Does the Church of Scientology engage in Human Trafficking? Thanks to all for the usage of footage in this video.

Scientology calls itself a religion and claims to offer purpose and meaning to its members. Yet for some who worked in the church's militaristic Sea Organization, Scientology provided something different: physical punishment, humiliation, beatings, sleep deprivation, and long and ruinous separation from loved ones. The stories of 11 former staffers, reported in a St. Petersburg Times special report Sunday, are told with such detail and emotional heft that the church's official denials of abuse ring hollow. It takes courage to challenge ...

ALBION — Employees at a drug and alcohol treatment center are claiming they haven't been paid. Connie Hobbs and Debra Mikowski have filed complaints with the Wage and Hour Division of the state Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth this month against Narconon Freedom Center in Albion. Christina Assante, Narconon Freedom Center senior director of administration, is claiming Hobbs resigned without notice and was paid in full. She also claims Mikowski resigned and was paid on Tuesday or Wednesday. Assante ...

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A woman accuses the Church of Scientology of human trafficking, obstructing justice, employment violations, discrimination and violation of privacy. Laura Ann DeCrescenzo says she signed her first "contract" with the church when she was 12, and did not "escape" until she had suffered 13 years of forced labor at less than minimum wage. "There are two very different versions of Scientology," DeCrescenzo aka Laura Dieckman says in her Superior Court complaint. "There is the Scientology as presented ...

PART TEN Former Scientologist Maureen Bolstad continues her account of her years at the church headquarters near Hemet. "I was actually one of the older ones at 17. There were 13-year-olds, 12-year-olds," Bolstad recollects. "There was just one kid, 12-years-old that was given an executive responsibility doing something. He had a complete nervous breakdown." This is how Maureen spent her teenage years: making videos for the church. Looking at her social security tax forms, she says nobody ever told her about ...

PART NINE The Church of Scientology believes one woman, Maureen Bolstad, is one of the worst people in the world. She is one of a few to be declared a "suppressive person." Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard declared so-called "suppressive" people "cannot be granted the rights ordinarily accorded rational beings." Her crime? Talking to the media about the church. Bolstad was recruited into the Church of Scientology at age 16. She was told she'd get an education, and the chance to ...

PART SIX News Channel 3 sent former Scientology marketing director and Portland resident Jeff Hawkins to KATU-TV, the local ABC television station, where he revealed what happened during his years inside Scientology's world headquarters in Hemet, called "IntBase." His account of what goes on behind these fences is one of religious punishment and imprisonment. "Within that Hemet compound, they work 100 hour weeks, seven days a week. They have no breaks. They have no vacations of any kind. They work around ...

“I started my life over with $200, a motorcycle and some clothes,” says Marc Headley, a former 25-year member of the Church of Scientology. He describes the night he “blew”—a term widely used within both critics circles as well as the Church community—and decided he was finished with life as a Scientologist. He managed to drive off on his motorcycle. As he made his way down a dark and winding two-lane road that runs along the edge of the compound through ...

A TOP Scientologist who escaped the cult has given the most explosive insight yet into the shady "celebrity religion". A-list followers including Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley and John Travolta believe their faith is the secret of their success. But for John Duignan it cost him everything and everyone he held dear after he become a leading figure in the church's British branch. John says he was so brainwashed that he would have killed for Scientology. And he claims another member was ...

SCIENTOLOGISTS are furious about a new book by an Irish writer that is set to expose the controversial church's military plans - including a sinister mission to 'clear the earth'. Author John Duignan claims to be a former high-ranking member of the church's secret army, the Sea Organisation or 'Sea Org', which answers directly to leader David Miscavige. His book, The Complex: An Insider Exposes The Covert World Of Scientology, details the weapons training he received at a naval base in ...

In the mid-1980s, more than ever before, television advertising was about big budgets and excess. Bucking that trend was Scientologist and marketing whiz Jeff Hawkins, whose understated, minimalist TV ads for L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics helped launch the book onto the best-seller list—and arguably sparked a worldwide interest in the religion. Hawkins' ads featured simple questions like, "Why are you unhappy?" in white print against a black background, backed by edgy music supplied by Hawkins' friends, and finally, a shot of ...

Six years ago, when I was a reporter at New Times LA, ''I’d written several stories about Scientology (Los Angeles is one of its headquarters), and I was about to uncork the longest one yet—a 7,000 word piece about an embarrassing, $8 million defeat Scientology had just suffered, when the weekly paper suddenly folded. That unpublished story has been sitting in storage ever since. Fast forward to 2008, and the world of reporting on Scientology has changed radically, thanks in part ...

A new demand for transparency and justice from netzins... In late January, news media across the world picked up on a phenomenal development on the Internet. A virtual civil rights movement had arisen from a most unlikely source: Internet gamers. It all kicked off when an in-house video of Tom Cruise preaching to members of his faith, the controversial Church of Scientology, was leaked onto the Youtube internet video sharing site. Indeed, Cruise is a frightening spectacle and his incoherent rant ...

Tessa Mayes is the first reporter to have gone undercover in the London Celebrity Centre of the Church of Scientology. It is, she finds, like a pious version of Pop Idol. The adherents want to be celebrities at least as much as Scientologists ‘A culture is only as great as its dreams and its dreams are dreamed by artists,’ wrote L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in 1969, 15 years after he formed the church itself. ...

Scientology is perhaps best-known for its most famous practitioner, Tom Cruise. But in this beachy Tampa suburb, Scientologists are neighbors... CLEARWATER, Fla. — Scientology is perhaps best-known for its most famous practitioner, Tom Cruise. But in this beachy Tampa suburb, Scientologists are neighbors, business owners, real-estate investors — and a growing force that makes some uncomfortable. The Church of Scientology, despite its official status as a tax-exempt religious organization, is nonetheless the largest taxpayer in downtown Clearwater, home to its worldwide ...

The church is buying property, increasing staff and raising its profile with TV ads and special offers. TAMPA — A group of high-ranking Scientologists, concerned the church's Tampa facilities aren't up to snuff, is investing more than $2.5-million to buy a second cigar factory in West Tampa and to lease and renovate a two-story building on one of the hottest corners in Ybor City. The church's three properties, staffed by nearly 100 people, will be the base for Scientology's most aggressive ...

Astra Woodcraft, apostate and defector, is the latest enemy of the Church of Scientology. Woodcraft, 22, never really joined this controversial psycho-spiritual movement, at least not as a free-thinking adult. Astra was born into it. Founded in the 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, a prolific science fiction writer and freelance philosopher, Scientology describes itself as "the only major new religion established in the 20th century," as a bridge to increased awareness and spiritual freedom. Woodcraft, a third-generation Scientologist, paints a different ...