If these people were so reprehensible, I asked, how had they all arrived at such elevated positions in the church? “They weren’t like that when they were in those positions,” Davis replied. The defectors we were discussing had not only risen to positions of responsibility within the church; they had also ascended Scientology’s ladder of spiritual accomplishment. I suggested that Scientology didn’t seem to be effective if people at the highest levels of spiritual attainment were actually liars, adulterers, wife beaters, drunks, and embezzlers.
