Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [177]
Three months passed before Tanja was summoned to a private room to meet with the Sea Org executives Warren McShane and Mike Rinder. Stefan had left the Sea Org, they told her. He'd walked off the PAC Base in broad daylight a few weeks earlier, slipping past his minder during a shift change. Then, they said, he'd sought legal advice from Ford Greene, a well-known attorney of the San Francisco Bay Area who'd successfully litigated against Scientology in the Larry Wollersheim case. That Stefan had contacted this sworn enemy made him unredeemable in the eyes of the church.
Tanja will never forget how coolly Rinder delivered the news about Stefan's defection. He had her divorce papers folded under an envelope on the table in front of him. There was one set of documents left to finalize her split with Stefan. "He thought for sure I was going to sign the papers and end it right there," she said. Instead, Tanja stood her ground. "Well, if he left, then I guess I'm going to leave too," she announced to the men. Rinder, she added, was "furious."
For the next week or so, Tanja endured "intense pressure" to change her mind. Rinder in particular couldn't fathom Tanja's stubbornness: her husband had committed some of the worst sins imaginable, and she wanted to be with him? She aimed to leave behind her family, her group, her religion, everything? According to Scientology's teachings, Stefan Castle was just one husband in a long string of husbands Tanja had already had, and would have, as a spiritual being over many lifetimes. "What is the big deal?" Rinder said.
Tanja was then subjected to another ten days of constant auditing. Then once again she met with Rinder, for what was called an "ethics interview." This time, he informed her, she wouldn't be allowed to leave the room until she confessed. When she insisted that she'd already told him everything, Rinder began to berate her. "He was just wide-eyed and red in the face, spitting and spraying me with his fury ... He painted this whole picture of what it would be like if I went out and found Stefan." Rinder, she said, gave the couple six months. "He kept saying, 'You have no money, no experience. You won't be able to talk to your family,' and he kind of played on my uncertainty. How could I know what I would be walking into if I were to leave?" Tanja had never had a credit card, didn't drive a car, didn't have a bank account. How could she possibly survive?
For years, Tanja had thought that one day she might be interrogated, and wondered how she would hold up. She'd assumed that she would be strong and make it through. But as Rinder's harangue continued, she felt herself weakening. She found it unbearable that Stefan, wholly unaware of her punishment and possibly believing she'd soon follow, had defected. Now he'd lost his spiritual salvation—his eternity. Even if he begged, he would never be able to return to the church. "These were things I couldn't bear the thought of," she said. After a while, "I was just dead. I wasn't crying, I wasn't showing any emotion, I was feeling kind of numb."
After more than twelve hours of interrogation, Tanja was given a piece of paper and a pen and told to write a "disconnection" letter to Stefan. She read the letter aloud while Rinder recorded the event with a video camera. Then Tanja was presented with divorce papers one last time. Through tears, she signed her name.
Chapter 17
Exodus
DAVID MISCAVIGE BURST into the conference room on the International Base one afternoon in the late fall of 2004, looking as if he was going to explode. "You guys are all shitheads," he barked. The leader ran through his usual litany of complaints: the overall organizational board was a mess; no one was doing their job; he was working himself to death just to counter the laziness and incompetence