After having discovered her father’s dead body at the age of 9, the late Lisa Marie Presley was so traumatized that she joined the Scientology church to help “cure” her.

Karen De La Carriere, a high-ranking member of the church who was known as the ‘Queen of Scientology’ told Daily Mail that Priscilla Presley, who became a member of the Scientology church to Elvis’s sudden death in 1977, used the church to help control her daughter’s behavioral problems.

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Lisa Marie, who died of cardiac arrest last week Thursday, at the Calabasas home she was sharing with ex-husband Danny Keough, reportedly shared a hostile relationship with her mother from the age of 11, after she was sent to the Scientology church to be placed in “obedience therapy” as a schoolgirl. Carriere became Presley’s auditor at the time. 

Carriere said that Priscilla forced the religion on Lisa Marie.

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“This is a girl, who is a second generation Scientologist, who didn’t elect to go into Scientology, but was dragged into it because her parent was in it. She didn’t want to be indoctrinated or attend courses. It’s really tragic that Lisa as a nine-year-old discovered her father’s body. She was her daddy’s princess, truly loved by him. That was a huge trauma for her,” she said. 

“Lisa emphatically acted out like a child, taking drugs to forget every agony of losing her dad. Priscilla would get exasperated with her because she was a rebellious kid – she was not a kid who believed in rules and boundaries. She was a free spirit – ‘I’ll do what I want, whenever I want.’ They were locked in mortal combat, the relationship was hostile,” added Carriere. “It was adversarial. There was such a power imbalance. Priscilla had all the power, she was the mom, the child can’t run away at nine years old. What you can do to fight back is be rude, be disrespectful. Your only weapon is to be combative.”

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She added: “Her mother got more and more worried. I think Lisa first started experimenting with drugs at 13 or 14 years old. The more Lisa fought back, the more Priscilla tried her own methods of control. So when I say locked in mortal combat, the two were not aligned at all. There was no harmony. A relationship of warfare, it was like living in a war zone. That would precipitate a child to do more drugs to get some kind of high away from misery. That’s why I think Priscilla will take this death really hard, as the other person has died and you haven’t made good.”

Presley reportedly dropped off Lisa Marie at the church’s celebrity center for hours, months on end and she went through the mentioned therapy. According to Carriere, Lisa Marie was made to do the “purification rundown” which included hours in a hot sauna, doing excessive exercise, and taking high levels of vitamins that were supposed to make the body pure.

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“Priscilla would be scowling when this big limousine drove up to the celebrity center with a chauffeur and Lisa would be ordered out of the car to get her indoctrination and straighten herself out,” says De La Carriere. “I can’t get into what came up in the sessions, it would be betraying trust. But any time she acted up, she was dropped off. The instructions from Priscilla were, ‘Handle her, just do it’, and she’d be there for hours. Lisa had no choice. I believe this was enforced conversion therapy, it was obedience therapy. Lisa spent a couple of hours a day with me for months when I was her auditor or counselor.”

The church refused to comment on “parishioner counseling.” Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw said that the church leadership was saddened by Lisa Marie’s death. “The church’s relationship with Lisa Marie was one of warmth and care,” she added.