Mike Rinder, a former spokesman for the Church of Scientology who grew to become one among its fiercest critics and who rose to fame as host of the Emmy Award-winning tv sequence Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, died Sunday in Palm Harbor, Flora. He was 69.
His dying at a hospice heart was confirmed by his spouse, Kristi Kolbran Rinder, who stated the trigger was esophageal most cancers that had metastasized.
Mr. Rinder grew up within the Church of Scientology and rose to turn into a world speaker, head of the Workplace of Particular Affairs and a member of the Church of Scientology’s Board of Administrators since 1983. by 2007, in keeping with his 2022 memoir. “A Billion Years: My Escape from Life within the High Ranks of Scientology.”
Shortly after Mr. Rinder graduated from highschool in 1973, he joined the Marine Corps, or Sea Orgelite corps of employees members who hold the Church of Scientology operating, and met for the primary time the church’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
He remained with the Maritime Group till 2007 wrote on his blogwhen he “lastly determined there was no strategy to change the tradition of violence and abuse that had turn into endemic beneath the ‘management’ of David Miscavige, Mr. Hubbard’s successor.”
After he left, Mr Rinder spoke concerning the abuse he stated he had witnessed. The church responded by denying allegations of abuse and attacking Mr Rinder’s authority, saying he had been expelled for abuse and had turn into a “skilled anti-Scientologist” who “spews spiritual hatred”.
Mr. Rinder stated he felt compelled to talk out due to the a long time he spent as a senior aide to the church and one among its chief advocates within the media.
“I do not need individuals to proceed to be damage, cheated and lied to,” Mr. Rinder informed The St. Petersburg Occasions in 2009, when he served as a key supply for a three-part series on Scientology. “I used to be unable to alter something due to my very own lack of braveness once I was within the church. However I consider that these abuses should finish.”
Mr. Rinder was maybe finest often called the host, together with actress Leah Remini, of the documentary sequence Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, which aired for 3 seasons on A&E starting in 2016. The sequence, based mostly on the accounts of former church members who stated their lives had been broken by Scientology, received Emmys in 2017 and 2020.
Ms Remini, who left the church in 2013, was additionally an outspoken critic of Scientology. Her 2015 ebook Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology helped encourage the sequence.
Mr Rinder was additionally featured in a 2015 HBO documentary. Going Clear: Scientology and the Jail of Perception, based mostly on the 2013 non-fiction ebook of the identical title. of journalist Lawrence Wright.
“I hope this movie will increase public stress on the church to alter its abusive practices,” Mr Rinder stated New York Times in 2015
Michael John Rinder was born on April 10, 1955. in Adelaide, Australia. His father, Ian, was a “serial entrepreneur,” he wrote in his ebook, and his mom, Barbara, was “a homemaker who typically helped with my father’s varied enterprise ventures.” The household, he wrote, was launched to Scientology by a neighbor who attended Mr. Hubbard’s lectures.
“So actually my life was predestined in Scientology,” Mr. Rinder wrote in his ebook.
As a church official, he writes, his days are “filled with monitoring down Scientology’s enemies, operating packages to neutralize them, placing out Web fires, and coping with persistent movie star points.”
He determined to go away in 2007, he wrote in his ebook, after a BBC reporter requested him if he had ever been enthusiastic about Mr Miscavige. Mr. Rinder wrote that he informed the reporter that Mr. Miscavige didn’t hit him, though he stated that was not true.
When he left, “a metamorphosis started that slowly remodeled me from a fanatical follower of the cult through which I had been raised to a dedicated whistleblower for the abuses I had skilled, witnessed and dedicated,” Mr. Rinder wrote in his ebook.
The church denied that Mr. Miscavige had ever hit workers and accused Mr. Rinder of mendacity.
Along with his spouse, Mr. Rinder is survived by their son, Jack Rinder; stepson, Shane Colbran; and two youngsters from a earlier marriage, Benjamin Rinder and Taryn Deutsch.
In a latest weblog put up revealed on Sunday, Mr Rinder wrote that he had been “the fortunate one – residing two lives in a single”.
He stated he stays deeply involved concerning the apply of “disconnecting,” through which church members lower off contact with buddies, members of the family or associates who’re believed to have turn into hostile to Scientology. Mr Rinder was estranged from his two eldest youngsters after he left the church.
“My solely actual remorse is that I didn’t obtain what I stated I needed – an finish to the abuses of Scientology, particularly the disconnection and seeing Jack as an grownup,” he wrote. “In case you are in any approach combating to finish these abuses, please hold flying the flag – by no means surrender.”
