How David Miscavige Created a System of Institutionalized Criminal Entrapment

Leaving Scientology Isn’t Merely a Psychological Process; It’s an Escape from a Criminal System Designed to Keep You Under Its Control

Before you ask again why they didn’t speak out sooner or report it to the authorities back then, read this.

It starts with a 14-year-old boy named Johnny. And it ends with the same criminal system now being exposed in court by Leah Remini, and in the wake of Danny Masterson’s trial.

My hat is off to the Jane Does, to Leah, to those who escaped the inside and broke generational silence, and to every survivor who put their name or just their story on the record. To the attorneys, investigators, and journalists who refused to look away.

And to those still untangling themselves from the system quietly, painfully, and bravely.

You’ve already made a difference.

Speaking to someone today reminded me just how much deeper escaping Scientology really is than a mere psychological process.

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Johnny’s Story: A Case Study in Institutionalized Criminal Entrapment

I knew a 14-year-old boy who, in the “Sea Organization,” was doing 12–14 hour workdays, 7 days a week, just like me and many others, some much younger.

We were both at the Int/Gold Base at the time.

Johnny was an energetic and generally happy kid though he seemed a little depressed at times.

However, his grandmother, mom, and sister were known “SPs” Suppressive Persons meaning they were supposedly “anti-Scientology”. I do not know the details, but I do recall they were on “OSA lines.” They must had been raising some hell and causing trouble for the Church or Miscavige.

In fact, what they were upset about was that they were not able to contact Johnny. He had been told to disconnect from them.

Johnny disconnected not out of choice, but because he “knew” it was the right thing to do just as many families who are devout Scientologists believe they are doing “the greatest good” when they disconnect, even before it’s enforced.

Then comes the enforcement.

As I recall the details of this story, it makes me wonder if he was sent to the Int/Gold Base to be hidden from them. I cannot confirm it, but considering the circumstances, it is possible.

Either way, Johnny had been made aware that he was “PTS” (a Potential Trouble Source) meaning he was connected to SPs, would need to disconnect, and was singularly responsible for his circumstances. All Scientologists particularly its children and second-generation members are brought up to believe we are responsible for anything and everything that happens to us, whether we really were or not.

Johnny always seemed pretty much normal but he was uncomfortably aware of the situation with his family. In a conversation with him, I learned he had loved his mother, grandmother, and sister, but he no longer had that option.

At the time, I personally was on the “Key to Life” Course and undergoing “PTS handling” myself. Not dissimilar to Johnny, I had been convinced that my dad whom I barely knew and had spoken to maybe twice in my life, was an SP. He had expressed disbelief about Scientology and questioned why I could not take time to visit him. He was not, however, attacking the Church publicly. My situation was much more “routine.”

On the KTL, I was put through “Clay Table De-PTSing.” I was literally made to create scenes with clay (like Play-Doh) depicting the “situation” with my dad. The idea was that by “putting it down in clay,” it would duplicate real life closely enough that the situation might fix itself. Maybe my dad would magically reach out as a result and be okay with me and Scientology and not seeing me.

Johnny was on a more aggressive program. He was receiving the new “Suppressed Person Rundown.” This rundown was designed to get to the bottom of why someone was PTS.

Of course, to handle PTSness, one would have to complete confessionals and admit what they had done to the Suppressive Person that might now be causing them to “pull in” the antagonism and attacks. Theoretically, if you were being adversely affected by someone else, you must have done something to them that gave them that power over you.

So the “process” was not particularly friendly or fun. At least I got to play with clay. Johnny reluctantly went into “session” daily.

About two weeks into our processes, I had reached the “EP”, the End Phenomenon, of my clay table “processing.” If I remember correctly, I had said something like, “You know what? I barely know my dad. How the hell could I be PTS to him?” This was considered a “cognition,” a realization that supposedly set me free from the [non-existent] adverse effects my dad was having on me or that I was letting him have on me. Whatever.

Johnny, on the other hand, had not reached an EP, yet.

He was still unhappy he couldn’t speak to his family and that they were supposedly still a problem for the Church.

In fact, things seemed to have gotten worse. I recall that his mother was trying to get hold of him, but the calls and mail were, of course, being blocked. They may have also gone to the press.

Johnny didn’t see mail from them, and phone calls were never put through. All he knew was that they and he were causing trouble.

Two weeks later, something extraordinary happened.

To his astonishment, his grandmother, mom, and sister had been standing at a busy intersection when a drunk driver struck them with his speeding truck. They were all brutally and instantly killed at the scene.

At first, Johnny cried over the news, as one might expect.

But immediately, he was told that his processing had reached its full End Phenomenon!

The “PTS situation” was terminated! Resolved! Gone!

The news, and Johnny, were celebrated. Johnny was held up as an example of the “power of the tech” and for his “accomplishment.” The SPs were dead.

Tragedy and grief were turned into celebration.

Some even joked about “not getting on Johnny’s bad side.”

Even Johnny occasionally remind people of his new “ability” if they got under his skin.

I distinctly remember David Miscavige being briefed about this and his reaction was fear. Fear of Johnny, who, a short time later, was kicked off the Int/Gold Base and declared unqualified. Or was Johnny now allowed to leave the base because he no longer needed to be hidden?

What I do know is Johnny could never reconcile for himself what had happened.

Did he actually kill his mom, grandma, and sister?

Could he actually be happy about the End Phenomenon of his processing or should he be?

You can imagine the things going through his head.

At 14.

Think about that.

This wasn’t healing.

This was indoctrinated dissociation passed off as spiritual achievement.

And it was a “win” for David Miscavige’s Scientology.

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Institutionalized Criminal Entrapment

Johnny’s story isn’t an outlier.

It’s a glimpse into how Scientology, under David Miscavige, took L. Ron Hubbard’s authoritarian system and converted it into something far more dangerous: a machine of institutionalized criminal entrapment.

This machine doesn’t just control what you think. It rewires how you feel about your family, your guilt, your trauma.

And when that system is turned against rape victims, whistleblowers, or even children, it stops being “spiritual” and becomes criminal.

It’s exactly what we saw in the Danny Masterson case.

It’s exactly what many of us experienced firsthand and what others are still suffering through in 2025.

It’s also why it often takes time, even years, before someone can speak out.

And it’s why the U.S. government and the agencies that could prevent, rather than protect, this kind of institutional abuse need to start listening.

Not just to the whistleblowers.

But to the Johnnys and every voice in between all of whom are screaming for them to pay attention and act.

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Cult Vs. Religion

The primary difference between a religion and a cult isn’t belief; it’s control.

Religions, even those with strict doctrines, generally allow for individual autonomy, openness to scrutiny, and the freedom to leave without coercion or punishment.

Cults, on the other hand, demand total obedience. They extend their authority deep into your personal, financial, emotional, and even sexual life often using manipulation, fear, and isolation to maintain dominance.

They are typically led by a “charismatic” figure whose authority cannot be questioned. They actively discourage contact with outsiders and former members, and they rewrite your moral compass to serve their internal agenda.

The distinction isn’t spiritual; it’s structural.

It’s about control, consent, and abuse of power.

By that measure, there is no doubt in my mind that Scientology is a cult.

And that was true even before David Miscavige took the reins.

But….

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How David Miscavige Criminalized Scientology

David Miscavige, with the help of a U.S. government that looked the other way and public agencies and press outlets that failed to act has taken Scientology to a whole new level.

He turned it from a high-control authoritarian system into a fully operational machine of criminal abuse, protected by tax exemption and disguised as religion.

In a discussion, today (it’s what lead me to write this) I tried to paint a more complete picture one that answers the two most common (and obvious) questions people ask:

“Why did you tolerate any of the abuse?”
“Why didn’t you report it to the authorities at the time?”

For a long time, I gave the simplest, most ambiguous answer possible:

“Because I was in a cult.”

It’s true. But it’s not really the answer.

Because David Miscavige’s Scientology isn’t just a cult.
It’s recognized as a religion in the United States and that changes everything.

Leaving Scientology isn’t like peeling back the layers of an onion, as I have often heard it described.

It’s more like having to wipe and reset your entire operating system just to get back to a place where new, real thoughts can be installed. And often, that reset takes multiple attempts. Even after you think you’ve deleted the virus, there are still hidden apps running in the background quietly controlling what you say, feel, and fear.

And once you’ve completed that mental reset, you’re still left to deal with the real-life fallout:

• Trying to reconnect with family and friends you’ve been forced to disconnect from.

• Struggling to get a real job, despite being dead-agented having your reputation destroyed by lies.

• Being followed, harassed, threatened.

• Discovering your animals mysteriously dead after a stranger was seen in your yard.

Or, despite being a relatively low-level member of the Church for 25 years, finding out that Scientology has submitted ten binders of “intelligence” on you not to a court, but to discredit you when all you wanted was to talk to the press.

And then, when Anderson Cooper or another high-profile outlet shows interest, they’re intimidated too. Suddenly, they become fair game, too.

That’s how this machine works.

So I want to take you deeper into not just the mindset of an ex-Scientologist leaving the church but what else it means.

Whether first-generation, second-generation, or (I say this jokingly, though some may believe it) even “second-lifers.”

Because it’s far more involved than you’d imagine.
And it explains why so many don’t speak out for years or ever.

It also reveals the larger point:

This is no longer about faith.

This is about a criminal organization, led by David Miscavige built to lie, deceive, twist truths, control minds (yours and mine), and operate without any external accountability, under the full legal protection of religion.

I don’t believe anyone who has spoken out is looking for sympathy.

Most of us just want to be heard. They want recognition that the basic human rights, and legal rights, guaranteed to citizens of the U.S. and every democratic country were stripped from us by force, manipulation, or both.

Hundreds of former members many of whom still cannot see their children, families, or lifelong friends are in this position because one man, David Miscavige, was handed unchecked power.

And all we want is for it to end.

We want our lives back, no longer controlled by Miscavige or the institution he’s weaponized.

Even now, 25 years after leaving, my everyday life is still shaped, restricted, and haunted by the control system he built. I cannot even speak to my own sister who is over 70 years old now.

And without checks and balances enforced by the government just like it enforces for every other corporation it will be until the day she dies.

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The Cycle of Control and the Fight to Break Free from Scientology Isn’t Just Psychological

Breaking free from Scientology starts with faith and belief, then gets cultish, but then becomes entangled in the Institutionalized Criminal Entrapment operated by David Miscavige.

It goes something like this:

1. Faith / Belief
   The beginning. A desire to improve yourself, help others, or find spiritual truth.

2. Indoctrination
   Scientologists of all ages are taught that they alone are responsible for their own condition, circumstances or situation. “Ethics conditions” enforce it. Bit by bit, Hubbard’s world replaces your own.

3. Group Agreement (Including Family)
   Everyone believes it, so it must be true. Disagreement becomes betrayal. Family becomes enforcers.

4. Enforcement
   You're told you’re the problem. “You pulled it in.” Ethics threats, sec checks, loss of privileges, sleep.

5. Peer Enforcement
   Everyone watches everyone. Spouses write reports. Children do too. The group polices itself and each other. Family turns on family.

6. The “Greatest Good” Trap
   Abuse is reframed as sacrifice. Pain becomes noble. You and your families suffering is the price of saving the world.

7. Isolation / Information Control
   News is filtered. Outsiders are distanced as “wogs” or “degraded beings”. You’re cut off from any reality but theirs. No television. No cell phones. No newspapers.

   Worse for second generations: You have no idea what the laws are or what your rights are. You have no idea it’s illegal for David Miscavige to lock you up or to smack you in the face. You may not even know who the president of the United States is as in the example of Debbie Cook, the Captain of the FSO.

   Dissenters are evil.

8. Mental & Physical Entrapment
   You’re worked to exhaustion. Locked into routine. Surveillance. No exit plan. No outside support. Your belief in the faith still grips you.

9. Religious Recognition: A License to Kill
   Legal protection from the U.S. government is granted and now used to shield abuse and silence victims under the guise of “religious freedom.”

10. Signing Away Rights Without Knowing It
    Religious arbitration. Gag orders. Confidentiality clauses. Staff contracts have you agree to forfeit even your First Amendment rights. All sold as “agreements” or “ethics” and “purpose”. These get used against you.

11. Disconnection
    Total social death. Family, friends, your entire world gone if you question the system.

12. A Criminal Organization with Endless Money
    Fueled by tax-exempt donations. Operated by OSA. Directed personally by David Miscavige. If you leave you’re suppressive. If you speak out you’re fair game.

13. Retaliation as a Business Model
    Harassment, lawsuits, surveillance, Private Investigators, dead agenting, funded and justified as “defense.”

14. Law Enforcement Complicity / Government Capture
    Police treat you like the criminal. Not because of evidence but because of influence.
    Miscavige controls the narrative, buys loyalty, or worse has leverage on those who should protect you. Like the LA Police Department.

15. The War on Whistleblowers
    Anyone who speaks out becomes “fair game.” Targeted. Discredited. Isolated. Threatened. Who Is Websites, to destroy “angry apostates”.

16. Collapse of Individualism
    Everyone wants to survive alone. No one wants to be part of something again. That’s the trap. But the truth is: we are stronger together. Miscavige knows it.

17. Misdirection: It’s All About ‘Scientology’
    Critics keep arguing about beliefs. But it’s not about beliefs anymore. It’s about a criminal system and who’s at the helm.

18. It Should Be About David Miscavige
    The architect of the legal system. The controller of the cash. The man who turned faith into fear and has been allowed to keep doing it, unchecked.

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So you see this isn’t just about belief. And it’s not even just about abuse.

Under L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology was already an authoritarian system. It was built on control, secrecy, and manipulation.

But under David Miscavige, it evolved into something far more dangerous: a criminal structure with legal insulation what we now call Institutionalized Criminal Entrapment.

What Miscavige created is not protected religious activity.

It is a continuing criminal enterprise that uses the First Amendment as a shield for:

• Human trafficking and forced labor

• Obstruction of justice

• Witness intimidation and retaliation

• Wire fraud, mail fraud, and financial coercion

• Tax fraud and charitable abuse

• Conspiracy to commit civil rights violations

This is not theory.

It’s pattern.

It’s structure.

It’s command.

And it fits squarely within frameworks like RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), CCE (Continuing Criminal Enterprise, a federal statute under 21 U.S. Code § 848) and prosecutable fraud.

Miscavige has weaponized every part of the system from internal arbitration and disconnection, to Sea Org contracts and religious protections to create a closed-loop of control with no escape hatch for its victims.

And instead of intervening, U.S. institutions handed him legal invisibility.

They gave him the power. And they’ve looked the other way ever since.

But the truth is no longer buried inside the Church. It’s in sworn declarations. In court filings. In survivor testimony. And in the eyes of every person who lived through it.

If law still matters, if justice still matters, this ends with real accountability.

Not for Scientology as a belief.

But for David Miscavige, as the architect of a system that turned religion into a racket.

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