They'll harass, even kidnap, their apostates. Throw nuisance lawsuits at them. Brainwashing is incredible. It's believed--not proven--that the personal secrets gleaned from their "auditing" (counseling) procedures are used to manipulate, intimidate, even blackmail people into staying with the cult.
All this is what I've read from several years ago. They haven't been in the news lately, so I don't know if those things are current. But what they do (or did) far exceeds a 40-question TR interview, HV/VT/"ministry" visits and leaving cupcakes on the doorstep.
You obviously have never been a missionary who gets seriously ill on a mission. I was told it was better to come home in a box than to come home early. I got locked up in the mission home and not allowed to see a doctor. The mission president didn't want his record of no early returns ruined because it made him visible for future promotions to GA
Scientology is far more coercive, but also far smaller, and its reputation much worse. Mormonism can therefore be said to be a more successful cult.
Mormonism has appx 4.5 million actives, while Scientology is down to as low as a reported 20,000 active.
Although Scientology has managed to intimidate the IRS (no mean feat), it doesn't puppeteer any U.S. states, and has no U.S. senators or congressional reps to do its bidding.
Back in the first years of the internet, I would get inquiries from 'agents' of scientamaleogy asking if I were available to handle inquiries for them.
I also had some contact with anti-scientamaleogists, asking me whose side I was on. I was told stories about the reckless and feckless activity of those who supported scientamaleogy.
I suppose that as time, and the internet, went on, both sides became ever so much more sophisticated.
“Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology” by Leah Remini is a great resource for learning the truth about scientology.
As has happened with many of us exmos, Leah was a sincere believer going along with things that to an outsider clearly appear wrong… until she stumbled across some awful truths about scientology that shocked her and angered her. She felt overwhelmingly betrayed after years of loyalty to an organization that she now realized never had merited her trust.
When I saw Going Clear and Leah Remini's scientology tv series, I mistakenly believed that ex-Scientologists had far more resource to combat the damage done by their religion than ex-Mormons have to combat the damages caused by Mormonism. I really emphasized with Leah and her colleague in this podcast who appear to be the only resource that scientologists have to disconnect from and heal from their cult. At least the ex-mormons know how to organize and concentrate their larger resource pool to bring about change, even if the church leaders in Salt Lake need to go screaming and kicking as their empire crumbles when they refuse to change.
The aggregate damage done by Mormonism is worse than the aggregate damage caused by Scientology. I hope that John Dehlin can work with Leah's people to come up with some resources that might be helpful to everyone who has been harmed by a cult. And it looks like the Jehovas Witnesses have less to work with than those leaving scientology do.
L.Ron Hubbard's 'Dianetics' books are even more incomprehensible than Joseph's 'marvelous work and a wonder'In Hubbard's defense/favor, at least he didn't argue that the garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.