cover image Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me

Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me

Ron Miscavige, with Dan Koon. St. Martin's, $26.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-250-09693-7

The Church of Scientology has become a corrupt, totalitarian despotism under its leader David Miscavige, according to this excoriating memoir by his father. Ron Miscavige, a musician who worked on Scientologist videos, still appreciates founder L. Ron Hubbard's philosophy and credits its auditing process%E2%80%94a kind of psychoanalysis, as he describes%E2%80%94with curing David's boyhood asthma. Unfortunately, he contends, under his son's leadership Scientology is mainly about extracting money and labor from the faithful. Miscavige describes prison-like conditions at the church's California compound: Sea Org devotees worked endless hours for negligible pay, faced frequent roll calls and grim communal meals, had mail and phone calls monitored, endured weeks-long confinement in "the Hole" for imaginary infractions, were accompanied by guards off-base, and were hounded by and disconnected from family members if they, like the author, escaped. Meanwhile, Miscavige suggests, David's Machiavellian rise to power made him a "toxic personality" and "sociopath" given to public rages laced with obscenities (sometimes directed at his father), chaotic micromanagement, and sadistic power plays. Miscavige and amanuensis Koon shape these anecdotes into a vivid portrait of religion as a cross between monastic deprivation and abusive McJob. The resulting memoir adds the poignancy of family conflict to now-familiar stories about Scientology. Photos. (May)