Joe Reaiche, 1958-2024: Former Aussie rugby pro turned Scientology whistleblower

We have confirmed with his brother Anthony in Sydney that Joe Reaiche, 66, died on September 4 while on a business trip to London.

Anthony is still awaiting a coroner’s report, and he says the family has begun the process to bring Joe’s remains back to his native Australia.

We are devastated to hear this news. For more than a decade we have been in regular contact with Joe, and he has been a key source for numerous important stories. He was always encouraging, and we considered him a friend.

A Lebanese-Australian professional rugby player, Joe Reaiche became convinced in the early 1980s that Scientology had the answers to help him achieve even more. So he traveled to the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida, Scientology’s “spiritual mecca.” And there, he met the Masterson family, including mother Carol and her sons Danny and Christopher.

Joe and Carol married in 1985 and then had two children of their own, Jordan and Alanna. So for several years Joe Reaiche was Danny Masterson’s stepfather. When Joe broke away from Scientology in 2005, all four of the Masterson children cut him out of their lives.

As Danny Masterson was going through criminal prosecution in 2022 and 2023, Joe was in a unique position to shed some light on Masterson’s upbringing and background, and he spoke to us and other journalists for really important stories about the Masterson clan.

But Joe Reaiche’s career as a Scientology whistleblower began about a decade earlier and in Australia, where he was featured on national television. One of the journalists who helped bring Joe’s story to the public was Steve Cannane, who featured Joe prominently in his 2016 book, Fair Game: The incredible untold story of Scientology in Australia.

“I am very sorry to hear that Joe has died and my thoughts are with his friends and family at this time,” Steve tells us. “Joe was a man of great courage. He played first grade rugby league in Sydney in the 1970s and 80s — the premiere competition for that football code in the world. He played at a time when the game was a blood sport. Matches would descend into all-in brawls; players were regularly knocked out by swinging arms and head-high tackles (and yes, American readers of the Bunker, there were no helmets).

“Joe got into Scientology when he was looking for a cure for a lingering groin injury that was hampering his football career. Soon he was going up the Bridge and juggling playing football with trips to Florida. ‘I was the first professional playing athlete in the world on OT 7,’ he told me.

“Joe showed all the courage he displayed on the football field when he became a Scientology whistleblower. He appeared in the Four Corners program The Ex-Files in 2010 – at a time when many still feared speaking out about Scientology.

“Joe was a great help to me when I wrote my book, and unlike the Church of Scientology, was always available to answer my questions.

“I last saw Joe at a pub in Sydney with his brother Tony, after publishing my book. They insisted on buying me dinner. We had a few beers, and a lot of laughs. Joe was committed to exposing the truth about Scientology and making sure that others didn’t get involved in the cult that derailed his sporting career.

“Joe was brave, generous and a good man to be around. He was a man of integrity and will be missed,” Steve says.

Four years ago, we wrote a lengthy story with Joe’s help about his years after rugby when he got very serious about Scientology and was raising kids with Carol Masterson.

When they had gotten married in 1985, Joe had become stepfather to Danny, then 9, and Christopher, 5.

“Let’s join the Sea Org, the world is going down, and we could be Class 12 auditors at Flag. I was already Class 5 and an OT 7,” Joe remembered his thinking to be.

“We would sleep at the QI — the Quality Inn. It was a cockroach-infested facility. Just a small room with a bathroom,” Joe remembered. Life in the Sea Org, which required signing billion-year contracts and working 365 days a year, was rough on the kids. Danny and Chris were on the floor, and Joe and Carol had the bed.

Joe was then sent to New York to handle a special problem: Some people were asking for refunds. In Scientology, there’s almost no worse sin. Not only was it a shocking betrayal of the idea that L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology” delivered what it promised, but a refund request put a huge burden on the Flag Land Base.

Joe was so good at talking people out of asking for refunds, it became his job for the church. “I was flown anywhere and everywhere on a minute’s notice to get that claim dropped by Thursday at 2 pm,” he said, referring to Scientology’s weekly production deadline.

Less than two years after joining the Sea Org, however, Joe had had enough. “I decided to leave in 1986. I told Carol she could stay, but I had to leave.”

She decided to leave with him and they moved to Los Angeles, taking their new son, Jordan, who had been born in 1986.

Joe was still working for Scientology, selling L. Ron Hubbard lectures on cassettes for Golden Era Productions and Bridge Publications, quickly becoming their best salesman. Then, in 1988, they moved to Garden City on Long Island where Joe got a job working for a mortgage company.

Carol had gotten her sons into modeling and was frequently taking them into Manhattan for auditions. It had started in the early 1980s, Joe said, and when they returned to New York in 1988 it picked up again.

It was about a 45 minute drive to the city, and usually it was Carol taking them for an audition. “Or I would do it if she needed me, or we’d all go in one van, the four of us. Back in like 1982, they would make like $75 for a shoot, for a photo in a magazine. For a bigger magazine it might be $350. It was a precursor to TV commercials as things increased,” he said.

In June 1988, the family grew when their daughter Alanna was born. Danny and Chris, meanwhile, made the transition from Scientology schools to Garden City High School.

“It was a difficult time. They weren’t good academically. They struggled. They didn’t like homework. In Scientology schools there’s no homework. And we’d pick up the kids from school and take them to the city for an audition,” he said.

But for Joe Reaiche and his four kids, the arrangement worked. The two older boys were getting gigs, Danny was playing baseball, and Peter, their father, was in the next town over. “A wonderful fellow. We all made for a good family clan,” Joe said.

And then, in 1992, disaster struck.

Joe had been convinced to invest in a new toy that he and his partners, other Scientologists, thought might take the world by storm. It was a skateboard with wide, banked sides and extra wheels. It was called the “Skatewing,” and Joe bet big on it.

[Danny Masterson modeling the Skatewing]

[Jordan, upper left, and Alanna, lower left, model the new toy]

The Skatewing bombed.

“I lost my shirt. I lost the house. I lost over $200,000,” he said. “We had to move back to Los Angeles in 1993. But the kids were easy. They didn’t care. School wasn’t a big thing for them. Carol kept them focused on their acting careers.”

That year, 1993, Danny got a recurring role on “Joe’s Life,” an ABC comedy starring Peter Onorati as Joe Gennaro, a laid-off dad taking care of his kids. It lasted a single season.

“He was good in that,” Joe said. Danny’s career was taking off, and in five years he would land his biggest role, as Steven Hyde on That ’70s Show. But for Joe, things were going in the other direction.

“The pressure to do Scientology courses and services on top of the financial problems we were having, it was too much,” he said. He and Carol split up in 1994 and divorced in 1995. But for the next ten years he was still close to all four of his kids.

With Danny’s acting success, he moved to Laurel Canyon. “Then I got him his mortgage for his Hollywood Hills house in 1998,” Joe said. “He’d just booked That ’70s Show when he moved there. So now he has his house, he’s famous, he’s making money. And I went to his house there a few times. I trained Danny, I trained Chris, fitness training. I helped Chris train for movies, Danny needed help in dieting. Whatever help I could give them. When they were in trouble, they’d turn to stepdad Joe.”

Then, in 2005, Scientology stepped in. Joe had run afoul of the organization after so many years, and he was subjected to a “committee of evidence” that had the power to “declare him suppressive,” the equivalent of excommunication.

On June 11, 2005, he received his declare order, which had been hand-delivered to his mailbox. “I was in Clearwater. I called my kids that day probably ten or fifteen times each, and they never answered. See how evil those bastards at Scientology are? They prepped them. The kids knew before I knew,” he said.

Declared a “suppressive person,” Joe was now radioactive. Any Scientologist not wanting to risk their own membership was now required to cut off all contact from him. He hadn’t heard from any of his children since that day. He’d had no contact with Alanna, for example, as she had her own success as an actress, with a run on The Walking Dead from 2013 to 2019. Jordan had a recurring role on Last Man Standing. And Christopher played the older brother Francis on Malcolm in the Middle.

“I have no beef with the kids and the family, I understand what happened. I don’t hate Carol or the kids. They’re a good family. My beef is with the church,” Joe said.

He hesitated to draw any conclusions about Danny Masterson’s childhood in Scientology and his current problems. “Whatever’s happening now is out of my control,” he said.

After Danny was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison last September 7, letters that family members had written to the court on his behalf became public. Among them were letters written by Jordan and Alanna, who told the court that they had been abandoned by their father at only three or four years old, and that their older brother Danny had stepped in to take care of them.

When we told Joe about those letters, he was very disturbed, telling us for The Daily Beast, “My son and daughter have very short memories about their dad.”

In fact, he reminded us, he had been a big presence in his kids’ life for a decade after his divorce with Carol, until they had cut off contact with him when Scientology forced them to. At that point, he said, Jordan was 19. They weren’t little kids at all.

Still, Anthony Reaiche tells us, his brother would have welcomed his children back into his life without question.

“He loved his kids very much. Scientology caused the separation between them and it left him forever with a broken heart,” Anthony says. “But he would have reunited with them in a heartbeat. That hope was still in the deep part of his heart.

“My brother was a very intelligent man. He was a soul that lifted spirts, encouraged them to do better for themselves, and was always there to support.

“He was a great man and he will be missed.”

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