So I'm watching TV on Friday night and I happen to catch the 20/20 episode with Leah Remini. By now the entire world knows that Leah, a once famous member of the Church of Scientology, is a Scientologist no longer. Leah has just written a book entitled, "Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology". In this controversial memoir Remini makes some stunning claims about her former church and it's teachings. Many of those claims have included the most famous Scientologist, Tom Cruise.
I thought this to be an interesting topic that I have little knowledge about, so I continued to watch. Remini was a child who was brought into Scientology by her mother. So immersed in the church she became, that as a teen she attended the prestigious Sea Org, reserved for Scientology's most dedicated members. Remini claims that her education comprised of only Scientology related subjects, and she was dedicated to working her way successfully up the "Bridge of Scientology" which is much like climbing a ladder. Remini admits to horrid living conditions while there and remembers getting in trouble for acts she committed with her then "boyfriend" that were prohibited by the church. Regardless of her previous discretion's, Remini continued to practice Scientology for 30 years.
It wasn't until her acting career took off and she became a celebrity when she was invited to the 2006 wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes that she began to question things that were happening in the church. Her most stunning claims:
- As a member of The Sea Org, Remini was required to sigh a billion year contract. Scientologists believe in reincarnation and are required to rejoin the church when they are reborn.
- Remini and her husband were recruited to teach Tom Cruise and his then-girlfriend salsa dancing. During the lesson, Tom was forcibly kissing Katie Holmes to which Remini responded for them to "get a room". She was immediately written up and sent into "succession". (a form of punishment in the church)
- Told by the church to invite her friend Jennifer Lopez and her then husband Marc Anthony to the Cruise wedding, she then realized that the church purposely sat them at different tables and purposely kept them away from each other during the evening.
- Remini, perplexed about the absence of her friend Shelly Miscavage, the wife of Scientology leader David, at Tom and Katie's wedding, questioned Shelly's whereabouts to which she was immediately written up and disciplined.
For their part, The Church of Scientology had plenty to say about Remini, all of it not becoming to an organization that calls itself a church. Their entire statement can be found HERE. The language they use to denounce Remini is troubling at best. The Church Of Scientology, calling Remini in a public statement, "self-absorbed, shallow and spoiled", it was Remini who claims to have voluntarily left the church. Scientology refutes that fact in their statement. Of Remini's departure they said,
"Her repeated ethical lapses and callous treatment of others led to an ecclesiastical review which resulted in her being expelled. She now regurgitates the tired myths the Church has repeatedly debunked, circulated by the same tiny clique of expelled former staffers bitter at having lost the positions they enjoyed before their malfeasance and unethical conduct were uncovered. Ms. Remini is now joined at the hip with this collection of deadbeats, admitted liars, self-admitted perjurers, wife beaters and worse."
I'm now beginning to understand why Nicole Kidman never stayed with nor had much contact with her kids after her 2011 divorce to Tom Cruise. I often wondered how a woman could leave her children. Now the picture is becoming clearer and clearer.
Evidently-Nicole was "self-absorbed, shallow and spoiled" too.
