Scientology in 2026: Masterson, Remini, and What the Latest Wave Reveals

On 7 September 2023, in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles, Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo sentenced Daniel Peter Masterson — That '70s Show actor, lifelong Scientologist, and son of a Sea Org member — to 30 years to life in California state prison on two counts of forcible rape. The convictions, returned by a unanimous jury on 31 May 2023 after a hung-jury mistrial in November 2022, named three Church of Scientology members as the complainants. The two women whose accounts produced convictions had spent years inside the organisation; both testified that Scientology's internal-discipline architecture — the auditing files, the disconnection threat, the Suppressive Person designation — was used against them when they considered reporting. The third complainant testified compellingly but the jury did not convict on her count.

The Masterson conviction is the most-significant Scientology criminal case in a generation. It is also one strand of a three-strand wave of pressure on the Church of Scientology that has produced more sustained scrutiny of the organisation since 2022 than the previous twenty years combined. This essay walks through the three strands — Masterson, Remini, Rinder — and asks what the BITE framework predicts about where the organisation goes from here.

Strand one: the Masterson trial as institutional X-ray

The most-revealing aspect of the Masterson trial was not the verdict itself but the institutional X-ray the prosecution produced. To convict in California rape cases requires evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and the Scientology-internal-procedure layer of the case made that bar genuinely difficult to clear in 2017–2019 when the LAPD originally investigated. What changed by 2022 was that the Mike Rinder, Marty Rathbun, Tony Ortega, and Aaron Smith-Levin ex-member-content infrastructure had produced enough public documentation of Scientology's internal-discipline architecture that a jury could understand the procedural barriers the complainants had faced.

Specifically, the prosecution established at trial:

• That Scientology's auditing confessional system produces Pre-Clear folders that retain a member's recorded confessions, and that members understand these can be used against them if they consider leaving or reporting. The complainants had each spent years in auditing.
• That Scientology's Knowledge Reports and Ethics Conditions framework treats reporting another member to civil authorities as a Suppressive Act — meaning the reporting member would themselves be declared a Suppressive Person and subject to mandatory disconnection by their family and friends.
• That the Office of Special Affairs (OSA) — Scientology's legal-PR-intelligence arm — has a documented history of pre-emptive litigation, private-investigator surveillance, and counter-narratives painting accusers as bad-faith Suppressive Persons. The prosecution called Mike Rinder, the former International Spokesperson, as an expert witness on OSA's documented practices.

The conviction does not mean Scientology will reform. The organisation has weathered convictions before — Operation Snow White in 1979, the French Celebrity Centre in 2009, and substantial civil litigation throughout. What the conviction does mean is that the institutional X-ray — the public documentation of how Scientology's internal procedures function as a structural barrier to reporting — is now part of an admitted-evidence record in a US criminal trial.

Strand two: the Remini lawsuit as RICO-shaped instrument

On 2 August 2023, Leah Remini filed a 60-page complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court (Case No. 23STCV18416) against the Church of Scientology International, the Religious Technology Center, David Miscavige personally, and several Doe defendants. The complaint alleges defamation, harassment, stalking, and intentional infliction of emotional distress through OSA-coordinated campaigns since her 2013 departure and the 2016 launch of the Aftermath docuseries.

The Remini lawsuit is structurally interesting because it reads as a deliberately RICO-shaped civil instrument. The complaint does not name a federal RICO cause of action, but the factual allegations — coordinated harassment campaigns through multiple corporate entities (CSI, RTC, IAS, OSA), private-investigator surveillance, fake-website harassment infrastructure, social-media-amplification networks — are exactly the pattern that produced the NXIVM federal RICO conviction in 2019. The 2024–2025 discovery phase is producing OSA-internal documents that prior litigation has not surfaced.

Whether the Remini lawsuit succeeds at trial is genuinely uncertain. Anti-SLAPP motions and First Amendment defences favour the Church; the Church's documented pattern of grinding plaintiffs into settlement through litigation cost is well-established (Tobin/Childs Tampa Bay Times 2009; Wright 2013). But the lawsuit produces a parallel discovery record to the Masterson trial and feeds the broader documentation infrastructure.

Strand three: Mike Rinder's A Billion Years

Mike Rinder's A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology (Simon & Schuster, September 2022) is the most-substantial insider memoir since Lawrence Wright's Going Clear (2013) and the most-substantial first-person-account-by-a-senior-defector since Marty Rathbun's books in the early 2010s.

What makes Rinder's account different from prior memoirs is the granularity. Rinder spent 27 years in the Sea Org senior bench, served as International Spokesperson during the period covered by the Tampa Bay Times's 'Truth Rundown' series, and personally witnessed events at Int Base that he could not previously discuss because of pending litigation. A Billion Years corroborates and extends:

• The Hole at Int Base. Rinder confirms in detailed first-person testimony the existence and operation of the two double-wide trailers near Hemet California in which David Miscavige confined senior staff (sometimes for years) from approximately 2004 onwards. Rinder names specific individuals, durations, and the documented physical assaults he witnessed.
• OSA's surveillance operations. Rinder describes the operational logic of the Office of Special Affairs's monitoring of journalists, ex-members, and family members of ex-members — including private-investigator hires, fake-blog infrastructure, and what Rinder calls 'noisy investigations' designed to intimidate.
• Sea Org labour conditions. Rinder confirms 80+ hour work-weeks, sub-minimum-wage pay (~$50/week historically), surrender of passports and personal documents, and the disciplinary architecture (Ethics Conditions, RPF, the Hole) that enforces compliance.

Read alongside Wright (2013), Reitman (2011), and Jenna Miscavige Hill's Beyond Belief (2013), Rinder's account makes the institutional structure of Scientology one of the best-documented in modern religious-studies literature.

The post-2019 ex-member-content phase

Behind the three high-profile strands is a quieter but possibly more consequential development: the post-2019 emergence of substantial ex-member YouTube and podcast infrastructure. **Aaron Smith-Levin's Growing Up in Scientology YouTube channel (founded 2019, ~350,000 subscribers as of 2024) has become the most-watched ex-Scientology video resource. Smith-Levin grew up in the Sea Org Cadet Org, defected in his twenties, and built a daily-content channel covering current Scientology news, ex-member testimony, and procedural deep-dives into the Bridge to Total Freedom, auditing system, and OT levels. Tony Ortega's The Underground Bunker (tonyortega.org, daily since 2012) is the canonical news-aggregation blog. The Aftermath Foundation** (501c3, founded 2018 by Remini, Rinder, and Smith-Levin) provides direct financial assistance to Sea Org and other Scientology defectors — meaningful because the documented surrender of personal financial assets makes exit-without-support genuinely difficult.

This infrastructure matters because it produces continuous, accessible, daily-updated documentation that prior generations of ex-Scientologists did not have. A current member quietly questioning their organisation can find Smith-Levin's daily videos on their phone in a way no 1990s defector could.

What the BITE framework predicts

The Church of Scientology scores CLCI 37 in this dataset — third-highest after Peoples Temple (Jonestown, 40) and FLDS (39), tied with Aum Shinrikyo. The BITE-framework analysis suggests four trajectories.

1. Continued institutional contraction. Independent membership estimates have dropped from ≈25,000–40,000 active members (2010s) to ≈15,000–30,000 (mid-2020s). The aging member base, the sustained defection wave, and the inability to recruit younger members at replacement rate produce continued contraction. The Church's continued real-estate accumulation — the 2023 Tampa Bay Times 'Real Estate Empire' investigation traced $400M+ in property purchases since 2010 framed as 'Ideal Org' refurbishment — suggests the organisation is converting member-extracted capital into illiquid assets faster than it can recruit replacement members.

2. Continued aggressive litigation. The Church's response to the Remini lawsuit will follow the documented pattern: anti-SLAPP motions, discovery delays, private-investigator surveillance, and counter-narratives. The pattern is structural rather than personality-driven and is unlikely to change while Miscavige remains in control.

3. Eventual succession crisis. David Miscavige is 65 in 2026 and has no designated successor. The Sea Org's documented internal-discipline architecture — particularly the Hole — has produced a senior-staff layer largely composed of Miscavige loyalists rather than independent figures. When succession comes, the BITE-framework prediction is either further institutional contraction under a less-charismatic successor or a 1986-style consolidation under whoever wins the internal struggle.

4. Continued exit-counselling demand. The post-2019 ex-member-content infrastructure suggests demand for cult-recovery resources for Scientology defectors will continue to grow. The Aftermath Foundation, International Cultic Studies Association, and Freedom of Mind Resource Center all maintain Scientology-specific exit-counselling programmes.

What this means for current members

If you or someone you love is currently in Scientology and reading this through what you understand to be a Suppressive blog, the BITE framework's main contribution is naming the architecture you are inside. The auditing folder leverage, the Knowledge Reports, the disconnection threat, the Ethics Conditions, and the KSW absolute-orthodoxy directive are not mysterious — they are well-documented institutional mechanisms with names. Recognising them as mechanisms is the first step in deciding whether you want to remain inside them.

The Aftermath Foundation provides direct financial assistance to defectors. ICSA maintains a cult-aware-therapist directory. Mike Rinder's 'Surviving Scientology' podcast and Aaron Smith-Levin's Growing Up in Scientology YouTube channel both operate as ex-member peer-network entry points.

The 2022–2026 publicity wave does not mean Scientology is collapsing tomorrow. It does mean the institutional X-ray is now in the public record at a level of detail and journalistic-criminal-discovery substantiation that has not previously existed. Whatever happens at the 2024–2025 Remini trial, whatever happens at the appeals of the Masterson conviction, whatever happens to David Miscavige, the documentation produced by the three concurrent strands is now archived, searchable, and available to current members on their phones.

That, more than any single conviction or lawsuit, is what the latest wave reveals.

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This is educational, not legal advice. For specific legal questions, consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction. The Church of Scientology dedicated profile carries the full BITE breakdown, sources, timeline, and recovery-resources list referenced above.