Scientology is a relatively new religion, but it’s been tabling on the U campus longer than most religions do. For the past two months, Scientologists from the Hubbard Dianetics Foundation have stood at their station in the Union offering free stress tests to U students and faculty. Volunteering Scientologists come to the U to educate people about the book, Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard, who is the founder of Scientology, Dianetics technology and previously a ...

EVEN for a religion started by a science fiction writer, the allegations levelled against the Church of Scientology in federal parliament this week sound stranger than fiction. Blackmail, cover-ups of child abuse, labour camps, embezzlement and coerced abortions are spelled out among the 53 pages of allegations by seven former Scientologists - some of whom had climbed high in the church hierarchy - tabled in the Senate. In what the church has decried as "an outrageous abuse of parliamentary privilege", independent ...

DANGEROUS dismissal of psychiatry and mental health problems must be part of a Senate inquiry into the Church of Scientology, a Melbourne cult counsellor said yesterday. Cult Counselling Australia director Raphael Aron said Scientologists put vulnerable people at risk by taking them off psychiatric drugs and treatment, instead treating them with vitamins and E-meter readings. Mr Aron supported Senator Nick Xenophon's call in Federal Parliament on Tuesday for a Senate inquiry into the Scientologists. The senator tabled letters citing forced abortions, ...

Sixteen years later, Betsy Perkins is sobbing as she talks about the day she ran away from Scientology. "I thought I was handing in my ticket to eternity," she says. Now 56, a graphic artist in Dallas, she says she is going public to offer her own "first-hand account of what happened to a person who was in there." She spent 17 years in Scientology's work force, the Sea Org, moved by the church's mantra that Scientologists held the future of ...

David Miscavige, 49 Born: Suburban Philadelphia Joined Scientology: As a child, with his parents; joined Sea Org at age 16. Family status: Married to Sea Org member Michelle Miscavige. They have no children. Career highlights: The ecclesiastical leader of Scientology since 1987, when he became chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center. The RTC is responsible for preserving, maintaining and protecting Scientology and ensuring that its practices hold true to the original "technology" set out by founder L. Ron ...

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 ...

The 110,000-volt electric charge that killed Edward McBride was so strong it caused an explosion capable of causing flash burns up to 10 metres away. Witnesses who saw it at the Energex substation in Everton, in Brisbane's north, two years ago likened it to fireworks that glowed red long after the Brisbane soldier's life had ended. There could be no doubt the 30-year-old Special Forces commando and trained electrician wanted to die, of that fact State Coroner John Lock could be ...