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 Simi Valley sent us a remarkable e-mail a couple of weeks ago. She wanted us to know that she’s no longer an “independent Scientologist” — she’s out all the way.
“It was a year ago that Debbie Cook sent out her e-mail and I finally woke up. But now a year later I’ve really woken up all the way,” she said in a phone conversation we had a few days ago. We thought we’d start off 2013 by writing about Simi’s journey, which reflects a trend we’ve been watching for the last couple of years. As much as the growth of a breakaway “independent Scientology” movement has been a huge part of the crisis gripping the Church of Scientology, we’ve noticed a tendency for some ex-church members to spend only a short time as “indies” before they ditch Scientology altogether. “On January 1, 2012 I was off the Miscavige Kool-aid. But now, a year later, I’m off the Hubbard Kool-aid,” Simi told us. Continue reading Another Indie Goes All the Way: Simi Valley Ditches Scientology For Good Advertisement
…this is how you send a message to Dear Leader out in front of the Scientology building in Los Angeles. Comedy writer Seth Madej snapped this photo on Monday afternoon and posted it to his Twitter feed with this message… Continue reading You Might Be in a Cult If…
 On January 7, BBC reporter John Sweeney’s book about Scientology, The Church of Fear, hits bookstores, and he thought of a great way to promote it.
About a month ago, he flew to the US and joined former church member and Blown for Good author Marc Headley for a trip to the Trementina vault in New Mexico. Earlier this year, we put together a comprehensive article about the strange vaults that one of Scientology’s most secretive entities, the Church of Spiritual Technology, has also dug in California and Wyoming in order to secure L. Ron Hubbard’s writings and lectures against nuclear attack. For our piece, we had the help of a former CST employee, Dylan Gill, who gave us some rare insights about these strange facilities. As his Sun article indicates, Sweeney and Headley were stopped at the gate before they could get inside the base and look around. What a shame. After all, Sweeney has demonstrated that he can put on a good show when he’s let in the door! Continue reading John Sweeney and Marc Headley Visit Scientology’s Odd New Mexico Vault
 With our year in review finally over, we’re left with one last Sunday in 2012, and what would a Sunday be without Funnies?
Our tipsters have been terrific this year, and we’re still getting great stuff from them every day. So let’s send 2012 out in style by looking at the latest fundraising mailers that Scientology has sent to its members. Now, if you live in the Los Angeles area — and many of the dwindling remainder of Scientologists do — then you know all about the Rose Parade, the thing you do your best to wake up for and watch bleary-eyed on your television while fighting a nasty hangover. Or, if you’re actually in Pasadena, you might secure your seat next to the parade route by partying all night on New Year’s Eve on Colorado Boulevard. We’ve done it, and a great freaky scene of street drunkenness it is. Continue reading Final Sunday Funnies of 2012: Scientology Targets the Rose Parade!
 Tiziano Lugli does his best Tom Cruise And so we come to the end of this lengthy year in review, which no doubt has already gone on far too long for some readers. If we’ve been longwinded, our excuse is that 2012 has been such an exceptional year for Scientology, and there were so many disasters for the church right up to the last few weeks. On December 10, with Gawker’s help, we brought to the world a very unusual video. During our recent visit to Los Angeles, former church member Tiziano Lugli played for us a funny song that featured several ex-Scientologists rapping about what it was like to work for David Miscavige at the International Base. We thoroughly enjoyed the rap stylings of Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder (seriously, it was dope), but what made the video go viral was that one of the people who performed on the song was Nazanin Boniadi, and she specifically name-checked the church’s three big celebrities, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley. Boniadi had become famous in Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair story in September, but here was the first evidence of Boniadi speaking out on her own about her disillusionment with Scientology. Continue reading Scientology’s 2012 in Review: Parting Shots from a Year David Miscavige Won’t Soon Forget
 Oh Belgium, how we love you We sure picked a great day to go for a long hike. Turns out, minutes after we left for our day-long stroll, we received an e-mail from a newspaper editor friend of ours in Ghent, Belgium. He wanted to make sure we had seen a Flemish-language story breaking the news that the Belgian government is going to prosecute the Church of Scientology as a criminal organization. Twelve hours later, we finally saw our friend’s e-mail. Ah well. Better late than never, anyway. OK, so you may have already heard elsewhere, but it’s still pretty interesting news…
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BELGIUM IS PROSECUTING SCIENTOLOGY AS A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION!! Continue reading Belgium Prosecuting Scientology as a Criminal Organization [UPDATED]
 We’re still looking back at this amazing year for Scientology watchers, refreshing your memory about what got our attention in 2012.
We hope you have plenty to say as we look back at the stories that mattered in the past twelve months… As the fall began, we were enjoying all the speculation by reviewers about the Scientology content in Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie The Master. (Those that actually knew some church history recognized that the film is shot through with it.) We pointed out how Anderson’s script was even more vicious about Hubbard and his invention than the finished movie, and we heard great suggestions from our readers about who the Joaquin Phoenix character, Freddie Quell, might be based on. Continue reading Scientology’s 2012 in Review: The Master Goeth Before a Fall
 Patrick Desmond By now you’ve probably seen our update on today’s year-in-review piece, or perhaps you’ve heard the news another way: Atlanta’s local media is reporting that state regulators are beginning a process to revoke the license of Scientology’s drug rehab program there, the Narconon Georgia facility which is at the center of a contentious wrongful death lawsuit. [Go here for local reports on radio, television, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.] For everyone who has followed this case closely — the folks at the Reaching for the Tipping Point forum who have worked so hard to dig up information about the facility, for example — this is stunning news. But we want to make sure that some people — particularly the folks at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which can’t seem to write a story about Narconon without including a sneering swipe at the people who work so hard to expose Scientology’s drug rehab front group for what it is — understand that Narconon’s problems go much deeper than its licensing. And it shouldn’t have taken the deaths of Patrick Desmond, Stacy Dawn Murphy, Hillary Holten, and Gabriel Graves to get the Narconon facilities in Atlanta and Oklahoma on the minds of government regulators. Continue reading Narconon Georgia Facing Closure: It Shouldn’t Have Taken a Death Advertisement
 Stacy Dawn Murphy We hope you have plenty to say as we look back at the stories that mattered in the past twelve months… One of the most surprising things about 2012 was the way that Narconon’s meltdown kept stealing the spotlight from celebrity divorce and other crises for Scientology. UPDATE: AND RIGHT ON TIME, THE STATE OF GEORGIA FINALLY WAKES UP. In a deceptively soft-pedaled piece, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today that state regulators are planning to revoke Narconon Georgia’s license after yet another investigation into allegations that it is running an unlicensed residential program. Damning documents produced in the Patrick Desmond wrongful death lawsuit made it crystal clear that the Scientology drug rehab facility runs a housing unit even though it is not supposed to, and its own internal paperwork shows that its housing was plagued by drug use. The best part of the story is that Narconon has requested a hearing — we can only hope that it is an open event, and that the state will put on a devastating show based on what is clearly spelled out in Narconon’s own paperwork. First Quebec, now Georgia — Oklahoma, are you ready? Continue reading Scientology’s 2012 in Review: Narconon Goes Into Withdrawal [UPDATED]
 Merry Christmas! We’re still looking back at this amazing year for Scientology watchers, refreshing your memory about what got our attention in 2012.
We hope you have plenty to say as we look back at the stories that mattered in the past twelve months… June 29, 2012 will be remembered as the day the news broke that Katie Holmes had filed for divorce from her husband Tom Cruise. But that morning, we were still drowsy after breaking a very different story in the wee hours. At 2:30 in the morning we posted what we figured was a story that would shake up the Scientology world. Instead, it got swallowed up by the tabloid tsunami which rolled out later that day and quickly would become the biggest disaster for the church this year — and perhaps for any year — when the Katie Holmes divorce filing suddenly had everyone from TMZ to the Business Insider scrambling for stories about Cruise and his odd allegiance to L. Ron Hubbard. Six months later, we’re at enough distance that we can now look back at what actually happened during that week in late June and early July, when Scientology’s numerous crises all seemed to erupt at the same time. Advertisement
Continue reading Scientology’s 2012 in Review: Eight Days that Shook the World
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