Joel Sappell, who wrote extensively about Scientology in the 1980s, catches up with Scientology defector Mark Rathbunand, who formerly combated Scientology's critics on behalf of the church. Rathbun reveals actions the church took against Sappell and his colleague Bob Welkos:
For [Church Of Scientology leader David] Miscavige the stakes were high, Rathbun says, higher than we knew. Our series represented an early test of the young firebrand’s ability to navigate a serious challenge at a time when the church was trying to emerge from scandal and enter the mainstream. Among other things the church had paid millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements to ex-members to keep them quiet about their run-ins with Scientology and to avoid even bigger financial and public relations hits down the road.
“We need to back the Times and Sappell and those guys down,” Rathbun remembers Miscavige ordering. But they couldn’t. Rathbun says the church hoped to get us to believe that with “the kind of intrusion we’re going to do in your life, it’s not worth messing with us.” That intimidation didn’t work with Bob and me, though Rathbun says it usually did. Of all the journalists who make inquiries into the church, he says, “you guys who write are the exception, not the rule.”
Sappell suspects that church members poisoned his dog:
Did I have proof the Church of Scientology was to blame? No. But I was haunted by the warnings I remembered getting at the start of what would become a five-year investigation of the church. More than one source had told Bob and me to keep an eye on our pets. Others who’d run afoul of church leaders had lost beloved animals under suspicious circumstances, they claim—but I hadn’t listened.
The Dish 