It's an all-Scientology issue!
Plus: A decade of hope can still be true crime-y
the true crime that's worth your time
We made it, folks. I am not even kidding when I tell you how happy I am to be at this point in the week, and am feeling oddly…I think the word is “hopeful”? Yeah, that.
To keep the good vibes going my weekend true-crime plans are focused on the 1990s, when I was at my most hopeful (did I ever tell you how in 1997 I moved to San Francisco from Indiana with no job and about $400 in the bank?) and least jaded. I’m starting with Limelight, the 2011 documentary about admitted tax evader (and alleged a whole lot of other things) nightclub owner Peter Gatien, the guy played by Dylan MacDermott in a particularly generous bit of casting in 2003’s Party Monster.
Limelight just returned to Amazon Prime this week, another reason I have it queued up, and it looks like Party Monster is there too (as well as Peacock and the Roku channel, which I didn’t even know was a thing until the Weird Al movie was released on it). Sarah has written about Party Monster a couple times for Best Evidence (but as Substack is busy releasing every feature imaginable except for an improved search, I can’t find it to link to here [“here’s a review of Glory Daze if that helps!” — SDB]) and each time, I feel like re-watching it. For this scene, as much as anything:
In this scene, I am James St. James, and Michael/Stacey Q is this country. It’s an imperfect metaphor, but I stand by it.
So that’s me, but what about you? What true crime have you saved for the weekend? You know what to do. — EB
I think Sarah just manifested some Scientology-related true crime. The “tomorrow on Best Evidence” thing we toss in the footer to every issue is always as accurate as we can make it, but it can be wrong if we decide to write about something else. Sarah sort of guessed that might want to talk about the first item you’ll see below when she wrote Thursday’s issue preview, and her Xenu joke made me wonder if I could pull together a full issue of Scientology-related crime content.
Then, after I announced that as an idea, we started seeing Scientology-related signs everywhere — Sarah passed a little free library with a Scientology-related tome, then, last night, Leah Remini had a pretty fun tweetstorm. Sounds like it was meant to be! I’ve got a couple items to get our E-meters going; and if you have any Scientology-specific properties you’d like to recommend to the group, we’ll see you in the comments. — EB
An Ex-Scientologist Explains the Danny Masterson Trial—and How Scientology Got Desperate [Slate]
This piece is about a week old, so its coverage of the latest developments in the Masterson rape trial are a bit stale. Here’s a reading list on the case as it stands now; courts are off today for Veterans Day so new developments aren’t expected until Monday.
Danny Masterson’s DJ Name ‘Donkey Punch,’ a Violent Sexual Slang, Comes Up in Rape Trial [The Wrap]
‘Ghost Dog’ Actress Says Danny Masterson Sexually Assaulted Her Twice in 1996: ‘He Was Rough’ [Rolling Stone]
'That '70s Show' Star Rape Case: State Rests Its Case-in-chief [Court TV]
The Most Shocking Revelations From Danny Masterson's Rape Trial [E!]
Now back to the Slate piece, in which reporter Rebecca Onion interviews Mike Rinder, the former international spokesperson for Scientology who left the church in 2007, and has subsequently become a household (well, households like ours, I guess) name for his work with fellow former Scientologist Leah Remini, including their podcast, Fair Game, and her lauded show, Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.
As we’ve discussed here before, the judge in the Masterson case has warned prosecutors multiple times that Masterson, not Scientology, is on trial here, and that mentions of the controversial faith should be kept to a minimum. That’s tough, though, as the alleged victims claim that officials at the church (where they were also members) warned them against reporting the alleged assaults, with some allegedly threatening the victims should they choose to purse charges against the prominent Scientologist actor.
So that’s where Rinder comes in: he’s uniquely qualified to evaluate those victims’ claims, and to discuss in general how claims against notable practitioners of the faith might be quashed (as they are, to be fair, in many faiths! We have all seen Spotlight!). Rinder says he “was unaware of the alleged rapes until years after he left Scientology,” ymmv on if you believe this, and a savvy Scientology spokesperson contacted by Slate denied the claims Rinder made in the interview, “and suggested any malfeasance Rinder described would have happened under his watch.” So, it didn’t happen, and if it did, it’s because the whistleblower did it. Okay, sure.
So what is Rinder alleging? Well, that’s worth the Slate clickthrough, even though that means one less Dear Prudence you might get for free. Here’s a snip:
If a woman reports that she has been raped by someone, the Scientology response to that is, OK, write a report about it. Now, we are going to find out what you did to pull it in. This is the ultimate in victim-blaming, and it is an absolute inviolate law of Scientology, this idea that if something bad happens to you, it’s because you did something similar bad yourself previously. It is very, very dangerous and damaging, but if you ask a thousand Scientologists or ex-Scientologists, What does “What did you do to pull it in” mean to you, they would all give you exactly the same answer. It is such a standard thing in Scientology. [Scientology said this is false, and contended nothing in Hubbard’s teachings ever used this phrase.]
The second thing that is really important is that Scientology doesn’t believe in law enforcement, the judicial system. Hubbard wrote a lot about how it’s corrupt and criminal, and getting yourself in the hands of the judiciary is tantamount to your death sentence. Instead, we need to apply Scientology justice procedures. The idea in the mind of a Scientologist is, We have the only answers to resolve the crazy things that people do. If we have someone here who is a kleptomaniac, turning them over to law enforcement will just punish them but will not cure their urges to steal things. Only Scientology can do that. Only Scientology can get to the bottom of why someone feels the need to steal. It is cruel and unusual punishment to turn someone over to the judiciary or law enforcement when we could actually help them and solve their problem and get rid of their impulses to steal in the future.
This is the mindset that Scientologists have. There’s a lot of discussion about, Well, Scientology, you’re forbidden from going to law enforcement. Scientology comes out and puts out these statements saying, No, that’s not true. There’s no policy that forbids that. Well, actually, there is … But also, what isn’t understood generally is, in the mind of Scientologists, it’s not just following a rule. It is what they believe is the best thing to do, to turn the person over to Scientology to be helped, not turn them over to law enforcement to be locked up and tortured.
The first graf is a total barf and horrific, of course, but the second bit seems straight out of the last two seasons of The Good Fight. It’s interesting stuff!
Rinder just released a book in September; I’m on my library’s reserve list but haven’t gotten called up yet. It’s called A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology, and I am eager enough to read it that I might break down and snag a Kindle copy. Have any of you read it, and if so, what did you think? — EB
Paul Haggis Found Liable for $7.5M in Rape Lawsuit [The Hollywood Reporter]
Once-beloved screenwriter Paul Haggis isn’t a Scientologist anymore, having famously left the church a little more than a decade ago over its refusal to stand against California’s anti-marriage-equality ballot measure, Prop 8. Since then, the Million Dollar Baby and Crash writer has been hit with multiple allegations of rape, including a recently-dropped criminal claim in Italy.
But in a civil case this week, a jury awarded Haleigh Breest at least $7.5 million over an alleged assault in 2013. She filed suit over the alleged rape in 2017 “because his public condemnations of Weinstein infuriated her,” telling a jury, “This man raped me, and he is presenting himself as a champion of women to the world.” Four other women testified at the Breest trial that they, too, had nonconsensual encounters with Haggis, though none of them were involved in the suit.
Also uninvolved in the suit was Scientology, as “No witnesses said they knew that Haggis’ accusers or Breest’s lawyers had Scientology ties, and his lawyers acknowledged that Breest herself does not.” However, Haggis’s defense team claimed that the allegations were based in a Scientology effort to discredit Haggis.
Remini, who featured Haggis in her series, also testified in support of that claim, as was widely reported. Per Variety, Remini took the stand to argue that “it’s absolutely Paul who is the victim here,” saying that “the first of four women to anonymously testify in the trial and accuse Haggis of assault, ‘has a Scientologist name’ that ‘sounds familiar’ from her time with the church.” — EB
While we’re on Remini…The anti-Scientology advocate released a tweetstorm Thursday night that alleged the LAPD might be involved in a Scientology cover-up.
LAPD captain Cory Palka is under investigation for allegedly tipping CBS exec Les Moonves off over a sexual assault claim made against him. Per ABC:
Palka, who formerly was in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollywood Division, was something of a minor celebrity himself. He posed with performers receiving stars on the Walk of Fame, ran security for the Oscars awards show, was photographed on red carpets and even landed a bit part playing himself on the television drama “Bosch.”
Video footage of Palka went viral during the racial injustice protests in Los Angeles in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death when he took a knee with protesters on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
However, from 2008 to 2014, Palka not only was a cop but he provided private security for Moonves at the Grammy Awards, which CBS produced.
Now he is the subject of an LAPD internal investigation, and the state attorney general's office is probing any criminal elements after a report by the New York attorney general's office said he conspired with CBS to conceal sexual assault allegations against Moonves.
Remini seized upon Palka’s Hollywood Division role in her tweets Thursday, saying that he was “in charge of the division where I filed my missing person's report into the disappearance of Shelly Miscavige,” and asks, “what investigative information has he provided to Scientology over the years?”
In subsequent tweets, she shares emails sent from Palka to officials at the church’s Celebrity Center, and claimed that under Palka, Scientology briefly had a kiosk at the cop shop.
This is something I’ve seen a lot when a cop gets got for misconduct — suddenly, every case and interaction he’s had is up for scrutiny. And that’s probably wise, and what should happen. But I can also see a lot of Palka’s interactions as shared by Remini as the actions of a local official who is dealing with a potential massive pain in the ass. And since I just read and reread all of Remini’s defense of Haggis, I am sort of questioning her judgement right now! This is a tough one. Thoughts? — EB
And now for a Scientology blast from the past. Please join me in the rabbit hole that is the Operation Show White Wikipedia page, which dedicated Scientology chronicler Tony Ortega characterized in 1999 as “one of the largest infiltrations of the United States government in history.” The goal of Operation Show White was to purge government records critical of L. Ron Hubbard and his church, and ended in the criminal conviction of Hubbard’s wife and several other church members in 1978.
It’s a kind of amazing story that I didn’t know much about until I started in on this item, but as I read, I found a lot of great articles on the case from pubs with good archives and those that traffic in looks back. So consider this a reading list:
Burglaries and Lies Paved a Path to Prison [LA Times]
The Creepy History Of The Church Of Scientology’s ‘Operation Snow White’ [ThoughtCatalog]
Scientology's Puzzling Journey From Tax Rebel to Tax Exempt [NY Times]
and for superfans: here’s a 544-page PDF of FOIAed FBI records related to the case.
And while we’re on Tony Ortega, his book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, is as meta as it gets — a book about the fallout from a book about Scientology. Still with me?
Well reviewed when it came out in 2016, Ortega’s book on the church’s campaign of harassment against journalist Paulette Cooper, who in 1971 wrote a book called The Scandal of Scientology (it’s available for download here, and I’ll bet Sarah comes across a copy now and again, as well). After the book’s publication, she was harassed nearly to the point of suicide by church members, Ortega writes.
Now 80 years old, she made it through 19 lawsuits from the church, and is reportedly living a happy life in Belgium. It’s nice to see a happy ending like that one. — EB
One last Ortega bit: his “Tom Cruise’s Dark, Twisted Journey to Scientology’s Top Gun” for The Daily Beast isn’t as explicitly true crime as the rest of the items we covered today, but goddamn if it’s not a wild and completely gripping look at one of the most prominent and longstanding cult members in the U.S. A snip:
I think about Tom Cruise a lot these days, when I think about blind belief, mania, and obsession with a set of beliefs that will ultimately destroy the believer. (And I say this as someone who enjoys Tom Cruise and his movies!)
People often ask me if Cruise is only staying in Scientology because the church is blackmailing him with information he has given up in auditing sessions. But again, that misinterprets the facts. The real situation appears to be that Tom Cruise is a true believer. He really does believe that L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest human being who ever lived, and that David Miscavige is the greatest human being living today.
In the words of John Brousseau, who worked closely with both men for many years, “Tom Cruise worships David Miscavige like a god.”
I see no reason to change that assessment today.
Next week on Best Evidence: Dinner with Anna Delvey? Sure, why not?
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