Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(123)

He referenced Davis’s interview on CNN. “I saw you deny the church’s policy of disconnection. You said straight-out there was no such policy, that it did not exist,” he wrote. “I was shocked. We all know this policy exists. I didn’t have to search for verification. I didn’t have to look any further than my own home.” He reminded Davis of Deborah’s experience with her parents. “Although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them.… That’s not ancient history, Tommy. It was a year ago.” He added: “To see you lie so easily, I am afraid to ask myself: what else are you lying about?”

Then, he said, he had read the series of articles in the St. Petersburg Times. “They left me dumbstruck and horrified. These were not the claims made by ‘outsiders’ looking to dig up dirt against us. These accusations were made by top international executives who had devoted most of their lives to the church. Say what you will about them now, these were staunch defenders of the church, including Mike Rinder, the church’s official spokesman for 20 years!

“Tommy, if only a fraction of these accusations are true, we are talking about serious, indefensible human and civil rights violations.”

He continued:

And when I pictured you assuring me that it is all lies, that this is nothing but an unfounded and vicious attack by a group of disgruntled employees, I am afraid that I saw the same face that looked in the camera and denied the policy of disconnection. I heard the same voice that professed outrage at our support of Proposition 8, who promised to correct it, and did nothing.

I was left feeling outraged, and frankly, more than a little stupid.


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Haggis was especially disturbed by the way the church’s Freedom magazine had responded to the newspaper’s revelations. It included a lengthy annotated transcript of conversations that had taken place prior to the publication of the series between the Times reporters, Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin, and representatives of the church, including Tommy Davis and Jessica Feshbach, the two international spokespersons for the church. In the Freedom account, the names of the defectors were never actually stated, perhaps to shield Scientologists from the shock of seeing familiar figures such as Marty Rathbun and Amy Scobee publicly denouncing the organization and its leader. Rathbun was called “Kingpin” and Amy Scobee “The Adulteress.” At one point in the conversation, Davis had told reporters that Scobee had been expelled from the church because she had had an affair. The reporters responded that she had denied any sexual contact outside her marriage. “That’s a lie,” Davis told them. Feshbach, who carried a stack of documents, then said, “She has a written admission [of] each one of her instances of extramarital indiscretions.… I believe there were five.”

When Haggis read this, he immediately assumed that the church had gotten its information from auditing sessions.7 He was inflamed. “A priest would go to jail before revealing secrets from the confessional, no matter what the cost to himself or his church,” he wrote. “You took Amy Scobee’s most intimate admissions about her sexual life and passed them on to the press and then smeared them all over the pages of your newsletter!…This is the woman who joined the Sea Org at 16! She ran the entire celebrity center network, and was a loyal senior executive of the church for what, 20 years?” He added that he was aware that the church might do the same to him. “Well, luckily, I have never held myself up to be anyone’s role model.”

Haggis concluded:

The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others. I have to believe that if they knew what I now know, they too would be horrified. But I know how easy it was for me to defend our organization and dismiss our critics, without ever truly looking at what was being said; I did it for thirty-five years.… I am only ashamed that I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.



AT THE TIME Haggis was doing his investigation, the FBI was also looking into Scientology. In December 2009, Tricia Whitehill, a special agent from the Los Angeles office, flew to Florida to interview former members of the church at the bureau’s office in downtown Clearwater, which happens to be directly across the street from Scientology’s spiritual headquarters. Tom De Vocht, who spoke to Whitehill then, got the impression that the investigation had been going on for quite a while. He says that Whitehill confided that she hadn’t told the local agents what the investigation was about, in case the office had been infiltrated. Amy Scobee also spoke to Whitehill for two full days, mainly about the abuse she had witnessed.

Whitehill and Valerie Venegas, the lead agent on the case, also interviewed former Sea Org members in California. One was Gary Morehead, who had developed the blow drill. He explained how his security team would use emotional and psychological pressure to bring escapees back; but failing that, physical force has been used.8

Whitehill and Venegas worked on a special task force devoted to human trafficking. The laws regarding trafficking were built largely around forced prostitution, but they also pertain to slave labor. Under federal law, slavery is defined, in part, by the use of coercion, torture, starvation, imprisonment, threats, and psychological abuse. The California Penal Code lists several indicators that someone may be a victim of human trafficking: signs of trauma or fatigue; being afraid or unable to talk because of censorship or security measures that prevent communication with others; working in one place without the freedom to move about; owing a debt to one’s employer; and not having control over identification documents. Those conditions resemble the accounts of many former Sea Org members who lived at Gold Base. If proven, those allegations would still be difficult to prosecute given the religious status of Scientology.