From Correspondent Dan Knapp SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) – At one time, the Cult Awareness Network took as many as 16,000 telephone calls a year in an effort to help anxious families worried about sons or daughters involved with unconventional religions. But last month, after 20 years of operation, the Cult Awareness Network closed its doors, forced into bankruptcy after losing a costly lawsuit to the church of Scientology. Now the phones are ringing again – but this time there's a good ...

In 1995, a jury awarded Jason Scott $5 million, ruling that his civil rights had been violated during an involuntary "deprogramming" by Rick Ross, a Phoenix resident and well-known cult expert. That judgment eventually forced Ross into bankruptcy court, put an anticult group out of business and made national news. Last week, however, the case made a sudden and surprising about-face. Scott and Ross reached a settlement that requires the deprogrammer to pay Scott not $3 million–his share of the judgment–but ...

CLEARWATER — After spending half her life as a member of the Church of Scientology, Lisa McPherson told friends she was ready to get out. At 36, she yearned to reunite with her mom and old friends and start a new life in Dallas. She hoped to visit them at Thanksgiving and vowed to be home for good by last Christmas. "She said she couldn't get into it over the phone but she said she had a lot to talk about," ...

BARRINGTON, Ill. - Hostile takeovers are nothing new in the corporate world, but what happened to the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) is an exceptional tale of the hostile takeover of a nonprofit organization. The anti-cult advocacy group is being dismembered and absorbed by its adversaries, who attorneys say have deftly outmaneuvered CAN in the courts. CAN's fate highlights the crippled state of what was once a prominent movement that for years kept America's unorthodox religious groups on the defensive. The modern ...

BARRINGTON, Ill. - For 20 years, the Cult Awareness Network ran the nation's best-known hotline for parents who grew distraught when unconventional religious groups they neither trusted nor understood suddenly won the allegiance of their children. From its offices in a Chicago suburb, the network (known as CAN) answered more than 350 telephone inquiries a week, counseled relatives at conferences attended by thousands and gave news interviews to everyone from small-town daily newspapers to "Nightline." As CAN's influence rose, so did ...

Title "The S Files" [S as in Scientology Logo] [Presenter Dermot Murnaghan (DM henceforth) no relation to any other DM] Tonight we're going to expose serious financial crime in one of the Scientology cult's most successful operations in Britain. We show how they cooked the books, made false statements to obtain bank loans, and changed invoices to fiddle their VAT. [Extract from "Trust" ad] This advert for the Church of Scientology was recently shown on cable TV. It was a major ...

The founder and former head of the Church of Scientology in Lyons was convicted of fraud and involuntary homicide today in the death of a church member who committed suicide after going heavily into debt to pay the sect for counseling sessions. A French tribunal sentenced the defendant, Jean-Jacques Mazier, to serve 18 months in prison, with an additional 18 months suspended, and fined him $100,000. The eight-day trial, in the first week of October, also examined charges of fraud, attempted ...

The onetime building of the Riverside Young Men's Christian Association, a Cultural Heritage Landmark designated as Italian Renaissance in style, is trying to develop an active community status. It faces University Avenue at Lemon Street. It has an auditorium, which combines earlier smaller rooms, available for conventions and other meetings. Its newest portion, the gymnasium built in 1951, has been decorated with murals designed by artist Sam Huang. Among its uses are programs called quincineras, a coming-of-age celebration for Hispanic girls. ...

One of the Church's most powerful groups is waging a holy war on the evil tide of brainwashing religious cults sweeping Scotland. Woman's Guild bosses are to hold a special summit aimed at stamping out the growing menace of the fanatics. Today, we reveal how many young Scots have fallen under the spell of these maniacs. The Guild plans two days of talks at Carberry Tower, near Edinburgh. Experts, victims and religious leaders from all Churches will debate the menace of ...

NEW YORK — Time magazine has agreed to settle a lawsuit by a member of the Church of Scientology who accused the magazine of libeling him in a 1991 article about the controversial church's activities. Under the settlement reached this week, the magazine agreed to publish a statement in next week's issue indicating it did not intend to suggest that Michael Baybak, the church member who brought the suit, had violated any law or regulation.