This past week the Tampa Bay Times produced another expose about an FBI investigation into the Church of Scientology. It comes in the same week that Lawrence Wright's new book on the church, Going Clear, has been published.
In 2009, former Scientology member Nancy Many published her own memoir, called My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist. She's now featured in the first episode of a new series, Dangerous Persuasions, that kicks off Wednesday night on the Investigation Discovery channel (Channel 135 on Bright House, Channel 123 on Verizon Fios) at 10 p.m.
Here's a clip, in which segments of Many speaking to the camera are interspersed with dramatizations of her story that play like B-movie Hitchcock, complete with trenchcoats, thunderstorms and dark alleys.
CL spoke to Nancy Many Tuesday morning. Here are some extended excerpts. We began by asking her about working with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, which she did in the 1970s (she joined the church in 1971). What were her impressions of the man who created the movement?
Nancy Many: First off, I was very happy he wasn’t my father. I was close to several of his children personally, as well as an outsider just watching those dynamics. …to put that in context, I don’t know of any man who really, really made, did something that made a mark, whether for good or for bad, who had time to be a good father. So it was his time, and his own choice of priorities.
CL: Did you come across him much at that time when you were in Boston?
NM: When I was in Boston I worked [for the church], and there were a couple of projects that we worked on in Boston that Hubbard was directly on top of.
CL: You didn’t really encounter Hubbard too often when you were in Boston?
NM: No, no. But all the people I worked with were personally connected with him, including my first husband.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2013.