Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He's written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology's harassment of Paulette Cooper titled 'The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.' He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world from an undisclosed location in an underground bunker he shares with four cats and one of them wrinkly Shar Pei dogs. Despite his super-secret security protections, you can still reach him pretty easily by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you'd like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.) [Header image courtesy John Rickard]
FOLLOW ME ON
Daily Notifications
Sign up for free emails to receive the feature story every morning in your inbox at tonyortega.substack.com

Categories

Monthly Archives

SCIENTOLOGY FORCES RELIGIOUS ARBITRATION ON VALERIE HANEY IN KIDNAPPING LAWSUIT

[Valerie Haney]

[BREAKING:] Jeffrey Augustine reports that Judge Richard Burdge Jr. has ruled in favor of Scientology, granting its motion to force Valerie Haney into ‘religious arbitration.’ The lawsuit is on ice, and the judge asked them to come back to report in April 2021.

Reports from Jeffrey Augustine in the []

ADVERTISEMENT

Why scientists think they have identified the remains of Vesuvius victim Pliny the Elder

 In the year 1900 Italian civil engineer Gennaro Matrone uncovered a cluster of bodies (73 eventually recovered) under volcanic rubble near the mouth of the Sarno River which flows from Mt. Vesuvius down to the Bay of Naples. This was only a few kilometers from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the twin towns famously buried in lava []

Still awaiting sentencing, Keith Raniere and other Nxivm leaders are now being sued

[Sarah Edmondson vs. Keith Raniere]

After a highly-publicized trial that resulted in the conviction or guilty pleas of six Nxivm leaders who now await sentencing, they and numerous others are now facing another kind of fight in []

Tom Cruise’s sister Cass the real superhero in the family, now with Scientology SUPER POWER

[Tom Cruise and his sister Cass Capazorio, with her husband, Freedom Medal winner Greg]

What’s the appeal of Scientology? That’s a question we get asked frequently by people trying to understand why anyone would want to go near the ideas of founder L. Ron Hubbard and his bizarre space opera cabal. []

From Nobel Peace Prize winner to genocide enabler?

 The town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh was once a popular trading post, named for Captain Hiram Cox of the East India Company in the early days of the British Raj, sited on a coast which boasts the longest stretch of sandy beach on the planet. The district was a violently contested no man’s land []

Scientology TV premieres episode about legendary Saint Hill Manor to… total silence

 We’re so grateful for our many tipsters and correspondents. They keep track of so many different things for us, and they often surprise us with their creativity and []

The timing of the John Bolton book leak could not be worse for Trump’s legal team

 Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…

[Regarding this story: Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says]

Months after not being called to testify at the impeachment trial, John Bolton drops a bomb in a book that previews what his testimony would be if []

Scientology clown Joy Villa got glowing press again, and here’s what it left out

 On a night when we were still trying to absorb the shocking news that Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter and seven other people had died in a helicopter crash in foggy Calabasas yesterday, the last thing we wanted to think about was a talentless grifter and her annual media []

Scientology says it’s ‘partnering’ with Miami police for Super Bowl anti-drug quackery

 Is it really too much to expect a police department to enter the words “Foundation for a Drug-Free World” into a search engine and get a clue that this is one of Scientology’s sneaky front groups looking to rook law enforcement into its L. Ron Hubbard-burnishing, quack anti-drugs []

My mom is the auditor in the ‘Reckless Ben’ Scientology infiltration videos

[Irmin Huber, keeping her TRs in.]

In 2017, we told you the devastating disconnection story of Clarissa Adams, a woman who had grown up in Scientology and then was cut off by both of her parents when she decided to leave the church. She hasn’t seen or spoken to her mother, Irmin Huber, since 2014, when []