Category Archives: miscavige lawyers

Monique Rathbun

News about Monique

My comment:

The Road I Must Travel

L. Ron Hubbard was a great observer and describer of phenomena.  He once noted that the universe abhors a vacuum.   He also noted that when confronted with a vacuum of data, people tend to invent data to fill it.

I have intentionally not shared a lot of personal information over the past several months; and I don’t intend to start regularly doing so in the near future.  However, I have observed that Ron’s description of the information vacuum has apparently created a field day for those intent on reading tea leaves and those who harbor intentions inimical to my own.   And that has apparently upset some folks.  So, I am going to attempt to fill in the vacuum in the hopes it might set some people at ease.

Monique and I worked hard throughout 2011 to create some time for me to write some books that I believe will help Scientologists and former Scientologists heal and move on up a little higher with their lives.   Things did not go as planned.  2012 presented some issues that I thought, right or wrong, deserved my attention.

We wound up spending the bulk of the year assisting with battles (Battle of San Antonio, mop up of Headley affair,  expose of the Pat Broeker affair, etc.).   We with forethought entered them and exited them without a single penny in compensation; not even for the not insubstantial personal costs involved.   Fundraising for them diverted much of our income for the year.  This was the case much to the frustration of Debbie, Wayne, Marc, Claire, and others who demanded I be compensated.   We did not do so because the road I feel I must travel requires absolute independence of thought and obligation.  The pursuit of truth can, and has through history – including with Scientology- , been compromised by financial considerations.

We decided to move at the end of the year and Monique decided to go back to work in the health care field for two reasons.  First, it was necessary in order to obtain the type of premises that would afford us our life back from an intelligence apparatus the likes of which have been unknown to the world since the infamous East German STASI.  Second, it was necessary to afford me the time and space to get done the books I am in progress on.  Monique knows what I have to say – and what I have been trying to find the time to complete in the full context I have always asserted it deserves in books form.   She felt it so important to be said that she gave up – temporarily – the joy and fulfillment of auditing in order to make it happen.  We also forfeited our only assets, $35,000 in equity from a lease/purchase option, in order to effectuate this change.

Thanks to great research and planning on our part, we are moving forward on our plans while also rebuilding our lives from the intrusion.  It is not that the STASI (OSA, Scientology Inc.’s Office of Special Affairs) has gone away.  It is that they are buffered.   Thanks to the good people in our community, and the rather ethical and uncorrupted law enforcement agencies in our vicinity, we know more about their rather extensive and expensive surveillance operation than it can divine about us.   Their absurd black PR campaign being run directly at virtually everyone we have known or met (including everyone who has visited us and all of Monique’s family) is indication of the level of frustration of not having 24/7 access to our every movement.  It also doesn’t hurt having Sugar Ray Jeffrey as a neighbor and friend – the only man in history who has kicked Scientology Inc.’s ass two times in one year and who is fully motivated and prepared to do so again if they get too adventrous.

As far as what I have to say in my books, I am previewing some of it on the blog of late – but those are simply snippets.   I will say the following.   I believe I will demonstrate that perhaps the most powerfully destructive fault with Scientology is its promise and authoritative insistence that only it, to the explicit and must-be-agreed-upon exclusion of examination of any other data or technology, with scientific precision delivers ultimate truth.   Understanding that, in my view, opens one to potential heights that Scientologists wind up insisting they have achieved, but in reality are not even aware of.

Where ultimately does that go?   I don’t purport to know.  I do believe, though, that the moment one is certain he has arrived, he in fact has died spiritually.

To borrow a line from Tom Morello, ‘the road I must travel, its end I cannot see.’

Colbert Report on Scientology

Like it or not, justified or not, the following segment on the popular Colbert Report (see both segments, second the interview with Lawrence Wright) pretty well sums up the public image of Scientology.  Not the church of Scientology in the eyes of the world at large, but Scientology.   A whacky religious cult with bizarre beliefs, violent practices and a threatening way of dealing with criticism.

The Colbert Report on Scientology

Do you believe this public image can change?   How?  How long will it take to change significantly?

Luis and Rocio Garcia vs. The Machine

From the author of a Letter From Garcia, please see a Lawsuit from the Garcias.  Updates forthcoming.

ABC Action News Tampa

CBS News Tampa

NBC US News

NBC News Tampa

ABC World News

see also: Rocio’s story

Rock Center with Lawrence Wright and Paul Haggis

I have a feeling that Rock Center’s segment tonight on Scientology from the viewpoints of Paul Haggis and Lawrence Wright is going to be rather interesting.  You may not agree with all you see and hear, but I suggest you ought to see and hear it.

NBC Rock Center Scientology segments

And, A preview from NBC Today show.

Idle Morgue Meltdown

Corporate Scientology has spent large sums of money plastering the internet with false propaganda about its ‘unprecedented expansion’ under the guidance of David Miscavige.  It is the pat response to every new  revelation reported here on the unlawful and inhumane abuses of Miscavige.   Finally, the news world is catching on that the big lie of Scientology Inc is just that – no matter how much money Miscavige wishes to throw at perpetuating it.

Idle Morgues story by Alex Klein.  Thanks to Mark Elliot, Amy Scobee, Jeff Hawkins, Bert Schippers, Lynn Hoverson, Luis Garcia, Rocio Garcia, Tony and Marie-Joe DePhillips,  Dani and Tami Lemberger, and last but not least, Mike Rinder and Christie King for holding to the truth against this multi-million dollar propaganda machine.

The Atlantic flap.   Apparently, Miscavige didn’t get the memo, money can’t buy you love.

Suppressed – The Hole and the FBI

Despite millions of dollars of legal threats, propaganda and creepy investigations directed to shudder them in to silence, Joe Childs and Tom Tobin of the Tampa Bay Times are still at it.   Their new series includes video interviews of Mike Rinder and John Brousseau as well as court footage of Debbie Cook. Not a lot of new revelations, however.  Clearly, though, another validation of the truth of the axiom, ‘if you lie it becomes part of your future, if you tell the truth it becomes part of your past.’

Suppressed: The Hole and the FBI

Scientology Inc. Obsession With Celebrity

For how  Scientology Inc.’s obsession with celebrities turned its greatest Public Relations assets into liabilities,  see excerpts from Lawrence Wright’s book concerning the courting of Tom Cruise and  John Travolta.

Is there something about Scientology that would lead to this inevitability, or is this simply a Miscavige Scientology Inc. deal?

While the Miscavige/Cruise business is in a league of its own in terms of excess and obsession, is the inhumanity exhibited by Scientology Inc. pre-Miscavige (as most of the cruelty reported in the Travolta sections are) any more tolerable in a civilized society?

 

 

 

Past and Future

I’ll say it again –

‘If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future.’  – origin unknown

Three and one half years ago after and because of the Tampa Times original Truth Rundown series, the BBC launched an investigation.  In response David Miscavige spent a year and millions of dollars attempting to discredit and attack the Truth Rundown witnesses and intimidate the BBC into silence.   Miscavige rejected my repeated, public advice that ‘If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future.’   Notwithstanding, Miscavige no doubt congratulated himself for having had a significant in terrorem editing effect upon the BBC.   Reporter John Sweeney and his producer were apologetic after their one-hour documentary aired.   Too much of the truth they had recorded, and intended to report, fell to the editing room floor at the over-the-top, threatening insistence of David Miscavige’s Scientology Inc. attack dogs.

The result was that John Sweeney decided to set out upon his own to write a book reporting on all that Miscavige had succeeded in backing the BBC off from reporting.   While I have yet to read the book, per Tony Ortega’s account, it contains nothing that has not already been reported upon on this blog.  However, it is international news once again.   Why?   Because,  ‘If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future.’  And, if you threaten and bully in order to perpetuate the lie, it can become an explosive part of your future.

What more can I say?

Thanks For Participating

The following are the uncooked, digitally preserved statistics for this blog.

+++                   Total Visits                        Per Day Average

2009                     558,162                               3,036

2010                    2,232,948                             6,118

2011                    2,492,948                             6,829

2012                    3,636,456                             9,950

There have been 8,914,639 total visits to this blog from its inception.

The total visits is not the total number of unique visitors per day.   Per wordpress we average about 2.75 return visits per visitor per day.  So, 9,950 translates into about 3,618 individuals visiting the blog each day during 2012.   That is up from roughly 2,483 during 2011.

You all have made 188,477 comments since the beginning of the blog.

The top ten most commented upon topics this year were:

1.  Judgment                                                                     642 (and counting)

2.  The Virus That Killed Scientology Inc.                       639

3. ‘Then There Is Me’ – Tom Cruise                                 604

4. Scientology And Saving the World                              567

5.  The Mecca of Thought Control                                   527

6.  Open Letter from Debbie Cook                                   524

7.  Battle of San Antonio – A Review                               520

8.  Debbie Cook – Gathering Steam on Day Four           507

9.  To Those Who Fly Under The Radar                         494

10.  Miscavige Surrenders                                                475

Overall this year the hottest topic for reader participation was Debbie Cook Baumgarten and Wayne Baumgarten and their epic battle to expose the abuses of David Miscavige (subject of six of the top ten reader participation posts).  Original post from one year ago tomorrow: Reformation – Division Within Corporate Scientology.

I have learned quite a bit from everybody’s input.  I hope you have too.

Thank you for participating.

I wish all who visit here a wonderful 2013.