By Milo Haskour —
Joy Villa, born into a Christian family, joined Scientology for 15 years, where she became a leader, was exploited, exploited others and gave almost $2M.
Now she’s out.
“I will never go back,” she vows in Evie magazine. “Scientology is not a self-help system. It’s a control system. At the center of it is auditing, which is presented as spiritual counseling but functions far closer to an interrogation technique. You sit across from an auditor with an E-meter, answering deeply personal questions. Nothing shared in auditing is ever truly confidential. Files follow you forever.”
Developed by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology masquerades as quasi religion with special emphasis on getting free from traumas. People rank up in levels in pursuit of the emotional freedom, but its services are expensive. From its beginning, Scientology recruits celebrities, whom it converts in spokespersons to dress it with an attractive face.
“My face was everywhere. Posters of me lined Scientology churches. I was used as proof that it worked,” says the girl who famously wore a pro-Trump dress. “I walked the Grammy Awards red carpet multiple times. I had Billboard number-one hits. I appeared on countless national and international news outlets. I was visible, successful, and influential. And Scientology took credit for all of it.”
In Scientology, Joy hoped to find joy. Instead, she became enmeshed in frustration and distress.
Right when she was reaching the highest spiritual enlightenment, she was completely broken.
“At Saint Hill Manor in the United Kingdom, Scientology’s global headquarters, (I was) completing my Operating Thetan Preps. OT is sold as the pinnacle of spiritual attainment. God-like awareness. Total freedom,” she recalls.
“What I experienced instead was the darkest spiritual state of my life. I was mentally depleted, spiritually numb, emotionally unraveling, deeply depressed,” she adds. “I no longer wanted to live. I was spiritually bankrupt.”
Finally, Joy fled back to her family in America and stayed clear of Scientology as she prayed to the God she knew in her youth.
“For the first time in years, I was not being monitored. Not audited. Not evaluated. Not extracted from,” she says. And God began to heal me.”
God answered her anguished prayers: Leave Scientology. No confusion. No fear. No bargaining. Just truth.
She got re-baptized into Christianity.
Scientology tells Christians they can keep Jesus while practicing its doctrine. I believed that lie for years,” Joy says. “But Scientology does not coexist with Christianity. It replaces it. It removes sin, removes repentance, removes grace, removes the cross. It replaces salvation with self-perfection, God with hierarchy, and truth with secrecy.“
Today, Joy leads The Fearless Joy Foundation to help others “escape cult abuse, recover from spiritual trauma, and rebuild their lives with truth, dignity, and faith,” she says.
“Leaving cost me years. But it gave me something infinitely more valuable: my soul, my faith, my freedom in Jesus Christ,” she says. “I will never go back.”
This article was first published on Pilgrim Dispatch.
