Ron Miscavige

Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me

US (l) and UK (r) first editions
Authors	Ron Miscavige with Dan Koon
Country	United States, United Kingdom
Language	English
Subject	Church of Scientology
Publisher	St. Martin's Press (US) Silvertail Books (UK)
Publication date	May 3, 2016
Media type	Print (Hardcover (US), Paperback (UK))
Pages	256
ISBN

Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me is a book by Ron Miscavige and Dan Koon, published in 2016 by St. Martin's Press in the United States and Silvertail Books in the United Kingdom. Written by the father of Scientology leader David Miscavige, it presents a personal account of life in the Church of Scientology, the rise of David Miscavige to the church's leadership, and the aftermath of Ron Miscavige's decision to leave the church.

The book is described by its US publisher, St. Martin's Press, as "a riveting insider's look at life within the world of Scientology" which tells the story of "David Miscavige's childhood and his path to the head seat of the Church of Scientology told through the eyes of his father." According to the UK publisher, "Ron [Miscavige] traces the arc of David’s life from his early years to David’s eventual, stellar rise to power in Scientology; his brutal approach to running the organisation today; and the disastrous effects that his leadership has had on countless numbers of Scientologists and their families."

Ruthless tells of how Ron Miscavige and his family joined Scientology in 1971, living for a while in the UK, before moving back to Pennsylvania. By the age of 16 his son David had become a confidant of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and had joined the inner core of the church, the Sea Org. He took over the leadership of Scientology when Hubbard died in 1986.

In 2012, after gaining access to the full Internet via a Kindle, Ron Miscavige discovered new information about the church and subsequently left the Church of Scientology. The Los Angeles Times reported that he was put under surveillance by the Church, which was said to have paid two private investigators to watch him around the clock for 18 months at a cost of $10,000 a week. The surveillance was said to have been "all because [David] Miscavige feared that his father would divulge too much about the organisation's activities." At one point, the investigators were said to have phoned David Miscavige when they thought his father was having a heart attack and were allegedly told not to intervene: "if it was Ron's time to die, to let him die and not intervene in any way". Miscavige denied having ordered the surveillance or speaking to one of the investigators. The incident prompted Ron Miscavige to write the book. According to Tony Ortega, a journalist and writer on Scientology, Ruthless was originally titled If He Dies, He Dies in reference to the "heart attack" incident.