Leah Remini TV series about how Scientology rips families apart

Nightmare!
Tom Cruise’s Ex Congratulates His Nemesis Leah Remini For Anti-Scientology Show

This comes months after Nazanin Boniadi's shocking FBI church documents were exposed.

By Rosa Sanchez, Radar Online

Quote:

Nazanin Boniadi has just spoken out to congratulate Leah Remini on her Scientology documentary, RadarOnline.com has learned, and Tom Cruise can’t be happy!

After A&E tweeted to congratulate Remini on her Scientology and the Aftermath Emmy win, Boniadi replied:

“Congratulations @LeahRemini @MikeRinder & all involved. There are no words, just [love].”

The gorgeous Homeland actress, 37, has long been linked with the Church of Scientology, even before Remini’s documentary became a booming controversial force within Hollywood circles.

Earlier this year, FBI documents were found disclosing someone named “NAZ” — very likely Boniadi — was recruited into the religion and trained to be Cruise’s wife.

She underwent intense supervision for months until she reached a high position within the clan and began to be “considered for a special project.”

While Cruise and the church denied all claims, the FBI documents state that “NAZ” was chosen to be the actor’s girlfriend and her only job was “to make him happy.” They moved in together after some time.

“At the beginning of the relationship [he] was very romantic, but as the relationship progressed [he] began to have temper tantrums,” and even “to show violent tendencies,” an agent wrote in the report.

She reportedly began writing a story about her turbulent relationship and was punished by the church after deciding to break it off.

She was forced “to dig ditches at midnight and scrub floor tiles in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms. She was placed on a curfew, [security] checked and escorted everywhere she went.” She “was no longer allowed to speak to anyone,” added the agent.

She was eventually able to leave the church and never look back, much like Remini.

Anti-Scientology activist Remini, 47, has often bashed Cruise, 55, directly, claiming he is not a good person and is often “diabolical,” much like Scientology leader David Miscavige; “they could be twins.”

Source: http://radaronline.com/celebrity-news/nazanin-boniadi-leah-remini-scientology-show/

Background: https://whyweprotest.net/threads/pr...rafficking-investigation.132880/#post-2608951

he has turned over a new leaf, we all have things in the past to cover up:

Tonight on ‘Leah Remini’: Two witnesses detail David Miscavige’s ruthless Scientology takeover

By Tony Ortega, September 12, 2017

Quote:

If L. Ron Hubbard is responsible for the millions of words that spell out every aspect of Scientology, what, exactly, qualified David Miscavige to take over as church leader after Hubbard died in 1986?

That’s one of the questions that tonight’s episode of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath tries to answer, and we think you’re going to find that answer pretty compelling. Once again, Leah Remini shows that she has huge respect for her audience, and isn’t afraid to dive deeply into Scientology’s arcane ideas and complex past.

To examine the church leader’s rise to power, Remini and Mike Rinder sit down in the first half of the episode with John Brousseau, certainly one of the best people to talk to if you want to know about David Miscavige.

Brousseau and Miscavige were brothers-in-law for 16 years, for example.

That’s one of the things we learned about “J.B.” when we did our own two-part story about Brousseau’s really amazing experience in Scientology — from L. Ron Hubbard’s personal driver, to Tom Cruise’s fix-it man, to the guy who actually put the bars on the doors and windows of “The Hole” at Int Base.

And in one of our favorite details, Brousseau was sitting in a van filled with audio equipment parked outside a Los Angeles hotel while inside the hotel, a wired David Miscavige was explaining to Mary Sue Hubbard that, because of her indictment and conviction in the Snow White Program prosecutions, she would have to step down from her post overseeing the church’s spy wing — the Guardian’s Office — and lose all power in the organization. That was in 1981, a couple of years before Mary Sue’s appeals ran out and she had to go to federal prison (she served a year of the five she was sentenced to for conspiracy in the Snow White break-ins), and more than a year after her husband L. Ron Hubbard had gone into total seclusion.

John Brousseau witnessed that as well, and was the last person to shake Hubbard’s hand after he climbed into a van and was driven away by Pat and Annie Broeker, Hubbard’s companions in hiding during his final years.

Just a few days before he died in 1986, Hubbard signed an order anointing the Broekers as “Loyal Officers,” superior to the rank of Captain in the Sea Org, in what seemed like a pretty clear statement that he expected the Broekers to run Scientology after he died. But soon after Hubbard’s death, a new order canceling the “Loyal Officers” decree was circulated as David Miscavige began systematically removing everyone who could make a claim for the church leadership position.

<snipped>

In the second half of the episode, Leah and Mike talk with Gary Morehead, who went by the code name “Jackson” when he was assigned in his early 20s to be the head security officer at the secretive Int Base international management compound near Hemet, California.

It was Morehead who helped develop the “blow drill” at Int Base, the complex set of strategies to track down and bring back any Sea Org member who made a run for it from the huge desert compound.

Morehead explains that one of the ways the church tracked people was to put a travel agency in the organization itself, with a terminal at the Author Services building on Hollywood Boulevard, so that Scientology can simply look up who is flying when, which helps explain a lot.

What was Gary’s breaking point, Leah asks him, and Morehead talks about his wife becoming pregnant while they were both still in the Sea Org — at a time when Sea Org women who became pregnant were pressured to have abortions, because having children was against the rules.

Morehead is already on record, in a video he made with Mark Bunker, explaining that one of his jobs as security chief at Int Base was to help with that mission, putting pressure on young women to abort their pregnancies in the name of keeping up their work in the Sea Org. But now, he reveals that he even had to perform that duty on his own wife, convincing her to end her pregnancy.

More at https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/12/t...vid-miscaviges-ruthless-scientology-takeover/

Season 2 of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath premieres in Australia on September 27

https://twitter.com/CITVAustralia/status/907861478895702019

'Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath' Investigates David Miscavige's Rise to Power

By Jean Bentley, Hollywood Reporter

Quote:

The fifth episode of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath season 2 focused on David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology since L. Ron Hubbard's death in 1986, and his rise to power.

Remini and her partner, former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder, alleged that Miscavige has spent the years following Hubbard's death pushing out all high-ranking Church officials, including the creator's widow, Mary Sue Hubbard, and an entire executive tier of more than 20 people (Rinder included).

The first person interviewed was 32-year Scientologist John "JB" Brousseau, who left the Church in 2010 after serving as L. Ron Hubbard's personal driver and later a right-hand man to Miscavige, whom he said began asserting his authority even before Hubbard's death.

"I observed him dismantling and putting himself gradually into a position where he was the senior most person, aside from LRH, and I saw Miscavige becoming more and more authoritative and more and more able to remove people, regardless of position," he said.

Among the things Brousseau said he observed were Miscavige secretly recording a meeting with Mary Sue Hubbard that eventually led to her losing her power in the Church, and Miscavige removing Hubbard's second-in-command Pat Broeker from power following Hubbard's death.

"Ultimately that put him in the position where there was no one else in the way, and now he was chairman of the board of Religious Technology Center, the top of RTC, and he was where he wanted to be," Brousseau said. "David Miscavige was the one. He was now invincible."

Brousseau also touched on the disappearance of Miscavige's wife, Shelly, who has not been seen in public since 2005 (the Church maintains she is not missing), and "the Hole," a.k.a. the Scientology building where Church executives are allegedly imprisoned. Brousseau said he was the one who put bars on the doors of the Hole and blocked the windows from opening all the way, and though the Church denies its existence, Rinder said he has official Church correspondence addressed to him there.

"People were, myself included, in that little prison for months, some for years," Rinder said.

Brousseau said the tipping point that caused him to have a crisis of conscience and leave the Church in 2010 was when the ex-wives of former Scientology executives appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 to deny the claims of Miscavige's physical abuse their husbands had made—including Rinder's now-ex-wife — but Brousseau said he had witnessed the abuse firsthand.

"I had decided in my mind...that this guy is really a psychopathic individual in how he deals with people. There was that turning point where I stopped rationalizing in my mind...the walls just came down for me," Brousseau said.

In response to Brousseau's comments, the Church of Scientology wrote to A&E, "Brousseau's staff history reveals his character as evasive, sneaky and untrustworthy...[he has] hawked his lies to anti-Scientology writers."

The second person profiled was former security chief Gary "Jackson" Morehead, a 30-year member who left in 1997 and outlined the different security precautions taken on the base at which he was posted.

"The security system was by design to keep people out, but eventually it became to keep them in," Morehead said. No one on the base could get out, or even call 911, Morehead said, and he eventually helped create the "Blow Drill," or the procedures taken to find and retrieve an escaped Sea Org member.

Morehead said he left the Church after he was encouraged by higher-ups to convince his wife to get an abortion, a claim the Church denies. Morehead said he was separated from his wife and subjected to security checks, and his wife was told negative things about him and that he was interested in beastiality. She separated from him, and Morehead left the Church in 1997.

The Church disputed Morehead's claims, writing, "By his own admission, [Morehead] was never an executive or 'high ranking' staff member and the tales he spins are false and unsubstantiated and continue to change and morph."

Morehead teared up multiple times, first discussing the abortion and later thinking about his complicity in some of the Church's actions.

"I thought I was doing a world of good by doing what I did," he said.

Remini moved to comfort Morehead, who'd joined the Church at age 11 and began his first security post at 16.

"We did it because we thought we were doing something decent," she told him. "When I look at you, I just see a young kid at 16, I see a young boy wanting to do the right thing and being forced into a cult and we were all part of it and we all believed that. I just want you to know that you're a good person, you just didn't know."

Later, Remini said, "He was earnestly doing his job thinking that he was protecting the planet ... that's what they all believed. This is the game that Scientology plays. This is David Miscavige following Scientology policy. Is it true that David Miscavige is bad? Yes. But if David Miscavige wasn't there they would grab [someone else] and he would carry on the same legacy because that is what Scientology teaches."

The Church of Scientology challenges the credibility and statements of the contributors appearing in the series, and wrote in a letter to the network, "neither John Brousseau nor Gary Morehead is a credible source when it comes to their former religion."

From http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/li...estigates-david-miscaviges-rise-power-1038344

Leah Remini Trains The Big Guns On Scientology In Latest Episode.

Federalist: Leah Remini Trains The Big Guns On Scientology In Latest Episode


http://thefederalist.com/2017/09/15/leah-remini-trains-big-guns-scientology-latest-episode/


By Bethany Mandel


* * * * * BEGIN CONCLUSION * * * * *

A Forced Abortion Was the Last Straw

After years of acting as the Gold Base enforcer, it was his wife’s coerced abortion that “broke” Morehead’s connection to Scientology. Sea Org members were banned from having children, so when members found themselves pregnant, pressure to abort came not only from the organization, but often also the other party to the couple. Talking to Remini and Rinder about his wife’s abortion, Morehead broke down in tears, describing his shame at pressuring his wife to abort their child. Had they decided to keep the baby, they would have “had to leave their whole life, leave their friends,” he said.

Morehead objected to his wife’s treatment, and soon, he says, was subjected to a year of intense interrogations and monitoring, with the goal of destroying his marriage (which was successful). His wife’s abortion and the subsequent abusive treatment Morehead was subjected to afterwards was enough to inspire his defection.

The intended goal of the second season of “Scientology and the Aftermath” was to spark officials’ interest in the goings-on behind the scenes of the cult. Local law enforcement can and should be conducting raids at the Gold Base and asking every occupant, alone, if they wish to stay.

After the latest episode aired, a viewer remarked “Forced abortions? Why haven’t the GOP declared war on them?” A prominent Scientology-watching journalist, Tony Ortega, echoed this question, as do I, as a pro-life journalist. With both the House and the Senate Republican-controlled, inquiries into Scientology’s policy of coerced abortions should also begin given how many individuals have described its existence both on and off camera on the A&E special.

Bethany Mandel is a stay-at-home mother of three children under four and a writer on politics and culture. She is a senior contributor to The Federalist, a columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward, and a contributor at Acculturated. She lives with her husband, Seth, in New Jersey. You can follow her on Twitter @BethanyShondark.

* * * * * END CONCLUSION * * * * *

I love Rinder and what he's doing, but I got to admit the show gets twice as interesting once you imagine him actually being put there by Scientology as some kind of undercover guy, playing the long con on everybody involved.

You smell like socks.

Interesting theory.

VIDEO - Preview: Scientology and Celebrity: The Betrayal of Paul Haggis

Video at link.

http://www.aetv.com/shows/leah-remini-scientology-and-the-aftermath/season-2/episode-6/preview-scientology-and-celebrity-the-betrayal-of-paul-haggis

/

I was enjoying the "Rinder is pure ebil!" against "No he is not!" slap fest. Why did it have to end so abruptly?

I think it was pretty black and white what the slap fest was about, and it wasn't about whether Rinder is "ebil". It was about whether Rinder is a liar based on a statement he made.

Quentinanon called Rinder a liar and other names for saying "It's really wonderful for people who have had no voice to now be given a voice by Leah and this show," based on the premise that most the guests on the show had written books and/or been interviewed by journalists before.

If the idea that people who have no voice are given a voice by the show can be translated as "people are speaking out for the first time because of the show," which seems like a reasonable interpretation based on how Anonymous has always scored our stats with the Big List, then Quentinanon was wrong to call Mike Rinder a liar for making that statement.

I showed Quentinanon that at least 7 people have spoken out for the first time because of the show.

Saina Kamula, Mirriam Francis, and Lauren Haggis all spoke out for the first time on the show.

Clarissa Huber Adams, and the three women who accused Danny Masterson of rape all spoke out as a direct result of the show, in stories for Tony Ortega.

Quentinanon called Mike Rinder a liar over a statement Mike Rinder made - a statement that can demonstrably be shown to be true.

In other words, regarding his true statement, Mike Rinder was being unjustly smeared by Quentinanon as a liar. Personally, I was surprised that more critically-thinking members of this message board did not leap to his defense.

I was open to the idea that Rinder might have lied about other things, and I would not argue the idea that he might be called a liar over some OTHER statement that is indisputably a lie. I am aware that some hold a lasting grudge regarding Gerry Armstrong. However, this particular statement was true in my book, and I was willing to defend him over it.

Because Anons so hate a woman with a decent pair of tits posing for a photo......

Fuck off you idiot.

https://twitter.com/GrowingupinSCN/status/910311140869251073

Tonight, Paul Haggis calls out Scientology’s celebs: ‘Damn them for being purposely blind’

By Tony Ortega, September 19, 2017

Excerpt:

...during her first season of A&E’s Scientology and the Aftermath, Leah barely mentioned the church’s celebrities at all.

She and Mike Rinder told us they were wary of talking about Tom Cruise and the church’s other celebrated figures on the show, hoping to keep the focus on Scientology’s controversies that mattered.

This season, however, Leah has already dived headfirst into another subject she previously avoided — Scientology’s beliefs as they are encountered on the “Bridge to Total Freedom,” which she explored in week four.

And now, in week six, she’s taking on the subject of Scientology’s celebrities head on, and the result is explosive.

She chooses two people to take us into the world of Scientology celebs. First, she and Mike sit down with Karen Pressley, who, until she left Scientology in 1998, was responsible for helping to recruit actors and directors and artists to the Hollywood Celebrity Centre.

Pressley confirms that celebrities who managed to be recruited were themselves expected to bring in other notables — one major coup that happened during her tenure was actor Mimi Rogers bringing in the man she was dating, Tom Cruise, in 1986.

And Pressley adds that because Cruise was such a big catch, he was the reason that the Hollywood Celebrity Centre got a renovation, so that it would look good for the other A-listers that Cruise was expected to bring in.

Leah then confirms that special pampering of these big names is hierarchical: She was given access to certain parts of the Celebrity Centre and could spend time in proximity to Cruise only after she had made a donation of a million dollars to the church. And she says Cruise rode herd on the other celebrities about what they were doing to bring in even more people — she says he would pester them about who they were bringing to the Hollywood Celebrity Centre’s annual August gala, for example. And Leah was under plenty of pressure to proselytize her King of Queens co-star, Kevin James.

She wasn’t interested in doing that, but Leah’s hefty donations did get her thank you notes from David Miscavige, Tom Cruise, and Jenna Elfman, which Leah managed to keep — and she gives us a glimpse of them. Here’s just one portion, from Miscavige:

Dear Leah,

I got your recent message regarding the event, only to be followed by your latest and overwhelming contribution. Well — I was both stunned and BLOWN AWAY! Congratulations and thank you. What you’re taking responsibility for and doing is damned heroic…I very much consider you a personal friend.

Money is everything in Scientology, and Karen Pressley reminds us that not only was Miscavige happy to keep the donations coming in, there was plenty of motivation to get others to donate as well. Scientology paid her a ten percent commission on anything she could get the celebrities to fork over.

There promises to be much more about Karen’s experience in Scientology and her career with the church’s celebrities in her new memoir, Escaping Scientology, which came out just this week.

The majority of tonight’s episode is spent with director Paul Haggis, whose story is already somewhat familiar if you read Lawrence Wright’s 11,000-word New Yorker story in 2011 about the Crash director leaving Scientology, or if you read Wright’s 2013 book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, or if you saw Alex Gibney’s adaptation of the book in his 2015 HBO documentary, also titled Going Clear.

But even if you think you’re familiar with Paul’s story, you haven’t seen him take on his former colleagues in Scientology like this.

Along the way, Haggis and Rinder and Remini talk about Scientology’s homophobia, its smear attacks, and the slimy way the church turned Paul’s sister against him.

“One of the things I regret most is getting my sister in Scientology,” Haggis says about Kathy Slevin, who disconnected from her famous brother, and then died of cancer without ever reconciling with him.

Haggis admits that when he first left the church, he tended to give his former friends a pass. He recounts how actor Anne Archer and her husband, producer Terry Jastrow, and film composer Mark Isham and others tried hard to change Paul’s mind after he wrote a scathing resignation letter to church spokesman Tommy Davis.

But now, some eight years since he walked away, Haggis says he has a different attitude about the celebrities who remain in Scientology even after all of the publicity about its abuses.

“I’m sorry. At the beginning I excused them. They were my friends and I excused them,” Haggis says. “You know what, damn them now, for being purposely blind.”

Haggis says that Scientology’s celebrities are “actively participating in a cover up,” and they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt that the press usually gives them. Celebrities need to be challenged about their involvement, even if that means putting their careers through a major shake-up.

“It shook my entire life, and that’s a good thing. And I’m ashamed I didn’t do it earlier,” Haggis says.

It’s a harsh calling out, and one echoed by Leah Remini, who makes this one of the most accusatory episodes of the series we’ve seen so far.

More at https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/19/t...s-celebs-damn-them-for-being-purposely-blind/

Laura Prepon Faces Blowback Over Scientology Claims | Pop Culture

Quote:

Leah Remini's documentary series Scientology and the Aftermath is still making waves, and Laura Prepon is the latest celebrity under fire for supporting the religion on Tuesday night's episode.

Prepon was shown claiming that the Church of Scientology does not teach its followers to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community. It was then pointed out that several books, which Remini claims are used widespread, include teaching against the communities.

Remini and Crash screenwriter Paul Haggis were live-tweeting her show and bashed Prepon's claims.

"Every Scientologist reads the same books," Remini wrote. "Any one who says 'I never read that' is a liar. As I was when I was trained as a Scientologist."

"It still always stuns me how (Scientologist) celebrities can lie like that," Haggis wrote. "I admire her so much as an actress. I find it very sad to see her say things she knows aren't true."

<snipped>

Prepon's fans were not happy with her defense of the religion, with many speaking out against her and vowing to boycott her shows. It was extra hurtful to the LGBT community, as she plays the openly gay character Alex Voss on Netflix's Orange Is the New Black.

See some fan reactions below.

More at http://popculture.com/reality-tv/2017/09/20/laura-prepon-faces-blowback-over-scientology-claims/

MLK Day at the Scientology compound

By Tony Ortega, September 21, 2017

Quote:

We just noticed that Paul Haggis, over at Mike Rinder’s website, named the two Scientology jackasses who leapt to their feet in outrage, protesting when Haggis dared to bring up civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when they were discussing Scientology leader David Miscavige.

Says Haggis:

It was LRH “biographer” and DM’s speechwriter Dan Sherman, who sat to my immediate left, and senior CoS executive Dave Bloomberg (famous for being the guy with the camcorder when Marty Rathbun was ambushed at LAX) who sat in the middle of the conference table…Sherman and Bloomberg who quite literally leapt to their feet to object to the insult of comparing DM to MLK – which of course I was not doing. I was, respectfully but rather doggedly, digging into the accusations made by the St Pete’s Times that alleged that DM had been physically abusive, trying to get anyone in the room to admit that even their revered leader was fallible. By way of illustrating what should be obvious, I suggested that even incredible men like MLK were human and made mistakes. That clearly outraged them, as I never even got to finish the sentence.

Haggis figures one of them might have been recording the session with a hidden camera, and so their vociferous defense of Miscavige was probably done knowing that DM could have viewed it later.

This anecdote was one of the highlights of Tuesday night’s episode, and we saw huge reaction to it on social media. So it’s fun to put some names and faces to the tale.

Here’s Dan Sherman, Scientology’s official L. Ron Hubbard biographer, who puts on a special show-and-tell presentation each March at the Hubbard Birthday celebration in Clearwater, Florida. For several years, we’ve lovingly referred to him as the Silver Mullet:



Dave Bloomberg was one of the trio who ambushed Marty Rathbun at LAX, as Paul pointed out. Here he is from a recent Scientology video:



Great job, guys.

Source: https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/21/f...-a-justice-panel-but-garcias-say-not-so-fast/

Some Thoughts on Scientology and the Aftermath | Chris Shelton



Leah Remini's Emmy-winning Scientology and the Aftermath is in its second season and the impact the show is having on the world of Scientology is immense. Scientologists have never come out to attack critics the way they are now on social media, the Church is desperate to counter the abuses that are being exposed and more. I talk about this and how the show is affecting me personally.

400 Retweets, 2.4K likes

Letters to the Editor | The Fresno Bee

Leah Remini exposes Scientology as 'pure, utter evil'

Quote:

I was so happy that Leah Remini won an Emmy award for exposing Scientology for what it really is. Pure and utter evil.

I remember back in the late 1970s when my older sister spent $300 to attend a seminar about this latest and greatest “religion,” even though she really could not afford that amount of money. She was searching, vulnerable and ripe for the picking. She was always sweet, a people person and had to have an active social life. She was trusting, unlike myself.

As she told me more about this pre-paid closed/locked door seminar, certain facts struck me as quite odd. You’re locked in a great hall, and you are not allowed to leave during their presentation. Have to “go”? No, you can urinate when we say you can urinate.

All signs pointed to a money-driven controlled cult, both financially and emotionally. I was incredulous. $300 was a lot of money then, only to be a prisoner for over three hours? The requirement of more money raised huge red flags. ​

Thankfully, she abandoned the experiment and moved on to Nancy Reagan’s “friends” – psychics and astrologers. What’s my sign? Closed.

- Linda Marie, Clovis

Source: http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article174515616.html

Director Paul Haggis pens an open letter to Marty Rathbun after Scientology’s latest smear

By Tony Ortega, September 23, 2017

Quote:

Yesterday, we received this remarkable piece of writing from Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis. His appearance on this week’s Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath resulted in, predictably, a full-throated attack from the Church of Scientology. But something in that attempt to smear him stunned Haggis. We’ll let him explain:

Tony,

I barely skimmed Scientology’s latest ad hominem attack on me this week. The church, quite paradoxically, largely relied upon their “arch-enemy,” Marty Rathbun, to supposedly discredit me. No one will be shocked to learn it is full of lies and blatant misrepresentations. Mike Rinder already dissected their non-responsive response and Marty’s flip-flopping assertions. But one thing stuck out to me which you may find interesting, so I will give you a little background.

Marty now claims that he masterminded my resignation from beginning to end, suggesting that my outrage over the Church’s support of Prop 8 was a smokescreen. He ignores the fact that my months-long battle with Tommy Davis and the church began in October 2008, more than six months before Marty and I had any contact.

When the Church’s executives descended on my office to handle me, I refused to reveal the names of those with whom I’d communicated. Every single one of those people, including Marty, asked me to keep their role secret – and I honored those requests. Marty, for his part, was already the subject of fierce attacks from Scientology, and didn’t need to fan those flames. If the church learned that Marty was reaching out to try and “turn” their celebs, those flames would have turned into a blast furnace. You saw what happened to him in the years that followed. So, from the time Marty sent an anonymous email to me in the summer of 2009 – at a point where I was already realizing I had to resign – until a few months ago, I kept his role secret. I thought I was protecting a friend, someone who had truly helped me.

I could not have fathomed that Marty would flip again, and return to his role of being Scientology’s attack dog, for reasons only he knows. Now Marty suggests that my agreement to protect him is “proof” that everything I said in my letter of resignation, and to Lawrence Wright, is a lie. That’s rather remarkable logic.

I will let you be the judge of Marty’s credibility.

That aside, Marty does deserve some of the credit he seeks. Through his anonymous email, he directed me to look at the articles in the St Pete Times. Later he helped me get in touch with an old friend in the Church who had disappeared, and had a story he’d never told – and didn’t want to tell anyone but me. I truly appreciated Marty’s help and support.

But if one is to be fair, the person who truly deserves credit is Jason Beghe – a fact I have likewise never revealed, but am quite sure Jason will not object to me doing so now. Jason is the one who pulled Marty out of his depression and got him to start his website; Jason is the one who gave Marty my email address and suggested that I was the kind of person who might be willing to open his eyes if made aware of the abuses within the church. Marty, I had never even met. Jason I instinctively trusted.

I had worked with Jason a few years before, and always liked him – although you couldn’t describe us as friends. Like most Scientologists, I had my head buried in the sand and actually didn’t even know Jason had left the church.

Jason is the one I met at Patrick’s Roadhouse after reading the St Pete Times article; Jason is the one who put me in touch with another “source” who was afraid to tell their story; it was Jason’s example that gave me the strength to start on the path that lead me to resign. At that time, the church was waging all-out war on him for the interview he’d done – doing everything in their power to destroy his life and ruin his career. I was deeply moved by his courage and integrity, and quietly helped him get through that time, and several months later cast him in my movie, when I was under the threat of being declared.

Including Marty and Jason, I met with a total of six people who had first-hand information about outrageous wrong-doing within the church. Marty knew two of them.

All this is preamble to something interesting I noticed in Scientology’s attack piece on me this week. It was something they inserted that only I would understand. I assume it was a veiled warning, some attempt to intimidate me – as I am the only person who would understand the significance.

It was the mention of the names “Collero” and “Lightning.”

[From Scientology’s newest attack on Haggis]

As I said earlier, when Marty and I first started communicating, he was doing so through an anonymous, encrypted Hushmail account. Rather than use his real name, he decided to call himself Lightning, the name of a blues musician he admired, Lightning Hopkins. Marty went to great lengths to keep his activities secret from the church, and to protect his identity.

Marty had a right to be apprehensive. He had first-hand knowledge of what Scientology does to its enemies, having been personally involved in many of the church’s dirty tricks and covert missions. By his own admission, he had lied on behalf of the church, chased down those who’d tried to escape from Scientology’s secretive base, and even destroyed evidence in a criminal case. He was, as he has described himself, a Scientology Warrior. So, perhaps he had more than one reason for choosing the name Lightning.

Back in 2009, whenever I wrote to Marty I used my own private email account, named after a minor character I loved from a TV series I created years ago.

The name was Collero.

There are three people in this world who know those two names. Marty, Jason, and myself. I would bet my life Jason wouldn’t reveal that; I certainly didn’t.

Which means that, in that attack piece, the Church of Scientology just admitted to one of two things: either they hacked personal emails, or Mark “Marty” Rathbun has supplied the church with my personal email communications. There are no other possibilities.

What I have written here will be of little interest to most people, but it will be of interest to some; perhaps to those who are trying to make the case that Marty took a secret, possibly even illegal, payoff from the church – to stop attacking David Miscavige, and start attacking Marty’s former “friends,” like Tony Ortega, Leah Remini, Mike Rinder, and myself.

A hack of encrypted emails is highly unlikely, which leaves us with the only other option. By blurting out information they could only get by reading our emails, by revealing the names Collero and Lightning, the church itself has announced that Marty is providing them confidential information and actively colluding with the church.

Continued here:
https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/23/d...arty-rathbun-after-scientologys-latest-smear/

Paul Haggis: Rathbun does what I feared, and outs ex-Scientologist we vowed to keep secret

By Tony Ortega, September 25, 2017

Excerpt:

To our surprise, late Saturday night Rathbun responded at his blog, which had been inactive since August 31.

We ignored Rathbun’s personal attacks, told in his characteristic tortured syntax, and focused on how he responded to Haggis’s accusation that he had fed their secret emails to the church. (The church quoted a brief part of one email on its “Leah Remini — Aftermath: After Money” website, which attacks the show and the people on it, and which carries a copyright by the Church of Scientology International.)

In his response, Rathbun addressed that accusation in two different places:

“One would think Haggis has been raped and left for dead because one partial sentence of an email he authored made it onto a website that did not genuflect to his phony victimhood narrative.”

and

“The self-anointed king of transparency is squealing like a stuck pig over a sentence of an email authored by him seeing the light of day.”

Instead of denying that he was the church’s source for the email, or revealing that the email had been stolen from him in a hacking attack, Rathbun was ridiculing Haggis for complaining about his private, sensitive material being made public.

And worse: Rathbun decided to make the entire email public on his website, and it included one name of a recipient who was not Rathbun, Haggis, or Beghe.

In other words, Rathbun had just outed one of the disaffected Scientologists that in 2009 he and Haggis and Beghe were trying so hard to keep the church from knowing about.

“He appears to be doing exactly what I warned he would – revealing another friend’s involvement that we all swore to keep secret,” Haggis told us last night.

“And to those who still think he was hacked – if that was the case, you really don’t think Marty would even mention it?” Haggis added. “You or I – or frankly anyone – would be pretty upset to discover we’d been hacked and to see our private emails and confidential info being used on the web – by Scientology or anyone else. So what’s the logic to that defense? That Marty just doesn’t care?”

Yesterday morning we sent an email to Rathbun, pointing out that he had twice referred to Haggis’s email being made public by the church without denying that he was the source of it.

We asked him if he was being compensated for turning over private emails to the Church of Scientology. And we asked him if such payments were behind his decision, on August 19, to create a new limited liability corporation with his wife Monique, a corporation they named Wimoma LLC.

We’ll let you know if he gets back to us.

“People should read Marty’s rant,” says Mike Rinder, who was formerly very close to Rathbun after they both left the church and went public with accusations of abuse by its leader, David Miscavige, but who now is a target for Rathbun’s slickly-produced videos. “It’s just a stream of name-calling that would make Scientology’s Freedom magazine proud, while protesting, apparently without irony, about ad hominem attacks. Marty is his own worst enemy, following the well-worn path of Miscavige and Scientology. They constantly prove what they stand accused of by their actions in response. Marty actually recommends that if people don’t see things his way, their ‘only realistic hope’ is to partake in a few hundred hours of Scientology objective processing. That says it all. I wonder if [Scientology social media propagandist] John Alex Wood has taken over his blog?”

Rathbun has not responded to our multiple questions about just what his current relationship with the church is. Highlights from his videos are being used in ads that the church pays to air on YouTube and Twitter, but Rathbun has not acknowledged whether he is being paid for them.

Whatever that relationship, there’s no question that on his own website, Rathbun has taken a step that for years, he and his former friends promised never to do.

“I truly don’t understand how Marty can rationalize this betrayal,” Haggis says. “He personally swore to this person he would never reveal his identity, as did Jason and I. This is a sweet man who never went public and was afraid what would happen if he did, but he wanted to help by personally sharing the story of his harrowing escape from Scientology, one that quite literally left him scarred, with a gash on his face from the barbed wire he was forced to drive through. His story had a great impact on me, and I thought Marty. A year after confiding in us, he suffered a debilitating stroke. He and I remained in contact throughout his hospitalization and recovery. He lost his job and his marriage dissolved, and when he moved several years later I lost contact with him as well. The only thing this person ever asked of us was anonymity. Have a good sleep, Marty.”

More at https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/25/p...uts-ex-scientologist-we-vowed-to-keep-secret/

To help you through withdrawals tonight, take our poll on Leah Remini’s Season Two so far

By Tony Ortega, September 26, 2017

Quote:

Leah Remini’s A&E show Scientology and the Aftermath is taking a well-deserved post-Emmys two-week breather after pushing hard to get the first six episodes on the air. It will resume with the next new episode on October 10.

We have some inside knowledge of what goes into putting together one of these shows, and we can tell you it’s an exhausting amount of hard work. Not only is there a huge amount of footage that has to be put together as tightly as possible, but the Church of Scientology is doing everything it can to derail the series, harassing and trying to intimidate people that have agreed to be on the show.

Gary “Jackson” Morehead told us that decisions about some of his interview footage were still being made on the Sunday before his episode aired — that’s just 48 hours to go.

So we don’t begrudge Leah and Mike and crew a couple of weeks to regroup and prepare the next episode, which looks like it’s going to be a harrowing examination of the notorious Mace-Kingsley camp for the children of Sea Org members. That should be terrifying.

But while the show takes a pause, we thought we’d take this opportunity to gauge your interest in the shows that have aired so far. Let’s quickly go over them, and then we’ll poll you.

Episode 1, “Thetans in young bodies,” aired on August 15 and featured Mirriam Francis and Saina Kamula. They had grown up in Scientology, and each of them had been sexually molested while they were students in Scientology facilities. We later followed up with them about their interview with LAPD detectives, and they told us they were pretty disappointed with how that turned out.

Episode 2, “The ultimate failure of Scientology,” aired on August 22 and featured Marie Bilheimer talking about her former husband, Aaron Poulin, who hanged himself at Scientology’s “Hollywood Inn,” and Lauren Haggis talking about her former friend, Tayler Tweed, another young Scientologist who committed suicide. We had written previously about Marie and her family’s distressing story of disconnection.

Episode 3, “The perfect Scientology family,” aired on August 29 and featured Liz Gale, who talked about her brother Philip’s suicide on L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday in 1998, and how she and her mother have clashed over the raising of her children outside Scientology. We had done our own story on Liz, but in Leah’s show we learned just how far her mother would go to punish her for leaving the church.

Episode 4, “The Bridge to Total Freedom,” was the first of four planned “special episodes” and it aired on September 5. It featured Bruce Hines and Leah’s mother, Vicki Marshall, discussing Scientology’s actual beliefs and how it is structured as a complex set of steps or levels. Bruce had previously helped us with our own examination of the Bridge, but it was really something to see Leah, Bruce, and her mother discuss openly the secrets of OT 3 and OT 8 on national television.

Episode 5, “The rise of David Miscavige,” aired on September 12 and it featured John Brousseau — giving his first television interview — and Gary “Jackson” Morehead. Both of them had worked at Scientology’s secretive “Int Base” near Hemet. California, and had witnessed the rise of David Miscavige as leader of the organization after the January 24, 1986 death of L. Ron Hubbard. JB is an especially great expert on Miscavige — he was Dave’s brother-in-law for 16 years!

Episode 6, “Scientology and celebrity: The betrayal of Paul Haggis,” aired on September 19 and featured the Oscar-winning director as well as former Scientology celebrity recruiter Karen Pressley. Both of them, and Leah, provided great insights as to the lives of the pampered in Scientology. Haggis also discussed Scientology’s homophobia, and the episode ended with Haggis and Leah very forcefully throwing down the gauntlet at the church’s remaining celebrity members.

OK, so please vote in our poll for your favorite show so far this season, and tell us what else you’ve wanted to say about Scientology and the Aftermath.

Continued with the poll and open comments at
https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/26/t...e-our-poll-on-leah-reminis-season-two-so-far/

‘Aftermath’ fan gets into party at Scientology’s ‘Int Base,’ brings Karen Pressley’s book along

By Tony Ortega, September 28, 2017

Quote:

With Leah Remini’s A&E series Scientology and the Aftermath well into its second season, we expected the Church of Scientology to increase its attacks on the show. But what we didn’t expect was a sudden charm offensive.

Is David Miscavige finally starting to learn that playing the creep all the time isn’t going to turn things around? In Clearwater, Florida, Sea Org members made nice recently as they boarded up local businesses, at their own expense, in anticipation of Hurricane Irma. Two hundred tons of building supplies are on their way to Corpus Christi for relief efforts after Hurricane Harvey. And near Hemet, California, Scientologists recently invited some members of the public to have dinner at secretive Int Base.

Karen Pressley told us about that last one. And she’s got quite the story about it today. Karen was featured last week in an episode of Aftermath because of her experience as a celebrity recruiter for the Church of Scientology, and it coincided with the release of her book, Escaping Scientology. We’ll let her explain what happened

Continued at https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/28/a...s-int-base-brings-karen-pressleys-book-along/

This video begins with a discussion of a new Facebook group, Supporters of "Leah Remini: Scientology & the Aftermath", which is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1401290063318947/

Landing on Your Feet After Scientology | Chris Shelton



Aaron Smith-Levin and I tackle the burning question "How do people coming out of Scientology/the Sea Org land on their feet, get a job and get on with their life" in this conversation. We compare notes from our own experiences and what we've seen happen to others, including some rambling on related topics as well. Enjoy!

'I don't give a shit about powerful!': Scientology and the Aftermath's Leah Remini could turn her attention to shedding light on Jehovah's Witnesses

Quote:

After going head-to-head with the Church of Scientology, Leah Remini might be shining a light elsewhere. The actress/advocate, 47, told Entertainment Weekly on Friday that she could delve deeper into the denomination of Jehovah’s Witnesses for season three of her A&E program, Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

Remini - who's been outspoken about her issues with Scientology after parting ways with the church in 2013 after more 35 years - revealed that she's been alerted that Jehovah’s Witnesses run like a 'diet Sea Org,' reflecting some of Scientology's organizational processes she's taken exception with.

Remini said that she was warned of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that 'these fuckers are super powerful,' but is not one to cower in fear.

'Are you ready for my response?' she said. 'I don’t give a shit about powerful. The truth is what I care about.'

The New York City native said she's currently in the 'talking stages' about how what she'll cover in the third season of her A&E program.

'I’m open to doing a season three in a different way,' she told the publication, which reported that A&E hasn't yet given the green light for a third season.

The former Scientologist said the program's officials have 'been getting an overwhelming amount of emails' and social media communications 'about other cults that are similar,' adding that she's 'looking into that.'

Continued at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...emini-turn-attention-Jehovah-s-Witnesses.html

Leah Remini slams Scientology's 'dumbass' Emmys boycott

Activist and actress also discusses Elisabeth Moss, celebrity hypocrisy

Quote:

On the morning of Sept. 9, the only obstacles in the way of Leah Remini’s first Emmy victory for her A&E docuseries were category mates Anthony Bourdain, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and James Lipton… and, according to reports, an alleged boycott of the Television Academy fronted by Scientology supporters in the name of taking the Kevin Can Wait star down. The only problem?

“They thought I was at the Emmys that Elisabeth [Moss] was at,” Remini tells EW, also noting that her victory really belongs to the contributors on the show. “They didn’t realize that I was at the Creative Arts Emmys that happens a week before [the main ceremony]. They sent out a Facebook message going: ‘Well done. We took a bite out of suppressive evil and it was the lowest-rated Emmys in history! We are winning! We’re kicking in the teeth of suppression!’ Meanwhile, it was the wrong fucking Emmys, dumbass.”

To make matters even more awkward, Moss — who defended Scientology to a fan who drew comparisons between The Handmaid’s Tale and the controversial religion on Instagram in August — won her first Emmy at the same ceremony select parishioners stood against.

Continued at http://ew.com/tv/2017/09/29/leah-remini-slams-scientologys-dumbass-emmys-boycott/

Rerun Tuesday: ‘Leah Remini’ participants tell us what the series has meant to them

By Tony Ortega, October 3, 2017

Quote:

We have another week to get through before new episodes of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath start running again. So we thought we’d tide you over on another rerun Tuesday with a special treat.

Last week, we polled you, our readers, about which of this season’s episodes was your favorite. We also sent that question to some of the people who have appeared on the show this season, and asked them what it’s been like since they were featured.

And after we check in with them, we have another item: A moving piece by a woman whose life has been touched by Aftermath. We think you’re going to find her story sadly familiar.

<snipped>

This is April Snow. We noticed that she posted this story to Facebook the other day, and we thought our readers would want to see it. It speaks for itself.

More at https://tonyortega.org/2017/10/03/r...ns-tell-us-what-the-series-has-meant-to-them/

There's a related post in the Garcia lawsuit thread.

Scientology is hacked off that Luis Garcia and attorney will appear on ‘Leah Remini’

By Tony Ortega, October 7, 2017

https://whyweprotest.net/threads/sc...h-the-garcia-suit.108358/page-33#post-2618262

Here’s how Scientology tried to keep you from seeing tonight’s episode of ‘Leah Remini’

By Tony Ortega, October 10, 2017

Quote:

“My uncle told me that if I were to allow the episode to air, I would personally be responsible for millions of deaths. He said the people who watch it will walk right into the hands of the psychs,” Tara Reile told us yesterday.

Tara appears in tonight’s episode of A&E’s Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, and we called her up after we had a chance to view the episode ourselves. It’s a frightening hour of television about what Tara and another child of Scientologists, Nathan Rich, went through as teenagers at Scientologist-run ranches in California and New Mexico. If you saw last night’s preview, or if you’ve seen some of the promotional spots online, you know it’s going to be a harrowing experience hearing these stories tonight.

But Tara wanted us to know about what she’s been through just in the last couple of weeks as Scientology tried to put the full-court press on her to convince A&E not to show the episode. The church really, really does not want you to watch this episode tonight.

[A programming note. Scientology and the Aftermath has moved to a new time slot! Didn’t hear about that? Well, of course not. A&E simply insists on confusing viewers with how it rolls out this series, including the odd way it numbers episodes and the way it claims that reruns with slight modifications are “new” episodes. (This feels like a ruse to convince people who DVR episodes to record anything labeled “new,” but A&E wouldn’t be that crass, would they?) For tonight, in the usual 9 pm slot for new episodes, A&E will show the Paul Haggis/Karen Pressley episode on Scientology celebrities (Season 2 Episode 5, or Season 2 Episode 6, depending on how you count the “special” episodes, but labeled “Season 1 Episode 6” on A&E’s schedule. Confusing? Of course, it’s A&E). This rerun has been labeled “new” because it apparently has some additional footage included. Then at 10 pm, A&E will air the actual new episode on Mace-Kingsley ranch featuring Nathan Rich and Tara Reile. We can already predict that the confusion on social media is going to be biblical.]

Tara tells us she has an aunt in California and an uncle in New York who are both Scientology OT 8’s, the highest level on the “Bridge to Total Freedom.” And both called her a couple of weeks ago, after the church had learned that she was going to be in an episode of Aftermath, and after the first teases of her episode showed up before the series took a two-week break.

“Both phone calls mimicked each other,” Tara says. “They both said they had seen the preview on TV. My aunt was basically asking me questions about the production aspect. ‘Did they fly you out? Did they come to you? Did they pay you? Did they do your makeup and hair? Was it at a hotel? Was it a production company?’ My uncle mentioned Slauson Productions by name [the production company actually filming the series]. He also asked if I had been paid. He said, ‘Doesn’t it anger you that Leah is making money off of your story?'”

It was obvious to Tara that her aunt and uncle had both been instructed by Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs to make the phone calls, and what questions to ask. And that they were both mostly interested in whether she had been paid to appear in the show. (She wasn’t.)

“I was on the phone for four hours with my uncle. It was so Scientology — he was super polite, but he was saying I should be thankful that I was sent to the ranch, and I should be grateful for doing such hard labor because it made me a strong person.”

In the episode, Nathan Rich explains that he was sent to the ranch at only 8 years old, from 1990 to 1991, when the Mace-Kingsley Ranch, founded and named after two high-ranking Scientologists, was first located in Palmdale, California. The ranch was a sort of reform school for kids who had been dropped off there by their Scientologist parents, and instead of schooling, the place was a kind of labor camp, interrupted by terrorizing by one of the men running it, a miserable wretch named Wally Hanks.

An audio tape of Hanks attacking a 15-year-old boy with a paddle is played as Rich insists that it is Hanks we hear on it. Hanks himself denied to A&E that he is on the tape, and the Church of Scientology denied that the ranch was a church operation. But there’s no question that the ranch was run on Scientology principles, by Scientologists, and housed Scientology kids who had been dropped off by their Scientology parents (who were paying Scientology prices — Tara’s parents spent $150,000 for her time there, which was just short of two years).

After Nathan’s experience in Palmdale, the ranch was moved to Reserve, New Mexico, and he was sent a second time, where he met Tara. Both were 14 years old, and were there in 1996. Tara was there for almost two years, and Nathan for three years. Their stories on tonight’s episode will shock you, particularly about how easy it was for their parents to turn them over and forget about them.

Continued at https://tonyortega.org/2017/10/10/h...-from-seeing-tonights-episode-of-leah-remini/

Nathan Rich
http://nathanrich.online/about-nathan/ and https://twitter.com/TweetNathanRich

Related threads:

Mace-Kingsley $cilon "School" in Clearwater
https://whyweprotest.net/threads/mace-kingsley-cilon-school-in-clearwater.17379/

Wally Hanks of Mace Kingsley Ranch is on Facebook
https://whyweprotest.net/threads/wally-hanks-of-mace-kingsley-ranch-is-on-facebook.112216/

“My uncle told me that if I were to allow the episode to air, I would personally be responsible for millions of deaths. He said the people who watch it will walk right into the hands of the psychs,” Tara Reile told us yesterday.

Just hearing about it makes me want to walk into the nearest psychiatrist's office and beg for a psych drug prescription, after which I feel compelled to schedule monthly ECT sessions for the next year.

A squillion bucks says this is the mugshot they'll use on their hate site for Tara:

Leah Remini And Jennifer Lopez Team Up For New Big-Screen Romantic Comedy Movie

By Victoria Miller, The Inquisitr, October 10, 2017

Quote:

Leah Remini is quickly becoming the busiest woman in Hollywood. Remini, who recently won an Emmy award for her A&E series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath and currently stars with her longtime leading man Kevin James on the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait, has added another big collaboration to her resume. Leah will co-star with real-life best friend Jennifer Lopez in the upcoming big screen romantic comedy Second Act.

In the STXfilms feature, Jennifer Lopez will play a big-box store employee who reinvents her life, while Leah Remini will play Joan, her best friend and fellow big box employee from Queens, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In the film, J Lo’s character will get the chance to prove to Madison Avenue hotshots that street smarts are as valuable as a college degree. And it seems as though Leah Remini will be her wingwoman in her lifestyle change, based on the star’s recent social media post about the project.

Jennifer Lopez posted a selfie of herself and Leah on Instagram, teasing the way overdue big screen collaboration between the besties. J Lo captioned the photo with, “Every Lucy needs an Ethel. Look who is doing a movie together!! #SEcondAct@stxentertainment.”

Leah Remini and Jenifer Lopez have been best friends for years after meeting through Jennifer’s ex-husband Marc Anthony. Leah has been vocal about the fact that Scientology leaders tried to get her to recruit the pop superstar for their organization. Jennifer also fully supported Leah when she very publicly left the controversial church in 2013 after nearly 30 years as a member.

In her book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, Remini wrote about the moment that she broke the news to Lopez that she was leaving the church of Scientology. Leah revealed that Jennifer could be pressured to end their friendship as part of the fallout, but J Lo shut that down, telling her bestie, “I don’t ever want to talk about this bullshit again” and then handed Leah a chocolate chip cookie.

Because they are such close friends, it’s a little surprising that Leah Remini and Jennifer Lopez have never made a movie together before. Leah has excellent comedic ability, as fans of the King of Queens and Kevin Can Wait know, so maybe the Lucy-Ethel comparison isn’t all that far-fetched.

More at https://www.inquisitr.com/4547459/l...-up-for-new-big-screen-romantic-comedy-movie/

From Nathan Rich:

https://twitter.com/TweetNathanRich/status/917977484683071488

The Hollywood Reporter: 'Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath' Investigates Church's Treatment of Children

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/leah-remini-scientology-aftermath-focuses-child-scientology-1047617

* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *

Two former students at the Scientologist-run Mace-Kingsley Ranch describe manual labor and corporal punishment during their time there.
The latest episode of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath focused on the treatment of children in Scientology, something the show has touched on before.

In Scientology, children are viewed as equal to adults, and therefore responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. "A child is a man or a woman who has not attained full growth," L. Ron Hubbard wrote in The Scientology Handbook. "Any law which applies to the behavior of men and women applies to children."

But the stories from two former students sent to a Scientologist-run reform school allege corporal punishment, manual labor, and other poor treatment.

* * * * * END EXCERPT * * * * *

Tara and Nathan — subjects of last night’s ‘Leah Remini’ — respond to Scientology’s smears

By Tony Ortega, October 11, 2017

Quote:

Right on schedule, the Church of Scientology posted a new page attacking Leah Remini’s guests just before her newest episode of Scientology and the Aftermath aired last night on the A&E network.

In last night’s show, Leah spoke with Nathan Rich and Tara Reile, who had spent some of their childhoods at Scientology’s notorious “Mace-Kingsley” ranches in California and New Mexico. Longtime Scientology Watchers were already aware of the horror stories that have come out of the reform-school ranches, which were designed to take troubled children off the hands of their Scientology parents. In last night’s episode, Nathan and Tara described the ranch as a labor camp, with extreme punishments and mind games played on children who had been abandoned by their families.

We interviewed Tara before the show aired, and she predicted that Scientology would talk with her family members and put together videos of them trashing her. And they did. Both Nathan and Tara got the usual Scientology treatment, with a page smearing them for speaking out.

We asked each of them if they wanted to respond, and they both enthusiastically said that they did.

<snipped>

Here’s what Nathan sent us as a statement:

For the first time in over a decade I got a glimpse of the family members that have long disconnected from me. They did their makeup and got together to put their indoctrination on display.

First they say going to the Mace-Kingsley ranch was my only other option than going to jail.

I was 8 years old.

Then they say I was taken home by the police under the influence of drugs. In reality, the first time I did drugs was at the ranch.

They then confirm everything I’ve been saying the whole time, and confuse the timelines to make it seem I was in trouble before the ranch, when actually almost everything they are talking about happened at the ranch or immediately after it, and I might argue because of it.

I’m not surprised at how fast they turned against their own family. They have Scientology to support. They don’t need family members that aren’t part of that.

We then got a phone call from Tara, and talked to her about watching the episode.

“I thought Nathan did a great job,” she told us. “I was there with him during the taping, and that helped. And last night, we were on the phone talking to each other as it aired. I cried the entire time the show was playing.”
She says watching herself suppress her emotion as she told her story, trying not to break down on camera, just opened the floodgates for her as she watched the episode as it aired.

She then took a look at the page the church put up attacking her, which included videos of the aunt and uncle who had tried to talk her out of allowing the episode to air.

“Everything they said was predictable and it was all bullshit. You know, I grew up with this family, and they made it very apparent that I was adopted. And they had no problem reminding me of that my entire life. But this suicide thing. I wonder if an outsider, after looking at this, would really wonder why I had tried to kill myself,” she says.

“They always accuse me of lying and stealing, but I’ve never lived with any of them. They keep saying, ‘Tara was pure hell.’ Well, my dad kicked me out of the house when I was 12, and then I was sent to the ranch, and then they wouldn’t let me come home. I’ve never stolen from any of them, and I’ve never hurt anyone. The truth is, they don’t know me at all.”

In fact, Tara has not had an easy time of it, and she’s currently trying to move to a better situation for her kids. She put up a GoFundMe page last night if readers are interested in helping her out.

“I hope Nathan and I did a good job portraying the overall feel of that place,” she says. “I’m so glad I did it with him.”

https://tonyortega.org/2017/10/11/t...ts-leah-remini-respond-to-scientology-smears/

Someone owes me a squillion bucks.

The mode of scientology operation:
1. Mess somebody up
2. Blame the victim
3. Ridicule the victim for speaking out
4. ????????????????????
5. Profit

Oh, and by the way, if Mace-Kingsley really did not have anything to do with the scientology crime syndicate, then why are the scienazis putting up attack websites against Nathan Rich and Tara Reile?
That constitutes an admission of guilt.

NEW blog about Scientology by Nathan Rich of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

http://enturbulated.com/tag/scientology/

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