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Why no one should ever join Scientology’s ‘Sea Org’

Frequent contributor Jeffrey Augustine told us he was surprised to see how some of the language in Scientology’s latest court filing — in the Laura DeCrescenzo lawsuit — dovetailed in such interesting ways with the recent explorations he’s been making into the church’s legal underpinnings. We told him to let that take him where it []

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Why no one should ever believe anything said by Scientology Sea Org or staff members

Jeffrey Augustine is back with another delicious dive into Scientology’s own policies and documents. In this case, he’s looking at Scientology’s own statements about whether you should ever believe a word they []

Why is the press so timid about outing Scientology’s many front groups?

We’re very happy to see a small publication like the Santa Clarita Express in Southern California expose a Scientology front group for what it is. Reporter Melissa Lampert revealed in her Thursday story that the local branch of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office will be offering a class put on by the Foundation for a []

London! And a member of government asks us, what can we do about Scientology?

 Not everyone gets so close up to Big Ben you get this []

Scientology’s Freedom magazine congratulates itself for going ‘Ideal’

We’ve greatly enjoyed the new Freedom magazine. Scientology’s propaganda outlet used to be a lot wackier and in its own way was screamingly funny. For several years it came out only about once a year, and when it did, it was a doozy — issues slammed Marty Rathbun for running his own “cult” (A Posse []

When Jesse Prince sec-checked David Miscavige: A Scientology interrogation for the ages

We recently saw Jesse Prince in Toronto, and we were struck by how healthy he looked. If you’ve followed his blog, you know that the former high-ranking Scientology executive struggled through cancer treatments which at one point had nearly destroyed his spine. But now, he’s looking great, and he’s back on the scene. He sat []

The Church of Scientology’s forgotten president: Karen de la Carriere on Heber Jentzsch

We’ll never forget when we got the message from Karen de la Carriere in July 2012. She had found out — through the help of Aaron Smith-Levin, we now have learned — that her son, Alexander Jentzsch, had suddenly died at 27.

Alex was not only Karen’s son, but also the son of Heber Jentzsch, []

From Cradle to Slave: Nora Crest starts her video series with frank talk about Scientology and sex

 Nora Crest dazzled attendees at the Toronto Scientology conference organized by Jon Atack last month, and now you’re going to get a taste of her storytelling talents with the video she’s allowing us to debut here []

A new look inside Scientology’s bomb-proof vaults, and a visit to Hubbard’s final rodeo

 We’re traveling today, and we’re grateful to our tipsters for keeping us supplied with good material while we look for some time to do some reporting on new stories.

We have contributions from two tipsters today that happened to hit on a similar theme — Scientology’s super-secretive entity, the “Church of Spiritual Technology” (CST), and its []

Long before Xenu: Scientology’s actual origin story, as told by a former member

 We have a real treat for you today. Derek Bloch noticed that Scientology’s “Xenu” story that was made famous in South Park in 2005 and was given another great treatment in Alex Gibney’s film Going Clear this year (pictured above) is often referred to as Scientology’s “origin story.” This is simply untrue. The Xenu incident, []