Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath is a show about exposing Scientology and the harm it has caused families.

Leah Remini, an American actress,  has always been public about being a part of the Scientology religion, but she abruptly left the church after years of questioning the religion’s treatment of followers under the leadership of David Miscavige.

Scientology is a body of religious beliefs and practices developed in 1954 by American author L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard initially developed a program of ideas called Dianetics, which was distributed through the Dianetics Foundation. It has gotten a lot of attention recently as celebrities come out talking about being a part of the religion.  

“No one is going to tell me how I need to think, no one is going to tell me who I can, and cannot, talk to,”  Remini  explained about her her departure.

Ever since she left, it has been her mission to expose Scientology.

On Leah Remini’s show, she meets with people who have left the church.  Her show’s guests have shared their side of the story and the impact the church has had on their everyday lives.

One guest is Oluremi “Mimi” Faust,  who is also one of the stars of VH1’s popular show Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta.  Mimi stunned the show’s largely African-American audience when she revealed that she had been abandoned at 13 by her mother, who was a Scientologist.

Faust’s mother, Olaiya Odufunk, was a part of the “ Sea org” community,” which is known as an extremist Scientology organization. It quickly changed Odufunke as a mother from once loving and caring to heartless and cold.

When it came time for Faust to sign a contract at the age of thirteen to dedicate her life to Scientology, she refused to sign it.  The members of the “Sea Org” kicked her out and left her homeless on the street while her mother did nothing but watch her young daughter be thrown out onto the streets.

Even on her mother’s death bed, she couldn’t get a moment alone with her. A member of the “Sea Org” was right there and refused to leave the room. So Odufunke whispered a poem to her daughter as an apology for everything that had happened.

During,the second season premiere of A&E’s Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, two women born into Scientology gave their accounts of sexual abuse at the hands of members of the church and alleged that other church members shunned them when they shared what had happened.

Saina Kamula said that she began attending the Scientology-run Apollo Training Academy, which is a school for Scientology. She was 8, she says, when a teacher took her under his wing, only to begin touching her inappropriately and kissing her on the neck.

When she told her mother she didn’t want to go to that school, Kamula recalls, “She didn’t ask me why. She just said, ‘You’re being counter-intentional to my dreams, to my purpose.’”

Mirriam Francis said she was molested by her Scientologist father between the ages of 3 and 5 and again starting when she was 7. During an audit, she revealed her father as a suppressive person or an enemy of the church.  

The auditor chuckled and stated, “That can’t be right. He’s a Sea Org member, pick somebody else.”  

Tom Cruise has been a major famous face of Scientology. Cruise campaigned for Scientology to be recognized as a religion in Europe.  

In 2005, the Paris City Council revealed that Cruise had lobbied officials Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Gaudin and described him as a spokesman and militant for Scientology.

As the show goes on, more people will speak up about what they experience while being apart of Scientology and hopefully more will be done as time goes on.