| David Miscavige | |
|---|---|
David Miscavige |
|
| Born | April 30, 1960 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Salary | USD$50-60,000 (1990s)[1] |
| Title | Chairman of the Board |
| Religion | Scientology |
| Spouse | Michelle "Shelly" Miscavige |
| Website | |
| http://davidmiscavige.rtc.org | |
David Miscavige (born April 30, 1960) is the leader of the Church of Scientology and affiliated organizations. His title is Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation that controls the trademarked names and symbols of Dianetics and Scientology. Miscavige was an assistant to Hubbard (a "Commodore's messenger") while a teenager.[2] He rose to a leadership position within the organization by the early 1980s and was named Chairman of the Board of RTC.[3] Miscavige's mandate is to protect the works of L. Ron Hubbard from distortion or misuse,[2] and to serve as ecclesiastical head of Scientology.[4][5]
Since assuming his leadership position, Miscavige has been faced with press accounts alleging illegal and unethical practices, abuse of authority, and abuse of church members.[6] Miscavige and other top church officials and spokespeople have repeatedly denied these charges with sworn affidavits and witness statements.[7][8][9]
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David Miscavige and his twin sister were born in 1960[10] in Philadelphia to Ronald "Ron" Miscavige, Sr. and his wife Loretta,[11] the youngest of their four children. The Polish-Italian family was Roman Catholic.[11] Miscavige was raised in New Jersey.[5] As a child, Miscavige suffered from asthma and severe allergies which prevented him from participating in many sports. During this time his father, a trumpet player, became interested in Scientology, and he had his son sent to a Scientologist. According to him and his son, a 45-minute Dianetics session cured his ailments. The family was impressed enough by Scientology to move to the world headquarters in Saint Hill Manor, England.[11]
Miscavige joined Scientology in 1971. By the time he was 12 years old, he was assisting others to experience Scientology by conducting auditing sessions.[5] When he was 15, his family returned to Philadelphia, where he went to a local high school.[11] Miscavige has said that he was appalled by his classmates' drug use, and in 1976, on his sixteenth birthday, he left high school with his father's permission to move to Clearwater, Florida, and join the Sea Organization, an association of Scientologists established in 1968 by Hubbard.[12][11] Some of his earliest jobs included delivering telexes, grounds-keeping, serving food and taking photographs for Scientology brochures.[11] He rose in the organization to a point where, still a teenager, he was training and supervising staff many years older than he was,[11] and eventually came to work alongside Hubbard as his closest assistant.[13] In 1977, he worked directly under Hubbard as a cameraman for Scientology training films, in La Quinta, California.[12] Hubbard appointed him to the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO), responsible for enforcing Hubbard's policies within the individual Scientology organizations; he became head of the CMO in 1979.[12]
By 1980, L. Ron Hubbard was not appearing at public functions related to Scientology, and Miscavige took effective control of the organization.[14] In 1981, he was placed in charge of the Watchdog Committee and the All Clear Unit, with the task of handling the various legal claims against Hubbard. After the Guardian's Office's criminal involvement in Operation Snow White, he persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to resign from the Guardian's Office (GO), and purged several top GO officials through ethics proceedings.[15] The St. Petersburg Times, in a 1998 article "The Man Behind Scientology," says: "During two heated encounters, Miscavige persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to resign. Together they composed a letter to Scientologists confirming her decision -- all without ever talking to L. Ron Hubbard."[11] According to Miscavige, he and Mary Sue Hubbard remained friends thereafter.[16]
In 1982, Miscavige set up a new organizational structure to release Hubbard from personal liability and to handle the Scientology founder's personal wealth through a corporate entity outside of the Scientology organization.[12] He established the Religious Technology Center, in charge of licensing Scientology's intellectual property, and Author Services Inc. to manage the proceeds.[15] Miscavige has held the title of Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center since the organization's founding.[2] The Church of Spiritual Technology was created at the same time with an option to repurchase all of RTC's intellectual property rights.[15] In a 1982 probate case, Ronald DeWolf, Hubbard's estranged son, accused Miscavige of embezzling from and manipulating his father. Hubbard denied this in a written statement, saying that his business affairs were being well managed by Author Services Inc., of which Miscavige was the Chairman of the Board. In the same document L. Ron Hubbard called David Miscavige a "trusted associate" and "good friend" who had kept Hubbard's affairs in good order. A judge ruled the statement was authentic. [17] The case was dismissed on June 27, 1983.[16]
In October 1982, Miscavige required Scientology Missions to enter new trademark usage contracts which established stricter policies on the use of Scientology materials.[18][19] Over the two years following the formation of the RTC, Miscavige and his RTC team replaced most of Scientology's upper and middle management.[20] A number of those ousted attempted to establish breakaway organizations, such as the Advanced Ability Center led by David Mayo, a former RTC board member who had also been Hubbard's personal auditor.[20][21]
When L. Ron Hubbard died in 1986, Miscavige announced the death to Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium.[22] Shortly before Hubbard's death, an apparent order from him circulated in the Sea Org that promoted Scientologist Pat Broeker and his wife to the new rank of Loyal Officer, making them the highest-ranking members; Miscavige asserted this order had been forged.[23] After Hubbard's death, Miscavige assumed the position of head of the Scientology organization.[24]
In 1991 Miscavige, together with Mark Rathbun, visited IRS headquarters to arrange a meeting with Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg, Jr.. For more than two decades, the IRS had refused to recognize Scientology as a nonprofit charitable organization, a status granted to most established religious organizations. Prior to this meeting, Scientology had filed more than fifty lawsuits against the IRS and, according to the New York Times, "Scientology's lawyers hired private investigators to dig into the private lives of I.R.S. officials and to conduct surveillance operations to uncover potential vulnerabilities... [and] taken documents from an I.R.S. conference and sent them to church officials and created a phony news bureau in Washington to gather information on church critics. The church also financed an organization of I.R.S. whistle-blowers that attacked the agency publicly." [25] At the meeting with Commissioner Goldberg, Miscavige offered to cease Scientology's suits against the I.R.S. in exchange for tax exemptions[25]. This led to a two-year negotiating process, in which IRS tax analysts were ordered to ignore the substantive issues because the issues had been resolved prior to review. Ultimately, the church was granted recognition as a nonprofit religious or charitable organization in the U.S., which creates a tax exemption for the Church of Scientology International and its organizations, and tax deductions for those who contribute to their programs.[5][25]
To announce the settlement with the IRS, Miscavige gathered a reported 10,000 members of Scientology in the Los Angeles Sports Arena, where he delivered a two-and-a-half-hour address and proclaimed, "The war is over!".[5] [25] The crowd gave Miscavige an ovation that lasted more than ten minutes. [1]
Since assuming his leadership role, Miscavige has been faced with press accounts regarding alleged illegal and unethical practices of the Church of Scientology or by Miscavige himself. A 1991 Time magazine cover story on the Church described Miscavige as "ringleader" of a "hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner."[4]
In 2009, the St Petersburg Times published allegations by former high-ranking executives of Scientology that Miscavige routinely humiliates and physically beats his staff.[6] This included testimony from Mike Rinder, former director of the organization's Office of Special Affairs who for years had been the official spokesperson for Scientology, and Mark Rathbun, the former Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center. According to Rathbun, Miscavige is "constantly denigrating and beating on people."[6]
Similar charges have been reported in previous years.[26] In a 1995 interview for ITV, Stacy Young, Miscavige's former secretary and the ex-wife of Hubbard's former public relations spokesman, Robert Vaughn Young, had previously asserted that Miscavige emotionally tormented staff members on a regular basis. "His viciousness and his cruelty to staff was unlike anything that I had ever experienced in my life," she said. "He just loved to degrade the staff."[27] Jeff Hawkins, a former marketing guru for Scientology, claimed to have attended a meeting where Miscavige "He jumped up on the conference room table, like with his feet right on the conference room table, launched himself across the table at me. I was standing, battered my face, and then shoved me down on the floor. "[28] Church executive David Bloomberg confirmed that there was a physical confrontation during the meeting but stated that it was Hawkins who became belligerent and attacked Miscavidge. In the confrontation Hawkins fell out of his chair and ended up putting a scissor lock on Miscavige's legs. Bloomberg stated "Mr. Miscavige did not touch Jeff Hawkins."[29]
Church representatives have consistently denied such accusations, insisting that the allegations come from apostates motivated by bitterness or attempting to extract money from the church.[6] [30][31] An issue of the church's "Freedom" magazine was dedicated to praising Miscavige and attacking the "Truth Rundown" series, featuring articles titled "Merchants of Chaos: Journalistic Double-dealing at the St. Petersburg Times." and "The Bigotry Behind the Times’ Facade of Responsible Journalism."[32] Miscavige sent an open letter to the newspaper challenging the integrity of the reporters and labeling their sources as "lying" after the persons in question had been removed from the organization for "fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion."[8] The church also commissioned an independent review of the St. Petersburg Times's reporting, but have not, to date, released those findings.[33][34][33] [34][33]
"Inside Scientology: The Truth Rundown" was recognized with journalistic honors, including the 2010 Gold Medal for Public Service award from the Florida Society of News Editors.[35][36] [37][38] The series was cited as a basis for subsequent journalistic investigations, including a weeklong series hosted on the CNN network by Anderson Cooper.
Though he and the Scientology organization have been the subject of much press attention, Miscavige has rarely spoken directly to the press. Exceptions include a televised 1992 interview by Ted Koppel of ABC News,[39] a 1998 newspaper interview with the St. Petersburg Times,[40] and a 1998 appearance in an A&E Investigative Reports installment called "Inside Scientology." [41]
As Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center, David Miscavige works primarily from Scientology's Gold Base near Hemet, California.[12][42][43] Scientologists often refer to him as "DM", or "C.O.B.", for Chairman of the Board.[18][44] In their 2007 book, Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles, W. W. Zellner and Richard T. Schaefer noted that "David Miscavige has been the driving force behind the Church of Scientology for the past two decades" and that "Miscavige's biography and speeches are second only to Hubbard in dominating the official Scientology Web site. [...] He is acknowledged as the ultimate ecclesiastical authority regarding the standard and pure application of L. Ron Hubbard's religious theories."[5]
Miscavige's is portrayed within Scientology as "a servant of Hubbard's message, not an agent in his own right."[45] Miscavige uses church publications as well as professionally produced videos of gala events, at which he acts as master of ceremonies, to communicate with Scientologists worldwide.[1]
David Miscavige initiated a strategy in 2003 to build new Churches of Scientology in every major city in the world. Since then, twenty-nine new Churches have been opened, a number of them in the world's cultural capitals, including Madrid, New York, London, and Berlin.[46][47] In 2011, five new Churches opened, including Melbourne, Moscow, Tampa, Twin Cities and in Inglewood a new church and community center.[48][49][50] Another 60 Churches are in design, planning or construction phases, including over a quarter of a million square feet under construction in Tel Aviv, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Pretoria.[51] Within Scientology, Miscavige has spearheaded and devoted himself to a large-scale, 25-year project of issuing unreleased, expanded and corrected editions of Hubbard's books and lectures, including translating many works into other languages. Miscavige's work has been described by Scientologists as bringing about a renaissance of Scientology materials.[52]
Miscavige is married to fellow Sea Org member Shelly Miscavige, who, according to Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, "disappeared" in 2006, and "her current status is unknown." Wright's sources allege that her disappearance occurred after she "filled several job vacancies without her husband’s permission." [53] His older brother Ronald Miscavige, Jr. was an executive in the Sea Organization for a time,[23] but left the Church of Scientology in 2000.[54] His sister, Denise Licciardi, was hired by major Scientology donor Bryan Zwan as a top executive for the Clearwater, Florida-based company Digital Lightwave, where she was linked to an accounting scandal.[55] [56] Ronald's daughter Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of David Miscavige, remained in the Sea Org until 2005, and since has become an outspoken critic of the Scientology organization.
Miscavige is close to actor Tom Cruise,[9] and served as best man at Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes.[57]
Miscavige is a firearms enthusiast who enjoys skeet shooting.[9] In the 1998 St. Petersburg Times interview he named playing the piano, underwater photography and trail biking among his other hobbies.[1]