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Rick Ross has a new book that will help you get someone out of Scientology

CultsInsideOutBack in the fall of 1995, we noticed an interesting letter to the editor in the Arizona Republic. It was from a man named Rick Ross who complained that the Republic‘s story about a lawsuit (which had gone against Ross) had failed to include the most important things about it — namely, that the newspaper had left out all mention of the Church of Scientology’s role in it.

We’d read a little about Scientology and were intrigued by it. And the newspaper we worked for at the time, the Phoenix New Times, encouraged us to find stories that the local dailies had ignored or had done badly. We reached out to Rick, and it led to our first cover story for the paper. It also put us on a path of developing sources about Scientology, a path we’ve been on for 19 years now.

Ross at that time lived in Phoenix. He moved to New Jersey several years ago, and we’ve stayed in touch all this time. We even both showed up in a (kind of weird) History Channel 2 “America’s Book of Secrets” episode on Scientology this year.

In October, Rick’s book, Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out, hit Amazon, but he’s been unable to do any publicity about it until this week. We were fortunate enough to get to read it before publication, and we learned even more about the kind of work Rick does, helping families convince loved ones to leave destructive groups. He specializes in Bible-based groups, but he’s also worked with Scientologists, as well as people who got involved in groups that don’t call themselves churches.

The book goes into detail about methods that Ross uses to penetrate the indoctrination that members of Scientology and other groups experience. And along the way, we get a glimpse of the twists and turns his career has taken over the past 30 years.

 

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Damn it feels good to be a Duggan

We’ve spent some time writing about the richest Scientologists in the world — Bob and Trish Duggan — and their large number of children (seven, with six of them adopted). If you ever wondered what it’s like to live with that much money (Bob’s worth around $1.5 billion), we stumbled across this photo posted recently to Instagram.

It was posted by one of the Duggan adopted sons (but not one of the two who were sent to South Africa, as we revealed in a recent story)…

 
DugganEuros

As you can see, the caption reads, “Consuela forgot toilet paper. Gotta wipe with this.” And it includes the hashtags #dugganproblems and #richkidproblems

Isn’t that fun?

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on December 18, 2014 at 07:00

E-mail your tips and story ideas to tonyo94@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. Here at the Bunker we try to have a post up every morning at 7 AM Eastern (Noon GMT), and on some days we post an afternoon story at around 2 PM. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

BLOGGING DIANETICS (We read Scientology’s founding text) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

UP THE BRIDGE (Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48

GETTING OUR ETHICS IN (Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING (Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49

PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

 

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