The church has been accused of being directly responsible for the financial ruin of some of its most fervently faithful, but Danos said getting started in Scientology is “extremely inexpensive.”
“You can go in and do something for 30 bucks,” she said. “The first book is 10 bucks.”
Woodcraft, though, warns that things get exponentially pricier once you reach the religion’s highest echelons, or if you try to quit.
“If you leave,” she said, “they send a bill for everything you’ve done.”
Woodcraft’s, which she still has a copy of, was $89,000. Modest compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars she said some people end up dropping just to rise up the ranks.
Editorials › Astra Woodcraft, California, Celebrity Centre, disconnection, education, Florida, Hollywood, L. Ron Hubbard, Los Angeles, Nicole Kidman, Rehabilitation Project Force, Sea Org, Suppressive Person, United States of America
Published on Saturday 17th February 2001
Scientology teaches its adherents to file reports on members who are acting against the church. Such people are deemed to have brought shame on their families and are sent to ‘ethics’ sessions, where they are questioned for hours about their thoughts and forced to make ‘amends,’ which can include manual labour.
Finally, Astra extricated herself from the movement in 1998, but not before she confessed to a list of petty crimes to avoid being declared a Suppressive Person.
Other Scientologists are ordered not to speak to such outcasts, who are declared enemies, and Astra didn’t want to lose contact with her family.
