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Date: March 28, 2024 05:42AM
A college friend dared me to take the infamous personality test once — but I knew what it was.
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3m7v5/how-i-escaped-the-church-of-scientologyWhen it comes to The Church of Scientology, you’ve most likely heard about both its celebrity followers and its wacky ideas about space battles (for example, Lord Xenu, the intergalactic warrior you can only get the full scoop on once you’ve climbed a paywall of courses worth many thousands of dollars).
You’ve likely heard a lot less, however, about the employees of the Church, who can be forced to work incredibly long hours for a tiny wage.
The man joined in his mid-twenties after reading a book about Dianetics, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s pseudoscientific theory about the relationship between the human mind and body. He then reached out to the Church and was encouraged to come in for a free personality test, a common recruitment method for the religion.
“I hadn’t ever heard anything about Scientology before that. I didn’t know what a cult was,” he told VICE. “They told me I was a complete mess, and that I needed to do some Scientology courses to sort myself out.”
At one point, the employee was sent to the Church of Scientology Flag Service Organisation in Clearwater, Florida, one of the main hubs for the religion. “They send you there to become trained. They consider that place to be the Mecca of Scientology,” he told VICE. Once he arrived, they took his passport off him so he was unable to leave.
Alongside a full training and course schedule, he also had to work to make up any shortfall for his living costs. “They were supposed to pay so much every week for your room and board. If they failed to pay then you would work to make up that amount. So you’d spend so much time every week, probably about 25 to 30 hours doing some physical job usually... I was quite lucky if I got six hours sleep. That was a good night.”
Eventually, he grew disillusioned with the religion. “I realised they weren’t helping anybody, they were just making money. I didn’t think it was right.”
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