David Miscavige - Early Life

Early Life

David Miscavige was born in 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the Roman Catholic Polish-Italian family of Ronald and Loretta Miscavige, the youngest of their four children. David was raised in Willingboro Township, New Jersey. As a child, he suffered from asthma and severe allergies. His father, a trumpet player, became interested in Scientology, and he sent David to see a Scientologist. According to both father and son, a 45-minute Dianetics session cured his ailments.

The family joined Scientology in 1971 and eventually moved to the church's world headquarters in Saint Hill Manor, England. By the age of twelve, he was conducting Scientology auditing sessions. The family returned to Philadelphia within a few years, where David attended a local high school, where he was appalled by his classmates' drug use. On his sixteenth birthday (1976) he left high school with his father's permission to move to Clearwater, Florida, and joined the "Sea Organization" (or Sea Org), a "religious order" devoted to the advancement of Scientology, established in 1968 by L. Ron Hubbard. Some of his earliest jobs in the Sea Org included delivering telexes, grounds-keeping, food service and taking photographs for Scientology brochures.