Becky Bigelow—Ron Miscavige’s Lying Wife

Michela Stave was Becky Bigelow’s boss for years as an executive at Golden Era Productions. Michela sheds light on Becky’s lack of honesty, inability to be trustworthy and how she was more trouble than she was worth by a long shot. Becky was downright destructive as a worker and caused loss of funds and more work for those around her through her deceit and covert actions.

I worked with Becky over a period of 20 years. For several years prior to her departure, I was the executive in charge, with Becky one of my junior staff.

During this time I found Becky to be a dishonest and unreliable person who created much confusion and disharmony in the area, all while producing bad and unusable products, wasting funds and making it almost impossible for others to do their work. It took me a long time to realize this, as Becky had the behavior of a simple, not too bright girl. However, I came to realize her destructive actions were calculated. When Becky left the area, I was relieved and working with the other staff became easier. Production doubled with no additional personnel and there were no more instances of wasted funds and huge delays in production.

When Becky left the area, I was relieved and working with the other staff became easier. Production doubled with no additional personnel and there were no more instances of wasted funds and huge delays in production.

A few examples:

1) Becky was in charge of preparing the final files for printing of our promotional items, such as magazines, brochures, fliers and so on. In this capacity, Becky repeatedly violated established standard procedures, wasting tens of thousand of dollars of Church funds and delaying production.

A specific instance occurred in October 2011. Becky was working on a key Church magazine, preparing the final files to turn over to the printer for production. She altered the standard procedure on how to check the color of the magazine and the quality of its photographs. As a result, when the magazine arrived at the printer it required extensive correction of the files, wasting a whole day of production and many thousands of dollars and never achieving proper quality standards. The magazine was late in going out.

Right after this instance, Becky was working on preparing the final files of another key Church magazine. I asked her if she had followed the industry standard to prepare the magazine for production, specifically with relation to the photographs. Becky assured me she had. I looked into this and found she had not, but had knowingly altered the established procedure and falsified that the magazine met the printing requirements. Becky only admitted to this when confronted with clear evidence of her wrongdoing. She wasted several thousands of dollars and hours of work. When others redid the work Becky had done, they produced a high-quality product in half the time. The magazine could immediately be printed without further work and with no waste of time and funds.

Becky only admitted to this when confronted with clear evidence of her wrongdoing. She wasted several thousands of dollars and hours of work. When others redid the work Becky had done, they produced a high-quality product in half the time.

2) During the years Becky worked in preparing promotional items files for production (2002-2012), there was a constant situation with delays and problems on the files. Becky had made it look like these came from the printers or in most instances did not report but covered up the situation.

In early 2012, I received several communications from two different printing facilities, asking for assistance. Both stated they had been asking for correction to the files so they could go to press. They were not getting a reply from Becky or they were being told by her that the files were fine. In looking into this, I discovered 140 products which could not be printed and were delayed in production. These had all been prepared and turned over for production and falsely attested as OK. I took over handling these items and within weeks all were handled and in production, with great relief from the printers.

3) Becky Bigelow was a walking catastrophe with regards to files. Files for any company or organization are extremely important. There are industry standards on keeping files and we have our own administrative policy on files. Following these makes work easy, makes it easy for others to do their job, makes it easy to do your own job.

Becky’s files were the complete opposite of standard files.

When we found Becky lying flat out about her actions on printing of magazines, she was taken off that function and restricted from it.

When we found Becky lying flat out about her actions on printing of magazines, she was taken off that function and restricted from it.

Every backlog, unanswered e-mail, letter, query from printers was dug out of her hiding places. We rooted out all job files that had been stuffed into dark corners. We basically found a hidden backlog she was spending most of her time covering up. This is what was found:

In a cabinet, behind some boxes, there were over 1,000 CDs and DVDs that had accumulated over approximately 10 years. They were stored randomly in boxes and binders and not in any kind of order. We could not tell what was on them. Someone had to go through all of them and verify their contents and get them properly filed and indexed so they could be retrieved if needed. I estimate over 1,000 hours was spent on this.

Job files were stuffed into cabinets, shelves, baskets, etc. Once printing is done one is supposed to put the information about the printing into the job file and send it off to be filed. We had to get the folders in order and dig up printing information and complete the files. At least 300 hours was spent on this.

Soft-copy files were strewn over 21 locations on the central server, yet our administrative policy is very clear that they should be filed in one place. Becky somehow managed to have files in the strangest locations. In some cases files were duplicated. Of course this meant nothing could be found easily. Becky kept soft-copy files on her desktop (a complete violation of any kind of industry standard—if your computer crashes you will lose the files). We found file names like “This is the Final One” or “Revised Revised.” Only in Becky’s mind did this make sense—or she knew it made no sense and was intentionally creating havoc.

Approximately 30,000 files had to be reviewed and placed in a proper single location, properly named. This included verifying that the files were indeed the files they said they were. It took a year to put this chaos into proper order.

Having Becky Bigelow anywhere near an important task or work environment is a disaster in the making. Becky only has the capability to bankrupt anyplace she would work, cause conflict, upsets, confusion and distress through her constant lies and destruction.

Having Becky Bigelow anywhere near an important task or work environment is a disaster in the making. Becky only has the capability to bankrupt anyplace she would work, cause conflict, upsets, confusion and distress through her constant lies and destruction.