Up until now, Leah Remini has been pretty quiet about her very public and very controversial split from Scientology. Even when prominent Scientologists like Kirstie Alley spoke out about the former King of Queens actress, Remini kept mum. Until now, that is.

Remini wants to set the record straight, and did so in an interview, in which she talked about her separation from the religion and why she did it. A lot of it had to do with her horrific introduction to the church and how that would affect her daughter, she says.

“We went from a middle-class lifestyle [in Brooklyn] to living in a roach-infested motel with six other girls off a freeway in Clearwater,” she stated. “We were separated from our mother. We had to sign billion-year contracts we didn’t understand. And we kept saying, ‘Why are you doing this to us? Why are we here?'”

Her past affects her and family now, as this is the time she would have to acclimate her nine-year-old daughter, Sofia, into the religion.

“I started thinking of my own childhood and how I grew up resenting my mother because she was never home. In my house, it’s family first, but I was spending most of my time at the church,” she explained. ”So, I was saying ‘family first,’ but I wasn’t showing that. I didn’t like the message that sent my daughter.”

Remini looked for help from other Scientology members, but was met with resistance. Although she received support from her mother, other friends weren’t so welcoming.

See what Kirstie Alley has to say about Remini:

“We had a chance to make a change from within, but they didn’t want to,” she said in the interview. “They only cared that their lives would be disrupted if they stood with me. They didn’t care about doing the right thing. That showed me everything the church taught me was a lie.”

The former Dancing With the Stars alum plans on writing a memoir in order to tell the truth about the religion.

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