14 DAY TRIAL // Leah Remini left Scientology in 2013, after 30 years, and she’s been trying to shed light on what goes on inside the Church ever since. As the latest episode of her reality show Leah Remini: It’s All Relative made it clear, she is not holding back when it comes to the infamous cult.
Gawker has video from the episode in question, in which Leah and her family sit down with a therapist to discuss what happened before they all exited. It was Leah who wanted out, but they defected en masse because their only other option would have been to disconnect from her.
Disconnect is a Scientology term that applies when a former member is declared a Suppressive Person (SP) and his or her friends and family are told to cease all contact after the exit.
Interrogations, manipulation and personal attacks
Leah says that she got in trouble with the leaders of Scientology when she started questioning and calling out those who did not “follow their own policy.” She doesn’t name any names here, but rumor has it that she actually stood up to Scientology leader David Miscavige, questioning him for allegedly torturing and exploiting members, and for the disappearance of his wife, who hasn’t been seen in public in years but is not even reported missing.
It didn’t last long before she was put through “major interrogations” and conditioning through auditing sessions. That was only the beginning, because next, Scientology went after her family.
“Then they go after your family and try to get your family to go against you to put pressure on you to straighten up. It was getting to a point where we just all couldn’t subscribe to these policies anymore,” she explains.
Leah also talks about the feeling of guilt and shame that came with this, and which only increased once her entire family chose to defect instead of disconnecting.
This had been their entire world for decades and now they were completely on their own: their friends and other family members had turned their backs on them, and they were without the support, such as it was, that they’d come to depend on.
The family gets emotional
Leah’s brother-in-law William also opens up about leaving the cult and how he doesn’t consider Leah “responsible” for what happened. He says his own father “discarded” him like an old T-shirt when he had decided to leave, but he’s not sorry for standing behind Leah.
Scientology is a cult, they say, and as one, it preys on every weakness it can find in its followers. Using family ties to keep members in check is one of them.
It also uses manipulation, actual physical and emotional torture, and smear campaigns to get back at those who leave and dare to speak about it publicly.
True to form, Scientology released a statement yesterday saying Leah is an attention-thirsty has-been who’s trying to “seem relevant again” by dragging the good name of the Church through the mud.