America’s Most Unwanted The New Yorker—if you wonder why they don't use photographs, here's your answer…
This is the rogues’ gallery of apostates Paul Haggis banded with and who became reporter Lawrence Wright’s sources for his New Yorker “profile.” These are the individuals Wright relied on for his long-intended hatchet job on the Church of Scientology and each was endorsed by the magazine’s editors.
As Haggis himself said: “I have a perverse pride in being a member of a group that people shun.”
He’s in good company—any rational person would consider them well worth shunning.
Tom DeVocht
Jason Beghe
Claire Headley
Marty Rathbun
Mike Rinder
Amy Scobee
Marc Headley
Jeff Hawkins
>> Tom Devocht: A former Church construction manager. By his own admission, he is an unrepentant liar and is proud of it. Indeed, he boasts there is nothing wrong with lying for financial gain, so long as “you don't get caught.” After having already been given multiple chances to redeem himself for past failings and work-related mess-ups, he was caught making unauthorized expenditures of large sums of Church funds on failed construction projects. He was immediately removed from any position of authority. This pathological liar then left the Church in 2005, never to return. Uncovered after his departure, courtesy of Marty Rathbun, was that Rathbun and DeVocht had coached witnesses to lie in a protracted legal case in Florida. DeVocht had kept this from everyone while he was in the Church, even his wife. Yet again, keeping things from his wife wasn't new for DeVocht who admitted to having sold two of his wife's cars while she was out of town, then pocketing and spending the money. He also frittered away over $100,000 of her inheritance and shortly before he left the Church forever, admitted to having stolen cash from his now ex-wife's grandmother on their wedding day.(See Tom DeVocht: Consummate Con Man in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
>> Jason Beghe: No stranger to law enforcement, here is apostate Beghe after being convicted of battery on an officer of the court, to whom he was ordered to pay $11,625.37 in medical costs. Beghe pled no contest and now has a criminal record. He was sentenced to a year of probation and restitution of all damages. If he violates any of the court-ordered conditions, it's off to the slammer. But curiously, despite that all this happened while Lawrence Wright was working on his article, none of it appeared in TheNewYorker. Yet even the threat of jail time hasn't curbed Beghe's violent tendencies. He's reportedly under investigation, again for alleged assault–this time against a handyman who Beghe felt had mishandled a weed whacker while working on his property. That Beghe is now running with the aforementioned Anonymous criminal terrorist group makes perfect sense. As if to prove himself worthy of the group's company, he posted an Internet video rant in which he used a certain expletive more than 300 times. He further described himself in these terms: “I was a drug indulger,” and “You know what I do, you know, Internet porn. ...” Given all of the above, there is little question as to why Rathbun decided to use a photo of him and Beghe arm in arm to launch his website, announcing Beghe as his poster boy. Cut from the same violent and perverted cloth, they are a perfect match. (See Jason Beghe: Apostate Poster Boy and Hollywood Psycho in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
>> Marc and Claire Headley: The apostate husband-and-wife team and card-carrying members of Anonymous appear here in good company. Trumping Hawkins and Scobee, the Headleys have not only attended gatherings of Anonymous, but Marc regularly posts on their sites (often scatological hate-filled rants), helps organize and participates in their events and proudly carries on posing for photos at their gatherings. Not satisfied with just being party to hate crimes against their former religion, the apostate couple recently filed suit against the Church. The only problem, their suits were resoundingly dismissed by a federal judge. The Headleys were further required to pay the Church $40,000. That didn't stop them from attempting to use Lawrence Wright and the pages of TheNewYorker to continue to promote their allegations and bitter apostates' tales. Moreover, during the case Headley was forced under oath to reveal his sideline career as paid “tabloid source.” From the stand he had to name the publications and the payments he'd received. Among them was a $10,000 payday with the lowest of them all, the now defunct NewsoftheWorld. Despite his Internet-based fantasy tales about his departure from the Church, the real story is Headley took off on the eve of an internal investigation into his selling Church-owned property on eBay. The scheme ultimately netted over $15,000 in Church funds, all of which landed in his personal bank account. Unwilling to face the ramifications of his crime, Headley took off, without a word. (See Marc and Claire Headley: Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
>> Marty "Kingpin" Rathbun: A former external affairs officer, removed from authority within the Church eight years ago for gross malfeasance. His mug shot is courtesy of the New Orleans Police who supplied it after Rathbun was arrested for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct on July 10, 2010. It was the same day he signed a false declaration in a failed lawsuit that occupied a prominent place in TheNewYorker's story. (See For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.) This was not Rathbun's first foray into false attestations to a court of law nor was getting arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct his greatest legal infraction–not by a long shot. He has previously admitted to obstruction of justice, suborning perjury and, for good measure, assault. The latter was inflicted on his now “best good buddy” and fellow apostate Mike Rinder who he nearly killed with his bare hands. It took five grown men to pry him off Rinder. (See A Brief Chronology of Monumental Disasters
and Marty Rathbun: A History of Hidden Violence in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.) And Rathbun is quick to confess his crimes, as in admitting to the obstruction of justice in a protracted legal case to an interviewer from a regional tabloid. Rathbun admitted to destroying evidence and coaching witnesses to lie to authorities. During the interview, Rathbun implicated fellow apostate Tom DeVocht in the same crime. All of it conveniently copped to after the statute of limitations had run out and none of it revealed to Church officials until his online revelation. (See Marty Rathbun: A Liar is a Coward; a Perjurer is a Criminal in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.) When a TV journalist called him on his behavior and asked whether he should be taking responsibility for what he now admits doing rather than blaming others, Rathbun's response was simply, “No.”
>> Mike Rinder: An erstwhile external affairs officer removed from post for gross malfeasance. Rinder walked away from his Church, his wife and two children. When Rinder's wife, daughter and brother, who flew in from Australia, went to see him, Rinder's “welcome” was an attack that left his brother injured and the mother of his children in the care of paramedics. She sustained nerve damage to her arm still healing almost a year later and a dislocated shoulder requiring surgery to repair. (See Mike Rinder: A Walking “Hate Crime” in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.) Then, to show he's a real family man, he went on a paid anti-Scientology media junket to Australia and tricked his way into his elderly mother's retirement home while she was away on vacation. He rifled through her belongings, snapping photos as trophies. And with that he chalked up another abuse for his résumé, as the senior Mrs. Rinder is a founding member of Scientology in Australia going back five decades and wants nothing to do with her estranged son, owing to his vicious attacks on the Church she helped establish in Australia. Rinder can now be seen in online videos fishing with his “best good buddy” Marty Rathbun–the man who almost killed him with his bare hands. When asked about the violent incident by a reporter and if it was in fact true Rathbun had nearly choked Rinder to death requiring five grown men to pull Rathbun off him, Rinder's response was, in all seriousness, “I think it was four guys, not five.” (See The Kinky Relationship in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.) Yet it was later discovered that this was not Rinder and Rathbun's only collaboration. That is, they had both conspired for years to hide from the Church's ecclesiastical leader their roles in the conspiracy to conceal Rathbun and DeVocht's suborning of perjury and obstruction of justice. (See A Liar is a Coward; A Perjurer is a Criminal in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
>> Amy Scobee: She was dismissed from the Church in 2005 for sexual misconduct. According to her own sworn affidavits, while a member of the Church's religious order, a then-married Scobee pursued extramarital affairs on at least five occasions. In the process, she committed one of the gravest offenses of Church ecclesiastical law. In her own words, “I committed a severe violation of Church scriptures and engaged in an affair; in fact with the person whom I was supposedly helping. ... I was also this person's auditor [counselor], and my actions were a serious violation of the Auditor's Code, a sacred ethics code that governs the conduct of auditors.” Prior to that, in 2003, she had been removed from any position in Church management for gross incompetence. Now reveling in her apostate role, she's a well-practiced “source” whose services are open to all and sundry. In particular, she willingly renders said services to her cohorts in the cyberterrorist organization Anonymous, a group currently under investigation by the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Attorneys' Office, Department of Justice Hate Crimes division and other local and international law enforcement agencies with 40 arrested in the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Turkey so far, not to mention 16 just recently arrested in the U.S. (See Amy Scobee: Sex, Lies and the Blogosphere in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
>> Marc and Claire Headley: The apostate husband-and-wife team and card-carrying members of Anonymous appear here in good company. Trumping Hawkins and Scobee, the Headleys have not only attended gatherings of Anonymous, but Marc regularly posts on their sites (often scatological hate-filled rants), helps organize and participates in their events and proudly carries on posing for photos at their gatherings. Not satisfied with just being party to hate crimes against their former religion, the apostate couple recently filed suit against the Church. The only problem, their suits were resoundingly dismissed by a federal judge. The Headleys were further required to pay the Church $40,000. That didn't stop them from attempting to use Lawrence Wright and the pages of TheNewYorker to continue to promote their allegations and bitter apostates' tales. Moreover, during the case Headley was forced under oath to reveal his sideline career as paid “tabloid source.” From the stand he had to name the publications and the payments he'd received. Among them was a $10,000 payday with the lowest of them all, the now defunct NewsoftheWorld. Despite his Internet-based fantasy tales about his departure from the Church, the real story is Headley took off on the eve of an internal investigation into his selling Church-owned property on eBay. The scheme ultimately netted over $15,000 in Church funds, all of which landed in his personal bank account. Unwilling to face the ramifications of his crime, Headley took off, without a word. (See Marc and Claire Headley: Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
>> Jeff Hawkins: A former Church copywriter who was dismissed in 2005 for sordid misconduct. Hawkins holds the dubious distinction of not only lying to his wife and colleagues about said aberrant conduct, he also blatantly lied about his execution of the directions of Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard. When that most egregious act came to light, together with his generally dismal performance, it led to his removal from the Church altogether. He is now a member of the cyberterrorist organization known as Anonymous. The group is under federal investigation for hate crimes against the Church of Scientology–with two of its members serving time in federal prison for destruction of Church property—not to mention 40 of its members arrested in europe while 16 were recently arrested during a one-day raid by the FBI in the U.S. despite this fact, Hawkins continues to be a regular fixture at the group’s attempts to harass Scientologists at their place of worship. (See Jeff Hawkins: Sympathy for the Devil in Freedom's Special Report: The Posse of Lunatics.)
It’s unlikely any of these characters are subscribers to The New Yorker. But then again, three serial batterers, one sexual deviant and two litigants looking for a payday apparently make for a perfect group of New Yorker sources. Trustworthy, dependable and all-around model citizens—with sources like these, who needs subscribers?