According to “King of Queens” star Leah Remini, the latest celebrity to leave the Church of Scientology, millions of Scientologists have it wrong.

Anonymous sources for the New York Post had plenty to say about Remini’s departure. They claimed that she suffered through years of “interrogations” and “thought modification” after she allowed herself to engage in a bit of freethinking and then — gasp! — question the church leadership about their policies and practices. (Questioning the leader, David Miscavige, is simply not allowed.) Remini didn’t stop there; she went a step further and spoke up about the abuses at Sea Org.

In case you aren’t familiar with Sea Org,

The Sea Organization is a religious order for the Scientology religion and is composed of the singularly most dedicated Scientologists — individuals who have committed their lives to the volunteer service of their religion. The Sea Organization is a fraternal religious order and is not incorporated. Members of the Sea Organization are therefore wholly responsible to the Church of Scientology to which they are assigned and are responsible, as are all other staff, to officers and directors of that Church. The Sea Organization was established in 1967 and once operated from a number of ships.

These individuals work long hours, live communally, and have signed contracts to spend the next billion years in service to the church. It’s not surprising that this type of environment, along with a constant barrage of heavy indoctrination, is a breeding ground for abuse.

Besides disallowing questions about doctrine, overworking, and brainwashing their members, other strategies commonly used by high-control groups are employed. They excommunicate individuals considered “suppressive persons” and force their family members to disconnect from them. A further search of the Scientology.org website elaborates on what a “suppressive person” is:

A Suppressive Person (SP) is a person who seeks to suppress other people in their vicinity. A Suppressive Person will goof up or vilify any effort to help anybody and particularly knife with violence anything calculated to make human beings more powerful or more intelligent. The Suppressive Person is also known as the Anti-Social Personality. Within this category one finds Napoleon, Hitler, the unrepentant killer and the drug lord. But if such are easily spotted, if only from the bodies they leave in their wake, Anti-Social Personalities also commonly exist in current life and often go undetected. The basic reason the Suppressive Person behaves as he or she does lies in a hidden terror of others. To such a person every other being is an enemy, an enemy to be covertly or overtly destroyed. The fixation is that survival itself depends on “keeping others down” or “keeping people ignorant.” If anyone were to promise to make others stronger or brighter, the Suppressive Person would suffer the utmost agony.

It’s clear that the Church of Scientology holds much disdain for “suppressive persons” and, if you’ve been indoctrinated to believe these types of things, disconnecting from them seems like a logical next step.

Remini protested the church’s policies prohibiting family members from communicating with those who have left Scientology behind or have been kicked out. The Post reported that a source close to Remini said that “she thinks no religion should tear apart a family or abuse someone under the umbrella of ‘religion’”:

[In a blog post] Remini innocently asked where Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, was. Former Scientology Celebrity Centre head Tommy Davis scolded her, “You don’t have the [bleeping] rank to ask about Shelly.” Mrs. Miscavige reportedly hasn’t been seen in public since 2007. As a result, Remini “was put through interrogations and blacklisted within the church that she donated millions to and that her family has spent their lives in. She was put through ‘thought modification’ for five years,” our source said.

A Scientology rep denied all the allegations.

This isn’t the first time someone has spoken up about the depravity within the Church of Scientology. And, unfortunately, this kind of news doesn’t seem to be hurting their membership numbers. The organization has revealed that it has anywhere from eight million to fifteen million members worldwide.



