Chapter Sixteen

IN 2012, SIX YEARS INTO their marriage, Tom Cruise announced that he and Katie Holmes were getting a divorce.

Katie and her team of lawyers initiated the proceedings with her formal filing of divorce. Rumors started flying immediately speculating that there would be an explosive showdown over custody for Suri and fears of revelations of secret facts about Tom’s life. While Katie’s team denied any of the rumors, the divorce was settled in less than two weeks and Katie ended up with primary custody. Tom seemed to acknowledge that Katie left because she wanted to protect Suri from Scientology. It made me wonder whether protecting his church was more important to him than his own daughter.

Katie’s action, of filing for divorce in such a public way (it had quickly been picked up by the media), would definitely get her declared a Suppressive Person by the church. It had always been my understanding that as a Scientologist you have the right to request that any Knowledge Reports written by an SP be removed from your files. I had been fighting for years to get the Cruise wedding fallout expunged from my files. So as soon as I heard news of the divorce, I picked up the phone and called my auditor, Todd, and said, “What do you have to say to me now?”

“I guess you can expect to have that report taken out of your folder,” he replied.

We met shortly thereafter and Todd basically admitted that they had screwed up about moving me off my OT levels and onto the training track after speaking up about everything I had seen in Italy.

“Look,” he said, “you got some bad auditing the last time you were at Flag. Putting you into training was not the right thing to do. In fact, it was all wrong. Go back to Flag and go back into auditing.” (This would, of course, be at my expense.)

Now that my church seemingly had realized that it had fucked up, and was starting to apply LRH policies again, I wondered where were the apologies to me from everyone involved in the wedding debacle? After I reported on what I saw in Italy, I was made to feel like I was crazy and that I was the only one to witness these things. Yet Norman Starkey was sent home early from Italy in disgrace. And guess who got divorced and remarried? Less than a year after the wedding, Jessica and Tommy, who were all over each other at the wedding, both took extensive leaves from the Sea Org—and later wound up married to each other after divorcing their spouses. So did I get a plaque that said, “You were right”? Nope. And I never got an answer about Shelly Miscavige’s whereabouts. I made up for the damage that they had accused me of doing. What about the damage they did to me?

“Well, if it was all wrong, are you going to give me back my money? Because, as a Scientologist, when I’m reprimanded I’m asked what I’m going to do to make up the damage. So now I’m asking you, what are you going to do to make up the damage?”

“What do you mean?” Todd said. “Are you asking for a refund?”

Although the church publicly claims that it will simply return funds to anyone who is dissatisfied, the reality of this policy is quite different. In fact, requesting a return of money from the church is classified as a Scientology “High Crime” or “Suppressive Act,” which qualifies one to be declared a Suppressive Person. And in an even more bizarre twist, once the church declares you an SP, according to its policy you are no longer eligible for a return of your money. It is the perfect catch-22—if you ask for your money back, you will be Declared and thereby no longer qualify to get your money back.

“No, I’m not asking for a refund,” I responded. “What I’m saying is, what does the church do to take responsibility for its actions? When I fucked up I spent my hiatus from King of Queens in Florida, in session twelve hours a day, having my ass handed to me. And so I want to know what you people do when you fuck up?”

Eventually, after some time, Todd came back to me and said, “It’s done,” and that I would get the $300,000 credited to my account. I believed him, never bothering to check my accounts. Why would I? To me Todd’s word was that of my church.

Todd went on to encourage me to get back onto my OT levels, but I decided that I wanted to continue pursuing the auditor training path because I liked the idea of helping people, working with preclears, counseling them. With the church’s seeming admission of having messed up the wedding fallout, and its agreeing to return my money, I began to re-engage, dedicating myself in the weeks that followed to moving ahead in my training as an auditor. But one thing still nagged at me: the fact that no one would tell me where Shelly Miscavige was. When I would ask Todd during our sessions, he would take me outside where there were no recording devices and say, “Shelly is a Sea Org member and you’re asking about the leader’s wife. How do you expect people to react? I can’t call COB and ask him.” When I flat out asked if she was dead, he responded, “I’m sure she’s not dead, but you and I are not in a position to ask where the leader’s wife is. I think it would be in your best interest to stop asking.”

In requesting my $300,000 back, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that if this kind of problem with money happened to me, an outspoken celebrity in the church, similar things must be happening to so many others who suffered in silence. That just wasn’t right. Having grown up a Scientologist, I knew firsthand the financial sacrifice that the church demands of its ordinary practitioners. I had met one man who said he was in foreclosure because of a sec-check—and a mom who told me she had drained her daughter’s college fund after she was sent to Flag. On a more personal level, I had watched my whole family struggle to move up the Bridge. They were $250,000 in debt at this point. The fact that people making average salaries of $50,000 a year somehow find a way to pay the $500,000 necessary to get on their OT levels—frankly, it’s a superhuman task. The level of dedication is astonishing and admirable, but over the long term it means financial destruction for a lot of people and families.

When anyone arrives at Flag, one of the first places he or she is sent is to the IAS (International Association of Scientologists). It’s one of the various wings in charge of getting donations out of parishioners. But the IAS is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of extracting money from Scientologists for the church’s monumentally important causes. Before you’ve even had time to go to your hotel room, they’ve looked up how much money you’ve donated to the church and immediately started to question it: “Do you really think you’re going to get onto OT VII with this donation?” No matter what you say about the state of your finances, the fund-raisers of the IAS can always find a way for you to give more. They’ll ask for your credit card number and its limit. Then they “help” you call Visa or Amex and they know exactly what to say to get your limit upped. And once they’ve helped you get that $10,000 or $25,000 credit limit increase, you end up charging that amount to your card as a donation. Either you’re an able being, or you’re not. Able beings make major donations. And of course, any “good” Scientologist is expected to be able.

I wondered how many Scientologists with far fewer resources than I had were in debt to the church because they had spoken out about something they saw that wasn’t right and were punished with a costly security check or a course of reprogramming. I also continued to wonder why parishioners had to pay for the same things over and over again. Why we had to keep purchasing new or revised textbook editions and CDs of the same policies/courses we had already bought. Forced to repeat courses if we wanted to move up the Bridge. Redo auditing actions over and over again, all at our expense. If we were made to abide by the same rules of “you are responsible for all,” why didn’t the church say, “Hey, we fucked up on that process, so we are going to have you do it again at our expense”? Instead, there was just no end to what was required of a parishioner.

The response I would get whenever I voiced my concerns to someone in the church was, “We just have to do it,” or some other runaround excuse. No one was willing to challenge these financial practices, instead just accepting them as the status quo. Even more infuriating was my original complaint that as parishioners we had to make financial and spiritual amends for our wrongs, but the leaders of our faith took no responsibility for anything ever. How could that be?

Here was Tom Cruise, being rewarded for being the most dedicated Scientologist on the planet, but you know who should actually get that reward? The guy who makes $75,000 a year and donates $250,000.

Soon after my various conversations with Todd, I got a call from my handler, Shane, who worked with Todd on my service. “You know what, Leah? I’m looking at things in your folder from over the years, and there have definitely been some issues in regards to your speaking up. Why don’t I come over and I can help you write up some Standard Request for Withdrawal Reports.” (Apparently the previous ones I had submitted to have earlier Knowledge Reports on me from people like Katie Holmes pulled from my file had been rejected due to the fact that I showed too much emotion in the language I used. I had found out that the requests were essentially ignored for years.) I agreed to meet with Shane, and together we worked on the new requests.

As we were working I once again broached the subject of Shelly. I told Shane that I found it surprising and concerning that I hadn’t gotten a holiday card or thank-you note from her after I sent her a gift that past Christmas, something she had always been diligent about in the past. It wasn’t like her. Shane, like Todd, responded with “I don’t know, I can’t ask where the leader’s wife is.”

I figured as long as Shane was here trying to help me with the requests for withdrawal, why not have him help me try to get a letter to Shelly, to which he agreed. I wrote the following note and gave it to him for delivery:

Dear Shelly,

It has been some time that I have seen or heard from you. I have sent you a few Christmas cards and gifts. It was not like you to not write back right away. I had asked about you and was told you were on project. Out of respect I didn’t want to say “Are they (meaning you and Dave) not together?” or “Is she on the RPF?” I let it go for a bit. But, it has been way too long now that I have not seen or heard from you.

I have come across some letters from you to me, my family, my daughter and I just feel as someone who I considered a friend, I needed to know that you were indeed ok.

I get it that you might be busy and might very well be on project, but you were there for me when I needed you and I don’t take that lightly. Further, you were always in comm. with us.

I am sure you can understand why I would write.

My cell is XXX-XXX-XXXX.

With Love,

Leah

A week or so passed and I called Shane to see if he had been able to get the note to Shelly or if he had gotten any response. He told me, “Honestly, Leah, I never sent the note. It was inappropriate the way you referred to COB’s relationship.” He told me to write a new note with a more appropriate tone and language. And so I did:

Dear Shelly,

It has been a while since we have spoken or seen each other. I came across a few letters that you had written to me and my daughter and I thought “I really love & miss Shelly.” What better way to show someone you love them than to not write them for 6 years! (That’s a joke.) So, I decided to write! I think of you often, Shelly—you were really there for me when I needed you and I will always consider you a friend.

I would love to hear from you and have a coffee with you!

Call me.

With Love,

Leah

XXX-XXX-XXXX

Once again, I received no response. I later received word back that my letter to her was considered “entheta,” meaning bad energy, sarcastic, angering, upsetting, and was basically thrown away. By this point Shelly had been missing for more than six years.

A few more weeks passed and I’d yet to hear any responses from the MAA about the requests for Knowledge Report withdrawals that Shane and I had submitted. I asked Shane about it, and he responded with “Let me check on it.”

When a request for withdrawal of a Knowledge Report is reviewed and accepted, formal paperwork and documentation accompany the agreed-upon withdrawal so that the parishioner knows the request has been granted. When I asked Shane to provide me with the formal paperwork, he instead forwarded an unofficial email from an MAA stating that the requests had been accepted. I knew this wasn’t on policy. I was getting the runaround. And now I was starting to get pissed.

I asked Shane for a full review of all of my accounting with the church as I had not yet received the $300,000 credit I had been promised. Shane in turn accused me of asking for a refund. I once again told him, “This is not a refund. This is a credit. A credit for all of the shit you guys have screwed up. When will you accept accountability?”

And with that, I received a personal call from none other than COB, David Miscavige, asking if we could meet. I told him there was no point, but he insisted, offering to clear out the Celebrity Centre for me, Tom Cruise style. I declined but agreed to see him that night so I could confront this issue once and for all.

Angelo, who was worried, said, “Babe, do you want me to go with you?” I refused. The last thing I wanted COB to think was that I needed backup. I was after all, taller than David Miscavige.

David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology, greeted me. His longtime assistant Laurisse (whom I had seen with him at Tom and Katie’s wedding) was also there. He immediately told me he had been traveling and was not aware of what was going on with my situation.

I repeated everything I had already said to others many, many times, plus I went on to ask why wasn’t anyone seeing Tom Cruise the way I saw him? Why with his three failed marriages and couch-jumping antics was he considered to be the epitome of a great Scientologist? Why was he not treated as an SP who should be in session twenty-four hours a day? And why couldn’t I get an answer as to where David’s wife, Shelly, was? He told me that Shelly was okay and that he had to keep her away because SPs are constantly trying to have her subpoenaed. It was so out of left field that I didn’t know how to respond.

We talked a bit more, and all the while he continued saying he knew nothing about my problems but that he would look into things for me. I agreed to have him investigate further and get back to me.

I wasn’t sure that I believed his offer to look into things. So, frustrated with the constant runaround I was getting, I started making phone calls. I broke another one of the cardinal rules of Scientology and began reaching out to those who had been deemed Suppressive Persons. I knew I was yet again stepping outside the bounds of what was acceptable to my church, but given my recent experiences, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to these people, who had been very high up on the Org board, to make them give up everything and everyone in their lives.

I reached out to Mike Rinder, who had left the church in 2007. I was honest with him that I wasn’t a big fan of his because of the way he had acted toward John Sweeney during the BBC documentary fiasco and a famous interview he gave to Dateline in which he blatantly lied to all of America when he said there was no policy of disconnection in Scientology. But for the man who was head of OSA for twenty-five years, a Sea Org member for forty years, and a Scientologist for fifty years to leave? Something must have happened to him. I listened to what he and another former top executive had said, that Scientology’s management—themselves included—was continually subjected to, and inflicted physical beatings on, other Sea Org members. I questioned him how this could possibly be. What about LRH policy?

“What you don’t understand is that we were backed up by policy,” Mike said to me.

I was stunned.

There were seemingly some secret flag orders and dispatches that Mike said he had seen that permit hitting and abusing people if it is in the course of getting someone to comply with policy, which would make it acceptable. According to several eyewitness accounts, in the Hole—a set of trailers on Gold Base (International Base), a remote 500-acre compound in Southern California—fallen executives are kept separated, humiliated, and often beaten. Mike said that at the direction of and by the hand of David Miscavige, leaders of my church, including Mike, were subjected to punishments like being made to lick bathroom floors or being doused in cold water, punishments that were so bad they felt they had no other choice but to flee. Mike decided enough was enough, choosing to leave the church and speak out; as a result he lost contact with his son, his daughter, and his wife of thirty-plus years, his mother and brother and sister and everyone else in his family.

My assumption up to this point—that terrible things like what was happening in the Hole were not an indictment of my church but bad Scientologists misusing policy—was wrong. Mike was saying that if David Miscavige was beating people, he wasn’t misguided; he was following LRH policy—which is what all good Scientologists are taught to do. “That’s why at the time I thought it was okay,” he told me.

Of course, the Church of Scientology has always denied that any of this is true—the church says there is no Hole, no abuse, no beatings, at least not by David Miscaviage. But then why were so many former executives leaving Scientology and telling consistent stories of abuse?

I also reached out to Debbie Cook, the woman who was the captain of the Flag Service Organization (FSO), which meant she ran Flag, which she did for seventeen years. She had also been in the Hole, but she wouldn’t talk to me. The church was suing her for violation of a contract after the famous New Year’s Eve email that she wrote and disseminated on December 31, 2012. In it, she described herself as “dedicated to the technology of Dianetics and Scientology and the works of LRH…and I absolutely know it is worth fighting to keep it pure and unadulterated.” But she went on to say, “I do have some very serious concerns.” Those concerns could be summed up in two words: David Miscavige. “There never was supposed to be a ‘leader’ other than LRH,” she wrote.

The church charged that the email violated the terms of the agreement she made back in 2007 after spending seven weeks in the Hole. But as Debbie testified in court, after the abuse she experienced in the Hole, “I would have signed that I stabbed babies over and over again and loved it.”

Scientology made the mistake of suing Debbie Cook, and in a Texas courtroom under oath, she described her experience in the Hole, stating that she had watched David Miscavige punch people, and that for twelve hours she was made to stand in a trash can with a sign that read “Lesbo” hung around her neck. During this twelve-hour period, cold water was periodically poured over her head while people screamed at her to admit she was gay. (In Dianetics, LRH explicitly called homosexuality a “perversion.” Then later, he put being gay on the Tone Scale as “Covert Hostility,” which registers at 1.1 on the scale of human emotions, which is considered by Scientologists to be a person avoided at all costs.)

Reading Debbie’s email started me on an Internet search. In Scientology you are told to stay away from the Internet or other forms of media or intelligence that might be against Scientology. I broke away from this long-held rule and looked at hundreds of stories about my church and just sat there and cried. Not just for me, but for the many who believed in something that they thought was bigger than themselves and dedicated their whole lives to sustaining it. How could I have been blind to the stories that the rest of the world knew? Scientologists are hardworking, dedicated, and caring people, albeit misinformed people, and I was no exception. The reason for their blind faith lies in their core belief that they alone have the answers to eradicate the ills of humanity. You run back to the safety of the group that shares your mentality, and in this way your world becomes very insular.

During my crisis of faith I did what most people do in similar circumstances—I relied on my friends and family as a sounding board. But when I brought up my discoveries of abuse with John and Val Futris, my dear friends, former employer, and closest confidants for the last twenty-five years, I was surprised by the reaction my concerns elicited.

After confessing that I had read Debbie Cook’s email and tried to contact her, I asked them why no Scientologists would read it.

“Why would I read entheta?” Valerie said.

“How do you know that it’s entheta?” I asked.

“Because it’s from somebody who’s against our group.”

“It was somebody in our group, Valerie. And not just a somebody but a trusted member. Debbie Cook was the captain of the FSO, on the front lines of Scientology, for a very long time. Why wouldn’t you give her the time of day, to even look at what she has to say?”

Debbie and many of the others whose information and statements I was looking at were considered to be among the chiefs of our church. These weren’t just some ex-parishioners, bitter apostates, kicked-out members, looking for fame or a quick payout. These were men and women who were respected leaders in our church, who dedicated their lives not only to our church but also to the Sea Org, signing billion-year contracts. They essentially gave up their lives for the church.

“Why would I go out of my way to read an enemy’s email?”

“It makes me wonder what you would do if I wrote an email like that.”

“I wouldn’t read it.”

“That kills me inside. I mean, you wouldn’t read an email from me? Are you kidding me, Val? You’ve known me since I was fucking sixteen.”

Once I opened myself up to the outside world, I heard so many terrible things. I learned what had happened to Sherry’s brother, Stefan, years after he came to me for help in getting his wife, Tanja, back from Gold Base, where she was kept for two years. At one point she was even put into isolation after she scaled an eight-foot wall topped by razor wire and jumped to freedom, only to be returned by Scientologists who found her walking along the highway.

Stefan never gave up on getting Tanja back. Eventually he came up with a plan that included sending her a Victoria’s Secret box, which he knew the security guards wouldn’t open because they wouldn’t want to risk being caught going through lingerie, which would certainly be considered aberrated behavior. In the box Tanja found a letter from Stefan and a cell phone so they could communicate. In 2006, seven years after they were first separated, Stefan pulled up at Gold Base in a car, and in the middle of the night Tanja jumped the wall again and the pair drove off to freedom.

Not long after I spoke to John and Val, Shane called me into the Celebrity Centre, but when I arrived at my course room, I found him standing with two men I had never heard of or met before. Shane introduced me. “This is Mike Sutter and Hansuli Stahli. They are executives from the church. They were sent here to talk to you.” The two of them, I later found out, were infamously referred to as David Miscavige’s “henchmen.”

“We wanted to sit down and answer any questions you might have,” they said.

“Great. Where’s Shelly?”

Rather than answer my question, they responded by showing me some policies they had on hand. I quickly dismissed them.

They then went on to say, “We got a report that you’re asking about Shelly and hooking up with the Debbie Cooks of the world.”

“Well, let me see the reports, because as per LRH policies you just showed me, I should have gotten a copy of the reports.”

“Well, it was a verbal report.”

“A verbal report? Why don’t you show me the LRH policy that says that’s okay? You can’t, because you know it’s not policy.”

They stared at me. I turned my attention to Shane.

“Shane, did you not know that I asked about Shelly? Did you not know that I was questioning what was going on?” Shane nodded that he did. “You’re all acting like I’m hiding something that I’ve been asking about for years. What the fuck kind of bullshit is this?”

Sutter and Stahli started in on a presentation of the expansion of Scientology and all the buildings the church had recently purchased. Pointing to images of millions of dollars’ worth of Scientology’s real estate holdings, Stahli said, “This is what we’re doing, Leah.”

“When you connect up with a Debbie Cook or a Mike Rinder,” Sutter said to me, “you’re cutting across the survival of mankind and impeding what we’re trying to do here.”

That’s right—according to Sutter, just talking with an SP means you’re trying to destroy Scientology by proxy. And if Scientology is humanity’s only hope for salvation, well, I was on the wrong side.

“Listen, guys, I really appreciate the eighth-grade presentation, but I could give a shit about buildings,” I said. “What I care about is myself, my family, and the people who are getting fucked by a church that doesn’t give a shit about the truth but rather buildings, which represent not only my millions of dollars but the millions of people who don’t have that kind of money but continue to remain dedicated and contribute.”

As I went on and on and on, it was clear they had no idea what to do. They weren’t prepared for this.

“I want answers as to why Tom Cruise seems to be running our church; I think he’s an SP. I want answers on why we have to spend hours and hours in session for minor transgressions, but you people, the embodiment of ethics and morals, don’t have to take responsibility for anything. I mean, what the fuck is going on here?…I want answers about Shelly Miscavige. So, do you have answers to where she is or anything else I’m asking about?”

No answers. They just “acknowledged” me, like every Scientologist learns in the introductory communication course. There were no human qualities to any of this.

“You’re going to acknowledge me, and I’m going to want to throw you out that window,” I said. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to. But you only acknowledging me is not the way you’re going to handle me. So if you want to handle me, come straight, and come with some fucking answers. Other than that, we’re done.” I then turned my attention to Shane. “You honestly thought having these guys work on me would be a good idea? Well, it wasn’t. And as I asked before, I want a full accounting of all of my finances within the church. How much money have I spent in total on Scientology?” I honestly had no idea up until that point. “How much has my family spent? I want all of it.”

And with that I walked out the door and left.

Two days later Shane and the Commanding Officer of the Celebrity Centre, Dave Petit, showed up at my house unannounced. Angelo answered the door even though I said not to let them in, because I knew this was just going to amount to more bullshit.

“Do you have answers as to where Shelly Miscavige is?” I said to Dave. “Otherwise I’m going to slam this door in your face.”

“I do,” he replied.

So the four of us went into my office, where Dave and Shane began taking out all these LRH policies from Dave’s briefcase.

“Oh no. I’m not going to read policy,” I said.

“You’re refusing to read LRH policy?” Shane said.

“Shane, I have read more policy than you. I’m higher than you on the Bridge; I’m also higher trained. You’re not going to school me on LRH. Okay? So back to my original question: Where’s Shelly?”

“I just need you to read this policy before we start,” Dave said, sliding the paper across the table to me as if it was too much trouble for him to stand up and hand it to me. I slid it right back and stood up myself.

“Listen to me, Dave Petit. You can take that policy and shove it up your ass. Where’s Shelly?”

“She’s at Gold.”

“Get her on the phone,” I said.

“We don’t have the number.”

“You don’t have the number, Shane? Really, you want to play games?” I walked over to the phone near my computer. “Okay, let’s call Tom De Vocht. Maybe he has the number?”

Tom, a former Sea Org officer who dealt intimately with David Miscavige, would have the number to Gold.

“Leah, Leah,” Shane said, “what’s happening to you?”

“You’re playing games with me,” I said, then turned to Angelo. “You see what is going on here? Didn’t they say they had answers about where Shelly was, and now he doesn’t even know the number to Gold?”

Then I turned to Shane and said, “If I don’t get answers, an apology, and the money I’m owed, I’m going to call the cops and the FBI. I know you’ve known me to make empty threats in the past, but mark my words, Shane: This one will happen. So I’d better get some fucking answers.”

“Leah, Leah, Leah,” Shane continued.

Angelo interrupted him. “Actually, stop. Just give her the answer you said you had. Where is Shelly?”

“Leah,” David said, ignoring Angelo, “what’s happening? Why are you talking to Debbie Cook?”

“Why don’t you make Tom Cruise disconnect from Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, both of whom you declared to be SPs? Everybody else in the world has to suffer and cut ties, but when it’s Tom Cruise, your god, policy doesn’t apply to him. Families are being destroyed every day by this. But not Tom Cruise. Never Tom…So you’re bullshit. And the church is bullshit.”

“You’re a fucking bitch,” Shane said.

Angelo jumped up out of his seat, slammed the door to the office shut so Shane couldn’t escape, and cocked his fist.

“Listen, man,” Shane stammered.

“You don’t call my wife a fucking bitch in front of me in our house,” Angelo seethed.

Like a trapped animal, Shane didn’t know what to do.

“Apologize to my wife,” Angelo said.

“Angelo, please…,” he said.

I didn’t lift a finger to stop Angelo. I wanted him to bust Shane’s ass no matter what the consequences were. I mean, I was full on ready to be arrested; you know, I’d just put on a little lipstick, mug shot ready. I’d take that bullet to see this asshole go down. I was so hyped up I wondered if I could take Dave Petit. But my fantasy was interrupted when Shane said, “Sorry, Leah.” Then he ran out of the house with Dave not far behind.

Shortly thereafter I was called in to meet with David Miscavige again.

We talked about what I knew to be my bad auditing at Flag. He was trying to justify what had happened to me and claimed that it was Jessica who was the one who had sent a written communication on his behalf to get me handled. That Jessica called the code red on me, not him.

“Dave, it’s not just about me. It’s about the whole thing. Families are being destroyed, people are in debt, OTs are leaving, highly trained auditors are leaving. Something is not right.”

He asked me to give him names.

“Dave, come on. How about at the next event you ask to see a show of hands from all the people who are in debt because of this church.”

He laughed as if I was being ridiculous, but I wasn’t kidding.

“My whole family is in financial ruin. I mean, it’s happening every day.”

He questioned the fact that I had reached out to people like Debbie Cook and Mike Rinder, referring to them as his enemies.

“I don’t know that they’re your enemies. I know that they left the church and I know that they’re claiming to have been abused by other Sea Org members.”

He dismissed what I was saying and tried to move the conversation along and “focus on the good.”

Sick of the many dismissals and runaround I was getting, I refused to focus on the good. Instead I started talking to him about my concerns with Tom Cruise and what I perceived to be his overwhelming role in the church.

“Tom needs to shut his fucking mouth and stop representing Scientology,” I said.

Miscavige then directed the conversation toward getting me onto my OT levels. Not what I wanted to hear.

I was surprised when I got a call shortly thereafter from Laurisse informing me that after nearly six long years, the $300,000 due to me was finally going to be credited to my account. I in turn asked for it to be provided to me in the form of a check, which she agreed to. I had Angelo pick it up at the Celebrity Centre and it was deposited into my bank account.

The church had finally done right by me. But my newly restored faith was quickly squashed when Susan Watson, the president of the Celebrity Centre, called a week later and ordered me to come in right away with my mom and Angelo. The “mother of the church,” the woman who hugged me whenever I came in for auditing, who married Angelo and me, who loved my daughter, now treated me like I was a criminal. As I walked through those doors, it was like all of a sudden this place where I had spent most of my life—on course, helping others move up the Bridge, fundraising, catching up with friends—was no longer my home, my refuge, my sanctuary.

I was taken upstairs to my former auditing room, another space in which I had spent countless hours and gone through all kinds of emotions and experiences, but waiting there for me was not my auditor, but the MAA Julian Swartz and Cassie Woodruff, Shane’s wife. They were both glaring at me when I walked in.

David Miscavige made the call, and now I, like those before me who had questioned what was going on, was an enemy of the church.

Looking at Cassie, I hostilely said, “You don’t speak now? What are you even doing here anyway?”

“I’m here to chaperone,” she said and then I was shown the policy that states there must be a witness on hand when a parishioner is going to be severely reprimanded. Okay, I was ready for it. It was at this point that Julian started showing me more than a dozen reports that my so-called “friends” had written up about me. I later learned that as a result of my association with SPs like Debbie Cook and Mike Rinder and my speaking out against David Miscavige and Tom Cruise, Julian had reached out to all of my closest friends in the church and requested that they write Knowledge Reports on me regarding any disaffection toward the church that I might have expressed, or anything negative I might have said about COB, or any mentions I had made about reaching out to SPs and Squirrel groups. Squirrel groups are those who collectively practice Scientology beliefs and techniques independently of the Church of Scientology.

He showed me a few examples of the Knowledge Reports my friends had written, including those from John and Val Futris. Their reports pretty much just recapped what I had already said or expressed, including that after Tom and Katie’s wedding I thought I was “unjustly sec-checked and investigated,” that I was talking to John about Sea Org members being “held against their will” in the “Hole,” and that I was continually asking people where Shelly was. Also that I had read Debbie Cook’s New Year’s Eve email. They went on to reveal that I felt that too many people doing their OT levels were “completely broke and in debt,” and that I “disagreed” with all of the money being spent on new buildings and design, as this was “not what LRH would want,” and instead suggested that it should be spent “getting people up the Bridge and paying staff.”

Michelle Workman, a friend of twenty years, wrote about what I had revealed to her in my meetings with COB. That I thought the denials coming from COB about his knowledge of what was going on was “bullshit,” and that I “might have said” that Tom Cruise was an SP and “running the church.”

“What’s all this?” I fired back.

“You tell me,” Julian said.

“What do you mean, me tell you? The fact that other people regurgitated my own story and wrote it in a report is meaningless. I reported it myself! Are you crazy?”

They might have been crazy, but I was stupid. Despite everything that had happened over the past weeks, I still didn’t think I was leaving Scientology. Even while making a stink about subjects that most Scientologists wouldn’t dare address; while confronting the church’s leader, who was said to administer beatings; while personally declaring Tom Cruise, a pillar of the community, to be an SP; and while facing down Julian Swartz and the many reports of condemnation—I still naively hoped that someone would step up and prove me wrong. I prayed that this belief system I had submitted to for most of my and my family’s life wasn’t, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, evil.

Make it right. Please, make it right, I thought. Get Shelly, who has now been missing for more than six years, on the phone for me. Do something.

I was actually naive enough to believe that all my carrying on, all my “fuck you”s and threats would lead to resolution. That David Miscavige would say, “You were right!” That all my friends who wrote reports on me would apologize. Or at least that somebody would see the truth.

But of course that never happened.

All Julian—and the church—focused on at this point was for me and my family to do a sec-check, an interrogation by an Ethics Officer to make sure a person hasn’t thought or acted in a hostile way toward the church. But I refused to bend. I wasn’t going to submit to more scrutiny, more fines, and more punishment when I wasn’t the one who did anything wrong.

“I’m not going to do it,” I told Julian.

Instead, for four weeks, I went in every day, reading every policy Julian wanted me to read. He wanted to break me, to have me recant what I had said, to admit that I was wrong to have done any investigating on my own. But I refused to acknowledge this. He also wanted to know which other celebrity parishioners were disaffected, a term Scientologists use to describe someone who is no longer willing to support certain church initiatives. Again, I refused to tell him. Finally, he asked me who I considered my friends to be. When I refused to include David Miscavige’s name in the few names I had given, he tried to insist that I include it. I told him what he was asking was off policy, as this was not my realization, but rather something they were trying to force upon me.

“COB is not my friend by the very actions he’s taken against me. And why does he even care if I like him?” I said, calling his bluff.

“You should be able to produce policy on this and you can’t,” I went on. “So I can only surmise that you’re taking your orders from COB, because I know you don’t have the balls to talk to me that way unless you’re being told to from above.”

And speaking of friends, during this time, many of my friends in the church started calling me, crying, “I’m not going to disconnect from you. I know that your heart’s in the right place,” and then, little by little, after hearing from Julian, they would write me emails that read, “You have to get yourself handled.”

I was devastated when my friend Michelle Workman told me that after speaking with Julian she believed that I was a liar.

“By calling me a liar, what you’re about to do is destroy a thirty-five-year friendship,” I responded. “Our children, who were born and raised together, will not know each other because you don’t have the balls to stick up for what’s right.”

After I revealed to another longtime Scientology friend what I had found out from my investigating, she replied that she was on my side, claiming, “You were on the right side of the tech. I know you’re not an SP.”

“You’re saying that now, but your whole family is in the church,” I said. “I understand if you need to disconnect.”

“There’s no way I would ever do that,” she said.

A few days later she called me hysterically crying.

“I was with Julian.…” she sobbed.

“You don’t have to say another word,” I said, sensing what was coming next. “I love you and understand why you’re calling me. If circumstances change, I’m here.” We both said I love you once more and hung up, knowing we would probably never speak again.

These types of exchanges became too heartbreaking for me. In response I blocked everybody in the church from writing, texting, or calling me. To be potentially branded a Suppressive Person by a whole group I dedicated my life to and have all its adherents turn their backs on me was incredibly sad, but not at all unique. It’s something that happens to Scientologists every day. I wrote counterreports on all of them and told them not to contact me.

Julian continued to press me about doing a sec-check and I continued to refuse. Then he ordered sec-checks for my mother and George, which they agreed to. My mother didn’t want to believe me about what was going on. That this was a witch hunt. “I’m telling you; it’s all leading up to me,” I said to her. “So if you want to submit yourself to a sec-check, Mom, you’re going to be really fucking sad when you’ve realized that they just want intel on me. But go ahead and do it.”

She did just that, and in the process, Julian pulled the wool over her eyes to get her to doubt me. He said that David Miscavige offered to get me onto OT VII in L.A. instead of Flag—which is unheard of. I mean, everyone spends huge sums of money and up to six months to get onto OT VII at Flag, and Julian was claiming that I would get to magically do it in L.A.? He also told her that I basically told him to go to hell. “Leah needs help. We need you to help her,” Julian said to my mother. “She’s connected up with some pretty heavy SPs. She’s making mistakes. She’s making bad decisions.”

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with my mother knows she can’t keep a secret. Anything she is feeling shows immediately on her face. So as soon as Julian fed her that lie, she began acting weird. And anyone who knows me knows that I’m going to call you out on it the minute you are acting weird. “Mom, you’re doing that thing. What’s up?”

“What thing?” she said.

My mom’s resistance didn’t last long. She finally let it out. I told her immediately that this invitation to do OT VII in L.A. wasn’t true, but I knew I had to prove it to her or she would always have doubts.

I wrote David Miscavige a letter right away, asking about his offer for me to do OT VII in L.A. and not in Florida, and I had the letter messengered to his office, where it was rejected. So I brought it to Julian directly and taunted him by saying, “David Miscavige’s offer was so gracious. I misunderstood you. I’d love to get onto OT VII here in L.A. Let’s do it.” Julian just glared at me.

I showed my mom the letter I had written saying how I would be thrilled to do OT VII in L.A. and how it was rejected by David Miscavige’s office and Julian didn’t seem to have anything to say about the offer.

And if that wasn’t proof enough, after my mother did her last sec-check, she said, “You were right. It was bullshit.” Just like with my stepfather’s sec-check, none of the questions were about her. They were all about me: what I knew; what they knew about me and Debbie Cook; what they knew about me and Mike Rinder. As I knew, it was all just to gain intel on me.

On top of all this, Julian had spread the word that my family and I were under investigation, which made us look horrible to everyone in the church. People averted their eyes when we walked by and refused to acknowledge us.

As a last effort to take us down, Julian threatened to take away all of my mom’s certs (credits earned, thus she would have to throw away thirty-plus years of training and start at the bottom of the Bridge) and claimed that he had enough evidence of suppressive acts to get my stepfather, George, declared an SP.

I in turn responded with “I’m not going to have a church tell me who I can and cannot talk to. That day is done. Where does it stop? What if my mother was an SP? Should I disconnect from my mother? Do you think I’d disconnect from anyone after the way you and the church have treated me?”

His response was “I’m not telling you to disconnect. LRH is.”

And with that, I decided I was done. I decided to sever ties with Scientology permanently.

I could have just let it go. I could have simply walked away, before being declared an SP. Then if I ever wanted to come back to the church, they would have me. But I didn’t want to leave that door open. I knew if I filed a police report about Shelly Miscavige, I would be declared an SP and that would be the end. That was the step I had to take. So I called the LAPD and asked, “How do I officially file a missing person report?”