Transcript: Descriptions of video in italics. VO=Voiceover of Lesley Stahl. LESLEY STAHL (in studio): There was a time if you were worried about your son or daughter being in a cult, you could get help from a small, non-profit organization called the Cult Awareness Network, or CAN, for 20 years the nation’s best-known resource for information and advice about groups it considered dangerous. Among them was Scientology, a church not known for turning the other cheek. But church officials say Scientology ...

When the end finally came for the old Cult Awareness Network, it happened fast. Cynthia Kisser, CAN's executive director, struggled to stay calm as she sat in federal bankruptcy court in Chicago late last October waiting for the auction to begin. Kisser, who had spent the past nine years leading CAN's efforts to inform the public about dangerous cults, had hoped that she wouldn't have to pay much for her group's assets that day. Nor did she want much, she claims ...

For years, Scientology has gone to great lengths to defend itself from critics. Often its defense has involved private investigators working for its lawyers. While the use of private investigators is common in the legal profession, some instances involving the church have been unusual. Scientology officials said that the investigators operated within the law and that the tactics were necessary to counter attacks made over the years by Internal Revenue Service agents and the press. "When people stop spreading lies about ...

On Oct. 8, 1993, 10,000 cheering Scientologists thronged the Los Angeles Sports Arena to celebrate the most important milestone in the church's recent history: victory in its all-out war against the Internal Revenue Service. For 25 years, I.R.S. agents had branded Scientology a commercial enterprise and refused to give it the tax exemption granted to churches. The refusals had been upheld in every court. But that night the crowd learned of an astonishing turnaround. The I.R.S. had granted tax exemptions to ...

A web of intrigue surrounds the high-stakes legal brawl between FACTnet and the Church of Scientology. Strange things happen around Lawrence Wollersheim. His businesses collapse. His Boulder apartment gets raided by federal marshals, his computers seized. When college students offer to help him rebuild his computer bulletin-board system, they receive threatening phone calls–anonymous voices urging them to stay away from Larry. A California judge who presided over a lawsuit in which Wollersheim was the plaintiff told reporters he'd encountered a lot ...

In 1995, a jury awarded Jason Scott $5 million, ruling that his civil rights had been violated during an involuntary "deprogramming" by Rick Ross, a Phoenix resident and well-known cult expert. That judgment eventually forced Ross into bankruptcy court, put an anticult group out of business and made national news. Last week, however, the case made a sudden and surprising about-face. Scott and Ross reached a settlement that requires the deprogrammer to pay Scott not $3 million–his share of the judgment–but ...

BARRINGTON, Ill. - For 20 years, the Cult Awareness Network ran the nation's best-known hotline for parents who grew distraught when unconventional religious groups they neither trusted nor understood suddenly won the allegiance of their children. From its offices in a Chicago suburb, the network (known as CAN) answered more than 350 telephone inquiries a week, counseled relatives at conferences attended by thousands and gave news interviews to everyone from small-town daily newspapers to "Nightline." As CAN's influence rose, so did ...

Lawsuits: Group with controversial ties to deprogrammers files for bankruptcy and may be forced to shut down in wake of $1-million judgment. Plagued by numerous lawsuits from religious groups and fighting a $1.1-million judgment against it, the Cult Awareness Network has filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. "How we will operate or if we will continue to operate in the short term, I don't know," said Cynthia Kisser, executive director of the 12-year-old organization, known for ...

Clients of deprogrammer Rick Ross call him a savior. Perhaps that's why people he's branded cult leaders want to crucify him. Rick Ross is describing how Arizona's cults use mind control to exploit their members. He warns about 70 people gathered at Arizona State University's Memorial Union that they are prime targets for groups that tend to prey on university students. The Moonies have a house on North Central. Scientology has a church in Mesa. There's Scottsdale's CBJ, whose members believe ...

A 23-year-old Seattle-area man was awarded nearly $5 million yesterday for civil-rights violations that occurred when religious "deprogrammers" took him from his home and tried to persuade him to leave the United Pentecostal Church. Federal-court jurors delivered their verdict yesterday after deliberating eight hours, ending a trial that began when Jason Scott sued deprogrammer Rick Ross, Ross' associates and Cult Awareness Network (CAN), a Chicago-based group that monitors cults. Scott's mother, Kathy Tonkin, contacted CAN in 1991 when she became worried ...

Section: News, Page: A1 A federal jury yesterday awarded nearly $5 million to a young Bellevue man who had been kidnapped at his mother's behest to get him to leave his church. The verdict was seen as a stunning blow to cult critics and ``deprogrammers" who seek to go up against unconventional but often well-funded religious groups. Jason Scott, now 23, smiled broadly after the six-member U.S. District Court jury gave him a near-total victory in his civil rights lawsuit against ...

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 was a strange way to describe an aspect of a theology. But L. Ron Hubbard, the highly successful science-fiction writer who founded the Church of Scientology in the 1950s, had little tolerance for those who challenged his beliefs. And so it was, at one time, that Scientology scripture came to include an unusual litigation clause: "The only way to defend anything is to attack, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged ...

[Picture / Caption: RESOLUTION — "I think the judge just wanted to bring an end to this case," says Graham E. Berry, right, with Gordon J. Calhoun.] For years, the Church of Scientology has been synonymous with bitter litigation battles. But the 40-year-old religious organization, long known for its aggressive legal tactics, threw in the towel recently on a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles that it had been waging against two critics. Besides serving as a legal setback, the action in ...

GRAHAM E. BERRY, State Bar No. 128503 GORDON J. CALHOUN, State Bar No. 84509 LEWIS, D'AMATO, BRISBOIS & BISGAARD 221 N. Figueroa Street, Suite 1200 Los Angeles, California 90012 Telephone: (213) 250-1800 Attorneys for Defendants UWE GEERTZ, PH.D. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA No. CV 91-6426 HLH (Tx) DECLARATION OF VICKI AZNARAN RE: MOTION FOR COSTS Date: APRIL 4, 1994 Time: 10:00 a.m. Courtroom: 7 CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY INTERNATIONAL, Plaintiff, VS. STEVEN FISHMAN and UWE GEERTZ, Defendants. —– ...

Scientology's leaders say the best defense is a good offense. DID THE CHURCH of Scientology kill a judge's dog during a trial? Did the judge, who is now dead, think church members did? Did that lead him to be prejudiced, and bias the jury against the church? These and other issues are part of an intense battle by the church's litigation machine to overturn what remains of a $30 million verdict won in 1986 by former church member Larry Wollersheim. Mr. ...

The Church of Scientology, bristling from public criticism by a nationally recognized psychiatrist and UCLA professor, has sued the outspoken educator and the university. In a lawsuit filed this week in Santa Monica Superior Court, two student followers of the controversial church claim that Dr. Louis J. West has waged a smear campaign of religious intolerance and hatred on university time. The verbal attacks by a representative of the state university system and his alleged "anti-religious activity" are violations of state ...

The Church of Scientology uses private detectives and bulldog litigators to pursue its numerous detractors. It also hires low-key establishment lawyers who work quietly within the system. So who is directing the $416 million libel suit against Time? On April 27, 1992, lawyers for the Church of Scientology International filed a $416 million libel action in federal court in New York against Time Warner, Inc., Time Inc. Magazine Company [Time Warner is a partner in American Lawyer Media, L.P.], and writer ...

The Church of Scientology contends that for more than 20 years it has been the target of a systematic campaign by the United States government, together with "vested-interest pressure groups" such as the medical professions, to "suppress the church's spiritual practice and expansion." The church advances this accusation as the fundamental rationale for its aggressive policies of defense-by-attack against individual critics, private groups and government agencies perceived as "harassing" Scientology. Church spokesmen, moreover, expand upon the allegation of systematic persecution to ...