Tom Cruise and the shocking documentary that shook Scientology

This article was published in the issue of June 10, 2015 and we present it again today to retrace the changes Vanity has undergone in the last 20 years. Here all the articles we are republishing

He prefers not to tell me which city he’s skyping from, or what job he does: “Every time a detail about my life comes out, Scientology tries to screw me up: in the past few years, I’ve counted five rented houses just to watch over me.” Of the church founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1954, Mark “Marty” Rathbun is one of the greatest enemies because he knows it well. Until he left in 2004, he was the right-hand man of leader David Miscavige: among the many battles won together, the one with the blows of lawsuits against the American tax authorities to obtain the status of religion, and therefore the exemption from to pay taxes. But second Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Beliefthe documentary on Scientology produced by Hbo which will arrive in Italian cinemas from June 25, Rathbun also played an important role in the relationship between the organization and its most famous disciple, Tom Cruise. A follower as famous as he is convinced, to the point of being defined as “the most devoted Scientologist I know”: words spoken by Miscavige in handing him the Freedom Medal of Valor, an honor created especially for him.

It would have been Rathbun, for example, who delivered the divorce letter to Mimi Rogers, who had introduced the actor to Scientology in 1986, but who would have had the defect of being the daughter of a squirrela squirrel, as church members are contemptuously defined who, while continuing to follow Hubbard’s teachings, decide to leave Scientology. And it would always be Rathbun who had the phones of the actor’s second wife, Nicole Kidman, checked when it was time to get rid of her too, considered “a source of potential problems” because her father Antony was a psychologist. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Tom Cruise then launched into a very harsh invective against psychoanalysts and pharmaceutical companies, which have always been the great enemies of Scientology, during a television interview. According to the organization’s doctrine, the state of mental clarity can only be obtained by following its expensive courses and doing audits, i.e. responding to orders and questions while holding the two electrodes of the e-meter, a modified version of the lie detector patented by Hubbard. And since Rathbun spent hundreds of hours auditing with Cruise following his divorce from Nicole Kidman, it’s to him I pose the question implied by the HBO documentary: Why doesn’t Tom Cruise leave Scientology? “Because after all these years, Scientology has become a mission bigger than him,” Rathbun replies. «Some speculate that celebrities like Cruise and Travolta are staying because Scientology audits have built dossiers full of their most intimate secrets, But it’s not true. I’ll never tell anyone what Cruise told me, but I can tell you that’s not the reason: he’s not leaving because Scientology is his life.” After the release of the documentary, Scientology put it on its site Freedommag.org a series of videos giving the lie to Rathbun and all the other outsiders now criticizing the organization. John Travolta said he wouldn’t even watch the documentary, in which he is accused by her Scientologist friend Spanky Taylor of failing to help her when she was separated from her infant daughter and forced into menial jobs by her executives. But in any case he also denies it: “I have not experienced anything that is attributed to me”. The only one who did not speak was Tom Cruise, whose representatives had already denied the revelations of the book by Lawrence Wright on which Going Clear it’s based. But it will be difficult for the star to be able to keep silent: the fifth is released in the United States at the end of July Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and during the publicity tour Cruise will probably be forced to explain whether his reluctance represents a resounding departure from Scientology or the confirmation of an involvement that so far seems absolute.

None of the stars who have passed by Scientology’s Celebrity Center in Hollywood have the power of Tom Cruise. Not John Travolta or Kirstie Alley, who after many years of militancy remained in the role of disciples, while Cruise became a global ambassador of the organization talking about Scientology with Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, opening offices around the world and trying to recruit celebrities like Spielberg , David and Victoria Beckham, Will and Jada Smith (who went on to fund a school based on Hubbard’s educational techniques). The only Scientologist remotely comparable to Cruise in the amount of money paid into the church coffers is Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart in the simpsons. But only Cruise has developed a symbiotic relationship with David Miscavige, whom the actor confidentially calls “COB”, from chairman of the board (president of the board of directors, his role in the church). “Theirs is an almost unnatural friendship,” explains Mike Rinder, who was Scientology spokesman until 2007. “Miscavige adores Cruise, Cruise treats Miscavige like a God. When I saw them together they were often dressed identically, at movie premieres they sat next to each other, and when Miscavige had his brother-in-law make a custom Harley-Davidson for him, Cruise ordered one just like it.” During the time he was with Nicole Kidman, the leaks claim, Cruise expressed the desire to run with her on a flowery meadow: immediately Miscavige put dozens of people to work to reclaim the desert next to the Gold Base, one of the headquarters in California. And since he didn’t turn out well, he had it redone. When Tom expressed admiration for Miscavige’s wardrobe butlers, a Scientology patrol set out to provide the same service at the actor’s Telluride home. The star’s apartment in Beverly Hills? That, too, would be restructured by a team of adepts. There was only a short time Cruise walked away from the church, back in the days of Eyes Wide Shut.

The exiles say that the actor feels protected in Scientology offices: church members are ordered not to talk to him, and not to disturb him. It is possible that Cruise is not fully aware of the abuses attributed to the organization. For example, that Sea Org militants—Scientology loyalists—would be “invited” as children to sign contracts pledging to serve the organization for a billion years, and that they would be paid only 40 cents an hour per grueling work shifts. Perhaps he doesn’t even know the existence of the California prison where according to the documentary Miscavige would lock up disobedient executives: The Hole, a hall without chairs or beds where you eat standing up and sleep among the ants on the floor, and where summer the air conditioning is removed. Mike Rinder says he was locked up there for two years, during which time he was occasionally let out to return to publicly defend Scientology. “I think Tom knows enough, though he’s probably seen little with his eyes,” he tells me. “But I think, above all, that he is genuinely convinced that he is fighting, together with Miscavige, to save every single human being in the galaxy, according to Hubbard’s teachings. And for this he is willing to justify even the most wrong things of Scientology, because they serve a higher goal ». It has often been speculated that Katie Holmes split from Cruise to avert the possibility of their daughter Suri ending up in the Sea Org. But Aaron Smith-Levin, co-opted into the organization’s ranks as a child, explains to me that it’s as if there were two different Scientologies: “The rules that apply to Tom don’t work for others,” he says, and points out that no one would dare to recruit little Suri into the Sea Org, as no one did for the older children adopted with Nicole Kidman, Connor and Isabella. The documentary tells of alleged “selections” organized by Scientology to find the star a girlfriend after the separation from Penélope Cruz, who had continued to declare herself a Buddhist despite requests to join the church. According to a reconstruction published in the American edition of Vanity Fairdozens of actresses were summoned, and the choice fell on Nazanin Boniadi, who later became famous as a CIA agent in the series Homeland. Her Daughter of Adepts, she was asked to break up with her boyfriend, and when she refused her she was shown the minutes of the audits in which he confessed to having cheated on her. She was then groomed to meet Cruise. She did so well that she ended up living with him. But one evening when she had a bad headache, she made the mistake of asking Miscavige to repeat what she was saying: to Cruise, church exiles say, it was such a great offense that she was abandoned. Even in her sentimental affairs, therefore, the star seems to receive preferential treatment from Scientology. Usually when a partner leaves the church she is declared a “suppressive person,” with whom Scientologists can no longer have any contact. Instead, as Mike Rinder wrote in her blog about her, Cruise doesn’t appear to be barred from seeing her ex-wives.

A very different choice was imposed two years ago on Sara Goldberg, who was asked to cut ties with her son Nick, guilty of being in contact with a friend who in turn spoke with a “suppressive”. “When I refused to do so, I was declared a suppressive person myself, and my daughter who remained in Scientology broke all contact with me,” she says. “Since then I haven’t seen her or my granddaughter.” In her case, it was the politics of dividing families that prompted her exit. But there are also those – like director Paul Haggis, father of two lesbian daughters – who left in protest against the homophobic doctrine of Hubbard. «Going Clear he laid bare the myriad contradictions of Scientology,” Rinder says. “It was like a dam collapsing, followed by a new revelation every day. The latest, published by Los Angeles Times, accuses Miscavige of having a private investigator tail his own father, who had left the church.” I wonder if Tom Cruise read that article. I wonder if he believes the Los Angeles Timesor to Scientology’s timely denial.