A lot has already been said about Joy Villa’s Grammys gambit last night, with her showing up for the fourth year in a row in a dress designed to get her attention.
For the first three years she showed up in dresses designed by Andre Soriano, a minor reality TV figure and fashion designer in San Diego. In 2015, he created a dress for her made out of snowfence, in 2016 it was another barely-there number that turned heads for how much of Villa it didn’t cover, and then both Soriano and Villa hit it big last year with his “Make America Great Again” gown that launched Joy into political stardom.
But Soriano very publicly disavowed Joy Villa recently as she continued to use her “MAGA” fame to promote Scientology. He claimed not to have known about her Scientology involvement, which, frankly, is a little hard to believe. But for whatever reason, Joy was on her own for last night’s Grammy awards.
Her arts and crafts project — painting an image of a fetus in a rainbow splotch on a white wedding dress, with the message “Choose Life” on her handbag — got her another round of publicity last night as various news outlets celebrated her for once again bringing a “conservative” message to the Grammys, held this year in New York.
But last night we talked with Robbie Olson, Joy’s former manager, and he tells us this doesn’t really fix the situation he described for us just two weeks ago. After rocketing to fame which got her to the White House, an exploratory committee for a Congressional run, and even an endorsement by Trump himself, Joy’s political ambitions crashed and burned in the fall as it became obvious that she was putting Scientology before her new MAGA friends.
“We know where her true loyalties lie,” Robbie says.
We’ve been keeping an eye on Joy Villa (who is 31, not 26 as some news outlets continue to mistakenly report) since at least 2014 as she emerged as one of the most active Scientology “celebrities” and someone who was desperate for fame even though she seemed to have no real talent to speak of. In October 2016, Joy and her then-fiance, Danish photographer Thorsten Overgaard, became “Patron Meritorious” donors for having given at least $250,000 to the church, and they were married at Scientology’s holiest site, the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, on Christmas Day 2016. Joy has reached the state of “Clear” in Scientology, which can take years of work up the “Bridge to Total Freedom” and requires many hours of “auditing” — Scientology’s form of counseling — which involves having a subject “remember” their experiences in past lives going back millions of years and on other planets. Former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder has asserted that any Scientologist who goes as far as Joy Villa has would have been convinced to give up what are called “other practices” as they absorb Hubbard’s teachings that the world’s other religions are all false, and that Jesus Christ, for example, is an invention, a figment of the imagination. “There was no Christ,” Hubbard can be heard to say on a 1968 recording.
But once she caught fire with Trump supporters a year ago and her dubious music recordings charted, Joy began making political appearances. Olson helped her meet people like Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Milo Yiannopoulos. With the encouragement of the president himself, Villa announced that she was considering a run for Congress. This website was the first to reveal that it was Florida’s 27th district in Miami that she and Olson were targeting.
But by December Villa was increasingly missing opportunities as Scientology began to second-guess the decisions she and her manager were making. Olson says that Villa failed to show up for a meeting with evangelical leader Franklin Graham, and then she didn’t show up when she was supposed to sing at an event for Donald Trump Jr. At that point, Olson says, he walked away from her.
Joy Villa might talk about being a devout Christian and Trump supporter after being “red-pilled” following the election (she had been an Obama and Sanders supporter until then), but her dedication to Scientology and her attempts to bring it up with Yiannopoulous and Kellyanne Conway were badly timed.
Also, on December 22, Joy was suddenly in the news again when Politico reported that during a November event, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had slapped Villa twice on the rear end. She eventually reported the incident to police.
Yiannopoulous recently had Olson on his new video podcast, and the two of them talked about Villa as if her political aspirations were over. Olson says that’s still the case, even with a new round of publicity for her latest stunt.
And Scientology watchers howled last night when they saw that Villa’s latest gambit was made in reference to reproductive rights. One of Scientology’s most notorious practices was forcing women in its Sea Organization, which has a no-child policy, to have abortions if they got pregnant. We’ve talked to former Sea Org members who say that they were subject to that practice as early as 1977. Others have told us it was firmly in place by 1982. And there’s no question it was official policy in the 1990s and 2000s. It was only when the Tampa Bay Times exposed the practice in 2010 that the church changed its policy — now, couples that get pregnant in the Sea Org are kicked out of the organization, but are no longer pressured to abort.
There’s simply no question that Joy Villa is a dedicated member and significant donor to an organization that to its members calls Jesus Christ a figment of the imagination, and that spent decades forcing young women to have abortions.
And by now, even the MAGA crowd seems to have figured out that her desperate ploys for publicity won’t hide those connections.
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Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 764 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 5,066 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 1,172 days.
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Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 1,447 days.
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Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 12,887 days.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on January 29, 2018 at 07:00
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The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2017 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Undergound Bunker (2012-2017), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)
Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of L.A. attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts
Other links: Shelly Miscavige, ten years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
