Exclusive A former cult security guard blows apart the star's squeaky clean image with claims of shocking abuse HOLLYWOOD megastar Tom Cruise has been sensationally named in a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the United States alleging receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of illicit perks from the controversial Scientology religious cult. The 32-year-old Oscar winner is alleged to have turned a blind eye to the use of slave labour to build him a gym, an apartment and other gifts ...

IN THE second part of his special investigation into the Church of Scientology, Argus chief reporter PAUL BRACCHI talks to a man who travelled 3,000 miles to join the Sussex-based cult. [A very small picture of Mr. Bracchi is shown, as in yesterday's article. A large picture, in the center of page 6, is shown of a man wearing a neat denim shirt, labelled: "Above: Nowell Matandirotya. "I feel I was exploited" A smaller picture shows a grim stone mansion, with ...

CLEARWATER — Church of Scientology officials are installing concealed cameras and microphones in at least 69 counseling rooms where church members reveal their innermost thoughts, a church spokesman confirms. What transpires behind the closed doors of an auditing session — one-on-one counseling — is as confidential as a confession from a parishioner to a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, said Scientology spokesman Richard Haworth. "It's subject to what's called the priest-penitent privilege," Haworth said. Occasionally, be said, sessions are videotaped ...

A PIECE OF BLUE SKY. By Jon Atack. Lyle Stuart. 428 Pages. $21.95. It has been 17 years since the Church of Scientology secretly bought the historic Fort Harrison Hotel and established a base for an important arm of the church in the city of Clearwater. And it has been nearly 10 years since critical public hearings — which detailed allegations of a slew of Scientology wrongs — captivated city residents for more than a week. The church professes to have ...

Have you ever been stopped on Dizengoff by a friendly, earnest young person inviting you to take a free personality lest? Did he or she mention the possibility of learning more about yourself at a special "college?" If the answer is yes, you may well have been stopped by one of Israel's Scientologists. "Osnat" and "Yaron" (not their real names) are two youngsters who did decide to take the test. Osnat, the daughter of an observant Jewish family, was 17 when ...

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in ...

WHEN a royal commission last year exposed atrocities at Chelmsford Private Hospital in New South Wales, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights scored dual victories: one public, one private. The first came with the release of Mr Justice Slattery's 12-volume report into the nightmarish "cuckoo's nest" of Chelmsford — a private hospital where the commission found that at least 24 people died as a result of deep-sleep therapy. Another 24 patients survived the treatment but later took their own lives, 19 ...

"Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars." —L. Ron Hubbard The Church of Scientology does not turn the other cheek. Ministers mingle with private detectives. "Sacred scriptures" counsel the virtues of combativeness. Parishioners double as paralegals for litigious church attorneys. Consider the passage that a prominent Scientology minister selected from the religion's scriptures, authored by the late L. Ron Hubbard, to inspire the faithful during a gala church event. "People attack Scientology," the minister quoted Hubbard ...

A festering dispute between a nontraditional religion and an anti-cult group has escalated to the point where each camp is accusing the other of using Nazilike tactics. Chances of a truce between the Church of Scientology and the Cult Awareness Network appear slim. Each denies the other's allegations of employing techniques that fleece victims of money and inflict psychological damage. The two have been at odds for at least a decade. The faceoff heated up in a recent solicitation letter from ...