An Open Letter to My Family first published on 25 May 2010

See my announcement on Friday — I am revisiting earlier posts during my vacation. Each day there will be a different one. While I might write this a bit differently today it still overall delivers the same message…

Dear Andrew, Taryn & Cathy,

You made a big issue out of my failure to respond to your letters, so I am responding herewith to the letters each of you sent.

I note that Jude sent me a letter when I was living in Denver – but didn’t send another in the second round after I moved near where she lives, and Benjamin didn’t send me a letter at all. I guess the Church is worried that I may respond in person by paying her or Benjamin a visit and it sort of blows the “You have disconnected from your family and refuse to communicate to them” line when I show up and they are unwilling to talk to me (as when I went to the Fort Harrison and requested to see Benjamin).

I also note your letters were coordinated, all coming from the address of the International Justice Chief. You put notes saying you want me to respond to that address because you are “following LRH policy.” How so? If I am an SP, my only terminal is IJC. No policy says IJC is your postal service. And if you are following what the Church now claims is LRH policy – then these letters are disconnection letters. Or are you trying to “handle” me and get yourself to gentle cause? Which is it? Handle or disconnect? Somehow you seem to be demanding that I communicate with you? But only if it is supervised? I really don’t know, what policy it is that you are applying?

I also respond here to the letters you sent to the St Petersburg Times. Those letters attempted to spin the encounter at the doctors into a “family dispute” that occurred because you just “happened” to see me driving into her parking lot (This story doesn’t quite square with “we are routing this from IJC as we are following LRH policy” – is this a family matter or a church matter?). Odd though that none of you mentioned the 4 people from “International Management” or the 2 PIs that accompanied you on this “family dispute resolution”? And you failed to mention that you had been following me for at least a day prior to showing up at the doctor’s office (Andrew, you said “I saw you yesterday and you looked terrible” – the only time I had left home that day was to ride my bike half a mile to the beach with Christie and Shane so I guess you were staked out next to the park in one of the SUVs with blacked out windows?). You also told the SP Times that you were here visiting Jude and Benjamin – yet you said to me twice “You have no idea what I had to go through to be able to talk to you, Mike.” And where were Benjamin and Jude if you were here visiting them and just happened to be out driving around? And why did you have two rental cars for you, Taryn and Cathy when neither Taryn nor Cathy drives?

But, like with everything in the church today, I do understand the position you are in and what you are required to do, and I bear you no ill will. In fact, Andrew and Taryn, as you will recall, I told you from the outset, and repeated a number of times, that I would happily talk to you without the screaming audience present.

And by the by Andrew, I guess you hadn’t experienced the raving madwoman insanity of Jenny Linson before. I challenge you to honestly ask yourself: “Is this really one of the most senior executives in Scientology?” Yes, unfortunately. But in truth she is just a wind-up doll that spouts the words that David Miscavige tells her to scream and is otherwise incapable of original thought. That is why she is one of his most trusted pit bulls he sends out to make a fool of herself and Scientology on CNN and then again when she led the screaming in the “family dispute resolution” (though I thank God she is not family).

Finally on the SP Times letters, it would be a good idea to remember the episode was recorded by the BBC. Don’t fall into the trap of lying on behalf of the church to the media. It never works out in the long run.

Sadly, I don’t believe you will read this letter, as it would be “spreading black PR” for you to see it. Possibly you will be shown some edited version. That’s why I put it on the internet so perhaps there is a chance that at least you Andrew can read the entire letter. You should.

If you had really intended for me to respond to your letters I would have suggested a different approach that didn’t include saying the following: “You are not even a Scientologist, so stop pretending.” “Maybe you should check out of this game and go sit on a rock for a few million years, way out of the way.” “Overwhelmed, implanted, evil-purp beings like you…” “We will continue to flourish and prosper despite your feeble efforts to make yourself, and the bunch of fruitcakes you hang out with, right.” “The American Psychiatric Association is in the phone book. Why don’t you give them a call. You are 95% in their camp by now anyway.” “Go contemplate at a rock for a long time and destimulate.” “You could not actually have a soul. It could only be rock solid blackness…” “You think you can fake out other people, taking advantage of the fact they don’t actually know you weren’t a Scientologist, having never studied or practiced the Religion you are now so viciously attacking.” “You continue to prove that you really don’t care about anyone and have no personal desires for betterment and never did.” And that’s just a few comments from 12 type-written pages of similar stuff. I take it you were following what someone told you was the way to “handle” SPs? Whoever it was gave you some really bad advice because it only served to make me more determined to do whatever is needed to end the insanity that has pervaded Scientology which includes turning family members against one another.

Your letters gave me the distinct impression that the only thing you would want to hear from me was “I am sorry I have been so stupid, I am reporting back to the bilges/Hole/tent on the golf course and I will write up steps A-E 5 times through” But, that isn’t going to happen, so why respond?

The foundation for that impression was the letter I received from Cathy when I reached out to her after I first left. I asked her to call me or come and visit. Her response, and I quote: “Fuck off. That is the last thing I would want to do. PS: I’ll send the divorce papers and brief the kids.” Cathy, what is it with the divorce? OSA lawyers put the papers together for you as the petitioner, I signed them, and they were filed and assigned a case number in Los Angeles Superior Court (BD476191) on Nov 19, 2007. It’s a formality to have an uncontested divorce with no mutual property and no child custody go through the court process. Yet, now, when it is convenient (i.e. in dealing with the media?) you claim you are still my wife, though you use some other name – Bernardini — neither your maiden nor earlier married names? What is this about? Based on your communication at the outset, the letters you have sent and your screaming tirades when you “happened to see me,” including your command to “stay away from Benjamin” I would hazard a guess that you don’t want to be married to me (nor by the way do I want to be married to you). Apparently you don’t even want to sully yourself by using my name. So, why scream “He is my husband” at the doctor? Did you (or OSA) do something to prevent your divorce petition from being finalized? Is this another good tactical move to combat “the SP”?

And while on this subject – Monique Yingling told the St Petersburg Times that I had refused to see you in Denver. She claimed that you were there to inform me about the situation with Benjamin and that I did not want to talk to you. Just so you know, and I have a recording of this meeting, she never told me you were in Denver and never told me there was any information I needed to know about Benjamin. And you didn’t try to call me, even though you reportedly flew to Denver to see me (I take it you weren’t there skiing?). Monique called me on my cell phone. Why didn’t you? You even have my email address – so does Linda Hamel and others in OSA. When Monique called me and said she was in town and wanted to see me, I arranged to see her. I would have done the same with you (though Tommy came all the way to Denver and stated he was there to see me too – but when I tried to call him to arrange a time and place, Monique wouldn’t let him talk to me).

So the record is clear, it was only after the 6 man team came to Denver to try and handle me and I told Monique she should go back to LA and deal with the rot that was destroying Scientology from within that you all decided to write to me. This was two years after I had left the SO. I had sent Xmas cards to everyone and the only person who responded was Barbara – until she too was told she could not communicate to me and sent me an “IJC” letter. Her cards and letters were nice, telling me I will always be her son regardless of anything and good roads, fair weather chat about dogs and kids and mundane matters. Mine were similar in response as I had no intention of creating any further upset for her. I was simply letting her know I was OK and wasn’t living in poverty under a bridge or dying of leukemia because I thought she would worry. I didn’t “suppress” her or give her a bunch of entheta. Andrew, I am sure you have seen those cards and letters by now – she even sent me photos of James and his wife and child, so proud to be a great-grandma. Barbara said she was too old to travel to the Freewinds or Flag again, so she had “nothing to lose” by communicating with me but was very worried that Andrew and Pat would find out. But that was too good to last – after all, her being in contact with me was “preventing her Bridge progress” – NOT – she told me she was on the Academy levels at the org and doing great auditing others, of course, she couldn’t do OT IX and X as they don’t exist. So, the letters that you then sent to me, along with the less than subtle effort to buy my silence by Monique, solidified my conviction that I could not ignore the destruction of Scientology at the hands of David Miscavige.

The problem is that none of you know what is really going on. You have been fed a lot of information that contains enough grains of truth to be believable, and yet is perverted to create a very false picture.

You have no doubt been given all sorts of DA packs and materials about me. Don’t you think it’s a little odd that there are such materials about everyone? Isn’t it starting to set off alarm bells that every person who ever speaks out about what they have seen has “confessions” about how terrible they were and how they were all trying to destroy COB? You’ve written similar things Cathy, I have seen them with my own eyes. They are only not used because you continue to toe the line. But your confessions are just like everyone else’s – you admit you have tried to impede and overworked poor COB because unless you do that you won’t get out of the trouble you are in. I did at least 10 “A through Es” during the time I was either CO CMO Int, WDC OSA, CO OSA Int or in the Hole (that is probably more than you have done, Cathy, but I know for certain you did at least two A-E write ups because you were an SP along with everyone else in the Hole and they admit to terrible crimes and intentions towards Miscavige and Scientology). Now, it is impossible that every single person in International Management is out to destroy David Miscavige and Scientology. But if you look in every person’s files, you will find the same sort of “confessions”. He proclaims loudly and repeatedly that this is the “op” of Int Management and nobody is going to get anywhere until they admit to it. There are ready made “confessions” to “D/A” every person at the Int Base. It’s designed that way. And no prizes for guessing what LRH says about someone who claims everyone else is an SP.

And just as an aside: Didn’t it ever strike you as just the tiniest bit strange that I was the International Church Spokesperson while I had been declared by David Miscavige, not once, but at least 5 times. And that I was doing this after those “confessions” that are published in Freedom Mag or handed out in D/A packs. I would come out of the Hole or the bilges or Old Gilman House (OGH) or the lake at St Hill as a total SP (according to DM), put on a suit or tuxedo and be the church spokesman or a speaker at one of the phony Int events? Is that standard Scientology policy at work?

The majority of the sensational “entheta” about David Miscavige concerns his physical and mental abuse of people. I know that in the circumstances you are in, you will swear under oath that black is white in order to protect him and his acts. But Cathy, you have seen it. Don’t pretend you haven’t. You just believe it is acceptable behavior because of all the “wonderful things” he does. But those two data don’t add up – savior of Scientology and vicious tyrant. And if it really is OK in your mind that he acts the way he does – why is everyone lying about it? Why not come out and say “Yes, he does beat people and he mentally abuses them, but we all think it is OK because he does so much good for Scientology”. Don’t kid yourself that it is just because “wogs” wouldn’t understand how it is the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics. No, 97.5% of Scientologists would be horrified if the church admitted the truth and the flow of funds would dry up. That’s DM’s dirty little secret. Scientology is supposed to be about the truth. Not covering up what goes on behind closed doors. That internal rot is a symptom of the decay of the church because it no longer represents truth.

Taryn, I don’t know for a fact if you have personally witnessed Miscavige wailing on someone, but if not, I am sure you have heard from plenty of people who have seen Gary Wiese being hit by him, and probably also Guillaume, Heber, Yager, Mithoff. Henning Benndorf saw it hundreds of times and Miscavige told Henning to hit people on his behalf. Henning was in SFX a lot. When I asked you whether it was OK for Miscavige to hit people, your response to me was “I never saw him hit you.” Probably true. But it was not a response to the question I asked.

Andrew, I know you haven’t seen this sort of insane behavior. Nor have you witnessed the mental abuse. You know I was in the bilges for more than a month with Guillaume, Heber and Yager at the same time Barb was on the Ship completing OT VIII. I had to be kept out of her sight in case it enturbulated her. When she attested, I was brought out of the bilges for an hour to get cleaned up and sit with her in the Heritage restaurant while someone stood guard at the door to ensure I didn’t do something funny. It’s odd, I was so happy for her, but it was such a strange situation, it was difficult to not let my true feelings (“What the fuck is happening here?”) show through. But that’s the weird shit that goes on. You can ask Barb about it. I am sure she will remember. I had people go ahead of me to ensure she wasn’t in any passageway if I ever went out of the bilges. I know she thought it odd that I had been on the ship for a month after MV and she hadn’t seen me.

But honestly, Miscavige’s insane treatment of SO members isn’t the most major departure from the ideal scene. It is just a manifestation of his aberration and the true crimes that he is engaged in.

I asked you Andrew if you knew what inurement was. Hopefully by now you have had the good sense to look it up. Miscavige is guilty a hundred times over. And that could bring about the demise of the Church. He knows it, but he thinks he is above the law (as well as policy) and can outsmart anyone. He can’t. But more importantly, he is in direct violation of very strict LRH policy. You have probably been convinced that “COB” deserves everything he has and more. Dozens of cars. Private jets. Lavish quarters. Expensive meals. Outrageous gifts. Cooks and maids and servants and typists and secretaries and chiropractors and hairdressers and makeup men. The problem is, LRH didn’t have that. And LRH made his money by writing his own books. DM hasn’t done anything other than illegally assumed control of the Church and is reaping the rewards, not of his work, but by taking what LRH created. The $1500 per day for a scuba boat to sit next to the Freewinds, the lavish meals and expensive cars are paid for by the donations of good Scientologists like you. Just one day of that $1500 per day boat charter would probably pay someone’s monthly mortgage that they took out in order to increase their IAS Honor Status. The money spent on having 4 PIs follow me full time would buy 2000 copies of Dianetics every day that could be handed out to people for free. Did LRH waste money like that? No way. And if you look at the article, What our Fees Buy you will see what he has to say about this.

You have been convinced that the Ideal Orgs strategy is a wonderful, on Source program. It isn’t. It is propaganda by redefinition of words. The LRH game for orgs was to expand beyond the size of Old St Hill and with that done get the staff to OT. You don’t hear about this anymore, and the Universe Corps is a faded memory. THAT was LRH. “Ideal Orgs” is DM. This is what LRH says about the subject:

” We own a tremendous amount of property. We own a tremendous amount of material, and so forth. And it keeps growing. But that’s not important. When buildings get important to us, for God’s sake, some of you born revolutionists, will you please blow up central headquarters. If someone had put some HE (high explosives) under the Vatican long ago, Catholicism might still be going. Don’t get interested in real estate. Don’t get interested in the masses of buildings, because that’s not important.

“What is important is how much service you can give the world and how much you can get done and how much better you can make things. These are important things. These are all that are important. A bank account never measured the worth of a man. His ability to help measured his worth and that’s all. A bank account can assist one to help but where it ceases to do that it becomes useless.” L. Ron Hubbard, 31 December 1960 lecture, The Genus of Dianetics and Scientology.

But even more important than this is the perversion of fundamental Scientology. PTS/SP tech is being squirreled with disconnection used as a means of controlling people rather than a last resort tool to help someone de-PTS and lead a happier life. It’s so bad, the Church spokesman doesn’t even know what to say any more – he says one time that there is no such thing as disconnection and then tries to go back on it and say it “isn’t enforced” and then tries to say it’s like the Catholic religion. I mean, guys, why not come out and say what really happens. There isn’t a Scientologist in the world that doesn’t know how it goes. If what is being done IS standard Scientology – why not just come out and admit it?

And there are many other examples, including 6 month sec checks on OT VII, redefining F/N’s, a training line up that makes robot auditors. You will, of course, reject this out of hand. But look at the long term international stats – they don’t lie. And I know they suck as I have been into many orgs in the last 6 months and every single one of them is empty. From London to NY to Tampa to Dallas to Brighton to Orlando to Miami to Denver to Kansas City. And I have received first hand reports from people who have been into numerous other orgs. And while the propaganda line is “new orgs opening” in truth it is only new buildings opening. There hasn’t been a new org opened in recent history.

Here are some articles I suggest you read. They won’t take you long. And if you can truly think for yourself then you can make up your own mind. But I would hazard a guess that you a) will never be informed that they even exist, b) if you do hear of them you will be told not to read them because they are all lies or c) you will reject them out of hand as you have already been conditioned to believe that the internet only contains entheta intended to destroy you and Scientology. But, just imagine if LRH had lived his life that way. Afraid to look or see because someone told him it was all bad. He would never have discovered the reactive mind. Or anything else for that matter. What happened to the idea that Scientology teaches you to find answers for yourself?  There are literally thousands of others written by all manner of people.

So, you now have a response and you can decide what you want to do. I am more than happy to communicate with you – any time you want. Though I am not willing to have the communication controlled by the Church. If you can’t have a comm cycle without being supervised by someone in the church then I don’t know what freedom you feel you have achieved.

And remember, it is so very easy to dismiss everything that is said that doesn’t match the party line because there is a built in justification: they’re an SP, they didn’t really make any case gain (even though they may have attested to every level including OT VIII), they are not really a Scientologist, it is just their own overts etc etc. Some won’t confront reality until it is “acceptable” – i.e. that enough others have decided that this is reality so it is OK to go along. They can’t “think for themselves” and observe what they see. But that is what Scientology teaches you. And if all you can do is think according to the dictates of others, you are not truly free. I hope you can look and not brush off the outpoints you observe. And start to think for yourselves. Don’t wait until it has become “fashionable” – that is not the manner of a real Scientologist.

I wish you all happiness. I know how hard it is to find inside the cocoon. It is inevitable DM’s house of cards built on a quicksand of lies will fall. It’s only a matter of time and how much more destruction occurs before his reign comes to an end.

Love,

Mike Rinder