outside Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles; magazine “Bay Guardian” with cover story “Scientology secrets revealed in 2 million dollar consumer fraud case”; outside AOLA building in Los Angeles; news footage from Julie Christofferson Titchbourne trial in Portland, with Scienos picketing VO: The ’80s saw a series of lawsuits brought against the Church of Scientology. Ex-members united, claiming they had been lied to and bilked out of millions of dollars. In 1985, an ex-Scientologist was awarded $39 million after she claimed the ...

picture of LRH; pictures of books “L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?”, “Bare-Faced Messiah] VO: Scientology lost its founder in 1986. And the news that Hubbard was no longer sparked a flurry of unofficial biographies. Russell Miller walking down road; picture of LRH RUSSELL MILLER (voice of and on camera): I knew that there was some question mark over L. Ron Hubbard’s background. The church presents a picture of L. Ron Hubbard as being a very extraordinary individual, and was almost ...

Clearwater picket 1997–Xenu picketing with sign saying “L. Ron Hubbard: Psychotic CON MAN”, other picketers with signs saying “www.scientology-kills.net” “Xenu Crossing (inside a yellow sign on picket sign)”; Deana Holmes with sign saying “Did Standard Tech kill Lisa?”; lecture at Scientology church VO: While church administration is busy dealing with a steady stream of conflict, individual Scientologists are out among the people, spreading Hubbard’s word at every opportunity. MIKE RINDER: Well, you know, the aims of Scientology are a civilization without ...

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Dec 6, 1998 - "I am L. Ron Hubbard," the woman on the hotel room bed announced in a robotic voice. "I created time 3 billion years ago." She rambled on and on, every outburst dutifully scribbled down by those assigned to watch her. "I can't confront force . . . I need my auditor . . . I want to take a toothbrush and brush the floor until I have a cognition." The jargon of Scientology was ...

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGY professor Benjamin Zablocki has been studying cults–now called, thanks to academic political correctness, new religious movements, or NRMs–since his graduate school days at Johns Hopkins during the mid-1960s, when he bought a ninety-nine dollar Greyhound bus pass and traveled around the country visiting all the religious communes he could find. "My style of research is participant observation," he explains. "I live with the groups, wash dishes with them, pray with them, and immerse myself in their way of ...

IN THE '70s, Jim Jones moved his Peoples Temple from San Francisco to Guyana to escape what he saw as persecution. In the U.S., the temple had run a free clinic and a drug-rehab program, but reports from Guyana began detailing brutality. Tim Reiterman was there when 913 people died in what we now call "Jonestown." OAKLAND, Calif. - For 20 years now, they have come to a grassy hillside overlooking San Francisco Bay to share tears, hugs and their private ...

Justice: Severe dehydration proved fatal to female believer who, family contends, was held against her will. Prosecutor files two felony counts. CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Church of Scientology was charged Friday in the 1995 death of a member whose family claimed she became severely dehydrated after being held against her will for 17 days. Prosecutor Bernie McCabe charged the church with abuse or neglect of a disabled adult and unauthorized practice of medicine, both felonies. The church noted that prosecutors did ...

In death, Lisa McPherson has gained fame around the world. Internet pages describing her death in the hands of the Church of Scientology have proliferated in Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, French and German. Scientology critics from Copenhagen to San Francisco walk the streets carrying signs that question the Dec. 5, 1995, death of McPherson in Clearwater. Some of those critics will be in Clearwater on the anniversary of her death again this year to picket Scientology buildings. Internet interest in McPherson ...

CLEARWATER (AP) — A prosecutor charged the Church of Scientology on Friday with two felonies in the death of a member whose family claims she became severely dehydrated after being held against her will for 17 days. Lisa McPherson, 36, died in December 1995. She had been under the 24-hour care of church members at the Fort Harrison Hotel, Scientology's international retreat in downtown Clearwater. Her family has claimed she was held against her will after trying to leave the church. ...

(Gerry Armstrong is my friend now that we are both out of Scientology, and I have already told him this story. I have told him how sorry I am for my part in trying to destroy him when I was still an OSA staff member. I’ve told several other people this story as well, and they have urged me to share it because it is such a classic illustration of how far DM and his cronies are willing to ...

The doctor who pronounced Scientologist Lisa McPherson dead pays her estate $100,000. A Clearwater doctor who declared Scientologist Lisa McPherson dead when she arrived at a New Port Richey hospital in December 1995 has paid her estate $100,000 to settle his portion of a wrongful death suit McPherson's family filed against the Church of Scientology and others. James Felman, the Tampa lawyer who represents Dr. David Minkoff, said two medical malpractice insurance companies paid the entire amount. "It wasn't our idea ...

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court has reaffirmed $1.09 million in damages against an anti-cult organization for its role in trying to "deprogram" a Washington state teenager, despite a warning from seven judges that free speech was under attack. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied reconsideration Wednesday of a panel's 2-1 decision in April upholding damages against the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Without announcing the exact vote, the court said a request for a rehearing had failed to ...