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 ...

Tribal members are getting advice, free trips—and perhaps a new rehab program—from their connection with L. Ron Hubbard's church. Is this the help they need? In 1964, when Rayola Running Crane was just 13, her parents sent her away from her home in Browning on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. She and her friends were drinking alcohol on a regular basis, and she had already been in an alcohol-related car accident that caused her permanent back injuries. She says her parents gave ...

It's been a year since Tom Cruise's war of words with Paramount resulted in one of Hollywood's biggest splits - and, apparently, new days of thunder for the 45-year-old superstar. Previous to the much-publicized split, the 5-foot-7 actor was riding high. How high? Cruise has had seven consecutive films that made $100 million or more (a record he shares with Tom Hanks). He has won three Golden Globes, and has been nominated for an acting Oscar three times. He has worked ...

As Chad Bloom can attest from firsthand experience, the Narconon rehab program can bring ‘ice’ addicts back to live a productive, drug-free life Lari Zelinsky-Bloom is proud of her recent graduate. No ceremony or lei hail his achievement, but thanks to celebrities Kelly Preston and John Travolta, there will be many others to follow in the footsteps of her son, 21-year-old Chad Bloom. Chad just graduated from Narconon, a drug rehabilitation center. After a harrowing nightmare suffering the effects of ice ...

As early as the third grade, students in S.F. and elsewhere are subtly introduced to church's concepts via anti-drug teachings A popular anti-drug program provided free to schools in San Francisco and elsewhere teaches concepts straight out of the Church of Scientology, including medical theories that some addiction experts described as "irresponsible" and "pseudoscience." As a result, students are being introduced to somebeliefs and methods of Scientology without their knowledge. Anyone listening to a classroom talk by Narconon Drug Prevention & ...

Dr. John G. Clark of Weston, a psychiatrist who was among the first to note the damaging effects of cults, died Thursday in Belmont Manor nursing home. He was 73. Dr. Clark was a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the staff at McLean Hospital in Belmont. He maintained a private practice in Weston. After several families consulted him in the early '70s about their children's membership in fringe religious groups, he became convinced that the young people ...

In a lawsuit to stop deprogrammers from trampling on religious sect members' rights, a Bellevue man yesterday told a federal jury that four men "ambushed" him to get him to quit his fundamentalist church. Jason Scott is suing the Cult Awareness Network and the four deprogrammers hired by Scott's mother for unspecified damages. The mother was trying to get Scott — then 18 — to leave the New Life Tabernacle Church, a member of the United Pentecostal Churches. The attempt failed, ...

IT IS portrayed as a typical private school. But the glossy Greenfields brochure, which boasts of academic success and a happy environment for children, does not tell the whole story. One important word is missing from the booklet - Scientology. It is also missing from: * The handbook issued by the Independent Schools Information Service, which describes Greenfields as inter-denominational. * The Independent Schools Yearbook, which it is listed as non-denominational. * The school's 27-page constitution lodged with the Charity Commission. ...

The June 1 letter on Prozac by Doug Johnston is another example of the campaign of misinformation that Scientologists are spreading on Prozac and other treatments prescribed by psychiatrists. Johnston refers to research carried out by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Hubbard initiated his "research" with the premises that all psychiatric treatment is damaging to all patients and that psychological problems can be dealt with only by training the mind to forget, using a form of self-hypnosis. He conveniently ...

A personal aide to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for eight of her nearly 20 years with the group says that fluoxetine (Prozac) and therapy have finally stopped the depression and suicidal ideation she had suffered since 1976. "I have to speak out." Hana (Eltringham) Whitfield told The Psychiatric Times. "The Scientologists choose the most prominent psychiatrists and the most successful drugs to attack. That's why they attacked Ritalin, and that's why they are now attacking Prozac." Although ...

"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 ...

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 ...

A HIGH Court judge yesterday delivered a damning indictment of the Church of Scientology. Mr Justice Latey described the Californian-based sect as 'corrupt, immoral, sinister and dangerous'. And of its methods, he declared: 'For those of us old enough to remember, it is grimly reminiscent of the ranting and bullying of Hitler and his henchmen.' He was giving judgment in the High Court Family Division at the end of a six-month 'tug of love' battle over two children whose father is ...

Robert Dardano and Warren Friske were trusted members of the Boston mission of the Church of Scientology in the mid-1970s when they say they were recruited to join a group of other church members intent on carrying out "dirty tricks" against critics and others deemed enemies of the church in this area. The activities of the group included break-ins, the theft of documents, harassment and misrepresentation, according to sworn testimony by Dardano in Florida last year and affidavits from him and ...

"To try to stop people from listening, the Chaos Merchant has to use words like 'cult,' " says L. Ron Hubbard (founder of the Church of Scientology) of his enemies. "That's a closed group, whereas Scientology is the most open group on Earth to anyone." Cult or religion? Scientology has been called both. A note prefacing most of Hubbard's books defines Scientology as "a religious philosophy containing pastoral counseling procedures intended to assist an individual to gain greater self-confidence and personal ...

The 16 witnesses who testified in Clearwater's public hearings on Church of Scientology activities provided the first-hand information city officials will use if they decide to design ordinances to regulate the sect. Boston attorney Michael Flynn, who gathered the witnesses, said he questioned them extensively about their Scientology experiences and people they knew in the sect. He confirmed that information through other witnesses and contacts inside the church, he said. If they had not been in the sect, Flynn said, "I'd ...

The same story makes the headlines again and again. An anguished family is trying to rescue its child, who has, the parents charge, been stolen by a cult, sometimes after only a single weekend of involvement. The parents describe the child as a humorless zombie - where formerly he or she was self-possessed, intelligent and completely normal. And, as family members begin to consult the clergy, lawyers and deprogrammers, they keep expressing confusion about exactly what has happened, and why. A ...

Protestant and Catholic churches are partly responsible for the increase in cults across the country, a Harvard psychiatrist said. John G. Clark, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School who opposes cults, said churches have melted into the background, allowing cults to increase in strength and authority. CULTS HE considers dangerous include the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church and The Way International. Clark said the Way's membership has increased to more than 100,000 followers, and members ...

An education group organizing in the Cupertino School District area may have tried to play down its affiliation with a controversial religious cult, the Church of Scientology. The non-profit Applied Scholastics Inc. (ASI) has also held unauthorized training courses for three district teachers at the district's Hoover School after a request to have the district sponsor ASI programs was turned down by Associate Superintendent for Instruction William Zachmeier. "We're not a front for Scientology," stressed ASI Executive Director Lisa Patella. "Our ...

How a Portland jury got a crash course in one of the oddest "religions" ever created and awarded the plaintiff more than $2. million Note: This summer, a jury in Portland spent a month listening to testimony in a $4 million lawsuit over the practices of the Church of Scientology there. The plaintiff: Julie Christofferson, a young Portland woman who was a follower of Scientology in 1975 and 1976. The defendants: three local Scientology organizations and one of their leaders. ''Richard ...