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 ...

LOS ANGELES — The Church of Scientology International sued Eli Lilly & Co. for $14.7 million, alleging the pharmaceutical maker pressured a public relations firm to drop the church as a client. The church and Eli Lilly have long been at odds over the drug maker's sale of Prozac. The scientologists say the antidepressant can be harmful, even fatal. The suit, filed Friday in federal court, names as defendants Lilly, the British advertising conglomerate WPP Group, its chief executive officer, Martin ...

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 ...

Police last month arrested Allan Anthony Buttnor, a minister and director of special projects for the Church of Scientology in Edmonton. They claimed he was working at the church offices last November 30 when he fondled the chest of a church member's 10-year-old daughter. They also alleged he had picked up the girl in his car near her home on March 7 and repeated the act. Last week, after a crown prosecutor told the court that there is no evidence to ...

Internal documents from the Church of Scientology, the parent organisation of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, indicate that behind the church's public battle to expose abuses of psychiatric patients lies a hidden plan of retribution. The documents contain evidence that some Australian Scientologists apparently have remained committed to a 30-year-old doctrine of revenge and intimidation against people the church describes as enemies. And while church members in Australia have been speaking out against psychiatric abuse, courts in the United States ...

WHEN a royal commission last year exposed atrocities at Chelmsford Private Hospital in New South Wales, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights scored dual victories: one public, one private. The first came with the release of Mr Justice Slattery's 12-volume report into the nightmarish "cuckoo's nest" of Chelmsford — a private hospital where the commission found that at least 24 people died as a result of deep-sleep therapy. Another 24 patients survived the treatment but later took their own lives, 19 ...

The Scientology Story. Today: The Making of L. Ron Hubbard. First in a six-part series. The Times today begins a six-part series on the Church of Scientology, the controversial religion founded by the late author L. Ron Hubbard. Since its creation nearly four decades ago, Scientology has grown into a worldwide movement that, in recent months, has spent millions of dollars promoting its founder and his self-help book, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." In the past five years alone, ...

"They promise you the moon — that's what's wrong with it," says an ex-staff member of the Church of Scientology. Despite her disillusionment, "Nanu," as she prefers to be called, maintains that it is the organization that is destructive, not the principles it espouses. "The technology does work; the church doesn't," she states. "They're so into money, money, money." When she and her husband, a painting contractor, left the church in 1984 — primarily because of disagreements with other staff members ...

TAXATION Deductions Are Denied for Payments Made to Receive Religious Services Cite as 89 Daily Journal D.A.R. 7177 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus HERNANDEZ v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT No. 87-963. Argued November 28, 1988—Decided June 6,1989* The Church of Scientology (Church) provides "auditing" sessions designed to increase members' spiritual awareness and training comes at which participants study the tenets of the faith and seek to attain ...

NEWKIRK, OK – A proposed drug treatment and rehabilitation center which could be in operation on Indian land at the former Chilocco Indian School north of Newkirk by June 15th may be part of a notorious religious cult. Narconon was approved for a 75-bed facility by the State Health Planning Commission in January of this year as part of The Chilocco Development Authority. The projected cost is $400,000 for renovation and the five Indian tribes involved are projected to receive $16,000,000 ...

Church of Scientology public affairs director Richard Haworth has accused Clearwater Sun Managing Editor Samuel E. Fenton and staff writer George-Wayne Shelor of attempting to break into the church's Clearwater headquarters earlier this month, after attending a sect press conference. As a result of the alleged break-in attempt and other "bizarre actions" on Shelor's part, Haworth said the reporter is banned from church property and is allowed to communicate with him only in writing. Shelor has written a series of stories ...

Defections by older members and publicity given a legal battle over control of hundreds of millions of dollars are believed to be cutting into the membership of the Church of Scientology. The church, which has a headquarters in Clearwater, is described by its leaders as a religion and by its critics as a highly profitable business with cult-like overtones. The church claims a worldwide membership of 6-million, although former officials say the number of adherents is probably fewer than 700,000. According ...

Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard told his followers early on that they should use civil litigation to harass, silence or even to destroy opponents. From the defamation suits filed four years ago by Scientology's Calgary, Edmonton and Old Strathcona Missions, however, seven weary but very determined Albertans last week emerged unsilenced and undestroyed. The $100,000 lawsuits against them (the figure, incidentally, specifically recommended by scientologist Hubbard) were thrown out of court without coming to trial. Even so, lawyers say, ...

DAVID BERESFORD investigates the activities of Scientology's secret intelligence unit whose director is based in Britain IT WAS a familiar beginning to an American public scandal: soon after 7 pm on the night of June 11, 1976, two burglars were caught in the US Court House in Washington DC. In the Watergate tradition frantic attempts were made to localise responsibility. But the cover-up finally cracked and disclosures followed which were to lead, not to the top of the Republican Party, but ...

Freelance writer Paulette Cooper is a finely honed, long-haired accumulation of nervous energy. She was dressed with a New Yorker flair that seemed out of context in the small windowless room in the grey dignity of the U. S. District Court building in Washington.

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 ...