Hollywood figures quit 'rip-off' church as Australian prime minister threatens parliamentary inquiry into its activities The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston's waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city's bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise. The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology's top legal adviser for ...

I knew Scientology was in trouble when the media moved on from the usual silly gossip about its celebrity members to much darker, disturbing issues at the heart of the movement. After a Paris court last month convicted several Scientologists and two organisations associated with the movement in France of organised fraud, and amid other investigations in France looking at a suicide and an alleged abduction, Oscar-winning film-maker Paul Haggis, a long-time member, quit Scientology. Haggis, who wrote and directed Crash, ...

What led Crash director Paul Haggis to leave the church after 35 years? Kim Masters reports on how Scientology aided his career—and then tried to milk his success. Maybe Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige had a premonition. Or maybe he’s not much of a talent spotter. But a few years back, Miscavige apparently wasn’t keen on using writer-director Paul Haggis for a series of films based on treatments by the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. This was before Haggis, ...

Marty Rathbun said he participated in a criminal act to protect the church against a possible security breach. Longtime executive Terri Gamboa and her husband, Fernando, abandoned their posts in January 1990, setting off what Rathbun called a "seven-alert fire.'' Terri Gamboa was executive director of Author Services Inc., the independent corporation set up by founder L. Ron Hubbard to control rights to his intellectual properties. David Miscavige, the leader of the church, wanted to know if she had access to ...

Robert S. Minton seemed to surface out of nowhere in late 1997. • A retired investment banker and millionaire from New England, he began to show up at anti-Scientology demonstrations in Boston and Clearwater. He gave millions to groups critical of the church. • He became the money man behind a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Lisa McPherson, whose unexplained death at Scientology's Clearwater mecca threw the church into crisis. • Minton quickly became the Church of Scientology's No. ...

The church said its leader, David Miscavige, and other church officials did not hire private investigators, church attorneys did. The church directs that its attorneys and their agents follow all laws and regulations and adhere to the highest ethical standards. "If Rathbun and Rinder used PIs to 'abuse poor innocent people,' they are the only ones to blame," spokesman Tommy Davis said. The Times submitted written questions to the church about David Lubow and Ferris Khan's involvement with former church staff ...

They squeezed into a two bedroom apartment, all they could afford. Two couples and a single guy had left the Church of Scientology and joined up in Las Vegas, starting a mortgage business near the Palace Station Casino. They were faces in the crowd. Except that the two wives were important in Scientology history, sisters Terri and Janis Gillham. They were two of the original four "messengers" for L. Ron Hubbard. The founder ran his church from his ship, the Apollo, ...

Five years after Tom Cruise called Nicolas Sarkozy a “wonderful guy,” a French court convicted his church of fraud. Eric Pape on Scientology’s latest crisis. Scientology isn’t a religion, it’s a dangerous sect overseen by convicted criminals—at least as far as France is concerned. There is no doubt that the last week has brought a flurry of bad news for Scientology. There was the vocal defection of respected film director Paul Haggis, as well as fresh indications that John Travolta, one ...

The Church of Scientology is going through a difficult season. Over the course of two days last week, a French court convicted the church of fraud and Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis' resignation from the church over a litany of concerns was aired publicly. On one hand, it was just another bad press week for the embattled institution founded in 1953 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. But for former Scientologists and scholars of the movement, the setbacks pose ...

[Picture / Caption: Responding to written questions, church spokesman Tommy Davis sent a binder addressing issues with individual sources.] The church said the Times is relying on sources who, before they left Scientology, admitted in sworn declarations, affidavits and confessions that all responsibility was theirs and they held the church blameless. For every person but one (Sinar Parman), Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis provided documents from church files, including confessions, ethics orders and Suppressive Person declarations. SINAR PARMAN AND JACKIE WOLFF ====FROM ...

Church spokesman Tommy Davis says the Times' sources admitted they left Scientology because they could not meet the church's strict ethical standards. Now they are lying, he says, and the Times is helping advance their agenda. Here is the Church of Scientology's response to their allegations, submitted as a 10-page letter: + + + CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 15 October 2009 VIA HAND DELIVERY Mr. Joe Childs Mr. Tom Tobin St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South St. Petersburg, Florida 33701 ...

For years, the Church of Scientology chased down and brought back staff members who tried to leave. Ex-staffers describe being pursued by their church and detained, cut off from family and friends and subjected to months of interrogation, humiliation and manual labor. One said he was locked in a room and guarded around the clock. Some who did leave said the church spied on them for years. Others said that, as a condition for leaving, the church cowed them into signing ...

Despite the upbeat tones of its advertising campaign, it's been a tough week for the Church of Scientology. First, Canadian movie director Paul Haggis — one of the church's oldest and most respected members — quit over what he says is the church's refusal to denounce an anti-gay marriage bill in California. He outlined his reasons in a letter to the Church's spokesperson, Tommy Davis. Despite the upbeat tones of its advertising campaign, it's been a tough week for the Church ...

Most religious organisations can weather a high-profile defection or two. Many might successfully explain away a fraud conviction in a foreign criminal court, or deal with the spectacular suicide of a member, or muddle through a less than stellar public performance by a prominent spokesman. Rarely, though, does a religion have to face up to all these challenges in the same week. The past few days have been little short of a nightmare for Scientology, the strange, secretive religion that thrives ...

Scientology’s recent travails, splattered like so much bad scrambled eggs in the mainstream press, has me thinking about that day way back when the Reverend Al Buttnor, the Church’s high priest of PR, took me on a personal tour of Scientology’s Yonge Street headquarters. Freaky, mostly. And surprisingly empty. A few curiosity seekers on one floor hooked up to Scientology’s famous E-meter, getting stress tested, presumably. But clearly searching for something else. Themselves? Salvation? On another floor, a shrine to late ...

The Church of Scientology is responding to claims that the religion is anti-gay, an allegation made by “Crash” director Paul Haggis, who is publicly denouncing the church’s practices. “I don’t want any misunderstanding,” said Tommy Davis, a spokesperson for Scientology. “The church supports civil rights for everybody, regardless of sexual orientation, race, color or creed. We are a minority, too; we understand what it’s like to be persecuted, so to the extent that anything prohibits or inhibits on civil rights, we ...

A French court has convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud, but stopped short of banning the group from operating in France. Two branches of the group's operations and several of its leaders in France have been fined. The case came after complaints from two women, one of whom said she was manipulated into paying more than 20,000 euros (£18,100) in the 1990s. A Scientology spokesman told the BBC the verdict was "all bark and no bite". France regards Scientology as ...

In his first detailed interview since walking off Nightline last week, church spokesman Tommy Davis talks to Kim Masters about Monday's startling public defection by Paul Haggis, addresses drug allegations—and explains his relationship with Tom Cruise. Plus, his former colleague speaks out. Tommy Davis has been busy lately. In the past week, the spokesman for the Church of Scientology tore off his lapel microphone and stormed out of an interview when Nightline correspondent Martin Bashir tried to question him about whether ...

"Crash" director Paul Haggis has severed his ties with the Church of Scientology, in part because of what he alleged as the organization's stance against gay marriage. Haggis wrote a letter addressed to Tommy Davis, the head of Scientology's Celebrity Centre. In it, Haggis said he was disappointed by the church's tacit denial of gay rights in the debate over California's gay marriage ban. The 56-year-old Haggis, who won an Oscar in 2005 for co-writing "Crash," said he was quitting the ...

Oscar-winner Paul Haggis breaks with the church. Leader Tommy Davis storms off "Nightline." Whither Tom Cruise? When Paul Haggis, the writer of "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," kicked his faith to the curb after 35 years, he did so as only an Oscar-winning scribe could: with a badass screed. His resignation letter, dated Aug. 19, emerged on ex-Scientologist Mark Rathburn's blog yesterday and promptly went viral. In his letter, Haggis explains, "for ten months now I have been writing to ask ...

"I am only ashamed that I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology." Over the past few days, a remarkable letter was published in four parts at the blog of Marty Rathbun, a former high-level Scientology official who has left the church and now criticizes Scientology's leader, David Miscavige. In the letter, written to Scientology's current national spokesman, Tommy Davis, 'Crash' director Paul Haggis explains why he is leaving Scientology after 35 ...