“The Bad Cadet is the shocking and highly engaging account of a child’s life in Scientology. Katherine’s parents signed a billion year contract, putting aside all of their rights, to serve in Scientology’s Sea Organization. They also signed away Katherine’s rights at birth, tricked into believing that they were saving humanity. Katherine and her siblings grew up without parents, shipped away to a ranch run on military lines, without proper care or education, where they were taught to adulate Scientology’s fabulist creator Ron Hubbard, and forced into child labor. This poignant account is made even more remarkable by Katherine’s lack of bitterness and her eye for detail in a sequence of compelling events. She shows that even her indomitable spirit was almost cowed into belief in the bizarre ideas of Scientology’s narcissistic founder. Every reader will find this well-written book fascinating, but it will be especially useful to survivors of childhoods in authoritarian cults. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”

– Jon Atack, author of the best-selling history Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky:Scientology, The Cult of Greed and Opening Our Minds: Avoiding Abusive Relationships and Authoritarian Groups