John Gordon Clark, M.D. (1926 - 1999) was a Harvard psychiatrist and pioneer in the research about damaging effects of cults.

He got a lot of harassment from Scientology after he had testified against it to the Vermont congress in 1976.

His similarly harassed colleague Louis Jolyon West remarked: "I was lucky that I was a full-time professor in a big university like UCLA. Others, like Harvard's Jack Clark. who was primarily in private practice, nearly had their lives ruined by the Scientologists." (Psychiatric Times, 1991)

1985, John G. Clark received the Leo J. Ryan award, named for the California congressman murdered in Jonestown.

The Psychiatric Times, when naming him 1991 psychiatrist of the year, described him as "a quiet, courageous man of conviction, who was fighting an all-too-lonely and unappreciated battle against well-financed, ruthless organizations."

In nominating him, UCLA psychiatrist Dr. John Hochman described Dr. Clark as "a quiet, courageous man of conviction, who was fighting an all-too-lonely and unappreciated battle against well-financed, ruthless organizations." He wrote that "early on, Dr. Clark concluded that the cult issue was at heart a question of human rights. He called the cult phenomenon an 'impermissible experiment' since these groups were gaining a level of exploitive control over their recruits that no ethical social psychologist would ever attempt to gain over his experimental subjects."

Their name - Clark. Six months earlier, the father of this family was described on Radio Station WXKS by Heber Jentzsch in the following terms: 'He was talking in a court process and basically he was asked, "Well, how do you feel about the worship of Satan?" and basically he indicated that was therapeutic. And then they said, "What about the worship of God?" and he indicated that was destructive.' The quiet-voiced man with the greying beard who was playing hymns at the organ and singing was Dr John G. Clark Jr., M.D., private psychiatric practitioner and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Boston. It was hard to reconcile the softly spoken sixty-year-old man I met with the picture I had been given by the Scientologists. Indeed, I was carrying a briefing file on Dr Clark's 'crimes' which the Church of Scientology had supplied. They ranged from writing for the American *Atheist* magazine, to being involved in 'deprogramming' (the controversial technique to break an individual's involvement in religious cults). Further crimes were giving diagnoses without having met the patient and of 'genocide' in his attempt to destroy a religion. On investigating these charges, I found that none was well founded.

It can be unpleasant crossing Hubbard's organization. Dr. John G. Clark, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, testified as an expert against the Church of Scientology^®. He reports that, in apparent retaliation, false complaints were circulated against his practice, phone threats were made to him, and ads placed in the Boston Herald offering $25,000 for evidence leading to his criminal conviction. This went on, he says, for ten years, during which two Church of Scientology^® suits against him were dismissed.

Now, if I can give you a brief listing of what has happened: In my writing, I have put down some of the attacks on me. In '77, the — I got my first letter from them, telling me that I had said the wrong things in the Vermont legislative — the hearing and I'd better stop it. I got a series of calls, which I pretty much ignored. They, also, quite simultaneously, wrote a whole series of letters to the Deans at Harvard Medical School and the head of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

In '78, three of my patients were investigated enough so that their places of work and their places of living were known to Scientologists, who then called them and asked them about my behavior in treating them. To a doctor, that is extremely bad business, just terrible.

Shortly after that, in about '78, I was called a Communist because of their interest in my daughter and my having gone to Russia to visit. And they put that into some very interesting fiction which they had put together from all of their investigations of my neighbors and friends, which they then presented to the legislative committee that was beginning to look into some matters of other cults.

They also tried twice to keep me out of England by sending a very strong protest to the proper authorities in England, looking into the matters on Ron Hubbard.

In 1979, I and a number of others were picketed by the Scientologists twice, once in Pennsylvania at a meeting we were having, talking about cults, and one at the then IMH where we were having the only meeting on the cults that the government has been able to put together so far.

In 1978, they lodged a complaint to the Board of Registration of Medicine. This is the Board that gives us our right to practice medicine, and that's in Massachusetts. This had to do with my behavior in court on a case that had to do with the original family that brought me into this, quote, business in the first place. That particular problem with the Board of Registration stretched on for a very long time.

By 1979, they were in Montreal passing out flyers at the place where I was giving my lectures at McGill. This time they were calling me a Nazi.

In 1980, they were sending an article to all kinds of people very high up in my profession, purporting to be something rather favorable to me, except that it was about ECT, electroshock treatment, and it had some material in it that claimed to be direct quotes from me  saying that deprogramming could be brought about by the use of electroshock treatment. Fortunately, I have friends who called me up and said, "What's this all about?" But I'm still quite sure that some people think that I'm advocating ECT.

They began to blow hard in various ways toward me in their magazine or their Freedom paper. And we have one copy of the most recent ones, '78 to '81. They call me a Nazi and one of the leaders of the ARM, as they call it in their own internal records, and that's the Anti-Religious Movement.

Several people approached my professor, one a college student who was looking for information and just happened to mention me in some way that was really quite derogatory, a patient who tried to get into my office and talk to me, somebody on one of the television shows from the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights talked about my use of drugs and ECT and my terrible attitude toward these people. Another — in about '80, another student wanted to study deprogramming, and it was quite clear, when we checked up, that was certainly not what she was interested in. It goes on and on and on.

In 1981, another complaint was lodged at the Board of Registration, and in this attempt — a second one was also lodged, a third one now lodged against me, both of them very, very clear — one from a Scientologist and the other one, again, purportedly from a Moonie; however, it had all the earmarks of the Scientology capacity to mischief.

By the way, all of these complaints have been dismissed. The first one was dismissed with a little bit of nastiness on the part of the Board, who could not — which could not understand what was going on. The last two, which recently came to me, are clear, clear releases from any obligation at all.

This past year from last July, there has been a fire storm of attacks. There's almost something once or twice every week coming. Because I haven't answered to them, they can't do some of the things they did to Paulette. But they did a few other interesting things, such as picketing the Mass. General Hospital and passing out some very interesting leaflets, offering a twenty-five thousand dollar-reward, for instance, for information leading to my conviction. This was done several months. They approached every newspaper, every TV outlet —