New Scientology escape book ‘Perfectly Clear’ leaves some important questions unanswered

Michelle LeClair’s book Perfectly Clear: Escaping Scientology and Fighting for the Woman I Love got a nice boost this week as it was featured on the cover of People magazine ahead of its September 11 publication date, and we expect it’s going to continue to get a major media push. But now that we’ve read the book, we’re having some mixed feelings about that.

The basic outline of LeClair’s story, which emerged in press accounts over several years when she was known as Michelle Seward, is that she was a wealthy public Scientologist who made money selling expensive insurance policies, and she convinced some of her clients to invest their money in a failed movie project directed by another Scientologist, Israeli filmmaker Dror Soref.

The film, Not Forgotten, starred Simon Baker and actually got some fairly good reviews when it came out in 2009, but somehow it made only $142,000 worldwide and the people who backed it lost millions.

Two California state agencies investigated and sued Soref and LeClair, claiming that their financing of the film amounted to a Ponzi scheme, with early investors being paid with money brought in from later investors. And even after settling those lawsuits, Soref and LeClair were then indicted by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office and each faced 75 years in prison for defrauding investors. While awaiting trial, Soref spent almost five months in jail.

LeClair claimed that as an insurance executive she didn’t really know what she was doing in the film business, and she blamed Soref for getting them into such a bad situation. She agreed to testify against him in the criminal prosecution. But then charges against Soref were dropped last year by a judge who criticized the DA’s office for taking too long to prosecute the case. Charges were then also dropped against LeClair, who has worked hard to get investors at least part of their money back. Soref is now suing the DA.

But many questions remained, and we were looking forward to this book answering them. How, with a well known actor like Simon Baker and some good reviews, does a film make only 140 grand? Surely there was a story there. And how, exactly, was that all Soref’s fault? What had he done, exactly, that caused them to be facing long prison sentences?

In Perfectly Clear, LeClair makes the case that she only faced state investigations and then criminal prosecution because she’d dared to come out as a lesbian, and so the Church of Scientology targeted her for ruin.

She claims that the state never would have been interested in her investment failures if Scientology had not dropped a dime on her to get her in trouble.

Knowing Scientology’s long history of homophobia, we’re certainly sympathetic to that claim. We’ve written about numerous people who suffered in Scientology because they were gay. Derek Bloch, for example, was kicked out of the Sea Org and his parents disconnected from him, which has been a very difficult thing for him to deal with. Keith Relkin, someone we wrote about several years ago, was crushed that although he was a huge public supporter of Scientology, he was not allowed to go to Flag to pursue upper levels because he was openly gay.

Gay people are kicked out, disconnected from, hazed, and denounced in Scientology, and that’s why we work to publicize its harsh homophobia. We don’t doubt LeClair’s account that she was criticized by her fellow Scientologists when they discovered that she was dating a woman. And also that the church spied on her after that relationship became known.

But on the other hand, investors had lost more than $21 million and part of the reason was, according to court testimony, that LeClair had encouraged them to invest in ways that were especially risky while she promised huge returns that never materialized. It’s hard to believe that state investigators wouldn’t have been interested in a loss that large even without the Scientology connection.

LeClair’s book, however, doesn’t begin to address those allegations — about her encouraging risky investing, for example. And a lot of other things seem to be missing as well.

We never do learn why the film flopped so badly. LeClair simply says that after a domestic premiere it failed to get distribution internationally, which doesn’t really explain anything.

She also doesn’t go into any detail about how, if Soref had caused so many people so much pain, he had managed to do that. The only thing she offers is that he had given himself a big raise, to $50,000 a month, without telling her.

Instead, the book is mostly a narrative about LeClair’s private life, and a skillfully told story about a woman coming to grips with the fact that she’s falling in love with another woman after being raised to believe that is a bad thing.

LeClair leaned on award-winning writer Robin Gaby Fisher to help her turn her story into a coherent narrative, and it certainly shows. It’s a captivating tale about LeClair’s struggle in her marriage to a man and then falling in love with a woman. It’s inspiring. It’s courageous.

It also has some great insights into what it’s like to be a wealthy Scientologist. LeClair went “Clear” in 2002 and then did the expensive “L-11 Rundown” in 2003. Her huge donations — she estimates that she gave $5 million to the church over the years — gave her special access to Scientology’s celebrities. There’s the time, for example, that she was ushered into Kirstie Alley’s bedroom (LeClair had sold life insurance to Kirstie and was investing in her ‘Organic Liaison’ business) and found the actress naked on a massage table being prodded with wooden forks.

LeClair also has a detailed and dramatic account of a lengthy stay at the Fort Harrison Hotel which is one of the more harrowing looks inside Scientology’s Flag Land Base in a long time.

And, like other Scientologists we’ve talked to, she was ultimately driven away from Scientology because of its virulent homophobia. But the thrust of her book is that her decision to date a woman then led the Church of Scientology to turn the full force of its secret police force, the Office of Special Affairs, to “destroy her utterly,” in the famous dictum of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

But did the State of California and Los Angeles County investigate and try to put LeClair in prison because Scientology didn’t like that she was gay?

There’s a major problem with that theory that the book never addresses — if Scientology motivated government agencies to go after LeClair for being gay, how does that explain that those agencies went even harder at Dror Soref, who is still today a Scientologist?

Maybe part of the problem is the memoir form itself. LeClair is the heroine of every anecdote in the book, and she spends considerable time making others appear to be almost completely evil — without those people, of course, having the opportunity to respond.

Because her case is so complex, her story might have been better served if Fisher had written it as her own, with deep dives into the documentation of the state investigations and criminal prosecution to establish what really happened, and to show how Soref was at fault. Some reporting, from official documents, might also have helped illuminate what happened in the bitter divorce between LeClair and her ex-husband, and between her current partner, music producer Tena Clark, and Clark’s previous wife, which the book says ended in a vicious assault.

This book, as it stands, has two grand story arcs — LeClair’s private fulfillment in finding a loving partner and embracing her sexual orientation, and her public fall from grace as a film producer and former Scientologist. It’s just hard to go along with the idea that the one caused the other, and it leaves us feeling that we’re not really getting the full picture.

 
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Why the Freewinds is in Cartagena

After a month of harsh treatment in the Colombian press and a call for an investigation by the country’s Congress, Scientology sent its private cruise ship Freewinds to Cartagena, where it arrived on Tuesday morning.

What is the barge doing there? Well, only Scientology would think this was a good idea. According to one of the people with the ship, the Freewinds is in town for — get this — a “PR convention.”

 
Yes, Scientology continues to believe that founder L. Ron Hubbard was a genius of public relations, and charges its followers thousands of dollars to get steeped in Hubbard’s ideas about making a good impression on the public.

Clearly, Scientology PR is nothing but magic.

 
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The Bunker represented at Burning Man once again

Says our tipster: “We went to Burning Man and placed a Disconnection Memorial at The Temple. As you know, The Temple is a spiritual place where people bring their mementos, memorials and other personally significant messages. It is both a place of joy and sorrow. Most of the messages left deal with sad moments but also many weddings and celebrations take place within the structure. It’s one of the most visited pieces on the ‘playa.’ I borrowed shamelessly from your blog to compile the disconnection list. Thank you for maintaining it. I believe every bit of exposure helps to someday abolish this horrendous practice and I hope our small contribution brings that day closer.”

 
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MEANWHILE, AT FACEBOOK…

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on September 8, 2018 at 07:00

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