Scientology leader physically beat staff, paper says

The leader of the Church of Scientology beat staffers, forced a group of key executives to play musical chairs for their careers and allegedly encouraged purchase of “must have items” to prop up church coffers, according to an article Sunday that’s received little followup treatment by other news outlets.

In addition, the article says that one of the leader’s key lieutenants deliberately helped cover up the circumstances of a follower’s death in 1995.

David Miscavige, the Church’s “tanned,” “chiseled” leader, is portrayed in the report as an intense, pugilistic chief executive of a Church that’s run with the efficiency of a large multinational corporation. Four major former Scientology figures give a detailed account of the inside workings of the Church — which the French government has labeled as a “sect.”

Two former leading figures in the Church described an incident in which Miscavige forced top-ranking Church officials to play musical chairs for their careers. “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,” the St. Petersburg Times Joe Childs and Thomas Tobin wrote. “If families are split up, too bad.”

He then purportedly had the church members play musical chairs to the sound of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The following day, they said, he slapped a church manager, threw him on the ground, and “delivered more blows.”

Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are quoted in the piece as speaking out for the first time. Also quoted is Amy Scobee, a prominent ex-church figure who helped created Scientology’s “celebrity network,” which “caters to the likes of John Travolta and Tom Cruise.”

In a followup article Monday, Rathbun admitted that he had a hand in covering up details related to a follower’s death. Rathbun said he reviewed entries in a daily log kept by the woman’s caretakers and found several troubling areas that might indicate neglect.

“One contained a bizarre sexual reference McPherson had made,” the report says. “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,” it adds, “I said, ‘Lose ’em’ and walked out of the room,’ he recalled, adding that the decision to destroy the records was his own.”

The article also alleges:

• 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.

• Staffers are disciplined and controlled by a multi­layered 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.”

• 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. (”For more than two weeks, they tried to calm, feed and medicate McPherson,” the authors wrote Monday. “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.”

• 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.

In tandem with the piece, the Times printed a letter authored by Miscavige in which he claimed that the reporters didn’t give him ample time to comment — and in fact refused to interview him before the piece ran.

“I have been advised that you have decided to move forward with your story without my interview,” Miscavige wrote in an email. “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.”

Editors, however, said Miscavige had been given the opportunity to tell his side of the story since May 13.

Miscavige added: “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.”

The following video accompanied the Times‘ piece.

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