Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

[Clueless Morgan]

Okay, watched Going Clear last night.  I thought it was good, interesting and engaging, but didn't personally find too much "new" information than what I already knew about Scientology.  I knew about the Sea Org and the forced abortions and that they separated children from their parents; I knew about the Hole, David Miscavige's prison camp place, and that he would play games with them where they basically fought to stay; I knew about members being pressured to sell books, pressured to keep donating money, and pressured to keep buying new copies of the books they already had; I knew about the ever-increasing additional levels; I had even watched Jason Beghe's 2-hour interview twice before.

I didn't know a great deal about Tom Cruise's story with Scientology other than the generals (I knew he was besties with Miscavige and their grip on him is damn-near unbreakable at this point).  I didn't know Spanky's story in particular, or that John Travolta is apparently in the know about a lot of the darker sides of the organization and how she was treated.  And I didn't realize that Marty Rathbun had remarried, or that his wife had filed a lawsuit against David Miscavige - that's fucking awesome!  I did a few minutes of googling to see what the status of the lawsuit was and found this:

Judge: Scientology leader not required to give deposition
http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology...on/2189099

Sadly I do not have HBO but after reading a few posts, i decided to YouTube a BBC Documentary on them. Now I investigated this "religion" (cough.. corporation) when I was young (14ish) and left it at that. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on this Doc. by BBC. It was crazy.

The interesting part of having seen Secrets of Scientology (which is, I assume, the BBC documentary you watched) was the appearance of Mike Rinder in that documentary and his appearance now.  He has changed so much that I had a hard time finding him on the cast list of Going Clear because he looks so different than he did in that documentary!  (I couldn't remember his name - I get him mixed up with Marty Rathbun - so I was reliant entirely on pictures of him)

From the BBC Panorama doc Secrets of Scientology (He's the one in the middle; on the Left is Tommy Davis, John Sweeny is on the right):


Mike Rinder's appearance now:


One of the few things that I didn't know what that when he appeared in the SoS documentary he had been temporarily released from the Hole that David Miscavige would keep people in and basically torture them, he went out and did his enforcer work, and then returned to the Hole!

I'm so glad that he got out and that he's looking so healthy.