Ruthless (20 page)
Authors: Ron Miscavige
On that early August day, as I sat in the conference room at the West Allis Police Department and was briefed on the whole matter by Nick Pye, the captain of the station came in and told me that in all his years of police work, this was the weirdest case he had ever known.
It was probably the weirdest thing I had ever experienced too. When Becky and I left the church, all we wanted to do was establish a life for ourselves. I understood that Dave would be pissed off at me because I had left. Okay, fine, but I did not want to live that life any longer. I wanted to restart my own life. However, I did not want to cause any trouble for the church. My granddaughter Jenna Miscavige Hill has written a book that explains what it was like to grow up in Scientology,
Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape,
and it was one hell of a way to grow up. The way David treats people and what he has done to the church are not the same as the philosophy of Scientology itself. A philosophy is just a philosophy. Nearly everybody follows someone else's way of dealing with life or makes up their own or creates a blend of the two. Scientology was Hubbard's philosophy, and I found a lot of things in it that were helpful.
Emotionally, David's words to Dwayne over the phone shook me up a lot. I had been involved in Scientology for more than 40 years and had a high degree of certainty about what Scientology had done for me and what I had seen it do for David, my family and many others. I had seen Scientology do a lot of good for people. Yet at home later that day and in the days and weeks that followed, the foundation of my certainty developed some mighty big cracks. Hold on a minute, I thought to myself, there is something really, really wrong here. That he would have me followed and allow me to
dieâthis
guy treasures his position of wealth and power above the relationship with a father. That was hard to face.
This episode with the PIs began my search into what was really going on with Scientology. I started investigating Scientology itself and looking at L. Ron Hubbard. Up to that time, I had thought of Hubbard as more or less like a god. Here was a man who had imbued me and many others with useful knowledge about life. And that was great. I spent nearly 27 years in the Sea Org, many of which were miserable, but, because of my attitude toward life, I do not look back upon those times with a “woe is me” feeling but as simply an experience. It does not pay to play the victim. At that point, well, you are a victim.
As you can imagine, my viewpoint began to shift. I tolerated all those things in the Sea Org because I felt I was doing the best I could to help others. Many people become interested in Scientology because they have something personal they want to deal with, but when they see it working for them, they think, Hey, this is something that might help a lot of people. Let me do everything I can to help.
I began reading stuff about L. Ron Hubbard that I found on the Internet. About his marriages. About how he took ideas from other philosophers without properly crediting them. The clincher for me, though, is David's doing: today, Scientology is about
strong-arming
people out of their money. What the hell is this?
Fundraising?
The word has a positive connotation for charitable organizations, but in today's Church of Scientology it means “something for nothing,” and that's all it means.
That really underscores why I wrote this book. I realize that by writing it I am giving up my anonymity, something I treasure. In my younger days I dreamed about being a famous musician, but as the “father of COB,” I became thoroughly disabused of the idea. The church used to hold large events at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Afterward, the crowd would congregate in an adjoining hall to buy whatever books, lecture series or courses had been released during the event. I would want to go see Becky, who would be selling, but invariably I'd be stopped every few feet by people who wanted to shake my hand and say hello. It would take me 20 minutes to make it to the far end of the hall where Becky was. Not that I was famous outside of Scientology circles, but you can imagine what it is like for famous people. You become stuck in a spot. You can't just float freely through your life. That's not for me.
Much as I cherish my anonymity today, I must do something, because the Scientology movement under David has morphed into a
money-grubbing
organization. No expansion has occurred that any Scientologist would recognize as such, by which I mean people being helped through auditing or by training to become auditors. Rather than concentrating on the substance of Scientology, the church today is focused merely on appearances. It just demands donations to fund fancy buildings, which other former church members have documented as being largely empty. I always drop a couple bucks into the Salvation Army pot because that organization actually does things to help the less fortunate. The Church of Scientology as it presently operates does not help anyone, so far as I can see.
Things settled down after the Powells were out of our lives. We moved into the house, Becky continued working and I got busy furnishing the place, selling
Exer-Genies
and playing gigs, mostly with Dixieland bands around Milwaukee. Nick Pye arranged for the police to keep an eye on our house in case David decided to put more PIs on me.
Ever since our escape, I had remained in regular touch with
Ronnie
, Denise and Lori. It was wonderful having relationships with my children and grandchildren again. They were happy to be back in contact with me. The only one not part of the picture was David. In fact, Lori and Denise, who live in Clearwater, rarely saw him in person, even though he came to town several times a year.
When Becky and I first left, my children and I talked and texted often. Later on, Lori, who I believe was acting under pressure from Dave, began insisting that Becky and I straighten out our relationship with the church after escaping the way we did. After several attempts to persuade us “to do the right thing,” she finally said that she could no longer talk to us until we sorted everything out.
The church has a stupid and disgusting practice called disconnection. Other groups, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Amish, have something similar, which they call shunning, but I have never heard of any group that takes it to the extremes that the Church of Scientology does.
Disconnection, in Scientology, is based on the Hubbard principle that a person should have the right to choose with whom to associate. If someone is continually bothering you, you should have the right to not communicate with the bothersome source. That makes sense. Society has mechanisms such as restraining orders to take care of this. The justice system “disconnects” people by sticking them in prison. No one will argue against the necessity of disconnection on occasion. The Church of Scientology, however, perverts that concept to the point of breaking up and destroying families, ruining people's businesses and even their lives. And for what? For things as simple as criticizing the church or disagreeing with its tactics or wanting to leave the group.
The church will say that disconnection is not a required practice in the church, but saying that relies on a fundamentally dishonest logic. Here is the “logic” behind the lie: If a Scientologist does something that the church doesn't like, such as criticizing it, the church will hit back by declaring the person an enemy and labeling that individual a “suppressive person.” This means that the person is out to squash or suppress anyone who is trying to better themselves or to suppress any group that tries to help people, in other words, first and foremost, the Church of Scientology. Accordingly, any Scientologist who remains in contact with someone who has been labeled suppressive is guilty by association and therefore must be barred from receiving any further services from the church. “So,” church representatives will say, “it's your own free choice whether you choose to remain in communication with Joe Blow.” Of course, if you choose
not
to cut your family member out of your life, you will no longer be able to participate in Scientology. Oh, and any other Scientologists you know will be given the same choice in regard to
you.
This will likely include your friends, family members, associates and, often, your employer. Do you want to keep your job, your friends, family and your continued progress in Scientology, or do you want to keep talking to that no good son of yours who had the nerve to speak his mind about Scientology? You're free to make your own decision!
That is a little background on disconnection, and why Lori decided to stop communicating with me. Being the father of the leader of the church has not exempted me from being affected by disconnection. Some months later, Denise also succumbed to the pressure, and she disconnected from me as well. Ronnie, who had left Scientology more than a decade before I did, was no longer willing to play that game, and, bless him, we talk and visit often.
Philosophically, the idea of disconnection flies in the face of
the
single most important of the fundamental principles of Scientology, which is that communication is the universal solution and that more communication, not less, is the path to resolving
any
issue. So Becky and I decided that we would plant ourselves on Lori's and Denise's doorsteps and see if communication could change their determination to cut us out of their lives. Bear in mind that we continued to receive occasional text messages from Denise but no letters or emails or phone calls. Those ceased in late summer 2013, right around the time that the Powells were busted.
Becky worked out a plan to keep a channel to the family open. In October 2013, a friend of hers was moving to Florida and Becky agreed to make the trip down with her. Becky's idea was to try to reestablish some sort of communication with Denise and other family members when she and her friend stopped in Clearwater. Becky was not able to contact Denise but did reestablish relationships with Denise's
ex-husband
and one of Denise's daughters. During the next year, we sent letters to Denise and learned that when her daughter asked about the letters, Denise often broke down in tears and said, “We can't talk about that. Don't pressure me. Don't ask me about them anymore.” Yet the Church of Scientology claims that disconnection is not mandatory!
The next year was calm for Becky and me. We did not think we were still being followed, but a particularly strange episode occurred in September 2014.
Our normal garbage pickup day is Wednesday. The pickup schedule got pushed back because of the Monday Labor Day holiday. We put the garbage out on Tuesday evenings as always, because we did not realize the schedule had changed. All day Wednesday the garbage stayed out on the curb. On Thursday, before the rescheduled pickup, Becky noticed a bag of garbage sitting out in the street, and it looked like one of the bags we ordinarily used, so she went outside to retrieve it and put it in the can. When she opened the lid, she saw that the bag had indeed been removed from our can and that lying on top of the remaining bags was a dead rat that I had killed earlier and dropped in the garbage. Someone had been rifling through our garbage, pulled the top bag out, saw the rat and vamoosed. When Becky checked the bag, it confirmed her suspicions that someone had been looking through our trash. This is a typical ploy used by the church to gain information about someone they are following. We later learned that Nick Pye also had his garbage stolen on a couple occasions right around that time.
In October, Becky and I drove down to Clearwater to try to resolve the family impasse once and for all. A week before we left, Denise's daughter texted us to say, “My mom knows you're coming.” We still have no idea how she knew, though Nick Pye tells me that some of our friends are informants for the church. Still, we had every hope that my daughters would consent to talk to us so we could resolve the roadblock that the church had erected in our relationship. We did not think that the church was still having us followed, but the message from Denise's daughter raised our suspicions.
Unbeknown to us, another player would enter the drama that was about to unfold. I have been friends with Lisa Marie Presley for a long time. We first met at the maiden voyage of the
Freewinds
cruise ship in 1988. That first voyage was a big deal in the world of Scientology, and the ship was packed with important Scientologists and Scientology celebrities. Lisa Marie and I somehow were introduced to each other and hit it off. We spent a lot of time chatting in the ship's lounge during the cruise. Over the years, she came to the Gold base occasionally, and she and I used those opportunities to renew our friendship. After Becky and I left in 2012, I contacted Lisa Marie, and we have remained in close touch since. We talk on the phone often, and she and I were catching up on the latest when I told her that Becky and I were driving down to Florida.
“Ron, you're never going to guess where I am right now.”
“I have no idea. Memphis? We're in Tennessee right now.”
“I'm near Clearwater. I'm here taking care of some things for the next few days.”
“CW? Get out of here! We'll be in town tomorrow!”
We promised to talk again and get together if the opportunity presented itself.
We made it to Clearwater, and on the first day we went to both Lori's and Denise's houses. Lori was not home. At Denise's, we spoke to her husband for 20 minutes through a crack in the door, but he never did allow us to see Denise.
The conversation went nowhere. Finally, at the end I said, “Okay, Jerry, let me put it to you straight: Does this mean that you and Denise are through with us forever?”
“Yes, Ron, we are through with you and Becky forever.”
If I ever had misgivings about telling the world my story and about my son David, those vanished right there on Denise's doorstep. At that moment I decided to write this book.
We left and went back to Lori's place. Her car was out front, so we knocked on the door for several minutes but she would not answer. That ended our first day, and I would not call it a success.
On our second day, we drove about an hour south of Clearwater to have brunch with an old friend from our days at Gold. A mile from where we were staying, Becky noticed a black Jeep that seemed to be following us. She drove for another 20 miles before telling me what was going on. She wanted to be certain. Our earlier suspicions were confirmed. We were again being followed by private investigators. Three of them, in separate vehicles. After brunch, we drove back to Clearwater and were followed again. Nick Pye and the West Allis Police Department ran their plates, so we knew who the PIs were; still, it was distressing.
What I did not know at the time was that Lisa Marie had decided to see if she could help me reconnect with my daughters. She and David had been friends at one time, and she thought that perhaps she could help. She went into the church's headquarters in downtown Clearwater and spoke to David's representatives. Later, she told me what happened. She was livid at the prospect of my not being able to talk to my daughters and the hypocrisy of the church's claim that it has no policy of disconnection, yet clearly it was affecting the family of the Chairman of the Board! There are cameras in the Religious Technology Center offices in Clearwater, and Lisa said that she wanted to deliver a message directly to David, so she spoke directly to the cameras. From what she told me later, she let him have it pretty good. “How dare you not let your own father talk to his daughters? You are breaking up the family!” Irony of ironies, the church was in the process of holding a Family Day public relations event extolling the values of family life and showing its support for all families everywhere.
A couple of days later, Lisa Marie received an astonishing response to her remarks. She and her husband were back in the Religious Technology Center office. Church officials apparently had decided that since Lisa Marie was concerned about my family, they were going to let my daughters address the problem. The message from the church was, basically, “Since you care so much about families, we want you to hear what Denise and Lori have to say.” What Lisa Marie relayed to me afterward was that the whole thing felt staged for her benefit. As if on cue, Denise and Lori came into the office. They had obviously been briefed and were stirred up and ready to kill.
Denise lashed out at Lisa Marie and stomped around like David does, cursing and gesticulating and slamming her fist on the desk. She fulminated about how I had hit Loretta and how I did this and how I did that, yelling that she, Denise, never wanted anything to do with me again. Apparently, it was quite a performance. Lisa Marie's husband told me afterward that watching Denise do her thing was like seeing Dave with a wig on blowing a gasket.
In all probability, the cameras were on so the scene could be replayed for David, if he wasn't sitting somewhere watching it in real time. David had helped Denise when she had a scrape with the law in 2013, something that has been written about elsewhere, so basically she now feels beholden to him, in my opinion. In other words, her performance was for her twin brother more than it was to make a point with Lisa Marie.
Denise had seen all the arguments and fights between Loretta and me over the years, and that had never stopped her from being in contact with me. Now, all of a sudden, that is a deal breaker? Who's kidding whom? Denise witnessed, grew up with and lived with the strife that Loretta and I had in our marriage. Now, fifty years later, when Becky and I are trying to resolve our relationship with Denise, not Loretta, what happened in the 1960s suddenly makes reconciliation impossible? Some people evidently think that if they can yell loud enough, the illogic of their arguments will pass unnoticed.
Yet, just a few years earlier, Denise and Lori had made a special point to come all the way to Los Angeles to spend time with me. They had been asking for me to come to Florida for a visit, but I was never able to get away. They decided, that's it; we're coming to see you. David was in Clearwater at the time, and Lori went to see him in his office. Since I was never able to get back east to see them, she told David that she and Denise wanted to come out to visit me. He relented and they flew to Los Angeles. Odd that a daughter would have to check with her brother before visiting with her father, isn't it? That is Scientology today under David. Denise and Lori stayed at Scientology's Celebrity Centre International hotel in Hollywood, and I was able to go down to see them. We spent four really good days together, talking, eating good food, relaxing and basically just being a family. We all thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only that, but in 2012 they sent me 75 gifts for my
seventy-fifth
birthday. Each year, for my birthday and Father's Day as well as Christmas, they always sent me beautiful gifts. There had always been a lot of love between us. Whenever I took a leave in the early years, I went to visit them and we had terrific times together. And now Denise won't talk to me because Loretta and I used to fight? Is there anyone alive who believes this is sincere?