Kathy True on Mike Rinder

I met Mike Rinder in the Church in 1987. I was in the office, it’s sort of a main office for our organization, and a call had come in that his young daughter had been hit by a car and was thrown like 50 feet. And she was like six years old or something. And they had gotten her down to Children’s Hospital right away and Mike had gotten this call, and there was this like, delay in his response. And he said something about how Cathy is going down there, that was his wife at the time. And he didn’t go. So that was really, “What?” Talk about odd, I mean I just can’t even imagine that a father wouldn’t run down there, you know, especially it was so close, no matter what, close or not you would go and, you know, deal with it. I mean, wouldn’t you just grab your jacket and run?

Mike Rinder came back into Clearwater to an event that he was speaking at. And I saw Mike and reminded him that it was his son’s birthday as well. Mike seemed to raise his eyebrows and said, “Okay. Well, here’s some money. Go buy him some birthday presents.” So I said, “Well, what does he want?” He said, “I don’t know. You guys find out and get him some presents.” Okay. So we got some presents for him and wrapped them up, gave them to Mike, you know, took him down to Ruth Eckerd Hall where Mike was performing, or speaking, and gave him the presents to give to Benjamin, brought Benjamin down there so we could give him the presents. And then Mike told me, “No, you give him the presents.” And I said, “Don’t you want to give them to him?” “No. You guys need to do it.”

And of course, Ben was just crushed by it. Like, it was so unreal that his own father wouldn’t even see him when he’s here or give him the birthday presents personally. And of course then it’s like, it dampened the whole thing and Ben really didn’t even want to open anything. He didn’t care. Because Mike didn’t even see his son. He didn’t even go talk to him or anything, or wish him a Happy Birthday or whatever.

He was a nullifying character and he was arrogant, and his handling of individuals was based off of that. His direction, you know, I was subordinate to him but the effect that I would see, really wasn’t, he wasn’t a group member.

There was a period of time in the mid-90s where he actually let loose his vitriolic and acrimony against some of the staff in these meetings on a daily basis. And as a counselor, I would assist these staff with their upsets. He had targeted a particular person on a daily basis as—just to utterly nullify her.

The intent wasn’t to help, assist, edify or otherwise improve the situation that he was encountering with this person as his subordinate. You could tell the intention because of the continuous harassment, if you will. I mean, it was worse than that. It really was vitriolic.

And she couldn’t really respond, it wasn’t like a communication where you’re going to respond to something. And it was like getting this shellacking every day. It was bizarre, you know, it was psychotic. It was psychotic.