Open Letter to Residents of Ingleside on the Bay Texas
Posted on June 26, 2011 by Marty rathbun
June 28 morning update (10:15 a.m.). I just got back from a six mile bike ride. Thanks to the good citizens of IOB I am afforded such luxuries because as you will see a number of unnamed heroes have got my back. I was followed down a relatively desolate 2-lane hiway by a gold sedan manned with spies with cameras. As I returned to IOB I was greeted (in what was supposed to be an ambush) by three people in a golf cart as I rounded the corner into our little town. All of this was witnessed and then reported by locals the moment I arrived home.
June 27 morning update. The incident captured on video immediately below occurred at ten a.m. this morning. It is apparently the Miscavige response to the post that follows:
My name is Mark “Marty” Rathbun. I live at 115 Bayshore Court . My wife Monique and I have been residents of Ingleside on the Bay (IOB) since November 1, 2006. For three years we rented the light blue house at 902 S Sandpiper from Janie and Pat Hunt. We leased a home on the canal on Woodhaven for a year before moving to our present location last November.
Us
I worked for the Coastal Bend Herald (The Conscience of the Coastal Bend) andWe the People monthly newspaper in Corpus Christi and did a number of other writing assignments from essay writing to contribution to an historical book. Until recently Monique worked as a supervisor at Superior Health Care in Corpus Christi.
I worked for the church of Scientology from my twenty-first birthday in January 1978 until Dec 12, 2004. Between 1982 and the time I left the organization I answered to no one but the head of Scientology, David Miscavige.
I moved to IOB primarily to write, fish, boat, and spend some years enjoying some of the fundamental virtues that drive humanity but that I found so lacking during most of my adult life in the church of Scientology.
In 2008 I learned that several former high level Scientology officials had followed my lead and left the church of Scientology. Some of those old friends found me through the internet and came to visit. The more stories I heard about how the organization had continued to deteriorate under Miscavige’s command after my departure, the more I grappled with responsibility for doing something effective for those who continued to suffer in part for my having helped empower what had become a ruthless madman.
I was also urged by many friends to make myself available to help former members “decompress” and make sense of their time within the cult. That necessarily involved application of some of the principles of the philosophy of Scientology. I found many former members of the cult felt most robbed – and the chief reason they stayed in an abusvie, cult-like environment – was their fear of the cruel, well funded attacks Corporate Scientology had become infamous for leveling against those with the temerity to say, as the first Protestants did in 16th Century Europe, “I do not need the imprimatur of a corrupt priest to read, understand and live the words written by the Founder of my chosen faith.”
I put up a website in Feb 2009, which expanded into a blog in July that year, that announced what I intended to do, Moving on up a Little Higher.
Within days Miscavige’s cult took extraordinary measures to intercept three of the first five people who expressed interest in seeing me. Also within days I received requests for interviews from news media around the world. I chose the St Petersburg Times (the largest newspaper in Florida) because I knew its writers and editors, knew they had integrity, they had a lot of experience investigating Scientology for decades and would not back down like other media. The result was a several part series entitled the Truth Rundown. The Times put over three hours of taped interviews with me on their website with the series, where I discuss in detail my entire history with Corporate Scientology from the beginning to the day I left. While I subsequently did a five part series on CNNs’ Anderson Cooper 360, a two-part ABC Nightline special, and an hour-long documentary aired on British Broadcasting Corporation, the Times videos are the most comprehensive, least edited account of my history directly from me. That video interview – organized by topics – can be found at:
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/rathbun.shtml
A consequence of my having spoken out as loudly and thoroughly as I did was the creation of an exodus of sorts from the Scientology cult. Houghton-Mifflin publishing company commissioned a two-year objective study into Scientology. The author of the resultant book (which will be officially released next month) Janet Reitman was interviewed this week by the Editor in Chief of the New York Village Voice, Tony Ortega. She concluded her interview with the following which probably serves as the best explanation why the cult of Scientology’s head David Miscavige has directed unlimited funds be utilized to destroy me utterly:
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/janet-reitman-change-or-die/
Which brings us to the reason for this post now. Many residents of IOB have been surprised, shocked, or simply intrigued at the antics of the cult and its hired private investigators over the past several weeks. Prior to about mid April their activities against me were limited to:
1. Hacking my email.
2. Illegally buying my phone records.
3. Buying my trash from BFI and searching it for any clue they could use against me.
4. Setting up 24/7/365 surveillance of my every move; they have had agents embedded in Ingleside and IOB for over a year.
5. Hacking airline computers to get my flight plans so that every time I left town in the past two years, i) my wife was confronted by two unidentified cult members each time, and ii) I was picked up by teams of private investigators at each destination airport.
6. The hacking of my blog and shutting it down.
7. Putting up 28 websites in attempts to slander and discredit me – including such allegations that my wife is in fact a man and that I murdered my own brother thirty years ago. The cult is well heeled and will invent and publish the most vicious defamation, inviting libel suits so that they can ruin the plaintiff utterly by abuse of court processes.
8. Sending private investigators to every former member who has met with me, multiple times, offering cash incentives to bad mouth me in any way.
9. Sending private investigators to harass each of Monique’s associates, friends, and even her former husband.
10. Sending teams of dummies to put cameras and microphones in my face in restaurants, sidewalks, airports, and other public places, obstructing my path, then bringing bogus assault charges against me for gently guiding them out of my way when they obstruct me, my wife or friends. To give you an idea how insane it gets, they hired a former FBI agent lawyer in Corpus to heavily lobby to have me prosecuted for grasping a microphone they stuck in my face, over my own property line after I had to herd four of them off my doorstep. Four unidentified intruders who traveled from California for the exclusive purpose of harassing me on my doorstep. The county attorney who evaluated the case said she had seen nothing more frivolous in her career (and could not believe anyone in their right minds would spend money to have an attorney try to lobby for such a case). They have done this to me nine times that I am aware of in three states. All nine cases have been heavily lobbied by their expensive lawyers and cop private investigators. All nine have been laughed out of existence by the officials receiving them. Zero for nine.
Here is the unedited video tape of the 17 April incident at my own home referred to above:
Which brings us to the present. Rather than take a hint that their acts are making them abhorrent in the public eye, Miscavige has decided to damn the torpedoes and sink me by any means necessary. In the past two weeks, his blue shirts have made a practice of harassing us daily by overtly training cameras on our home from the street, then travelling to the entrance to Bahia Marina to do the same to the other side of our home. They harass us at Ingleside restaurants. They have added to their couple of covert surveillance properties by leasing real estate in IOB to overtly harass me and my wife.
All harassment efforts are being coordinated by the cult’s chief private investigator, one David Lubow dba Falcon investigations from Los Angeles.
David Lubow – Chief Cult Private Eye
First, they attempted to rent the apartment directly across the canal from our bedroom at Bahia Marina. This photo of their target apartment is taken from our bedroom window:
Luckily, the good people at Bahia caught the investigator lying about his intent and identity and refused on the basis that they would not rent to people attempting to spy on neighbors:
Then, they attempted to purchase several prime lots directly across the canal from our home. Here is the view of the property from our deck:
Again, another true American refused to sell out to the cult.
Finally, under false pretenses, Ralph S Gomez, making big cult dollars working for Lubow, lied to a local real estate agent in order to rent these premises on Bayshore Circle, less than a quarter of a mile from our home:
This is their staging area for two to three daily visits to the front of our home for filming and to the rear of our home for more filming of our home. Several other drive bys are done of our home by vehicles during each day. Gomez has been seen driving three to five cult members around IOB wearing baby blue t-shirts to perform these “religious” rituals. The T-shirt have photographs of my head on them with the international strike out symbol across it in red:
While the Bayshore Circle Cult headquarters is just less than a quarter mile from our home by road, it is less than a couple hundred yards as the camera records. Here is Cult HQ – the wood sided home with orange trim – taken from the front deck of our home:
Gomez also uses the Bayshore Circle headquarters to drive cult members to Ingleside to interrupt and harass us in town.
Gomez is working for the cult’s most notorious private detective, David Lubow from Falcon Investigations in Los Angeles. Lubow has worked for the cult for more than twenty-years and will stop at nothing, violate any law he can get away with violating, because he is a card-carrying member of the cult. Gomez has consistenly refused to indentify himself while stalking my wife and I. He has lied to a number of people in Ingleside and IOB. It has been established he is working for David Lubow.
Ralph S Gomez
This past Thursday night Gomez was escorting his merry pranksters around IOB in a golf cart clad in their “bust Marty” t-shirts. Gomez spent three hours trying to prevent us from finding out where the golf cart would wind up. Finally, he dumped it on Starlight drive and had a cult driven van whisk five cult members away. Gomez trespassed through a closed chainlink gate and hid behind the home at 721 Starlight. With my headlights all over the place Gomez emerged.
I asked Gomez whether he had rented the place since he was deep into the property hiding and there was a for-rent sign in front. Gomez said “no”…..”but I have the owner’s permission to be here.” A later call and visit by me to the owner confirmed Gomez’s assertion to be an unadulterated lie. Gomez, caught in the hot-seat, finally broke down after weeks of following the cult script: “we are a media company, we are here to do a documentary, we just want to interview Marty, etc.” Gomez made a big mistake and let a little bit of truth eke out. Gomez told me that I just need to go “fix it” with Miscavige’s cult. Gomez told me that all of what they have been doing to me would go away if I simply caved in and settled with Miscavige’s cult. Gomez admitted to me that if he was the recipient of what they had dished out to me over the past several weeks he personally would long ago have “flipped out.” Gomez told me all the harassment would cease if I simply surrendered.
Unfortunately for Gomez, Miscavige and those misguided cult members doing his bidding, the evidence of their real intent, as admitted by Gomez in a moment of fear when he was separated from the pack of cult members, has been provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation which has an ongoing Human Trafficking investigation with Miscavige as the main target, and several local law enforcement agencies.
The cult has two weapons and two weapons only: a) harassment to a degree unprecedented in a civilized society, and b) money to buy the victim of “a” when he is put into an amenable frame of mind. Just so everybody knows, as Miscavige just won’t seem to get it through his head, I will never fold to any pressure no matter how intense, and I am not for sale – at any price.
To the many IOB and Ingleside residents who have expressed and provided support, Monique and I cannot thank you enough. You have deeply touched our hearts and greatly increased our faith in humanity. If you have any questions or you would like more background on the matter feel free to stop by anytime or email me at rathbunmark@yahoo.com
Scientology 101 