Her once pristine reputation is publicly dragged through the mud, the police raid her home, her ex-husband tries to gain full custody of their children, and the multi-million dollar business she built from scratch is utterly destroyed. Michelle finally ends her horrific marriage, finds the love of her life, a woman, and ultimately leaves the Church. I ran into her on the airplane leaving New York City almost two years ago.For years, Michelle LeClair, former President of Scientology's international humanitarian organization, tried to reconcile her sexual orientation with the anti-gay ideology of the church. ![]() Of course, actress Leah Remini, who left Scientoloy in 2013, is amazing, she is extremely supportive. Other than that, I haven’t heard from anyone else inside the Church. I'm not aware of anyone who is openly living as gay in the Church. I think all of them are still with the Church - but not public with their sexuality. Since my defection, four female Scientologists have come out to me as gay. By 2011, I had stopped all communication with the Church and ceased making donations. Just a lot of back and forth with people filing reports on me. There was no official letter I sent severing ties with the Church, no phone call made. I was summoned to the Celebrity Centre, where an ethics officer told me the man had written a report claiming I was having inappropriate homosexual relations in public. I dropped Tena’s hand and she was like “Oh my God, what’s going on?” I said, “He just saw us!” She was like “What is wrong with this place!” I reached out to the Church five times for help seeking a divorce from what had become a tumultuous marriage. Eventually, he asked if I'd ever had an intimate experience before, and I told him, "Yes, with a woman." He tried to turn it into a sexual fantasy. I put off sex with him for as long as I could. In 1994, we got married in a traditional Scientology wedding with vows written by L. My mother said that in order for us to get married, he had to read a book by L. ![]() I met my now ex-husband not a year later through friends. But that was not where my attraction was, and I knew I was going to have to just deal with that. It felt sickening to sit there and think “OK, I have to go find a boyfriend, I have to physically be with a man.” I’m not saying there’s anything disgusting about men. The enemy in my case was homosexuality, and the blow to the enemy was to get a boyfriend. The next step was to do “a blow to the enemy” - that’s the phrase Scientologists use. ![]() I've done something wrong, but they're going to help me be better." And that's exactly what I thought Scientology was going to do. The Church is very good at breaking you down and building you back up, making you think, "I'm the bad one. But before I could be accepted back into the Church, the ethics officer said I needed 25 Scientology members to agree I should be forgiven for my actions. I decided I was not going to like girls anymore. "I don’t want to be thought of as somebody bad or devious." Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who said that homosexuals are the lowest of the low. The day prior, I’d told a Church ethics officer about a fling I'd had with my female high school friend. I was 19 years old, a new member of Scientology, and wandering the Centre begging for forgiveness. “I want to know what you’re doing to make up for this,” another man questioned, when I walked up to him. "Will you accept me back into the group?” “Excuse me, sir, I have a liability formula," I said. I nervously approached a man at the Church of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre in Hollywood and handed him a piece of paper. The Church denies her claims, telling they're "pure fiction." In her new memoir, Perfectly Clear, LeClair, a mother of four, says the Church targeted and humiliated her for being gay when she came out, ultimately leading to her defection. She claims to have donated an estimated $5 million to the Church and claims to have acted as a spokesperson when Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had a baby. For years, Michelle LeClair, 45, was a prominent member of the Church of Scientology.
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