Lawrence Wright on Scientology: the toothless pole job

A QUOTE from Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. Lawrence Wright’s Book on Scientology, as selected by Mike Kinsley:

Among the horrors Wright either uncovers or borrows (with credit) from previous Scientology exposés in Time magazine and The St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay) Times is “the Hole,” a hellish double-wide trailer parked at a California resort owned by the church. Forty or 50 people were housed there with no furniture or beds, eating leftovers, enduring cold-hose group showers. There are stories of people being beaten; and lots of stories of forced divorces, mandatory “disconnections” — orders not to talk with a spouse or friend who has offended in some way. But only once in 430 pages filled with lurid anecdotes did my skeptical antennas start to twitch. Wright asserts that someone was punished by being “made to run around a pole in the desert for 12 hours a day, until his teeth fell out.” Really? That’s the first thing that happens when you run in circles in the desert all day? I need to know more. How many days are we talking about? Did they let him floss?

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Anorak

Posted: 21st, January 2013 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)