Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology

by Leah Remini

In businesses run by Scientologists, lack of experience, age, or education didn’t seem to matter.

For example, I was told that if she got hurt, I was not to react but perform a Contact Assist, which “consists of putting an injured body part exactly on and in the place it was injured.” So if she hit

her leg on the corner of the coffee table, I was supposed to remain quiet and gently touch the hurt part of her leg to the exact spot on the table where she hit it—and continue to repeat that action until she said it was better. Instead, the second I heard Sofia crying from a fall or bang, I was shouting, “Are you okay? Mommy will kiss it better.” I refused to raise Sofia in a way that would make her incompatible with the rest of the world as I felt I was, and as were many second-generation Scientologists.

Occasionally, I would have flashbacks to that nightmare period of my life when as a teenager I was ripped from everything I knew in Brooklyn only to end up cleaning hotel rooms at Flag. After I returned, every time I ate dinner in one of the hotel restaurants I remembered how I used to steal food because I was so hungry. During one of my sessions at Flag, I gave this up as a transgression and my auditor asked how much I thought I owed to make up the damage for the food I stole twenty years earlier. “I don’t know,” I said. “How much was custard and hamburgers for three months in the eighties?” “Well, let’s just round it up to forty thousand dollars. Okay?” Forty thousand dollars? I was dumbfounded, but I was also trying to get onto my OT levels so I paid the church forty thousand dollars for this transgression.

With that, I got up and left. On the drive home, I called Julian, just as he had asked me to do and told him everything that had happened, which was nothing. When I got home, however, there waiting for me was a representative of the Office of Special Affairs, the legal branch of the church. For an hour or so, the OSA person grilled me on exactly what had been said and by whom, all the while taking notes that he slipped into a black briefcase before leaving. When I closed the door behind him, I was devastated because, as per the church, that would be the end of my friendship with Sherry. I felt I had no choice.

Like when he invited some Scientologists and a few other celebrities like Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, to his house and announced he wanted to

In the church, though, Tom’s status only grew, despite his public behavior. He followed his Oprah appearance with his even more infamous one on the Today show, where in an interview with Matt Lauer he chastised Brooke Shields for taking psychopharmaceuticals to deal with postpartum depression. The church’s response was to hold a huge event for him at the Shrine Auditorium to present how prescriptions for Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs were down something like 500 percent, thanks to Tom and his recent comments. According to the church,

After a few days, Kevin called over to Missing Persons to check on the status of the report. That’s when a detective told him that someone from the unit had spoken to the church’s lawyer, who said Shelly was fine and didn’t want to be found. Kevin asked the detective if anyone had spoken directly to Shelly. “No,” the detective answered. “We spoke to the attorney.” Then she cut the conversation short and said she couldn’t answer any more of his questions. “We’re done here,” she said.

Shelly still hasn't been seen to this day.