Taryn Teutsch | Daughter of Mike Rinder

Taryn Teutsch, Mike Rinder’s daughter, says that because of the way her father treated her when she was growing up, she thought he hated her.

TRANSCRIPT:

As a dad, I wouldn’t really call him a dad. Just by the fact that a dad is someone that you depend on, that is there with you, that lives your life with you, that goes through your special, you are good, you are bad and all of that and I wouldn’t say that he held that function or did any of those things for me and even more so for my brother.

Before that he wasn’t in my life at all. When I was 8 years old I got hit by a car. It was a hit and run and I almost, I almost died. I mean they thought I might die. And if you ask me right now, I can’t—I don’t remember my dad ever being there, ever, ever, ever. Not once. I have no recollection of even seeing him or—I’m trying—you know I thought about it recently and I was like, “Wow, I don’t think he was ever there.” Not once, but my mom was there every single day.

Because of the way he treated me and because of those non-gestures by an early, my early teens or late teens I thought he hated me. Like, I was positive.

He never said good bye, he never gave us a letter, he never said, “Okay kids, I’m off, you can have your choice.” Nothing.

I went there with my mom and my uncle thinking, “Okay good, let’s go see him and give him the benefit of the doubt and see if we can reconcile this, once and for all. He can go on his own way, I’m totally fine with that like—but just stop attacking me and saying things about me or my family or my family members.” Okay good, we go to see him. First of all I would say outright, I was, I was shocked at how bad he looked. Like meaning, when I saw him I was like, “Whoa. He looks whacked, he looks crazy to me and his eyes looked funny.” I mean, it was just—I hadn’t seen him and then I saw him and I was like, “Wow, oh my god. That’s, that’s Mike.” And my mom was there and she was speaking to him and at one point he totally and utterly lost it.

He was—you could tell his only interest in the conversation was getting something the media could use because he was like, “I’m getting the BBC on the phone” or whatever. So he was all frantic about that and crazy. He didn’t even, he wouldn’t even listen. He wouldn’t even have a conversation and go, “Wow, my kid’s here, my wife’s here, my brother’s here, they all came to see me, why don’t I stop a minute and hear what they have to say.” No, he wouldn’t listen to us, he then grabbed my mom’s arm and I guess there was a key or something he had in his hand, his car key and he’s grabbing her arm so bad, she’s going, “Ow, ow, ow, ow! Stop, Mike stop!” And he gouged her arm. But not only that but he actually—I don’t know exactly, technically what he did but he pulled her arm out, okay. So now it’s years later, right now, as we’re talking, 2016, and every day she’s in pain, every single day. She had surgery and she’ll never have proper function of it and… So she’s sitting there screaming and—this is his wife. I mean, he was still married to her at this time even though he decided to go with another woman but that’s a whole ‘nother story. And he’s hurting her like, badly hurting her. She’s a small woman, she’s pretty frail, like meaning she has small bones and stuff and he was squeezing her and, and she’s going “Stop, stop! It’s hurting.” You know, and he’s just like, “Yeah! No it’s not!” And I can’t remember what he said but I think he was saying like, “Yeah right.” I don’t remember what he said but it wasn’t very nice, but I do remember seeing the interaction between him and my mom. Mike Rinder and my mom. And I remember going, “Oh my god, he hates her.” Like he was just like, “Grrr! Bitch!” Like really bad like, scary, I was like, “Wholly crap, that’s my dad, doing that to my mom.”

Mike’s brother Andrew then tried to talk to him even more and was like, “Look man, just stop and talk to us.” And he was just like, “I’m out of here!” and trying to get in his car and leaving and then he ends up basically like, bending my uncle’s fingers back, completely hurting him. And refused to talk to us and just, I don’t know, I went away from it and I went, “Wow, there’s something really wrong with him.”

Even when he was with us he treated everybody like shit. He treated us like, really like, like we were nothing. I’m telling you, you would have a conversation with him, you would walk away and go, “I suck.” It was the way he made you feel, that you were horrible and this is coming from his daughter and his son, I mean my brother—he never liked him, he didn’t like him.

My grandmother had quite a few times spoken up and or written to him saying, “Please stop, stop attacking my family, my church.” Like, she is a founding Scientologist, her and my grandfather were. And so they’ve put a lot of their own lives and love and their heart into creating this religion and forwarding it. So he comes along and not only deserts his immediate family, meaning me, my brother and my mom, but her, his brother, his sister who are all also Scientologists, and their kids. So not only did he desert us, leave his mom which of course that’s just like—he just left, never said anything to her either. Then he starts attacking the one thing that, you know, the thing she’s put her heart into the most and our religion and our family and he starts attacking that.

So she’s saying, “Mike, please just—can you not do this? Can you please—I’m fine on you not being in Scientology, we’re all okay on that. Go have your life, be with Jack and your wife, that’s totally fine. We’re happy with that.” But he wouldn’t stop and so she kept saying, “Can you please stop doing this, can you please just…” Okay, so then that incident happened where he went in her room. Shortly after that she got very ill, within probably I would say about a year. She got very ill and then she was on her death bed, literally on her death bed. We were getting calls from the hospital in Australia, like, “Okay, she’s going to die any day now.” And the last thing she asked is, “I wish Mike—I was on the phone with her—and she says, I wish Mike would come to his senses. I which I didn’t have a son that did this.”

For him to say anything to Leah Remini in her show or otherwise—factually to anybody for that matter, especially people that—I don’t know them at all. They've never experienced my life or my family’s life and my childhood or what I went through or even now in the present the way that our family operates—which is amazing, the best ever. So for Mike to now tell or to say on the show or to insinuate in any way that 1) he knows anything about me, or 2) that I or my brother or my mom disconnected from him is just a total farce. Like by true definition he’s the one that disconnected.

My comment on him being a consultant for Leah Remini on the subject matter of disconnection specifically is actually a little bit laughable. Because as a consultant, you would think it would be someone that does whatever that thing is, that is a good example of whatever you’re trying to show. And yet he is the exact opposite of that. So he disconnects from his family. He leaves both of his kids. I don’t remember how old I was at the time. But he never said goodbye, he never said anything. Left both of us in the lurch with no communication. Not one single piece of communication. Not an email, not a phone call, not a note, not a goodbye. Nothing. He left and never came back. So how does that person consult with, or become a consultant for that subject matter? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. That just seems absurd.

He fully and utterly misrepresents me, my lifestyle, my church, my friends, my mom, my brother, my family and everything having to do with it and does it knowingly—and does it to meet his own ends and so for me that signifies a liar.

Everyone in the family is just like, ‘Wow, we didn’t even realize how much, like what a black sheep he was,” how much he put a little uuhhh on the family communication lines. And every single one of us has expanded and we're doing great and we see each other more than ever. And I was just with Andrew and Pat last weekend. And my brother and Jackie and my cousin in Florida spent the weekend with Andrew and Pat a few weeks before that. And we went to New York, and we went to Australia. And we’re going to go in December. Mike’s sister and her family are coming. That didn’t happen before. It just didn’t happen. I don’t remember ever seeing my family as much, or see and feel our family as close as we are now, since he was removed, or removed himself from our family.

So since he removed himself from our family, it’s only gotten better and better. And everyone is just so much more vibrant and flourishing and prospering and doing well and more successful in their jobs. Like everything got better.