Background: This photo shows the Flag Super Power Building owned by the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)./ Inset: Whitney Mills. Photo via Facebook.
The mother of a Florida woman who died by suicide has slapped the Church of Scientology with a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging the church “brainwashed” her daughter who struggled with her mental health, into thinking traditional therapy or medical treatments were “unnecessary and abhorrent.”
Whitney Mills, 40, of Clearwater, died by suicide in May 2022, according to the civil lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County.
Leila Mills alleges the church knew quite well that her daughter — who was among the highest ranks in the church after shelling out “hundreds of thousands of dollars to attain her status,” the lawsuit claims — was struggling to cope.
But “upon learning of her problems, the Scientology defendants took control of Mills’ medical care, thus foreclosing her from obtaining the exact treatment she needed,” her family claims.
Instead, she was “misinformed and misdiagnosed with Lyme disease and a cancerous ovarian cyst” while the church, and specifically one doctor was “largely ignoring her very real psychosis and mental health crisis.”
Whitney Mills was “extorted” by the church, her mother says, and everything the church “foisted” on her daughter was “outside the field of mental health treatment, and everything failed,” the family’s attorney Ramon Rasco wrote.
Stopped from seeking any real help, Whitney Mills “felt she had no other choice,” but to kill herself.
“Not only did they not properly care for her, contrary to the duty they undertook, they actually suggested she ‘drop the body,”” the lawsuit emphasizes repeatedly, using a phrase coined by Church of Scientology leaders including founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The phrase means suicide or death or to leave one’s corporal body, according to the lawsuit.
