A few short years ago, Michelle LeClair was the “poster girl for Scientology.” She was an ardent supporter of the controversial church, even donating around $5 million!
Then she came out as a gay woman. And everything changed.
Related: Jenna Elfman Credits Scientology With Her 23-Year Marriage
As she writes in her new memoir, Perfectly Clear, the church is NOT cool with homosexuality and never has been:
“L. Ron Hubbard considered homosexuals and other ‘perverts’ as ‘evil, untrustworthy, a criminal.'”
In the new issue of People, Michelle details in an excerpt that after first opening up about her feelings she felt she was punished:
“I had to go around to all the members inside the church, confess to them what I was thinking, what I was doing. People would look at me in the face and say, ‘You are disgusting.'”
Ugh. What is it with religion and homophobia? Where are the LGBT-friendly religions??
She says she had to swear she’d never acted on the feelings.
Eventually, facing church pressure, Michelle married an actor named Sean Seward, with whom she then had three children.
Years later, when she spoke to him about her experience with a high school girlfriend, she writes he actually turned her in!
So finally she left the church — and that’s when things got really scary:
“From the moment I decided to publicly leave, my life unspooled as if I were in a suspense novel. Strange cars idled at the curb by my home at all hours of the day. Men wearing dark glasses followed me to the grocery store, my kids’ school. My computer and my phone [were] hacked.”
Michelle was charged with running a Ponzi scheme through her insurance company, and forced by the state of California to shut down her business and return $1.3 million to 40 people; and she thinks the Church of Scientology is to blame.
“I had heard how vindictive the church could be, [that] they used the courts to bleed people dry with litigation. Still, I hadn’t been prepared for the force of their retaliation. Now the government had accused me of a felony? My thoughts ran wild.”
After six years, in 2017 the court dropped all criminal charges against Michelle — after she was already millions in debt.
The Church of Scientology released a statement in response to Michelle’s claims, saying she’s not as “innocent” as the portrait she paints:
“Ms. LeClair has not been involved with the Church of Scientology in a decade. The civil and criminal cases stemming from her financial misdeeds, which resulted in a permanent injunction and restitution order signed by a Superior Court Judge… and a plea agreement with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, were of her own making.
Contrary to the myths spread by Ms. LeClair and her publishers as they try to sell her book, the Church has no position on sexual orientation. The Church is on record as being opposed to discrimination of any sort.”
What do YOU think of these claims?
Perfectly Clear hits bookstores on September 11.
[Image via WENN/Michelle LeClair/Instagram.]
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