10 Jaw-Dropping Revelations From Leah Remini's Scientology Tell-All, Troublemaker

Children are largely left on their own in Scientology. "In Scientology, minors are considered spiritual beings and not children in need of protection and guidance. You are the only one responsible for the condition of your life, regardless of your age. The Sea Org members believed that their kids could make up their own minds. As a result, these kids could no longer live with their parents.... Even if that meant they ended up practically squatting, or sleeping in a stranger's apartment, their parents felt that it was the child's decision to make."

Childbirth is expected to be a near silent experience in Scientology. "Scientologists espouse the concept of 'silent birth,' which LRH described in Dianetics as providing an environment where no one—not even the doctors or nurses in the room—talks during the delivery. It's because in times of pain, loss, or unconsciousness, 'words, in particular, spoken during these moments, can have an adverse effect on one later in life.' Women can make sounds during birth; they just aren't supposed to say any words."

Remini was forced to steal food as a teenage Sea Org member because she was hungry—and Scientology made her pay for it years later. "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 20 years earlier. 'I don't know,' I said. 'How much was custard and hamburgers for three months in the '80s?' 'Well, let's just round it up to $40,000. Okay?'... I was dumbfounded, but I was also trying to get onto my OT levels, so I paid the church $40,000 for this transgression."

Moving up in Scientology requires hundreds of thousands of dollars. "Having grown up a Scientologist, I knew firsthand the financial sacrifice that the church demands of its ordinary practitioners...On a more personal level, I had watched my whole family struggle to move up the Bridge. They were $250,000 in debt at this point. The fact that people making average salaries of $50,000 a year somehow find a way to pay the $500,000 necessary to get on their OT levels—frankly, it's a superhuman task. The level of dedication is astonishing and admirable, but over the long term it means financial destruction for a lot of people and families."

Tom Cruise doesn't like premade cookie dough or chipped coffee mugs. "People were terrified of offending Tom, and not without reason. Once when Angelo and I were over, Tom decided he wanted to make cookies. He walked into the kitchen, where a batch of prepackaged cookie dough had been prepared and was sitting on the counter, a perfect loaf ready for cutting and baking. Tom was looking for flour and other ingredients and must not have seen the cookie dough, and he instantly got angry.... 'Goddamn it!'... I thought about the time a friend had mentioned to me that she witnessed him taking his assistant to task for giving him a chipped coffee mug. 'You served me tea in a chipped mug? Do you know who gets served with a mug that's chipped? F—king DBS,' he said, using the initials for 'Degraded Being,' a term in Scientology that means degraded spiritual being.