David Miscavige
David Miscavige is an American Scientologist who is serving as the second and current leader of the Church of Scientology. His official title within the organization is chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center. RTC is a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology. He is also referred to within the Scientology organization as "DM", "COB", and "captain of the Sea Org".
Miscavige was a deputy to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard as a teenager. He joined the Sea Org, a management group for the Scientology organization, then later joined the Commodore's Messenger Organization, a group within the Sea Org that carried Hubbard's orders to subordinates. He rose to a leadership role by the early 1980s and was named "chairman of the board" of RTC in 1987, the year after Hubbard's death. Official Church of Scientology biographies describe Miscavige as "the ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion".
Since he assumed his leadership position, there have been a number of allegations made against Miscavige. These include claims of human trafficking, child abuse, slavery, forced separation of family members, coercive fundraising practices, harassment of journalists and Scientology critics, and emotional and physical abuse of subordinates by Miscavige. Miscavige and spokespersons for the Scientology organization deny the majority of such statements, often making derogatory comments about and attacking the character of those who make them.
Miscavige has been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation due to allegations of criminal activities within the Scientology organization. He is named as a defendant in numerous lawsuits involving his role in the organization. One such recent lawsuit, filed in April 2022, refers to repeated sexual assault of children by senior Scientology executives in the Sea Org during Miscavige's leadership. The case also involves allegations of human trafficking, forced labor, and other forms of child abuse.
Early life
David Miscavige was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, on April 30, 1960. His parents, Ronald Thomas "Ron" Miscavige Sr. and Loretta Gidaro, were Catholics of Polish-Italian heritage. Miscavige and his twin sister, Denise, were raised primarily in Willingboro Township, New Jersey. As a child, Miscavige played baseball and football, but he suffered from asthma and severe allergies. His father, a trumpet player, became interested in Scientology and sent the younger Miscavige to see a Scientologist. According to both father and son, a 45-minute Dianetics session cured Miscavige's ailments.Miscavige's family joined the Church of Scientology in 1971 and eventually moved to the organization's world headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in West Sussex, England. Saint Hill served as Miscavige's training ground as an auditor, and he is remembered by the Scientology organization as a "12-year-old prodigy" who became its youngest professional auditor. The family returned to Philadelphia within a few years, where Miscavige attended Marple Newtown High School.
Early career in Scientology
In 1976, with his father's permission, Miscavige left high school on his sixteenth birthday and moved to Clearwater, Florida, to join the Sea Org, a Scientologist organization established in 1968 by founder L. Ron Hubbard. Some of his earliest jobs in the Sea Org included delivering telexes, groundskeeping, food service and taking photographs for Scientology brochures.Miscavige was appointed to an elite group of young Scientologists within the Sea Org called the Commodore's Messenger Organization, which Hubbard had established to carry out his personal errands and deliver executive directives to Scientology management. As they grew into adolescence, the Messengers' power and influence within the Sea Org increased. By 1977, Miscavige was living in La Quinta, California, working directly under Hubbard as a cameraman for Scientology training films at CMO Cine Org.
Rise to leadership position
In the late 1970s, after the public relations disaster of the criminal convictions of eleven leaders of the Guardian's Office, including Hubbard's wife Mary Sue, Hubbard had to maintain his distance from Church management since he had formally resigned in 1966. Hubbard further distanced himself from the Guardian's Office, his wife, and CMO—which stood for Commodore Messengers Org where "Commodore" had been Hubbard's title as leader of the Sea Org.In April 1979, the Watchdog Committee was formed, consisting of the senior executives of CMO International, with Miscavige assuming a prominent role. When Hubbard went into hiding with Pat and Annie Broeker in 1980, Miscavige became the sole link between Hubbard and church leaders, secretly relaying Hubbard's orders from the Broekers. In early 1981, Miscavige set up the All Clear Unit "which was allegedly designed to work towards a situation when Hubbard could come back on lines"; to be "All Clear" for Hubbard to emerge from hiding.
By the end of 1981, Miscavige was in charge of the Watchdog Committee and the All Clear Unit, as well as Author Services Inc., a for-profit entity established in 1981 to manage Hubbard's literary and financial affairs. As head of the CMO, Miscavige sent out teams to investigate problem areas within Scientology.
Next, setting his sights on dismantling the larger and more powerful Guardian's Office, Miscavige strong-armed Hubbard's wife Mary Sue to resign from her post as Guardians' controller, removed several other GO officials, and purged several more through Comm Evs including David Gaiman, Duke Snider, Mo Budlong and Henning Heldt. The St. Petersburg Times later reported: "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." She subsequently changed her mind, believing that she had been tricked. Despite this, Miscavige claims he and Mary Sue remained friends thereafter.
Corporate restructuring
In 1982, Miscavige set up a new organizational structure to insulate Hubbard from personal liability and to handle his personal wealth through a corporate entity outside of the Scientology network. He established the Religious Technology Center, an entity responsible for licensing Scientology's intellectual property, and Author Services Inc. to manage the proceeds. Miscavige has held the title of chairman of the board of the RTC since the organization's founding. The Church of Spiritual Technology was created at the same time with an option to repurchase all of RTC's intellectual property rights. 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 also chairman of the board. In the same document, Hubbard called Miscavige a "trusted associate" and "good friend" who had kept his affairs in good order. A judge ruled the statement was authentic. The case was dismissed on June 27, 1983.In October 1982, Miscavige required Scientology Missions to enter new trademark usage contracts which established stricter policies on the use of Scientology materials. Over the two years following the formation of the RTC, Miscavige and his team replaced most of Scientology's upper and middle management. A number of those ousted attempted to establish breakaway organizations including the Advanced Ability Center led by David Mayo, a former RTC board member who had also been Hubbard's personal auditor. The Advanced Ability Center closed in 1984, two years after opening.
1986–2009: leadership of Scientology organization
When Hubbard died in 1986, Miscavige announced his death to Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium. Shortly before his death, an apparent order from Hubbard 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. After Hubbard's death, Miscavige assumed the position of head of the Church of Scientology and, according to the organization, "ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion." Within the Sea Org, Miscavige holds the title of "captain of the Sea Organization" and is its highest-ranking member.Since Miscavige assumed his leadership role in Scientology, there have been numerous accounts of illegal and unethical practices by the Church and by Miscavige himself. A 1991 Time magazine cover story, "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power," described Miscavige as "ringleader" of a "hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner." Miscavige stated in a 1992 interview on Nightlinehis only live televised interview to datethat the publication of the article resulted from a request by Eli Lilly, because of "the damage we had caused to their killer drug Prozac". Scientology filed a suit against Eli Lilly, J. Walter Thompson, Hill & Knowlton and the WPP Group. Scientology agreed to settle the case shortly before it went to trial.
The Scientology organization also brought a libel lawsuit against the piece's publisher Time Warner and its author Richard Behar, seeking damages of $416 million. All counts of the suit were dismissed by the court, and the dismissal upheld when Scientology appealed. Similar lawsuits in Switzerland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany were dismissed as groundless.
In 1987, the BBC Panorama program Scientology: The Road to Total Freedom? featured an interview with former member Don Larson, who served as the church's $25-per-week "finance ethics officer" and who described Miscavige's physical violence towards a staff member:
In a 1995 interview for ITV, Stacy Young, Miscavige's former secretary and the ex-wife of Hubbard's former spokesman, Robert Vaughn Young, 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." Though Miscavige and Scientology have been the subject of much press attention, he has rarely spoken directly to the press. Exceptions include the 1992 interview on Nightline, a 1994 print interview with weekly Austrian news magazine Profil, a 1998 newspaper interview with the St. Petersburg Times, and a 1998 appearance in an A&E Investigative Reports installment called "Inside Scientology."
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, David Miscavige published a message to all Scientologists entitled "Wake Up Call", urging them to redouble their efforts to use Scientology. Miscavige asserted that World War II, Hitler, Pearl Harbor, the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks, and "endless world conflicts can be traced to a lack of real technology of the mind and reliance on false mental therapies of psychiatry and psychology." Miscavige declared that Scientology "work to reform the field of mental health" and "we have the technology and organization to overcome any obstacle facing this planet today" and "we have the technology to pull it off."