IN THE ONLINE BRAWL OVER SCIENTOLOGY, INTERNET USERS DISCOVER THAT VIRTUAL REALITY BITES BACK.SHOWDOWN IN CYBERSPACE THE BATTLE OVER SCIENTOLOGY'S SECRETS IGNITES A HOLY WAR ON THE INTERNET. Lawrence Wollersheim's hands shake as he reads his notes, ticking off the damage done to his computers. Surrounding the 46-year-old Boulder resident is a cluster of reporters and, beyond that, a ring of glowering, dark-suited men (and one woman wearing a clerical collar), all packed into a hallway of the federal courthouse in ...

A 23-year-old Seattle-area man was awarded nearly $5 million yesterday for civil-rights violations that occurred when religious "deprogrammers" took him from his home and tried to persuade him to leave the United Pentecostal Church. Federal-court jurors delivered their verdict yesterday after deliberating eight hours, ending a trial that began when Jason Scott sued deprogrammer Rick Ross, Ross' associates and Cult Awareness Network (CAN), a Chicago-based group that monitors cults. Scott's mother, Kathy Tonkin, contacted CAN in 1991 when she became worried ...

Section: News, Page: A1 A federal jury yesterday awarded nearly $5 million to a young Bellevue man who had been kidnapped at his mother's behest to get him to leave his church. The verdict was seen as a stunning blow to cult critics and ``deprogrammers" who seek to go up against unconventional but often well-funded religious groups. Jason Scott, now 23, smiled broadly after the six-member U.S. District Court jury gave him a near-total victory in his civil rights lawsuit against ...

In a lawsuit to stop deprogrammers from trampling on religious sect members' rights, a Bellevue man yesterday told a federal jury that four men "ambushed" him to get him to quit his fundamentalist church. Jason Scott is suing the Cult Awareness Network and the four deprogrammers hired by Scott's mother for unspecified damages. The mother was trying to get Scott — then 18 — to leave the New Life Tabernacle Church, a member of the United Pentecostal Churches. The attempt failed, ...

Scientology, the California-based religion with ties to the entertainment world, seems to be making a push for even greater mainstream acceptance. In the past few weeks, both Fox News and Hard Copy, the Paramount-produced tabloid news show, have run strangely upbeat pieces about the new Scientology center in Kansas and the group's recent benefit concert at Isaac Tigrett's House of Blues in Hollywood. The hooks for both pieces were the newly accessible Scientologized celebrities John Travolta and wife Kelly Preston and ...

Toronto — Allstate Insurance Co. of Canada appears to have flunked its free personality test last month after word got out that its U.S. parent put managers through training sessions based on doctrines of Scientology, the California-based church with a keen sense of cash flow. Question: Was such training done in Canada too? Allstate's answer: No. Correct answer: Yes. At least a little. Scientology is the brainchild of the late L. Ron Hubbard, a paperback novelist who in 1950 published a ...

[Picture / Caption: Linda Hostetler, with her husband, Dan, is battling the Church of Scientology.] ROYAL OAK — At first glance, Linda Hostetler appears the vibrant, independent woman who answered a personal ad eight years ago, beckoning her to join the Church of Scientology. But a closer look reveals a puzzled 29-year-old woman, emotionally scarred by years of what she termed "psychological torture," and financially ruined by a much-maligned yet resilient and powerful empire into which she said she not only ...

THE acquittal of Stephen Cooper is a major setback for the Church of Scientology in its efforts to dispel its image as a sinister and manipulative cult. The decision will go down in the demonology of the cult - or, in its own terminology, on the ever-lengthening list of anti-Scientology 'suppressive acts' - alongside a bench-mark case in the family division of the High Court in 1984. In that hearing Mr Justice Latey presided over a custody dispute between a father ...

A MAN who tried to remove a woman from the Church of Scientology was cleared of attempted kidnap yesterday after arguing that 'brainwashing' by the cult had turned her into a robot without the ability to decide whether she consented or not to leaving. Stephen Cooper's 'victim', 23-year-old former shoe shop worker Miss Kathleen Wilson, told the jury that she was happy to be at the cult's headquarters at Saint Hill Castle in East Grinstead, East Sussex, and did not consent ...