TAMPA, Fla. — Mike Rinder, a former top Scientology spokesperson who later broke away and became one of the church’s most outspoken critics, died Sunday 5 in Palm Harbor due to esophageal cancer. He was 69.

Rinder, who once worked closely with church leader David Miscavige, later went on to win two Emmys for his work on the docuseries “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.”

Rinder was born in Australia and raised as a Scientologist. His parents learned about the church from a neighbor who had gone to a talk by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Rinder wrote that he started regularly attending a local Scientology center as a young child.

Though Rinder earned a scholarship to attend the University of Adelaide, his parents instead pushed him to join the Sea Organization, an elite group that lived and traveled with Hubbard aboard his ship.

“Really, my life was preordained into Scientology,” he wrote in his 2022 book, “A Billion Years.”

Life in the Sea Org

While part of the church, Rinder married a fellow Sea Org member and had two children, though he recalled in his book that he had little time to see them. His focus was working his way up to the top ranks of Scientology. Leading the Office of Special Affairs, he became one of the group’s most prominent spokespeople.

He later would write about how the job required him to smear critics of the church and work with high-profile members, including actor Tom Cruise. Rinder followed the Scientology tradition of “fair game,” attacking anyone who spoke out.

“My days were endless, crammed with keeping track of Scientology’s enemies, conducting programs to neutralize them, putting out fires on the internet, and dealing with the constant celebrity issues,” Rinder wrote.

Former Scientologist Karen de la Carriere said Rinder was a handsome man, with an Australian accent that charmed people.

“Even if a reporter was aggressive, they would kind of be a little bit seduced,” said de la Carriere, who became friends with Rinder in the 1970s. “Reporters can be very hard-nosed, but they’d start off aggressive and be more gentle with Mike Rinder.”

De la Carriere said Rinder suffered for Scientology, enduring beatings and verbal lashings from the group’s leader.

“Whenever you were close with David Miscavige, sooner or later you’re going to fall in extreme punishment,” she said. “There’s no such thing as making a mistake. You are deemed a criminal if error is made.”

Rinder would later go public with how he endured years of living in “The Hole,” a detention center in California where high-ranking members of Scientology slept under desks, ate scraps of leftover food and tortured each other. Rinder wrote about occasionally being removed by Miscavige to speak with reporters.

Mark Bunker, a former Clearwater City Council member and longtime critic of Scientology, remembers seeing Rinder in Clearwater after his time in the Hole.

“He had become so pale and gaunt and thin,” Bunker said. “Your reasoning has to be reshaped so much to have to put up with being in the Hole for two years before you finally break.”

Rinder’s escape

In June 2007, at age 52, Rinder left the church. He wrote about fleeing during a trip to London with “only a briefcase containing my passport, a few papers, a thumb drive and two cell phones.” He snuck away to Central Florida, then Virginia and then Colorado. Fellow defectors helped him find housing and work.

While he hoped his wife and children would come with him, they instead cut Rinder off, a practice known in the church as “disconnecting.”

Tampa Bay Times reporters Joe Childs and Tom Tobin found Rinder while he was living in Colorado. Initially, he declined to be interviewed about his experiences. Then Scientology tracked down Rinder, too.

Rinder wrote that the organization sent lawyers to threaten him and private investigators to keep track of his movements.

“They rented an apartment across from mine, in Westminster, Colorado, to watch me 24/7 through the windows with high-powered cameras and night-vision scopes,” Rinder wrote in his book. “They also took my trash and followed me around for $10,000 per week.”

After this, Rinder reported a determination to share his experiences in what would become The Truth Rundown series, a Tampa Bay Times investigation in 2009. He recounted physical and mental abuse he experienced, including the torture he suffered in the Hole.

Rinder later moved to Florida, where he continued to speak out against the church, from interviews with the media to assisting the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The attacks on him also continued.

Private investigators installed GPS trackers in his cars. Members of the church “instructed my family members to send nasty letters to me … implying I should kill myself.” The church drew out his divorce to his first wife, Rinder explained, “as long as the case was not resolved ... lawyers overseeing it could demand continuously updated financial info from me to see who was supporting me.”

“I knew every move in the Hubbard Fair Game playbook,” he wrote. “It’s a mind game. If they didn’t succeed in getting into my head, I would win.”

Spreading the word

When the HBO documentary “Going Clear” premiered in 2015, Rinder’s profile increased even more. He heard from former Scientologists, elected officials and celebrity defectors like Lisa Marie Presley and Leah Remini.

Remini asked him to help her with a show exposing the abuse she’d witnessed in the church. Rinder became her co-host.

“Families torn apart. Children victimized. Women forced to have abortions. People defrauded. A literal trial of death and destruction,” Rinder wrote. “Many told us for the first time, we had personalized the abuses and given them real, believable faces.”

Despite legal threats and harassment, “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath” ran for three seasons and won two Emmys.

“It really changed the way Scientology was perceived by the public, and it really helped to educate the press on how to talk about Scientology,” said Tony Ortega, a journalist who runs the Scientology blog The Underground Bunker. “I think it surprised everyone how much Mike Rinder became a star as well.”

Bunker said Rinder seemed much happier after he recovered from Scientology and dedicated himself to helping other “people who had been abused.”

“I think that was the healthiest thing he could have done,” he said. “Coming back to the real world was a really important thing for him to do and I think he got a lot of peace.”

Bunker recalled how Rinder helped members of local government understand the tactics used by Scientology.

“To have someone with inside knowledge on how David Miscavige operates and why they would do that was very important for our city manager and city attorney to understand,” Bunker said.

And after years of attacking journalists, Rinder became an ally to them.

“They spy on my wife. They spy on my mother. They’ve sent a private investigator to intimidate my mother. And one of the things was they tried to get my wife in trouble,” Ortega said. “When I told Mike, he was good enough to write a letter, saying ‘look, this is the kind of operation they do,’ and I was able to send that to my wife’s employer.”

The importance of family

After leaving Scientology, Rinder married Christie Collbran. A fellow former Sea Org member, she understood what he’d been through. They lived in Palm Harbor — raising her son, Shane, and a child they had together, Jack.

Before he died, Rinder wrote a statement for his family to share after his passing.

“I have been lucky — living two lives in one lifetime,” he said in his final blog post. “The second one the most wonderful years anyone could wish for with all of you and my new family!”

When he wasn’t working to expose abuse, Rinder sought comfort among others who had been through the same pain. Fellow defector and whistleblower Claire Headley, who has been friends with Rinder since 1991, was one of them.

Like Rinder, she had been cut off by family members who stayed behind in Scientology. Rinder and Christie became her new siblings.

“He had this vision that our kids would grow up in a family of choice as cousins, and that is what we’ve done. We’ve vacationed almost yearly with them,” Headley said. “Our kids are all the best of friends, and it’s a beautiful thing just to be able to have each other and to create this community.”

Rinder co-founded the Aftermath Foundation in 2018 as a way to support people trying to leave Scientology.

“He was a board member, participating in grant review, helping people with attorney connections, helping people get their money back from Scientology,” said Headley, who now serves as the foundation’s president. “It was a long list of advocacy work to help people getting out of Scientology get on their feet, who often have been so isolated from the outside world.”

Rinder never stopped thinking about the people he left behind.

He began his book with a letter written to his children Taryn and Benjamin, who are still involved in the church.

“Since I escaped I have been shouting back over the wall, throwing notes tied around stones, and skywriting to anyone who may look up — attempting to get the message through that there is a big, wide world out there. I hope you can discover the real world for yourselves, too,” he wrote. “No matter what you may think, it is never too late to start over.”

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