Clearwater picket 1997–Xenu picketing with sign saying “L. Ron Hubbard: Psychotic CON MAN”, other picketers with signs saying “www.scientology-kills.net” “Xenu Crossing (inside a yellow sign on picket sign)”; Deana Holmes with sign saying “Did Standard Tech kill Lisa?”; lecture at Scientology church VO: While church administration is busy dealing with a steady stream of conflict, individual Scientologists are out among the people, spreading Hubbard’s word at every opportunity. MIKE RINDER: Well, you know, the aims of Scientology are a civilization without ...

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Dec 6, 1998 - "I am L. Ron Hubbard," the woman on the hotel room bed announced in a robotic voice. "I created time 3 billion years ago." She rambled on and on, every outburst dutifully scribbled down by those assigned to watch her. "I can't confront force . . . I need my auditor . . . I want to take a toothbrush and brush the floor until I have a cognition." The jargon of Scientology was ...

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGY professor Benjamin Zablocki has been studying cults–now called, thanks to academic political correctness, new religious movements, or NRMs–since his graduate school days at Johns Hopkins during the mid-1960s, when he bought a ninety-nine dollar Greyhound bus pass and traveled around the country visiting all the religious communes he could find. "My style of research is participant observation," he explains. "I live with the groups, wash dishes with them, pray with them, and immerse myself in their way of ...

IN THE '70s, Jim Jones moved his Peoples Temple from San Francisco to Guyana to escape what he saw as persecution. In the U.S., the temple had run a free clinic and a drug-rehab program, but reports from Guyana began detailing brutality. Tim Reiterman was there when 913 people died in what we now call "Jonestown." OAKLAND, Calif. - For 20 years now, they have come to a grassy hillside overlooking San Francisco Bay to share tears, hugs and their private ...

Justice: Severe dehydration proved fatal to female believer who, family contends, was held against her will. Prosecutor files two felony counts. CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Church of Scientology was charged Friday in the 1995 death of a member whose family claimed she became severely dehydrated after being held against her will for 17 days. Prosecutor Bernie McCabe charged the church with abuse or neglect of a disabled adult and unauthorized practice of medicine, both felonies. The church noted that prosecutors did ...

In death, Lisa McPherson has gained fame around the world. Internet pages describing her death in the hands of the Church of Scientology have proliferated in Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, French and German. Scientology critics from Copenhagen to San Francisco walk the streets carrying signs that question the Dec. 5, 1995, death of McPherson in Clearwater. Some of those critics will be in Clearwater on the anniversary of her death again this year to picket Scientology buildings. Internet interest in McPherson ...

CLEARWATER (AP) — A prosecutor charged the Church of Scientology on Friday with two felonies in the death of a member whose family claims she became severely dehydrated after being held against her will for 17 days. Lisa McPherson, 36, died in December 1995. She had been under the 24-hour care of church members at the Fort Harrison Hotel, Scientology's international retreat in downtown Clearwater. Her family has claimed she was held against her will after trying to leave the church. ...

(Gerry Armstrong is my friend now that we are both out of Scientology, and I have already told him this story. I have told him how sorry I am for my part in trying to destroy him when I was still an OSA staff member. I’ve told several other people this story as well, and they have urged me to share it because it is such a classic illustration of how far DM and his cronies are willing to ...

The doctor who pronounced Scientologist Lisa McPherson dead pays her estate $100,000. A Clearwater doctor who declared Scientologist Lisa McPherson dead when she arrived at a New Port Richey hospital in December 1995 has paid her estate $100,000 to settle his portion of a wrongful death suit McPherson's family filed against the Church of Scientology and others. James Felman, the Tampa lawyer who represents Dr. David Minkoff, said two medical malpractice insurance companies paid the entire amount. "It wasn't our idea ...

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court has reaffirmed $1.09 million in damages against an anti-cult organization for its role in trying to "deprogram" a Washington state teenager, despite a warning from seven judges that free speech was under attack. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied reconsideration Wednesday of a panel's 2-1 decision in April upholding damages against the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Without announcing the exact vote, the court said a request for a rehearing had failed to ...

Publication Date: Wednesday May 20, 1998 COURTS: Palo Alto man to pay church $75,000 Court rules that Internet posting violated Scientologists' copyright Palo Alto engineer Keith Henson was ordered to pay $75,000 to the Church of Scientology last week after he posted some of the church's unpublished teachings on the Internet. The award by a federal jury in San Jose is one of the largest made for copyright infringement of a single work, according to Helena Kobrin, an attorney representing the ...

Depending on whom you ask, last week's verdict in Religious Technology Center v. Keith Henson is either a vote for intellectual property rights or a vote against freedom of information. But regardless of whom you ask, Henson is in an unenviable position: He faces a US$75,000 fine for violating the Church of Scientology's copyright. And this Friday, the Palo Alto, California, electrical engineer must tell the judge in the case why he should not be held in contempt of court for ...

She is one of an estimated 3,300 Scientologists who have migrated to Clearwater in the 1990s, the most dramatic period of growth for the church during its 22 years in Clearwater. In addition, the church has said it is "deadly serious" about its plans for the year 2000, which include tripling the size of its Clearwater staff to more than 3,500; launching a local Scientology "university" that would accommodate more than 10,000 students a week; and having "Clearwater known as the ...

The Church of Scientology International is accusing two Web sites of trademark violation and is taking action to stop it. The church has threatened to see legal recourse against a Colorado Web site owner if he continues to run a site called "scientology-kills.net," which also sells T-shirts bearing the same phrase. In the second dispute, the church sent a letter to Tilman Hausherr of Berlin on Monday telling him to remove altered Scientology graphics from his CompuServe home page, which he ...