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After an embarrassing string of high-profile defection and leaked videos, Scientology is under attack from a faceless cabal of online activists. Has America’s most controversial religion finally met its match?
Clearwater is prepared for its enemies. It’s a warm, if overcast, Saturday in February, but all the storefronts lining the sidewalks of this sleepy town on […]

Nearly 300 demonstrators jammed the sidewalks out front on March 15, many of them young computer geeks in plastic Guy Fawkes masks honoring the 16th-century British subversive. Some hid behind party masks and bandanas. They hoisted signs: “Religion is free, Scientology is not,” “They want your money and your sanity,” and, in a reference to a string of mysterious tragedies involving members of Scientology, “How many more must die?”

Scientologists are at war with a member of their own family - the outspoken niece of the church’s powerful leader, David Miscavige.

Jenna Hill Miscavige, 24, the daughter of David’s older brother Ron, recently came out in support of Andrew Morton’s “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,” and slammed the star for “supporting a religion that tears apart families, both in the media and monetarily.” Since then, Jenna claims she’s been subjected to harassment.

The biographer of Princess Diana alleges Cruise is consulted by Scientology leader David Miscavige on “every aspect of planning and policy” and is tailoring his career to fit the aims of Scientology.

Miscavige is said in the book to have gone to extraordinary lengths to charm Cruise, even ordering his staff to plant a field full of wild flowers at a Scientology base in California after Cruise had told him of his fantasy to run through a wildflower meadow with his then newlywed wife Nicole Kidman.

The relationship between the two men is so close that, according to Morton’s book, Miscavige even joined him on honeymoon in the Maldives after his wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006.

It included an allegation that the church at its UK headquarters in East Grinstead, Sussex, took in young English people with a history of mental illness.

The document said the young members paid fees of £450 and £500 before being classified as trouble-makers and put out on the street after suffering breakdowns.

It also said the church created family discord and broke up marriages, referring to a six-year-old who was declared a “suppressive” because she would not leave her mother.

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.