Phil and Willie Jones

KEY FACTS

PERPETRATOR OF HATE CAMPAIGN

Posts anti-religious rants and lies online, spreading hate on websites including one that linked to an individual incited to hate and an act of vandalism against the Church.

Phil and Willie Jones

KEY FACTS

EXPLOITING HIS FAMILY

Exploiting his own adult children to create footage for a reality TV show including knowingly filing a false police report, and a false report to a California agency.

Phil and Willie Jones

KEY FACTS

DESTROYED HIS FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

Threw his son out of the house at age 17, going into a rage over a minor debt of $200, then years later he turned his back on both children, attacking them and their personal beliefs.

HATEMONGERS

Phil and Willie Jones

Phil and Willie Jones were Scientologists for 40 years. Lured by attention and money, they turned against their former religion and began viciously harassing their adult children, Mike and Emily, through a bigoted reality TV show.

In December 2015, Phil Jones—with a 5-man reality TV camera crew, a known anti-Scientologist, and private investigators hired by the TV production company—showed up unannounced at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles where his son Mike is a staff member.

Pretending he was “looking for Mike,” who had worked there for nearly 20 years, Phil staged a phony incident for the cameras about “rescuing” Mike—a 42-year-old married man with a responsible job who wanted nothing to do with his father’s vicious charade.

To generate footage for the camera crew, Phil Jones’s next diabolical antic was to plaster Mike’s neighborhood with “MISSING” fliers with Mike’s name and photograph emblazoned on them. Some were placed in the coffee shop where Mike had picked up his coffee that morning, as usual. The owner knew the fliers were a sham, so he gathered them up and threw them in the trash.

Phil Jones’s next scam was to file a knowingly fraudulent report to the Los Angeles Police Department claiming Mike was somehow being held against his will. It failed in its intent to generate dramatic TV footage of police investigating, but it did not fail to waste the time of a police force already stretched thin protecting the public. It was dismissed immediately.

Desperately needing more footage to satisfy the reality TV team, Phil Jones filed a false report with California Adult Protective Services claiming Mike was in dire need of medical help for a degenerative disease—that he does not have. It too failed to produce viable footage, wasting the time of yet another overburdened government agency. There are laws protecting police and state agencies against those who file knowing false reports, and Phil Jones violated those laws.

Phil’s harassment is the thanks Emily Jones gets from her father for her efforts to help him in 2013 when he suffered from a back ailment so crippling he was wheelchair bound. Emily researched, located and paid for special treatment for her father, which helped him to such an extent that he is now able to walk.

Phil Jones then launched a dishonest “Call Me” campaign, placing billboards in Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017 and raising money from people unaware of the full story. The billboard message is a lie. Emily did call him, and Mike called him too. Emily told him that he needed to cease harassing Mike and her if he wanted to repair the relationship. But Phil refused. He loves the attention more than he cares about his children. The billboards are a blatant attempt to incite hatred and violence against a religion and its members, while stroking Phil’s ego and his insatiable desire for publicity.

As a further demonstration of his malevolence, Phil Jones works in tandem with Tony Ortega, a hate blogger who relentlessly attacks Phil’s son and daughter, the Church of Scientology and its leadership. He is an obsessed anti-Scientologist with a tainted reputation who can’t get a real job with any legitimate media.

Phil Jones focuses on Scientology solely because he sees profit in attacking a prominent religion. He has no shame in spitting on Mike and Emily’s freedom to practice their religion. It would be no different if the parent of a Catholic, Methodist, Jew (or any other religion) did what Phil Jones is doing. Mike and Emily have a right to live their lives as they please and practice their faith free from the vicious harassment of their parents.

The Jones billboard is not about religion at all. It’s about dishonest, disingenuous parents with stars in their eyes who put profit and attention ahead of family.