Rick Ross

One would be the FLDS, another would be the Kingston clan in Utah that also was guilty of this type of abuse. So, you know, there are about 50,000 people living in polygamist communities in North America. So that would be another group where things would go on inside the group that outsiders would not know, and that the group would control, and people suffered, in particular children.

Well, I would say we've touched upon the polygamist groups, and then there are, in my opinion, Scientology would be a group that I would be concerned about, even though there are many celebrities involved in it. It's a shrinking organization, but they still control a great many people, and they have an enormous amount of money and property that they control.

That group was started by L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer, who... you know, ultimately created a religion that has tax-exempt status in the United States and now is run by a man by the name of David Miscavige, who took over after L. Ron Hubbard died. And so there are prominent people involved in Scientology, like Tom Cruise, John Travolta.

Interestingly, I had always thought over the years that if a celebrity that was in Scientology left, and turned on them, that could be where celebrity recruitment, which often helped them, could be a two-edged sword that cut both ways. And that happened when Leah Remini, the sitcom star, left Scientology and started to speak out against them. And she has accomplished an enormous amount of good

basically explaining what's going on inside Scientology and how it affected her. And she was raised by Scientology parents to be a Scientologist. So that is an organization that that I look at quite a bit and get quite a few complaints about. And I would say that most of these groups are relatively small. They might have a few hundred followers. Some of them have a few thousand. Scientology,

might have 25 to 50,000 people involved at this point, though they claim to have many more people than that. And then there's the Unification Church, which was founded by Reverend Moon, which still exists within the United States and internationally, and has a very strong presence in Japan. So there are just, there's so many groups. And many of them recruit online.

They recruit through social media platforms. They have YouTube channels. They have Twitter X accounts. They're on Instagram. There's even a group led by Robert Shen, who had something called 7M Films and the Shekinah Church that is nicknamed the TikTok cult. because his followers, dancers and entertainers, do very popular videos on TikTok.

And Shin makes money from these people, and they live in group housing. And there's a documentary now on Netflix in which they allege that that this is a cult group, that they manipulate and control their members, and that they cause families to be cut off. And a number of people that were in the Shekinah Church and were associated with Robert Shinn have spoken out.

And then, you know, there are just so many of these groups, you know, it's hard to keep track of them. But I do try to create a, through the Cult Education Institute, a database where people can find information.

Well, in the case of David Miscavige, it's interesting because he was in his 20s when L. Ron Hubbard died. And he was like his gatekeeper. He was in full time as a Scientology graduate. member of staff and his job was to take care of and he was like a courier, a messenger for L. Ron Hubbard.

And he was able to use that position as gatekeeper to then promote himself into a position of absolute leader of Scientology. David Miscavige has held that position for many, many years. And I would, in my opinion, L. Ron Hubbard was not a nice guy, but probably an easier leader to deal with than David Miscavige, who many people that have left Scientology say is a very harsh person

a very punitive leader. And so I would say that in the case of Scientology, things seem to have gone from bad to worse under the leadership of David Miscavige. That's my view. And I think that even though he had the breakthrough of getting tax-exempt status for Scientology and building it as a financial empire that's certainly worth more than a billion dollars,

it's shrinking from the standpoint of membership. But there are these people that are called Sea Org members, the Sea Organization, SCA. And L. Ron Hubbard was in the Navy. And so he kind of fancied himself as a leader of a kind of naval organization. And at one time, he lived on a ship. with many of his loyal followers.

So what evolved is this organization of staff called the Sea Organization, and there are thousands of them, and they staff various facilities for Scientology, and their entire lives are controlled, monitored by Scientology. And by the way, I've testified as an expert in court regarding Scientology. And one of the most, and I've done a number of interventions to help people leave Scientology.

And I write about that in my book. And I think it's a very difficult organization for people to leave because if you have family in Scientology or friends, And there are people that have been raised in Scientology. Their whole life is Scientology. There's a policy called disconnection. which would be the extreme equivalent of what Jehovah's Witnesses call disfellowshipping.

In Scientology, it's called disconnection. And so they declare someone as what they call a suppressive person, and then you are to disconnect from them, which means it's over. You have nothing to do with them. And it's rumored that this is the reason that Nicole Kidman's adopted children, Connor and Isabella Cruz, have very little to do with her, because they were raised in Scientology.

And it's also been said that the reason that Katie Holmes left her marriage with Tom Cruise was because of Scientology, and that he has very little to do with his daughter Suri because of Scientology.

What do they believe? Scientology is really kind of a self-help organization, or that's how they sell themselves. So they have courses, they have curriculum, and you go through these ascending levels of First, you reach what they call clear, and then there are eight different levels above clear. They call them operating fate in level one, two, all the way to eight, OT8.

Tom Cruise, I think, is an OT7. John Travolta, an OT7. Jenna Elfman, I think, also an OT7. Danny Masterson, by the way, was in OT7. was very much involved in Scientology. And the women that he raped said that because they were Scientologists, this abuse did not come out for a number of years. And of course, eventually he was convicted. Now he's in prison.

So what Scientologists do is they go through what's called auditing, which is also referred to as a kind of spiritual counseling. and you sit with a person who is an auditor. You hold these metal cans, which are connected by wires to a box called an E-meter, which is really like part of a lie detector. It measures nervous tension in your hands, and it makes the needle move.