Shelly ‘a prisoner not looking to escape‘, Scientology reporter claims

THE wife of Scientology’s leader is looking “thin”, “frail” and “almost homeless” and is a prisoner within the church, witnesses claim.

THE wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige is a “prisoner resigned to her fate” within the controversial church, an investigative journalist claims.

Shelly Miscavige has not been seen publicly since 2007, but there have been two reported sightings of her in the past 12 months.

She was reportedly spotted looking “thin”, “frail” and “almost like she was homeless”.

Journalist Tony Ortega reported the first claimed sightings of Ms Miscavige on his freelance blog The Underground Bunker, which is focused entirely on Scientology.

The sightings, in a small town near Scientology’s Church of Spiritual Technology (CST) headquarters in California, were made in December 2015 and April this year.

The couple who claim they spotted Ms Miscavige came forward after being motivated by actor and former Scientologist Leah Remini’s documentary series focusing on the religion.

Ortega told news.com.au that Ms Miscavige was not “missing” but was being held against her will by the church.

“She is a prisoner, banished because David (Miscavige) wants her out of his sight. Sadly, she may be resigned to her fate and is not looking to escape,” Ortega said told news.com.au.

“My eyewitness sources say Shelly vanished from Int Base at the end of August or beginning of September in 2005. Since then, she’s been at the CST Headquarters compound, and I have multiple lines of evidence that put her there.

“So her being spotted only a couple of miles away from there on what appear to be a couple of shopping trips tends to support what I’ve been saying.”

Ortega said the couple who reported the sighting “knew it was a risk to speak out”.

Scientology has always maintained Ms Miscavige is not “missing”. Rather she stepped out of the public spotlight, and is happy working on a special project for the church. The church doesn’t elaborate on where.

Undated picture of Scientology leader David Miscavige and wife Shelly from father Ron’s family album. Picture: Supplied

But Ortega says that’s not the case.

“Shelly was a loyal executive and a loyal wife, and in 2005 she angered her husband simply because she tried to do her job and take care of some things at Int Base that David had left undone,” he says. “A week later, she vanished.”

Ortega says Ms Miscavige was put at the “tiny” CST compound of 12 to 15 people and declared a “non-person”.

“And she’s been there for 11 years, working on the L. Ron Hubbard archive project, cut off from the outside world, and from her family,” he said.

“There is no ‘rehabilitation’ going on, no auditing to get her back in the ‘Scientology way of thinking’.

“However, after 10 years, it appears that she was given the opportunity for a trip to the local town to pick up some supplies at the local hardware store (which, in this case, is more of a general store), and, four months later, to the local grocery store — but only with two younger men leading her around.

“That’s what was spotted. A woman looking frail and dishevelled after a decade of imprisonment, being let out briefly for a short shopping trip.”

Ortega suspects the sightings are “the last thing Scientology wants”.

“Scientology gets no possible benefit from these sightings. In fact, the sightings give Shelly’s family evidence to have law enforcement check on her welfare,” he said.

“And if anything, a sighting of Shelly in such bad shape only lends credence to Leah Remini’s concerns about her.”

Shelly Miscavige and Leah Remini. Picture: Supplied

‘WHERE’S SHELLY?’

Ortega and other critics of Scientology say Ms Miscavige is the person Scientology wants us to forget.

All the church has said when asked about her whereabouts since 2007 is she is not “missing”: she is alive, well and “working non-stop for the church out of the public eye”.

Ms Remini — once one of the religion’s fiercest supporters, and now one of its fiercest critics, has been among the loudest questioners.

A close friend of Ms Miscavige’s during her time as a Scientologist, Mr Remini says her “disappearance” was pivotal to her leaving the religion: when she couldn’t get answers, she began to break away.

At the 2006 wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes the alarm bells truly began to ring. It was the Scientology wedding of the century, and Ms Miscavige was not there.

“Shelly was always where David Miscavige was,” Ms Remini told ABC News last year. “It was it was like, ‘where’s Shelly?’”

In 2013 Ms Remini reported Ms Miscavige as a missing person to police.

Los Angeles Police came back within days, reporting she was alive, but that she didn’t want to make a public statement.

Scientology views Ms Remini as “bitter, and spreading false claims”, and ahead of her documentary said in a statement she was “desperate for attention” and “needs to get on with her life”.

“Instead, she seeks publicity by maliciously spreading lies about the Church using the same handful of bitter zealots who were kicked out years ago for chronic dishonesty and corruption and whose false claims the Church refuted years ago, including through judicial decisions,” the church said.

Leah Remini reported Shelly missing in 2013. Picture: Supplied

Another former Scientologist, Australian Mike Rinder, has long claimed Ms Miscavige expressed concerns with the church in the months leading up to her vanishing from public view.

He last spoke with her a week before she “disappeared”.

“I knew that she was in deep s**t. That was the last conversation I had with Shelly,” Mr Rinder said.

In May this year, David Miscavige’s own father, Ron Miscavige, added to the mystery.

On the promotion trail for a book about his experience in the church, Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me, Ron Miscavige revealed a picture of his family when they were all in the religion. The undated shot, which featured David and Shelly, was the first shot the public had seen in years.

In his book Ron Miscavige laments: “There are a lot of people that would like to get out, just like I did,” he says. “But they have no money and nowhere to go.”

Ron has been cut off from his family since he left the church in 2012 with his second wife Becky. His son Ron Miscavige Jr. left Scientology in 2000, followed in 2005 by Ron Jr.’s daughter.

THE BEGINNING

Ms Miscavige was born into Scientology: her parents were devoted members under founder L. Ron Hubbard. She married Mr Miscavige in 1982, four years before he took charge.

Vanity Fair conducted an extensive investigation in 2014, detailing Shelly and Mr Miscavige’s history. They met in 1978 and upon their marriage became the “it” couple of Sea Org (described by Scientology as a fraternal religious order of its most dedicated members, and by critics as an almost paramilitary force).

But insiders told the publicationthat by 2006, she seemed to have fallen out of favour with Mr Miscavige. The Vanity Fair story concluded Shelly is being kept at Twin Peaks, Rimforest: just as Ortega believes.

Former Scientologist Marc Headley, who has written about the church, said: “She’s probably the one person who could just end it tomorrow. If she just walked away ... and said ... ‘this is where all the bodies are buried — this is what he did with this, this is what he did with that — let’s f**king burn it down’, it would be done.”

Ortega’s claims Ms Miscavige was hidden away as punishment for exerting too much power in the church have been continually denied by spokesmen for Scientology.

‘Sadly, she may be resigned to her fate’: Journalist Tony Ortega Picture: Supplied