After spending more than two decades being what he calls "brainwashed" by the Church of Scientology, Co. Cork native John Duignan believes that A list movie star and noted Scientologist Tom Cruise is the reason why Amazon U.K. stopped selling his exposé about life in the "cult."

Duignan, who spoke to the Irish Voice from Cork City last week, spent most of his adult life under the rigorous "control of Scientologists," and after "he started to piece things together" he escaped their clutches and created a tell-all book on his "outrageous and terrifying" experiences during his 22 years of what he describes as "total brainwashing."

Days after his 318-page book "The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology" (published by Irish-based Merlin) went on sale through Amazon.co.uk, the site stopped selling the book. Amazon, in a statement, said that a man claimed he was defamed in the book with "false claims" and they were forced to remove the book for their website.

"U.K. law gives us no choice but to remove the title from our catalogue," Amazon said in a statement. Cruise's rep also denied Duignan's charge.

Duignan says this is a "load of rubbish."

"It was Tom Cruise's recent visit to Amazon headquarters in Seattle that put a stop to the sale of my book," he said.

Cruise, a proud and open Scientologist, visited the Amazon headquarters in Seattle three days after the book went on sale through the site on October 31, 2008. He allowed senior staff a sneak peak at his new movie "Valkyrie," which opens on Christmas Day.

"I know how covert operations work within the organization," said Duignan, suggesting that Cruise, who he believes received orders from the top, was in Seattle to make sure his book doesn't get the exposure it deserves.

"No negative book on Scientology is out there because they have stopped them all. Mine will be the first of its kind revealing the truth behind the cult," Duignan said emotionally.

Duignan's story had a sad beginning. Born in Scotland to a Cork mother and a Scottish father, he was soon orphaned when his father took his own life after years of suffering from mental illness, and his mother died from a reaction to medication for asthma six months later. He went to live with his aunt and uncle in Cork for the remainder of his youth.

"I was a troubled teenager," admits the ex-Scientologist. "I had huge emotional problems."

After several years traveling around the globe with a Christian drama group from Cork, Duignan made a trip to Germany to find work and maybe even a little hope.

"It was 1984, an economically depressed time, nothing was happening in Ireland," he said.

After settling in to what he described as a "very nice place," Duignan fell in love and found work as a laborer. During a stroll through Stuttgart in the summer of 1985, he thought he stumbled on "the answer to everything."

On a street in the German town, the Irish lost soul encountered people who he felt "really knew him." They were Scientologists.

After completing a personality test, it was revealed to him that his new friends understood his pain, where it was coming from and they could help. Music to Duignan's ears! Finally he had discovered a way to alleviate the anguish of his past.

"I was quite taken that they could read my personality. It felt like they could see into my head and see the psychological trauma I had been going through," said Duignan.

Completely in awe of this new group of people offering the chance of happiness, Duignan was prepared to do whatever it took to feel complete.

Over the course of the next four weeks, Duignan became obsessed with his newfound church. He broke up with his girlfriend, lost contact with all his family and friends and spent every day from early sunrise to midnight with the Scientologists.

"Those weeks I was undergoing various training routines at a very hypotonic level," he explained.

During this time, Duignan was introduced to the concept that he had lived in other lifetimes. "This was fascinating to me, I really did wonder if I had lived other lives," he said.

Soon, the Scientologist beliefs became his.

"Everything was becoming real," he said, including the belief that he was a descendant from an alien called Xenu.

Duignan admits after a few weeks into the process he had a total mental breakdown. "I can't remember much of that time but I strongly remember the desire to kill myself," he said.

After two months of intensive therapy to "get him out of it," he was back to himself - but this time fully convinced that Scientology had saved his life and that he was in it for the long haul.

"They had me, I was gone," he said.

And the long haul he sure committed to. Duignan spent the next 22 years of his life traveling the world promoting the church and carrying out various Scientology duties.

After a number of weeks in Germany, Duignan was given the option to buy the "Bridge to Clear," a necessary path to "total freedom." "They tried to get me to buy the Bridge to Clear for 30,000 deutschmarks, ($20,000)," said Duignan.

After telling them he didn't have that kind of money, they "suggested" he seek an early inheritance. That not being possible, Duignan took the long road of crossing the Bridge to Clear by becoming a staff member and a student.

After a month of working on the reception desk at the church in Stuttgart, a call from an American woman in the U.K. set him on a stricter course again.

"The woman asked me why an Irish man was in Germany," Duignan said.

The lady urged Duignan to move to England and become a member of the Sea Organization, or Sea Org, an association of Scientologists established in 1968 by L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer who founded Scientology. The Sea Org controls the Scientology empire.

Duignan, flattered, found himself in Southern California that October following strict paramilitary regimes similar to the army.

Sea Org's organizational structure is an odd mixture of military and corporate ways. Sea Org members live together, work together, eat together and are not allowed to marry outside of the organization. Critics believe that the Sea Organization is one of the most abusive groups in the world.

"We were up at 7 a.m. running around the place and spent five intensive hours each day studying the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard. We were being brainwashed day in day out and I never knew it," added Duignan.

"The Scientology council gets into your head, messes with your mind and totally undermines your self, creating a further dependency on Scientology."

Duignan counts at least 20 friends through the years that took their own lives or "went insane" because of Scientology. "They got in everyone's mind and some people just couldn't be saved," he said, acknowledging his own lucky escape.

Convinced on a daily basis that he was part of an intergalactic brigade that would come back in a different life to fight the "evil psychiatrists in the world," Duignan spent 24 hours a day living in what he describes as a "closed cult."

Explaining that there was a tight system of political control, Duignan or other scientologists were not allowed access to television, newspapers or the Internet.

Always knowing in his gut that something didn't feel right, Duignan had doubts like everyone else. "They knew when you doubted them and there was a very specific routine to get you 'right again,'" he said.

Duignan recalls being told repeatedly that people in the outside world were nothing but "degraded beings" or "wogs" as Hubbard used to call them.

"They stole our brains," he said, angrily.

It was in 2000, when Duignan, who by this time was a high-ranking member of the organization, began to really ask questions. He explains, "I had to meet a woman (an ex-Scientologist) who was threatening to sue the church. I had to give her half a million sterling to buy her off."

She accepted the money and never pursued her lawsuit. "I knew it wasn't right," Duignan admitted.

However, he pressed on with his work and dedication to the church and set aside his critical thinking. After all, Hubbard made it clear in his teachings that critical thinking was wrong.

During the next few years, while based in Sussex, England, Duignan was afforded more freedom. By now he was a trusted and loyal member of the church for over two decades.

He began running the transport division of the Sussex church. "The more time I spent away from them the more I was getting my own mind back," he said.

Realizing his deep affection for children, Duignan would take the kids, or "adults with small bodies," as they are known in Scientology teachings, on little day trips to a horse riding stable.

"You have to remember these kids grew up with military training and internal schooling. They knew no better," he said. "It all just felt wrong to me. Their parents were often sent away to America on ethics programs for three or four years and they never saw them."

In 2005, Duignan was promoted to a full Sea Org ranking officer and moved to Birmingham. "Now I had full reign," he said.

His new role was in the public relations division of the organization. He soon began doing volunteer work with the local council and disadvantaged groups.

"I used to teach in an after school club teaching drama, theater and then I'd slip in some Scientology teaching subtly," he admitted, saying this was the way they worked, get into the kids' minds at an early age.

It was during this time that Duignan became more curious about human beings and their basic good nature and complexities. His mind was becoming clearer and clearer.

The final straw for Duignan was in March 2005 when he attended the International Association of Scientologist's annual gathering at the Saint Hill Manor, the original house of Hubbard in England and headquarters of Scientology in England. Cruise, Nancy Cartwright and John Travolta to name but a few attended the event. Cartwright donated $10 million to the church soon after the event.

"This was becoming too much," said Duignan, realizing, after years of brainwashing, that the organization was money driven all this time.

A few more months had passed and Duignan got a call from his relations in Cork, who he hadn't seen in nearly 22 years, that his uncle was dying. He made the trip home.

"In my whole 22 years I only ever got five weeks holidays," he said.

"After arriving in Kinsale (Cork), I realized I was being kept away from this beauty. I just loved it here. I cared about this place so much, and the very cold world I had been living through the years kept me from this," he said.

It was then Duignan knew it was now or never. He had to get out.

Worried about his safety and his future, Duignan hatched a plan. He returned to Birmingham to take care of some unfinished business.

"By this stage I was really connecting the dots, something I had never done before," he said.

Weeks later he finally snuck away one early morning, telling his superiors that he had to return to Ireland for a funeral. "I left at 5 a.m. that morning and found a safe house over a pub in Birmingham," Duignan recalls.

When he didn't return on the date he said he would, people in higher ranks became worried. They posted two men outside his aunt's home in Cork awaiting his arrival.

"If they knew where I was they would kidnap me and send me back for 'rehabilitation' at St. Hill, which was a prison camp where they control your mind," he described. "I saw it done many times."

Knowing he had to do something, Duignan sent an e-mail to the organization saying, "If you follow me I will sue."

Though extremely scared, he then made it his business to present himself at a cafZ where he knew a senior executive in the organization had coffee every morning. "I walked right past him and he tried to follow me but I got on a train," said Duignan.

That same evening, the two men in the car were no longer seen outside his aunt's house in Cork.

Duignan returned to Ireland and spent the next several months hiding out all over the country and at the same time trying to find himself.

"I had been severely conditioned for 22 years. There were so many bad, horrible and evil things that happened to me and others alike," he said.

Duignan, who completed his book with the help of Irish journalist Nicola Tallant, has undergone serious counseling. He is currently studying for an arts degree at University College Cork, where psychology is one of his majors, and he is in a loving relationship.

"I'm finally finding my own self," he said.

His book "The Complex" is currently available through Eason's bookstore in Ireland or on their website at www.eason.ie. Although the book has been removed from amazon.co.uk, it should be available through amazon.com. However, the website says it is currently "out of stock."