Amy Scobee is an anti-Scientologist and former Church staff member whose tenure on staff includes a long history of contradictions, lies, failures to do her job, and repeated sexual transgressions despite numerous opportunities to reform.
By her own admission, Scobee was incompetent, to put it mildly: “I have been falsely representing myself to appear competent, which is a pretense and cover-up for what I actually am. I have had the intention to get out of confronting ‘hard work’ or things I didn’t understand and instead would goof off, flirt … totally dumping my own responsibilities.”
Scobee lived the self-created pretense that: “I am a productive, contributing member of the group when I am factually covering up for non-production and the fact that I do not really know what I am doing…. I would cover these up with PR and lies so as to not be detected.”
Failed at Her Job
Scobee knew and admitted more than once that she lived a lie. She would pretend to know how to handle the functions she was responsible for when she actually would get another staff member to do her job as she sat idly by. By her own admission, it was a repeating pattern that eventually caught up with her. She had to be sacked from her position and placed in lower posts more than anyone on record.
Scobee herself wrote in 2005 that she was dishonest on many occasions “where I put on a false representation of myself” and that she “betrayed all trust.” After being given numerous opportunities to change, but refusing to do so, Scobee was subsequently dismissed from the Church and expelled from the religion in 2005.
Her own admissions of dishonesty and ineptness were echoed by others. “She was notable for being unproductive in the extreme,” said one Church executive who knew her. “She would literally sit at a desk all day typing up evaluations she never completed.”
As but one example of her incompetence, Scobee had been responsible for establishing the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre Nashville. She opened the Church in a rundown 3,000-square-foot building with 12 staff members, knowing this was degrading the standards expected of the Church. Years later, after she was gone, it had to be completely rebuilt, staffed and fully re-established. The attached before and after photos tell the story.
Scobee’s arrogance on Church operations was never more apparent than when she predicted to a media outlet in 2009 that with Mr. Miscavige in charge, the Church was soon doomed to fail. In fact, with her and her cohorts out of the way, the Church has grown globally at its fastest rate ever with more than 50 new Ideal Churches in the past decade. Just in the last year, new Ideal Churches were opened in Milano, Atlanta, Budapest, Harlem, a continental headquarters for Australasia in Sydney, a national affairs office in Ireland and Scientology Media Productions in Los Angeles.
Admitted Liar
Scobee did not just lie about her work. She admitted she lied about nearly everything in her life, making up a more glamorous fantasy life that she never led.
She detailed her stories, calling them “long-term standard lies that I practically believe are true because I use them so much.”
They included petty lies like:
- “I used to have horses. I’ve never had a horse before….”
- “I’ve said that I know how to play the guitar but I don’t and actually go blank every time I pick it up.”
- “I’ve said a number of times that I used to sing with a band. This isn’t true. … This was done to make someone think that I knew about singing and that I’ve done it for a while. Boy, has that been a lie I’ve used for a long time.”
- “I say that my uncle flew the plane that was on the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’ show.… I don’t have any idea where that came from, but I don’t think it’s true.”
- “I say that I used to take modern jazz lessons and I was good at it. I took lessons for a very short period of time and only remember two steps I learned and cannot dance modern jazz. I can’t even do these steps correctly.”
Said one executive, who was Scobee’s senior or co-worker for more than 20 years: “I got to know her pretty well in terms of her level of integrity. And I must tell you that she was a chronic liar. Repeatedly it could come up that things she claimed to be the state of affairs were, in fact, lies. And these were not minor things because in the management of the Church of Scientology one of our most important factors that we consider, a point of character, is if that person is truthful and honest.”
Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior
By her own admission, Scobee was unable to adhere to the ethical and moral standards expected of her as a staff member. While married and on staff, she initiated extramarital affairs on at least five occasions.
Even in her self-published “memoir” written after she left the Church to become a bitter anti-Scientologist, Scobee admitted to her chronic adultery and to being disciplined for her transgressions. When deposed in June 2010 in a court case, Scobee also admitted under penalty of perjury to her promiscuity and violating Church ethical standards.
Scobee’s history of extramarital affairs and inappropriate sexual transgressions and irresponsible behavior are too numerous to recount.
In 1983, she initiated a relationship with a man even though she was already married. She slept in his car with him every night, went out to dinner with him continually and spent hours during her normal working days with him when she was supposed to be on a project hiring personnel. Around the same time Scobee started up yet another relationship even while she was on a reform program to try to reform from her earlier sexual transgressions. Scobee was still married at the time.
Fast forward to November 2002, when Scobee was removed from a position for refusing to do the job honestly and ethically. She was given yet another opportunity to make good and change her ways so she could become a contributing staff member. But instead she engaged in a secret six-month affair with a married man, even though she was also married at the time.
One Church executive who worked with Scobee described her repeated sexual transgressions as “in total contravention of our ethics code.”
He added: “In one instance that I know of, she lied repeatedly about it to cover it up. In every instance when Scobee got involved in an extramarital affair, she was provided help and given another chance. She promised to reform, but transgressed again and again. She knowingly disqualified herself as she kept on refusing to uphold our clearly defined ethical standards, and was dismissed from the Sea Org in 2005.”
Wrote one married staff member who fell prey to Scobee’s advances: “Observing my distress, Amy Scobee used it and worked to attract my attention onto her, openly stating she wanted to involve me in a sexual relationship. This gradually took place over a period of 3 or 4 months and was completely contrary to the purpose of the [spiritual counseling program], distracting both of us.”
The staffer continued, “She was out to seduce me and to use that to get me into disrepute and out of the Sea Organization. She didn’t care what the consequences would be to herself because she wasn’t going to be around. And she didn’t care what the consequences might be to the organization for me having to leave post.”
Scobee knew that she was unfit for the religious order of the Church because of her refusal to uphold the ethical standards and her involvement in extramarital affairs. When she was dismissed, in January 2005, she wrote in the signed affidavit:
“I committed a severe violation of Church scriptures and engaged in an affair; in fact with the person whom I was supposedly helping …. I was also this person’s auditor, and my actions were a serious violation of the Auditor’s Code, a sacred ethics code that governs the conduct of auditors.”
Abusive and Vindictive
In 2005, Amy Scobee in a signed affidavit stated, “I abused my powers and responsibilities.” One such case, she wrote, was “when I enforced harsh discipline on certain staff in 1993. This type of conduct is far below the standards expected of Church staff members, especially staff at the Mother Church in the positions I was in.”
Those staff members who had to endure working under Scobee found her exceptionally nasty and harshly abusive, all part of the elaborate smokescreen she created to hide her own failures. Knowing she was abysmal at every job she held, Scobee would cover her tracks by denigrating and belittling others so she could unfairly and unethically shift the blame to them.
One female staff member described an incident in May 1995 where Scobee physically shoved her into a room while screaming at her. Scobee was emulating the management style of her good friend and now fellow anti-Scientologist Mike Rinder. Just two years earlier, she lodged a formal complaint when Rinder became physical with her after she witnessed him assaulting a fellow staff member. “Mike then came directly over to me, grabbed me by both of my arms and shoved me which nearly knocked me down,” Scobee wrote.
Another staff member who worked directly with Scobee said she was a sociopath who showed no empathy for anyone else. “She was just an extremely pugnacious and nasty person to be around,” the staffer recalled.
An individual who was in a junior position to Scobee, described her as someone who screamed constantly. On one occasion, Scobee was screaming at him in front of his own juniors, using foul language in berating him. He described her as “arrogant and haughty.”
One woman, who first met Scobee more than 30 years ago in Clearwater and who worked alongside her, described her as a bully who was always quick to criticize, launching into irrational rants.
Another staffer who worked with Scobee called her a “complete and utter terror for people that she had any sort of authority over. And to her it was funny.”
Scobee’s abusive treatment of others is legendary, making it all the more baffling why a network like A+E would put such an offensive person on a pedestal in a television show.
Hooking up with Cyberterrorists
Unable to move on with her life, Scobee continues to harass the Church and Scientologists. After leaving, she wrote a misleading account of her time in the Church, in a self-published book. When the book failed, she turned to the Internet fringe and the tabloid media.
She connected up with the cyberterrorist hate group Anonymous, attending a symposium with them in Germany in March 2010 and speaking on “AnonyNews” to promote her book. (Anonymous is the group whose members have been charged, convicted and imprisoned for criminal acts worldwide, including federal prosecutions for engaging in hate crimes against the Church of Scientology and its members.)
Lying comes naturally to Scobee. Now she lies to generate hate and bigotry, always failing to look at herself and her actions, and never taking responsibility for what she did.
