PERFECTLY CLEAR

A high-profile former Scientology member tells the story of how she came to terms with her homosexuality and found the courage to leave the organization.

Oklahoma native LeClair first came into contact with Scientology after her mother took a consulting job with a management firm that encouraged her to take Scientology “self-improvement courses.” Soon she was encouraging her 17-year-old daughter to forgo her plans for college and work full-time at her company. Pressured from the start to join Scientology, the author finally began sessions with a Scientologist minister after a traumatic car crash. She then underwent “Security Checks” to determine her fitness for Scientology membership, during which she obliquely admitted to having experienced same-sex attraction. To move out of what Scientologists called “Lower Conditions” that would impede her spiritual progress, LeClair was tasked with finding a boyfriend. So she married a man she helped convert to Scientology three years later. The author struggled in private with both her sexuality and an abusive marriage, but she thrived professionally, “making money hand over fist” in the insurance industry while serving as volunteer president of the church’s Youth for Human Rights organization. Though she was a poster child for Scientology, her relationship to the church soured when she tried to divorce her husband. A generous donor, it was only after LeClair had spent large sums on useless “auditing”—the church equivalent of therapy—and threatened to withhold future funds that she was able to divorce. Then she fell in love with another woman and became the target of a Scientology “Black Propaganda campaign” designed to ruin her and her business. An unrepentant LeClair left Scientology in 2011, but her nightmarish battle, which included protracted legal wrangling over accusations of fraud, would not be over for years. As courageous as it is honest, the author’s tell-all book offers disturbing insights into the inner workings of a church that is as controversial as ever.

A gripping narrative perfect for those seeking more information after reading Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear.