Deserters’ tales a warning to Scientologist Peaches

Despite Peaches Geldof's announcement that she is a Scientologist, membership is declining in the cradle of the 'religion', America. The American Religious Identification Survey shows that between 2001 and 2008, the number of people claiming to be adherents to the Church of Scientology plummeted from 55,000 to 25,000.

Now, a series of chilling accounts from senior former members of the celebrity cult lays bare what awaits Peaches should she ever decide to join the thousands of apostates renouncing the cult. The stories, published in the Florida newspaper, the St Petersburg Times, read like the plots of Hollywood thrillers – which they will no doubt one day become.

According to the accounts, there are two ways to leave Scientology. You can 'route out', a months-long procedure of interrogations and often manual labour, which at least has the blessing of the church, or you can 'blow': that is, go on the run.

One of the whistleblowers, Gary Morehead, is a former security chief of the Church of Scientology’s international base in the desert east of Los Angeles, who developed the search and capture procedure used to bring back disaffected members. He tells how all staff at the base, except those in the the higher echelons, signed waivers allowing their mail to be opened and read.

Information such as credit card statements and dates of birth could be used later if these people ever tried to blow.

Two people who did make an unauthorised bid for freedom were Sinar Parman, once the chef of the church's founder L. Ron Hubbard, and his wife Jackie Wolff. Their first escape attempt in 1991 - a month after Parman cooked at Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's wedding - ended in failure after Morehead and his team caught up with the couple 500 miles away in Carson City, Nevada.

After agreeing to return to be ‘routed out’ properly, Parman and Wolff were returned to a rundown house in a swamp at their old base. After six months of ‘auditing’ interviews straight out of Orwell's Room 101, they agreed to stay and were assigned lowly jobs: he an electrician and she a gardener.

"You kind of start feeling better about yourself and you start feeling remorse for what you did," says Wolff. “It's like you've deserted your group, and how could you do that?"

Morehead also tells the tale of a Julie Caetano, a Scientology member who jumped into a contractor’s pickup truck and drove off. After a three-hour chase at speeds up to 100mph, Caetano escaped over a rutted field. However, she was tracked down the next day and agreed to return.

The Church of Scientology’s spokesman, Tommy Davis, dismissed the tales, telling the St Petersburg Times: “All you have is a few people who left a religion after committing destructive acts and are now complaining about what they did while in the church.”

Of the thousands of people who have left the church since 2001, few are likely to contradict that statement. The final act in ‘routing out’ is the signing of a declaration by the disaffected member absolving the church of any wrongdoing. When Wolff finally left in 2004, hers read: "I know that what I have done violated church policy and caused harm… I do not blame anyone else but myself." ·