David Miscavige facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
David Miscavige
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Miscavige in 2019
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| Born | April 30, 1960 Bristol, Pennsylvania, U.S.
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| Organization | Church of Scientology |
| Spouse(s) |
Shelly Barnett
(m. 1982) |
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| Relatives | Jenna Miscavige Hill (niece) |
David Miscavige ( born April 30, 1960) is the second and current leader of the Church of Scientology. His official title within the organization is Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center (COB RTC). RTC is a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology. He is also referred to within the Scientology organization as "DM," "COB" and "Captain of the Sea Org."
Miscavige was a deputy to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard as a teenager. He joined the Sea Org, a management group for the Scientology organization, then later joined the Commodore's Messenger Organization, a group within the Sea Org that carried Hubbard's orders to subordinates. He rose to a leadership role by the early 1980s and was named "Chairman of the Board" of RTC in 1987, the year after Hubbard's death.
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Early life
David Miscavige was born in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, on April 30, 1960. His parents, Ronald Thomas “Ron” Miscavige Sr. and Loretta Gidaro, were Catholics of Polish-Italian heritage. Miscavige and his twin sister, Denise, were raised primarily in Willingboro Township, New Jersey. As a child, Miscavige played baseball and football, but he suffered from asthma and severe allergies. His father, a trumpet player, became interested in Scientology and sent the younger Miscavige to see a Scientologist. According to both father and son, a 45-minute Dianetics session cured Miscavige's ailments.
Miscavige's family joined the Church of Scientology in 1971 and eventually moved to the organization's world headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in West Sussex, England. Saint Hill served as Miscavige's training ground as an auditor, and he is remembered by the Scientology organization as a "12-year-old prodigy" who became its youngest professional auditor. The family returned to Philadelphia within a few years, where Miscavige attended Marple Newtown High School.
Early career in Scientology
In 1976, with his father's permission, Miscavige left high school on his sixteenth birthday and moved to Clearwater, Florida, to join the Sea Org, a Scientologist organization established in 1968 by founder L. Ron Hubbard. Some of his earliest jobs in the Sea Org included delivering telexes, groundskeeping, food service and taking photographs for Scientology brochures.
Miscavige was appointed to an elite group of young Scientologists within the Sea Org called the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO), which Hubbard had established to carry out his personal errands and deliver executive directives to Scientology management. As they grew into adolescence, the Messengers' power and influence within the Sea Org increased. By 1977, Miscavige was living in La Quinta, California, working directly under Hubbard as a cameraman for Scientology training films at CMO Cine Org.
Rise to leadership position
In the late 1970s, Hubbard had to maintain his distance from Church management since he had formally resigned in 1966. Hubbard further distanced himself from the Guardian's Office, his wife, and CMO—which stood for Commodore Messengers Org where "Commodore" had been Hubbard's title as leader of the Sea Org.
In April 1979, the Watchdog Committee was formed, consisting of the senior executives of CMO Int, with Miscavige assuming a prominent role. When Hubbard went into hiding with Pat and Annie Broeker in 1980, Miscavige became the sole link between Hubbard and church leaders, secretly relaying Hubbard's orders from the Broekers. In early 1981, Miscavige set up the All Clear Unit "which was allegedly designed to work towards a situation when Hubbard could come back on lines"; to be "All Clear" for Hubbard to emerge from hiding.
By the end of 1981, Miscavige was in charge of the Watchdog Committee and the All Clear Unit, as well as Author Services Inc., a for-profit entity established in 1981 to manage Hubbard's literary and financial affairs. As head of the CMO, Miscavige sent out teams to investigate problem areas within Scientology.
Corporate restructuring
In 1982, Miscavige set up a new organizational structure to insulate Hubbard from personal liability and to handle his personal wealth through a corporate entity outside of the Scientology network. He established the Religious Technology Center (RTC), an entity responsible for licensing Scientology's intellectual property, and Author Services Inc. to manage the proceeds. Miscavige has held the title of Chairman of the Board of the RTC since the organization's founding. The Church of Spiritual Technology (CST) was created at the same time with an option to repurchase all of RTC's intellectual property rights. In a 1982 probate case, Ronald DeWolf, Hubbard's estranged son, accused Miscavige of embezzling from and manipulating his father. Hubbard denied this in a written statement, saying that his business affairs were being well managed by Author Services Inc., of which Miscavige was also chairman of the board. In the same document, Hubbard called Miscavige a "trusted associate" and "good friend" who had kept his affairs in good order. A judge ruled the statement was authentic. The case was dismissed on June 27, 1983.
In October 1982, Miscavige required Scientology Missions to enter new trademark usage contracts which established stricter policies on the use of Scientology materials. Over the two years following the formation of the RTC, Miscavige and his team replaced most of Scientology's upper and middle management. A number of those ousted attempted to establish breakaway organizations including the Advanced Ability Center led by David Mayo, a former RTC board member who had also been Hubbard's personal auditor. The Advanced Ability Center closed in 1984, two years after opening.
1986–2009: leadership of Scientology organization
When Hubbard died in 1986, Miscavige announced his death to Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium. Shortly before his death, an apparent order from Hubbard circulated in the Sea Org that promoted Scientologist Pat Broeker and his wife to the new rank of Loyal Officer, making them the highest-ranking members; Miscavige asserted this order had been forged. After Hubbard's death, Miscavige assumed the position of head of the Church of Scientology. Within the Sea Org, Miscavige holds the title of "Captain of the Sea Organization" and is its highest-ranking member.
Relationship with the IRS
In 1991, Miscavige, together with Marty Rathbun, visited the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters in Washington, D.C. to arrange a meeting with Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg, Jr. For more than two decades, the IRS had refused to recognize Scientology as a nonprofit charitable organization. Before this meeting, Scientology had filed more than fifty lawsuits against the IRS and, according to The New York Times:
Scientology's lawyers hired private investigators to dig into the private lives of IRS officials and to conduct surveillance operations to uncover potential vulnerabilities... [and] taken documents from an I.R.S. conference and sent them to church officials and created a phony news bureau in Washington to gather information on church critics. The church also financed an organization of I.R.S. whistle-blowers that attacked the agency publicly.
At the meeting with Goldberg, Miscavige offered to cease Scientology's suits against the IRS in exchange for tax exemptions. This led to a two-year negotiating process, in which IRS tax analysts were ordered to ignore the substantive issues because they had been resolved prior to review. In 1992 Scientology was granted recognition as a nonprofit organization in the U.S., which creates a tax exemption for the Church of Scientology International and its subsidiaries, and tax deductions for those who contribute to their programs.
Scientology officials and the IRS later issued a statement that the ruling was based on a two-year inquiry and voluminous documents that, they said, showed the organization was qualified for the exemptions. To announce the settlement with the IRS, Miscavige gathered a reported 10,000 members of Scientology in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, where he delivered a two-and-a-half-hour address and proclaimed, "The war is over!" The crowd gave Miscavige an ovation that lasted more than ten minutes.
Church of Scientology initiatives
According to Scientology, Miscavige initiated a long-term project of issuing unreleased and corrected editions of Hubbard's books and restoring Hubbard's lectures, including translating many works into other languages. Another initiative by Miscavige, launched in 2003, is to build new or remodeled Scientology locations, called "Ideal Orgs," in every major city worldwide. Since then, over seventy new or remodeled locations have been opened, including facilities in Washington, D.C., Madrid, New York City, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Rome, Tel Aviv, Atlanta, Miami, and San Diego. Until the late 2010s, Miscavige worked primarily from Scientology's Gold Base near Hemet, California. Scientologists often refer to him as "DM," or "C.O.B.," for chairman of the board.
Flag Building
One of the largest projects of Miscavige's career is the Flag Building, originally called the "Super Power Building," which is described as the spiritual headquarters of Scientology. The largest of Scientology's properties in Clearwater, Florida, the 377,000-square-foot (35,000 m2) structure is reportedly outfitted with custom-built equipment designed to administer the supposedly perception-enhancing "Super Power Rundown" to high-level Scientologists. The building was scheduled for completion in 2003, but underwent ten years of delays and re-designs as Scientology completed two other major construction and restoration projects in the same area ahead of it, the Fort Harrison Hotel and the Oak Cove Hotel. Miscavige inaugurated the Flag Building on November 17, 2013. He reportedly took up permanent residence at the Flag Building in the late-2010s.
Personal life
Miscavige is married to fellow Sea Org member Michele Diane "Shelly" Miscavige, who has not been seen in public since August 2007.
See also
In Spanish: David Miscavige para niños
