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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KID CORPS: Scientology’s internal documents lay out its disturbing ideas about children

 Tuesday night, Leah Remini’s A&E series once again provided harrowing stories of what it can be like to grow up in Scientology. Her guests, Mimi Faust and Christi Gordon, spoke about the frightening result when Hubbard’s ideas about children being adults in small packages gets put into []

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Scientology’s Flag Building brain injury: In Clearwater, it’s déjà vu all over again

[Scientology’s playground for wealthy patsies]

December 5 will mark the 22nd anniversary of the death of Lisa McPherson. Two years ago, for the 20th anniversary, we produced a lengthy series re-reporting her final days in real time, to get a sense of how her terrible experience played out over several []

Raid in Hungary: Scientology’s Cold War tactics are colliding with 21st Century data privacy

[Police outside the Budapest org. Photo: Szabó Gábor]

Yesterday, when we saw news stories pop up briefly announcing that the Budapest Scientology “Ideal Org” was raided by police, we knew just who to turn to. Those stories said that some 50 police officers carried out the raid, but there were virtually no other details. So we []

Scientology slut-shames Mimi Faust after destroying her family because … it’s a church!

 Continuing its unbroken record for doing exactly the wrong thing every time its reputation is in question, Scientology responded to this week’s Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath in characteristic fashion with an overheated slut-shaming of reality TV star Mimi Faust, and by calling Christi Gordon []

On tonight’s ‘Leah Remini,’ reality star Mimi Faust takes on Scientology’s harm to family

 In 2012, we talked to Mimi Faust for the Village Voice after she had dropped a bombshell on VH1’s popular show Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta. At 13, Mimi had been abandoned by her mother, who chose Scientology’s Sea Organization over raising her own daughter. Mimi then became []

Crashing a ‘Mace-Kingsley’ event in Pasadena to get some answers about Scientology and kids

[Saddest bookstore ever at the Pasadena org, selling only one author]

Marcy Sargeant of the Mace-Kingsley Family Center in Clearwater, Florida, held a seminar at Scientology’s Pasadena “Ideal Org” on []

David Miscavige is gambling on Birmingham for Scientology success, and who knows why

 Rod Keller continues to keep us up to date on Scientology’s “Ideal Org” program, as David Miscavige pushes to open a number of new facilities one right after the []

Coming to grips with Scientology’s most vile secret, which was hiding in plain sight

 About two years ago, a reader first made us aware of a shocking passage in L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics that somehow seems to have been overlooked by generations of commenters on that important volume, the very basis for what became the Church of []

After pausing to reflect, Marie Poulin takes on Scientology’s attack of her ‘Leah Remini’ spot

 Every week when there’s a new episode of A&E’s Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, we look to see how the Church of Scientology is going to react on its website dedicated to attacking Leah and the people who show up as her []

‘Miss Lovely’ as you’ve never seen her — new photos of Paulette Cooper, war survivor

[Previously the earliest known photo of Paulette Cooper and her older sister Suzy Bucholc]

One of the most rewarding experiences we ever had as a Scientology watcher started out in a Manhattan eatery and a simple []