It has just been revealed that before he became a superstar in Hollywood, Brad Pitt dabbled in Scientology for three years. During that time, he was “twinned” with a 15-year-old girl for up to five hours a day in a hot sauna during “purification” rituals and screamed at by church superiors during “bull baiting” sessions.

Pitt was introduced to Scientology in the early 1990s by actress Juliette Lewis, who he was dating at the time. He dabbled in the religion for three years before ditching it when he broke up with Lewis, and he went on to become one of the most popular stars in Hollywood.

A Scientology source spoke out this week to open up about Pitt’s time there, saying he underwent a “purification rundown” at the Portland Celebrity Center, spend hours in a hot sauna where he was assigned the teenage girl as a “buddy.”

“I was being trained up to be a course supervisor, so was sent to Celebrity Center Portland for training,” the source, an ex-Scientology follower, told The Sun. “While I was there I met the teenage daughter of the executive director of a Portland-based Scientology company. … One of the things she told me was that Brad Pitt, who was dating Scientologist Juliette Lewis at the time, did the purification rundown at Celebrity Center Portland. He did it there to keep out of the public eye.”

The insider went on to explain that the girl was chosen to “twin” with Pitt because “she was the daughter of an established Scientologist. … In the Church of Scientology, people are often paired and made responsible for getting each other through courses, so she sat in the sauna with Pitt every day for the month, or so, that it took to get through it. She was definitely in the sauna with him, but there was nothing bad about it.”

Scientology records state that Pitt completed some therapies in July of 1991 and a “special course in human evaluation” in May of 1993.

Pitt’s former church supervisor, Michael Mallen, spoke out as well to recall how he “insulted the s–t out” of Pitt and verbally abused him until he stormed out of the classroom.

“Brad was doing the therapeutic (training routines),” said Mallen, who spent 40 years in the church before leaving Scientology for good in 2014. He explained:

“The first TR involves you sitting across from another person with eyes closed for some time. Then you look at another person with eyes open for two hours. … Once you pass that drill, you go into what’s called bullbaiting. The ‘coach’ tries to get the student to react by pushing the student’s ‘buttons’. That’s what I did with Brad Pitt. I did it mercilessly, insulting the s–t out of him. His then girlfriend Juliette Lewis was there. He got so pissed off, he walked out of the trailer and just split. Juliette had to rescue him; he just needed to cool off. I guess no one had bullbaited him before. I was going pretty hard on him, but that’s the whole point, to get the person where they’re no longer reacting and can comfortably be there.”

Luckily for Mallen, Lewis was able to get Pitt back that time.

“No one wants a celebrity to leave. If he hadn’t come back, I’d have been in big trouble,” Mallen remembered.

Pitt finally ditched Scientology forever in 1993.

“I heard he did the purification rundown in Portland,” Mallen said. “Looks like he decided he’d had enough around that time. They tried to get him back, but he never continued with Scientology.”