I investigated them in person in early 2000.
Their primary income is from selling courses, except that the courses are primarily you telling someone else all your deep dark secrets, over and over and over again. A short course will start at around $5000, and gradually increase in duration and price as you become free of your inner worries.
I did an introduction course and then booked and paid for a first level course. I changed my mind before taking the course and requested a refund. It took two months for the refund but that process involved daily phone calls, interviews, and lie detector tests (to ensure I wasn’t working for the FBI or CIA). Oh and enormous patience.
After they reluctantly gave me the refund I was promptly expelled from taking part in their organization again. That was nearly 3 years ago and I have been receiving about 3 pieces of mail from them every week ever since, despite my calling them and pointing out that they expelled me so their literature isn’t applicable to me.
It seems one doesn’t pay for courses, you make donations instead, and donations to registered charities are not normally refundable. Subtle, but their course booking forms didn’t state that and I hadn’t signed any contract that stated that, hence I had a way out. Also, if they had had any suspicion that I worked for a newspaper, a police agency, or government agency then they would have refused to talk with me.
Overall a nice bunch of people who are incredibly paranoid about their bad reputation, especially in the UK and Germany where I think they have been outlawed. There is an alleged sinister side to their activities where some of the auditing sessions are recorded and there are accusations that senior staff use the ‘confessions’ against their victims.
There are many reports about victims who have had nervous breakdowns and have felt incredibly vulnerable after having confessed many deep secrets to effectively strangers, and have paid for the privilege. The sums of money involved are grotesque.
I found myself feeling quite disturbed after having spent some time with this organization. This is definitely something to avoid at any cost. Their up front salespeople use hard sell tactics that are difficult to fight. Once you are hooked then you will spend a great deal of money, often to be humiliated.
Oh yes, at one of my final exit interviews I was asked if I was open-minded. But I was shown one of their dictionaries that defined open-minded. I thought this was fabulous – effectively their definition says that if you can’t accept Scientology then you can’t be open–minded. Sounds to me that as soon as you limit what can and can’t be considered open-minded then the effect is to define narrow minded. They didn’t see my point, of course.
Stay away – a potential and probable sinister and dangerous organization.