Week after week Leah Remini’s “victim” factory continues to crank out reality TV fraud using the exact same formula with the promise that “unvetted” and dishonest subjects can use the exposure to gain fame and money through cash payments, sales of self-published “memoirs” and even GoFundMe pages.
First, cast a “victim” who fabricates tales and wildly embellishes for dramatic purposes. Express hate toward and blame one or both parents rather than accept personal responsibility because parents—and especially their religion—make for easy scapegoats. Finally, cue the phony crocodile tears from Remini and co-host Mike Rinder and show them with their mouths agape, all of it no doubt cynically rehearsed and shot using multiple takes to look “spontaneous” and ensure the most flattering lighting and camera angles.
Remini is on record admitting she doesn’t vet her sources and that A&E’s legal department is perfectly content to let her get away with it.
As Remini’s latest episode shows, it doesn’t even matter if a parent being smeared is dead, because Remini and her enablers at A&E led by Nancy Dubuc, are so cynical they couldn’t care less about vilifying a warm-hearted, loving and respected parent if they can make money and spread hate doing it. After all, Remini is on record admitting she doesn’t vet her sources and that A&E’s legal department is perfectly content to let her get away with it.
Remini’s latest quintessential unvetted “victim” is fellow member of the trashy reality TV club, Love and Hip Hop’s Mimi Faust, whose credits include an arrest for domestic battery and who is best known for getting the tabloid attention she craved by leaking a sex tape for money. After lying publicly that the tape was inside stolen luggage, she later admitted when called out about it that she was behind the scheme all along.
Mimi’s fabricated tale of victimhood orchestrated by Remini centers around her claim that she was abandoned as a child by her Scientologist mother and left wayward in the streets of Los Angeles. But her tale is provably false, full of holes and contradicted by living, breathing sources who were good friends with her mother that Remini and A&E never sought out. That’s because the last thing Remini and A&E want is to contradict the fake narratives Remini and Rinder cook up week after week.
Here is what really happened: As a young teenager Mimi expressed a desire to live with the family of a close friend and schoolmate, Diana Wittenberg. Mimi’s mother Olaiya had remarried, and Mimi did not get along with her new stepfather. Mimi’s mother was working in the Church’s religious order. Mimi didn’t want to join, and Olaiya respected her decision. Olaiya arranged with Diana’s stepmother, Helaine, for Mimi to live with them.
The Wittenbergs covered Mimi’s food and clothes, saw that she got her schooling, took her shopping and cared for her. At no time was Mimi left without an adult to care for her and give her guidance. According to a sworn declaration from Helaine, Mimi and her mother loved each other, spoke regularly and frequently saw each other. “At no time was Mimi homeless,” Helaine stated in the declaration. She further stated that at no time did Mimi ever mention being pressured to join the Sea Organization.
“She did quite well in school and had a lot of friends,” Helaine said.
Helaine said the false portrait of Olaiya painted by Remini as someone who heartlessly abandoned her daughter is disgusting.
“Olaiya had this huge warm heart,” Helaine said. “She loved people. She was very, very affectionate. She was very, very outgoing. All she wanted to do was help. She wanted to help people. She loved Mimi. She wanted to make sure that her daughter was doing well. She was in communication with her quite often. And she was just a big warm person.”
And, Helaine said, Mimi’s claim now that she was something of a street urchin tossed out to fend for herself and labeled a “freeloader” by the Church is pure dramatic fiction. In truth, she said, Mimi’s life was uneventful and very normal.
“Mimi had a very non-eventful life. She went to school. She had boyfriends. She dated. She pretty much did what she wanted to do and was happy about it,” Helaine said.
Another friend of Mimi’s mother, Judy Mercy, says that Mimi’s Remini-orchestrated portrayal of Olaiya couldn’t be further from the truth. She notes that Olaiya fought in the civil rights movement and was a fighter, something 180 degrees from what Mimi and Remini portray. “She’s talking about something else entirely different from the way her mother was,” Judy says.
After a few years of living with the Wittenbergs, Mimi briefly moved in with her aunt and cousin in South Los Angeles, then as a young adult moved to Atlanta, where she stayed with a boyfriend. Helaine continued to stay in touch with Mimi up through as late as 2012. During all those years that Helaine knew Mimi, at no time did she ever claim that she had been pressured to sign a Sea Org contract. She simply chose not to become a member, which her mother respected. In fact, Helaine recalled that Mimi never said anything negative about Scientology, that she said she learned a lot from the religion and that she knew that the Church was helping people.
In 2003, Olaiya was diagnosed with cancer. She traveled from Clearwater, where she worked for the Church, to the world-class City of Hope cancer hospital in Duarte, California, before passing away that October. A member of the Church’s medical liaison office, Valerie Demange, coordinated her care and treatment, staying by her side to make sure she had what was needed. Mimi was fully informed of her mother’s illness and came to see her mother before she died. Once again, at no time did Mimi express any unhappiness with her mother or with the Church.
Following her mother’s death, Mimi had issues of her own. In 2009, she was arrested and booked on domestic battery charges. In July 2012, Mimi was cast in the reality TV show Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, with one episode staging a farewell to her mother nine years after her passing in which she says she promised her mother she would spread her ashes in a river after she died. The website Got Gossip, noting how long it had been since her mother had passed away, questioned whether it was just a cynical ratings ploy, writing “Why Mimi waited all these years until she was on reality TV to do this, we don’t know. But far be it from us to cast aspersions on the motivations of a woman using her dead mother for a plot line.”
Mimi’s hostility toward the Church started in 2012, nearly a decade after her mother’s death, when she hooked up with “Backpage” Tony Ortega to bash the Church seeking personal publicity and attention. Prior to then, she never expressed any complaints.
At the time, Ortega was editor of The Village Voice, whose parent company was making a mint via Backpage.com, which countless law enforcement officials have said is the world’s worst online cesspool for child prostitution and human trafficking. In addition to his day job in which he ranted about Scientology—something he knows nothing about—Ortega was defender-in-chief of the cash cow pimping operation run by his bosses, attacking any media outlet like CNN or any celebrities who dared to expose it.
Ortega was defender-in-chief of the cash cow pimping operation run by his bosses, attacking any media outlet like CNN or any celebrities who dared to expose it.
Once it was in the hands of “Backpage” Tony, Mimi’s story took a U-turn and became how she was allegedly kicked out of the Church because she would not sign a contract with the Church. Ortega claimed that Mimi was abandoned and left homeless. Yet another Ortega article written in August 2012 contradicted the narrative of an uncaring parent when former Scientologist Kirsi Paul stated that “Olaiya had spoken about her children … particularly Mimi and it was obvious that she loved her. … That was my impression, that she was not indifferent about her family to be sure.”
In 2014, Mimi resorted to reality TV’s as a sure-fire way to get tabloid publicity —“leaking” a sex video. This one was with her reality co-star Nikko London, with the story spread at the time that it had been safely hidden in stolen luggage. But in June 2015, US Weekly reported that Mimi admitted to intentionally leaking her sex tape and that she and her boyfriend recorded more graphic footage with porn giant Vivid Entertainment to make even more money. She boasted that she “gets a check every quarter for the rest of my life.” Hollywood Life reported that Mimi made more than $100,000 from the tape from “Scandal in Atlanta,” which was a “Best Celebrity Sex Tape” nominee at the annual AVN Awards, known as the “Oscars of porn.”
Like Remini and other reality TV actresses, Mimi has whipped up other tabloid controversies to stay in the spotlight. In April 2016, her daughter was exploited through articles that claimed her fans were allegedly upset over Mimi’s lesbian relationship and how it might affect her daughter. That was followed by an article in October 2016 that claimed her sex tape “killed her dad.”
Just this past May, she got into a feud with another cast member of Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, Joseline Hernandez, about a restraining order aimed at keeping Hernandez away from Mimi’s daughter. Mimi claimed that Hernandez had attacked Mimi twice and threatened more violence multiple times.
Mimi herself had a record of domestic violence when she was booked and charged with battery and released on $2,500 bond.
Now to get attention, Mimi’s manufacturing drama and a hopeful payout with Leah Remini by making claims that she knows are false and lets A&E and Remini drag the name of her respected, loving mother through the mud for profit.
Mimi herself had a record of domestic violence when she was booked and charged with battery and released on $2,500 bond.
“I think it’s totally disgusting that a person like Leah Remini would use the life of a person who is now dead,” Helaine said. “A person that was very, very warmhearted, very, very affectionate. All Olaiya wanted to do was to help people. And for Leah Remini to use the name of this person in such a way to make money is just completely wrong.”
“I think it’s totally disgusting that a person like Leah Remini would use the life of a person who is now dead,” Helaine said. “A person that was very, very warmhearted, very, very affectionate. All Olaiya wanted to do was to help people. And for Leah Remini to use the name of this person in such a way to make money is just completely wrong.”
Nearly lost in Remini’s C-level celebrity episode is Christi Gordon, a very disturbed woman who begged for years to be part of the Church and who was kicked out not once but three times. In each case she was found unqualified to stay due to promiscuous and unethical behavior.
Gordon is a classic example of how Remini is so desperate to spread hate she must go back decades—Gordon was kicked out of the Church 33 years ago. Nonetheless, count on Remini and A&E to dishonestly make it look like these unvetted sources just left yesterday.
Each time, Christi claimed she had reformed and preyed on the sympathies and goodwill of Church staffers to let her back in. But throughout her time in the Church, there were several reports of Christi caught stealing or being a key suspect in a series of thefts.
One of the Church reviews to determine Christi’s fitness to remain in the Church made it a condition of her staying that she return clothes and other items she stole. But Christi’s behavior only got worse.
Finally, she was kicked out for the last time in 1984 and assisted to set up a life and get a job. Unfortunately, a friend Christi moved in with later reported that Christi had stolen some of the friend’s mother’s clothes including a $300 lace nightgown. According to the report from this friend, Christi at first denied having taken it, then sent a note to the friend’s mother confessing that she took it.
Now Christi tells tales on TV about alleged events that happened more than three decades ago, hoping there is a pot of gold waiting for her at the end of Remini’s delusional rainbow—just like all the other “unvetted” sources Remini scrapes together.
The bottom line: Christi was disturbed from an early age, did not qualify for Church staff, should never have been allowed to join and never changed her deceitful ways. Now Christi tells tales on TV about alleged events that happened more than three decades ago, hoping there is a pot of gold waiting for her at the end of Remini’s delusional rainbow—just like all the other “unvetted” sources Remini scrapes together.
As Remini’s latest episode shows, manipulating the narrative to create “victims” who blame their parents and their faith is the weekly modus operandi of A&E to generate hate, ratings and profits. Proof of that was a recent quote from Marie Billheimer, featured in a previous episode, to “Backpage” Tony on how Remini’s producers tried to get her to disparage her mother: “I tried to protect my mom while I was being interviewed for Leah's show. The story was about Aaron. When the off-camera producer started questioning along that line, I stopped and said I didn't want to trash my mom, that that's not what this was about.”
