Some of Cocolat's ex-workers claim that the company's newest ingredient is Scientology by Erin McCormick of the Examiner Staff It was once the sweetheart of the Bay Area business world - a woman-run chocolate company that grew from a single storefront to a national success. Now, two years since an employee's embezzlement forced the sale of Cocolat Chocolate Co., an unlikely mix is brewing at the company's Hayward plant: Scientology and chocolate. The mixture has been volatile. Cocolat is the latest ...

Members of a group led by a supporter of the Church of Scientology have alerted Glendale police to alleged "deprogramming" activities of a Glendale woman. Kevin Hulce, a member of the Church of Scientology, along with two members of the Deprogramming Survivor's Network, accused Priscilla Coates of conspiring with Hulce's parents to turn him away from the religious group formed by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. "Because Priscilla Coates lives in Glendale, Kevin thought the police might like ...

SANTA CLARA — Former employees of Applied Materials have filed suit alleging that the Silicon Valley manufacturing firm forced them to undergo Church of Scientology seminars. Trial proceedings began Tuesday as lawyers for both sides argued motions before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Frank Cliff. In their suit, former employees Steven Hunziker, Virginia Sanders and Kate Schuchmann allege that Applied Materials hired an outside firm to teach workers communication and time-management skills. But the seminar firm, Applied Scholastics of Fremont, ...

A PIECE OF BLUE SKY. By Jon Atack. Lyle Stuart. 428 Pages. $21.95. It has been 17 years since the Church of Scientology secretly bought the historic Fort Harrison Hotel and established a base for an important arm of the church in the city of Clearwater. And it has been nearly 10 years since critical public hearings — which detailed allegations of a slew of Scientology wrongs — captivated city residents for more than a week. The church professes to have ...

The former top-level Scientologist who told The Psychiatric Times in June that fluoxetine (Prozac) had helped her overcome the depression she suffered while in Scientology has been under surveillance along with her husband, and she said her friends neighbors have been harassed by private investigators since shortly after the story was released. Both Hana Whitfield and her husband, Jerry have been watched at their home and followed whenever they leave. They were also investigated by police in England ...

The Church of Scientology has a long and undistinguished history of harassing its detractors — but that shouldn't stop the media or anyone else from speaking out against it, cult experts say. The church commonly threatens lawsuits, tries to have detractors arrested, and harasses sources and individual reporters, said Cynthia Kisser of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago. And recent Sun stories linking the church — alleged by experts to be a dangerous, mind-control cult — to Narconon, a drug rehabilitation ...

When Narconon comes to town, the Church of Scientology — and trouble — follows, residents of Newkirk, Okla. warned yesterday. Newkirk civic leaders were threatened and harassed by the controversial church and its private investigators after they opposed a Narconon treatment centre set up on Indian territory near the small, rural town in 1989, Mayor Gary Bilger said. "We had three investigators in our little town of 2,300 off and on for weeks," he said. "My little boy was 11 years ...

Last June, the Los Angeles Times published a damning series on the Church of Scientology. Scientologists responded by extracting a few good things the writers had to say about their organization and putting those quotes in foot-high letters on billboards all over town. On May 6 of this year, Time magazine published a cover story on Scientology. It had even fewer good things to say, and now the church has responded with an even more aggressive counterattack. Scientology's campaign of daily ...

Strange things seem to happen to people who write about Scientology. Journalist Paulette Cooper wrote a critical book on the cult in 1971. This led to a Scientology plot (called Operation Freak-Out) whose goal, according to church documents, was "to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." It almost worked: by impersonating Cooper, Scientologists got her indicted in 1973 for threatening to bomb the church. Cooper, who also endured 19 lawsuits by the church, was finally exonerated in 1977 ...

Saying the Internal Revenue Service harasses and discriminates against their members, Arizona followers of the Church of Scientology have gotten four of the state's congressmen and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to look into their allegations against the IRS. Scientologists have long waged a bitter battle with the IRS, which has challenged members' tax returns, saying they cannot claim charitable deductions on some money they pay for church-sponsored courses, materials and other costs associated with the 35-year-old organization founded by L Ron ...

THE Church of Scientology, a religious cult accused of brainwashing its devotees, has paid private detectives more than £100,000 to organise a worldwide "dirty tricks" campaign against a Sunday Times journalist. Documents seen by The Sunday Times detail how Russell Miller, journalist and author of a book on scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, has been secretly pursued around the world by investigators and members of the sect for the past three years. A former employee of the church, ...

The Church of Scientology hates "squirrels." That is the scornful word L. Ron Hubbard used to describe non-church members who offer his teachings, sometimes at cut-rate prices. Most are ex-Scientologists who say they believe in Hubbard's gospel but left the church because its hierarchy was too oppressive. "We call them squirrels," Hubbard once wrote, "because they are so nutty." Hubbard contended that only church members are qualified to administer his self-improvement-type courses. Outsiders, he said, inevitably misapply the teachings, wreaking spiritual ...

Joseph Yanny represented the movement until a falling out. Now he says lengthy litigation and mysterious harassment indicate he's become 'Public Enemy No. 1.' Los Angeles attorney Joseph Yanny was driving through rural Ohio in the pre-dawn hours in 1988 when he was pulled over by police, who had received a tip that he was carrying a cache of cocaine and guns in his rental car. A telephone caller had supplied authorities in Ohio with Yanny's name, the car's description and ...

"Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars." —L. Ron Hubbard The Church of Scientology does not turn the other cheek. Ministers mingle with private detectives. "Sacred scriptures" counsel the virtues of combativeness. Parishioners double as paralegals for litigious church attorneys. Consider the passage that a prominent Scientology minister selected from the religion's scriptures, authored by the late L. Ron Hubbard, to inspire the faithful during a gala church event. "People attack Scientology," the minister quoted Hubbard ...

[This is a reprint of an article published on Dec. 22, 1988 in the St. Petersburg Times.]

A Pinellas judge presiding over a Scientology tax dispute has removed himself from the case because of a newspaper report that cited a real estate transaction between the judge and the Church of Scientology. The St. Petersburg Times reported in December that Circuit Judge Howard P. Rives, who was presiding over a lawsuit concerning taxes on Scientology properties, sold one of those properties to the church in 1979. Rives said in December that there was no conflict in his role because ...

The year was 1976, one year after the Church of Scientology had secretly moved its spiritual headquarters to Clearwater, and Mayor Gabe Cazares was complaining too loudly for the church's comfort. So, as documents seized by the FBI would later show, the church's Clearwater office devised a scheme to "ruin Mayor Gabriel Cazares' political career by spreading scandal about his sex life." Church officials came up with ways to get Cazares' school records, birth records, anything — from checking with the ...

L. Ron Hubbard was portrayed yesterday in court as a devious cult leader who believed he'd gone to heaven — twice — and was ruthless in his treatment of those perceived as enemies of the church he founded. Hubbard, who died last year, advised his followers to use the courts to "harass and discourage" critics, lawyers for Key Porter Books argued in Federal Court. They said a court bid to stop publication of a biography of Hubbard is a thinly disguised ...

THE CHURCH of Scientology has mounted a campaign of intimidation and harassment against the author and publisher of a new book on the founder of the religious cult to be serialised shortly by The Sunday Times. Scientologists and private detectives have been used to put pressure on people in Britain and the United States involved in the forthcoming publication of Bare Faced Messiah: the True Story of L Ron Hubbard. Russell Miller, the author, who spent more than two years researching ...

A private detective employed by representatives of the Church of Scientology cult to investigate one of its opponents, shot at a Sunday Times reporter and photographer and threatened to kill them last week. The detective, Jarl Grieve Einar Cynewulf, fired a pistol at the journalists after saying: "You'd better go now unless you want to end up in a wooden box. Do you want to be another Hungerford martyr?" Although the gun was fired from close range, the journalists escaped unharmed ...

THE CHURCH of Scientology cult has threatened worldwide legal action against The Sunday Times in an attempt to prevent the newspaper today publishing extracts of a new book on its founder. Lawyers representing the church last week said they would sue The Sunday Times and its distributors in more than 50 countries if extracts of a book by Russell Miller, published into today's Sunday Times, breach the copyright of the estate of the late L. Ron Hubbard, scientology's founder. The threats ...

Bare-Faced Messiah Russell Miller ''Michael Joseph, £2.95 (copies available from Church of Scientology, Tottenham Court Road) CULTS require their members to believe three impossible things before breakfast. But a successful cult's adherents can't afford breakfast because they've given all their money to the guru. And, of all the gurus in the world, none was as opportunistic, mendacious, paranoid, miserly and psychopathic as Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, inventor of Scientology and Dianetics. Every story he told about himself was a lie — and ...

An attempt by the Church of Scientology to suppress publication of a book about its founder, Mr Ron Hubbard, failed yesterday when the High Court ruled that legitimate public interest far outweighed an alleged breath of confidentiality. The court ruled that the church's action was "oppressive and mischievous." The book, Barefaced Messiah, by Mr Russell Miller, is due to be serialised later this month in a Sunday newspaper. The church alleged that the book contains two photographs of the late Mr ...

Description of video is in italics. VO=VOICEOVER shot of Church of Scientology, Los Angeles; apparently group of ex-members VOICEOVER: The Church of Scientology, one of the largest and richest new religious movements, is being sued for a billion dollars by former members for fraud and breach of trust. They regard Scientology as a dangerous cult. group of Scientologists VO: Yet the church goes on expanding, making converts and claiming it is "The Road to Total Freedom". ''"Panorama" opening credits; while music ...