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 ...

It was well after midnight and the Tampa airport terminal was almost empty. Just a few late-night travelers sitting on the benches, reading, trying to sleep or, like me, watching the movie on the screen hanging above the waiting area. They were showing Pancho Villa, the 1972 Eugenio Martin film with Telly Savalas as Villa. I was identifying with Villa – his betrayal and imprisonment, his escape, his revolt against his enemy, Huerta. I could feel Villa’s hot outrage. ''¡Viva la ...

Jason Beghe is the bravest actor in Hollywood. He’s come clean about his 14 years in Scientology, the religion that Tom Cruise reveres. He says the purpose of Scientology is to create a "brainwashed, robotic version of you." He also says that he spent about $1 million to work his way up the Scientology ladder to become what’s known as an "OT5 auditor," or someone who listens to new members and teaches them the ropes. He was so successful as a ...

Cult Friction After an embarrassing string of high-profile defection and leaked videos, Scientology is under attack from a faceless cabal of online activists. Has America's most controversial religion finally met its match? By John Cook [Picture] Masked hackers have declared war on Scientology. Could the celebrity-friendly religion be in its final days? (Photo: Sam Comen) This article is from the April issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here Clearwater is prepared for its enemies. It's a warm, if ...

The show is about karma and redemption, but could there be a deeper message? James Donaghy examines the influence of the Church of Scientology on hit comedy My Name Is Earl Do good things and good things will happen to you. Do bad things and it will come back to haunt you". Why can't all TV have a simple message like that at its heart? The brilliantly slick My Name Is Earl carries the karmic principle through to its logical/absurd conclusion ...

COOPER: It's no secret that Tom Cruise is a devoted, outspoken member of the Church of Scientology. That has not always been the case. There was a time when the subject of his religion was off limits to reporters and to interviewers. Not so now. Just ask Matt Lauer who got lectured by Cruise weeks ago on what the actors says are the evils of psychiatry. Now, while some are surprised by the chance in Cruise, former Scientologists insist it's really ...

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Late on a November afternoon two years ago, a 36-year-old Scientologist named Lisa McPherson was involved in a minor traffic accident. She was not injured, but she inexplicably stripped off her clothes and began to walk naked down the street. A paramedic rushed her into an ambulance and asked why she had taken off her clothes. Ms. McPherson replied: "I wanted help. I wanted help." She was taken to a nearby hospital for a psychiatric examination, but several ...

[This appears to be an OCR'ed version of a paper document. I wish to find a copy of the original document in order to fix the typos troughout.] —– To Whom It May Concern To the best of my memory - I, Lorna Levett was a Scientologist from 1961 to 1974, from 1966 to 1974 full time, from 1968 to 1974 a franchise holder and received rewards for being the top recruiter on the planet 1969 to 1970. In late 1969/early ...

While being handcuffed before dawn Tuesday, Linda Haggard allegedly told authorities she set a fire that gutted the Carpinteria Library because "books are evil." Haggard, 31, a geology major at UCSB since 1983, was found outside the newly renovated library by Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies called to the scene of the 4:15 a.m. blaze. Haggard admitted setting the fire, according to sheriff's Detective Bruce Pixley. "Yeah, I lit the fire," Haggard said, according to Pixley. When asked why, she replied ...

And now, the next Walt Disney Studios— the Church of Scientology! That is, if entrepreneurs connected with the Hollywood based cult can muscle into the film business with their proposal to homogenize films by tailoring them to the tastes of the unwashed masses. It all began last July, when Future Films, a new, eccentric studio, began running ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter touting its revolutionary ideas. No one knew what to make of it all. The grand concept, to ...

Pomona police said Friday they are investigating whether beliefs espoused by the Church of Scientology led a family to confine a mentally disabled woman in a cell-like bedroom at a Phillips Ranch house. While stressing that neither the church nor its beliefs are under investigation, police said they want to know if Scientology practices could explain why the woman was kept in confinement. Police and Los Angeles County mental health workers discovered Marianne Coenan, 31, locked in a sparsely furnished room ...

Three years after publishing a best-selling book in 1950 about his theories for improving mental health, L. Ron Hubbard, 42, was living in Spain and worrying about money. An idea struck him. Why not present Scientology as a religion, he suggested in a letter written to Helen O'Brien, then the head of an organization for marketing his mental health concepts known as the Hubbard Association of Scientologists. This was the formative stage of the Church of Scientology. Over the next 30 ...

The Church of Scientology in Portland waged an expensive, large-scale advertising campaign throughout the fraud trial that led to a $39 million verdict against the church and its founder, but jurors said they paid no attention to it. Printed advertisements appeared frequently in daily and weekly newspapers in the Portland area throughout the 10-week trial, and radio and television commercials were played on several local stations. Two jurors who were interviewed Monday said the jury's decision was based on long discussions ...

A Multnomah County Circuit Court jury awarded $39 million in punitive damages Friday to a Portland woman after finding she was victimized by "wanton misconduct" by the Church of Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. The verdict was returned in favor of Julie Christofferson Titchbourne, 27, after 2½ days of deliberation and a 10-week trial. One of her lawyers, Ronald L. Wade, said it was the biggest punitive damages verdict in Oregon history. John Carmichael, president of the Church of ...

Attorneys for the Church of Scientology finished their cross-examination of a former Scientologist Friday without attempting to use the last two of four surreptitiously recorded videotapes made for the purpose of discrediting him. The latter tapes, made in Los Angeles In November 1984 without the knowledge of Gerald D. Armstrong, a church critic who appeared on them, were delivered to Multnomah Circuit Judge Donald H. Londer Friday. Londer had learned of the existence of the tapes Thursday and ordered them produced ...

"Corrupt, sinister and dangerous" were the words used to describe the Church of Scientology in a judgment given by Mr Justice Latey this summer. He also referred to it as "immoral and socially obnoxious". But who controls the Church now? A major Sunday Times Magazine investigation into the activities of the cult in America and Britain has uncovered a disturbing and extraordinary story — the takeover of the organisation by a small band of youthful fanatics following the disappearance of the ...

[Picture / Caption: Scientology's headquarters in L.A. was formerly the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. The church purchased It for $5 million In 1977.] Last October in San Francisco, some 70 local leaders of the Church of Scientology gathered to hear nine church executives harangue them about their shortcomings. Styling themselves with titles that ranged from the quasi-military ("Commander," "Warrant Officer") to the quasi-lunatic ("International Finance Dictator"), the men announced that they represented the new hierarchy of the organization, and that they ...

Throughout its nearly 30 years of existence, the Church of Scientology has had problems with its image in the media. Newspaper articles have called it a "bizarre brain-washing cult" founded by a former science fiction writer. Television coverage of recent hearings in Clearwater, Florida — home of the Church's U.S. headquarters — emphasized testimony that the group's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, is in hiding and, according to his son, might even be dead. And the Reader's Digest recently printed two controversial ...

"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 year was 1950. The book was Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, written by a 39-year-old "pulp" writer of science fiction, L. Ron Hubbard. A few months earlier, Hubbard had outlined the book's tenets in a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. And a year before that, at a lecture for science fiction writers, Hubbard had mused, "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be ...

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 ...

CLEARWATER — Why, Robert Dardano was asked, had he done it — why had he participated with other Scientologists in burglaries and theft of documents and smear campaigns against the church's perceived enemies? Because he was convinced, the slender, soft-spoken Dardano told Clearwater city commissioners, "that Scientology was going to save the planet and free the world. "That we were right and everyone else was wrong," Dardano, a 31-year-old Boston resident, was one of eight witnesses to testify Saturday during commission ...

"Narconon is the ONLY successful drug rehabilitation program on the planet." L. Ron Hubbard, Founder of Church of Scientology "Narconon was definitely a con. It was bullsh•t. Those guys were forcing guys into Scientology." Narconon graduate St. Cloud Prison, Minnesota [Picture of internal memo: "We are expanding the Scientology drug rehabilitation programs, primarily through NARCONON. During the coming months we plan to get NARCONON programs into many additional prisons, rehabilitation centers and the armed forces. We also have plans to open ...

A 1977 order from the top level of the Church of Scientology sought to silence criticism of the cult by a New York-based organization dedicated to investigating UFOs and claims of psychic wonders.

Confidential documents from various Ontario Government offices including an attorney-general's communication about police intelligence operations have been found in U.S. Church of Scientology files. The documents were part of the evidence submitted by federal attorneys in the Washington prosecution of U.S. leaders of the cult on charges of conspiring to steal government documents and obstruct justice by cover-ups and by kidnapping an informer. Of 12 indicted, including two in Britain and the informer, nine have been tried, convicted and sentenced by ...