It took Deborah a year to complete the course, but it didn’t change her parents’ status. She petitioned officials at the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles for help. They put her on another program that took two more years to finish. Still, nothing changed. If she failed to “handle” her parents—by persuading them to make amends to the church—she would have to disconnect not only from them but also from everyone who spoke to them, including her siblings. She realized, “It was that, or else I had to give up being a Scientologist.” The fact that Paul refused to disconnect from her parents posed yet another conflict.
According to the church, Deborah’s parents had been part of a class-action lawsuit against Scientology by disaffected members in 1987, which was dismissed the following year.2 The church required them to denounce the anti-Scientology group and offer a “token” restitution. That meant performing community service and following a rehabilitation course, called A to E, for penitents seeking to get back into the church’s good graces; it includes repaying debts, taking additional courses, and making public declarations of error. Deborah told her parents that if they wanted to remain in contact with her they had to follow the church’s procedures. Her parents, worried that they would also be cut off from their grandson, agreed to perform community service. For three months they delivered food in a Meals on Wheels program in Los Angeles. But the church wasn’t satisfied. Deborah was told that if she maintained contact with her parents she would be labeled a Potential Trouble Source—a designation that would alienate her from the entire Scientology community and render her ineligible for further training. A senior official counseled her to agree to disconnect from her parents and have them formally branded SPs. “Until then, they won’t turn around and recognize their responsibilities,” he said.
“Okay, fine,” Deborah responded. “Go ahead and declare them. Maybe it’ll get better.”
The official then granted Deborah permission to begin upper-level coursework in Clearwater.
In August 2006, a formal notice on yellow parchment, called a “goldenrod,” was posted at the Celebrity Centre declaring Deborah’s parents Suppressive Persons, explaining that they had withdrawn the money they had placed on deposit for future coursework and that they had associated with “squirrels”—that is, they received unauthorized Scientology counseling. A month later, Mary Benjamin sent her daughter a letter. “We tried to do what you asked, Deborah. We worked the whole months of July & Aug. on A-E.” They gave the church back the $2,500 for the courses that they never intended to take. After all that, she continued, a church adjudicator had told them to hand out three hundred copies of L. Ron Hubbard’s booklet “The Way to Happiness” to libraries and to document each exchange with photographs. Her parents had had enough. “If this can’t be resolved, we will have to say Good-Bye to you & James will lose his Grand-Parents,” her mother wrote. “This is ridiculous.”
In April 2007, Deborah received a letter from the lawyer who represented her parents, threatening a lawsuit for the right to visit their grandson. Deborah had to hire an attorney. Eventually, the church relented. Deborah was summoned to the Celebrity Centre and shown a statement rescinding the decision, although she wasn’t allowed to have a copy of it.
WHILE HE WAS RESEARCHING on the Internet, Haggis came upon a series of articles that had run in the St. Petersburg Times3 beginning in June 2009, titled “The Truth Rundown.” The paper has maintained a special focus on Scientology, since the church maintains such a commanding presence in Clearwater, which is adjacent to St. Petersburg. Although the paper and the church have frequently been at odds, the only interview that David Miscavige has ever given to a newspaper resulted in a rather flattering profile in the Times in 1998. (Since then, Miscavige has not spoken to the press at all.)
In the series, Haggis learned for the first time that several of the top managers of the church had quietly defected—including Marty Rathbun. For several years, the word in the Scientology community was that Rathbun had died of cancer. Mike Rinder, the chief spokesperson, and Tom De Vocht, the former landlord of all the church properties in Clearwater, were also speaking out about the abuses that were taking place inside the top tier of management—mainly at the hands of the church leader. Amy Scobee, who had overseen the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, pointed out that the reason no one outside of the executive circles knew of the abuse, even other Scientologists like Haggis, was that people were terrified of Miscavige—and not just physically. Their greatest fear was expulsion. “You don’t have any money. You don’t have job experience. You don’t have anything. And he could put you on the streets and ruin you.”