Mark "Marty" Rathbun the bully

MARTY RATHBUN ROUTINELY ACTED LIKE A BULLY TOWARDS HIS FELLOW STAFF MEMBERS

“I engaged in a campaign to covertly and systematically take out and undermine any executive or staff who might expose me.” – Mark “Marty” Rathbun

I have known Marty Rathbun since 1984.

In the entire time that I knew Rathbun as a Church staff member, which was from 1984 until he deserted the Church in 2004, he was always working either on external affairs of the Church or internal investigations, such as to find out why a project or program was overdue.  He chronically fouled up legal and other external matters he was meant to handle and, on ethics matters within the Church, instead of applying the standard investigatory procedures as laid out by Mr. Hubbard in Scientology policies, Rathbun would often use intimidation and physical violence, though the Scientology ethics codes are clearly against such actions.  He routinely acted like a bully towards his fellow staff members, using physical force and threats of physical force to intimidate people—usually on persons who were of a smaller physical size than he.

Marty Rathbun’s behavior was irrational and bizarre in the extreme. In one instance, as I was leaving an office and stepping onto the sidewalk, Rathbun walked up to me.  I thought he was coming up to say something to me, and I paused in front of him.  Without any preamble or warning, he punched me in the jaw with his fist.  I fell back against the screen door of the building and stumbled sideways. I was not only in pain but in shock from the surprise of it.  He then turned and walked away without saying a word.  I thought he must have gone completely psychotic.

In another instance I observed Rathbun in a rage, throwing an executive up against a file cabinet repeatedly while screaming at him.  He then stormed out of the office, leaving the executive shaken, upset and confused.  Rathbun was not investigating anything or doing anything even vaguely resembling an application of Scientology ethics policy, nor did his action facilitate getting a project completed or a report submitted.  He was terrorizing an executive, period.

I witnessed Marty Rathbun stride up to Mike Rinder while Rinder was speaking to a group of about 40 other staff, and violently tackle him to the floor.  Once Rathbun had him down on the floor, he straddled his body and proceeded to choke Rinder, while asking him some question I could not discern. Rathbun kept on choking Rinder, while also pounding his head against the floor repeatedly and demanding that he answer the question, but Rinder was unable to answer Rathbun’s questioning because he was being choked and could not speak.  His face was contorted and very red.  Rathbun still hadn’t let go of him and finally several men had to forcibly pull him off.  At that point Rathbun let Rinder go, and he stood up.  Rinder’s face and neck were very red, he was shaking and he was still having trouble both breathing and speaking.

Looking back on this I note the pattern is that Rathbun conducted his acts of physical violence when Mr. Miscavige was away from the base.

Staff were in terror of Rathbun and usually did not report his psychotic behavior out of fear of reprisal.

Rathbun had very minimal technical training, and what he did have was done on a correction program.  He trained to Class V in 1995 and asserted that he had interned.  In Scientology policy, certificates are provisional for one year until one does the internship for that level—meaning auditing under professional technical staff to become competent—and if the auditor does not do the internship in that allotted time, his certificate expires.  Following his departure I found that Rathbun never did a single internship and the certificates for the courses he did in 1995 expired a year later.  He continued to audit without a valid certificate, a High Crime in Scientology. He further pretended he had trained on an advanced level (Class IX) when he had never completed the course, another High Crime.

In 2003, after continuing to cause even more trouble on external matters, Rathbun was dismissed from Religious Technology Center altogether by Mr. Miscavige.

Based on reports that had accumulated on Rathbun, I reviewed case folders and session reports of staff he had “audited” and these showed he had been altering the technology, inventing his own versions of auditing procedures and refusing to apply it as written by L. Ron Hubbard (called squirreling). Rathbun committed violations of the Auditor’s Code, which are some of the most serious High Crimes that can be committed in the Scientology religion.  These acts included scolding and belittling a person in during that person’s auditing, getting angry at the person—including screaming at and threatening him during session—attempting to run auditing sessions late at night when the person was too tired and even walking into an auditing room while an auditing session was taking place and berating both the auditor and the person who was being audited.  In a single time period of only a few weeks he violated 15 out of a total of 29 clauses of the Auditor’s Code.

Rathbun was covert in his squirreling and hid what he was doing by avoiding sending the person to the examiner after a session, falsely reporting in the case folder what he’d done in session and often not turning in the folder to a Case Supervisor for inspection—in one instance giving 30 consecutive sessions to one person without sending the folder to a Case Supervisor. The technical violations he committed are criminal and are of the level of crime that, per the Scientology Justice Codes, can result in a person being expelled and barred from the Church.

Despite everything, he was still given a chance to straighten himself out and start following the technology and policy as written by L. Ron Hubbard, but he refused.  His pretended authority was now gone and he hated it. And, in 2004, he again ran away.

Squirrel then, squirrel now.

A Staff Member