Ten years ago today: 'Going Clear' exposed Scientology's abuses for a new audience

[Alex Gibney and Lawrence Wright at Sundance]

Ten years ago today at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Alex Gibney and Lawrence Wright premiered their blockbuster documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.

Later showing on HBO, the brilliant 2015 documentary delved into the dark underbelly of the Church of Scientology which it has tried to hide from public view for decades. I was awed by the detail and depth of research, the contributors, and the director’s obvious responsibility in bringing these secrets into public view.

Scientology’s wealth grew by members paying for costly training and auditing—Scientology’s words for counseling and therapy. After founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 1986 death, David Miscavige took over managing Scientology. With a declining membership, he turned the Church — which is not a Church — to attracting and recruiting the rich and famous worldwide and receiving massive donations. When Going Clear came out, the Underground Bunker had showed that Scientology’s top three corporations were worth more than $2 billion. Yet this Church, which is not a Church, continues to pay its worker members, who keep church buildings open and clean and cater to the millionaires, a fraction of the minimum wage.

[Hana, in Going Clear]

Based on Lawrence’s best-selling book, Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, the documentary focused on Scientology’s true nature, its continued unethical and immoral practices of subjecting critics to its Fair Game practices to silence them. These include wiretaps, surveillance, dissemination of confidential and confessional auditing disclosures in mailings and magazines to friends and business associates to silence them, forcing members to disconnect from their families, turning children against their parents, breaking up Scientology marriages of which Miscavige disapproved, framing former Scientologists and public figures who speak out against Scientology such as Alex Gibney, the director of this documentary. And forcing Scientology members to leave their babies and small children in its “nurseries” in appalling conditions of neglect.

The nature of Scientology has not changed since Hubbard’s death. The organization has retained Hubbard’s harmful practices that pit the Scientologist against himself, causing him to question his beliefs, hopes, fears, thoughts, and eventually even himself and who he is. Yes, members feel better after auditing. However, when the first upset or problem appears, that happy moment, that altered state of awareness, is gone. A small number of members shuck their doubts, become true believers, and stay in the cult for decades. Other members rationalize, justify, and gradually end up in pain, ill, or mad. The fortunate ones quickly find Scientology a con, a window-dressed fraud, and leave early on.

I believe that Alex Gibney’s documentary contributed greatly to Scientology’s massive membership decline around the world since 2015.

On this tenth anniversary, I sincerely thank Lawrence Wright for his book, Alex Gibney for his documentary, and everyone who contributed.

— Hana Whitfield

Thank you, Hana. We certainly remember watching that first showing at the film festival, with celebrities in the room, and what a treat it was to see what an important figure you were in the documentary, telling your stories about what it was like to serve Hubbard at sea.

It was a very moving day, seeing the movie and seeing the people who had come to it, like Mike Rinder, Marc Headley, Spanky Taylor and her daughter, Vanessa Piñón.

Vanessa was the infant Spanky talked about rescuing from the Scientology nursery in Los Angeles in the film. When we told her we were thinking about that premiere for the anniversary, she sent over some of the photos she shot that day.

Like Hana, we want to thank Alex and Larry (and the folks at HBO) for making that amazing day happen.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

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