New reports about Freewinds, the Scientology-owned cruise ship, suggest more people than previously recorded may have been exposed to crocidolite asbestos over the last few years. Crocidolite asbestos is one of the most toxic forms of asbestos, and is known to cause several types of asbestos cancer. Initial reports of asbestos problems surfaced in April. However, a recent statement from the vessel’s captain has indicated there may have been previous incidents where asbestos was released through the ship’s onboard ventilation system. ...

In the mid-1980s, more than ever before, television advertising was about big budgets and excess. Bucking that trend was Scientologist and marketing whiz Jeff Hawkins, whose understated, minimalist TV ads for L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics helped launch the book onto the best-seller list—and arguably sparked a worldwide interest in the religion. Hawkins' ads featured simple questions like, "Why are you unhappy?" in white print against a black background, backed by edgy music supplied by Hawkins' friends, and finally, a shot of ...

It was a warm August day in 1986. I was in my office on the third floor of the main building in the PAC Scientology complex in LA — "Big Blue." We had the windows open and the fans running, to try to suck in any vestige of a breeze that we could. Out the open window, I could see Fountain Avenue below me, and across the street, New York George’s, where I sometimes had a bowl of chili. A simmering ...

Scientology officials insist its S.S. Asbestos will sail again. Reports of cancer-causing particles aboard the 40-year-old Scientology cruise ship and floating fortress for the church's secret OT VIII training floated around yesterday after a report by a St. Martins newspaper that the ship was sealed by authorities on the island of Curacao. Perhaps most interesting was the old interview with the ship's architect Lawrence Woodcraft, originally aired by Xenu TV and reposted by the anti-Scientology Lisa McPherson Trust and others. Woodcraft ...

He's one of the biggest box-office draws in history, but in recent years Tom Cruise has become more than just the face of his films. He has also become the face of his religion – Scientology. A recent video of Cruise – made for a Scientology event and leaked online – showed the star's unbridled passion for his religion and piqued the public's interest in a belief system that has long been surrounded by controversy. "I think it's a privilege to ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit against Dr. James Orrington, DDS, alleging religious and sexual harassment. The suit, filed on behalf of ten employees — 9 women and 1 man? 10 women? — claims the South Side dentist required employees to recite passages from Scientology literature before he'd give them their checks. Three employees were fired after they lodged a complaint with the EEOC in 2005, and another two were fired after they complained about the harassment. According ...

The optometrist wants to hear about my most painful memories. This is an auditing session, an important component of a religion called Scientology. The optometrist is the auditor. His name is Steve Sasala. He is skinny. And tall. His face is long and narrow. I can make out the shape of his skull. We sit across from each other, on opposite sides of a tiny desk inside a claustrophobic room at the back of some historic building in Parma Heights. The ...

A former employee of a Southland telecommunications company claims the company's required training included courses "designed to indoctrinate employees" in Scientology, and when she objected to the religious aspects of the training she was fired. Margaret Warfield, of Montgomery, filed her religious discrimination lawsuit in federal court Monday against BTI Communications Group. According to the company's Web site, BTI Communications Group is a business telephone and communications technology company headquartered in Lemont, with branch offices in Santa Fe Springs and Sacramento, ...

A Springfield woman has alleged in a federal lawsuit that she was fired in 2004 from a Branson West company for refusing to convert to Scientology, the chosen religion of her boss and several co-workers. Brianne Shahan filed the suit against Richmond Monroe Group Inc. in U.S. District Court last month. Shahan claims her former employer violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allegedly pressuring her to divorce her husband and become a Scientologist. According to its ...

(CBS) There was never a question who committed the murder of Elli Perkins on March 13, 2003. As correspondent Peter Van Sant reports, within hours, police had a confession. His jeans drenched in blood, 28-year-old Jeremy Perkins had just stabbed his mother 77 times. Weeks later, in a recorded interview, Jeremy told a psychiatrist what was going through his mind. "My mom, I thought she was out to get me," he said. "Like sometimes she’d be totally normal and then she’d ...

At first glance, it seemed like a classic David-and-Goliath punch-up: Danielle Lavigueur, a separated mother of two living in Longueuil, on Montreal's South Shore, claims the high school her 12-year-old son Gabriel attends is pressuring her to medicate him with Ritalin for hyperactivity. She refuses to yield to the alleged demand, and eventually someone calls in the Children's Aid Society. Feeling besieged, Lavigueur confides in a friend, who introduces her to Raphaël Huppé, head of research for the Montreal-based National Parents ...

Tom Cruise says Katie Holmes is now a fully-fledged follower of L Ron Hubbard. So what is it about the sci-fi writer's 'religion' that exerts such a hold? Sara Lawrence goes undercover to find out Sitting on a red velvet chair in the middle of a majestic, oak-panelled hall in East Grinstead, I have rarely felt more fearful for my sanity. On the wall in front of me, a creepy, larger-than-life-sized portrait of an old man seems to be staring straight ...

Lynley Hood finds deep flaws in the Lake Alice settlement. News that the police have found no evidence of criminal offending by psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks, former head of the child and adolescent unit at Lake Alice Hospital, has been greeted with dismay by the psychiatric patient advocacy group, Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). "We're not giving up now. We are still working with victims and are still going to be filing criminal complaints," the group's New Zealand executive director, ...

If a high-ranking LAPD official can be believed, perhaps the Scientology-affiliated The Way To Happiness should take a page from its own teachings. Two of the Glendale-based nonprofit organization’s 21 guides to achieving happiness are “Be Worthy of Trust” and “Seek to Live the Truth,” neither of which were followed apparently in the group’s dealings with the LAPD and a city in Texas. Officials with the group, which over the past two decades has distributed booklets of the same name to ...

In the 1900 block of East Carson Street on the South Side, there's an unassuming storefront that marked its first anniversary last month. It's the Pittsburgh office of the Church of Scientology, the controversial religious movement that recently captured international headlines when celebrity disciple Tom Cruise became increasingly public and, at times, combative, about his beliefs. Although the office opened here with little fanfare, Scientologists have high hopes for its growth as they try to regain a foothold in the region ...

After years of conflict, the church and the media seem to have reached a truce. Is it because Scientology has become less confrontational — or because the press is scared? For anyone interested in the Church of Scientology, the May 6, 1991, issue of Time magazine remains a milestone in news coverage. For those who back the church, it ran an outrageously biased account that eventually led to a libel suit by the church — later dismissed — and prompted Scientology ...

Opponents say the legislation takes advantage of lingering stigma and will deter parents from seeking help for their children. TALLAHASSEE - Legislation backed by an offshoot of the Church of Scientology aims to discourage public school students from seeking mental health services. The measure would require schools to tell parents that any mental health treatment would be part of a student's permanent record, which is true only in limited cases now. It also would require school officials to tell parents that ...

Dec. 2—A Chattanooga company that once bragged its software would create a computer that could receive and implement oral commands in any of five languages has been charged with defrauding investors out of $12.4 million. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is suing the former E-Brain Solutions and its founder, Peter Warren, for making false claims and raising funds in violation of federal securities laws. The civil suit claims Mr. Warren and the company falsely claimed they had developed a prototype ...

Tax lawyers are watching a trial in Los Angeles that pits an orthodox Jewish family against the Internal Revenue Service over whether tuition for religious education is deductible – based in part on a "secret" settlement between the IRS and the Church of Scientology. "It's not clear that [plaintiffs] Michael and Marla Sklar will win, but if they do, it may well mean that millions of families will be able to deduct some portion of private religious school education," said professor ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing a British national and his Chattanooga company, claiming he defrauded investors out of $12.4 million. According to the SEC, Peter Warren of ExoBrain LLC (formerly E-Brain Solutions) in 2000 through 2001 falsely claimed to have developed multilanguage voice-activation technology to make computers easier to use, the agency says in a lawsuit filed Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. Through the Internet and other media, the lawsuit says, Warren solicited money from inexperienced ...

... I froze. I wasn't moving much to begin with, but I froze solid. I didn't want to breathe. I forgot all about our immediate problems. My CO had just said he was going to murder Julie Titchbourne. He was absolutely serious. I was in shock. Sure, she deserved to die — all SPs did. But you can't actually do that that sort of thing. My thoughts raced. Please, I thought, please, somebody say something that will make this stop. I ...

Harlingen — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit on behalf of former employees of Harlingen Family Dentistry who refused to attend training courses reportedly containing scientology doctrine. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Brownsville, alleges religious discrimination and retaliation against the workers. According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, scientology is "a religious movement begun in 1952 by L. Ron Hubbard which teaches immortality and reincarnation and claims a sure psychotherapeutic method for freeing the individual ...

Greg Bashaw's father respected him and trusted him to make wise choices. Even after he chose to devote his life to Scientology. While the shock and grief of his son's suicide were still fresh, Bob Bashaw read back through their decades-long correspondence, looking in particular for references to Scientology. "I wanted to see what there was here I missed," he says. His son Greg had been a member of the Church of Scientology for more than 20 years. During that time ...

Critic: Are you guys a cult? Mike Ferris, Public Relations Spokesperson, Church of Scientology of NZ: Depends on what you mean by a cult. Every religion in its forming stage was considered to be a cult, pretty much. Critic: You guys aren't in your forming stages though, you've been around for fifty years. You claim to be the only major religion that's emerged out of the twentieth century. So, are you a cult? Ferris: Not in the derogatory sense, no, we ...

Months of interviews and thousands of pages of court papers show the effect that influential church members had on a Clearwater company that was a darling of the dot-com boom. It was New Year's Eve 1997 when Digital Lightwave's chief, Bryan Zwan, made his biggest deal: a $9-million contract for his signature product, a 10-pound device that tests telephone lines. At 5:30 p.m., Zwan phoned his production staff and gave them a tall order: Ship the 308 units right away. It ...