Fair Game Read online

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Chapter 1 The Escapee

  Chapter 2 Ron’s War

  Chapter 3 Dianetics

  Chapter 4 Dianetics Goes South

  Chapter 5 Old Ron’s Con

  Chapter 6 Bunkumology

  Chapter 7 The Scammer Scammed

  Chapter 8 The Anderson Inquiry

  Chapter 9 The Riff-raff of Australia

  Chapter 10 All Aboard

  Chapter 11 The Church of Spyentology

  Chapter 12 Celebrity and New Faith

  Chapter 13 The Rock Concert

  Chapter 14 Deep Sleep

  Chapter 15 The Greatest Game of All

  Chapter 16 The Gillhams Blow

  Chapter 17 Julian Assange’s Noisy Investigation

  Chapter 18 Cruise and Kidman

  Chapter 19 The Packer Acquisition

  Chapter 20 Mike Rinder Leaves the Building

  Glossary of Terms

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  Photos Section

  Copyright

  PREFACE

  UNTIL 2010, I WAS ignorant of the activities of the Church of Scientology. I was 12 months into one of the best jobs in the Australian media, working as a reporter for ABC TV’s Lateline program. I was looking around for a story to get my teeth into. I didn’t have to wait too long. Lateline’s Executive Producer, John Bruce, called me into his office and in his formidable baritone said, ‘I think I’ve got something for you …’

  Quentin McDermott had just aired his Four Corners program ‘The Ex-Files’. It contained a series of explosive allegations about forced abortions, punishment camps, abusive work practices and families being torn apart by Scientology. Quentin had two strong leads he had been unable to follow up on and had generously passed them on to Lateline.

  The stories related to former Scientologists Scarlett Hanna and Carmen Rainer. Scarlett was the daughter of Vicki Dunstan, the head of the Church of Scientology in Australia. Scarlett wanted to blow the lid off one of Scientology’s dark secrets – how children were treated inside the cult. She told me she had been separated from her parents and forced to live in a unit with 25 other children of Sea Org members. She said children were treated like cattle. Scarlett said she did not see her father, Mark Hanna, for several years after he was sent to the US as punishment for failing to prevent a critical story airing on Australian TV.

  Carmen Rainer had been sexually abused between the ages of 8 and 11, by her Scientologist stepfather, Robert Kerr. She told me that a senior Scientologist, Jan Eastgate, had coached her to lie to police and community services about the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her stepfather, an allegation that Eastgate denied. Carmen also said that Scientologists had told her the abuse was her fault because she had been bad in a previous life.

  The Church of Scientology did all it could to prevent Scarlett and Carmen from telling their stories. Lateline was threatened with an injunction and defamation writs. Scarlett said her father had threatened to sue her if she went ahead and spoke to me. The night before the interview was due to be recorded, Vicki Dunstan spent the night at her daughter’s unit pleading with her not to talk to me.

  When it was clear the stories were going ahead, the Church of Scientology did all it could to make life hard for me. No-one at the centre of the allegations would speak to me. Negotiating an interview with their spokeswoman, Virginia Stewart, was a painstaking process. Finally, after much back and forth, she agreed to be interviewed. But when the cameras were due to roll, she simply failed to turn up. When we rescheduled for another day she brought along Sarah McClintock, a committed Scientologist, who disputed Scarlett’s version of events.

  The Church of Scientology wanted to film the interviews on a video camera, which was no problem to me. But when I started asking difficult questions of McClintock, Sei Broadhurst, the Scientology public affairs representative who was filming the interview, abruptly yelled out, ‘I have to change my batteries!’ It seemed like a preordained tactic to give Sarah thinking time once the questions got too tough.

  When the stories aired, the blowback began. The ABC and Lateline were bombarded with complaints from Scientologists. I was accused of bias and interacting with members of a cyber terrorist group (by this they meant I spoke to members of Anonymous as a reporter might do while filming an anti-Scientology protest). They complained about my stories but never sued. They said the allegations were egregiously false but the organisation with a well-earned reputation for silencing journalists and publishers with aggressive litigation never took it to the courts.

  Included in the correspondence I received following those stories was an email from Virginia Stewart’s father, Allen Wright. In her on-camera interview Scientology’s spokeswoman had denied that children and parents were routinely separated by the church. Her father, by now living in Switzerland, had seen the program and was disgusted by the comments. He wrote me the following note:

  I am Virginia Stewart’s father.

  I was a Scientologist, doing up to OT 5 in the Church of Scientology and being on staff in Sydney, but I saw the whole place turn from something fantastic to a good approximation of a Nazi concentration camp after 1982, so I just left when my staff contract was up.

  I still had great relationships with both of my daughters until 1988, when Virginia phoned me to say she was joining the Sea Org and could no longer have any communication or connection with me.

  Since then she has kept that decision and never once originated a communication, or replied to any from me across the intervening 22 years.

  I wished to grant her complete freedom of choice in her life, no matter how much I disagreed with her choice, and how much I missed her, but her directly lying publicly on your show has really pissed me off and I’m willing to make this story public, if you are interested.

  Please feel free to email or phone me if it will help put some control in on this criminal organisation.

  Regards,

  Allen Wright

  Virginia Stewart’s father had made a similar post on an Internet forum known as the ExScientologist’s Message Board. He said, ‘I even sent her a great gift for her 40th birthday, but not even a thank you card.’ I quickly organised a camera crew to travel to Allen’s home to do an interview, but he pulled out at the last moment. His daughter must have have seen the public relations disaster that was about to unfold. Allen wrote to me again.

  Steve,

  I have just had a long email from Virginia, the first communication in 22 years!

  And I feel there is a chance of continued communication, so I’d like to put a hold on the interview for now.

  Sorry.

  But this doesn’t mean I don’t applaud what you are doing.

  The same organisation that could separate a loving father from his daughter for 22 years could suddenly allow them to communicate again if it meant that it helped close down the threat of negative publicity.

  At every opportunity, before, during and after I covered the stories of Scarlett Hanna and Carmen Rainer, the Church of Scientology tried to make life difficult for me, my Executive Producer and the ABC. It was a common tactic designed to intimidate journalists, editors and publishers to the stage where they made a decision that these stories were simply too hard to cover. My instincts told me it was worth the trouble. I thought that if they were willing to carry on in this way to prevent two stories going to air, what else did they have to hide? To his credit, John Bruce agreed and backed me to keep going.

  The more I looked, the more I found. I did further stories for Lateline and the reaction from the Church of Scientology was repeated. They threatened to sue me, sent complaints to the Managing Director of the ABC about me and sent me
statements that at all times denied all allegations raised by former Scientologists. One thing, however, did change. They never again granted me an interview with Virginia Stewart or any other Scientologist.

  As I researched the topic more I was struck by the extraordinary stories where Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, were entwined with Australia. Hubbard had served in Brisbane in World War II and visited Melbourne in 1959, where he declared that Australia would be the world’s first ‘clear continent’.

  Australia was the first country to have a public inquiry into Scientology and the first place in the world where it was banned. I discovered that many of Hubbard’s harshest policies had evolved in response to that inquiry and the banning of Scientology in three states: Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Among these harsh policies was Fair Game, which (according to Hubbard) allowed critics to be ‘deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.’ Australia had changed Scientology forever and that story had never fully been told.

  A number of Australians also had a major impact inside Scientology. Mike Rinder, who grew up in Adelaide in the 1960s, became its international spokesman and head of its feared Office of Special Affairs (OSA). He later became one of the cult’s fiercest and most influential critics.

  Former Brisbane kindergarten teacher Yvonne Gillham set up Scientology’s Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Her daughters, Terri and Janis, were two of Hubbard’s original messengers, responsible for everything from pulling his trousers on in the morning, to delivering abuse to subordinates. Both rose to be senior executives in Scientology and until now have never told their remarkable stories.

  Then there are the big Australian personalities who collided with Scientology. James Packer was recruited into the organisation when he hit rock bottom after the One.Tel crash. Nicole Kidman had her marriage to Tom Cruise undermined by Scientology spies and wiretaps. Rupert Murdoch was spied on by the Scientologists after his newspapers took aim at them in Australia in the 1960s. Julian Assange was targeted when he helped publish one of the first anti-Scientology websites in the 1990s. Two Scientologists exposed one of the worst cases of medical malpractice in Australian history at Sydney’s Chelmsford Hospital. The Church of Scientology even recruited elite rugby league players including State of Origin and Test prop Pat Jarvis. The more I looked the more extraordinary revelations I found.

  Four years later, after conducting over 200 interviews, and spending countless days pouring over documents, files and transcripts, I finally managed to pull the story together.

  In Scientology’s foundation book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard has an introductory chapter that includes a section titled ‘How to Read this Book’. I feel like I need a similar section in my book because I think that as the reader there are a few things you need know about up front.

  The Church of Scientology would not put forward anyone to be interviewed for this book.

  I tried to get interviews with church officials in Australia and the US, as well as practicing Scientologists at the centre of certain allegations – all requests were declined.

  At times I had email exchanges with Vicki Dunstan, the head of the church in Australia, where she requested that I put all questions in writing before she would consider interview requests. I refused to comply with this. Former Scientologists I interviewed had not made the same request. I felt like it gave them an opportunity to rehearse their answers and would cut out the possibility of asking follow-up questions. I also believed they had no intention of giving me interviews anyway and this proved to be the case. I did manage to interview some current Scientologists but this was done without the church’s knowledge.

  After church representatives declined to do interviews, I laid out the key allegations in writing and requested written responses. Through their lawyer, Patrick George from Kennedys, the church accused me of being unreasonable and asked for further details including the names of sources. When I asked if I could publish online in full all correspondence between myself and the church so readers could make up their own minds about who was being unreasonable, I got another legal letter.

  It said in part ‘… we expressly do not authorise, and indeed are instructed not to authorise, the publication or disclosure of our letters which were sent to you on a confidential basis. Further, publication of the allegations with knowledge of their falsity leaves you liable to substantial general and aggravated damages.’

  Eventually I got written responses from Scientology’s lawyers to the key allegations. This meant it was impossible to test their claims in an interview setting. The former Scientologists I spoke to were willing to have their claims tested and for me to follow up and further scrutinise their claims in subsequent interviews.

  It is hard to know when the Church of Scientology is telling the truth.

  I have come across evidence of Scientology officials being punished when critical stories have been published even when it’s not been their fault. With that in mind a statement from a Scientology official has all the credibility of a statement coming from the press office of the North Korean President Kim Jong-un. It might be true, but there are often good reasons why it might be a pack of lies. If the Church of Scientology is hiding something, why would an official tell the truth if it meant being sent off to a punishment camp?

  Hubbard’s internal justice system, known as ‘ethics’, punishes those who speak out against Scientology. In fact, inside Scientology’s justice system, many High Crimes, the worst offences of all, relate to criticising or embarrassing Scientology in public. That means there is a powerful disincentive for any Scientologist to tell the truth if it will lead to bad public relations for Scientology. This makes it very difficult to ever trust any statement the church makes relating to serious allegations of abuse.

  I have never seen a story about Scientology abuses where the church has admitted guilt or apologised. The closest I’ve seen them come to admitting a failure of some sort was in relation to the case of Paulette Cooper, the New York journalist who wrote about Scientology in the 1970s. Church operatives tried to get Cooper imprisoned by framing her for a bomb threat that she never made. She was facing 15 years in jail when the FBI raided the Church of Scientology over another matter and found documents that proved she was the victim of an elaborate conspiracy. The Church of Scientology has never apologised for this; instead it blamed the action on a ‘rogue unit’ that had been disbanded.

  The Church of Scientology claims I am a bigot.

  The Church of Scientology says I am a bigot and will inevitably make other false claims about me following the publication of this book. They have made similar claims of bigotry about other journalists and documentary makers who are determined to expose abuse inside Scientology. These include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright; Academy Award-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney; Emmy Award-winning BBC journalist John Sweeney; and Tony Ortega, who blogs and breaks stories about Scientology on a daily basis out of New York. I consider all of these people to be fine journalists with a commitment to exposing the truth.

  Similarly, former members who leave Scientology and become critics are labelled apostates, criminals, merchants of chaos, part of a posse of lunatics, liars, wife-beaters and egomaniacs. They are attacked in Scientology publications and dismissed invariably as either no-hopers or former executives who were removed from positions of power for incompetence or gross malfeasance. No ex-member who criticises Scientology is given any credibility at all. They are all slimed. Could it be true that not one of them has anything valid to say or any redeeming characteristic? I don’t think so.

  I’m not fussed about what Scientologists believe in. I am not interested in making fun of Xenu, volcanoes and thetans. If believing in Scientology helps its followers, I’m not going to judge them on it. As a journalist, what disturbs me about Scientology is the abuse of power that comes fro
m the top: the forced abortions; the human trafficking; the underpaid and overworked staff; the families torn apart; the lies; the rips-offs; and the trauma experienced by its followers. It disturbs me too how the organisation has managed to avoid scrutiny through litigation and the intimidation of both its adherents and critics. I hope this book goes some way to exposing the truth of the abuses Scientology has managed to suppress inside its secretive organisation.

  I also hope that by exposing the truth it helps in some way those who have suffered this abuse. The former members who spoke to me are extraordinarily brave. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress. All of them in their own way face repercussions for speaking out. It’s been a privilege to meet these people and to be able to share their stories.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE ESCAPEE

  JOSÉ NAVARRO WAS HOMELESS, hungry and hallucinating from sleep deprivation. He had one set of clothes, a quarter of a pouch of rolling tobacco and an empty wallet. Trapped in a foreign city, with no family or friends to fall back on, his passport held by the Church of Scientology, José had run out of options.1

  The only people he knew in Sydney were trying to hunt him down and return him to Scientology’s punitive re-education camp, the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF). The RPF is reserved for members of Scientology’s supposed elite unit, the Sea Organization, or Sea Org, who had fallen foul of the hierarchy. José had been a member of the Sea Org for 17 years. Now he was on the run, and consumed by the kind of fear only a wanted man knows. But the 37-year-old had one thing going for him. He was free from the soul-destroying enforced labour of the RPF.