A former follower of the controversial Church of Scientology has filed suit claiming she was harassed and shamed into contributing more than $7,000 to the church. Saundra Haynes, in a fraud suit filed Thursday by attorney Hiram M. Martin, claimed that she went along with the urgings because she hoped the church's "auditing" procedures would enable her to "go clear," as the church calls it, and "rid her of her deep depressions and suicidal attempts." At one point, she claimed in ...

[...] 1 The Church of Scientology of California (California Church), a California corporation, appeals from a judgment dismissing its action for libel. The suit is against the Pulitzer Publishing Co., publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, and James E. Adams and Elaine Viets, principal authors of the newspaper articles in question.1 The district court dismissed the action against appellees for lack of personal jurisdiction and ruled, alternatively, that the complaint fails to state a claim upon which ...

"Who would have dreamed that U.S. inteligence agencies would attempt to destroy a religious movement born in America?" By Jeff Dubron In 1950, the book "Dianetics: The Modem Science of Mental Health" by L Ron Hubbard was first published. It was an immediate bestseller. It was also the target of an intelligence campaign covertly carried out by many federal agencies such as the State Department, FBI, CIA, Air Force Intelligence and others. Perhaps we will never know the original reason for ...

The Church of Scientology Wednesday filed a $1 million lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against Times Mirror and two Times reporters, alleging conspiracy to interfere with civil rights. The lawsuit stems from a series of articles dealing with the Church of Scientology written by reporters Robert Rawitch and Robert Gillette and published earlier this week in The Times. The lawsuit charged that the reporters acted in concert with representatives of the FBI and the Department of Justice to publish ...

The Church of Scientology contends that for more than 20 years it has been the target of a systematic campaign by the United States government, together with "vested-interest pressure groups" such as the medical professions, to "suppress the church's spiritual practice and expansion." The church advances this accusation as the fundamental rationale for its aggressive policies of defense-by-attack against individual critics, private groups and government agencies perceived as "harassing" Scientology. Church spokesmen, moreover, expand upon the allegation of systematic persecution to ...

On June 25, 1971, a young Colorado woman named Susan Meister died in an apparent suicide aboard the Apollo, the 3,280-ton flagship of the Church of Scientology and for nearly a decade the personal yacht of the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. In mid-July that year, according to State Department correspondence obtained by The Times, Miss Meister's father traveled from Colorado to the Moroccan port of Safi, 125 miles south of Casablanca, where the Apollo was then moored, to inquire into ...

"If anyone is getting industrious trying to enturbulate (sic) or stop Scientology or its activities, I can make Captain Bligh look like a Sunday-school teacher. There is probably no limit on what I would do to safeguard Man's only road to freedom against persons who . . . seek to stop Scientology or hurt Scientologists." — L. Ron Hubbard, Aug. 15, 1967 It was not the first time that private investigator Eual R. Harrow had interviewed jurors following a verdict, but ...

It started a little like Watergate. Late one night two years ago, two men made their way to the third floor of the U.S. courthouse in Washington. With stolen keys, they opened the office of assistant U.S. attorney Nathan Dodell and photocopied sheaves of government documents rifled from his files. They repeated the caper a few nights later, but when they showed up at the building again, a suspicious guard called the FBI. The two men, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, ...

Those not-so-saintly Scientologists are in the news again. This time, it appears, our money-making missionaries have been up to their cassocks in — of all things — spying and as a result 11 members of the pay-as-you-learn church have been indicted in Washington on charges of stealing government documents and bugging government offices. Some of the things the reverie reverends are accused of include planting scientology "agents" in the government to find out about its investigations into the church; and of ...

The author of a book critical of Scientologists has filed a $20-million damage suit against the Church of Scientology of New York, Inc., charging it with calculated and reckless plan of harassment during the past five and [?] years. The suit was filed August [?] State Supreme Court in New York by Paulette Cooper, author of "The Scandal of Scientology," published [?] Tower in 1971. According to published reports, Scientologists caused the publisher [?] withdraw the book from circulation. While ...

A group of concerned Calgarians ex-Scientologists and parents of youngsters of the various mind-warping, brainwashing cults such as Hare Krishna and the Unification Church (Moonies), have got together and formed an organization. Its main functions will be to combat such cults, to help parents cope with and understand the situation when their children fall prey to them and, where possible, to rescue the victims and help them get their heads back together. They held their first meeting recently, with 17 people ...

The Church of Scientology is an organization that fervidly shuns investigations. When probed, it attacks the investigators. When criticized, it makes the critics pay. Church attempts to stifle investigations and criticism include lawsuits, harassment, frameups and attempts to have critics jailed, or at least enjoined from talking about Scientology. If there is "a long-term threat" to Scientology, founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in a confidential memorandum to his staff, "you are to immediately evaluate and originate a black PR campaign to ...

Since its founding by a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard in 1954, Scientology has been among the growth stocks on the self-help market: a quasireligious, quasiscientific cult that has attracted three million U.S. followers (some highly touted celebrities among them) and estimated annual revenues in the hundreds of millions, much of it tax-exempt. Until recently Scientology's only certifiable vice was eccentricity, but within a week a federal grand jury in Washington is expected to hand down a bulging sheaf ...

The church of Scientology held an unusual press reception yesterday to introduce two of its top officials who the church says will be indicted for alleged crimes against the government. Standing around fruit punch, soft drinks, cookies and open-faced sandwiches, church lawyer Philip J. Hirschkop told assembled reporters that the predicted indictments are part of a government effort "to break the back" of the church. Hirschkop said that a total of 12 church members - including Mary Sue Hubbard, wife of ...