How Scientology leader David Miscavige rose to power, according to insiders

After steadily rising through the ranks and becoming Hubbard's most trusted advisor, David Miscavige announced the founder's death in 1986. Hubbard's passing was framed as an intentional decision by him to leave his body in order to go on to even higher levels of spiritual being.

“The core belief of Scientology is that you are a spiritual being," show host Leah Remini explained. "L. Ron Hubbard had reached, obviously, the highest level of Scientology there was to reach, promoting this idea that there’s an afterlife, and he found the answer to it by deciding to discard this body to go explore new OT levels. All of this is bulls--t. L. Ron Hubbard died of a stroke.”

As Hubbard's closest advisor, David assumed the leadership of Scientology. His official title is Chairman of the Board, Religious Technology Center. But according to Mike Rinder, David liked to refer to himself as "the pope of Scientology."

Tom Devocht, who left Scientology in 2005 after 28 years, worked closely for David Miscavige. His job was to work with city authorities for Clearwater, Florida. He said he was often dispatched to carry out outrageous requests from the leader.

Devocht said that his doubt of the church began after David allegedly divulged that he had L. Ron Hubbard's various writings and was going to finish the OT chart.

“It suddenly hit me," Devocht recalled. "Then, it’s a farce that Miscavige himself was going to finish these off. Hubbard died. He’s not some superpower being.”

“You have parishioners believing that L. Ron Hubbard obviously reached the highest level of Scientology there was to reach," Remini said, "that he could actually decide to discard his body, because how else was [David] going to keep Scientology going? What if he came out and said, ‘L. Ron Hubbard has died of a stroke.’ Then, why are we doing all this if we’re just going to die of a stroke?”

"On that base, [David Miscavige] referred to me as Ron," Ron Miscavige said of his relationship with his son. "He never called me dad. I was a staff member... Family connections were considered [by Scientology as] a false dynamic, meaning no spiritual being is the father of another spiritual being."

Jeff Hawkins, who was in charge of church marketing while he was a Scientologist and wrote a book about his experiences called "Counterfeit Dreams," described a violent scene in which David Miscavige was unhappy with an infomercial Hawkins wrote, accused him of crimes against the church, then allegedly physically assaulted him.

"I was scratched up, my shirt was ripped off," Hawkins described. "Everybody [else in the room] was sitting."

Hawkins claimed that David assaulted him on at least five occasions.

Tom Devocht described when David allegedly assaulted him when he couldn't get the city permits to destroy the sidewalks around the Clearwater, Florida headquarters in order to dissuade protestors from standing around the property. Devocht said that even then he blamed himself for failing at the task instead of being angered by David's violent reaction.

Devocht said, “It was, ‘Man, I f--ked up.’ That was the level of control and power that [David] had.”

If the leader believed that someone was guilty of “crimes” against the church, David would allegedly tell other members to get that person to confess their crimes. Often, they would allegedly resort to violence on the member, according to the show's insiders.

“It was like ‘Lord of the Flies’ in there," Rinder, who had detailed his own alleged assault by David on a previous episode, added. "I mean, it was insane. It was literally, ‘I’m going to beat the crap out of you before I get the crap beat out of me.'"

Ron Miscavige says that he and others were monitored around the clock at the Hemet, California headquarters. He described locks on doors, sharp spikes on the gates — both facing out and in — being chaperoned by other members when exiting the facility, the internet being severely filtered and monitored, and all calls being eavesdropped on.

He decided to leave the church after a fatal error by his son. David Miscavige gave his father an Amazon Kindle, which was connected to the internet -- unfettered by the church's filters.

"[Ron] just googled Scientology," Remini said. "And he was hard-pressed to find anything good that the world was saying. He found all the bad things."

In 2011, after 42 years as a Scientology member, Ron Miscavige decided he had to leave. He and his wife planned their escape for six months. They finally were able to do so during a routine trip across the street to the only refrigerator available to him on the campus. The guards were used to them doing the trip once a week and let the couple pass through the gates.

David, Ron's daughters, and their children ended their relationship with he and his wife after they left Scientology, an alleged church policy toward former members called disconnection.

But Ron and his wife weren't totally free from the church. After escaping, police told Ron that he had been followed and surveilled for 18 months by a private investigator hired by the church in 2013. During questioning, the investigator told police that they once mistakenly thought that Ron was having a heart attack. When David was informed, he allegedly told the investigator not to help his father and to let him die, a heartbreaking thing for Ron to hear.