TOM FOOLERY: Church of Scientology head David Miscavige had staff do work for Tom Cruise (with Miscavige), a report says. (AP)
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Risky is too tame a word for this nasty business.
The FBI is investigating whether the Church of Scientology engages in human trafficking and uses unpaid labor — including allegations that Tom Cruise had work done on his motorcycles and property by church members who were paid little if anything for their efforts, a new report reveals.
The shocking 26-page exposé in The New Yorker focuses on “Crash” director and Oscar-winning writer Paul Haggis’ decision to quit the church, a spacey blend of self-help and science fiction that critics say uses brainwashing and coercion to indoctrinate and impoverish vulnerable recruits.
“I was in a cult for 34 years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t,” said Haggis, who cut ties after the church’s San Diego chapter endorsed Proposition 8, which opposed same-sex marriages.
Haggis, whose writing credits include “Million Dollar Baby” and “Quantum of Solace,” has two lesbian daughters.
According to the report, church leader David Miscavige, a close Cruise friend who was the best man at his wedding to Katie Holmes, ordered members to customize a building, two motorcycles and an SUV Cruise owned — for little or no pay.
John Brosseau, a 30-year member who has left the church, said he met with Miscavige and Cruise in 2005 at a secretive church enclave in the Southern California desert.
Cruise, an outspoken apostle of Scientology, was admiring a motorcycle Brosseau had customized for Miscavige.
“Cruise asked me, ‘God, could you paint my bike like that?’ I looked at Miscavige, and Miscavige agreed,” Brosseau told the magazine.
Cruise brought two motorcycles — a Triumph and Honda — that he’d gotten from director Steven Spielberg. Brosseau said both bikes had to be completely taken apart, nickel-plated, repainted and reassembled, a job that would normally cost thousands of dollars.
Brosseau told the magazine that members also renovated an airplane hangar and office Cruise operates in Burbank and customized Cruise’s Ford SUV by adding “eucalyptus paneling” and other high-end details.
“I was getting paid $50 a week,” Brosseau said. “And I’m supposed to be working for the betterment of mankind.”
Lawyers for Cruise and the church denied the accounts in The New Yorker.
“Whatever small economic benefit Mr. Cruise may have received from the assistance of church staff pales in comparison to the benefits the church has received from Mr. Cruise’s many years of volunteer efforts for the church,” church spokesman Tommy Davis said.
But the “assistance of church staff” could be described as unpaid labor by church members, the magazine alleges, and is the focus of the ongoing FBI probe.