Inside the Scientology Celebrity Centre: An Ex-Parishioner Reveals All

[Music] hi my name's Steve mango I'm an actor a business owner and I was a 4-year parishioner of the Church of Scientology celebrity Center in Hollywood hi my name is Jeff Myers I'm a lawyer and I'm Ana Miska peléan and I'm Steve's husband I came in there hoping to find spiritual fulfillment and get some guidance in my acting career so over the course of four years I donated close to $50,000 of the Church of Scientology they lied to me they manipulated me and they took advantage of me you have to have money to be a Scientologist regardless of what they want to tell you do you have any investments no you have any gold bullion no he wants me to call my grandmother and ask my grandmother to donate $3,200 she's like look I need you to donate the total amount of your checking account they got my social security number they got you know all my financial information and all of them were running credit apps at the same time we have people higher up in American Express in other financial institutions where Scientologists and they can underwrite and approve your credit card for the amount of credit that we need for you to be able to go clear they'd show up to my house they would knock on my door telemarketers have nothing on these people they would call 40 times a day give up on being an actor and become a staff member now so they lay it on really hard they put the seer contract in the pen in my hand urine on the greatest push in the last 2,500 years you're gonna be an auditor and you're gonna help us clear this planet so just listen to us trust us and sign the contract now this program is basically manual labor you may be digging ditches for Scientology you may be painting walls you're doing manual hard labor from sunup now they're yelling at me you are a horrible disgusting excuse for a human being you shouldn't even be living right now because you don't contribute anything into this world Steve's a [ __ ] he needs to grow a pair of balls and handle and confront what the condition on this planet is and he can't do that he's just a [ __ ] he's not gonna be able to be in the C organization sign the contract and won't handle getting rid of your apartment your car you give up on all your artistic dreams Scientology makes you forget all about them they suggest to women I have an abortion if they get pregnant if they're a Sea Org member because they believe a kid's just going to hold back a woman from their mission that I got into Scientology wasn't through family or friends I am NOT a second-generation Scientologist so it was about August of 2009 that I was reading backstage one night and I come across an ad and the ad was breaking into the industry and of course that caught my attention that's what I'm looking for I'm looking to break into the entertainment industry and it said burking into the industry $20 including a book by l ron Hubbard called the problems of work and the ad listed how you know you're going to be able to learn how to get an agent how to get a manager how to get in front of casting directors those are all things every actor is looking for when they come to LA so he's really enticing but I knew about l ron Hubbard I didn't know much but I just knew that he ran the Church of Scientology and he was the founder but I didn't really know much about you know what the church actually was but you know you see them every you know five minutes when you're driving through Hollywood you come across the Los Angeles or you come across a celebrity Center and you know they have just various different like front groups and different things all through Hollywood so I mean I was kind of filming familiar with the idea and I knew that Scientology had a really large celebrity following and I was kind of curious I knew it might have been like a bait-and-switch sort of thing but I figured let me just give it a shot and go and there's nothing to lose it's only 20 bucks so at the time I didn't have a car I had to take the bus to the celebrity Center but the bus stopped about a half a mile before the celebrity Center so I left kind of early so I'm starting to walk on you know the pathway down you know Franklin to go to the celebrity Center in Hollywood and I get a call on my cell phone at about 6:30 and the guy was saying where are you are you almost here we have your seat reserved for you and we're waiting for you and we'd really like to speak to you and I'm thinking well that's kind of strange because you know I'm said like a half hour you know early and I'm almost there so I just thought it was kind of strange just given the fact that it was only like a twenty dollar workshop so I meet with one of the staff member who takes me out onto one of their balconies and he wants to talk to me a little bit about my career he says so you know he's just asking me how long I've been in LA and how long I've been pursuing my acting career then he immediately begins to sell me the whole series of workshops I've only been in Scientology like five minutes and they're already selling me a whole you know a couple hundred dollars worth of classes so I tell them you know no I'm not really you know interest I don't really have the money right now and then he starts to you know change his sales pitch a little bit and he says well you know Giovanni Ribisi well his dad works here and he's actually a Scientologist and you know we have a number of celebrities that come here that you're going to be able to see like Tom Cruise we have Kirstie Alley we have you know John Travolta we just have you know tons of celebrities who come here and they've gotten help their workshops like these and we're going to be able to help you so I just said you know I don't really have the money right now let me just go to the workshop so I'm sitting in the workshop and there's only like a couple other people there and the actor Gino comes to the front and he starts talking a little bit about like his credits and the industry and the different shows that he's worked on and kind of just like setting up his I credibility so he starts like just talking about just like very basic elementary ways that you can get started as an actor like mail your headshots to agents and try to take workshops around town now this was like nothing that was really worth paying for to hear because I already knew all these sort of things but then he turns a table over to one of the celebrity Center workers who comes to the front and he starts talking about various Scientology principles and everyone's like happy and whatnot and then he starts talking about your mind and how there is a part of your mind that's holding you back and in Scientology you can learn about this part of the mind and how your fears and your pain and all different things are stored in this part of the mind and you can take this two-week course and it's 50 bucks it's part-time and you're going to learn about this and how you can get rid of it and you know it's the best investment you can make who wants to sign up for the course and I sign up for the course with another guy they take me in the guy into this theater room and they lock the door so now we're stuck in this dark theater and they start playing this film which was their orientation film it's very like cosmic and space opera like and it's just very very dramatic and it's just really creepy and strange and the guy in the film Larry Anderson is no longer in Scientology so they no longer show this film because of that reason because he departed Scientology he was a member for 30 years and then he's seeking a refund so now they no longer showed the orientation film anymore if you leave this room after seeing this and walk out and never mention Scientology again you are perfectly free to do so it would be stupid but you can do it you can also dive off a bridge or blow your brains up that is your choice if you don't walk out that way if you continue with Scientology we will be very happy with you and you will be very happy with you you will approve and then you are a friend of yours [Music] people always wonder what's the fascination with celebrities inside Scientology why do they have their own celebrity center and how do celebrities benefit Scientology so here are a few things i'll ron hubbard said about celebrities so first how does LRH define a celebrity so celebrities also further defined as any person important in his fields or an opinion leader or his entourage business associates family and friends with particular attention to the arts sports and management and government LRH from HCl policy letter may 23rd 1967 on celebrities so why celebrities so LRH says a being expands wanted conditions to the degree he is trained and uses scientology technology celebrity center will ensure that beings and power use their power to create a safe space thus bringing about d stimulation and will bring people into aesthetics and speed the forward drive of creating a new civilization from HCO policy letter February 22nd 1970 celebrity Center so why artists lr8 says we instinctively revere the great artist painter or musician in society as a whole looks upon them as not quite ordinary beings and they're not they are a cut above man what distinguishes civilized man as man is that he is married into problems which just get worse the more he solves them the being who can recognize the actual source of problems and so see them vanishes too rare to be easily comprehended when a being can do this make problems vanish with a glance is certainly no longer man and the problems artists have our legend la rage from the state of existence 1965 LRH knew that celebrities would put legitimacy onto Scientology if you have these famous faces attached to the church yes there's the aspect where they have money to donate to the church but it's not even necessarily about that it's more about having that one person that you may look up to actually be a Scientologist and then you attribute your their success to Scientology so you'll see someone like Tom Cruise and you may look up to him as an actor and you say well he's in Scientology it must be good there must be some workable things inside Scientology so you have these people who are opinion leaders in their fee maybe they're in the government in the police force and they're talking about how Scientology has helped them so you think wow well you know let me give this Scientology thing a shot so a lot of people come in and they stay in Scientology like I did because of these celebrities and I stayed in because I was saying well look there are these different celebrities and famous faces who seem like they're doing quite well in life and they're attributing it to Scientology maybe I'm not seeing what they're seeing so let me give it a little bit more of a shot let me see what these famous people see in Scientology and that's how they trap you and that's how they get people to stay in Scientology they say that Tom Cruise has helped introduce Scientology to over a billion people on this planet a Scientologist can be defined by a single question would you want others to achieve the knowledge you now have in answering that question Tom Cruise has introduced loh technology to over 1 billion people of earth and that's only the first wave he's unleashed which is wide the story of Tom Cruise Scientologist has only just begun so all across the planet people you know see Tom Cruise is this huge movie star and they say well you know Tom Cruise is the Scientologist let me find out what Scientology is and that's the danger of having celebrities attached to Scientology because you go into Scientology and then you learn about the abuses and the money extortion and all of these other horrible things so you're new after and you come to Hollywood and most actors when they're first getting started they'll do background work on TV and film and the way that you do that is by going to central casting and they're like the main casting office that casts extras on a TV and film now there's like two days that you can go a week that central opens up for actors to line up outside and to register for background work and get into their files so Scientology knows most actors coming off of the Greyhound bus are just flying into town are gonna land at central casting so they have a couple of their division six people which division six is like the new people Department of Scientology and they come and they start talking to the different people in line and they'll try to get them to go to one of those workshops like I did one of those breaking into the industry how to get started how to get an agent how to get into the Screen Actors Guild so the different weeks they have a different topic it'll talk to these wannabe actors and they'll tell them you know you don't want to you know be an extra I mean it's fine if you want to make a couple bucks and try it out once or twice but I know the real reason why you're here is to try to be an actor and we can show you how to do that you don't have to just be in the background you can be the star and we can give you the tools so you can become that star we have a workshop tomorrow night at 7:30 can we sign you up and we'll expect you there so that's kind of the way that they try to recruit new people totally fresh because that's their prime candidate that want to be after the want to be modeled and want to be musician they want they want to touch them and at their most vulnerable points where they're just willing to do anything they might not have the support of their family or friends they know all of this so the new actor is like a real prime candidate for Scientology now of course like I said backstage newspaper they buy the biggest glossiest ads in backstage newspaper because where do actors go when they get off of that Greyhound bus and they go to the Samuel French bookstore which is you know books where they sell different like acting books on you know the crafts we're gonna pick up a copy backstage newspaper Scientology knows that they have all the ads and you're gonna see one of their industry seminars they may advertise about one of their books backstage actually throws a convention for actors called actor fest and it's held in LA New York Chicago just a different link major acting markets and they have it in you know like usually late fall or the winter in LA and you know thousands of actors come and they have just different like actor related vendors and businesses headshot photographers casting directors have like workshops and different things there that you can sign up for so it's a you know it's a big event in the year for actors to come and they network with different people so on and so forth so you know businesses normally just have like the standard booth but Scientology has almost like the whole entire back wall of the place and you know they just have all of their pretty smiling you know Sea Org workers which are their staff members of the celebrity Center and you know they start talking about Scientology and talk about their workshops talk about their classes and they basically you know get people to sign up to come into the celebrity Center for whatever they're you know selling at the time and it's big for them because they don't have to convince people at first to come into the celebrity Center these actors are just walking around and they can approach them bring them back to the booth and you know do the first introduction right then and there so actor Fest is a very big recruitment for Scientology and they have different you know acting related companies that are owned by Scientologists that are also there and you know those different acting schools that are run by Scientologists eventually start talking to you know you as a new actor in their class and they'll start saying stuff like wow you know you just have a little bit of stage fright you know you know I'm a Scientologist and you know there's a scrape place called a celebrity Center and we can actually help you with that so you know whether you get into Scientology directly through you know the actual Scientology or you get in through one of their other acting related Scientology front groups I mean you're bound to be introduced to Scientology one way or the other as an actor as a musician as someone trying to break into the entertainment industry so that's why it's really important to see and know what this group is up to so you don't even have the curiosity like I did to go in there and then end up giving them basically you know all your money and all your time and you just realize it's just a money-making organization another way that actors get roped in are through acting auditions and there are two main sights that actors submit themselves on every day for acting work and that's actors access and LA casting so but once or twice a month on each one of those sites you're gonna see a posting for maybe a Scientology video come in an audition at the celebrity Center and they'll have like a number of different roles for each project that cover just like a whole variety of different types of different people so there's usually the direct way through the Scientology video but sometimes they'll mask it a little bit and they'll say I'm coming to audition for the way to happiness PSA now the way to happiness is a Scientology book but people may not know that and they'll submit for it and they're really going to be in a Scientology film they'll go to the celebrity Center to audition for the film and then afterwards like I've seen like different staff members come up to different actors who are coming out of an acting audition and say well since you're here I mean if you're curious to find out what Scientology really is let's let's watch this video display or hear read this pamphlet about what Scientology is there's so many actors like yourself who are in Scientology right now and you know we can help you with a number of problems here look at these different courses we're offering boom they put you in the register office and they get you sign up for your first course Milton Katselas was a famous acting teacher and he taught an exclusive master class at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and some of his students are like Alec Baldwin George Clooney Michelle Pfeiffer so he taught a lot of really huge names in Hollywood he was the go-to acting teacher now Milton was a longtime Scientologist since the 1960s and he was an ot5 and he used his classes as like a recruitment ground for Scientology so say you're an actor in class and maybe you're hitting like a roadblock or you know you're not feeling like you can really access your emotions and you're just not really doing well well Milton will use that opportunity to say look you know I have this church that I go to and we have courses that can help unleash that creativity inside of you so you're an actor and you're going to class and then you end up going into Scientology you may not get in through Milton directly introducing it to you but you're using these Scientology principles in your work he's using Scientology philosophy and different ideas to help you in your acting work so you're basically in a Scientology acting class so this was like the main recruitment ground for many of the top actors that you see in Scientology Milton introduced Scientology to them now Milton died a couple years ago and his classes are no longer running so this isn't now a recruitment tool for Scientology in 2013 but this was like the main way they recruited actors back in the day people don't really know what Scientology or Dianetics actually is so here are some videos from the church that explains some of their basic principles stress anxiety depression negative thinking irrational behavior unwanted aches and pains where do these things come from in the next 40 minutes you will discover the single source of all these problems it's called the reactive mind and it's the part of your mind that stores all your painful experiences and then uses them to control you without you knowing it your reactive mind is the cause of what's wrong in your life but with Dianetics you're going to learn how to get rid of it [Music] so to recap Scientology believes of your analytical mind which is that part of your mind that just kind of computes and stores data but there's also that reactive mind and the reactive mind is what you're trying to get rid of in Scientology it's the place of your mind that stores your fears your pains your upsets and they tell you well if you don't have this part of your mind you're gonna be a much more capable person so in Scientology the way to get rid of this reactive mind is through a process called auditing auditing is the process of asking specifically worded questions designed to help you find and handle areas of distress this is done with an auditor meaning one who listens an auditor does not offer solutions or advice they are trained to listen and to help you locate those experiences that need to be addressed but some experiences are so deeply buried within the mind they are not easily recalled the auditor helps you pinpoint these with the aid of an e meter when you think of something that has upset or stress connected to it this shows up on the meter your attention can now be directed to that thought through auditing one is able to look at their own existence and discover the past experiences that are holding them back against their will how ironic that the Scientologists who are so obsessed with psychiatrists most of them could use a psychiatrist themselves but the fact that they that they hate psychiatrists but basically what they're doing with auditing is a really expensive form of psychotherapy it just by someone who's not trained and has no knowledge or willing to study brain chemistry auditing is purchased by the intensive and an intensive as 12 and a half hours of auditing and at the celebrity Center when I left it was $3,200 per intensive now to go clear you probably need 40 to 50 in tenses of auditing so it's not cheap and that's only the first half of the bridge to total freedom of what l ron Hubbard's path to enlightenment is there's another big belief in Scientology and that's that you're an immortal spirit and your spirit is called your thetan it's you you are of being and intelligence a consciousness that part of you that is aware of being aware in Scientology we use the word Satan the term thetan is taken from the Greek letter theta which has long served as a symbol for thought or Spirit will use satan to avoid confusions with other concepts and beliefs regarding the soul or spirit it isn't something you have you wouldn't say of my Phaeton you'd simply say me you have a body you have a mind you are a Satan most of the ideas in Scientology in the beginning are just basic universal truths of the world and that's kind of how they wrote people in and then if you can believe some of the beginning stuff you start believing some of the later stuff in Scientology and as you go up the ranks in Scientology the more controlled your life gets the more money you invested the more time you have to commit and your whole life becomes engulfed in Scientology l ron Hubbard came up with the path towards enlightenment called the bridge to total freedom and the bridge to total freedom was a path laid out where you can attain spiritual freedom now there are two sides of the bridge to total freedom there's the left side which is training to become an auditor and the right side is the processing section of the bridge and that's where you go up and you attain the spiritual wins and gains through auditing now to go up this bridge to total freedom it could take anywhere from maybe five years to 25 plus years into what both sides of the bridge is probably gonna cost you close to a million dollars this bridge to total freedom has been modified several times by David Miscavige what he would do is redo the level and say that he found like lost technology so basically lost information from l ron Hubbard and he would say well the reason you didn't attain the goal of this level is because you know there was people who were suppressive in Scientology who made sure the level wasn't workable and now I found the loss information that's going to help make the level workable so the people who are at the top of the bridge now have to go back down to the bottom of the bridge and they have to get all their certificates cancelled and they have to restart from the bottom and that's how they start you for more money even when you get up to the top you think you're done nope we have to go back to the bottom and redo those courses most people when they get starting to Scientology will start off on one of their life improvement courses now these life improvement courses are a series of courses that usually take about two weeks to do and they address various areas in your life the first thing probably most everyone does is a course that's actually the theology Scientology for you're learning about the actual philosophy itself and it is a religious philosophy but it's also an applied religious philosophy seizo apply it kind of like a spiritual college they have tons of courses on every subject you really think of there are courses on how to communicate better and how to get along with others how to handle negative people how to raise children it's not just a philosophy where you sit and think about it it's taking the spiritual nature of man and it's combining it with something that's really practical it has a way of being very very simple and easy to come across to the reader and easy to apply but also extremely powerful you come in you feel good you're studying there you need to be a Scientologist and you can be any religion really to come check it out the whole point is you're yourself in a Church of Scientology you're the one doing the learning nobody's preaching to you or teaching it to you you're learning it yourself and basically when they're selling you this course they're trying to find your ruin and especially for actors going into the celebrity Center they're trying to figure out what's holding you back from being successful as an actor as a musician as a model whatever you are so you may have issues with say your self-confidence or maybe you have stage fright or whatever it is there's a course for that so once they figure out what's really holding you back and why you're not being successful as an actor you take a chance on the course and you say well it's only 50 bucks to sign up and maybe I'm going to gain a little bit more confidence at the end of the course but it's their way of getting you indoctrinated into Scientology to where you start donating for more of the larger courses so this is really like the first introduction is through these basic courses the first major step Scientology is a purification rundown the purification rundown actually opens the way to spiritual progress it's an all-natural regimen which frees one from the harmful effects of drugs and toxins old drugs that you could pet decide you sweat all those things out of your system and you feel so much more alive revitalizing the simplicity and the power of it is immeasurable Scientology's like very anti medicine they're also anti psychiatry so for example if you wanted to take a Tylenol for a headache that's not recommended you're not going to take a Tylenol because basically taking a Tylenol is going to suppress the headache it's not actually handling the root of the headache so Scientology believes that most of these are psychosomatic illnesses that are just kind of caused by the mind and they also believe these drugs and toxins store in the fatty tissues of your body so by doing this program you're able to you know cleanse your body and be able to have spiritual gains because they say these drugs and chemicals are holding you back so that's why people may have a second thought when taking drugs or by you know taking an over-the-counter medicines that may impede their spiritual progress in Scientology you have to come into the Celebrity Center every single day and on their basement floor is their purification delivery center they have to or I guess three women in charge of the purification program now they're not medical professionals they're just staff members who are trained under l ron Hubbard and his principles on this type of drug detox so you take basically a whole mega dose of vitamins all different types of vitamins and you also take niacin now at the end of the program you're taking upwards of 5,000 milligrams of niacin so you take like a really toxic dose of niacin you drink a calcium magnesium drink and then you go a new exercise for 30 minutes and it's supposed to you know get all the nice and everything running in your system get your blood flowing you change in your bathing suit and you go into the sauna now you go into the sauna for four and a half hours a day this isn't just you know a quick you know easy you know spa-like sauna that you're going and you're really going in there trying to get rid of these drugs and toxins out of your body one thing I remember that you had terrible allergies and and you would your nose would run constantly and there was throat clearing all night which would keep me up at night and and there were mounds and mounted reminded me of my maternal grandmother who always slept with a box of tissues and and this pile of tissues would grow throughout the night with the multiplying of the of the clear mucus from your nose and mucous membranes from allergies and I said well why take a benadryl for God's sakes oh no I can't take a benadryl it's a drug and it's terrible and I can't take a benadryl and the amount of suffering that you were going through when all you had to do was take a benadryl and it wasn't as if I'm pushing crack on you or crystal meth I'm pushing an over-the-counter medicine that's one of the safest things used in hospitals on a daily basis for a variety of reasons and finally you gave in and took a benadryl and then it was another three or four months before I convinced you to go to the doctor to get some Nasonex or flonase that so if you live in LA chances are you have allergies chances are you take flonase year-round and you didn't want to take that somehow it was going to alter your being and really all it does is alter your histamines so on Tuesday nights the celebrity center they'll have a free lecture about the purification rundown and sometimes they'll even have one of their celebrities host the lecture so as an actor in the audience you're hearing a celebrity that you've seen on TV in film basically vouch for this program and say how this program has helped them succeed in the industry because now they don't have these drugs and toxins and chemicals holding them back by Reese Tim you lating in their system and may be impeding their work as an actor because they say it's going to hold back your creativity if these drugs are in your system even if you haven't taken even if you're just in this world that we live in there's pollution there's chemicals there's other things out there so they're saying well all those things are gonna hold back your artistic creativity so you're thinking okay you have the celebrity saying how they got successful by doing this program and I'm a health you know conscious person so maybe this program is something I should invest in now the program's about two thousand dollars and you know as a young actor who's not you know a working actor at this point you're saying well you know maybe this is I can look at this as an investment into my career maybe this is what's going to launch my career when you do the purification program you're on the program with a partner which is called your twin and your twin supposed to be looking out for you but also when you're on the purification program you're sitting in the sauna with maybe ten or twenty other people not the celebrity Center you may be in the Sun with editors writers directors producers all sorts of types of industry people so it's almost like you know you can network in the sauna so while I was on the Sun on my second time I was in the sauna with someone who was on the show True Blood so one of the other girls was getting all excited because one of the actors from True Blood was in our sauna you as an actor look and you see someone like that in the Sun and you think well wow they're successful and they're already you know a working actor and they're doing this program so it must be good because they wouldn't waste their time with it and I've met just a various number of other actors who were you know working actors and who are on this program and you know you're going through the experience with them so you really bond with these people and you really connect with them and you really feel like you're on a mission like when I was on the purif I felt like I was really going to become spiritually free and I was on this journey and I was gonna help for the aims of Scientology and you have other people who are encouraging that there's other people there to support you and even though you're going through these horrible 'sometimes experiences in the sauna like I was you have other people there that you went through it with so even though necessarily it might not have been the greatest experience you still try to give it hope and continue on because there's other nice people there and there's other people who you know understand what you're going through they're encouraging you think I'll just give it a little bit more of a shot so on my first pure if I was on it with a woman named Ivana Lewis and Ivana was the mother to the after Johnny Lewis who was on the show Sons of Anarchy so I was friendly with davana and we would talk in the sauna about her son and how different Scientology courses helped him to accelerate his career access a range of emotions and how I should maybe sign up for some of these different courses she's like look I will do anything to make someone famous with my connections so then therefore they can go into some innate Scientology on a grand scale so she gave me a referral to a talent manager now the crazy thing is her son ended up killing an older woman he jumped off a roof and he killed himself it's a 28 year old actor from the TV show sons of anarchy brutally killed his elderly landlady Wednesday then as he tried to run away he fell possibly from the roof to his death he was obviously troubled and he had mental illness and in Scientology you're not seeking help for your mental illness outside of the church you're going to receive more Scientology services so that's the problem they control you to such a level where you feel like you know you can't seek outside help you have to just try to make it work with Scientology and it's really sad that you know her own son had to you know tragically die like that and kill someone it's crazy when I was on the pure if I was told that Whitney Houston was supposed to be coming in to receive auditing no sadly she passed on before she was actually able to receive any services from Scientology but basically I was told that they had a comm line which is a communication line to Whitney Houston and they were really working on her they were trying to handle her objections to Scientology and show her that Scientology was going to be a solution to her problems we all know that Whitney Houston had you know struggles with drugs and alcohol and she had other personal issues going on in her life and Scientology was offering her a helping hand and telling her look if you come into the celebrity Center we are a safe haven for artists and we can help deliver what's called auditing and we can help you with these problems now she passed on and she wasn't able to go to Scientology but they were really working on trying to get her to come into the Celebrity Centre but it never actually ended up happening so me and one of my other friends on the purification program decided that we were going to recruit Bobbi Kristina Brown who was Whitney Houston's daughter into Scientology now there are all these media reports out there that Bobbi Kristina was abusing drugs and we thought while this program is going to be amazing for her but we're also going to be able to get Scientology out there on a grand scale so maybe we can work with that other Scientologist who had a comm line to Whitney Houston to maybe try to recruit Bobbi Kristina into the church we're gonna work on this we're gonna try to get some of these other younger celebrities into Scientology and we have these other members who are saying look Steve Amanda you guys are young you guys are perfect to get the younger generation the young Hollywood crowd into Scientology you guys should work together as a team to recruit young Hollywood into Scientology so I was also starting to begin to get onto that force of recruiting celebrities into Scientology for the idea that it was going to help bring our message out there into the world on a grand scale because I admitted to having alcohol and I drug reverted I was programmed to go back on to the purification rundown for a second time now before I could actually walk on to the program and start going through the sauna rituals and all of that business I had to get a PT s interview which stands for potential trouble source suppressive persons interview and I had to receive a security check now I'll talk a little bit later on the video what a potential trouble source and what a suppressive person actually is so they're asking me you know like what evil intentions do you have against Scientology who do you know that's antagonist ik to Scientology do you have any government security clearance has any of your family or friends gone to the press about Scientology and they start asking you all these really like out there like super crazy questions l ron Hubbard was paranoid and you as a member of Scientology have to undergo these constant checks on the e meter to see if you're still a loyal devoted member I'm on the meter getting these security checks every couple weeks even to a point at the end I'm on the meter like almost every single time that I'm going in there and they're just really hammering you're trying to figure out like what crimes you may have committed what have you done that is evil towards Scientology some on the meter and they're checking me for a few hours and they're trying to see like who may be suppressing me in my environment they're asking me all these crazy questions so eventually I passed the meter and I'm able to go onto the program if you think about what type of health problems can be caused by sitting in the sauna for you know four and a half hours a day you know that heat really takes a toll on you so I mean I have my own personal horror story but the first one before mine was this woman and she was basically lying in the sauna unconscious she wasn't responding to anyone she was just lying there in what seemed like pain and agony and she was totally out so afterwards we find out she was kind of laughing about it but she was saying you know she was running out anesthesia out of her body so that anesthesia we stimulated and now she was in the anesthesia experience and she was completely passed out and she was experiencing the effects again okay depending what you believe if you believe in the Scientology idea that you're running out drugs that's one thing but if you're looking at from a medical standpoint of what this program requires and the vitamins and the heat and the running not everyone's cut out for this program and you know you don't see a real doctor I mean you do but you see a Scientology doctor so who signs off on the program beforehand you can't go to your own doctor because they may advise you not to do the program because of how taxing it is on your body so yeah there's not any medical professionals on-site at this point it's just you just do whatever l ron Hubbard prescribes in this sort of case and there's the book and it tells you what to do so in my experience and what happened to me was I start feeling kind of strange and it's about like at like hour three in the sauna so all of a sudden I have my cup of water and I throw it up in the air and I'm saying it's raining it's raining in the sauna but obviously it's not raining in the sauna and I knew that but I kind of did and I just was certain to act weird and I'm not that type of person to try to make a show but I start talking and very overly you know expressing myself which doesn't really like me so then I try to get out of the sauna and I start stumbling and I can't walk like I can't use my legs and I start slurring and I just kind of like go and collapse into one of the chairs so one of the other public Scientologists was on the program goes up to get the purification in charge so the woman comes downstairs and she looks at me and she just goes Stevie you know it looks like you're having so much fun and in her mind she thinks that I'm running out the drug and I'm having fun because I'm running alcohol out of my system so I'm actually having fun but really I'm like basically like almost like scared for my life at this point because I'm not sure what's going on with me I'm dehydrated I probably had some sort of like a heatstroke thing going on it was like I couldn't even walk I can't talk I'm just totally just lying there I'm not responding to them and it's scary when you're inside your body and you're like why aren't you talking so they get one of the other girls to take me into the shower put cold water on me and she squirted me back into the sauna while I'm still in this state of delusion and craziness and I was instructed go back into the Sun instead of resting because by being in the sauna they say that I'm gonna sweat out more of the drug and therefore my body will be clean of it and I'll feel sparkly better at the end well really I was just getting more dehydrated and more delusional I was I just felt like I was being tortured by being in that Sun I'm just like get me out of here I was in the sauna that day about six hours or six and a half hours maybe and I mean at the end you know I was still a little bit kind of out of it but I said well I have to tell them I feel better so I can go home because they were just prescribing to go back into the sauna a registrar best way to describe it is basically a Salesman it's a sales function okay people come into the organization and they need to get service service cost money the Registrar works with them to basically because through all the stuff he works on how they get it paid for and their performance is measured by statistics the registrar's statistic is the amount of money brought in it's not necessarily how many people were helped it's how much money got brought in and their week goes from Thursday at 2:00 to the next Thursday at 2:00 so that's their week that they record statistics on so you can imagine the amount of pressure it is for them to get money in by Thursday at 2:00 because there's repercussions for them and different condition formulas that they're going to have to do if their statistics are not so they're basically punished if they're not getting money in so Tuesday Wednesday especially Thursday morning they're doing anything it takes to get you to donate for your next service and it donate as much as you can and they all compete on how much money they can bring in so it's really unethical how Scientology reges you for money there's just a numerous amount of stories out there including mine that really showcases that Scientology is a money-making organization one of the new persons registrar in Scientology was an actor himself before he joined the see organization now they intentionally make him your registrar when you first get into Scientology because he's really friendly and he's really good with the new people he's one of the top producing registrar's of course because he gets all the new actors in and he tells them how Scientology has helped him in his acting career in his music career and how they can gain similar successes so he basically gets you to donate more money than you were initially intending to spend that day because he uses that Scientology is the way to acting stardom and he gives all the wrecked to riches stories how Scientology has helped someone like you who came into Scientology who maybe not really had anything but has now had their career boomed by taking these different Scientology courses so then again you know you're going in Scientology and you're going new day thinking you know let's see if they're gonna be able to help me today and you go in and what happens you donate more money because they use these different lines on a very vulnerable young actor saying look this is the way take this course it's X amount of dollars but you need this course let's max out your credit card and we're gonna be able to help you so one time I was waiting for one of my receipts to print out and I was sitting at one of the desks I was just looking at my phone or whatever and there's a few other registrar's that were standing by that desk so then I overheard one of the reges and she basically just said I don't even care what they say to me talking about the public Scientologist I will say and do whatever it takes to get them to give me their credit card number just point blank now at this time I was like starting to become like more of a believer so I kind of ignored it I kind of just said well they're just doing it for you know the greatest good like I started reasoning how a Scientologist would reason over hearing that statement not thinking well maybe this is a red red flag over here that maybe something's not right at the end of the course period when you're about to leave whether it's for lunch or whether it's a dinner break or whether you're about to go home you have to go out one door now the reges line up all along that door so you're gonna have your IAS read you're gonna have the ones trying to get money for courses the bookstore office or anyone whose job it is to collect money from you they're lined up by those doors so when you leave you know one of them is about to grab you and pull you into one of their offices and read you for money so some Scientologists start trying to find backdoors that they can leave through so they don't have to face the reges but the reges know that so they may start waiting for you in different areas so they kind of spread themselves out now to think you're in a church and you have to think about an escape route so you don't have to pay them any money I mean there's just a number of times I was going out that backdoor just cringing because I knew that they were gonna ask me to maybe donate for something that I didn't finish paying for or they were gonna try to get me to up my status level for something so I mean just the idea that these reges have to and come after you write it right after a course to get your money you can't even finish your scientology course iran they want more money from you they take you off a course it's ridiculous so i get to my car one night and it's about ten o'clock and it's after course and i hear a tap on my window and it was one of the reges so i roll my window down and he basically said look if you're not ready to donate the $3,200 for your basic book in lectures you could at least buy the books themselves instead of buying the whole entire set and just the books itself is about five or six hundred dollars you can just buy the books you have to do it right now like look I'm on my way out I just told you I can't afford it he said look you need to be an example of LRH tech basically the technology and the books and you need to basically be good Scientologists and demonstrate the usage of it and you're gonna get more people into Scientology you're being able to help us because we're using this money to disseminate to other Scientologists you know around the world we're using this money to help other people and we're also trying to you know clear this planet it's a big job and we need money to do that I basically was able to drive way after a half hour of him standing at my window I can't even leave I have them asking me for money the second I step onto the property the second I leave the property so I get home one night and I get a call and I got home kind of late because they were rejig me for hours and hours so I get a call from their bookstore officer it's about like 2:00 a.m. at this point so I'm thinking why is the bookstore officer calling me at like 2:00 in the morning so I answer the phone I need you to buy those lecture tapes that we talked about I said look I can maybe come in tomorrow I'm going to be here maybe I'll look into purchasing them if you know I can somehow make it go right with my finances and he's like look I need the money right now I'm like well why can't I just come in the morning and pay for what's the big rush it's like look I can't even go to sleep until I get my quota met and my quota is whatever his quota was and I just need X amount of dollars which is the cost of those lectures so I can be able to stop calling people in the middle of the night to get them to buy something from me now just the desperation from him that I needed to buy these lectures and he couldn't even go to sleep but just just like something wasn't right and I just felt so bad for this these you know Sea Org members who basically live and work there 24/7 and think that he's going to bed at 2 a.m. and he has to wake up at 5 or 6 a.m. and have a whole new quota as they are so money motivated he can't go to sleep until he sells more books I was at the event where they released the l ron hubbard encyclopedias and after the event the doors opened and there all the staff members with forms trying to get you to buy several sets of the encyclopedias now I wasn't going to buy the encyclopedias because there were $750 and I didn't have the money at the time and again I just didn't feel that they were necessary because they already was spending thousands of dollars on books and other things that I wasn't even using at the time so me and this other girl who I was friends with who is a Scientologist we're having to fight through all of the different staff members because they just kept approaching us while we were walking saying how many sets are you gonna buy and do you want to donate a set to the library or whatever they were just trying to get you to buy as many sets as possible because of course they were working on their stats and they had to sell so many books and they were working on quotas so it was at the very end of the event and we finally make it to the parking lot and one of the staff members was waiting at the parking lot to try to get like any of the people who kind of struggled off and to their you know to find the parking lot on their own he was the one who was trying to sell to them so he approaches my friend and starts trying to sell her the encyclopedias so she begins to run up the stairs in the parking garage saying no no I'm not going to buy any no not now and she's running up the stairs away from the the sales guy so now if you think about it we're in a religious spiritual group and you have to run away from someone who's trying to sell you books it's just ridiculous you can't just say no I can't make a donation at this time I can't purchase the books you are required to buy you says this is what your duty is a Scientologist is to buy all the releases and to always be donating towards your next step on the bridge so I never actually purchased the Encyclopedia books but I was getting phone calls from every single org almost all over the country trying to sell me these encyclopedias and they don't take no for an answer Scientology leader David Miscavige had called his flock to clear waters Ruth Eckerd Hall on June 30th 2007 for a major announcement over the next three hours he explained that a team of church specialists had located and restored all of Scientology founder l ron Hubbard's recorded lectures from decades ago including recordings that had never been available to church members listening to Hubbard's lectures the team also determined Hubbard's texts were incomplete and out of order in places those volumes also were rieta 'td now Miscavige said the church had all of Hubbard scriptures in complete form for the first time the new collection of 18 books and 280 lectures on CDs was called the basics Miscavige called it the Golden Age of knowledge for Scientology it also became a golden age of revenue for the church the basics would cost parishioners three thousand dollars a set Church staffers sold them aggressively in an effort to disseminate Hubbard scriptures worldwide yes that too all of it you can have it all ladies and gentlemen I present you the basics so I was in one of the Regis's and he was trying to sell me the basic book and lectures which are basically just all of l ron Hubbard scripture and the whole set of the basics were $3,200 so obviously I'm still in the same financial state I was in I'm a new actor I'm trying to get my career going I don't have just a spare $3,200 to be buying just sets of Scientology books I was still considering myself a really strong believer in Scientology this was basically my life but again I can't afford basically to be a Scientologist at this point so I'm in the office and he's really just trying to do whatever he can do to get me to buy these books and he's like look we're gonna figure out a way to get this money and get you to buy a set today right now you're gonna buy a set of the basics so I knew that I didn't have any available credit or anything so I didn't really know how he was gonna go about getting me these books so he went through the whole process of checking all of my credit cards and trying to call the banks for increases on all my cards nothing worked I didn't have any available credit so now he's trying to think of like alternative solutions to how he can get the funding so I can buy these books so my dad gets to come into town for business here and there and the guy knew that my dad would probably be someone who would give me money cuz my dad supportive of me and my acting career and whatever I do so he's like you know your dad's coming into town this week what if we set him up for dinner at the Renaissance which is their four-star restaurant at the Celebrity Centre we'll set him up for a really nice dinner I'm mostly trying to like wine and dine him and then we're gonna go on a tour of the Celebrity Centre and we're gonna show them all around and have a meet different staff members and have them really just say you know how Scientology is basically the greatest thing and how it's helped their acting career because we're going to try to sell them on the idea that these books are going to help your acting career and I'm just thinking you know I'm not going to take my dad here because I knew that they would sit him down and they have all these edges on him and they would try to guilt him and lie to him and say that these books are somehow related to you know my education as an actor so I said you know what you know my dad's really busy when he comes into town we're not going to be able to get him in here his work schedule is too busy I just lied and told him that because I knew that there was no way that I was going to go in there knowing that I was gonna plan to trick my dad for the books and I said okay well you can't get him to come in let's call him right now and we'll try to get his credit card number over the phone you can say that you're trying to loan the money from him and we can you know use that for getting these basic books again no I'm not calling my dad okay well what about Jonathan now Jonathan is my best friend who I grew up with and he's actually been to the Celebrity Centre before I'm here the very small introduction of Scientology via me because you know I'm trying to be a good Scientologist and disseminate to all the people I meet about how wonderful Scientology is because it was somewhat helping me at this point I did learn some new tools and stuff but all the abuses and things I had to go through weren't worth a few wins that I had they said look Jonathan's broke he works at Dunkin Donuts he's not going to have the money to loan to me $3,200 that's just not going to happen so you know the guy's just like really just kind of like frustrated because I'm not willing to give in or even give it a try to call these different people that he's referring to so he goes up let's get your grandmother on the phone and I'm just like this guy is just a slimeball he wants me to call my grandmother and ask my grandmother to donate $3,200 to Scientology books for me when she's a Christian and she's not going to be she I'm not even going to ask her I don't have the heart to try to trick my grandmother into giving me basic books and Scientology just wasn't gonna happen he's like all old people have a little bit of money that they're sitting on I'm look look she's on a fixed income even if she's sitting on money which she's not I'm still not gonna ask my grandmother for $3,200 that's just not the type of relationship we have I love my grandmother I'm not gonna ask her to give me money to go toward Scientology so you know he's still like kind of like whaling and dealing here trying to figure out what we can do so he's like do you have any investments no do you have any gold bullion no at the time 19 maybe 20 years old and the guys asked me do I have any gold bullion that I can basically sell so I can use it to buy Scientology books and he's like look I really wish Scientology had the ability just to have these books just be open resources to you guys but we need a charge you would cost money to assemble these books now Scientology has their own printing department and they print off these books I can probably do it cheaply I mean there's no way that 20 books and Scientology lectures cost them $3,200 or even even half of that to even print it just doesn't make any sense and even so this is religious Scripture that's supposed to be helping free mankind why would they be charging so much money for it that's what was always the thing if they want if this check can really truly make a difference in people's lives and help people wouldn't they do it for free and just go all around the world and go on tours and give people these books for free no you have to buy them and you also once you buy the set of basics they're gonna have you donate sets to libraries around the country around the world they want you to spend money to disseminate these books it's just it's crazy it's really insane because it wasn't just like I was in one Registrar's you know sitting with him and trying to work on this cycle of getting me my books there was tons of registrar's calling me on my phone from all different orgs and even people who weren't registrar's there's other staff members in the org who were trying to sell these books it was anyone the director of processing it was the auditor it was the core supervisors anyone who isn't it's not part of their job to sell books it's their job to maybe help people and what are they doing they're selling these books and it just completely rubbed me the wrong way that they think that you know I was going to Joanie thousands of dollars for books I revealed to one of the reges that I had $2,500 on a count at flag now I was planning to go to flack to do some flag only rundowns and receive some auditing and this guy at the time was trying to read me to get my Congress lectures and they were pretty much about the same price maybe it was three or four thousand dollars to get it but that was still a bulk of the money to get these congresses so he told all the other writers I had money on account so all these writers began to call me all over CC these writers are just calling me trying to be the one and get the sale they want to raise their stats they may want to commission off of these lecture sales so I had one of these registan me up and she's like look you're not going to be able to go to flag unless you purchase these Congress lectures these Congress lectures are a prerequisite before you're going to be able to be accepted to go to flag on services so therefore by these congresses now and then you can work on going to flag maybe in a few months so I believed her so then we extracted the money off of a counted flag and we build it towards these Congress lectures and I was really excited to go to flag I thought is really gonna get a lot of help by doing these flag auditing run downs that you can only do there but then they got me to buy these lectures that I wasn't even going to listen to I heard he had a whole set of basic books that were just sitting and collecting dust at the time so then at the time I'm like thank you for helping me because I thought she was helping me so I could be able to go to flag to do these other services and she laughs and it made me feel like ripped off because she's laughing and I thought she would maybe like yeah you know I'm just trying to look out for you and make you move up the bridge and Scientology no she laughed I felt like a sucker I felt like I was just totally taken advantage of right then and there it was ridiculous that they took the money off of my account to purchase these books and they did anything to get that money in any other Church say the Catholic Church for example if you can't afford to purchase the Bible they'll lend you one of their Bibles maybe you can't afford to go to one of their Bible study groups maybe they'll have like a work-study program or they'll let you go in for free in Scientology that's not the case you have to have money to be a Scientologist regardless of what they want to tell you you need money so I'm just looking at it and thinking well this isn't a real religious organization because if they're trying to spread the good word and the message and if Scientology can really help people wouldn't they maybe let you borrow the books for free so you can study them and so you can maybe disseminate the good word and maybe be able to help others and be able to promote Scientology you can't do that you have to buy all these sets of books you have to purchase these really expensive courses and it's just not to me a religious organization its operating as a business trying to sell you spirituality so now the Reg is hitting me for fifty thousand dollars to go clear and at this time of select nineteen twenty years old I don't really have fifty thousand dollars to donate to go clear the Reg knows this she's been with me working with me for several years in Scientology she knows all my credit cards what the available credit lines and how much balance I carry on them she knew I wasn't going to be able to give her fifty thousand dollars today which is like Steve this is your year you are gonna go clear this year you have been in Scientology now for three four years and you haven't gone clear yet this is the time you are a Scientologist and you need to go clear it's your responsibility so I'm thinking okay here we go now I'm gonna be in another like five to six hour cycle with her trying to go back and forth with how I'm gonna pay her fifty thousand dollars which I do not have so all these reges come over and they're all surrounding the desk so if all these writers over there with iPads just like we're gonna all start applying for credit cards for you so basically all the registered I pad they got my social security number they got you know all my financial information and all of them were running credit apps at the same time with a theory beam that hopefully doesn't look like I'm hitting for a lot of credit once because if you put all the credit apps through at once maybe I'd be able to get approved for ten credit cards all at the same time instead of doing one at a time so they all start apply four credit cards on my behalf and I'm like look I don't really want to look affect my credit I don't really want to be running 20 credit apps and then ruin my credit score because only like three or four points each credit up anyways and then you know it's gonna lift off and you know a few months anyway so I'm just like okay let's see what happens so none of them get approved at the time because my credit wasn't as established as it is now so then I'm like look as you see I can't get approved for credit I can't get you know fifty thousand dollars I don't even have the ability to pay off fifty thousand dollars they're like look this is fine that you didn't get approved right off the bat this is okay this is just the first step now we have to handle the banks now we're gonna call each of these banks and we're gonna get you your credit line I'm like hahaha like you know how am I actually gonna get approved for what they want from me you know she's like look we have people higher up in American Express in other financial institutions who are Scientologists and they can underwrite and approve your credit card for the amount of credit that we need for you to be able to go clear to think that there are people in the banks who are giving people credit lines that they are obviously not qualified for is that like legal at all it just doesn't seem right or even like ethical and it's just they they were just gonna call up and get me approved I just I just said look you know what we've tried we can't get me the available credit let's just you know try to figure out another solution and I just did anything I could just to get myself out of that room with them I just try to still pretend like okay yeah this is what I want so they would actually let me go let me out of the room so then I can you know basically be free you know I I'm locked up in the celebrity Center day after day after day and it's just not like dawning on me yet that this is you know just like a money-making scheme the International Association of Scientologists or otherwise known as the IAS is the Membership Department of Scientology and you donate to become a member l ron Hubbard lists of two different memberships that you could sign up for in the IAS it wasn't called the is then but it was the same basic principle so an eight Co policy letter March 22nd 1965 current promotion and org program summary membership rundown he states there are two memberships and he lists the International annual membership and gives it a cost at thirty dollars and he lists a lifetime membership which is priced at seventy-five dollars and in here he says there are no other memberships or statuses approved or known to LRH an annual membership isn't going to run you 30 dollars nowadays and a lifetime membership isn't going to be 75 dollars you're going to pay five thousand dollars for your lifetime membership and that lifetime membership is required for you to go up the bridge so if you want to make any progress in Scientology you're gonna have to be a lifetime member of the IAS it's just you're supposed to make a force donation to be able to receive services in the church it doesn't really make any sense so I'm invited to a free dinner at the Renaissance restaurant after course and they told me is for a special briefing for some of their most dedicated Scientologists about the IAS so I go down after course to the restaurant and we have dinner and everything seems really great and a guy comes up one of the ER is wedges basically and he starts getting really enthusiastic and you know to like the point like he's like off the wall is crazy it's like look we're gonna take down psychiatry and the is is gonna do that and we're gonna you know really you know make waves and we're really going to get Dianetics and Scientology across all nations and he's like you know what we're gonna scream freedom and we are gonna you know just totally reverberate this whole building with screaming this freedom out loud and because we are going to get freedom from psychiatry and we are gonna have freedom by going up the bridge and we are gonna do this so we're all screening freedom freedom and you know everyone's getting really excited and that's what they want do they when it gets really excited so then they brought up a whiteboard they wrote $10,000 on it they circle the $10,000 they locked the door there's people standing by the door and then the tones differing it's like we need $10,000 amongst you guys you need to figure out how you're gonna get us the $10,000 in order to eradicate psychiatry in an order to get our social betterment programs and our PSAs out there we need money so we're sitting there okay who's gonna be the first donor so then all the other IES reges are going around to all these different tables trying to get others to be the first person to stand up and donate money so one of them goes you know Steve mangos gonna you know donate tonight he's going to be the one and I donate like a thousand dollars that night which I didn't intend to donate that night I was just going thinking I'm gonna have a free dinner in here about how Scientology is helping people I didn't think again that a free dinner was going to somehow be a bait and switch and then get me the donate thousands of dollars that I didn't have at the time so at the end you know I guess it wasn't enough how much I donated so then they go up and they're like look you know you need to donate a few more thousand dollars you're a Scientologist you have to do this you are dedicated now you're you've been here for a few years now and you know this is the time that you actually start helping us like look I just donated a thousand dollars I don't have the money to you know do any more than this I already did enough and then there's other people standing up with their reg and they're saying you know so-and-so just donated you know ten thousand dollars for example someone so distorting fifty thousand dollars and people are clapping so instead of donating ten thousand they really donate it you know twenty times that amount of money but these other people just happen to have maybe better credit than I did or they may happen to have more success than I did in their business or in their life I mean I'm still young at the time I didn't really have the ability to donate tens of thousands of dollars to Scientology and I'm like even when I make a donation is just not enough it just never was enough which was you know just I don't know it was off-putting because I thought I was making a significant contribution to them and they just wanted more you I was sitting in the HGC one day which is a hybrid guidance center and I was waiting for like an interview or something so I'm sitting there in the IES reg comes up to me we have to reach this quota today it's fifty thousand dollars for example I don't really remember the exact amount but is around that amount and we need you to donate towards that and I'm like and I'm laughing she's like I know I know because they know that I don't really have all that type of money to donate she's like look you know if we meet this quota a Sea Org members are gonna be able to go to a Cirque du Soleil show as a reward so we're laughing cuz she knows that I really have a lot of money but she needs a lot of money so she can be able to go and reach her quota for the day and so she can go to her Cirque du Soleil show so she's like what's the max dollar amount that you can donate today and I'm like look I don't really have anything to donate today because I've already been donating tens of thousands of dollars throughout the last couple months I don't have you know a significant amount that I can donate so she's like fifty bucks I'm like I can do 25 she didn't even want the 25 but she's like it's not even worth you she's like you know it's not even worth filling out the form you know what let's meet again and you know we can work on getting a sizeable donation which is going to have much more of an effect than just 25 50 bucks she ended up calling me one night and I ended up donating five thousand dollars towards my lifetime membership so I donate the five thousand dollars and she's like you know what we're gonna set up a photo shoot for you too because we're gonna do a photo shoot of you around CC and we're gonna put you on posters and on the posters we're gonna advertise donating towards your lifetime membership so that was one of the way she was trying to sell me to get me that five thousand dollars initially you know that's a cool thing you're gonna be around CC and everyone's gonna know all about you I do the photo shoot around celebrity Center and I started appearing on posters around the org and I'm just like how did I give them $5,000 how did they talk that out of me because every time after they got a little bit of money out of me even if at the time I was willing to maybe donate in that second I go home that night I'm like how did I give them so much of my money so I gave them my $5,000 but it was probably around that time like a month or two after that I actually left Scientology so it was just happens to be right after I donate I left Scientology there was another really crazy IAS reg cycle that I was in and she basically got me down and come down to her office she's like look I need you to donate the total amount of your checking account to the IAS this is pro-survival and this is the best most important way that you can utilize your money that you have in your checking account she's like I know it's scary so just like that I know it's scary I know it's really hard to confront this but you must do this because it's pro survival it's higher purpose and we're gonna actually build a purification center and like you know New Orleans or something and we're gonna get so many people through it and you know your donation is gonna go towards that no I'm thinking is she crazy she really is she I was trying to figure out if she was really serious or not she thinks I'm gonna spend my whole checking account to donate towards the IAS so I'm looking at her and I'm trying to figure out is she serious is she not and I'm just trying to feel her out like is am I supposed to be laughing but she's dead serious she was serious after all so I'm like look Melyssa I'm just entertaining her at this point I wasn't gonna give her all my money I'm like what about gasps I need to get home tonight I don't have any gas in my tank and I need a buy for groceries for food I'm just trying to see like to what extent are they willing to go at to get my money she's like look you're worrying about too much of the logistics take that out stop questioning and answering just do it I'm telling you what's in your best interest and it's a donate towards the IAS and give us the money that we need so I didn't give her obviously my whole checking account I probably gave her you know a few hundred bucks just to keep myself from you know trouble you know you can't just say no and not donate it's at least give a little bit of something so I donated a little bit that night but to think that they just want all my money my whole bank account we're I'm saying I can't even feed myself if I gave you all my money and they're saying well this is for your best interest and for the best good of Scientology and you know you're just thinking about yourself right now you have to think about others so that was really insane and of course through this whole time I'm questioning Scientology and thinking is it really worth staying here for what I'm hoping to get out of it which are the gains and be able to help my acting career and just my personal self and get rid of this reactive mind or do I leave so but but still I was still invested so deeply and I want it to work so badly and recently what made me want to speak out in to do this videos because I got an email about this guy and he donated $250,000 to the IAS and I knew him because I was on my piriform thinking how could such a nice guy you know be manipulating and donating all this money because I know that's how it is you're not giving this mind your for your core you doesn't walk into the org one day and say hey I want to donate $250,000 that I have lying around you're gonna say let's take the money out of your home let's get credit cards out who do you know you can borrow money from what about your business could we take money out of your business they'll do anyway you know to drain the money of your cut they'll do whatever it takes basically is what I'm trying to say to get the money out of you and people like that you know they hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him until you're just weak enough and your donate and they're saying well look you know you have to be a patron to go clear now and you need $50,000 for your patron so how we're gonna do it and you need $50,000 to go clear anyway so how can we get $100,000 right now so that's basically why I decided to kind of speak out a little bit because I said I want to stop people from actually having to be tricked into donating all this money when obviously donating this money isn't going towards the causes that they say it's going to so it's just totally mind-blowing the amount of money that they can extract from their parishioners if you don't donate enough money you can be security checked and they can try to find out like what your evil intentions are are you connected to someone who's int agonistic to Scientology they can you know forbid you from going up the bridge any further in Scientology so cut off your basically or spiritual freed because you weren't willing to donate enough to the IAS you know there's just a number of different ways that they try to control you so then you feel like you have to give this money they may say well you can't you know be a Scientologist anymore you can't talk to your friends and your family you can't go up the bridge because you're not willing to be like a true Scientologist and really you know be on the team because you're not willing to contribute enough money to be able to be like you know true dedicated Scientologists and what they think is a true dedication ecology through a financial donation it's not like how much time you're willing to spend on course whatever it's okay how much money can we get and if not you know you're gonna have to suffer different consequences and you know if someone thinks that they're not gonna be able to speak to their family or friends or any more and they've been a Scientologist all their life what else are they to do they think this is the way to spiritual freedom they think these courses are helping to you know clear the planet and to clear themselves so they think well I need to you know take money out of my home because this is the way to spiritual enlightenment my home is just a brick wall but the gains you get in Scientology and through other people that I'm being able to help through my donation are more important than say having my home my spirits were freedom and other people's spiritual freedom is more important so I'm gonna donate say a million dollars to the church because you know so I told you to be around for a lifetime maybe I'll help create that versus oh I have a home that I live in who cares about that I'm a spiritual being so that's how they trap you and to you know donating all this money outside of the event we were reading for the IAS which is separate from the ideal org building that's what they were doing inside the event outside the event we were talking to people as they came out to pay money's to the is and this woman just came to just sit down and just relax and someone came up to her and said we need you to make a donation to the is and she said oh gosh my husband and I just inside just made a hundred thousand dollar donation to the ideal or building and this person was just like well that's great but that's not the is and we need you to make a donation to the is and I thought I was just dumbfounded my goodness you know the present just donated $100,000 it's not just like what have you done for me lately a week from now it was like what have you done for me lately five minutes from that I just that's where it just starts to get so extreme then after a while with all the different pressures and the different things because I would would reg someone or ask someone to donate say thirty thirty five thousand dollars to become a patron of the is the next week that person was being asked to buy ten thousand dollars worth of books and then the next week that person was asked to do something else and I was just starting to feel that there was so much greed and I just it was making me physically ill actually I just I just couldn't do it anymore when there's a disaster the IAS exploits that so say for example with Hurricane Katrina right after that happened the IAS reges went after for donations and they really try to guilt you don't you care about those people who lost their homes people who are separated from their families and have nowhere to go we're helping those people with your donations we need you to contribute as much money as you can and they also work on sending some of their Scientology volunteer ministers to go to the disaster sites they do it mostly I believe for public relations to get photos at these disaster sites so when the next one occurs they can say look at the previous disaster we were out there helping but in reality they're not really helping they're just using that disaster as a way to disseminate Scientology so at the disaster site they'll deliver assists which are basically like light touches on the body that help you go into communication with yourself they say but in reality that's not really helping with like the cleanup in actual real stuff that they need help without these disaster sites and the money they raise maybe like one to five percent is actually going towards say Hurricane Katrina for example the rest is just going into you know the leaders pockets and is used to fund other things that aren't even having to do the disaster but they use say for example the disaster to get more money out of Scientologists and is wrong the Sea Org is the religious order of the Church of Scientology their members are kind of maybe like what a priest would be in a Catholic Church there the church management there the auditors which are basically like counselors and Sea Org members have to sign billion year contracts to be a member of the Sea Org now they sign a billion-year contract because they believe they come back lifetime after lifetime and in your new life you are expected to come back as a sea org member and Reese I know poor service the PTSD that I suffer from is because of these Sea Org recruitment cycles that they put me through on a daily basis now they don't take no for an answer on their routing forms they go through a process to recruit a new person into the sea organization and the end product of that is a Sea Org member who signed up and ready to begin now until you're ready to sign that contract they will go for hours and hours and hours and hours until they reach out and product which is you joining the sea organization I never join the Sea Org so they would just keep me for hours locked in these rooms recruiting me abusing me emotionally and just trying to get me to sign that sea or contract now they would say you are being selected to be a sea org member this is the most elite and important mission that you can undertake in this lifetime and we need you to understand that it's just your reactive mind that's holding you back from joining the sea organization and you're silly you know purposes and goals to maybe want to be in the entertainment industry you can't do that you have to be a sea org member now and they would just keep me for hours and they would never let me go and I have so many traumatic memories of being recruited into the Sea Org now they say this is the most elite and important mission in the world that you can undertake now why aren't people lined up outside the recruiters offices like begging to join they're putting all this force and pressure and abusive behaviors onto me to get me to join but you know why are people you know begging to join this group there must be something off and that's what I learned all these Sea Org atrocities and abuses happened just Google Scientology see organization go on Amazon and look up books on Scientology there are a number of books about abuses that happen inside the see organization now for example say you were in the Sea Org for 15 or 20 years and you leave you owe the amount of money that they paid to train you in their courses you have to pay back your expenses is called your freeloader bill so there's Sea Org members who after they leave the Church of Scientology after maybe 15 20 years of dedicated service they may get a bill for a half a million dollars they suggest to women to have an abortion if they get pregnant if they're a Sea Org member because they believe a kids just gonna hold back a woman from their mission as being a sea org member because it requires a lot of devotion and you can't have a kid so they'll say look you know if you want to be a sea org member this is what you got to do and they recommend that they have an abortion now sure they can say no I'm not having an abortion but they'll be kicked out of the Sea Org now if you're in the Sea Org for 20 or 30 years and this is all you know you have no other life skills you have no money you don't have a credit card you don't have anything you're gonna follow Scientology's orders they're gonna put the pressure on you to maybe have the abortion or else they'll demote you to one of their lower organizations and that's maybe not an option for you because you may not be able to support yourself in the outside world and be a regular staff member so what happens a lot of women are forced to have abortions by the Church of Scientology the Jameses say their troubles with Scientology began when they wanted to have a baby when Lucy became pregnant in 1990 she says she was pressured to have an abortion I was escorted to the ethics Division and then I was put in a room and then a gentleman came in and sat down and said you know this is wrong you know you need to terminate the pregnancy they told you that flat-out oh yeah oh yeah there's a punishment program that Sea Org members may be put on which is called the rehabilitation project force or RPF so say your stats are really down er you're not producing or you do something that's you know against the aims of the Church of Scientology they can force you to go on this program now this program is basically manual labor you may be digging ditches for Scientology you may be painting walls you're doing manual hard labor from sunup to sundown and you're doing it with another person until you come to the realization that you know Scientology is good and I'm gonna reform and I'm gonna really you know try to you know produce for this group so they say oh look you know this program is totally voluntary it's up to the Sea Org member to decide whether or not to do the program and get into good graces with the church or you have to route out of the Sea Org and you have to leave and you can never do Scientology again because they're saying to a lot of ex-members well look you know the program is voluntary you don't have to subject yourself to that well of course not anyone could you know walk out the front door but Scientology has these spiritual traps you either do the program and you can become a Sea Org member again you have no money you have no car no home you have basically nothing all your family and friends are inside the church they'll say that you can't do the bridge to total freedom especially if you have to you know depart Scientology in this way so what do you have they place you in that trap so what do people do they end up spending years on the rehabilitation project force being tortured trying to get into good graces with the church again and they abuse these members and eventually maybe they do get back to being Sea Org members but just the amount of spiritual and emotional and the amount of distress they place on them under this program they're more controlled they're more weak welds and they really just beat these members down horribly actors are the perfect candidate to be Sea Org members actors come out to LA full of hopes and dreams and they try to pursue their acting career month after month day after day but it's expensive to live in Los Angeles it's expensive to market yourself as an actor to take these classes it's not easy and it's not easy even getting a day job just to support your acting career now if you become a Scientologist and be an actor you know they're gonna start trying to get you to join the sea organization and you know at first you may like know like I was I'm very ambitious I don't want to join the sea I want to pursue my acting but there may catch you at a time where you had to maybe like a really bad audition or you may realize like look I'm never gonna be a main stage act maybe now I can be in the see organization maybe I could live at the church I can sing I can dance I can be an actor whatever it is that you do they'll promise you that you can do that inside the C organization all your expenses are paid for and your real true believer maybe at this point in Scientology so they get these really talented people to join the C organization and then they kind of switch the plate and say you know what right now we need this post filled where you know you can maybe be a registrar for example or a course supervisor and at this point you might have given up your car you sold your home you might have given up everything or maybe didn't have anything to start with in Scientology's the way that you can avoid being homeless so what do you do you go off and be a course supervisor and you give up on all your artistic dreams Scientology makes you forget all about them being the Sea Org member isn't as glamorous as they say it is you may work 80 to a hundred hours a week for the church and you'll get $50 a week it doesn't get any higher any lower than that you make your standard base $50 now that $50 you know may be going towards say like shampoo or soap or just your basic living essentials or maybe you're turning that money over to the International Association of Scientologists so that money that you make basically goes back to Scientology so you never really have like that escape route of maybe saving money and being able to use it towards anything you make a very low amount of money you're working these excruciating amount of hours you can't leave the Scientology base unless you go off with someone and that's very rare you don't get vacations you may have two or three days a year to take a vacation day but they're gonna say look you know your statistics aren't up or you know we were short-staffed right now we really need you to stay here so there are people who work you know pretty much year-round every single day including holidays for the Church of Scientology when you're in the seer you're totally isolated from the outside world you get no cell phone you're not able to use your email any mail that you get to you is read by someone first so you may not even get your meals especially there's something that's you know critical of Scientology they're not going to pass your mail along to you so you're totally secluded from the outside world especially because you can't read the newspaper there may be in theta or bad things in there about Scientology and you can't read that can't read a magazine you're not going to be able to sit down and watch TV or go to the movies so they totally just seclude you into the Scientology lifestyle by being a C word member as Amana lunch break from course I say to different staff recruiters approached the table and they were recruiting for the new ideal org that was opening up in our area so they come up to my table and they asked me if they can do a survey on me and 9:00 to say okay I'm already on my lunch break let's just see what they say so they're asking these questions like you know do you agree that people are starving to death and people are using drugs in the state of our planet is just an horrible decay right now and I'm like I'm okay yeah I guess that's true you know do you think that you know Scientology can help improve the state of this planet and that you know we need to go out there and really just push our message out there yeah I'm a Scientologist at the point I believe that well by joining staff you're gonna be able to get rid of this downward spiral you're gonna be able to be able to help improve the conditions on this planet and I just was you know trying to be polite and I'm telling them no I'm not interested because at this time to be a staff member you had to sign either a two-and-a-half or a five year contract and you have to work pretty much a minimum of 40 hours a week for the church that day or at night now during the Danny to keep my days open I was doing background and stand-in work and I was also auditioning for TV and film roles so I don't really have the time to commit say 9:00 to 5:00 to Scientology well you could work in the evenings well I wanted those evenings to devote towards my acting career and my whole thing was look I'm gonna be able to disseminate Scientology on such a grand scale by being a famous actor I'm gonna be able to be like Tom Cruise and go on Oprah's couch and be able to talk about the powers of Scientology I had every intention on doing that for Scientology because I believed that they were helping me but you know they didn't want to hear any of that they want me to be a staff member so one of the guy goes off and he's talking to his boss and they're trying to find different ways to handle me and they knew my acting career was a big button for me my acting career was my main thing in life I had to be successful as an actor or else my life didn't have meaning at that time I was really ambitious and really motivated and that's why I wouldn't join staff so they needed to try to figure out a way to get me to join you know there's just a point where they just got really upset because we're spending hours and hours of them trying to recruit me at this point actors are scum you're not gonna be like no Tom Cruise or some [ __ ] no none of you actors in this place are you're just wasting your time unnecessarily in these acting classes and auditioning you're not gonna really be able to help anyone as an actor actors are just down tone people you're portraying those type of people and your work you're portraying say psychiatrists maybe you're pursuing the homeless person or you're just you know taking on that beingness of those characters now you don't want to take on the beingness and take on the persona of these horrible horrible types of people in the world no one's going to see the film that you're self producing anyways you are a Scientologist now you have been here and you understand our mission and our missions clearing this planet and helping improve the state of this planet with Scientology and we're not going to do that by just having other people like you just you know take this like passive role and just try to you know pursue their silly dreams of being an actor they thought you know just give up on being an actor and become a staff member now and I'm thinking okay now this is a church that l ron Hubbard is you know saying that artists are like the most valuable people to society you know he thinks like you know artists are contributing in such a big way he said that a culture is only as great as its dreams as its dreams or dreams by artists and they can create such aesthetic beautiful things in this world these artists but yet you know the tables turn and they say look you know that's great and all about your silly dreams but you know you can you know have your past memories about them and now it's time to take responsibility and become a staff member but I saw the out point about it I saw that the church is you know promoting artists and then when you get in a little bit more they bait-and-switch and say you know what that whole artist thing is all [ __ ] you know it really rubbed me the wrong way because I'm thinking well maybe you know there are other courses or other things are going to switch on me and I've already donated all this time and money so I'm still really invested and I still really believe in it but just something was off I just really felt depressed at this point and I just didn't know what to do and I just told them no it's not gonna happen and they're yelling at me and they're screaming at me they're telling me I'm one one on the tone scale I'm equivalent to a criminal I'm a horrible person there's no reason why a real true Scientologist wouldn't join staff in the way that they emotionally abused me for hours and hours day after day month after month I knew that being a staff member was just gonna be a horrible horrible experience because look at how they're treating me now just to get me to join I knew there was something wrong if they had to be so abusive towards me just to get me to join it must not be as good as they say it is so I didn't join staff at that time so one time I was at one of the events and to see recruiters brought me to the back to try to recruit me now my stance amongst most of these CEO recruiters they know it's a no I'm not going to join and it's not going to happen so don't waste your time so while I'm in the process of being recruited by these two Sea Org members another two approached the table and they start getting really angry and they tell these guys not to waste their time on me Steve's a [ __ ] he needs to grow a pair of balls and handle and confront what the condition on this planet is and he can't do that he's just a [ __ ] he's not going to be able to be in the sea organisation don't waste your time trying to recruit this just basically like this piece of [ __ ] they just said it straight out and to think that these people are supposed to be these elite members of society and they're willing just to talk to a future potential recruit and they're willing to say these sort of horrible things about me it just made me more you know willing just to say no and this isn't going to happen I'm not going to join the Sea Org I just totally was like look after hearing that I was on my way out of Scientology little did they know at another of any of these two really hot Sea Org members come up to try to recruit me and I basically shut them down right away and I said look I'm not going to join the Sea Org it's not going to happen don't waste your time with me I'm just going to tell you know they're they're laughing and they're like no you're not interested in joining the Sea Org but we want to show you this presentation in these videos and we really want to show you what the Sea Org is actually about so you can see what we do and you can just have a little bit more of a Finiti for our group because you can see the dedication a Sea Org members put in so I'm thinking well you know okay these are these two cool hot Sea Org members let me give them a shot and see what see what it's about they said no pressure they're not going to try to recruit me let's just hang out and have a coffee so they decided to meet me at the coffee bean next door of my house just let us know what time is good for you and we'll meet tomorrow so the next day comes around and it's a bait and switch it's not the Tohatsu org members it's some ugly ball guy and some really dorky looking girl so I'm like just like everything else in Scientology they can't just follow through on what they say so I'm sitting there at the coffee bean and I'm watching all these really crazy propaganda videos how the psychs are destroying the world how everything we see in the media is basically through these companies that have different psyche messages that they implant into us and how we need to audit out mankind's fourth dynamic Engram and that's what's holding us back in life because we all have the same Engram that's implanted into us that you know Sea Org members are working to eradicate and you know we're gonna be able to clear this planet and they're just really going on like really kooky like I was in Scientology for a while and I'm was kind of aware of some of their aims and missions and some of these different kind of things but just all of it together was really kooky I mean they're showing me like a Britney Spears music video and showing how she's promoting you know deviant sexual behaviors and how you know in the CEO were working to erase those type of things from people who get those messages inside of themselves and start acting out sexually it's crazy and I really like Britney Spears so I automatically like discredited everything that they said about you know Britney's message anyways so they start really hitting me to join the sea organization and I said look this is you guys already knew I told those other two guys that I wasn't going to join the sea organization and I feel pressured and I'm not going to you know join the sea organization well the pressure is your reactive mind and questioning answer back and forth you can make the decision to be a sea org member right now and there doesn't have to be any pressure we don't care if you're joining the Seward or not we're just trying to look after you and help you so I can enter the whole thing about my career and how I'm not gonna give up my career to be a Seward member so the girl I know she's like a young girl she's maybe like 18 or 19 or something like that and she starts talking to me she's like look you know my whole life I was a musician and I really just wanted to go out there and make effects with my music career and I had the opportunity to do that because I got some sort of like a development deal through a record company but I gave that up to be a seorak member because she felt like she saw the real purpose of what the c.c work was about after watching this crazy video but I saw the pain in her eyes I see how upset she was even though she wasn't really showing it but I could I can read through people and I saw how sad she was and I'm like look the Sea Org is ripping apart people from you know promising careers in just a family life and is just that they just really hurt these people and they really mess them up because they feel like they have to do Scientology or else you know whatever else they were doing was just meaningless in life so I'm sitting there and at that point I mean there was a point where I was really vulnerable and my career wasn't really moving and there might have been a chance that they could have maybe have caught me to join the sea or get one of these you know junctures but at this point I'm like it's not gonna happen no I like I couldn't give up that career I was so motivated just how to make it happen for myself so I told them no and they go off on me they're yelling at me you are a horrible disgusting excuse for a human being you shouldn't even be living right now because you don't contribute anything into this world they're screaming at me at the top of their lungs inside the coffee bean and I'm saying just like I said before there's no way that the Sea Org is this beautiful ethical amazing group that they make it out to be they're abusing their members and they're abusing me right now emotionally telling me I'm not gonna go up the bridge in Scientology basically everything in my life is you no it just gone to hell basically because you're not willing to attain that spiritual freedom by being in the Sea Org and at that point I'm like look I need to take a little Scientology break so I took a break for a little while but that didn't stop them from continuously trying to get me to join the sea organization this really pretty CEO remember from the Celebrity Center saw me check into one of their events which was their maiden voyage event which they hold every summer so I came there alone and she was trying to you know befriend me I really want to interview you cuz I told her about my acting career she said look can we do like a quick interview before we go into this event and I'm thinking well the events gonna start in like 20 or 30 minutes so it's not like we have a lot of time to do an actual interview but I'll be happy to thinking she's gonna ask me questions about the industry or whatever so she starts asking questions like you know have you ever done LSD before Jeff any psychiatric history I've ever been institutionalized she's basically trying to quality for the sea organization to see if I'm qualified but of course they have to try to find tricks to get you to actually go through with the whole recruitment cycle because no one's gonna agree if they say let me just read you know recruit you to the sea organization she's asking me all these questions just to find out if I'm qualified it's not any pressure to actually join if I actually am of course I am cuz I have a pretty clean slate in life I haven't really murdered or killed anyone and I don't have excessive debts all the things that they ask you before joining the sea organization so we're at the Hollywood and Highland Center where the event is at the Kodak Theatre and you know I'm there at the end of the event for like eight hours with a Sea Org recruiter and you know at first she's just trying to be my friend and she's trying to tell me about you know how you know I'm gonna meet so many people in the sea organization and we're all actors too so don't worry about like having to give up your acting career we're all actors and you could be an actor in the Sea Org now like I've said being an actor in the Sea Org isn't like being an actor out in the real world you can't audition for a TV show you're not gonna be on Modern Family you're gonna be in you know one of their Dianetics DVDs if you're lucky to actually have the chance to be in one of their Scientology films as a CEO org member so they try to trick actors and feel like well we're also actors too you're gonna meet so many nice people and we're all creative and we're all trying to you know help forward l ron Hubbard's message and this is what you want right so they lay it on really hard they put the CR contract in the pen in my hand they say look urine on the greatest push in the last 2,500 years you're gonna be an auditor and you're gonna help us clear this planet and we're not basically taking no for an answer because we're trying to help you and we know it's your reactive mind that's holding you back from actually joining so just listen to us trust us and sign the contract I wasn't budging I had the contract in my hand and I'm like what do I do I've never actually had the contract in the pen and actually been told signed the contract right now and we're going to announce you two we're gonna announce you two this whole event you're gonna go onstage in front of thousands of people and we're gonna announce you as our newest Sea Org member and they were just trying anything to try to you know make me feel like okay I'm gonna do it right now because you can't think about it if you think about it what they say most people don't join if they think about it because they find all the reasons in the world they let the outside world influence them they may you know have a home or a car other things they're not seeing the real purpose of what the Sea Org is about that they're presenting right now and if you can agree and put that intention here right now to join the Sea Org then you know all those other things aren't going to matter we'll help you sell your home your car whatever so they really put pressure on you to join right now so the girl tells me she's like look I cried when I signed my Seor contract I didn't necessarily wanted you know do it I had other goals and things that I wanted to do in my life but I joined and now my life is better now life is actually meaningful because I'm able to help so many people and you know I was almost ready to cry because I just wanted to go home after these long Sea Org cycles so I had all these other recruiters around me and they say look and we scheduled a meeting for tomorrow and we're gonna show you videos and they're gonna basically you know show me what being a CEO remember at the celebrity Center was like so I said okay at the time I said okay sure I'll come in tomorrow at 11:00 in the morning because that was the only way to get out of you know the Hollywood Highland Center that 9:00 a.m. to go home because if I didn't say that that I'd be willing to agree to meet with them I would have had to sign that contract because they don't take no for an answer their end product is Sea Org member on post so until I signed that contract I'm screwed so my way out was I'm gonna see you tomorrow and I didn't show up to the org for a couple weeks because I just couldn't handle being in these sea org cycles but yet I went back and they continued so one time I was locked in the Celebrity Centre with one of their staff recruiters it was about 3:00 a.m. and unbeknownst to us we were actually locked in the building because they closed up shop for the night so I'm in CC with the staff recruiter and he wouldn't let up he's hitting me and he's not taking no for an answer so it gets to a point where he starts to kind of like run like some form of like an auditing process on me where he puts the contract in my hand and he puts the pen in my hand and he starts running a process and he starts going put that pen on that paper thank you you know withdraw okay good now put your pen on that paper good sign the contract and now you think after you've been in there for like ten hours and you're tired and you're weak and you're hungry and you haven't slept and you've been on course all day and you're reading these books and they're brainwashing in and of themselves sign the contract we won't even put it into effect we just want to see if you can confront the contract and sign the contract and then of course if you sign it they'll say oh well let's put it into effect they already got your signature they just do anything to get you to sign these contracts so you know you start feeling kind of controlled and numb and you know you're like yes I'll put the pen on that paper and you're like we'll wait a minute you know I mean this is not what I'm I'm not signing up for this no you're not tricking me so we try to leave after hours and hours of him recruiting me and the doors locked we found out that they locked the front doors so then I remember from the purification program they have a back door that if you kind of hit chuck it it locks the other way so then we can escape out of the back of this celebrity Center because I'm thinking oh crap I'm gonna stuck here at the Sea Org recruiter until tomorrow morning and then he's just gonna keep hitting me and hitting me and hitting me to join staff and I wasn't budging for it but to be in Scientology and to continue on with my services I had to sit through these your recruitment cycles so in 1c recruitment cycle I had a woman screaming in my face she told me I'm an enemy of the Church of Scientology and we are the effin brave ones who can confront the conditions of this planet and we are the ones who are and you know like the frontlines of the church and we are the reasons why you public members are able to receive Scientology services and don't you want Scientology to be here in another 20 40 50 years for your kids for your friends and being able to really help other people in this world well you're not able to you know how forward sign told you if you're not gonna be a see org member so should you just keep attacking and attacking me and yelling at me and just emotionally just going at me telling me I'm just this horrible person and I just couldn't believe how hard that they would just keep hitting me and this was right before I left the church and this was kind of like the last straw for me I wasn't willing to be put up with these abuses so this woman tried every trick in the book will make you an auditor will let you work in the president's office where all the celebrities go through or you know you could basically have any job within Scientology to sneem it will put on your contract so you can work in that department of Scientology but I know how they bait-and-switch they always say they'll work out the details with you after you sign the contract you in my 35 years in the Church of Scientology there is one thing I learned very thoroughly the Church of Scientology is homophobic anti-gay the fact of being gay is looked at as a kind of disease or even a mental condition this is a religion that monetizes your gayness give us money and we'll if you're gay you're a kind of subhuman a little bit batty a little bit loony a little bit it's a disease and wickedness hundred thousand dollars and we'll get the gate exorcised out of you I do not know of one person in 35 years whether they gave $100,000 to the Church of Scientology Oh half a million dollars to the Church technology they were still gay l ron Hubbard was an extremely homophobic man he was he was anti-gay his son was gay he ended up either killing himself or being killed I'm not sure which but he was found dead in the desert people that are gay have a hard time in Scientology because they're basically saying there's something wrong with you and you need more auditing to fix it here's the absolute truth if anybody just happens to be lurking in you're in Scientology that's a complete lie it is not true at all you don't need to get fixed at all okay some of the top people in Scientology there's a bunch of people that are gay that are in Scientology one of the more famous ones rumor has it is John Travolta that he's at least bisexual I know he's married he has children but from what I've heard I'm seen I'm he's kissing a man on the lips he's been found and known to be in different places I don't care what his sexuality is that's fine with me but Johnny why are you still in a homophobic group I don't understand that I really don't I know you now you're gonna really go into being straight but I wish you'd be honest and straight with yourself it would really be healthy and good for you and for everybody else okay because there's another man in Scientology that often sues people if they say he's gay Tom Tom Cruise Matt Tommy I don't give a damn what sexuality you are either but don't you be sending private investigators over to my friends houses because I thanked you on TV for setting a good example of this Scientologist that's all I did I said I think Tom Cruise did a great job showing people what an OT looks like and you know what basic Scientology sent private investigators to two of my friends houses to see if I was labelling Tom Cruise I'm not labelling you Tommy I don't give a damn I just think it's pretty odd for a man to sue people because they say he's gay who cares if you're not why would you care why would you possibly sue someone because of it you cannot be a Scientologist and be gay I mean take a few minutes if you're k you can walk into a church and see how the people react towards you they kind of keep their distance from you they're weirdos and I I'm gay and I was in the Sea Org for three years and I actually was kicked out because I started to develop a relationship with a fellow male staff member and obviously you can't do that I mean really gay people are considered to be evil and I for a long time thought I was evil they love gay money when gays paying tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars as I did I paid enormous to half a million dollars to Scientology they love that they'll accept any gay checks any gay cash anything like that but as soon as you stop paying ah you're back into the 1.1 crowd again ah you're not worth even bothering with anymore Hubbard wanted to kill off all gay people even even in his science fiction books I mean in the last science fiction I think was Mission Earth which he wrote he rounds up all the gay people in this whole civilization puts them on one island and in the eye in the end the island is blown up and there's no survivors l ron Hubbard believed that you could audit out the gay he believed that being gay was one-one on the tone scale which is basically the very bottom of his tone scale the very top being serenity of beingness total happiness and you're basically a totally in ethics you're a great person he believed that when you're one one you are equivalent to a pedophile you're pervert criminals are one ones so basically you're gay you're equivalent to a sexual pervert criminal and one one's just right above body death which is at zero so you're pretty much just barely even you know recognizes even a person at this level they just think that you're just some sort of criminal in their eyes but by auditing you can go up the tone scale and you can become more ethical you're going to start you know auditing and you're going to start erasing these different engrams from your mind that are the reason why they think that you're gay because maybe one of these different incidents in your mind you'll start going over it with your auditor and then it'll blow and then hey maybe you'll be straight that's what they're hoping for that maybe you'll reach the very first incident where you realized you're gay and then you can audit it out it's nonsense you can't change someone who's gay who's lesbian who's bisexual you can't come you can't make them completely straight there's no way possible that's why they banned these conversion therapies gay conversion therapy is illegal you can't try to change someone this is just common knowledge so this scam has been sold for years and finally it is now in California it is against the law and Scientology and the state of California are going to have an unpleasant interaction shortly because the law is you cannot whatever you want to call it auditing psychotherapy whatever it is you are not allowed to promote or engage in quote reparative therapy because it isn't reparative federal courts have now upheld the California law and and under the guise of a religion you are not allowed to engage in this practice even though you claim it's part of your religious practice now I get these books are read in nineteen fifty but they're still practice practicing this to this day they're still practicing auditing gay people and promising them that they'll be able to become straight no it's not right and these people are being so trapped in the closet because now they're not able to be who they really are they may try dating and marrying a woman and there are these actors who I'm not naming any names but they're rumored to be in the closet because of Scientology it is madness so I'm gonna be reading out of Dianetics but l ron Hubbard said about homosexuality the sexual pervert and by this term Dianetics to be brief includes any in all forms of deviation in dynamic - such as homosexuality lesbianism sexual sadism etc and all down the catalog of Ellison crafts a being is actually quite ill physically and he goes on to say and the some of it is is that the pervert is always a very ill person in one way or another whether he is conscious of it or not he is very far from culpable for his condition but he's also so far from normal and so extremely dangerous to society that the tolerance of perversion is as thoroughly bad for society as punishment for it so in handbook for pre-clear seller h talks to auditors and tells them basically how they can audit out the gay no it may not make a lot of sense to the normal person but just to go to show you how we talked about auditing out the gay an individual aberrated enough about sex will do strange things to be a cause or in effect he will substitute punishment for sex he will pervert other homosexuality comes from this manifestation and from the manifestation of life continuation for others a boy whose mother is dominant will try to continue her life from any failure she has a girl whose father dominant will try to continue his life from any failure he has the mother or the father was cause in the child's eyes the child elected himself successor to cause break this life continuum concept by running sympathy and grief for the dominant parent and then run off the desires to be in effect and their failures in the homosexual is rehabilitated homosexuality is about 1:1 on the tone scale so his general promiscuity so his going out to lunch with a friend of mine who was currently still in the church and I went to lunch with her about you know a few months ago so it's pretty recent so basically I was kind of expressing some of my doubts in Scientology so you're talking about the LGBT stance of l ron Hubbard so I basically was telling her what l ron Hubbard said about homosexuals which I just basically read two of the most prominent things that he says about them and then I was telling her how I didn't think it was right so then she takes a moment and she thinks and she says well was it a short mention I'm sure he only mentioned it briefly like having it just be like a very small mention would actually make it any less significant it's still Ella l ron Hubbard he still said it he still put it in his book and people are receiving auditing to audit out their homosexuality so therefore it's not just a little tiny mention in a book it's actually a very big thing because it's still going on to this day if their homosexuality stance has changed why not remove it from these books why not have a public stance towards homosexuality and that it's not something that you can just add it away why don't they try to cover up their tracks they can't because they still believe these type of things and their members are being trained to try to like overlook it like oh it's not a big deal that he says that being gay is wrong you can't discriminate against people especially a religious group a real religious group is going to be totally supportive of who you are try to help you embrace who you are and not discriminate against certain people for example you can't go to flag which is the spiritual mecca of Scientology the big hub in Clearwater Florida if you're gay if they're just not going to happen they basically will say yes you you can be gay but you can't engage in homosexual behaviors you can't be with a guy you can't basically be yourself because you're going there probably to audit it out but they don't want you to have a relationship or anything even so they're they're just not for it plain and simple and no religious group who's legitimate should be telling people not to be who they are embrace it so this is kind of another one of those signs where you say hmm is this really a spiritual happy place where they let you be who you are and you know kind of develop who you are and understand yourself more than just repressing it and are they suppressing you and that's what Scientology does to gay people at one point I was ranting and raving about Proposition 8 and the the ballot initiative that was funded by in part the Mormon Church and you said well yeah it's terrible I said well you do realize that Scientology financially supported proposition 8 oh no that's not true that's absolutely not true how do you know that I said well they have to file disclosure forms and a lot of money was donated by the Church of Scientology to either directly or indirectly fund the ballot initiative on Prop 8 in fact that's why the director I don't know how to pronounce his last name haggis Paul Haggis I think he directed leaving Las Vegas anyway he had a public break with Scientology and the reason he did he's straight but he had a public break because he didn't like what the church Scientology was doing on Proposition 8 and how it dealt with gay people [Music] proposition 8 was a California initiative to block gay marriage I was out my daughter is trying to do picketing and donating money to try and stop Proposition 8 and then I found out that a branch of the church was supporting it and I got very upset a Scientology a cult out Christmas of course it is it's it's as a system of belief that they mean you've got these folks inside this fortress who who won't look out and won't look at any criticism and can't bear to there's any investigation and think that everyone is against them would you describe that it's a cult of course it is there was sort of an argument between us and and the next time if I said well I want to go to this restaurant oh how do you know they haven't donated to profit to Proposition 8 you know you were you're sort of zinging me whenever I wanted to patronize this store and I said well I I knew if a business had done that or not and then there was sort of a shift where one day you were saying something and in in the context of it you said something like well the san diego org may have given money to support proposition 8 but bla bla bla bla bla bla bla and that was sort of the first kernel that I thought that you had done a little research on your own and discovered that what I was saying was true but I I kind of let things drop after I made my point because I think the worst thing to do to someone when you think they're in a cult is to counter-pressure them I just think it's counterproductive and if the person's otherwise smart and they're not in that environment 24/7 you lived on your own you had your own place you were spending a lot of time here I just figured let you come to your own conclusions and you were smart enough to figure it out the reason I was alarmed about Scientology was I never got involved in it the only contact I had was about 25 years ago when I was in law school and I was sort of I wouldn't say dating but I would say seeing somebody occasionally once a month yeah I guess as the euphemism we're going to use and he would go to Scientology for the purpose of becoming quote clear on not being gay since they equate that with being a criminal and so he would leave Scientology where he was in some sort of program to D gay himself and then come over to my house and spend the weekend so I thought that was kind of interesting it has never worked read I would say read Mel White's Biot autobiography he was Jerry Falwell 's right-hand man in the religious right and for years for 30 years he tried to quote pray away the gay whether you call it praying away the gay or auditing away the gay whatever label you want to put on it it's the same thing it's flim-flammery it's Hornswoggle dre and it's just a technique and a tool of of subjugating people and and getting their money so the question on everyone's mind is where Shelly now Shelly is David Miscavige's wife who's the current leader of the Church of Scientology though she hasn't been seen publicly in several years no one really knows where she is no one has heard from her no one can actually back up with any proof that they've actually had any sort of interaction with her and that she's actually okay so it's just been this big ongoing question that everyone's been asking this big ongoing investigation where's Shelly Miscavige is she okay where is she and how can we help her the actress Leah Remini famous for her role in the CBS sitcom the King of Queens I took a leap of faith for you you didn't take a leap of faith of me taking her confrontation with the controversial Church of Scientology to a new level Leah Remini who was the most recent celebrity to defect from Scientology was actually friends with Shelly Miscavige and over the holidays they would send each other gifts back and forth and they would send letters and write to each other but all of a sudden Shelly stopped responding to Leah so she's just kind of wondering like what the hell is going on so it was at Tom Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes where she saw David Miscavige and no Shelly so she had the balls to ask David Miscavige where Shelly and because she's wondering well this is a big high-profile event for David Miscavige his best friend Tom Cruise why isn't Shelly at the wedding it just only would make sense that she would be there so Tommy Davis who was kind of like the like media and PR type of person of Scientology he actually recently left the Church of Scientology after a number of years his mother's actually an archer the actress anyways at the time he basically told Leah you don't have the effing rank to ask about Shelly meaning she's not like important she doesn't have enough power to actually ask where Shelly actually is so when leah got back to LA after the wedding she wrote up a knowledge report on David Miscavige basically because she knew something was up what's going on so then after just a number of years of being interrogated which they just continued to interrogate him figuring out why she would ask such a question they would figure out what her evil purposes were after they did all of that her and her family just decided okay enough is enough they can't produce Shelley and there's just a number of out points about the Church of Scientology so she left the Church of Scientology because of this Shelly Miscavige that's what kind of started the ball rolling for her to question okay something's up and for such a public figure being an actress in her case she was a very public Scientologist she's been one of her whole life she decided to leave so it's just it's important for celebrities to actually take responsibility and leave the Church of Scientology because there's just a number of abuses there are a number of unanswered questions and they really just have to stand up and not just put up with the BS of the Church of Scientology because they're representing the Church of Scientology by being public members but now this ABC news confirming that Remini filed a missing-persons report with the Los Angeles Police Department on the wife of the man who runs the Church of Scientology David Miscavige Shelly has not been seen publicly in many years making her current whereabouts a source of feverish speculation among the church's many critics ever since day one I'm getting at least 15 of 30 calls texts and emails from them every single day they never let up you'll be on their mailing list for eternity once you give them your number don't expect them to ever stop calling you even if you tell them not to call you they're still going to call you because they want to handle you and they want to find out why and they want you to come back into the org so I mean you're never gonna get off their phone call list so I had to change my phone number I moved so I luckily don't get as much mail from them but it would pour in if I wouldn't be on course for a few days I would get calls at all hours on my home number my cell phone you know they would text me insanely it was just incredible the amount of calls the amount of mail I would come home to so there are times when I wouldn't show up for course for example because I was obviously not a Scientologist anymore at least within the walls of the Church of Scientology they'd show up to my house they would knock on my door even when I'm not home I would get nope shoved underneath my door from them saying that we came to your house and we were waiting for you you know let's set up a time for you and I to get together so I mean they stopped at nothing okay I can see how in any normal group you can maybe say look don't call me never reach out to me again I don't want to hear from you but with them they say well this is perfect because now we know he's upset so now we can handle the reasons why he's upset and then he's going to become a member again because we just handled all the reasons why he didn't want to be a member of our church so you're almost giving them information that's going to be used to basically yet to keep you in side the church these people would call I mean the telemarketers have nothing on these people they would call 40 times a day 30 times a day I thought it was exaggerating but he wasn't and they were always it was a certain prefix so he knew it was Scientology so he wouldn't answer the phone and I kept saying why don't you just answer him and tell him to call anymore oh no that won't work and you don't understand they'll try to they'll look at it as an objection and an opportunity to bring me back in the fold and I thought I'm just tell him to go [ __ ] off you know that sort of was my philosophy of it but you were getting more and more agitated and I was having to answer your phone more and more and just to sort of be double these people I would answer the phone in various characters that I have created over the years one was an Armenian man from Glendale one was an El Salvadoran made one what was a toll booth collector from New Jersey I have about 20 different characters one was an elderly Jewish man from Fairfax at the deli and I would answer the phone in this voice but then he got paranoid about that so he wanted me to always answer in the one voice so he picked the El Salvadoran maid and I would constantly answer the phone as the El Salvadoran maid tell them in Spanish that Steve wasn't here that they had the wrong number but even though when I said that the number was incorrect in Spanish whoever they had on the phone you would think people in if they're based in Clearwater Florida and have this huge presence in Los Angeles they would have someone that could speak Spanish that would call up and speak to me in Spanish if I'm truly the maid answering the phone they never did it there's always some fresh-faced white kid trying to talk to me on the phone that couldn't speak Spanish but I would get across that they have the wrong number this isn't Steve's number don't call anymore and then they would call again as if I'm I'm well I was lying to them but they they didn't know that I mean at some point can you imagine if you really had the wrong number and they kept calling and calling and calling and I think there's been a lawsuit over that at some point but you were getting more or anxious anytime a piece of mail would arrive from there you were getting more fearful more anxious more depressed and you started watching some videos on Facebook posted by a lady named Karen de la calle and you would want me to watch him and i thought she's an ex Scientologist and exposing scientology and i thought they were a riot she would portray herself as the ethics officer from the Sea Org with some hapless fool that was in there in trouble for god knows what some some one thing or another and they were really funny but they got their point across and you seem to take some comfort in them because you were both laughing and it would take your mind off the anxiety so I decided it to contact her and I just sent her an email through Facebook and I said look my fiancee because I by then we were engaged my fiancee is you know having a tough time he's trying to leave Scientology these people are constantly hectoring him calling mailing pressuring and I wanted to make sure she knew because you now have to think as if everything's the grassy knoll you have to think in the conspiracy sort of mindset so I told her I was a friend of Mark ebner's so she would know I wasn't some Scientologist secretly trying to harass her and she was extremely gracious and she got right back to me and she gave me her phone number and and we had her over for dinner she and her husband and that was a I think that was a helpful step on your road to making a break but say like me I decided to have a little bit of a quiet departure from Scientology I never actually verbalized to them and kind of had like a written resignation from them but even so they knew that I haven't been there in a while and they're trying to get me to come back and be a member so what do they do they call you up 40 times a day they send you text they send you emails they mail you letters they send you books they send you postcards they will never stop reaching out to you via any of those means so you know you kind of live with you know Scientology on you all the time because you know you look out your phone there's the Scientology texts you go on your email there's an email you go in your mailbox there's a whole booklet of information for you you can never really like escape from them fully because they think well if you've left the reason you leave is because maybe something's misunderstood you might not have understood the philosophy properly you might have a misunderstood word for example and it sounds so silly but that's what they believe so I think well if we just get them in here we can handle him and we can fix him they don't understand that they're over burdening amounts of communication are creepy it's stalkerish it's weird they do anything and they stop at nothing and people don't realize that they think oh I can maybe just go to a Scientology Center maybe and you know take a course you're gonna be on their list for life so I wanted to read from l ron Hubbard again from his keeping Scientology working bulletin which every Scientologist has read before this is easily found and this is what l ron Hubbard says and this is kind of why they don't let up on people when somebody enrolls consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe never permit an open minded approach if they're going to quit let them quit fast if they enrolled their aboard and if they're aboard they're here in the same terms as the rest of us win or die in the attempt never let them be half minded about being Scientologists the finest organizations in history have been tough dedicated organizations not one namby-pamby bunch of pantywaist dilettante have ever made anything it's a tough universe the social veneer makes it seem mild but only the tiger' survive and even they have had a hard time will survive because we are tough and our dedicated when we do instruct someone properly he becomes more and more Tiger when we instruct half mindedly and are afraid to offend scare to enforce we don't make students into good Scientologists and that lets everybody well everybody down when mrs. pattycake comes to us to be taught turn that wandering doubt in her eye into a fixed dedicated glare and she'll win and we'll all win humor her and we'll all die a little the proper instruction attitude is you're here so you're a Scientologist now we're going to make you into an expert Auditor no matter what happens we rather have you dead than incapable so if you leave Scientology there's a policy that can be enforced called fair game and fair game l ron Hubbard says someone who leaves may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologists may be tricked suit or lie to or destroyed so if you leave the church they can employ this fair game policy where they can basically have you know free rein to do whatever they want to you to try to intimidate you to stop you from speaking out publicly to stop you from you know they just basically want you to know that you can't mess with them because they don't want the word to get out that Scientology is a cult they want other people to stay inside the walls of the Church of Scientology and if they can shut up their critics and if they can shut out people who have defected then you know they can continue on their group organization they can continue doing what they're doing what did what specifically what you're referring to is if somebody is expelled from the church anybody who insists on continuing to be connected to somebody who's been expelled from the church would be told that as long as they maintain that connection they're not welcome in the church so in Scientology there's a policy called disconnection and is basically just like the practice of just shunning someone so say for an example I'm a Scientologist and I have family or friends in the Church of Scientology well if I leave Scientology I'm no longer allowed to communicate to my family members who are inside of the church because I'm now disaffected I may be in tagging istic and they say that it's going to basically inhibit the spiritual process of enlightenment for the person who's currently in if they stay connected to the person who has left Scientology so there are numerous stories of people who have disconnected from their parents their friends they basically lose their job if they work for a Scientologist because they end up just saying well we don't really need you anymore because you know they're suppressive they can't work for our organization so people have this really hard decision that they have to make because they're basically deciding between their family their friends or the in the Church of Scientology or basically they go off they leave Scientology they have no other job they have no family or friends that are outside maybe you rent from a Scientologist for your apartment so you may not want to live there anymore so basically have to restart your life all over again because you know you don't have the connections that you once had inside the Church of Scientology so now they would tell me you know maybe your father isn't agonistic and that's their way of kind of slowly telling you to disconnect from them they would say you know maybe just fair roads good weather them and fair roads good weather is basically just the way of asking how the roads are when you talk to someone so if I was to talk to my dad I wouldn't get into talking about my daily life for my Scientology I would say how is the weather oh how are the roads are a lot of traffic just to talk about that just we can stay in communication but not we talk about anything to them of substance if you can't handle your family member through that means you have to disconnect from them so say for example my dad wasn't supportive of Scientology I would have to disconnect from him because he's going to inhibit me from having gains in Scientology because I'm connected to this person whose antagonist ik and doesn't want me to win in Scientology he wants me to you know follow his belief system for example so you're basically left after you leave Scientology with none of your family none of your friends none of the connections that you once had and some of those connections may have lasted 30 years for example 50 years just because you decided to leave the Church of Scientology although it wasn't the case for me there are numerous families that are broken up because of the Scientology disconnection policy there are countless stories of parents who have received letters from their kids who decide to join the Sea Org and basically if the parents didn't approve of that decision or they weren't supportive about them going into the sea organization for example they would write a disconnection letter and they basically say you know what mom until you get back onto the straight and narrow with Scientology and until you can accept my decision to be a seaward member I can no longer communicate with you please do not call me please do not write to me any communication I received from you is going to be an you know basically shredded and I'm not even going to receive it so please do what's best for me and do not talk to me I have no interest in communicating with you so there are just families just ripped apart because Scientology makes you decide between them and your family and when you think you're fit you know your spiritual future is at stake you're gonna choose you know maybe that route you may be looking out for yourself most people end up you know being split between Scientology and their family in Scientology there's what's called a suppressive person and a suppressive person and basically in the layman's terms as a person who isn't agonistic to Scientology they're a person who holds you back in life now a pts a potential trouble source is basically a person who's connected to a suppressive person so say for example you're my father and you're a suppressive person that makes me pts now Scientology basically says that any accidents injuries illnesses stem from a pts condition which means that if I get sick it's because I'm around a suppressive person so in Scientology they're always trying to find who's the suppressive person maybe your stats are down as a staff member well maybe you're connected to someone who's suppressive or maybe your suppressive person yourself so they're always trying to find who the suppressive person actually is now at the celebrity Center if you're an actor and you leave Scientology they're gonna basically tell you that you're not going to work again in the industry they're gonna say look you're a suppressive person and our casting directors directors producers writers at such aura aren't going to work with you anymore because that will make them pts they don't want to hire a suppressive person they'd rather hire another Scientology actor who's actually working towards bringing Scientology out front into the public they're not gonna want to hire a silly suppressive person now this is what traps actors because they feel like I have to stay in Scientology because this this is going to ruin my career if I leave the church I can't leave the church so these members stay in the church because they feel their careers going to be ruined when in reality the amount of industry people in Scientology to me is probably like 5% but to you as a Scientologist you feel like it's a hundred percent and that's what traps actors they're actually many reasons why I actually left the Church of Scientology my main reason of course was because of their stance on LGBT and I just couldn't put up with being in an organization that just suppresses people and tells them not to be who they are and tries to audit it out of them so of course that was a really big motivating factor for me to leave the Church of Scientology but also I did give Scientology one last shot and last October November so of 2012 I did go back for a very short time I went back for a few days so I was trying to give it another shot because I just felt like I was very deeply invested in Scientology I felt like I invested a lot of money a lot of time and I somewhat believed in the philosophy so I said well let me give it one last shot so as I was leaving the organization out for the night I saw all these edging cycles going on there is is reges surrounding one parishioner and they just looked like they were just in such panic and terror and fear they just didn't want to be in that cycle there's someone else being wedged for money over here to pay for you know the rest of their Scientology bridge there's someone over here and they're talking about donating towards the ideal org program so just like in the lobby as I'm leaving you're seeing the Sea Org members with the money in their eyes these reges you see them with the money in their eyes and you can see how they're manipulating these very vulnerable people and I had a little bit more strength in me at this time like I wasn't going to put up with being taken advantage of like I felt I had been through my Scientology experience so I started realizing and seeing some of the different colors of the organization I never saw before I decide black and white Scientology was good or bad and I thought it was good so once I started to question and kind of look around the org a little bit more and read online and talk to other people about their experiences I started seeing how the organization wasn't legitimate they deviated from their true initial purpose now I'm not saying l ron Hubbard was any saint I'm not saying that the philosophy of Scientology is all good but there is a difference between the philosophy of the Church of Scientology and the Church of Scientology is a religious organization that's now under control of David Miscavige which is different the policies have changed there's new money-making fundraising schemes going on that shouldn't be going on there's abuses in the see organization they're abusing their members they're taking all of their money and bankrupting them and it's just not a spiritual place to be so once I realized that it wasn't a spiritual place to be and I could see that there wasn't anything happening in the church that was you know spiritually enlightening to me I said you know what I'm not gonna put up with this so I quietly departed the Church of Scientology then I started getting all the stalking behaviors of them trying to show up at my house of them calling me and mailing me and doing whatever can to get me to come back but they don't see that the Church of Scientology is anything but pure and innocent so my intention was to start showcasing why this organization shouldn't be supported in its current state the only way the organization can ever maybe reform as if David Miscavige steps down or if he gets overthrown because then maybe the church can go back to l ron Hubbard's basic purpose now of course there was policies in the church such as being a suppressive person and the gay stance and all those same things but maybe if the church was able to kind of come back to 2013 and take itself out of 1950 and maybe try to reform itself maybe it could be a religious organization again and under the Church of Scientology but until then the Church of Scientology is not doing what they say they will they're not delivering what they promised and until someone decides to step in and try to reform and try to take back control of what kind of spiraled out over these last twenty thirty years ever since David Miscavige has been in power then it's going to stay the same and I do not support the current Church of Scientology now that I left the cult of Scientology I can have children I can watch her read the news I can Google whatever I want I can have gay friends too now that I've left the cult I can experience unconditional love I can do yoga now that I've loved the code you now that I'm out I can live my life my life is just completely changed for the better since I left the Church of Scientology I'm happier than ever I recently married the love of my life I have a home I have two dogs I own my own business and still pursuing my acting career I'm just making so many more steps in the right direction I feel free I finally have that freedom and I was seeking that inside the Church of Scientology but until I left I wouldn't have actually been able to attain that freedom [Music] words from a book showed me the way to be free of the shadows the price of that freedom we all must pay [Music] joining together we held [Music] yes we decided to take a stand defend the rights of man [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] knowing the truth will set us free take us from clear to we thought ever be leased and [Music]

Channel: Mangotology

Views: 3,064,737

Rating: 4.587636 out of 5

Keywords: Celebrity Centre (Organization), Scientology (Religion), The Church of Scientology, Acting, Modeling, David Miscavige, Cult, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, Backstage (Magazine), Actorfest, Central Casting, Los Angeles, Religion, Catholicism, Actress, Actor, Celebrity Center, Marty Rathbun, Tony Ortega, Mike Rinder, How To Get an Agent, Leah Remini, Hollywood, Singer, Documentary, Spirituality, Mormon, Jehovah's Witnesses (Religion), Golden Era Productions, kabbalah, Steven Mango

Id: LfKqOUMrCw8

Length: 156min 46sec (9406 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/teracrapto]

Great expose. Interesting anecdotes and explains with insight the dearth of tricks Scientology uses to manipulate it's victims.

[u/Liz4tin]

http://tonyortega.org/2014/01/29/the-best-parts-of-steven-mangos-documentary-on-scientologys-celebrity-centre/

Here's an excellent take on this interview if you don't have time to watch the whole video.

A warning though. The bunker is a wealth of information on Scientology and you might find yourself going down the rabbit hole and spending more time than the original video.

[u/crash7800]

It's worth noting that this person still believes in many of the tenants of Scientology - he does not support the current leadership.

There are signs that he understands that this is a cult and that a lot of what they believe is wrong, but it doesn't seem to me that he's abandoned all of their beliefs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LfKqOUMrCw8#t=9092

[u/shoothershoother]

This is a 2.5 hour long interview.

[u/mofosaurus]

Video blocked

[u/[deleted]]

I wish more people would see this, when i protested against the church a few years back, many of my friends were confused why I would protest Scientology - because they were under the impression this group was just like every other religion.

[u/TheHouseofOne]

Watched the whole thing. Sounds awesome, where do I sign up? /s

[u/putittogetherNOW]

Long, but pretty good.

[u/Chincoming]

Got a UK version? Or am I gonna have to proxy it. Never mind works now. Wierd.