Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (2016) s02e02 Episode Script

- Hello? - Hi.
Hi, baby.
Baby, I totally understand what predicament you're in.
I really do.
They are saying the only reason you're feeling this way about the church is because you are connected to suppression.
Even though you're saying No, 'cause something happened to me.
It's gaslighting.
It makes you absolutely insane.
That's the purpose of it.
And the purpose of my show is to validate these people's stories who've been told that it's their fault.
Okay, my love.
We'll talk.
Okay.
Bye, baby.
This makes me so sick.
Like, I want to cry.
I want to cry from this phone call.
Somebody reached out to me and said they want to tell their story.
But not on television.
The story that she's telling me was that she was molested when she was underage.
In a way, I'm glad the cameras are here because this is what Mike and I do.
- This is day in, day out.
- All day, all night, when the cameras are not rolling.
And our job is to simply be there for them as much as we can.
And when we say, are you willing to do anything? A lot of times they say no.
And we say okay.
It says a lot about the people who are talking.
- Right.
- Who have talked.
Not just to us, Mike, but to people who go on blogs and say, this happened to me.
But anybody coming on this show is taking such a big stand because of the repercussions.
And it says a lot about the people who said yes, I'll talk to you guys on camera.
It sure does.
I am the writer of the textbooks of Scientology.
The aim and goal is to put man in a mental condition, uh, where he him can solve his own problems.
Without any Scientology organization things are not gonna change on this planet.
After years of slowly questioning Scientology Leah Remini and her very public break with Scientology Stop lying to people that they hold their eternity in their hands.
Stop telling parents that it doesn't matter what you do this lifetime other than Scientology.
If your religion is so amazing and doing all these amazing things for the world, then it should stand up to some questioning.
I would repeat this line, "I want to die.
I want to die".
That was my first idea of: I want to end my own life.
You gave me up at 13 years old.
How could you think that this was okay for me? These people are doing extreme things, and they need to be held accountable.
For us to do more of this, we wanted to do something that could help these people.
We need to do more than simply document stuff.
You got this.
People will continue to speak.
People will continue to fight.
So we're going to see Marie Bilheimer, who is a former Sea Org member, whose former Sea Org member husband committed suicide in the Hollywood Inn.
The Hollywood Inn is one of the Sea Organization's buildings that's on Hollywood Boulevard, where the staff live.
And now it actually has the Test Center on the ground floor, there.
Scientology promises people that it has the answers to everything.
All of life, every part of your existence can be analyzed, resolved, and made better by Scientology.
And clearly, the ultimate failure of that is when someone commits suicide.
Right.
If you are suicidal in the Church of Scientology, you actually get in trouble for those feelings.
So you're gonna suppress that and hide those feelings if you want to remain in Scientology.
- Right.
- So there's a lot of things that add to people being suicidal in Scientology or depressed in Scientology.
But they learn very early on to suppress those feelings.
- Hi, cutie lady.
- Hello.
- Come on in.
- Thank you for having us.
- How are you? - I'm good.
I'm Marie Bilheimer.
I was born into Scientology and I was a member for 30 years.
Thank you for having us in your home, and thank you for talking to us, 'cause I know this is not an easy thing.
You're feeling worried about doing this.
You feel like you're going against your former group.
There's so much history, and so it's kind of all coming up, you know, emotionally.
- So it's all kind of - Right there.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
So your parents were Scientologists.
Yes, so I was born into Scientology.
The youngest of four, and my parents had already met at the Edmonton Org.
And so for my whole life, it was just Scientology was the most important thing.
I ended up joining the Sea Org when I was 15.
A lot of kids my age were joining at that time.
I don't feel like I really knew what it was about until I was there.
You didn't get what you were about to do.
You're 15, but now you're joining the elite group of the Sea Organization.
The Sea Org is not glamorous at all.
But there's this hype of "You're so tough if you can make it".
And "Many are called, few are chosen".
Very early on, I would see various punishments, or treatments, of people getting into trouble, such as people having to do all-nighters or scrubbing toilets with toothbrushes.
There was the mindset for me that I couldn't get into trouble, because when I would see it happen with other people, I didn't want the same thing to happen for me.
So you joined the Sea Org at 15 and then you get married at 16.
- Yeah.
- To another Sea Org member.
- Yes.
His name was Aaron.
- How old was he? I met Aaron when I was newly into the Sea Org.
He'd been there longer than I had.
He had been in the Cadet Org.
He kind of helped show me the ropes.
He was very happy, big smile, always goofing around.
Even if you have friends on post, you always have to watch your back.
You let one little thing slide, and someone's gonna report you.
And with Aaron, I could let my guard down.
I could be myself.
So when he and I first met, we were at the same level.
Eventually, I got promoted, and he would get demoted.
He would just get caught doing, like, I don't know, sleeping in some room.
Or, like, just not showing up.
And it ended up where we were at different echelons, where I was at one base that was higher, and he was still back at the at PAC Base, where we originally started.
We were young, and we were happy.
And things were crazy, but we still had fun to a degree.
I remember one time, like, him and two of the other guys in his dorm got caught with an Eminem CD.
It was like, "You're not allowed to listen to that".
One time, he put, like, sun-in in his hair.
And so, like It was like his tips, and they were orange.
And some exec comes up to me, and they're like, "Can you please tell your husband to handle his hair?" Then for a period maybe nine months or a year I was in training at Flag in Florida.
And while I was gone, he had kind of gotten into trouble.
He went out to, like, an 18-and-older nightclub and was dancing, and it was like a couple of other guys Wait a minute, he's 18 years old - and he's going dancing.
- Yeah.
It was totally not allowed.
- Oh! - Yeah.
- Okay, I was I was like - That's a big crime.
- It's a crime.
- Yeah.
No matter what he did, no matter how many times he got into trouble, I still felt I made those vows and through thick and thin, I will be married to you.
Aaron was going through what teenagers go through.
He wanting to go out to nightclubs, and dancing, and he put sun-in in his hair.
But the way that children are treated in the Sea Org is that there is one goal, and that is to clear the planet.
And anything that goes on beyond that is unacceptable.
There was a certain weight on me as an executive with a non-executive husband, because I had to uphold an image all of the time.
But Aaron being demoted to a lower org and being more involved with public the parishioners at some point, it felt like Aaron got interested in having the styles of the regular society.
For me, it seemed like that isn't important.
At higher echelons of Scientology, the public image of those people is considered to be extremely important.
And that includes their spouses.
If their spouse is someone who is considered to be a sort of a lowlife or a low-level person, that's unacceptable.
And thus, there is pressure brought to bear to find yourself another spouse.
So they want you to divorce him.
One of my seniors did kind of a, - "You could do better".
- Right.
And things like that.
But he felt that he was holding me back.
- Oh.
- And I said, "I don't care".
- Did you love him? - Yeah.
And I he was my best friend.
And I wanted to help him.
And I thought that we had the answers to do that.
Being Scientologists.
We went through a period of a lot of struggles between us.
And then Aaron came home one night.
He got home very late, and he said that it was really foggy, so he didn't want to drive, and he pulled over, and he had gotten a ticket.
And I'm like okay.
That's weird.
None of it made sense in hindsight.
It's like, how do you get a ticket if you're pulled over like this? I don't understand.
And he needed to go to court and take care of it somehow.
And he was concerned about that 'cause explaining that to your org, you would get in trouble.
Then one evening, he comes home and he said he had to go back to post.
They were doing an all hands, and he had to go back.
And he just wanted to change and to get into something more comfortable 'cause he was gonna be up all night.
He had this one red shirt he really liked and this beanie.
And I'm like, why do you have to wear that beanie? It's the wrong image, again.
And I wouldn't let him wear it.
And I wish I did, 'cause it was what he wanted to wear.
Why does it matter? He came over, and he said good-bye.
And he kissed me on the lips, and then on each of my eyelids.
'Cause that's he always did it the opposite way for some reason.
And that time he switched it around, 'cause I would always say, "Why don't you kiss my lips first?" And The next day, I am on post.
- Dir I&R comes up to my desk.
- Who's that? The Director of Inspections and Reports.
And so she says, the security chief from OSA Int wants to speak to you at the HI.
And I instantly knew, what did Aaron do? We pulled up from behind the building.
As we approached, I could see an ambulance and fire trucks and police.
I knew it was bad, but I didn't want to believe it.
And I just I couldn't even think.
I walk into the parking lot, and the security chief from OSA Int comes up and says Aaron hung himself last night.
And that was it.
And I said, "Did he die?" And she said, "Yeah".
And I stood there, screaming and crying alone.
And they all walked away from me and just the was no consolation.
And I thought, well, how am I supposed to react to this? And I screamed.
And I had no one to comfort me.
There was nobody.
Like, there were people, but there was nobody.
They all walked away from me.
They looked at me like I was awkward.
Like, what do we do with this person? Right? Everyone was looking at me, and it was so awkward.
And I'm standing there alone, and there's 25 people around, and they just wanted to make sure that the police got their questions answered in the right way.
Which which meant what? They just monitor it from a PR aspect to make sure that police get the questions they need and it gets shut down.
And no more questions are asked, and it goes away.
And nobody else hears about it.
Whenever a situation occurs that involves police or law enforcement or something that could potentially get into the media, this is what's known as a shore flap.
When Aaron committed suicide, anybody that was around at the time and Marie, of course, when she was brought to the location is to be controlled.
They didn't let me see him.
They made me leave before his body was taken out.
Who made you leave? - OSA.
- Not the police.
No, no.
And I went back to post.
- I went back to work.
- Oh, my God.
Luckily my desk was in a corner, so I could just sit there and cry.
And I was an executive in my organization and couldn't tell anybody there what had happened.
I wasn't allowed to have a proper service for him.
I wasn't allowed to spread his ashes on my own.
People that were oblivious later on that knew him would ask me, "What hap well, where's Aaron? How's your husband doing?" And I I wasn't able to say.
They kind of spread a story that he had blown.
Meaning he left the Sea Organization? He left, and they didn't find him, and he's gone.
Is that a thing? I mean, is that is that a thing? Absolutely.
You don't want you don't want other Sea Org members to know that a Sea Org member committed suicide.
That is how Sea Org members think.
We must keep everybody focused on their job and clearing the planet.
And we can't allow them to be upset about this.
I got to the point where I couldn't I couldn't take it anymore.
I couldn't try to be on post.
I couldn't have people continually looking at me going, "What's wrong with this person?" And not being able to communicate what had happened.
The security chief asked me, "What do you want to do? "Do you think that you need to leave? "And if you do, that will be totally okay.
Just tell me if that's what you want to do".
And I said, "Yes, I think that I should".
She didn't want you to be upset - Yeah.
- Because it would cause - a problem for the church.
- I was a situation.
Right.
So now they see you as a problem.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
So then you get instantly switched over to the security checking and the interrogations.
- Right.
- And mine was tailored - about Aaron.
- Okay.
What were the questions about Aaron? Have you ever harmed Aaron? Have you ever done any like, just anything - So it was about you - Have you ever withheld - anything about Aaron? - What you had done to Aaron.
Yeah.
And they communicate to me that the only reason he did it is because he's an out-ethics person, not because of whatever issues caused him to get to that point.
- Right.
- Not because he's sad or because he feels trapped there or because he didn't feel like he had anyone to turn to or even that he could communicate to me whatever he was going through, but that he took his own life - and what he did was wrong.
- Right.
And his whole life, what he was doing was wrong.
- He was just a bad person.
- Right.
Then when I decided to leave the Sea Org, I did end up finding the ticket that Aaron had previously told me about in his sock drawer.
I'm like, "How did I miss that?" And I pull it out and I look at it, and I'm like, "It says prostitution".
He was prostituting.
I don't know if he was struggling with his sexuality, - if he was gay or - Right.
He never communicated anything like that to me, but He wouldn't really be allowed to.
He wouldn't be allowed to, and he was born and raised essentially in the Sea Org, and anything other than being straight and in a regular - Monogamous - Relationship is wrong.
And so even if you think anything like that, you're like, "Push that out of my mind".
Like, "I don't want to have any thoughts like that".
So he had an impending court date and That was essentially what was weighing on his mind.
I feel like he was trapped, and for years, I felt a responsibility, and I felt the blame, and I felt like I had missed it and it was my fault and that he did it because of me because I was so dedicated and he didn't have anywhere to turn to.
They looked at him as somebody who was undesirable as a Scientologist and as a Sea Org member.
They didn't have compassion for him and what he had been raised in.
They created a person who felt he couldn't communicate to his church.
He couldn't communicate to his wife.
He felt tremendous guilt for whatever he was going through.
Because the Church of Scientology is not a compassionate one.
It doesn't say, "How are you feeling? Let us hold you, let us help you through this".
And even if he were to speak to me, I was super dedicated.
I kept my nose clean and he would've felt that I would've reported him, of course.
Right.
Right.
I wish that I could've told him, "You can tell me whatever you need to tell me".
And I thought that I thought that he knew he could be open with me.
And I thought at that point I had proven myself to stand by him and And that I would've tried to do whatever I could.
But at the same time it would've always been Scientology's answers.
Every time we go to talk to somebody, it's like another level.
Like, what? That wasn't the worst of it? It doesn't end, you know? We leave, we go back to our lives, and we're protected by our viewers and the people who support us, but anybody coming on this show, you know, they're not protected.
Well, ultimately, they are.
- They just don't know it.
- Right.
Well, they don't know it in this moment.
- Right now.
- Yeah, right.
But they will see, once their episode has aired, the outpouring of support and love that they get from people is astonishing.
So we're gonna go talk to Lauren Haggis, 'cause her friend Tayler, who is a Scientologist, - committed suicide.
- Right.
The tragedy of it isn't just that she committed suicide.
That happens, as we know, all too often.
What's heartbreaking about it is how she was treated.
- Right.
- And the way that her problems were addressed by her "friends and family" because of what they believe as Scientologists.
I know, it's just still a shock, Mike.
- Hello, hello! - Lauren, hi.
- Hi! How are you? - I'm great, how are you? Look at you, you beautiful lady.
- So good to see you.
- Hi, so good to see you too.
- It's been a long, long time.
- I know.
And you.
I'm Lauren Haggis.
I was born into Scientology.
My dad's Paul Haggis.
He's a producer, writer, director.
He was one of the first celebrities in Scientology who became public about leaving.
So how's life, my love? This is a surreal moment, 'cause it's like I think my entire life, I've done everything to be very quiet and not talk about stuff.
So it's like I'm fighting myself.
Do you think that that side of you that you're just talking about is the Scientological side? - Absolutely, 100%.
- Yeah.
Well, 'cause I was raised in it since I was a little girl.
So I didn't have another way to think.
- Right.
- It absolutely has created a way of operating for me that I've been unlearning in the last, like, 10, 11 years, which has been - Right.
- Fantastic.
I think the one thing about being raised in the church, I had naturally started to distance myself from people that I had felt were really strong Scientologists.
Because I just didn't like the "us against them" culture.
It kind of felt like some people thought that they were better than wogs non-Scientologists throughout middle school and high school, especially in high school.
And then that's where you met Tayler.
Yes.
She had just come from being in the Sea Org in 1999.
She was a firecracker.
She was really sweet, but intense.
I mean, those were the two words that best describe her.
She wasn't, like, a negative person.
She was just assertive or really sweet and bubbly.
Like, that's just was.
If she didn't like something, she told you right to your face.
So she was just herself.
She was a pure spirit.
That part about her I really enjoyed getting to experience because she was she was unique.
We didn't stay in contact at that point in time.
So I then go to college, graduate from that.
And then started following her on Facebook.
So we were able to see each other's lives.
And it was really interesting watching her become her own person.
Like, she completely changed, like, visually.
Like, she liked to change her hair and her style.
She was modeling and singing and doing music.
And it seemed like she was really coming into her own.
Because she was she was just her in the world.
She'd been working for the church and really gung ho.
Like, "I'm a proud Scientologist".
She was working in Japan as a volunteer minister, posting photos of her smiling.
Just, like, totally down with the program.
Loving life, loving it, and then something turned for her.
It started with a boyfriend who broke up with her and was really negative and nasty and so that started it.
So he breaks up with her and becomes nasty in what way? Mostly it's he works with a bunch of other people at the org, and they were supposedly she had been saying they had been saying really terrible things about her.
Calling her, like, a drug addict.
And, like so it'd be really, like, - breaking down her character.
- These are people - who worked at the church - Yes.
Were calling her names and ridiculing her.
Yeah, and taking things from her past that are supposed to be private.
Tayler was going through a lot of emotional stress.
And she had felt like she was bullied.
She had repeatedly tried to address this in the right channels by writing it up, sending it up to the people at the top of the org so the Portland Org to get this addressed.
And she did over, and over, and over, and over again over a span of months and was getting nowhere and then became very public about it on Facebook.
I saw these messages.
What I see being, you know, older is a child.
- Yes.
- Crying out for help.
- Yeah.
- And you're seeing this.
- Yeah.
- Okay, go ahead.
And it gets worse and worse and worse.
She had a lot of Scientologist pressure from her Scientology friends about her being public.
They were saying, "Why are you talking about this publically? You should really be quiet about this".
Like, people who were harassing her in some ways and being really negative.
You know, unlike Aaron, Tayler was reaching out.
Please, to my church, help me.
You're saying this is what you do.
Help me.
She was doing the right things.
And nobody cared.
She would seem sad and upset and she was having all these problems.
She had tried to go through the normal routes, and nothing was working, and she wanted it to be fixed.
She was posting everything that she possibly could because she was done.
I was concerned about her.
I was worried for her.
She was really thin.
She was posting pictures of her at, like, 95 pounds Where she was having these emotional breakdowns, and she was so stressed out.
She was just continuing to be offered auditing, essentially.
Which made her worse.
Scientology does not recognize depression as a mental illness.
In fact, nothing that has anything to do with psychiatry is acceptable in Scientology.
Anybody who has any problem whatsoever in Scientology is sent to an auditor to have Scientology counseling.
Therefore, anything that was troubling Tayler will only be addressed by Scientologists with Scientology.
She had nowhere to go to get real help.
So I wanted to try to give her support, but I was scared.
Well, you didn't want to reach out to her, because - like most Scientologists - No.
I wasn't very comfortable.
And I'm including myself in that thinks what I can't do is show her any public support because then my church is gonna come after me.
- That was your frame of mind.
- Yeah, essentially.
And so it was that fear.
And I let that fear control me.
Right.
And I wish I hadn't.
- Lauren - I know.
- Okay, 'cause it - I know.
I know it's I hope for not one second you're gonna say that you could've prevented it, okay.
I know, I know I couldn't, but I I didn't do what I could.
- So how - But, Lauren, in the frame of mind of a Scientologist, you believed that there was nothing you can do.
- Well - You know, being outside - I know.
- Mike knowing what he knows now would never allow his children to be in Scientology.
- No, no.
Of course.
- So we understand.
But sitting here, seeing your pain, I can't allow you now to blame yourself or to think you could've prevented it.
Because you couldn't have.
You were also in a prison at that time.
Yeah, yeah.
But still, I didn't I was still fearful and so I gave her this, like, really, like, I'm sorry to hear you're having problems with the church.
Keep your head high, hugs and kisses, kind of thing.
That was the last time I talked to her.
Around the end of the year, Tayler wrote this giant paragraph of saying, basically, I'm sorry for being an asshole to my friends.
About putting this stuff on your guys' lines She apologized to the Scientology community - for speaking out.
- Essentially.
And then she stopped posting on that Facebook page, made a new Facebook page where she didn't post anything negative against the church.
And was posting photos of herself.
And then she applied to, like, college.
So I was like, okay.
- Things got fixed.
- Things got fixed.
So I was like, okay, good.
Glad I reached out and everything's good.
And then January came around and we found out that she had killed herself.
I was shocked.
I was just shocked.
I started asking my friends 'cause we all know each other.
We went to a really small school.
So everyone knows someone.
And so I started reaching out to people.
And we found out she shot herself.
She took her own life.
We can't ever be prepared for anything like that.
But I was totally taken off.
Like, I I thought she was doing better.
I thought things were good for her.
But no one expected it.
It was just so sad.
From what I know now, Tayler has suffered from had suffered from suicidal thoughts and, like, she had tried to commit suicide several times throughout her life.
My friend asked, "And you did all the processing and didn't feel any better?" Taylor says, "Worse".
She'd never gotten to see a regular doctor, but she'd gotten to see homeopathic people.
And tried to handle her symptoms with vitamins - and those types of regimens.
- Yeah, Scientology.
Scientology's thing versus medication.
Because in Scientology, you no, it's not an answer.
It's not an option.
You got to get do your auditing and take your vitamins and exercise.
Because you think psychiatry and psychology is they're all crazy.
They're just going over and lobotomizing people and shoving Ritalin and stuff down kids' throats.
And ultimately, you'd get kicked out of the church if you said, "I want to go see a real doctor".
Or "I want to go see a psychoanalyst "or a therapist or a psychiatrist.
I want to be put on medication".
- They'd say, "You're out".
- Yeah.
And you would lose everything you've ever known.
No, 'cause it's the antichrist.
Yes, and you're evil to the church of Scientology and that's it, and then everybody you ever have ever known leaves your life.
In all of this, it gave me a window to understand what was going on with her.
But to see her say things like That is that's just awful.
She actually wanted to die.
She thought it was a solution to stop all of her problems that she had been having her entire life, and she was done with.
The second round, where she's, like, has this new Facebook page and she seems to be, you know, starting again.
This poor girl keeps trying to pick herself up and move on.
Something happened and I don't know because I don't know.
I'm hoping you have some answers.
The Scientology part of her family her mom, specifically for every time that Tayler did something and spoke out, her mom would distance herself from Tayler financially.
And that was Tayler's only support.
She was not self she was a musician.
She was not on her own, she wasn't working.
She was dependent, completely, on her parents.
So she would withdraw her financial support.
And her emotional support.
Her family was really, really important to her.
She loved her mom, and she loved her family.
So it was very tough on her.
To be going through what she was going through in her own experiences with the church and then to have to deal with the disconnection back and forth, back and forth with her family.
And what got me is, she was living on her friends' couches.
And I had heard her mom was calling her friends and saying Tayler is in a suppressive person - kind of stage.
- She's an anti-Scientologist.
She's an enemy of the church.
It's not good for her for you to house her.
And this happened at the last house that she was staying at.
And she just ended her life, which makes me feel like she didn't feel like she had anywhere more to go.
She just all roads led to this.
And at Tayler's funeral, Tayler's mom said, "I am at peace with my daughter's decision".
It was, like, a week after she killed herself.
"I'm at peace with my daughter's decision".
This is a microcosm of the Scientology prison of belief and mindset that makes it acceptable to destroy someone for the greater good.
We have to do what L.
Ron Hubbard says to do so we're gonna disconnect from you, - despite your emotional problems.
- Yes.
That belief system is toxic.
It is dangerous.
And ultimately, it's deathly.
Her mother told her friends to publically disconnect from her.
That's what her mother said.
The mother was applying Scientology.
No, that's okay.
So this is December.
This was a month before she passed.
So it's Christmas is coming.
I just can't.
I just Yeah.
You have to step up.
You have to take responsibility for what you're saying to people.
The mental health profession should have issue with Scientology promoting itself as the cure for mental illness.
It is not a cure.
It isn't.
You telling this story, I hope, that even one parent in Scientology or any other cult wakes up and realizes - I need to protect my own.
- Of course.
I need we need to protect our children.
There are options, there's things that you can do.
- Exactly.
- They make things go right and to help people's lives.
There are so many options.
I think it's so beautiful what you're doing for your friend.
You're being everything Scientology isn't by telling Tayler's story.
You are giving her the defense she needed.
So you're doing the right thing.
I didn't know her, but she would've been, you know, somebody I would've liked to have tried to help, you know, so - Of course, absolutely.
- Let me get a damn tissue.
Okay.
It's amazing that you did this.
Oh, thank you.
I I see her as if she was actually she was here, but - Right.
- They remind me completely that she's not and that she could have been she could have been so easily helped.
I've known five people in my life who've killed themselves.
Four of them were Scientologists, including Tayler.
And so who are these people? And how can we do the same thing with Tayler for them? - I love that.
- I am doing what I could have done then, now.
- I understand.
- Yeah.
Oh, my God.
You're not alone.
- Thank you.
- Oh, don't worry about it.
We had three generations applying Scientology to the best of their ability.
And at the end of the day, it destroyed us.
There's no way to make it work.
All of this destruction is Scientology.
Some of the people in my dorm looked out the window in time to see him fall.
I feel guilty.
You were a victim yourself.
We are told that if you reject Scientology, you will lose.