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

Mareka Brousseau compares growing up in Scientology to The Hunger Games

We’ve talked to Mareka Brousseau numerous times for stories at the Village Voice and the Underground Bunker. And she was a key character in John Sweeney’s 2010 BBC special, The Secrets of Scientology. And now Jeffrey Augustine has given us a treat and interviewed Mareka at length for the Surviving Scientology podcast.

It’s really eye-opening to []

ADVERTISEMENT

Hana Whitfield: What it’s like to be stalked by Scientology

Mark Bunker has shared with us another excerpt from the video interviews he’s been collecting for his upcoming documentary, Knowledge Report.

In this clip, he interviews Hana Eltringham Whitfield about what it’s like to be the target of “Fair Game” — Scientology’s notorious retaliation efforts coordinated by its Office of Special Affairs (OSA), which often []

LIVE BLOG: The Elli Perkins story tonight on the ID Network, ‘The Scientology Cure’

Please join us tonight as we watch a dramatization of one of the most disturbing Scientology deaths, the 2003 murder of Elli Perkins by her own son, Jeremy.

Several months ago, the ID Network interviewed your proprietor for the show, and tonight we’ll get a chance to see the result. ID previously did a really good []

More trouble for Scientology fundraising and recruitment in Europe

For today’s story, we turned to our helpful translators again for assistance with another article from the German press.

This item appeared in the weekly publication Kontext and provided some interesting history of Scientology in Stuttgart, saying that the local Scientologists have actually been “on the sidelines” as plans to replace a drab, poorly situated org []

Surviving Scientology podcast: Former treasury employee Mat Pesch spills the beans

Amy Scobee and Mat Pesch

In November 2012, we broke a big story with the help of Mat Pesch. At that time, former church executive Marty Rathbun had testified in court that Scientology had spent about $30 million in order to influence officials and get the church out of a criminal prosecution over the []

A Scientology death will be examined Wednesday night on the ID network

Several months ago, your proprietor was asked to take part in a television program about the 2003 death of Elli Perkins which will be airing for the first time next week.

Perkins was a Scientologist in the Buffalo area who was killed by her son, Jeremy, in a vicious knife attack. Jeremy was subsequently judged seriously []

The Dallas Morning News asks a question about Scientology, and we want your response

Hey, kids, welcome to summer camp! This is supposed to be a time when things slow down, but we’re more slammed than ever — and we have big stories coming, we promise.

But today, we thought we’d latch on to the seasonal fun over at the Dallas Morning News, where the editorial board decided that []

John Joseph, 1955-2014: A Scientologist, and a friend to the Underground Bunker

 We knew him only as “Plain Old Thetan.”

He began communicating with us during our Village Voice days, and quickly became one of our most productive and most trusted sources about what was happening inside the Church of Scientology.

On Thursday, Plain Old Thetan — whose real name was John Joseph — died after suffering complications []

Rathbun: ‘Scientology never endorsed anyone where there wasn’t a clear self-interest’

Pam Bondi, Florida AG

On Sunday, we broke the news that Scientologists were holding a campaign fundraiser for Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is running for re-election this year.

One of our tipsters had forwarded to us a mailer that was not meant to be spread outside the church, showing that several high-level Scientologists []

That time L. Ron Hubbard was hit by lightning while wearing full armor: It’s science!

Yesterday, in our Sunday Funnies, we showed you a flier (pictured, right) announcing a set of L. Ron Hubbard lectures that the folks at Scientology’s London Ideal Org claim were never previously released, and that would be on sale for £200.

“Ron talks about the anatomy of the body and gives a glimpse at one of []