The Church of Scientology is facing two major battles, as the niece of the cult's leader has gone public about bizarre rituals she was forced to endure while an anonymous group begins an online war.
Jenna Hill Miscavige, 24, the daughter of David's older brother Ron, recently came out in support of Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, and slammed the star for "supporting a religion that tears apart families, both in the media and monetarily".
Since then, Jenna claims she's been subjected to harassment, report the NY Post.
"The church has contacted several of my friends, telling them that I am smearing the church and I am going to be declared a suppressive person and asking my friends if they would disconnect from me and, in at least one case, insisting that they do," Jenna said.
"At least eight friends have removed themselves from my MySpace page," she said, and blames the church for it.
Jenna, who was raised as a Scientologist, attacked the religion in an open letter to a senior sect official, praising the Andrew Morton book.
A Scientology spokeswoman blasted the 24-year-old.
"I am absolutely shocked at how vehemently you insist upon not only denying the truths that have been stated about the church in that biography, but then take it a step further and tell outright lies," the spokeswoman said.
Jenna's parents were also Scientologists but left in 2000. She stayed on as a member until 2005, during which time she says she was kept in a boarding school, only allowed to see her parents once a year and subjected to a bizarre daily regimen.
"If you flunked your uniform inspection, sometimes if you were late you would be dumped with a five-gallon bucket of ice water," she tells Recchia, a former Post reporter.
"We were also required to write down all transgressions . . . similar to a sin in the Catholic religion. After writing them all down, we would receive a meter check on the Electropsychometer to make sure we weren't hiding anything, and you would have to keep writing until you came up clean. This is from the age of 5 until I was 12."
Meanwhile, an anonymous group have launched an online war, threatening to destroy the cult. They have released an eerie video on YouTube with their mission statement.
Just recently they released a second video, appealing to the cult's members to break free and think for themselves.
So far the group have managed to create havoc for by crashing the Church of Scientology's international website.
It's also pledged to a sustained campaign of "Google bombing" - manipulating the way the internet search engine works so that whenever anyone enters the search words "dangerous cult" the Church of Scientology appears as the first link.
The group started their campaign when YouTube removed the bizarre Tom Cruise initiation video.
Anonymous allege that Scientologists forced YouTube to delete the highly embarrassing footage.
