LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The daughter of the president of the Church of Scientology in Australia is speaking out for the first time about past treatment of children within the church. In an exclusive interview with Lateline, Scarlett Hanna has described Scientology as a toxic organisation and says that many of those who've grown up in the church are damaged. Scarlett Hanna talks of children being deprived of contact with parents and communal living conditions where 25 children lived in one unit. ...

The daughter of the president of the Church of Scientology in Australia has spoken out against the organisation, describing it as toxic and accusing the church of tearing some families apart. In an exclusive interview which will air on ABC 1's Lateline tonight, Scarlett Hanna has detailed life growing up in the former Cadet Org - a group set up for the children of Scientology's elite unit - the Sea Org. "The best way I can describe it is cattle," Ms ...

Tampa, Florida — It is one of Tampa's most famous building complexes, dating back to 1886. Ybor Square, which houses the Spaghetti Warehouse and Creative Loafing newspaper, is owned by the Church of Scientology. As a religious building, the church will be exempt from paying almost $75,000 in property taxes. Vince Pardo, the head of the Ybor Community Development District, says that is a big concern, because the taxes generated are the budget for Ybor City. Pardo says he is also ...

Objectif: soigner l'image du mouvement pour stimuler le recrutement [Picture / Caption: Le porte-parole de l’Église de scientologie de Montréal, Jean Larivière, devant l’édifice que le mouvement vient d’acquérir au centre-ville de Montréal. Un projet de 10 millions après rénovations] L'Église de scientologie prépare une offensive majeure au Canada. D'ici deux ans, cette organisation controversée compte construire d'attrayants lieux de culte à coups de millions dans les grandes villes du pays. Une opération charme sans précédent visant à recruter de plus ...

[...] H. Church Of Scientology / In 2007, when the Church of Scientology purchased the old west building of the Minnesota Science Museum, church officials promised a $7 million makeover. According to plans filed with the city, the 82,000-square-foot building will undergo work estimated at $2.5 million. The building renovations include new finishes, walls, doors, ceilings, updated bathrooms and repairs to the exterior and roof. The city issued a building permit on March 29. [...]

Most people know very little about Scientology aside from the fact that Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other celebrities are a part of it, and that it's had its fair share of controversy over the years. A new book is looking to pull back the curtain on the mysterious religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard, and the author certainly knows her stuff. Amy Scobee is a former Scientologist who was in the church for more than two decades, and worked in ...

The Senate has agreed to launch an inquiry into the tax exempt status of religions and charities after allegations of abuse within The Church of Scientology. TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Well the Senate has agreed to hold inquiries in the laws regarding the tax exempt status of religions and charities. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has proposed a test which asks groups to demonstrate whether their activities are of public benefit or cause harm before being granted tax exempt status. The inquiry was ...

CLEARWATER — Ten-year-old Anais Jean made it out of one the world's worst natural disasters, a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people and crippled her Caribbean nation of Haiti. Her father hoped they could rebuild in Clearwater, where they settled after the quake. But tragedy has stricken the Jean family once again. Anais died May 3, four days after she fell from the roof of Mike and Mary Campbell's Chateauwood Drive home, Clearwater public safety spokeswoman Elizabeth Watts ...

["Amy Scobee was a staff member for the Church of Scientology for 27 years. She escalated up the ranks to the top of church management by the time she was twenty, where she remained for two decades. For much of that time, she served as a member of the Watchdog Committee, the highest management body in Scientology, which supervises every sector that makes up the church today. In this book, Amy relates her experiences from her discovery of Scientology as a ...

Mark Bunker (Wise Beard Man) pointed us to something remarkable over at Marty Rathbun's blog. Rathbun is a former high-level member of Scientology who defected and is now providing some of the most damning statements against his former employer. We had heard earlier from Jason Beghe that one of Rathbun's roles was to provide "auditing" to Tom Cruise. And now, Rathbun is speaking out about it. Rathbun says that Scientology leader David Miscavige ordered that Rathbun's private counseling sessions with Cruise ...

Per a letter sent last night to Creative Loafing’s chief financial officer, CL now has a new landlord: The Church of Scientology of Tampa, Inc. We broke the story of the prospective purchase last weekend on the Daily Loaf after finding documentation of the deal-in-progress at the City of Tampa zoning office. That news was a surprise to most of Ybor, most especially to CL and our fellow tenants in Ybor Square (which include Centurion Center, an executive suite rental company ...

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has slammed the major parties for blocking his moves for an inquiry into the Church of Scientology. Senator Xenophon has been calling for a full inquiry into the church since revealing claims of forced abortions and other abuses in Parliament last year. Today he accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of hiding behind process and vowed to continue to fight for further examination of Scientology in Australia. "There is a certain cowardice in turning your backs on people ...

An assault against a masked demonstrator protesting against the Church of Scientology has landed a Halifax woman in legal trouble. Nicole Cassandra Andersen, a 40-year-old personal-care worker, pleaded guilty in Halifax on Tuesday to assault for punching the protester in the face near the Scientology Life Improvement Center on Dutch Village Road on Sept. 19. Click here to watch the protest and the assault She will return to court July 20 for sentencing. Andersen has told police that she has ...

[Picture / Caption: Scientology leader David Miscavige (l.) is being accused of gossiping about Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson after snooping in her confidential confessional file.] The Church of Scientology is bringing down the hammer on a renegade member who alleges leader David Miscavige loves to gossip about his star parishioners. Former high-ranking member Amy Scobee claims in her just-out book, "Scientology: Abuse at the Top," that Miscavige and other officials "snooped" in confidential confessional files - a charge vehemently ...

Last week, as Creative Loafing was preparing to move from temporary quarters to permanent office space in Ybor Square (right), we heard the rumors: The historic former cigar factory, built in 1886 by Vicente Martinez Ybor, was up for sale — and the prospective buyer was The Church of Scientology. Whoa. We looked into it. No one could confirm. Calls weren’t returned. Then I checked with the City of Tampa’s zoning office, and there it was in black and white: In ...

A BIZARRE religious cult which believes humans are trapped alien souls has announced plans to open a centre in Trafford to serve as its north west HQ. The Church of Scientology, which bills itself as the fastest growing religion in the world, announced on its website plans to take over the former Duckworth’s Essence Distillery factory on Chester Road in Old Trafford. The movement’s website has started advertising the building as one of several across the globe it plans to open ...

For more than 25 years, the IRS denied tax-exemption to the Church of Scientology. The long-running policy flowed from an IRS determination in 1967 that Scientology was in fact a commercial entity operated solely for the benefit of founder L. Ron Hubbard. In 1993, seven years after Hubbard's death, the IRS made a puzzling and highly suspicious reversal. It settled its tax bill with Scientology for just $12.5 million and conferred on it the title of tax-exempt "religion." Both the Wall ...

With two recent public confrontations, a year-long, highly publicized drama in the world of Scientology has spilled into the streets of Clearwater. The latest incident occurred Friday afternoon as seven members of the Church of Scientology — including five senior members of its California-based international management team — surrounded and screamed at a former church executive, then loudly carried the dispute into the office of an unsuspecting and startled doctor. The former executive was Mike Rinder, 55, Scientology's longtime spokesman, whose ...

Inside Scientology, superstar Tom Cruise is regarded as its most dedicated follower. The mystery is why he never joined its most elite unit. Now, a former top-ranking defector who was just a teenager when recruited into Scientology says she knows why. Amy Scobee claims she knows the truth about how the cult controls celebrities, the way it handled Tom Cruise's marriage to Nicole Kidman and tells eyewitness accounts of what happens when its leader loses it. She began life and work ...

RUSSIA is set to ban dozens of texts and recordings by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. "Materials on Scientology by Ron Hubbard have been found extremist and will be banned from distribution in Russia," the Russian prosecutor general's office said in a statement. The ban relates to 28 books and audio-video discs containing lectures by Hubbard, a US science fiction author who founded Scientology in 1954. The ruling was the latest blow to the Church of Scientology, an organisation that some ...

Moscow, April 21, Interfax — On the initiative of the Surgut Transport Prosecutor's Office, materials by scientology founder Ron Hubbard were recognized as extremist and banned in Russia, the Prosecutor General's Office reports. In compliance with the legislation, they will be included in the Russian federal list of the extremist materials. The Surgut Transport Prosecutor's Office and the Khanty-Mansiysk customs held a joint check to find out that various recipients in Surgut received international mail deliveries from the USA with literature, ...

TAMPA - A lawyer suing the Church of Scientology has filed a motion asking to withdraw from the wrongful death case – but he doesn't really mean it. Kennan Dandar says the state judge who ordered him to withdraw doesn't have jurisdiction in federal court. He also says he doesn't want to abandon his client, who blames the church for her son's death. The highly unusual motion is rooted in the longstanding animus between the church and Dandar. The order to ...

Amy Scobee is a former high-ranking Scientologist. She's about to publish a book about her time with the Church, which contains some interesting details about Tom Cruise. Last week, Cruise's lawyer has sent her an angry letter, countering the claims. Scobee, who'd been with the Church since age 14 and used to work at the LA Celebrity Centre, has spoken out before—most recently during Anderson Cooper's CNN Scientology expose. Next month, her book, Scientology: Abuse at the Top, will be (self-?) ...

BRIGHTON — William Rex Fowler lured his former business partner into a deadly trap last year, killing 42-year-old Thomas Ciancio over claims Fowler was embezzling money from the company he founded, an Adams County prosecutor said Friday. But the second half of Fowler's plan failed when the 58-year-old tried unsuccessfully to kill himself, prosecutor Dave Young said in a preliminary hearing. "His intent was suicide," Young said. "He was going to take care of his business before he took care of ...

THORNTON, Colo. (CBS4) — An Adams County judge says a man, accused of shooting a former business partner, will stand trial. The first degree murder trial will begin May 19. Prosecutors claim Rex Fowler shot himself after shooting Thomas Ciancio on Dec. 30. The prosecution presented four witnesses during Friday's preliminary hearing. Fowler has been charged with first degree murder. He appeared in court wearing shackles around his wrists and ankles. An Adams County Sheriff's Deputy testified that Fowler seemed dazed ...

She was the original Hollywood wild child, leaving school at 14, winning an Oscar nomination at 18 and then sliding into drug addiction. But now Juliette Lewis, 36, who played unhinged outlaws in Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia, is back on the big screen after five years, again playing a bad girl in the roller derby drama Whip It. Lewis credits the Church Of Scientology for helping her beat her drug habit and putting her back on the path to recovery. ...

Yesterday, we were visited by Aaron Saxton, who is in town visiting friends. Saxton is a former Scientologist, and his Orwellian tales of being one of the Sea Org's ruthless enforcers during the 1990s are part of a national scandal that has become big news in Australia. In November, an Australian senator with the unlikely name of Nick Xenophon stunned his colleagues and the nation with a surprising speech filled with allegations of abuse by Scientology and calling for a federal ...

EVERY jail in England has been infiltrated by alien-obsessed Scientologists, it emerged today. Followers of the wacky "church" claim to have signed up thousands of cons to a bizarre "rehab" programme behind bars. But officials freely admit there is no way they can STOP the cult's vast recruitment drive — because it does not "threaten" national security. A wing of weird religion, called Criminon, today revealed it had targeted lags in all 139 prisons in England and Wales. It offers "distance-learning" ...