Background: This photo shows the Flag Super Power Building owned by the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)./ Inset: Whitney Mills. Photo via Facebook.
The mother of a Florida woman who died by suicide has slapped the Church of Scientology with a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging the church “brainwashed” her daughter who struggled with her mental health, into thinking traditional therapy or medical treatments were “unnecessary and abhorrent.”
Whitney Mills, 40, of Clearwater, died by suicide in May 2022, according to the civil lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County.
Leila Mills alleges the church knew quite well that her daughter — who was among the highest ranks in the church after shelling out “hundreds of thousands of dollars to attain her status,” the lawsuit claims — was struggling to cope.
But “upon learning of her problems, the Scientology defendants took control of Mills’ medical care, thus foreclosing her from obtaining the exact treatment she needed,” her family claims.
Instead, she was “misinformed and misdiagnosed with Lyme disease and a cancerous ovarian cyst” while the church, and specifically one doctor was “largely ignoring her very real psychosis and mental health crisis.”
Whitney Mills was “extorted” by the church, her mother says, and everything the church “foisted” on her daughter was “outside the field of mental health treatment, and everything failed,” the family’s attorney Ramon Rasco wrote.
Stopped from seeking any real help, Whitney Mills “felt she had no other choice,” but to kill herself.
“Not only did they not properly care for her, contrary to the duty they undertook, they actually suggested she ‘drop the body,”” the lawsuit emphasizes repeatedly, using a phrase coined by Church of Scientology leaders including founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The phrase means suicide or death or to leave one’s corporal body, according to the lawsuit.
Mills’ mother alleges that it was a fellow “high-ranking” scientologist, Dr. David Minkoff, who misdiagnosed her daughter and then proceeded to bill her for costly “alternative” treatments totaling $20,000. Over a decade ago, Minkoff’s physicians’ license was suspended for a year by the Florida Board of Medicine after another Scientologist he treated, Lisa MacPherson, died, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Mills’ mother points to MacPherson’s life and death in her own lawsuit.
MacPherson, like her daughter, was in the throes of a mental breakdown.
Minkoff reportedly prescribed MacPherson Valium and muscle relaxers amid forcing her to go into long periods of isolation. He allegedly prescribed MacPherson the drugs without ever actually seeing her. Charges of abuse, neglect of a disabled adult and practicing medicine without a license were filed against Minkoff in 1998 after MacPherson’s cause of death was ruled to be undetermined in an autopsy report. But those charges were dropped after another autopsy report ruled MacPherson’s death was accidental. Mills’ mother recalled how MacPherson’s family sued and how the scientologist doctor, while admitting no guilt, had to pay that devastated family $100,000.
According to Mills’ lawsuit, Whitney began seeing Minkoff in early 2022 when three of her “caretakers” in the church alerted David Minkoff’s wife, Sue Minkoff at the Lifeworks Wellness Center, that they needed “assistance” with Mills. David Minkoff founded the center.
Mills already had mental health crises that led her to the emergency room in December 2021 and then again in January 2022, her mother says. It was during this time that members of church’s so-called Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization and Sea Org demanded Mills be “quarantined.”
Whitney was told she could not “step foot on their massive Clearwater Flag Base” and she was allegedly put under 24/7 watch where she had multiple caretakers who lived with her and “handled her medical needs” while regularly reporting back to church higher-ups about her status.
It was around this time that one of Mills’ handlers told her there was a “Scientology assist where she could ‘drop the body’ where her spirit or ‘operating thetan’ would leave her body to inhabit another, causing the original body to die,” the lawsuit claims.
Text messages later found on her daughter’s phone showed Mills “asked for that assist,” the lawsuit states.
Notably, Leila Mills argues that the Clearwater Police Department failed to adequately investigate her daughter’s death. She says they failed even to ascertain where Mills obtained the gun she used to kill herself, noting only in a police report that a “pawn check came back negative for Mills buying any weapons.”
Leila Mills also says police failed to thoroughly interview her daughter’s Spanish-speaking church “caretaker” Albertina Mejias-Harvey. Mills alleges Harvey specifically told her daughter to “drop the body” but due to a “language barrier,” Mills says police never fully interrogated Harvey.
If members of the church were involved in assisting her daughter’s suicide then they should be found guilty of homicide too, the lawsuit states.
For the last three months she was alive, Minkoff was Whitney’s treating physician but “instead of properly treating her” Minkoff charged her some $20,000 for highly questionable ‘alternative’ treatments, not one of which was covered by insurance or was of any use whatsoever to Mills,” her mother claims.
Medical experts outside of the church allegedly said Mills was “suffering from a bout of severe depression rather any specific ailment.” Mills’ family says Minkoff “had a duty of care to refer Mills to a mental health professional, even if his religious beliefs forbade it.”
Text messages accompanying the lawsuit show Mills reeling in the weeks before her death, telling her caretakers: “I feel horrific. I can’t take it anymore. [I]t’s too brutal. I need relief. I don’t understand why I’m not getting any relief in my brain. My brain is so inflamed. I’m so annoyed I just want this to go away. I just can’t take it anymore, it’s beyond brutal. I have it the worst. I literally can’t take it anymore, this is beyond brutal. I wish I had a time machine.”
Mills also allegedly disclosed to a church caretaker that she had “said something really dumb on the phone” when asking for the “assist” to “drop” her body.
“Albertina told me there’s an assist for someone that is really sick and to drop the body. I asked for that assist,” Whitney Mills wrote to caretaker Nieves Lopez.
Lopez allegedly replied with “oops” and Mills responded by saying she thought she was “in trouble now.”
“They know you’re desperate with this ongoing situation,” Lopez replied.
Mills’ mother alleges it was this moment where Lopez could have convinced her daughter not to take her own life.
Then, the same day that Whitney Mills told Lopez that fellow caretaker Harvey suggested to her that she “drop the body,” Mills reportedly sent a text directly to Harvey:
I’m super strong for anything but this. I can do ANYTHING but live with mental illness that I can’t control. I’m at the top of the bridge and dealing with serious mental problems. This is not right! I literally can’t take it anymore. I don’t think anyone could lol [Emphasis original]
Mills had been lethargic for months before this, struggled with headaches, hallucinations, memory loss and was underweight, her mother said. She often reported feeling that her skin felt like it was on fire and she struggled to do even daily basic tasks like bathing.
Whitney Mills begged Minkoff for help, lamenting the “intense” pressure she felt in her head that “won’t seem to go away no matter what I did,” she wrote, according to one message shared in the civil complaint.
Minkoff had already allegedly diagnose her with Babesia, a parasite-based infection.
When Mills asked Minkoff if she should take steroids or “something else that would help,” Minkoff allegedly replied by suggesting that they could “try a diuretic.”
And then Minkoff allegedly asked: “Did you start the ivermectin?”
Ivermectin is used to treat parasitic diseases in humans and animals and took off in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic but the Food and Drug Administration has not approved it for use in preventing the virus.
Mills’ family claims that when Whitney kept pressing Minkoff for something to help her cope even after this conversation, he responded with useless Scientology gobbledygook invoking church training and classes, writing:
Drugs could numb you but you are the OT. Put TR O in. It’s a sensation. It’s noise. It has no power over YOU. That’s the truth. Eye of the tiger. You are loved. You have friends and LRH. Duplicate it. Dissolve it. That is your power. You can be tone 40 with your TR O. That’s you as cause. I know you can.
Whitney Mills died by suicide a month later.
The named defendants include the Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization Inc. in Florida, as well as a similarly named entity in Delaware and the church’s international organization based in California. They have also sued the Church of Scientology of Tampa Inc. and the Church of Scientology Mission of Belleair Inc. as well as the International Association of Scientologists Administrations Inc.
Mills family seeks a jury trial and damages to be determined at trial.
A spokesperson for the Church of Scientology did not immediately return a request for comment to Law&Crime on Wednesday but in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times, dubbed Mills’ death as an “unfortunate tragedy.”
“Church policy is crystal clear,” he said. “If a Scientologist is in need of medical care, he or she must see a medical doctor. Any and all decisions regarding treatment are solely the decision of the individual. The Church does not provide medical advice.”
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