If accounts are true, and there are so many varied stories from defectors chronicling a seriously messed up culture of violence all the way up the church’s hierarchy, this is one of the most disturbing details of an organization still largely shrouded in mystery. There have been numerous reports featured on CNN and other media outlets reporting on the troubling allegations that leaders in the Church of Scientology use physical violence as a form of punishment. These allegations extend all the way to David Miscavige himself, whom most point to as the source of this strange culture of seemingly random violence towards subordinates.
It’s one area where for all the open-mindedness one can show towards the Church’s methods for self-improvement and general teachings, keeping members in line with the organization’s authoritative structure through the use of physical enforcement is just wrong. If it were operating the same way as a really intense, lifelong self-help course, liberating people from their neuroses as well as their cash, it would be one thing, but efforts to control and intimidate through threats against a person’s body crosses the line between ordinary financial villainy and gruesome sociopathic supervillainy. Ethan Hunt would have no part of such a corrupt institution.
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