In what way does Scientology differ from other religions? Is Scientology a cult? Previous In what way does Scientology differ from other religions?
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Feel free to review our Privacy Policy for further details. She just knew that people thought she was bad, and she worried they were right. In one, Silverman explains, two people are supposed to face each other for hours without moving or reacting. In another, she says, a person attempts to sit, calmly, while their partner yells things at them to make them react.
She now suffers with diagnosed D. When Silverman tries to understand her life, there are huge holes missing. She compares herself to Claire Danes on Homeland , with her wall of clues and connected dots.
But an early life as hippie seekers was not exactly on the Scientology track. When her mom got into Scientology through a business consultant she hired, though, she went all the way. And for Abigail, everything changed. But when she started to doubt — inspired, she says, by a lunch with some skeptical D.
She says her old friends would pass her in the hallways, but now they looked past and through her, or averted their eyes altogether.
The church claims that a Sea Org member can leave at any time, and denies that hard labor is part of the leaving process. One subject who did not wish to reveal their identity, photographed in California, May Meanwhile, Abigail was beginning to wonder if Scientology had a handle on how to live in the first place. It reminded her of being on the decks at the Sea Org. Despite all that, though, she longs to find a belief system she can put her faith in, and a group where she can belong. And so she keeps trying, cobbling together a self-styled faith that rejects dogmatism, guilt and authority and embraces ritual and compassion.
All she knows is that she feels a kinship with other Jewish people — as if her body remembers some other way of being and belonging and is giving her clues. Moments before, while another group member was telling a story about reconnecting with their mom after years of separation, Rich had crumpled like a worn-out doll, putting his head on the table until Gordon noticed. When she comes to him, he chokes it out.
The last time he talked to his mom, he wrote her a letter saying he hated her. She died in Gordon cries with him. Silverman is there, too. No one knows quite what to do, or how to comfort him. So they hug him. They suggest talking to a therapist. At this, Rich rears up. Earlier that evening, Abigail went into the bathroom and wrapped her head in a scarf and grabbed a couple of crackers from the kitchen.
Then she slid out the front door, not wanting to attract attention. It felt too much like Scientology. So she decided to do the ritual her way. She decided to walk to the Brooklyn Bridge and drop some crackers in the water, not as a symbol of sin but a metaphor for anything that comes between her and God. What is Vodou? Inside a Vodou ceremony.
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Scientology is probably one of the most successful new American faiths to have emerged in the past century. But despite its success -- and like a lot of other belief systems -- what Scientologists believe and how they perceive a higher power is often misunderstood. Here's a look at the basics about Scientology:. Read More. Scientology describes itself as a religion that was founded in the s by L.
Ron Hubbard. At the core of Scientology is a belief that each human has a reactive mind that responds to life's traumas, clouding the analytic mind and keeping us from experiencing reality. Members of the religion submit to a process called auditing to find the sources of this trauma, reliving those experiences in an attempt to neutralize them and reassert the primacy of the analytic mind, working toward a spiritual state called "clear.
Leah Remini's Scientology series gets second season. The process involves a device called E-meter, which Scientologists say measures the body's electric flow as an auditor asks a series of questions they say reveals sources of trauma. The church goes on to say, "Science is something one does, not something one believes in. Auditing purports to identify spiritual distress from a person's current life and from past lives.
Haggis had learned from reading it that several of the church's top managers had defected in despair. Marty Rathbun had once been inspector general of the church's Religious Technology Centre, and had also overseen Scientology's legal-defence strategy, reporting directly to Miscavige.
Amy Scobee had been an executive in the Celebrity Centre network. Mike Rinder had been the church's spokesperson, the job now held by Davis. One by one, they had disappeared from Scientology, and it had never occurred to Haggis to ask where they had gone. The defectors told the newspaper that Miscavige was a serial abuser of his staff. If you did try, you'd be attacking the COB" — the chairman of the board.
Tom De Vocht, a defector who had been a manager at the Clearwater spiritual centre, told the paper that he, too, had been beaten by Miscavige; he said that from to , he had witnessed Miscavige striking other staff members as many as times.
Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht all admitted that they had engaged in physical violence themselves. Scobee said that nobody challenged the abuse because people were terrified of Miscavige. Their greatest fear was expulsion: "You don't have any money.
You don't have job experience. You don't have anything. And he could put you on the streets and ruin you. Much of the alleged abuse took place at the Gold Base, a Scientology outpost in the desert 80 miles south-east of Los Angeles. Miscavige has an office there, and for decades the base's location was unknown even to many church insiders. According to a court declaration filed by Rathbun in July, Miscavige expected Scientology leaders to instil aggressive, even violent, discipline. Rathbun said that he was resistant, and that Miscavige grew frustrated with him, assigning him in to the Hole — a pair of double-wide trailers at the Gold Base.
The church claims that such stories are false: "There is not, and never has been, any place of 'confinement'… nor is there anything in Church policy that would allow such confinement. According to Rathbun, Miscavige came to the Hole one evening and announced that everyone was going to play musical chairs.
Only the last person standing would be allowed to stay on the base. He declared that people whose spouses "were not participants would have their marriages terminated".
The St Petersburg Times noted that Miscavige played Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody on a boom box as the church leaders fought over the chairs, punching each other and, in one case, ripping a chair apart. De Vocht, one of the participants, says the event lasted until 4am: "It got more and more physical as the number of chairs went down. They had no money, no credit cards, no telephones. According to De Vocht, many lacked a driver's licence or a passport. Few had any savings or employment prospects.
As people fell out of the game, Miscavige had aeroplane reservations made for them. He said that buses were going to be leaving at 6am. The powerlessness of everyone else in the room was nakedly clear. Davis told me that a musical chairs episode did occur. He explained that Miscavige had been away from the Gold Base for some time, and when he returned he discovered that in his absence many jobs had been reassigned.
The game was meant to demonstrate that even seemingly small changes can be disruptive to an organisation — underscoring an "administrative policy of the church". The rest of the defectors' accounts, Davis told me, was "hoo-ha": "Chairs being ripped apart, and people being threatened that they're going to be sent to far-flung places in the world, plane tickets being purchased, and they're going to force their spouses — and on and on and on.
I mean, it's just nuts! The church provided me with 11 statements from Scientologists, all of whom said that Miscavige had never been violent. The church characterises Scobee, Rinder, Rathbun, De Vocht and other defectors I spoke with as "discredited individuals" who were demoted for incompetence or expelled for corruption; the defectors' accounts are consistent only because they have "banded together to advance and support each other's false 'stories'".
A few nights after the musical chairs incident, he got on his motorcycle and waited until a gate was opened for someone else; he sped out and didn't stop. Haggis called several other former Scientologists he knew well. One said he had escaped from the Gold Base by driving his car through a wooden fence.
Still others had been expelled or declared Suppressive Persons. Haggis asked himself, "What kind of organisation are we involved in where people just disappear? At his house, Haggis finished telling his friends what he had learned. The stories on the site, of children drafted into the Sea Org, appalled him. My God, it horrified me! Many Sea Org volunteers find themselves with no viable options for adulthood.
The church says it adheres to "all child labour laws", and that minors can't sign up without parental consent; the freeloader tabs are an "ecclesiastical matter" and are not enforced through litigation. Haggis's friends came away from the meeting with mixed feelings. This would be the last time most of them spoke to him. In the days after, church officials and members came to his office, distracting his producing partner, Michael Nozik, who is not a Scientologist.
In October , Rathbun called Haggis and asked if he could publish the resignation letter on his blog. Haggis says he didn't think about the consequences of his decision: "I thought it would show up on a couple of websites. I'm a writer, I'm not Lindsay Lohan. The next morning, the story was in newspapers around the world. At the time Haggis was doing his research, the FBI was conducting its own investigation.
One was Gary Morehead, who had been the head of security at the Gold Base; he left the church in In 13 years, he estimates, he and his security team brought more than Sea Org members back to the base.
When emotional, spiritual or psychological pressure failed to work, Morehead says, physical force was sometimes used. The church says that blow drills do not exist. Whitehill and Venegas worked on a special task force devoted to human trafficking. The California penal code lists several indicators: signs of trauma or fatigue; being afraid or unable to talk; owing a debt to one's employer. Those conditions echo the testimony of many former Sea Org members. Sea Org members who have "failed to fulfil their ecclesiastical responsibilities" may be sent to one of the church's several Rehabilitation Project Force locations.
Defectors describe them as punitive re-education camps. He recalls that the properties were heavily guarded and that anyone who tried to flee would be subjected to further punishment. Davis says that Sea Org members enter RPF by their own choosing and can leave at any time; the manual labour maintains church facilities and instils "pride of accomplishment". Defectors also talked to the FBI about Miscavige's luxurious lifestyle. The law prohibits the head of a tax-exempt organisation from enjoying unusual perks or compensation; it's called inurement.
Davis refused to disclose how much money Miscavige earns, and the church isn't required to do so, but Headley and other defectors suggest that Miscavige lives more like a Hollywood star than like the head of a religious organisation — flying on chartered jets and wearing custom-made shoes.
The church denies this characterisation and "vigorously objects to the suggestion that Church funds inure to the private benefit of Mr Miscavige. He was unhappy with Miscavige, his former brother-in-law, whom he considered "detrimental to the goals of Scientology". It was Tommy Davis; he and 19 church members had tracked Brousseau down.
Brousseau locked himself in his room and called Rathbun, who alerted the police; Davis went home without Brousseau. In a deposition given in July, Davis said no when asked if he had ever "followed a Sea Organisation member that has blown [fled the church]". Under further questioning, he insisted that he was only trying "to see a friend of mine".
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