After getting in Gorman's face, the man doesn't stick around as Tommy and Jennifer called police.
I called the San Francisco org yesterday and left a message for its president, Jeff Quiros. He didn't call me back, which is disappointing, because Quiros has given some really interesting and colorful quotes to reporters in the past. This one he gave the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001 seems relevant in this case:
"It's not a go-to-church-on-Sunday kind of religion. It's an intense religion. If people get in your way, they need to be dealt with one way or another."
Gorman knows Quiros very well. In his family, Quiros was known as "Uncle Jeff."
Gorman's father was only 18 when he joined Scientology, his mother was even younger. They met and raised a family in the church. Tommy met his future wife, Jennifer Stewart, at about 14 when they were both in a Scientology school.
In a lengthy 2008 profile of Gorman, my colleague Lauren Smiley at our sister paper in San Francisco, SF Weekly, explained that as Gorman grew into adulthood, he wanted to help Scientology with its enemies. Tommy began picketing the houses of church critics as a volunteer for Quiros, who is also an executive in Scientology's Office of Special Affairs, the church's intelligence, public relations, and covert operations wing.
In 2000, Gorman ran into Jennifer Stewart again when he became a staff member at the org in nearby Mountain View, California. She had left school and was working at the org as a receptionist. She also had a terrible secret: for months, a man named Gabriel Williams, a course supervisor at the Mountain View org, had been raping her at his apartment, where she claimed she had been ordered to stay by Scientology officials. (Scientology denied that she had been ordered to stay there, and claimed that Williams had merely offered to let her stay there to shorten her commute to work.)
Jennifer -- who was only 16 at the time of the attacks -- would later tell police that she had been raped more than 100 times. She was terrified that if she told anyone about it, she would be excommunicated as a "suppressive person," and her family, per Scientology's policy of "disconnection," would be forced to cut off all ties with her.
Eventually, with the support of the Gorman family, she did go to police. Williams was arrested, and ultimately pled guilty to sexual battery and sodomy with a minor, and was sentenced to a year in jail and five years' probation. Jennifer also filed a civil suit against the church.
Tommy says that when he found out about the rapes, he went to Quiros.
"He told me to disconnect from her. I told him to fuck off," Tommy says. "When he told me that, that's when I realized something was wrong."
Tommy, Jennifer, and both of their families left Scientology in 2001.
As a result of leaving the church, and for filing the lawsuit, the Gormans say they were then subject to a hellacious program of "fair game" by the church, which has a reputation for retaliating against people it perceives as enemies. From Smiley's 2008 story:
As documented in police reports Gorman has since posted online, his father answered the phone to hear someone say, "SPs don't live long! Your son and his wife Jennifer will be dead soon!" Gorman's mother was tailed in her car for 45 minutes. After Jennifer lost control of the couple's 1991 Lexus while on the way to her attorney's office, a mechanic showed police that all six bolts connecting the left axle to the transmission were missing, which was probably done deliberately. City child protection workers showed up at the Gormans' house on an anonymous tip that Gorman's father may have sexually abused Tommy's sister, Christle. Gorman has no proof it was Scientology other than the timing, and Quiros denies the church was involved. About the axle, he says, "the most likely story is [Gorman] did it himself."
Jennifer's lawsuit was ultimately ended with a settlement.
