I fled Scientology aged 22 — now I spill its secrets on TikTok
Published By admin
Jenna Miscavige has long been one of Scientology’s most prominent defectors. The niece of the church’s leader, David Miscavige, she published a bestselling memoir in 2013, Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape, and has given dozens of interviews about her upbringing inside the movement.
More than a decade later, Miscavige is experiencing a new wave of attention — this time on TikTok.
Within a week of launching her account in mid-August, the 41-year-old mother of two from San Diego had amassed more than 200,000 followers and more than ten million views. Within a month, her follower count has reached 280,000. Her videos, which follow an interactive Q&A format, have gone viral by blending revealing details about her experience in Scientology with personal reflections on recovery from abuse.
“I’m putting myself out there,” she told The Times. “People know who I am. I’m a real person and that, to some degree, builds trust.”
Miscavige doesn’t shy away from addressing Scientology’s biggest names. Viewers pepper her with questions not just about daily life inside the church, but about its celebrities and contradictions. She has explained why she believes Tom Cruise enjoys privileges denied to ordinary members, and criticised what she sees as the hypocrisy of the actress Elisabeth Moss remaining in the church while playing a woman fighting authoritarian control in The Handmaid’s Tale.
In a statement provided by their lawyers Carter-Ruck, the Church of Scientology said that Miscavige’s claims were “categorically false”. It denied that it afforded special privileges for celebrities, and said any comparison to an authoritarian regime was “entirely baseless”.
To her new legion of followers, Miscavige is puncturing Scientology’s carefully curated image with every two-minute post. “Scientology is freaking out,” one commenter wrote.
For Miscavige, TikTok represents not only an opportunity to bring the church’s negative practices to the attention of a wider audience but a way to connect with others who have endured trauma. “For ex-cult members, or anyone who grew up in a high-control group, in an abusive family or the foster system, it’s the same healing process,” she said.
Born into a third-generation Scientology family, Miscavige was separated from her parents at the age of six, signed to the church’s militant Sea Org on a “billion-year contract”. She claims she was then put to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for as little as $12.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/jenna-miscavige-scientology-beyond-belief-book-tiktok-3rttdsk8q.
