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]
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Targets of a Jehovah’s Witnesses inquisition reflect on their purge

[Nestor and Toni Kuilan]

Lloyd Evans has a new video, his interview with Nestor and Toni Kuilan, to talk about their book about their targeting as they left the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization. Here’s Lloyd’s []

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Media and authorities should focus on the real horrors of Scientology’s Freewinds

[Valeska Paris, on a ship going nowhere]

In 2011, we first told the story of Valeska Paris, who was sent to Scientology’s Freewinds cruise ship in 1996 at 18 in order to keep her away from her mother, who had criticized Scientology on French television. She served on the ship for 11 years without any choice []

Scientology measles ship back in Curaçao, which talks tough about quarantine

 Scientology’s floating cathedral the MV Freewinds arrived in Willemstad, Curaçao this morning after leaving St. Lucia Thursday, where the ship had been in quarantine because of a crew member with a confirmed case of measles. Officials in Curaçao said they would quarantine the vessel, board the ship, demand vaccination records of the crew and passengers, []

NXIVM: Judge denies Keith Raniere’s attempt to suppress child porn images

[Judge Nicholas Garaufis and Keith Raniere]

Nxivm leader Keith Raniere may want to rethink this notion about going to trial next week. In another blow to his chances, Judge Nicholas Garaufis has denied his attempt to suppress explicit images of a 15-year-old girl that were found on one of his hard drives after a search of []

Scientology measles ship Freewinds ditches St. Lucia quarantine for Curaçao, its home port

[Marine tracking website shows the Freewinds sailing west from St. Lucia just after midnight]

St. Lucia officials quarantined Scientology’s floating cathedral, the Freewinds, on Monday morning, and word from health officials was that the measles case on board would require 21 days of no passengers disembarking. But they also admitted that they had no power to []

What it’s like on the Scientology measles ship right now, according to former crew

 We had a pretty exciting afternoon yesterday, helping to figure out that the measles ship quarantined in the Caribbean country of St. Lucia was, in fact, Scientology’s floating cathedral, the 440-foot []

CONFIRMED: Scientology’s ‘Freewinds’ is the ship quarantined for measles in St. Lucia

 [UPDATE: Please see our follow up with interviews of former Freewinds crew members about what conditions aboard the ship are probably like right now.]

[NOTE: When we posted this story at 2 pm Eastern on Wednesday, we strongly suspected but couldn’t confirm that the measles ship was the Freewinds. Now, NBC is reporting that St. Lucia’s []

Scientology staffers: Putting up with chaos and hardships as they hope for promised OT powers

 David Miscavige announced recently that the new “Advanced Org” in South Africa has been deemed “Saint Hill Size.” That made us think of a piece Sunny Pereira wrote for us about her stint in the “Universe Corps,” the special troops that were the promised reward for taking your org to that mythic level. We thought []

Jehovah’s Witnesses: The ‘spiritual divorce’ goons are at the door again

[Larson caught on camera]

Why would strange men be looking for Brandon Fiquett — men he’s never met from a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation he’s never attended?

Why? Because Watchtower.

For months, Tacoma, Washington Allstate insurance salesman Erik Larson has been coming to Brandon’s home, interrupting his private life, demanding that he attend a “judicial committee.”

Larson and his []

Questions for Scientologist Elisabeth Moss — from former Scientologists

[Elisabeth Moss and L. Ron Hubbard]

Recently, Daily Beast reporter Marlow Stern interviewed actress and Scientologist Elisabeth Moss. Marlow has written some good Scientology stories over the years, and he’s no pushover. So we were glad to see that he took the opportunity to ask Moss not one but three questions about []