The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology (36 page)

For Claire to have her baby she would have to leave the Sea Org. Fearing it meant leaving her only home and breaking from her family she felt an abortion was her only option. Two years later, the couple were posted 2,000 miles apart.

‘I was in Clearwater, Florida,’ Claire told me, ‘when I found out I was pregnant again. I requested authorisation to be able to call Marc. That was disapproved, not allowed. So I literally could not even tell him about it until eight months after the fact when I next saw him in person.’

If she chose to have the baby, she faced never seeing him again. Unable to talk things through with her husband, she had another abortion: ‘It was absolutely the most horrifying, upsetting, deeply disturbing situation I’ve ever been in.’

For its part, the Church said Claire made a statement at the time that she did not want the child and never wanted children. It confirmed pregnant women cannot remain in the Sea Org but they are free to leave with their husbands.

Marc left the Church on his motorbike on a rainy day. Chased off the road by Church security, he said, he crashed, picked himself off the floor and was rescued by a cop. He got back on the damaged bike and drove into the town of Hemet at its new maximum speed: five mph. Claire got out a short while afterwards. But since that say, both sets of parents, still in the Church, have shunned them. The couple have two sons, both seriously into Thomas The Tank Engine. The little boys have never seen their grandmothers.

‘My mother,’ said Marc, ‘has never met her only grandchildren and Claire’s parents have never met their only grandchildren.’

The day after Claire fled, she said, ‘my mother, my stepfather, my half-brother, my two half sisters were all pulled into Scientology and told I was a Suppressive Person. They could have no further contact with me.’

The Church said it is a fundamental human right to cease communication with someone. It added disconnection is used against expelled members and those who attack the Church. It said Marc and Claire Headley were declared suppressive persons and expelled. The family’s decision not to have contact was theirs alone.

‘Speaking to me,’ said Marc ‘would risk their and all of mankind’s future eternity.’

Claire said: ‘The last phone call I had with my sister was her bawling her eyes out, telling me that she could never talk to me again and she could not talk she had to hang up. That was the last conversation I had with my sister in Jan 2005 – I haven’t talked to her since.’

The couple tried to sue the Church, saying they had been abused at work, used as slaves, working illegal hours and paid a pittance. Because the Church is classed as a religion in the United States, they lost the case. Members of the Sea Org – in America, a religious body – are legally exempt from labour law. As a result, they ended up owing the multi-billion dollar Church $40,000 – and had to hand over their savings, sell many of their possessions, including their children’s swing, to try and make up the money. Word got around the ex-Church community – both ex-Scientologists, Out-Outs, and people who have left the Church but still believe in L Ron, Outs, – and tens of thousands of dollars was donated to the Headleys. In Britain, where the Church is not officially recognised as a religion for the purposes of English charity law, they might have stood a chance. So the difference between religious recognition and non-recognition is not academic. For the Headleys, it almost drove them bankrupt. It did cost them their boys’ swing.

Like the Headleys, Tommy Davis was practically born into the Church. He was three years old when his mother, Anne Archer, became a Scientologist. There you are: sympathy for the devil. Thing is: he’s not a devil.

We flew to Florida, to catch up with Mike Rinder. I interviewed Mike on top of the car park in downtown Clearwater, just as I had Shawn Lonsdale three years before. Not long into the interview an enormous black SUV approached. It boasted a squaloid radiator grille and tinted windows, making it look the most passive-aggressive motor vehicle I have ever seen. I walked towards the SUV, my hand upraised. Coincidentally, I am sure, the driver elected to park somewhere further back and he started to reverse slowly. From the perspective of Bill’s camera, it looked as though I was forcing the SUV backwards by the telekinetic power of my hand, like Magneto in the film
X-Men.
This image of my superhuman powers was so disturbing, so challenging to the rational mind, that the BBC elected not to broadcast it. Shame.

When it finally stopped the SUV disgorged two men. One of them was the fat robot who had filmed us at Gold, two thousand miles away and less than 24 hours before. They were silent. The cameraman was working but the other man was not. I offered him my hand. He refused it.

‘Have you been told by the Church not to talk to us?’

Silence. Good answer.

We got back into Mike’s car and drove down the multiple tiers of the car park to the ground level. In the side mirror the black SUV loomed monstrously large, as if we were living inside a Hollywood thriller. Immediately outside the car park was a disused drive-in bank, essentially lots of car lanes, open and empty. Mike drove down one lane; the SUV followed. Mike reached the end of the lane and turned hard around and drove back along one of the lanes; the SUV followed. It was a stately gavotte in metal, chrome and rubber. Following them, following us, was the BBC back-up car driven by assistant producer Jon Coffey with producer Kate Stead riding shotgun. Mole was lurking in Essex, having a baby. After a prolonged to-and-fro-ing inside the empty drive-in bank facility, all of us in the car were in danger of being car sick. Mike headed home. The black SUV followed. Jon and Katy followed them, until a car containing two chaps in white-ish uniforms stopped them. Jon wound down his window, assumed that they were Scientology security, patronised them and drove off. Too late, it dawned on Jon that they were, in fact, officers from the Clearwater Police Department.

The black SUV followed us all the way back to Mike’s home, where it parked outside. I rapped on the window, and accused the private investigators of harassing Mike in the name of religion. No reply.

The level of harassment was extraordinary and unbecoming.

Mike’s mum and dad joined the Church when he was six years old. He has known nothing else since primary school. He married and became a father to son Ben and daughter Taryn while inside. After he got out, Mike’s family became part of the battleground. Mike has tried to see his son, Ben, who is still in the Church and has disconnected from Mike. Like the rest of Mike’s family, Ben has refused to have anything to do with him.

In late April 2010 Mike drove his girlfriend Christie to a medical appointment. He sat in the car, while Christie was in the clinic. Seven people started walking towards him, including Cathy Rinder, his ex-wife, Taryn, his daughter, Andrew, his brother and four other Scientologists, one of whom is a massive chap. It was seven members of the Church against one ex-member. Mike had not seen his ex-wife and daughter for three years.

What happened next is disputed. But Mike was on the phone to a reporter who was taping the call – and that reporter was me.

First, you can hear several people screaming at the same time: ‘Fuck you, Mike, Fuck you.’

Jenny Linson, the ex-wife of Tom DeVocht screeches: ‘You look at your daughter. You piece of shit.’

Mike: ‘Oh, Fuck off Jenny.’

Jenny: ‘Fuck you. You deserted your family, you piece of shit!’

Cathy Rinder: ‘You walked out on me, you fucker.’

Taryn Rinder: ‘And you tried to fuck with Benjamin, you tried to fuck with Benjamin.’

Mike: ‘Taryn…’

Taryn: ‘You’re trying to fuck with me. You’re trying to fuck with my home.’

Mike: ‘Taryn…’

Taryn: ‘Your church, and my church, you’re fucking with everything I believe in.’

Cathy: ‘You leave Benjamin alone, you knock it off.’

Mike: ‘That’s fine, Cathy.’

Cathy: ‘No, it’s not fine, you fuck off, you fucking stop.’

Jenny: (nonsensically) ‘Your family came here to talk to you, and you refuse to talk to your family.’

Andrew Rinder: ‘Talk to me Michael, talk to me.’

Sweeney (from London, down the phone to Mike): ‘Mike, are you OK?’

Andrew: ‘Don’t be a dick, don’t be a fucking dick.’

Cathy: ‘I’m telling you, you better stop, you better stop… You have no fucking idea, Ok. I don’t give a fuck. All I know, is that what you’ve been doing and what you’re doing now is committing SP acts every minute, of every fucking day…’

At one point Mike says his brother and ex-wife tried to take the car keys off him. In the scuffle Cathy’s arm got grazed. The police arrived. The police report stated the injury was incidental contact – not intentional assault. No charges were filed.

Mike was stoical when he reflected on it: ‘The intention was intimidation. It was to make me worried. It was very unpleasant.’

The evidence from the audio is clear: seven members of the Church approached Mike and began screaming at him. The effect on him of seeing his ex-wife, daughter and brother after three years of no contact must have been extraordinarily painful.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A Space Alien Cathedral

New Mexico, USA.

November 2012.

I
f you don’t have a flying saucer, Trementina Base is not an easy place to get to. If you’re a visitor from Outer Space, it’s a doddle because the Church of Scientology’s Church of Spiritual Technology has etched on to the top of a mountain side in the desert scrub of New Mexico, west of Los Alamos and due north of Roswell, two vast connecting circles, 1000 yards in radius, containing two diamonds. Just follow – not the Yellow Brick Road – but the Space Alien Signs.

I’m not joking. Dial up Mesa Huerfanita on any satellite map such as Google Earth. Go west from that mountain – New Mexico state road 104 trundles along the bottom of the picture – and you will find a second nameless mountain scarred by a long concrete strip with a short leg at the northern end pointing to the east. That’s the Church’s private airport. A ziggy-zaggy white line from the strip heads north. That’s the Church’s private road. It leads to two enormous intersecting circles with diamonds in them. You can’t see them from the road because they are on top of a mountain. But if you have that spaceship you can see them fine.

Down on the planet, it’s not so good. The mobile phone signal dies as soon as you turn off the freeway, the old Sante Fe trail. The road tapers through the buttes of high New Mexico, great cliffs of rock on which you half expect to see a Red Indian in full plumage on a horse being pursued by John Wayne, or vice versa. You cannot drive through this landscape without marvelling at the raw courage of the pioneers in their wagon trains and feel great sympathy for the Native Americans. The sheer immensity of America is stunning, that and the absence of people.

Trementina itself turns out to be a ghost town, abandoned after the end of the Second World War. The only signs of life are the steel windmills, still turning in the cold early winter breeze, but they are misleading. At the foot of each and every windmill is an old homestead with broken walls and 1940s tractors, rusting gently on the humidity-free mile-high plateau.

To get directions we drive to Trementina Post Office. It is round the back of someone’s house. Out front is a car with the keys in the ignition. No dogs bark. Only the autumn leaves scurry and tumble through the scrub, snagging on the occasional cactus. The Post Office is shut. I shout, ‘Is there anybody there?’ The silence is oppressive.

Not far away is another house, but this one has a dog outside. I hail the owner and eventually an old chap emerges tentatively from his house and gives me directions to Trementina Base: go two miles past the fire station, take the dirt track, and drive for 30 miles. Then you’ll find a gate…

Driving me to the base is Marc Headley, the ex-Scientologist who says he was audited by Tom Cruise and beaten up by David Miscavige. The Church denies both and says that Marc is a cyber-terrorist.

As we drive down the bumpy dirt track in a gulch between two walls of rock a certain nervousness creeps over us. Here, even the windmills have no life. They have not turned for decades. A great black bird circles in a thermal high above. We come to a gate marked NO TRESPASSING. Gingerly, we go through the gate and drive on. If a crazy hillbilly shot us – there is, of course, no suggestion that the Church would do any such thing – then you get the feeling that no-one would find the bodies for six months.

Two more gates, marked NO TRESPASSING. Trementina Gulch is the creepiest place I’ve ever been to because the faint memory of life here makes you wonder why everyone left. Our courage dries up and we turn back, all the way to Trementina, and park at the Fire Station. It’s closed. There is dust on the door. We drive on and find somewhere. It, too, looks empty of life. I shout. There is no answer. I knock on the door. No answer. I open the door and walk into an empty room. I shout again, and another door opens. It is the first proof of humanity we’ve seen for about two and a half hours. This chap gives us firmer directions and we head back down the dirt track.

Ex-Scientologists say that the Church spent millions of dollars building a space alien cathedral deep underground in the 1980s. In the vault are housed L Ron Hubbard’s lectures on gold discs locked in titanium caskets sealed with argon. The cathedral is H-bomb proof, behind three separate 5,000 pound stainless steel airlocks. The signs on top of the mountain are for Clears, returning from outer space, to find Mr Hubbard’s works after nuclear Armageddon has wiped out humanity. Ex-Scientologist Chuck Beatty of Pittsburgh has said: ‘The whole purpose of putting these teachings in the underground vaults was expressly so that in the event that everything gets wiped out somehow, someone would be willing to locate them and they would still be there.’

It is an odd thought that if all of humanity dies out then at least there will be some Scientologists left or at least some evidence of Scientology.