Welcome to indoctrination, a weekly conversation series about protecting yourself from systems of control.

I'm your host, Rachel Bernstein.

Hi, everyone.

I want to make sure to mention that a friend and colleague and also someone who's been a guest on the show a couple of times,

Mike Rinder, has unfortunately passed away.

He fought a battle with cancer for quite some time and was valiant and was able to start a whole new life once he left Scientology, even though he had to leave his other one behind,

including a son who he was not able to continue having a relationship with once he left.

And it is incredible to see what can happen and how people can change and how their lives can change once they get

out of a group like Scientology. I remember years and years ago, if anyone heard my conversations

with Mike Rinder, they would have heard us telling these stories, where as a spokesperson for Scientology, he was also taught to be aggressive and to be in your face

and to harass.

And I remember him in, well, trying to intimidate me and getting in the faces of clients of

mine who had come to speak about their experiences in

Scientology, sometimes for the first time, at a conference. But as we had a chance to talk about

it years later, he really did believe that he was, as they were telling him in Scientology,

saving the planet somehow by doing what he was doing.

I remember when he contacted me and we were on Skype at the time.

He was starting his show with Leah Remini and wanted to be able to talk to me about

how to approach helping people tell their stories in a way that wouldn't retramatize them, which was

a really lovely transition that I got to see in him that now with leaving Scientology,

he was able to act with certain sensibilities about not wanting to cause trauma in others.

But when I first saw his face on my screen, I jumped back a bit,

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