The following story is by our correspondent Dianne Lipson. It deals with the curious disappearance – or absence in public of Shelly Miscavige – who is or was the wife of the leader of Scientology, David Miscavige. While we have not looked into this curious matter – the wife of the leader of Scientology disappearing from public sight is curious. Frank Report makes no accusations or allegations -or judgment of Scientology. But we cannot help but wonder if Shelly Miscavige is the equivalent of Daniela of Nxivm, the woman Raniere confined to a room for two years. Dani was able to escape. One wonders is Shelly cannot escape.
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By Dianne Lipson
The Disappearance of Shelly Miscavige, Wife of Scientology Leader David Miscavige
David Miscavige (born April 30, 1960) is the leader of the Church of Scientology. His official title is Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology.
Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, has not been seen in public in over a decade. Sometime in the summer of 2005, she disappeared from “Gold Base,” Scientology’s secretive administrative headquarters located about 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
Since 2005, per Tony Ortega’s Underground Bunker, Shelly’s only appearance in public was at her father’s funeral in 2007, where she was accompanied by a Scientology “minder.”
Gold Base [Golden Era Productions, Int Base, or Int) is the de facto international headquarters of the Church of Scientology, located north of San Jacinto, California, about 100 miles from Los Angeles. The heavily guarded compound comprises about 50 buildings surrounded by high fences topped with blades and watched around the clock by patrols, cameras and motion detectors. The property is bisected by a public road, which is closely monitored by the Church with cameras recording passing traffic.
At Tom Cruise’s lavish 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes, the actress and former dedicated Scientologist, Leah Remini, noticed that her friend Shelly was not with her husband, David, at the festivities.
In her book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, Remini describes getting a series of non-answers to her insistent questions about why Shelly was not present at the “wedding of the century”.
Finally, Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis told her, ” You don’t have the rank to be asking about Shelly Miscavige.”
Per News.Com.Au, Leah was “outraged” to see David Miscavige and Laurisse Henley-Smith, Miscavige’s personal communicator (Scientology’s lingo for secretary) behaving at the wedding like they were “on a date.”
Upset at many things she observed at the wedding, Leah called her mother later that night, ranting, “I think I saw David Miscavige’s assistant touching him inappropriately at the welcome dinner.”
Tony Ortega, journalist and proprietor of the anti-Scientology blog, The Underground Bunker has pieced together, from various sources, the events leading up to Shelly’s disappearance.
According to Shelly’s former assistant, Valerie Haney, interviewed by Ortega the Miscaviges’ marriage began to break down in 2004.
In 2005, David Miscavige went to Los Angeles to oversee a project, leaving his wife behind at Gold Base. This was highly unusual. Shelly was a Scientology executive in her own right, and anywhere David Miscavige went, his wife was always at his side.
Knowing she was in serious trouble, and hoping to please her husband, she used the time to complete a couple of long-unfinished projects. She filled a series of vacant job posts, and she packed up David’s belongings for a planned renovation of their living quarters.
When David returned, eyewitnesses report that he had a “titanic meltdown” over what she had done, in particular that she had “touched his stuff.”
Shelly was driven away from Gold Base in tears shortly afterward, not seen again except for her father’s funeral. Prior to her disappearance, Shelly had confided sadly to Valerie that her sex life with David was almost non-existent. Shelly had been jealous of the way David treated his ‘personal communicator’ Laurisse Henley-Smith, asking Valerie ” ‘Are they fucking? Can you find out?”
Valerie herself later escaped Gold Base by hiding in the trunk of a stranger’s car.
From what he has gleaned from ex-members of Scientology, Ortega has determined the whereabouts of Shelly Miscavige.
Shelly lives and works at a place Scientologists have dubbed Twin Peaks, a small “super-secret compound near Lake Arrowhead in the mountains above Los Angeles . . . where L. Ron Hubbard’s works are stored so they can survive a nuclear holocaust.”
Gadfly anti-Scientology activist Angry Gay Pope has traveled to this compound.
[Here, https://angrygaypope.com/twin_peaks/index.html,]
Angry Gay Pope describes it: “The large number of visible light floodlights, infrared beams, motion sensors, cameras and motorbike mounted guards make escape nearly impossible even without the seven-foot-tall fence studded with razor spikes.”
After leaving Scientology, Leah Remini filed a missing person report on Shelly Miscavige with the LAPD.
Officers visited and spoke with Shelly. They told Leah that Shelly was fine and that she didn’t want to make a public statement. When Leah asked if Scientology officials were present at the interview, she was told, “that’s classified.”
You never know what will make the public demand action.
I maintain that the long-overdue arrest of Keith Raniere did not happen because of his financial or sexual crimes. Ultimately, he was arrested because of the visceral image of a young, pretty (white) woman with a brand upon her flesh, published in the New York Times.
[The New York Times story credited Frank Report with first breaking the branding story]
That image [of Sarah Edmondson] cut through the noise of the more complicated narratives of Raniere’s twisted philosophy, and the many accounts of his criminality.
It was a visual punch in the gut.
There are many first-hand accounts of Scientology’s alleged abuses, particularly from those who staff the organization.
Marc Headley’s story of David Miscavige’s cruelty here: http://www.scientology-cult.com/is-dm-vicious.html.
The suicide attempt of a gay Scientologist here: https://ragingbuddha.net/how-i-left-the-scientology-rpf-and-why-goingclear-is-the-most-important-film-of-2015/.
Debbie Cook’s imprisonment in a building at Gold Base dubbed “The Hole” here: https://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/ex-clearwater-scientology-officer-debbie-cook-testifies-she-was-put-in-the/1214690/.
But for all of these stories, there are always the naysayers.
They say things like:
Why did they accept this awful abuse?
Why didn’t they fight back?
Why didn’t they just leave?
I would never have put up with that.
I would have spoken my mind!
These people must be weak, stupid fools.
The naysayers do not understand the gradual, but powerful mental manipulation and indoctrination that characterizes high-control groups.
Or the threat of family disconnection, and for Gold Base staff members, the specter of being cast with little money and no friends into an outside world that they have been taught to fear.
The story of Shelly’s fate is uncomplicated. It requires no knowledge of Scientology policies or cult dynamics to understand.
It is the tale of a powerful man with almost unlimited resources who shut away his “inconvenient” wife into a guarded compound in the middle of nowhere, perhaps for the rest of her life.
The branding story shocked the public and brought down a cult.
If Shelly Miscavige ever resurfaces, alive or dead, her story might have the same power.
