Mark Rathbun reveals a firsthand account of Mike Rinder’s stunt to “see his son,” which in truth was done to save Rinder’s face.
He says in the thing that he—he says in this story that he, Mike Rinder says that he moved to Clearwater so that he would be visible to his son Benjamin who was working in Clearwater. I was there. Never came up. He moved to Clearwater because I got him a free ride gig with a guy that would pay him to do nothing but talk out about Scientology. Nothing to do with Benjamin, his son.
Okay. To highlight the point, I don’t know, a few months after he was there, Rinder took great offense to the fact that the Church was responding to him attacking the Church by saying, “Well, he left his kids behind and doesn’t care about them,” right. And he would bemoan that over and over and over again, right. And so I said, “Hey, if it bothers you that much that people are saying that, why don’t we go down and attempt to go see your kid. The Church isn’t going to let us, and therefore we can put it on tape, and it can show that you did have concern for your kid but they didn’t allow it to happen.” Oh, Rinder was all happy about that. “That sounds great.”
It had nothing to do with seeing his kid, alright. Because he knew it was going to be rejected. It had to do with his own personal reputation and him responding to accusations that were made about him in public. And when we went to the Fort Harrison, the Church’s headquarters in Clearwater, as predicted, they said, “You can’t come here,” and they gave us a trespassing warning. “You’ve got to leave. And in fact we called the police.” So I said, “Hang on. Let’s wait and see the police. So the police showed up, and the police said, “We’re giving you a trespass warning. You got to leave.” I explained to them why we were there—that Mike wanted to see his son, who worked there. And the cop said, “Hey, I can go in there and see him. And in the presence of nobody, tell him that you’re here to see him. And if he wants to come, we’ll escort him right out to see you, if it’s, you’re worried, as you say, that the Church isn’t allowing it to happen.”
Rinder’s like, “No, no, that’s okay.” I said, “No, no, let’s do it.” He didn’t want to do it. I said, “Let’s do it.” So it put him in a bad position and the cop said, “Okay.” And the cop went in there—20-30 minutes later came back. And he said, “I got to talk to him alone and Benjamin doesn’t want to see you. And he’s an adult. And it’s his red, white and blue American-born right to exercise that prerogative.”
You know, Rinder has stated that he was the great warrior for Scientology, right—without ever disclosing anything that he ever did that was nefarious. Just saying that he did—that he silenced people, and he was the hit man. But nobody ever got hit, and there was no silencing that we’ve heard of. And so she, Remini exonerates him of all this and says, “You’re fighting now against the Church so you’re on the right side of the fight now.” End of quote, right. And this is what I’m talking about. He’s absolved by the fact that he’s on board with this cult.
ON-SCREEN TITLE: ASC (Anti-Scientology Cult)
This cult that says that they’re the enemy and anything you do in furtherance of weakening the enemy is A-Okay.
And so, the thing—the crux of the story that keeps on being replayed with Rinder is, this great justification that he must continue to crusade against Scientology, because of his two children that are in Scientology, okay. And they omit the fact that he left with Scientology—he left Scientology without ever reaching out to or making any kind of gesture whatsoever to any of his family, to try to get somebody to go with him, or to explain himself, or to be talked back or to any of that. He just, he just took off, right. Number one.
Number two, he just denigrates his kids. I mean, I have reality on one of them in particular because I know his daughter Taryn. I probably worked more closely with her than he ever did, based on my position in the Church, because she was in the technical, Qualifications division. And so I had a lot of back and forth. And I mean—and I’ve had this conversation with Rinder. I mean, he knows. I’ve made this known to him and he hasn’t disagreed. His continuing to crusade, his continuing to denigrate Scientology, his continuing to belittle Scientology, okay, is the worst possible thing he could ever do in terms of ever reconciling with his son and daughter. And yet he continues to do it.
I mean, it goes to new extremes in this series with Remini, to the point where he literally makes statements that are denigrating to Taryn and Benjamin, personally, saying, “There couldn’t possibly be any reason”—“There couldn’t possibly be any input in the decision for them to not be in communication with me.” In other words, they are just mindless automatons who are taking orders from the Church.
First of all, he doesn’t—he has no basis to know that, because he chose to leave, what, eight years earlier, now? By the way, you know, the time just gets screwed around with—we don’t realize, all this happened eight years ago, right—nine years ago. Ten years ago. It’s ten years ago now. I mean, that’s how long ago this is. And they make it sound like it’s all—this is all new, fresh stuff. He left ten years ago, with a “good riddance,” essentially, to them, Benjamin and Taryn.
And—so what it amounts to, literally, is he’s, Mike Rinder is literally being paid by Leah Remini to go up there and denigrate and call his kids a bunch of mindless automatons and then have the temerity to say, “Hey, this is all I can do. I’m doing this for my children.” It’s really sick, it’s really twisted.
