We hope we can convey to you how much it hit us square in the solar plexus when Leah Remini sent us the photo above, which she came across as she was going through some of her things.
You no doubt recognize Leah in the middle, and you may also recognize Shelly Miscavige on the right. In 2005, Shelly was disappeared by her husband David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology, and we believe she’s been held for all of that time at a small, very secretive mountain compound in Southern California that we’ve told you about many times.
But the woman on the left? That’s Barbara Ruiz, another woman Miscavige made vanish, which we’ve been saying since 2012, and to no avail.
She vanished sometime after 2007, and we’ve received no information about her whereabouts. Leah tells us she’s incensed that former Sea Org executives who might know something haven’t come forward with information about numerous people Miscavige has disappeared.
“I have a huge issue with all of these former executives, like Tommy Davis, who witnessed abuse and then went off to live their lives without doing anything about it,” she tells us.
In 2006, after her fateful experience at Tom Cruise’s wedding in Italy, Leah was not only asking about what had happened to Shelly Miscavige, she was also asking about Barbara Ruiz, a woman who was such a trusted executive, she ran the annual L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future awards gala for Scientology.
“Barbara was in David Miscavige’s circle. She was in Tom Cruise’s circle. And she was close to Shelly,” Leah tells us. “When Shelly went missing I called Barbara’s husband Javier.”
Javier Ruiz had been a longtime Sea Org member who had been the president of Author Services, Inc., the branch of Scientology that acts as L. Ron Hubbard’s literary agency and oversees the Writers of the Future Contest. But when Leah called him, Javier had left the Sea Org, but was still in the church.
“I told him I was worried about what was going on in Scientology,” Leah says. She told him that Shelly didn’t seem to be around, and Barbara had also seemingly vanished.
“We’re divorced. What do I give a fuck where Barbara is?” Javier told her. And soon after that conversation, Leah found herself being called down for a meeting.
“I was called in and confronted by Shane Woodruff, Todd Woodruff, Hansuli Stahli and Mike Sutter — Hansuli and Mike are Miscavige’s henchmen,” Leah says.
She learned that Javier Ruiz had dropped a dime on her.
“He wrote a Knowledge Report, an internal report on me, saying I was trying to start a mutiny because I wanted to know where Shelly and Barbara were. They confronted me with the KR and wanted to know if I was trying to start a mutiny. That is where the beginning of the end started for me,” Leah says.
“I started going to all of my friends I considered my family, people like John and Valerie Futris, who were both OT8s and also my daughter Sofia’s godparents, my closest personal friends in Scientology. I believed they would want to know that our church was hiding people away. But all of them, my friends like Michelle and Justin Workman, Stacy Francis, and Jaime Landers, all turned me in to Scientology. They simply didn’t care, it had nothing to do with them.
“I was also concerned with the control Tom Cruise had over our church, and the control he had over Scientologists who had the unfortunate luck of working with him. They were getting into trouble with Scientology for simply not wanting to work for him anymore, which came out during intense interrogations of them,” she says. “I was asking about it all, the abuse, the missing executives, Tom Cruise, and I was reprimanded for asking not only by my church but my closest friends who simply didn’t care.”
At the time she started asking about Shelly, in 2006, Leah didn’t know anything about a strange prison for executives that had been started a couple of years earlier at Scientology’s secretive international management compound, also known as Gold Base, near Hemet, California. The prison at the base came to be known as “The Hole.”
Mike Rinder has told us that when he was a prisoner in the Hole in 2004, Barbara Ruiz was actually helping to run it, dishing out punishments to its inmates for not coming up with more confessions about their “crimes.”
Later that year, Barbara ran her last Writers of the Future gala, the only one that David Miscavige ever personally attended. After that, Barbara became a prisoner in the Hole herself.
Rinder says that when he left Scientology in 2007, that’s where Barbara was, a prisoner in the Hole.
But the most recent defector from Gold Base, Valerie Haney, who made an appearance in the third season of “Scientology and the Aftermath,” tells us that Barbara Ruiz was not in the Hole when Valerie made her daring escape from the base in 2016.
At some point between the time Rinder left Scientology in 2007, and Valerie’s escape in 2016, Barbara Ruiz was sent to an unknown location.
“I think she was sent away, not sure whether it was to another country or just out of state,” Valerie tells us. When we asked if it’s possible that she was sent to the same small base where Shelly Miscavige is being held near Lake Arrowhead, California, she and Rinder both told us they were doubtful about that — because Barbara and Shelly had been so close before they were both disappeared.
“I don’t think she’s with Shelly because she was an ally in Shelly’s turmoil with Dave,” Valerie says.
Where could Barbara be? Leah says that Barbara’s ex-husband, Javier, told her that he himself had been “disappeared” for a few years after his job running ASI. “They shipped me off to a different country for a couple of years,” he told her.
Where is Scientology keeping Barbara Ruiz? And what did she do to have been disappeared for about a decade now?
Leah tells us that Barbara’s disappearance — and numerous others — reminds us that there are still many former church members, former Sea Org members, who have not come forward with what they know.
“Where is Heber Jentzsch, the former president of the Church of Scientology? Norman Starkey, the former captain of the Apollo? Guillaume Lesevre, the Executive Director International? And all of the other people still stuck in the Hole?” Leah asks.
“I mean, these people have family that are out in the real world but they’re afraid to ask about their imprisoned family members for fear of retaliation from Scientology. Shelly has sisters, but they won’t inquire because they fear Shelly won’t reach out to them, because asking about her is a mortal sin in Scientology.”
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Leah says it burns her up that former Sea Org members who witnessed abuse have not come forward with what they know.
“These Scientologists like Javier Ruiz are off living their lives, while Barbara is in a prison camp somewhere,” she says. “And Javier won’t ask because even though he is no longer in the Sea Org, he is still a Scientologist and he can’t ask because he will be pulled in by Scientology and put on an e-meter and be subjected to an interrogation, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars like I was when I asked these questions.”
And that also includes the celebrities, who won’t do anything about Miscavige’s abuses.
“Elisabeth Moss won’t even ask about where Shelly is,” Leah says. “The answer she would be given is the same one I was given — that it’s just the SPs lying, that there’s no ‘Hole,’ and that no one is missing.”
And if they do ask, they pay a price.
“They’ll be sec-checked [interrogated]. And that questioning can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she says. In her book Troublemaker, Leah revealed that after she raised questions about Shelly Miscavige, she was subjected to months of interrogations that cost her $300,000.
“When Lisa Marie Presley was thinking of leaving — before Scientology threatened her with blackmail with what she had confessed to her church — she told her best friend John Travolta that Arthur Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard’s youngest son, had been abused as a child and throughout his childhood under the care of current Sea Org members. She told him of the abuses of the executives in The Hole, the children that were sexually abused at Scientology’s day care in Burbank, and his response was ‘I don’t care and I don’t want to know about that stuff, Scientology helps me.’ And at the end of the day, that is the Scientology mentality, they simply don’t care.”
But those who have left have no reason to fear being sec-checked by police. So why aren’t they talking?
Last month, Leah’s costar, Mike Rinder, posted a list at his blog of ex-Sea Org officials who have kept quiet about the abuses they witnessed — with names like Tommy Davis and his former wife Jessica Feshbach, and Javier Ruiz.
“Rather than speaking out about the abuses they witnessed or experience, they have chosen to remain silent. A number of them have taken advantage of their previous status to make money with or through Scientologists. Some of them took healthy payouts,” Rinder wrote. And Leah is still seething about it.
“All these ex-Scientologist have a responsibility to go to the police and tell them what they know,” she says.
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HowdyCon 2019 in Los Angeles
This year’s HowdyCon is in Los Angeles. People tend to come in starting on Thursday, and that evening we will have a casual get-together at a watering hole. We have something in mind, but for now we’re not giving out information about it.
Friday night we will be having an event in a theater (like we did on Saturday night last year in Chicago). There will not be a charge to attend this event, but if you want to attend, you need to RSVP with your proprietor at tonyo94 AT gmail.
On Saturday, we are joining forces with Janis Gillham Grady, who is having a reunion in honor of the late Bill Franks. Originally, we thought this event might take place in Riverside, but instead it’s in the Los Angeles area. If you wish to attend the reunion, you will need to RSVP with Janis (janisgrady AT gmail), and there will be a small contribution she’s asking for in order to help cover her costs.
HOTEL: Janis tells us she’s worked out a deal with Hampton Inn and Suites, at 7501 North Glenoaks Blvd, Burbank, (818) 768-1106. We have a $159 nightly rate for June 19 to 22. Note: You need to ask for the “family reunion” special rate.
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Scientology’s celebrities, ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and more!
We’ve been building landing pages about David Miscavige’s favorite playthings, including celebrities and ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and we’re hoping you’ll join in and help us gather as much information as we can about them. Head on over and help us with links and photos and comments.
Scientology’s celebrities, from A to Z! Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!
Scientology’s ‘Ideal Orgs,’ from one end of the planet to the other! Help us build up pages about each these worldwide locations!
Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society!
Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in our weekly series. How many have you read?
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THE WHOLE TRACK
[ONE year ago] Scientologists, gullible? Would they fall for a felon saying he’s the returned L. Ron Hubbard?
[TWO years ago] She ‘graduated’ from Scientology’s drug rehab, which told her she was cured. Now she’s dead.
[THREE years ago] More Atlanta video: David Miscavige cuts the ribbon on Scientology’s new real estate venture!
[FOUR years ago] Scientology spy caught trying to interview Paul Haggis as fake ‘Time’ magazine reporter
[FIVE years ago] Scientology takes aim at the latest move by the Garcias in their federal fraud suit
[SIX years ago] Scientology Means Never Having to Tell an Ashtray You’re Sorry
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Bernie Headley has not seen his daughter Stephanie in 5,418 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 1,547 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 2,051 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 1,531 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 594 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 482 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 3,789 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 1,657 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 2,431 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 3,205 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 2,551 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 11,117 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 7,037 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 3,204 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 2,785 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 3,046 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 2,085 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 1,797 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 1,323 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 5,412 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 2,552 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 2,872 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 7,728 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 2,847 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 1,203 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 5,505 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 1,611 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 2,013 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 1,885 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 1,468 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 1,963 days.
Mary Jane Sterne has not seen her daughter Samantha in 2,217 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 13,326 days.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 16, 2019 at 07:00
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Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.
The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2018 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2018), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)
Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | 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 | 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
Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…
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Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele
