Ex-Scientologist claims he was tasked with 'hiding' John Travolta’s same-sex lover accusations
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: A former prominent member of the Church of Scientology has revealed in his upcoming memoir how he worked hard to conceal John Travolta’s "same-sex lover" accusations. In his soon-to-be-released book — ‘A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology’ — Mike Rinder has also noted about his escape from the church, for which he worked from 1982 to 2007 as a senior executive.
An excerpt from the book reportedly read, “I was tasked with the job of helping John Travolta with some public relations issues. Since the beginning of the '90s, Travolta had been hounded by stories from various alleged male lovers, including one of his former pilots as well as a porn star.”
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The ‘Grease’ star was happily married to Kelly Preston since September 1991 and the two were Hollywood’s favorite couple. But Rinder claimed that the church was still worried because rumors of Travolta being gay could be a PR disaster for the "perfect Scientology couple”. So to prevent that, the church “dug up dirt on the sources of the stories and threatened the media with lawsuits,” which resulted in these stories being "shut down,” Rinder alleged.
In his book, the ex-Scientology leader has also mentioned that he “became a trusted person in John's life.” Rinder’s writing went on to dismiss the claim by a Scientology church spokesperson that the religion is not against gays. He said, "the threat of a story describing a Scientologist as gay would cause panic internally because for a Scientologist, not being 'cured' of homosexuality would indicate that the tech doesn't work.” Writing for The Daily Beast, Rinder gave a detailed idea of his work while being with the church. He noted: “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.”
He also mentioned Michael Jackson, saying he had “the strangest celebrity encounter” with him. The 67-year-old shared, “I became the go-to person in Scientology for Lisa Marie Presley during her marriage to Jacko. Her mother, Priscilla, had become involved in Scientology when Lisa Marie was young, and so she had been raised a Scientologist. She enlisted me in her efforts to convert Michael to Scientology, or at least to convince him to accept it.”
“I gave them both a private tour of the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition. Throughout the tour, Michael was extremely paranoid. He repeatedly dove to the floor, whimpering that he had seen someone taking photographs of him through the windows, though there was no line of sight to any publicly accessible location. Lisa Marie laughed it off and explained that he was always worried about the paparazzi. He was so soft-spoken I could hardly hear him, and his comments and questions were disjointed and childish. She had told me she thought Michael understood her because he had grown up in the media spotlight and never really had a childhood, similar to her own experience as the daughter of the King. But it was not to last—they divorced in 1996,” Rinder added.