Those who join the Sea Org dedicate their lives to Scientology and sign a 1-billion-year contract, to symbolize their commitment to serve in this life and the next ones.

Many of those who leave undergo a "security check'' to see if they have ill intentions for the church, and many are cut off from contact with family still in Scientology. MIKE RINDER In March 2007, David Miscavige assigned Rinder to get the BBC to spike a story it was preparing.

A reporter and film crew had been to Los Angeles, asking pointed questions about Miscavige.

Rinder followed them back to the UK. Working out of church offices in North London, Rinder wrote network executives, asking to meet.

He camped out at BBC offices. On March 31, he intercepted the reporter at a church test center.

A church videographer stood by.

Blocking the doorway and face to face with the reporter, Rinder repeatedly denied allegations Miscavige abused his deputies.

"It's rubbish,'' he said. The story aired May 14, but it did not expose Miscavige.

Rinder was relieved. But Miscavige still was furious with him.

The first week of June, Rinder says, the church leader wrote that he was to be sent to a remote part of Australia.

And a manager in the London office told Rinder that Miscavige had phoned to say that first he was to report to the church's facility in Sussex, England, and dig ditches.

He was not to return to the United States. The church says Rinder was not told to dig ditches and was not told that he could never return to the United States. Rinder picked up his briefcase and headed for the subway.

He knew the route well.

Go to Victoria Station, catch a train to East Grinstead, in Sussex.

He had made the trip many times. But not this day.

He exited the subway before reaching Victoria, walked up to street level and toured one of his favorite cities. A few days later he called Tom De Vocht, saying he was flying into Orlando.

Could Tom pick him up? De Vocht hadn't seen his old friend since he left the church two years earlier.

On the way to De Vocht's apartment, they stopped at Kohl's to get Rinder something to wear. Rinder stayed a few days, then went to Virginia.

He wrote the church, saying he wanted to talk to his wife and also wanted his stuff, except his motorcycle and bicycle.

Give them to his kids, he wrote. He did not talk to his wife. Soon a FedEx package arrived, including a check for $5,000, to cover the motorcycle "and everything else,'' Rinder said.

The only items not sent were family photos. Rinder and his wife, Cathy, divorced after 35 years.

A Sea Org member for 35 years, Cathy Rinder called her ex-husband's allegation that Miscavige struck him on some 50 occasions "outrageous.'' "I slept with Mike,'' she said, "and I would have seen it.'' The Rinders have two adult children, both Sea Org members.

Since he left the church in 2007, Rinder has had no contact with them and didn't know their 24-year-old son battled cancer the past 18 months. A Sea Org member since he was 18, Rinder is 54 and lives in Denver.

He sells cars. Continued...

MARTY RATHBUN After riding away from the California base aboard his motorcycle in February 2004, Rathbun flew to Clearwater to "sort things out'' with his wife, Anne, a longtime Scientologist.

Eventually, he hoped to sort things out with Miscavige, too. Rathbun was a "potential trouble source" for any Scientologist he encountered.

For 10 months, he ate alone, roomed alone in staff housing — his wife in a separate apartment — and pulled a daily shift in the church's furniture mill. Through his wife, Rathbun conveyed that he wanted to confront Miscavige.

He said he waited for 10 months but the leader never came to see him. On Dec.

12, 2004, he walked away from 27 years in Scientology.

He rented a car and drove around the South for 35 days, stopping at the southern tip of Texas, where he found it easy to blend in. "It's not a big thing that a guy in middle age comes into town destitute or depressed.

There's a lot of that along the border," he said.

"So it wasn't like I stuck out like a sore thumb.

It was nice." In Clearwater, a church critic put up posters asking, Where's Marty Rathbun?

On the Internet, there was speculation: "Is Marty Rathbun dead?'' Now divorced, Rathbun and his girlfriend of three years share a stilt house near Corpus Christi, Texas.

They have a dog, Chiquita. His former wife, now Anne Joasem, remains in the Sea Org.

She said Rathbun was violent and saw his role as a warrior for the church. She said he told her he was leaving because the church was entering an era of expansion and he didn't want to get in the way. Rathbun scoffed at that.

"This is all manufactured.

This is Miscavige-scripted stuff." Rathbun writes for two small newspapers but considers himself more activist than journalist.

Last year, he worked as an organizer for the Obama campaign.

He also hawked beer at a local ballpark. He said he gives advice and counsel — and listens a lot — to people in and out of Scientology. He has an e-meter in his home office and says he still practices Scientology.

He is 52. AMY SCOBEE When Scobee first saw Miscavige physically strike a church executive, back in 1995, she said she rationalized it this way: The guy must have done something really wrong to make the leader angry. The next six years, she saw more abuse and other dehumanizing practices, she said, before she had an epiphany: "What I am seeing is completely insane and I am nonstop trying to make it make sense, and it doesn't." She started speaking up and constantly got in trouble.

She was sent to Scientology's Rehabilitation Project Force, RPF for short, a work detail that is supposed to offer Sea Org members a chance to sort things out, recharge, reorder misaligned priorities.

Scobee called it "slave labor.'' She had to scrape the inside of a septic tank with a wire brush.

She dug drainage ditches. Scobee was married 17 years to fellow Sea Org member Jim Mortland.

But she said they rarely saw each other because they were often assigned to different locations, had different schedules and were kept apart a total of five years because of the RPF. In 2003, a church "Fitness Board'' found her unfit to work at the California base and "off-loaded" her to the RPF in Clearwater. At first, she thought, she would try to redeem herself.

But then she started thinking she wanted to leave.

She asked fellow Sea Org member and longtime friend Matt Pesch if he wanted to leave with her.

He did. They began the cumbersome process of "routing out.'' They knew they faced confessionals called security checks, but Scobee was shocked to learn she was being declared a "suppressive person,'' an enemy of Scientology.

She would be allowed no contact with any church member. "I blew up.

Somebody's going to do a sec check on me and put me on the streets after 27 years of working my a-- off around the clock, not getting paid.

I was really livid.'' During the routing out process, Scobee said she and Pesch were guarded 24 hours a day and fed only beans and rice. Two months later, on March 1, 2005, Scobee and Pesch told their handlers the process had gone on too long.

They left separately. The church gave her $500, most of which paid for her flight back to her home near Seattle.

On the way to Tampa International Airport, she had her driver stop at a salon so she could get a haircut. Twenty-six years after coming to Clearwater as a 16-year-old Sea Org newbie, she said she boarded the plane with about $175. "That's how much I started the world with,'' she said. "I never had job.

I had no prior job experience.

No high school diploma.

I had no bank account.

No driver's license.

… I knew nothing of the outside world.'' A few weeks later, Pesch traveled to Seattle and the two married.

They buy and sell used furniture.

Scobee is 45. TOM DE VOCHT De Vocht said Miscavige hit him twice, first in 2004 after musical chairs, and again in May 2005 in the film studio at the church base in California. "He slapped me across the face, pushed my neck and head up against the wall, which hurt pretty good.'' De Vocht told his wife, Jennifer, a Miscavige aide, that if it happened again, he would fight back. Days later, De Vocht said, he was summoned to a room, where about 15 people waited, including his wife.

Miscavige telephoned from Clearwater and over a speaker phone read an order declaring De Vocht a "suppressive person," an enemy of the church. Not allowed to talk to his wife again, he bunked in a small room.

Rinder shadowed him for three days, pitching reasons to stay. But De Vocht wouldn't budge.

He agreed to a limited number of confessions called "security checks," but he told everyone he was leaving, that Sunday afternoon at 3:30.

He also asked to talk a last time with his wife.

Rinder told him no. Sunday came.

The guard at the base wouldn't open the front gate so De Vocht scaled it and walked to Hemet, a city 6 miles away.

Rinder walked with him. De Vocht, a 28-year Sea Org member, had his $300 severance pay.

He checked into a hotel and called his brother in Florida to come pick him up.

Days later, Rinder met De Vocht and turned over his belongings and his two dogs, Puggers and Guppers. The church also called, saying he had left his wet suit.

De Vocht gave a forwarding address.

Two weeks later, the wet suit arrived, along with a "freeloader's bill'' for $98,000 to reimburse the church for courses he took for free as a Sea Org member.

He hasn't paid a dime. De Vocht and his wife, now Jennifer Linson, were divorced after 19 years.

She told the Times her ex-husband successfully completed a number of construction projects in Clearwater, but badly overspent on a key project at the base, was demoted, became bitter and left.

They haven't spoken since. "I don't hold anything she had to say against her,'' De Vocht said, "because she was put up to saying it.'' He is 45 and runs a furniture business in Winter Haven. http://www.tampabay.com/news/sciento...cle1012520.ece

ABOUT THIS SPECIAL REPORT ON SCIENTOLOGY: Mark C.

"Marty" Rathbun left the Church of Scientology staff in late 2004, ending a 27-year career that saw him rise to be a top lieutenant to Miscavige in the organization.

For the past four years, he has lived a low-profile life in Texas.

Some speculated he had died. In February, Rathbun posted an Internet message announcing he was available to counsel other disaffected Scientologists. "Having dug myself out of the dark pit where many who leave the church land," he wrote, "I began lending a hand to others similarly situated." Contacted by the St.

Petersburg Times, Rathbun agreed to tell the story of his years in Scientology and what led to his leaving.

The Times interviewed him at his home in Texas, and he came to Clearwater to revisit some of the scenes he described. Seeking to corroborate Rathbun's story, the newspaper contacted others who were in Scientology during the same period and have left the church: Mike Rinder, one of Rathbun's closest associates for two decades;

Tom De Vocht, who Rathbun named as key to his decision to leave;

And later, Amy Scobee. Rathbun and Rinder were well known to the reporters, who had interviewed them dozens of times, sometimes combatively, through years of controversy in Clearwater.

They also hosted the reporters in Los Angeles in 1998, when Miscavige granted the only print media interview he has given. Two reporters met Rinder in Denver, where he now lives, but he declined to be interviewed.

About a month later, two Washington-based lawyers who work for the church showed up unannounced in Denver, informed Rinder that they had heard about the newspaper's visit and asked what he had revealed. They reminded him that as one of the church's top legal officers, attorney-client privilege did not end when he left the church.

They told him he could hurt the church by going public. Weeks later, after the church provided the newspaper with a 2007 video of Rinder heatedly denying that Miscavige hit him and others, Rinder decided to talk to the Times. De Vocht was interviewed in Winter Haven.

Scobee was interviewed in Pinellas County, when she and her husband came to visit relatives. The reporters interviewed the four defectors multiple times, and met with church spokesmen and lawyers for 25 hours. Joe Childs, Managing Editor/Tampa Bay, ran the Times Clearwater operation dating to 1993 and supervised the newspaper's Scientology coverage.

He can be reached at childs@sptimes.com Thomas C.

Tobin has covered the Church of Scientology off and on for 20 years.

He can be reached at tobin@sptimes.com The result of the Times' reporting is this multi-part special report, the latest in a long history of Scientology coverage by the Times.

The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for a 1979 report on Scientology.

And in the years since, with the church's Clearwater headquarters in the Times' prime coverage area, the in-depth reporting has continued.

This project, as you will see, features the three days of in-depth reports from the St.

Petersburg Times, as well as additional content for this Web presentation.

Those additional pieces include video;

A photo gallery; and links to previous coverage in the Times, including the Pulitzer-winning coverage. http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/

How Scientology Attracts Celebrities Church Has Long Sought High-Profile Public Figures as 'Walking Success Stories' By MARTIN BASHIR, ETHAN NELSON and MAGGIE BURBANK Oct.

24, 2009 Celebrities and the Church of Scientology seem to go hand-in-hand.

And actor Tom Cruise is arguably the world's best-known celebrity Scientologist. "She goes, 'I don't really understand who you are,'" Cruise says in a video made for a Scientology event that was leaked onto the Internet last year.

"And I said, 'OK, I'm a Scientologist.' "There's nothing part of the way for me," Cruise says on the video, laughing.

"It's just [makes voom sound]." Tom Cruise first burst onto the scene in a pair of white socks, and not much else, in "Risky Business." Then he was fighter pilot, a bartender, and by the time he appeared in "Jerry Maguire," he'd become the most successful movie star on the planet -- and deeply involved in Scientology. Amy Scobee was a member of Scientology for 27 years.

She was a Church executive who helped expand Scientology's outreach to celebrities.

She spoke with "Nightline." Nightline: ...Presbyterian Church doesn't have a wing that emphasizes reaching celebrities ...Why do you think there was this emphasis on celebrity? Scobee: ...One of the purposes of Celebrity Centre is to make celebrities walking success stories of Scientology. Tommy Davis is the director of public affairs for the Church of Scientology.

His mother is the actress Anne Archer, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a betrayed housewife in the movie "Fatal Attraction." Nightline: ...Why was there this exceptional approach to celebrities? Davis: Well... Nightline: What's the purpose of that? Davis: What you have in Scientology is you have a lot of artists who are Scientologists.

Some of them are well known.

...the Celebrity Centre, which is that arts and culture branch of the Church first began, it was actually started and founded by and gotten going by Scientologists who are artists. Scientology was founded by science fiction author L.

Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s.

One of the key practices is "auditing," which is a kind of counseling session in which a person's unconscious thoughts from painful experiences are purged, often with the help of a trained auditor and a device known as an "e-meter." Bruce Hines left the Church in 2003 after 24 years. Hines: This e-meter, this electrometer, which works on the same principle as a lie detector, even though they say, "No, this isn't a lie detector." But it's the exact same principle. Nightline: But it indicates some kind of electrical pulse? Hines: It sends a current through your body.

... And the theory is is that when you have emotional charge ...

It changes the resistance of the body.

So that changes the current.

And that ... and it makes this needle move. "Nightline" spoke with Tommy Davis. Nightline: Has the e-meter ever been subjected to randomized clinical trials to assess its efficacy? Davis: I have no idea.

I don't know why it would be.

It works in Scientology and that's what people use it.

I don't know why it would be subjected to random clinical trials. Nightline: Because it's a...a mechanism for therapeutic care you just said... Davis: In a religion. Nightline: But has it ever been tested objectively is what I'm asking? Davis: I mean it gets used every day by Scientology counselors. Nightline: I'm not asking that.

I'm asking... Davis: To my knowledge, no.

...And as far as evidence of the e-meter and its efficacy, the evidence of that is in those Scientologists who have used it to great benefit.

And as far as the Church of Scientology is concerned, it's the only evidence that matters, is the people and the results. From the start, L.

Ron Hubbard set out to attract celebrities, believing high profile public figures would be its most effective evangelists. Nightline: Can you recall any celebrities who came into the Centre when you were there? Scobee: I met John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie, Edgar Winter, Isaac Hayes, uh, Tom Cruise. After Hubbard died in 1986, David Miscavige became the Church's leader -- and soon embraced Tom Cruise with great fervor. Continued...

Tom Cruise: Church's Most Celebrated New Member Nightline: But I guess it ...

It's helpful, isn't it, if ...

Uh, you're an organization with an individual as well known, as ...famous, as successful as Tom Cruise. Davis: Sure. Nightline: He's a... Davis: Of course. Nightline: He's a good advocate? Davis: Oh, look ...

I think anybody who would complain about having successful, well known, happy ...

Uh, people ... Nightline: John Travolta, Kristie Ally. Davis: ...of...of...

Their group, I'd think you'd be crazy to (laughs) complain about that. Bruce Hines says he helped prepare for the arrival of the Church's most celebrated new member, who had decided to fully commit to Scientology by staying at the International Base in California for a few months of services. "I was part of the preparations where David Miscavige brought Tom Cruise to the International Headquarters," Hines said. And Hines says nothing was to be spared.

"...And he had the very best auditors and the very best people looking after him," said Hines.

"...Just the ... the best treatment that anyone could possibly get, so that he got a favorable impression of Scientology." Church's Treatment of Celebrities Marty Rathbun left the Church in 2004 after 27 years.

He was a top lieutenant to David Miscavige. Nightline: Did you audit Tom Cruise? Rathbun: Yeah, extensively... Nightline: They were given what, a celebrity environment? Rathbun: A cel-- Nightline: Pampering? Rathbun: You got it.

You got it. Nightline: And who was doing that? Rathbun: Miscavige, man.

I mean, that was his thing.

It's all about image.

...He's flying across the country in Tom Cruise's jet.

...It's all about living the high life and being a powerful guy who is looked up to by the rich and famous. Tommy Davis said the Church does not indulge or pamper celebrities. In recent years, Tom Cruise has been more confident about publicly asserting Scientology principles -- particularly its rejection of psychiatric medicine. "Here's the problem," Cruise told host Matt Lauer in a "Today" show appearance.

"You don't know the history of psychiatry.

I do. "Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even-- you're glib.

You don't even know what Ritalin is." Rathbun says the Tom Cruise he now sees on TV is not the Tom Cruise he once knew. Rathbun: I watch him on Matt Lauer.

And I go, "That ain't Tom Cruise.

That's David Miscavige.

That's not the Tom Cruise I knew two years ago." Nightline: You're referring to the moment when he attacked Brooke Shields for suffering post-natal depression and-- Rathbun: Attacked Matt Lauer, I mean, he's talking-- Nightline: For not understanding-- Rathbun: --he is talking to Matt Lauer like David Miscavige talks to his staff.

"You're glib, man, you don't get it.

You don't understa--" you know. When asked by "Nightline" if he supported Cruise's comments on the Today Show, Tommy Davis said: "I support anybody who is going to be out there talking about the dangerous effects of drugs..." Nightline: But with the greatest respect, Mr.

Davis, Tom Cruise is an actor.

He's not a medical academic.

He's not a clinician.

...Do you really think he's qualified to denounce an entire field of medicine? Davis: Well, I think your comments right there are actually quite degrading of actors and artists... Nightline: ...What right do they have? Davis: They have every right... Cruise was one of many celebrities to join the Church.

In 1998, actors John Travolta and Kirstie Alley told ABC News how much Scientology has helped them. "The basic thing that I think Scientology helps people with is to rehabilitate their own spirit, their own nature, their own personality that was sort of buried or lost somewhere along the way," said Alley. "It's given me all aspects of life back to me where I can move through life confidently, I can move through life feeling fulfilled, I look forward to life every day," said Travolta. Recently, speculation has swirled about Travolta, who famously produced and starred in the film, "Battlefield Earth," based on a book by L.

Ron Hubbard. "Nightline" spoke with Marty Rathbun, who says he audited Travolta. Nightline: What sort of a man was he? Rathbun: He's a wonderful man.

He's a great guy.

He's very love -- one of the more loving persons you ever want to meet, sensitive, caring. It was at the family's island retreat that Travolta's 16-year-old son, Jett, who had autism, died from a seizure, in January. "Nightline" asked Davis if the Church had ever advised Travolta not to allow his son take certain medications. "Absolutely not.

It never happened.

The Church never advised them on ...

In ... in any way, shape or form, whatsoever, on any aspect of, uh ...

Of their son's treatment.

Never have. And never will," Davis said. Nightline: As you know, Mr.

Travolta and his wife suffered a very great tragedy recently.

... Do you know if the Church ever advised them not to allow their son to receive certain medications for conditions? Davis: Absolutely not.

It never happened.

The Church never advised them on ...

In ... in any way, shape or form, whatsoever, on any aspect of, uh ...

Of their son's treatment.

Never have. And never will. The tragic death has lead to tabloid speculation that John Travolta might leave the Church of Scientology, something the Church and Travolta's publicist fiercely denied -- and last week, Travolta, his wife, Kelly Preston, and Tom Cruise were at major Scientology celebration in England. Secrets of Scientology The Church says there is no aspect of life that cannot be improved through the application of Scientology principles, some of which are treatments conceived by L.

Ron Hubbard. One such procedure, popular with celebrities, is called the "purification rundown." "It's a sauna and vitamin program, some exercise to get your heartrate going and ...

You would take high doses of ...

Dosages of Niacin," said Amy Scobee. Scientologists believe it can dislodge toxins and poisons from the body. Tom Cruise is a strong advocate of this treatment -- co-founding the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, which uses L.

Ron Hubbard's "purification rundown" principals for those exposed to toxic chemicals after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Continued...

"When I started this project, it was because I was in a position where I knew that I could help," Cruise said at a project event. Scobee had the treatment. "When I did it the first time...

It was one week..., and I felt, brighter and more alert," she said.

"My skin was, you know, vibrant and stuff like that." But far away from the limelight of celebrities, Scobee says the program can also be used to discipline Church staff members.

She says she was once told to take part in a purification rundown that ended up lasting eight months. Scobee: I was at 5,000 milligrams of Niacin for months and months.

I don't know what that did to my body!

(Laughs). I have no idea. Nightline: How did you feel? Scobee: I felt really, there was like gray stuff coming out of my skin, and I didn't know if it was like my insides coming out (laughs) or whatever that long of being in the sauna five hours a day every day. Nightline: Five hours? Scobee: Yeah. Nightline: And you kept going? Scobee: Yeah. Nightline: What happened when you did it for eight months? Scobee: That was when I, uh, decided I didn't want to be there anymore ...

To satisfy somebody else's demands on ...

On me, to fix me, because of their preconceived ways. The Church denies Scobee's characterization and says the program is a "religious service," and to claim it as a "kind of perverse punishment" is "gross in the extreme." Perhaps the most sensitive aspect of the Church's theology concerns confidential scriptures meant only for higher level Scientologists. According to former Church insiders, these documents describe L.

Ron Hubbard's belief in an intergalactic emperor called Xenu who brought the spirits of his people to earth 75 million years ago, burying them in volcanoes.

These spirits, the story goes, have stuck to the bodies of people living today in the form of "body thetans." "They have had some really bad experience millions, billions, trillions, actually quadrillions of years ago, which is way older than the Big Bang basically...," said Bruce Hines.

"You're supposed to, isolate ...

And communicate with them telepathetically, so that they go away." Tommy Davis spoke with "Nightline." Nightline: Do you believe that ...

A galactic emperor called Xenu ...

Brought his people to earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes? Davis: OK. Nightline: Do you believe that? Davis: Martin, I am not going to discuss the disgusting perversion of Scientology beliefs that can be found out commonly on the Internet and be put in the position of talking about things for ...

That ... talking about things that are so fundamentally offensive to Scientologists to discuss... Nightline: Well, I ...

I have the burden of my own journalistic responsibility ... Davis: Uh-huh. Nightline: ...

That I bring to this meeting and I hope that, I've been appropriately respectful of you in my asking of the questions ... Davis: Well, you haven't to the degree that the question that you asked me you know, by virtue of the fact that it's been made very clear in other media entities that it's something that we consider offensive ...

It is in violation of my religious beliefs to talk about them. Nightline: So, just for clarification ...

Just for clarification, do you personally believe ... Davis: I'm going to stop you, if you're going to ask me that question again and you're going to repeat things about volcanoes and this kind of thing and so on and so forth, I will stand up and walk out, Martin.

Because ... because what you're doing by doing that is you are intentionally asking me things which you know I find offensive, and you're insisting on asking me.

So I'm asking you one more time... Nightline: Mr.

Davis ...So, for a moment, if you wouldn't mind, I'm not trying to offend anybody.

I'm just trying to ask you a series of questions about the public face that you have.

I'm not trying to mock you, I'm trying to understand what your beliefs are. Davis: Sure. Nightline: You've explained what auditing is....you've explained the growth of the Church, you've done all of those things. Davis: Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Sure. Nightline: I am asking you in the context of those questions, in the context of those questions, is it true that L.

Ron Hubbard said that understanding the origins of the human race and described through Xenu -- At this point Davis stood up and left the room. 'We're Counting on You' Tom Cruise is a close friend of the ecclesiastical leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige. Cruise recently received the organization's "Freedom Medal of Valor" at a prestigious ceremony. "I want to tell you something.

I have never met a more competent, a more intelligent a more tolerant, a more compassionate being," Cruise says in a video of the ceremony.

"....To LRH! [salutes photo of L.

Ron Hubbard]." In a report on Oct.

22, 2009, "Nightline" focused on allegations made by former high ranking Scientologists who claim leader David Miscavige repeatedly struck subordinates. "He just walked up and he hit me on the side of the head.

It was a ... he didn't have a closed fist.

But it was an open hand," Hines said.

"But it was ... it definitely hurt and it definitely knocked me back." "I saw him ...

Attack [Mike Rinder] while he was sitting in a chair and hitting him upside the head," said former Church executive Marty Rathbun.

"And then -- in -- and then wrestling him around the neck and ...

Throwing him to the ground...

I saw at least a dozen times, this happen." The church denies David Miscavige ever hit anyone.

Sworn affidavits given to ABC News from over a dozen current Scientologists describe the allegations of abuse as "vile falsehoods" and say it was actually Marty Rathbun who was abusive. Rathbun concedes he was violent, but says he was encouraged to be physical by Miscavige.

He and the other accusers believe Tom Cruise is too supportive of the Church's leader. "Tom Cruise, I don't appreciate the fact that he's supporting David Miscavige," said Scobee, "because either he's supporting him and ...

And dumb to the fact that he is a total tyrant, or he's in agreement with it ...

And either way that is really not OK." And Rathbun hopes that the other most famous Scientologist, John Travolta, will re-consider his relationship with Scientology in light of the allegations of violence. Nightline: What do you think of his position at the moment?

Do you think that he's likely to leave? Rathbun: I think if [Travolta] were exposed to the truth, the truths that are being spoken...about what really is going on behind the façade, I don't think he would continue to support that organization.

...I think he'd check out in a heartbeat. In a letter sent to Nightline yon October 22, Tom Cruise's attorney called the actor "a man of spirit, intelligence, and independence." He said, "Mr.

Cruise is aware of the claims made against Mr.

Miscavige by former members of the Church of Scientology.

He does not believe them." http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/scie...ory?id=8871475

Ex-Scientology Kids Share Their Stories Former Scientologists, Including Church Leader's Niece, Share Stories With 'Nightline' By LISA FLETCHER, ETHAN NELSON and MAGGIE BURBANK April 24, 2008 He's one of the biggest box-office draws in history, but in recent years Tom Cruise has become more than just the face of his films.

He has also become the face of his religion -- Scientology. A recent video of Cruise -- made for a Scientology event and leaked online -- showed the star's unbridled passion for his religion and piqued the public's interest in a belief system that has long been surrounded by controversy. "I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist," Cruise said in the video. Cruise is a vocal supporter and close friend of Scientology's worldwide leader, David Miscavige, who took over the reins of power when science fiction author and founder L.

Ron Hubbard died in 1986. Miscavige says Scientology can offer its followers greater ability in all areas of life, rid people of negativity, and make them "clear." But some former members of the Sea Organization, or Sea Org (Scientology's version of clergy -- the group of people who essentially run the church), including a niece of Miscavige, see another side to the religion.

They spoke to "Nightline" about how they became increasingly disillusioned with the Church of Scientology, until they decided it was time to leave. According to the Church, Scientology is in the midst of tremendous growth.

It claims millions of members in more than 100 countries, although critics say those numbers are vastly overstated.

But recently, the Church has found itself under increasing attack.

In January, a group of online activists known as Anonymous posted a threatening video on the Internet and have since staged a number of anti-Scientology protests across the country.

And new Web sites, critical of Scientology, are popping up all over the Internet. Exscientologykids.com was created by three young women who used to be members of the church, including Jenna Miscavige Hill, who is a niece of Scientology's leader David Miscavige.

Hill's parents joined when she was 2 years old.

Both her parents were high-ranking members of Sea Org. "What we're told is that [members of the Sea Org] have to work so hard because they're helping other people," Hill, 24, recalled.

"Your family isn't the most important thing." Life on 'the Ranch' and at Scientology's 'Mecca' From ages 6 to 12, Hill lived at a Scientology-owned property in California that was known as "the ranch," where she said children as young as 6 had long days.

In addition to reading, writing and arithmetic classes and studying Scientology, she said there were physical chores. "These projects ranged from rock hauling, taking rocks out of the creek, picking them up, hauling them up a hill, putting them in a pile -- these were usually to make rock walls," she said. As a little girl Hill said she remembers weeding for hours, "no matter how hot or how cold it was outside." In an official response to a Radar magazine article that included Hill's story, the Church wrote, "Children were never forced to engage in manual labor.

Claims to the contrary are categorically denied." The Church has said about the ranch, which was closed in 1999, that the facilities were "nothing short of spectacular." Hill said she was asked to sign a billion-year contract to prove her devotion to the Church, because "in Scientology, they believe that you live lifetime after lifetime." After six years at the ranch, she left California to visit the Church's so-called "mecca" in Clearwater, Fla.

She said Church elders asked her to remain there and become a full-fledged member of the Sea Org, while her parents remained in California. "I wanted to go back and see them," Hill said.

"And I was even about to get on a plane, and I just got pulled into a room and screamed at, telling me that, you know, I'm here to be a Sea Org member." Hill's parents declined our request for an interview. Sea Org and Suppressive Persons Hundreds of miles away and unknown at the time to Jenna Miscavige Hill, Astra Woodcraft, 29, was the daughter of Scientologists and as a child also went to Scientology schools and belonged to Sea Org.

At age 15, she married a fellow Sea Org member and her days consisted of studying -- mostly Hubbard's teachings -- and clerical duties. "I worked 15 hour days," she said.

"We worked seven days a week.

I maybe had only two or three days off a year." Woodcraft said disobedience wasn't tolerated in Sea Org, and describes the reaction she says she received when she once refused an order from a higher-ranking Sea Org member. "He held me up against the wall, screaming in my face," she said.

"I remember thinking the whole time I was there … on the one hand I was raised on Scientology, I grew up in this environment, I didn't know any different, but I still it was like, this doesn't seem right." Her father, Lawrence Woodcraft, said the family joined the Sea Org because of his wife's passion for Scientology. "They paint an extremely rosy picture," he said.

"And it sort of sucks you in.

[My wife] would happily go for a year or two without seeing [her daughters].

I'm sure she missed them.

Her total priority was Scientology, and clearing the planet.

When I spoke to her about it, she'd say well, if I don't further the aims of Scientology, the kids won't have a future anyway.

It was that level of fanaticism that drove her." Astra Woodcraft's mother did not return "Nightline's" calls.

Lawrence Woodcraft said he grew disillusioned soon after joining the Sea Org and wanted to take his children and leave the Church.

But he said he felt that wasn't an option. "You'll be declared a suppressive person, and then you'll never speak to your family again," he said. "Suppressive person" or "SP" is Church lingo for someone who is anti-Scientology or, in their terms, "seeks to suppress any betterment activity or group." "If you leave without permission, they declare you a suppressive person and they make your family and anyone who knows you in Scientology disconnect from you," Astra Woodcraft said. Despite the risk of being labeled an SP, Lawrence Woodcraft left the church, and he and his wife divorced. Continued...

"I was told I couldn't see my dad anymore because he wasn't in Sea Org," Astra Woodcraft said. Jenna Miscavige Hill also spoke about having contact with her family restricted.

She said one day when she was 14 she got in trouble for chit-chatting when she was supposed to be studying.

She tried to make a phone call to her parents, but she says she was prevented from doing so and even punched someone during the altercation. "People were physically stopping me," she said.

"Basically I got held down by like three people." Shortly thereafter, she said, she was confronted by her uncle David Miscavige, who she said told her, "What you did is unacceptable.

You're not gonna get any more special treatment," she recalled.

"I was like, if special treatment means being held down and not being allowed to talk to your family, then I am happy to be rid of it." Scientology and Celebrity Celebrity Center International is a Scientology Church located in Hollywood, Calif.

It is aptly named, as many Hollywood celebrities are members of the Church.

Cruise and his wife, Katie Holmes, of course, as well as John Travolta and wife Kelly Preston, and Kirstie Alley. "I had one auditing session in Scientology, and I never did drugs again or had the urge to do drugs again," she told ABC News in a 1998 interview. Auditing is a fundamental and common practice in Scientology.

It's a kind of counseling session in which a person is asked a series of questions and negative feelings and thoughts are identified -- and hopefully purged -- through the use of what's called an e-meter. "You just basically hold the two cans, and I think they measure electrical resistance," Lawrence Woodcraft said of his auditing sessions.

"They have a whole list of questions: Are you withholding anything, do you have an upset over anything.

In other words they want to find out what's going on in your life." Said Jenna Miscavige Hill: "Once a week we would get a meter check where they just have you sit there, and they'd ...

Observe your needle, and if it's like dirty, then that means that you're hiding something." Hill said the e-meter and auditing sessions could also be used to interrogate, asking things like: "Do you have any intentions to leave and never come back?

Do you talk about bad things about the church to your parents?" In 2000, Hill's parents were preparing to leave the Church and Hill said that around this time, her e-meter sessions suddenly intensified. "I just got plucked out of my usual activities by a very high representative of the Church and was interrogated on the e-meter," she said. Hill also said there were times when she was physically restrained during auditing sessions, "to a point where I was yelling and screaming." But according to a Scientology report from May 2006, provided to "Nightline" by Hill, the Church said she was the violent one.

The report states she had a "long history" of "verbally and physically accosting other staff members … neglecting duties … damaging church property … mayhem … mutiny … enturbulation." Hill doesn't deny the incidents, but said Church restrictions pushed her to the breaking point. 'No More Kids'? "I'd been very unhappy while I was there," said Astra Woodcraft, who was becoming disillusioned with the church. "They came up with a new rule, 'OK, that's it.

No more kids,'" she said. Her father said, "She was very upset when she was about 16 or 17 and told me they suddenly decided to change the rules and Sea Org members were no longer allowed to have children." Hill said that "if you get pregnant when you're in the Sea Org you either have to leave, or you get an abortion." Said Astra Woodcraft: "I remember thinking wait a minute, I never agreed to this.

I am 17 years old, I haven't made a decision that I'm not going to have children." Two years after the policy was established, Astra Woodcraft learned she and her husband were expecting a baby. "A very high-level Sea Org member one day saw me and asked me what I was doing and I said I was leaving and I said I was pregnant and he said, Oh, is it too late for an abortion?," Woodcraft said.

"I didn't even know what to say in response.

" In a San Francisco Chronicle article from 2001, Church leaders said that the Church has no policy on abortion, leaving the choice up to individual couples. Lawrence Woodcraft remembered the relief he felt when his daughter finally decided to leave the church. "She thought, Wait a minute.

There's more to life than Scientology," he said.

"That's when she just took off.

Just got the hell out of that rotten organization.

… Sorry, it makes me upset to think about it," he said, tearing up. Soon after Astra Woodcraft left, she divorced her husband and says she was disconnected from her family who was still in the Church. A few years later, her younger sister left, too. 'I Don't Have a Life' Jenna Miscavige Hill said it wasn't until years after her parents left the Church that she began to realize she wanted to leave as well.

"I don't even have a life," she said of her time in Sea Org.

"I don't get to enjoy things.

Who am I really helping?" Hill said she and her husband, Dallas, went back and forth about leaving or staying in the Church.

In 2005, they finally left for good, and she said she was told to sign paperwork promising not to talk about her experiences within the Church. "That's a bond that I didn't sign," she said.

"I shredded it in front of the lady's face." Now out of the Church, Woodcraft, Hill and other ex-Sea Org member started their Web site ExScientologykids.com as a way to connect with other ex-Scientologists. "It's just a way for people to share stories," said Hill, "And to maybe reconnect with people who they knew before." With her 9-year-old daughter by her side, Astra Woodcraft said she and Hill are trying to move forward. "If they would just let people who wanted to be there, be there, and let someone who wanted to leave, leave, and someone who didn't like what was going on, speak their mind, there would be no story," she said. As for Hill, "I'm not gonna be intimidated.

I'm just gonna continue living my life the way I want it to be," she said.

"I'm not gonna let them affect me anymore." Again, Hill's parents -- the brother and sister-in-law of Scientology's leader -- declined "Nightline's" request for an interview.

However, Hill said that they have a good relationship now that they are all of out of Scientology. For weeks, "Nightline" repeatedly asked for an on-the-record response from the Church of Scientology.

Thursday night, the Church responded with a statement in which the Church says it would not comment on what it called Hill's "dismissal" from her Sea Org position.

It goes on to say in part that "Every religion has its detractors;

There is no faith that can satisfy everyone's spiritual needs, Scientology included.

We wish Mrs. Hill well in her search for spiritual fulfillment." http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=4702271&page=1

Church of Scientology Statement to ABC News Statement from the Church of Scientology to 'Nightline' April 24, 2008 The Church of Scientology made it clear from its first contacts with "Nightline" that it would not publicly discuss the ecclesiastical circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Mrs.

Hill from Church staff, regardless of the nature of her allegations. The Church will not discuss matters surrounding Mrs.

Hill, because given the thrust of her claims, she has used her name to make an otherwise ecclesiastical issue into a family matter and a personal attack on a family member.

The Church will not relinquish its dignity to engage in such a debate.

Moreover, due to Mr.

Miscavige's ecclesiastical position he cannot, will not and never has commented on family matters.

It would be entirely inappropriate.

Indeed, it is always inappropriate to discuss family in a public forum. Every religion has its detractors;

There is no faith that can satisfy everyone's spiritual needs, Scientology included.

We wish Mrs. Hill well in her search for spiritual fulfillment. "Nightline" clearly had its show prepared before it ever contacted the Church.

Nonetheless, the Church provided "Nightline" with a wealth of information regarding the allegations raised in this piece so that ABC could undertake journalistic due diligence.

"Nightline" well knows the Church cannot respond directly to Mrs.

Hill's allegations without impugning her character, something the Church will not do. The Church of Scientology repeatedly offered ABC unlimited access to its staff and facilities for a piece on the actual story of Scientology.

Under the leadership of Mr.

David Miscavige, the Church has seen unprecedented expansion across the globe, in its membership, in its facilities to serve its parishioners and the surrounding communities and, most importantly, in its humanitarian programs reaching out to make this a better world.

"Nightline" was more interested in pursuing a story more fitting to tabloid journalism. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/...4720823&page=1

Strength in their numbers: More Church of Scientology defectors come forward with accounts of abuse By Joe Childs and Thomas C.

Tobin, Times Staff Writers In Print: Sunday, August 2, 2009 They are stepping forward — from Dallas and Denver, Portland, Las Vegas, Montana — talking about what happened, to them and their friends, during their years in the Church of Scientology. Jackie Wolff wept as she recalled the chaotic night she was ordered to stand at a microphone in the mess hall and confess her "crimes" in front of 300 fellow workers, many jeering and heckling her. Gary Morehead dredged up his recollection of Scientology leader David Miscavige punishing venerable church leaders by forcing them to live out of tents for days, wash with a garden hose and use an open latrine. Steve Hall replayed his memory of a meeting when Miscavige grabbed the heads of two church executives and knocked them together.

One came away with a bloody ear. Mark Fisher remembered precisely what he told Miscavige after the punches stopped and Fisher touched his head, looked at his palm and saw blood. These and other former Scientology staffers are talking now, inspired and emboldened by the raw revelations of four defectors from the church's executive ranks who broke years of silence in stories published recently by the St.

Petersburg Times. Those behind-the-scenes accounts from Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest officials ever to leave Scientology, were buttressed by detailed revelations of highly placed former managers Amy Scobee and Tom De Vocht. Now their stories have prompted other former Scientology veterans to go public about physical and mental abuses they say they witnessed and endured. Some want to support and defend the initial four, whom church representatives labeled as liars attempting a coup.

Others say they feel more secure now that Rathbun, Rinder and the others are on the record with their unprecedented accounts of life on the inside. But fear still prevents many defectors from talking.

For every former church staffer willing to speak out, one or two more refused. Those who talked confirm the earlier defectors' stories of erratic, dehumanizing treatment and provide a deeper view into the controlling environment in which members of the religious order known as the Sea Org live and work. Four men joined Rinder, De Vocht and Rathbun in saying: David Miscavige assaulted me. Church spokesman Tommy Davis said the new defectors' accounts of physical abuse by Miscavige are "false and categorically denied." "It is clear that these new 'accounts' were stirred up by your recent articles," Davis said in a written statement, "and are nothing more than the ranting of anti-Scientologists on the grassy knoll of the Internet corroborating each other." The church provided the Times two dozen written declarations from current and former church executives and staffers.

Referring to those statements, Davis said: "You have been provided with volumes of evidence to show that your original sources are delusionary, bitter and dishonest;

Your new sources are more of the same." Those new sources are men and women who joined Scientology as children, teenagers or young adults and spent decades laboring to advance the mission envisioned by Scientology founder L.

Ron Hubbard. Morehead, who drives a tow truck in Portland and spent almost a decade as security chief at the church's sprawling base outside Los Angeles, described how Miscavige struck a church executive in the chest so hard, "I could hear the hollow thump and see (him) lose his breath from the impacts.'' How does Morehead manage such recall after 15 years? "It's just like you remember when you touch a hot stove," he said.

"You're never going to do it again, right?

It hurts, there's pain … "Well, it's as clear and conceptual as that is.

I have a hard time remembering my address, but I can certainly remember this.

You hold on to this because what the hell could you have done then, and what the hell can you do now?" A NEW AWARENESS Like countless college kids in the mid 1970s, Steve Hall was searching for meaning in life.

He stumbled across a personality test he picked up a couple of years earlier at a Rolling Stones concert and stuck in a drawer. He sent it in and got a call.

"I asked the girl what Scientology was, and she said it's a way you can become more aware.

… She summed up everything that I wanted at the time." Hall got involved with the church to the point that his mother hired a "deprogrammer" from Los Angeles to come to Dallas and get her son out.

Hall says he threatened to kill the guy if he ever contacted his mother again. In the mid 1980s, Hall landed what he imagined would be his dream assignment: A position living and working at the 500-acre "Int" base, east of Los Angeles, home to top church executives and Golden Era Productions, the church's media and publications division. But it was no dream. "There was this incredible atmosphere of people not being in communication.

People seemed afraid to speak to each other.

… Nobody was laughing for the most part.

It was very somber and solemn.

… That did not at all seem in keeping with anything I'd ever experienced with Scientology because everywhere else I'd been it was just the reverse.

People were laughing and joking." Hall joined the church marketing unit in 1987, which brought him into more frequent contact with Miscavige, who holds the title Chairman of the Board, or COB.

Hall said it was a shock the first time he saw Miscavige attack an executive, Ray Mithoff.

The second time was like something out of a cartoon. Hall says Miscavige came up behind two seated executives — Marc Yager and Guillaume Lesevre — grabbed their heads and banged them together.

Then he ground them against each other.

Lesevre had blood coming out of his ear. Then came the time when Hall and about 20 others were summoned to the Religious Technology Center headquarters.

"You don't get called up to Building 50 because it's some good news or something fun.

It was always like everybody would literally be in terror.

You were supposed to sprint from wherever you were up to Building 50, which is way the hell up the hill." The group took their seats, the chairs in rows, spaced about 2 to 3 feet apart in all directions.

Huffing and puffing, Hall said he worked to keep his breathing under control, so he wouldn't get singled out. "You end up waiting a long time.

Nobody f breathes, no one says anything.

It's dead quiet. You could hear a pin drop.

Everybody's just … waiting.

Then finally COB walks in. "He starts walking amongst us.

Never says a word.

Just stops and glares at each person.

Sometimes he stops and sometimes he doesn't stop.

When he got in front of me he stopped, he looked at me, I looked back at him, careful not to seem to be resisting or whatever. "He took a step forward.

He stopped. He looked back at me again.

He backed up, he looked at me even closer.

He said, 'He's out-ethics.

That son of a b---- is out-ethics,' " he's breaking the rules of Scientology. Continued...

"Then he walked on, he walked down the aisle, looked at a couple other people, turned to start going down the next aisle right where Marc Yager was sitting on the end.

And then suddenly, without warning, he starts slapping the bejesus out of Marc Yager, open-handed." There were as many as 10 head slaps.

Yager didn't resist, just put his arms up and took it. For Hall, the last straw came in November 2003.

Hall wrote scripts for Scientology videos and had been assigned to work under Mike Rinder, the church's chief spokesman.

Hall says he had creative differences with Miscavige, which was a problem, because nobody is to question the COB. Miscavige came by to see an edited video.

"He ordered Mike and me stand shoulder to shoulder.

… So Rinder and I are pressed up against each other, and right up in front of us is DM … and he says, 'Play the video.' " The video over, Miscavige drew close.

"We're standing there sort of at attention.

He looks at me, he looks at Rinder.

He looks at me, he looks back at Rinder.

And then suddenly, with violence, he flashed his arms up and grabbed Mike Rinder's head and body-slammed his head into the cherry wood cabinets. "He lifted Mike Rinder nearly off of his feet and smashed his head into the wall, and he banged his head into the wall three times, just BANG, BANG, BANG!" A dozen others watched.

"But everybody's afraid to move, because anything you did would be like, 'Are you making me wrong?' Don't make COB wrong.

So if you showed any kind of reaction or upset, you would be, 'making COB wrong.' " Miscavige left the room.

"Rinder stood there with his hair mussed, his shirttail out and red marks on his face." "It so could have been me," Hall said.

"And that was the message I got was that you're next." Rinder said Miscavige abused him so often that his recollections of specific attacks sometimes run together.

Asked about Hall's account, he said, "That happened more than once." Though long disillusioned with his life in the Sea Org, Hall said he didn't want to leave his wife, who was also a staffer.

He finally accepted that he had to give up her and everything else. His last day, church security went through his belongings and confiscated photos of his wife.

They videotaped a lawyer posing questions and Hall taking blame for any problems he had with the church.

He also promised never to sue the church. "I had one last goodbye with my wife.

… They told me she doesn't want to go with you and it was her decision, we didn't influence her in any way.

They said you could talk … they led us to rooms." In tears, they hugged.

"She told me all the rooms were bugged.

She whispered all the rooms were bugged and they could probably hear it." FOCUS ON EXPANSION Miscavige, 49, has been intense and demanding since he started working full time for Scientology at age 16 in Clearwater.

He quickly proved himself and was handpicked to work at Hubbard's side, at Scientology's administrative headquarters in California. The founder gave his young aide one important assignment after another.

Miscavige delivered, building a reputation as a problem solver.

He persuaded Hubbard's wife to resign as head of the church's troubled intelligence unit, known as the Guardian's Office. Hubbard died in 1986 and Miscavige took control, asserting himself over other department heads and church executives.

In the early 1990s, he earned admiration throughout the ranks in leading an unyielding effort to win the church a tax exemption from the IRS. This decade he has pushed church expansion, extending Scientology's reach into more than 60 countries with a sustained campaign to build new churches, remodel existing facilities, translate Hubbard's teachings into the languages of target markets and disseminate the church's community outreach materials worldwide. Miscavige is deeply admired, church officials say, not only by the thousands of staffers in the Sea Org, but by millions of Scientology parishioners worldwide. "Any Scientologist of any duration will tell you that the church wouldn't be here if it wasn't for David Miscavige," church spokesman Davis said in interviews with the Times in May and June. Nine new churches opened since 2004.

This year, the church will set a record, opening eight more, he said.

"It's just unbelievable what's happened in the world of Scientology.

It's a renaissance.

It's a revitalization.

It's everything we always dreamed of." In his letter to the Times last week, Davis said that as in the first stories, the new defectors are twisting church practices and discipline to make the normal seem "abnormal and abusive.

They know this could not be further from the truth." CAMPING OUT Shelly Corrias gave nearly two decades to the dedicated work force known as the Sea Org.

She left in 2002. She remembers the time Miscavige punished top staffers Norman Starkey and Greg Wilhere, ordering them to camp out in tents for days in a high, open area of the mountainside base, near the Bonnie View mansion built for Hubbard.

They were assigned hard labor and forced to shower with a garden hose. Corrias said it was striking to see Starkey — one of Scientology's elder statesmen, who had worked with Hubbard and served as a trustee of his estate — treated so crudely. Said Corrias: "How can you take these high executives and send them up to sleep on the ground and they can't even go to the dining room to eat, their food brought up to them?" "He particularly picked on Norman," said Claire Headley, who worked on Miscavige's staff for eight years before leaving the Sea Org in 2005.

She said the leader often tried to take Starkey "off his high horse" and once made him wear a name tag that said "figure head." Morehead, the security chief, said Miscavige sent him to town to buy camping gear for another group that faced the tent punishment: Starkey, Yager and Mithoff. Miscavige made them set up camp at night and came by to shine a flashlight in their eyes, and he recalled the way Miscavige taunted them as they struggled to assemble their gear in the dark: You guys think you're so hot?

If only the rest of the Sea Org could see you now! He ordered that a portable toilet be set out in the open, no privacy, Morehead said, and posted guards to watch them round the clock.

Nobody protested, they just took their punishment. Morehead said he told Miscavige that he had turned off the sprinkler system, but the leader told him to turn it back on so a shower would roust them in the morning. "He was giddy about what was going on with these guys," Morehead said.

"They were just a joke, proving him right.

It was acknowledging of the fact that he brought them there because they were just incompetents." Two more staffers — Mike Sutter and a woman named Hare O'Hare — later were placed on the same punishment with the three executives.

Morehead said O'Hare was not exempt from Miscavige's order that no one bathe or use the toilet in private. Continued...

A CRUEL CONFESSIONAL As many as 400 staffers were summoned to the mess hall, where a small group of staffers were given special seats of dishonor.

Church executives would introduce them with scorching assessments of their recent performance. "They had to get up one at a time into a microphone and confess their crimes," said Jeff Hawkins, who left the Sea Org in 2005. The crowd screamed and jeered. "They're out for blood so … you have to make it sound good.

Otherwise they'll just shout you down," Hawkins said.

"I saw people just led away in tears from that treatment." Jackie Wolff choked up as she recounted her turn at the microphone late in 2003.

She was singled out after taking over the assembly line for E-meters, the lie detector-like devices Scientologists use to pinpoint areas of spiritual distress during counseling. Wolff's staff had been cut down to four from about 10 the year before, and E-meter production was down.

She didn't see how she could make up the backlog, but supervisors disagreed.

The crowd turned on her, screaming: Why is this happening? What are your crimes? You're hurting Scientology! Wolff says she tried to answer: There are only four of us on the assembly line. If we speed it up, the quality will suffer. I just don't know. "The feeling of standing up there in front of all these people was very intimidating and very scary," she said.

"It was like your life was on the line.

And to me it wasn't Scientology any more." Three months later, Wolff ended her 23-year career in the Sea Org. RUNNING IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS There's a spiritual exercise in Scientology called the "Cause Resurgence Rundown.'' You run around a circular track, at your own pace, until you reach a point that "you have a realization that you're in control of your own body and mind.'' That's according to Marty Rathbun, a defector who once was one of the top church officials charged with protecting Scientology's religious practices. Church founder L.

Ron Hubbard described the running procedure in dispatches but it has not been formally made part of the church practice, Rathbun said, which is why some parishioners would not be familiar with it. It's supposed to be done at the suggestion of a "case supervisor" in charge of the parishioner's spiritual counseling, called "auditing." Rathbun said it's to be done gradually, the person building endurance at his own pace. "The whole thing was about getting a thetan (spirit) centered and getting all of his energies straight,'' Rathbun said.

"Miscavige immediately turned it into a torture." Multiple witnesses say the same.

As a form of punishment, Sea Org members had to run around a circular dirt track with a pole at the center for hours on end in the desert heat. "You would be on it anywhere from eight to 12 hours a day," Morehead said.

"For every hundred people that were out there doing the running program, one of them was there because it was part of their actual (spiritual) progress." Rinder recalls being sent to the track with others to run until they had a "cognition,'' a realization.

It was supposed to be about something in their lives — but instead of focusing on themselves, the runners tried to divine what Miscavige wanted to hear so he would end their punishment. "That was all sort of a joke," Rinder said.

"What cognition are you supposed to have that will now satisfy Dave?

… People spent years trying to figure that out." FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNTS To the three men who previously told the Times that Miscavige attacked them, add four more. 1.

Jeff Hawkins He worked more than 15 years at the base, mostly in marketing and design.

His TV spot featuring a rupturing volcano promoted Dianetics, Hubbard's megaselling book. Hawkins recalled the day in 2003 when he and a group of senior staffers toured one of Miscavige's prized construction projects, Building 50, a colossus of buffed metal, chrome and marble. Leading the pack from room to room, Miscavige was every bit the voluble docent, extolling the unique features. "I was standing by the door and as he's walking out and without any warning, he rabbit punches me right in the gut.

… Just a quick punch to the stomach, right under the rib cage.'' Another time, a meeting of Hawkins' marketing team, Miscavige turned angry.

"He gets pissed off at me for whatever reason.

I was usually the punching bag.

And he wails on me and knocks me to the ground." "I stand up and he notices my cheek is bleeding.

So, he called his assistant (Laurisse Stuckenbrock).

He says, 'Lou,' and points to my face.

She rummages in her purse and gets out a bottle of antiseptic that she carries with her, believe it or not.

And she daubs that on my face.

So, it's like she knows the drill.

If there is a visible mark, then that's got to be taken care of.'' Before leaving, Miscavige turned to Hawkins.

"He says to me, 'Do you know why I beat you up?' " "I say, 'No, sir.' " "He says, 'To show you who's in charge.' '' Church executive Amy Scobee previously told the Times about a day she was working in her office cubicle at the edge of a conference room when a Sea Org member landed at her feet, with Miscavige on top of him.

It was Hawkins underneath. Hawkins said dozens of Sea Org members had been summoned to the international management conference room.

The leader did not like the latest infomercial script. "He was reading out sections of it with great sarcasm.

And then he started pointing at me and saying, 'Look at how he looks at me.' " Hawkins tried to explain himself, which only got him in deeper. "You see that disrespect?" he said Miscavige shouted to the group.

"You see how he talks to me?" Miscavige jumped onto the conference table, Hawkins said.

"He's like crouched in the middle of the table, and then he launches himself at me." Hawkins fell back off his chair and landed in Scobee's work cubicle. Two other defectors who attended the meeting confirmed Hawkins' account.

Two current executives who were there say it didn't happen. 2.

Mark Fisher Fresh out of Langley High School in suburban Washington, Fisher skipped college for a different adventure: In the mid 1970s, he came to Clearwater to help Scientology settle in its newest frontier.

He was 17. Miscavige, who dropped out of high school the day he turned 16, had come three months earlier. Fisher and Miscavige bunked with four other recruits on the ninth floor of the Fort Harrison Hotel.

Fisher opened his foot locker one day and pulled out his Langley High letter jacket and diploma. Miscavige told Fisher he probably was the only high school graduate in the group.

"He said, 'What a waste,' " Fisher recalled. Fisher stayed in Clearwater.

Miscavige went West, handpicked for Scientology's esteemed crew serving as the right hand of Hubbard.

The bookish Fisher absorbed Hubbard study and training classes, advancing to management as an evaluator of statistics and performance metrics. By late 1983, Fisher was in California, managing a team of five who provided administrative support to the emerging leader.

He also tended to household needs of Miscavige, his wife and their dogs. Continued...

Fisher married in 1984.

In 1990, his wife was sent to a work detail as punishment for performance issues in the audio-visual facilities. "I got really upset with it," Fisher recalled.

"I started getting disaffected." He hatched a plan: Sneak away and then come slinking back.

He would be punished — and get to see his wife. It didn't work.

He was ordered to dig weeds, far from where his wife toiled. A second hammer came down.

He was stripped of everything he had attained in Scientology — he was an OT7 and a trained auditor.

So he rebelled — "I was being really defiant," he said — and got slapped with more work assignments. In August 1990, he was up on a scaffold painting the inside of a garage when in came Miscavige, assistants in tow. Miscavige told Fisher to come down. "He put his hands around my throat," Fisher said, and shouted, " 'You want to sue Scientology?' " Fisher said he collapsed and curled up as Miscavige kicked and punched him and pulled the hair on the back of his head. Fisher stood, touched the back of his head, showed his bloody palm and told Miscavige: "You notice I did not lay one finger on you." That was the end for Fisher.

"I didn't join Scientology to see people get beat up." Morehead said he witnessed this, as did defector Marc Headley.

But Yager said he was present and, "at no time did Mr.

Miscavige strike or otherwise harm Fisher." 3.

Bruce Hines Hines remembers back to the mid 1990s and the unmistakable sound of Miscavige's footsteps coming down the hall. "Where is that m f ?" he heard Miscavige shout. Hines was in Room 106 of the Del Sol executive offices.

A veteran auditor, Hines usually worked at the church's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.

He said he counseled Nicole Kidman and Kirstie Alley. But counseling the wife of one of Miscavige's favorite speech writers had not gone well, and Hines had been called back to the base. Hines braced himself as the footsteps drew near. Miscavige poked his head in the office, Hines recalled, and said: "There he is." Without another word, Hines said, "He hit me in the head.

He just hit me in the head, in the side of the head," an open-handed blow. "It did sting and it did knock me back.

And then he got right up in my face and was kind of yelling at me.

Then he walked out.

The next thing I knew, I was on the RPF." Scientology bills its Rehabilitation Project Force as an opportunity for wayward Sea Org members to find redemption through manual labor.

Some defectors say it can be abused. Hines said he spent three years on the RPF, on a labor crew that cleared land, painted old mobile homes and built sheds at Happy Valley, a church-owned tract about 10 miles from the base. Finally authorized to return to the base, he reunited with his wife and their son, who was born in 1984, prior to a church ban on children imposed on Sea Org members.

It took all of three weeks for him to land back on the RPF.

His offense? He didn't stand up when Miscavige came into a room. This time was worse.

He lived in an 8-by-10-foot shed and slept on concrete.

He couldn't talk to anyone.

He was under constant guard.

Letters he wrote his wife were read and returned to him.

She divorced him while he toiled in isolation. Looking back at his six years in the RPF, Hines views it as a mind-control technique. "In the RPF, they try to get you to take responsibility.

You are supposed to confront the evil things you did, and deal with those in auditing.

You are there because you are evil." "And you are there because you were destructive, and you were destructive because you were acting on your evil purposes.

And I, the whole time I was in the RPF, I am trying to convince myself that it was me, it was my own fault." In 2001, he was sent to work in the church's offices in New York City.

He was on the roof, chipping tar, when the planes hit the World Trade Center.

He went to ground zero and volunteered. By 2003, Hines had lost interest in Scientology.

The rich mix of life in New York, he said, "made this whole military lifestyle of the Sea Org seem kind of ludicrous." He made his way by bus to Denver, where he had grown up.

He finished college in 2006, with a degree in physics, and this summer completed his master's in electrical engineering. 4.

Marc Headley Headley made movies for Scientology.

By the early 2000s, he was named a producer at Golden Era Productions, the church's umbrella division for its prized audio-visual efforts. In 2004, Headley led Miscavige on a tour of the A/V area.

Miscavige asked about a timetable on a project, and Headley said he made the mistake of answering in a "smart-aleck" tone. He said Miscavige pushed him against a shelf unit and started punching him.

He fell onto a countertop, and Miscavige continued to slug him in the chest. When it ended, Headley said, senior Sea Org member Greg Wilhere pulled him aside and explained that Miscavige had come from a difficult meeting.

Wilhere said in a written statement that Headley's entire account is "a complete lie." A few months later, Headley was on the hot seat again.

He had bought and sold equipment and an audit determined $250 was missing.

Headley was ordered to the RPF. The next morning, he sped off in his motor bike and made his way to Kansas City, where his father lived.

Weeks later, his wife, Claire, made her break and joined him. They sued Scientology in January, contending that the wages paid Sea Org members — about $75 a week — violate labor laws. The church says the lawsuit has no merit.

Sea Org members work on a "volunteer basis" and receive weekly stipends.

The church covers all living, medical, dental and other expenses, which helps workers focus on their jobs, "without having to worry about paying your bills, cooking dinner, paying property taxes or this and that." A CHANGED MAN Most of the defectors said that the church tried to get them to stay, saying it would be a monumental mistake to give up their chance to reach eternal salvation and warning that life would be awful in the cruel world outside Scientology. Most started their new lives with little money and few friends.

Some still practice Scientology and attribute their job successes to skills the church taught them on interpersonal relationships and how to take responsibility for oneself. For most, the issue is not the religion but the man leading it. Russ Williams left the Scientology staff in 2004 after 29 years, most of them at the base.

He says he witnessed Miscavige attack Yager, but he minimized it and kept his respect for the leader. "One time he blew me away," said Williams, recalling when the leader yelled at him nose-to-nose but returned five minutes later with a pep talk: "I've seen you do good work.

What happened?" Sea Org life was always tough, Williams said, but there was an enthusiasm and a feeling of accomplishment that kept people going.

Over time, that went away. "The flavor was gone.

It mutated." "I think he started out meaning well," Williams said of Miscavige.

"It just got to him.

It just got over his grasp and he started falling into this threatening, nasty way of handling people." Morehead, the security chief, said the same.

He remembers going into town and bowling with Miscavige, and the leader smuggling in food from the burger joint across the street.

And Miscavige laughing and taking pictures at Sea Org holiday events — including the time Morehead wore a tutu in the talent show. But through the years Miscavige grew more intense, and frustrated when Scientology staff couldn't pull things off the way he wanted. "There was this guy who once was a good guy,'' Morehead said, "who totally turned the church around from what I know L.

Ron Hubbard intended it to be.'' http://www.tampabay.com/news/sciento...cle1023717.ece




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