Leah Remini and A&E have been blamed by the Church of Scientology for the fatal stabbing of a 24-year-old man at the Church’s Sydney headquarters.
On January 3, a Taiwanese man died after being stabbed in the neck at the Church’s Chatswood complex. Police later arrested and charged a 16-year-old boy with murder, common assault, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray.
Now, Church officials are claiming the killing was “inspired” by the anti-Scientology movement led by A&E’s docuseries Scientology: The Aftermath, and are urging the network to stop the program before more Scientologists get hurt.
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According to a letter obtained by Channel 7 News, with the subject line “Re: Blood on your hands,” Church official Karin Pouw blasts A&E Networks Group for stirring up “hate for the church” with its Emmy-winning show.
The January 11 letter accuses Remini, a former Scientologist, and her cohost Mike Rinder (pictured above), a former Scientology spokesman, of creating “hatred” against the religion by conducting explosive interviews with former members that detail the many alleged abuses throughout the Church.
The strongly-worded letter reads:
“The attacker was inspired by an anti-Scientology website that featured your people and included a link to Remini’s show… Week after week, month after month, and now year after year this series has poisoned the airwaves in an avowed effort to create hatred against the Scientology religion. Hatred and propaganda always find their mark, and now it has born strange and bitter fruit.”
This message comes a week after it was reported that the attacker wanted to save his Scientologist mother from a purification process that would have distanced her from her family.
As Remini and Rinder have highlighted in their series, family estrangement is commonly forced by Scientology. Many of the interviewees have opened up about losing family members to the Church in gut-wrenching interviews.
Related: Former Scientologist Says Church Tried To Ruin Her For Coming Out As Gay
But the Church says exposing these practices is doing much more harm than good, as Remini and Rinder’s “hate-filled” episodes have apparently incited “six hundred threats of violence” — and now, they claim, a murder. The letter concluded:
“You paid for the hate that caused his murder. And you profit. Stop your program.”
It was an intense message that Rinder saw coming.
In response to the allegations, the cohost told Channel 7 that the letter was a blame-shifting tactic from the Church, explaining:
“They basically seek to shift the blame to our show for their abuses. The statement that this is all caused by A&E and our show because someone apparently looked at a website that mentioned our show – that’s absurd.”
It looks like A&E is just as unbothered, as the network’s official Twitter account shared Sunday:
Don't miss the brand new episode of @LeahRemini: #ScientologyTheAftermath Tuesday at 9PM. pic.twitter.com/v5PK9WP0yI
— A&E Network (@AETV) January 13, 2019
Better luck next time, Scientology?
[Image via FayesVision/WENN.]
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