1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 ⇑ Latest ↑ Later Earlier ↓ Earliest ⇓ Jun 13, 2000
Florida drops charges against Scientology in 1995 death — New York Times
Type: Press
Author(s):
Douglas Frantz Source:
New York Times Criminal charges against the Church of Scientology in the death of a church member who was under the organization's care were dropped yesterday because Florida prosecutors said they could no longer prove the accusations. Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pasco and Pinellas Counties, said in a document filed in state court in Clearwater that his office was dismissing the charges because the medical examiner had determined earlier this year that the death of the church member, Lisa McPherson, was accidental. ...
Jun 13, 2000
McPherson case expected to haunt medical examiner — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Craig Pittman Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) The blow to her credibility could make it difficult for Joan Wood to do her job, lawyers say. Although prosecutors said her "serious forensic error" ruined their case against the Church of Scientology, Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Joan Wood said Monday she has no plans to resign. But veteran lawyers predicted the case – and particularly the 31-page memo from prosecutors that blasted Wood as "illogical" and "inconsistent" – will dog her every time she takes the witness stand. That could make ...
Jun 13, 2000
State drops charges against Scientology — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Thomas C. Tobin Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) Blaming the medical examiner for damaging their case, prosecutors quietly end the inquiry into Lisa McPherson's death. CLEARWATER — State Attorney Bernie McCabe's weekend reading was a memo by his chief assistant urging him to drop the first criminal charges ever filed in the United States against the Church of Scientology. The 31-page document was filled with medical words that McCabe had never heard, but its essence was all too clear: The star prosecution witness, Medical Examiner Joan Wood, really didn't ...
Apr 7, 2000
Scientology's defense impresses judge — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Thomas C. Tobin Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) Promising a decision in a month, she questions the state's criminal charges against the church over a member's death. ST. PETERSBURG – After listening to legal arguments over two days, Pinellas-Pasco Chief Circuit Judge Susan F. Schaeffer said Thursday she will take a month to decide whether to dismiss the criminal case against the Church of Scientology. She also expressed support for key arguments raised by the church, which is defending itself against two charges in the 1995 death of Lisa ...
Apr 4, 2000
Scientology to argue for dismissal of case — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Thomas C. Tobin Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) If the judge denies the church's request, the focus shifts to a five-week criminal trial scheduled in October. Seventeen months after it was criminally charged in the death of Lisa McPherson, the Church of Scientology will have its first big day in court on Wednesday and a chance, it hopes, for vindication. "The entire basis for the state's prosecution of this case has now collapsed," begins one of the many Scientology legal briefs arguing the case should be dismissed. The prosecution ...
Mar 27, 2000
Travolta and Will Smith caught in religious rows — Guardian Unlimited
Type: Press
Source:
Guardian Unlimited In yet another fine weekend for protest groups, the anti-scientology group FactNet has warned that "lawsuits may soon be flying" over John Travolta's upcoming Battlefield Earth. FactNet accuses the movie - adapted from a sci-fi novel by cult founder L Ron Hubbard and starring celebrity scientologist Travolta - of accommodating "subliminal messages to surreptitiously recruit new members from the movie audience". FactNet goes on to allege that the would-be religion - beloved of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and other film stars ...
Mar 3, 2000
Church wants judge removed in McPherson case — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Thomas C. Tobin Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) Questioning his impartiality, Scientology asks Judge Brandt C. Downey III to remove himself. LARGO – The Church of Scientology says it fears Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Brandt C. Downey III cannot be impartial and is asking that he remove himself from presiding in the Lisa McPherson case. In a motion filed late Thursday, Scientology asserts that several of Downey's former law partners were active in anti-Scientology efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after the church's controversial arrival in Clearwater. The ...
Dec 16, 1999
State of Florida Department of Health v. David Ira Minkoff, M.D. / Case no. 1997-15802
Nov 20, 1999
French Scientologists sentenced in fraud — Los Angeles Times (California)
Type: Press
Source:
Los Angeles Times (California) A former French Scientology official has been sentenced to two years in prison for fraud, along with four other Scientologists who received suspended sentences of six months to two years. Xavier Delamare, former head of Scientology's branch in the southern French city of Marseille, was sentenced Monday in connection with a 10-year-old case in which he was found guilty of operating sham "purification" courses between 1987 and 1990. As with the others, Delamare will not go to prison because 18 months ...
Nov 16, 1999
Scientology leader jailed for fraud // Group denounces French trial as inquisition — The Guardian (UK)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Jon Henley Source:
The Guardian (UK) In another blow to the controversial Church of Scientology's battle to be recognised as a religion rather than a sect, a French court yesterday found one of its former leaders guilty of fraud and sentenced him to six months in prison. Xavier Delamare, a former regional Scientology leader in south-east France, was given a further 18 month suspended sentence by the Marseille court while four other members accused of fraud, violence and illegally practising medicine were given suspended sentences of six ...
Nov 15, 1999
French scientologists guilty of fraud — BBC News
Type: Press
Source:
BBC News A court in the French city of Marseilles has found five members of the Church of Scientology guilty on fraud charges over courses offered by the organisation. The former leader of the church in southern France, Xavier Delamare, was sentenced to two years in jail, including 18 months suspended, and fined 16,000 dollars for manipulating people into giving money to the church. He will not return to jail because he has spent 17 weeks in pre-trial detention. Four more people were ...
Sep 21, 1999
World briefing / France: Scientologists on trial — New York Times
Sep 20, 1999
Scientology trial opens in France — BBC News
Sep 9, 1999
Files destroyed in Scientology case — The Guardian (UK)
Sep 9, 1999
Loss of Scientology files studied — New York Times
Sep 9, 1999
Scientology faces French ban — BBC News
Sep 1, 1999
Virtual Book Burning — Wired
Type: Press
Author(s):
Mike Romano Source:
Wired When A Piece of Blue Sky , a book critical of the Church of Scientology, suddenly disappeared from Amazon.com's online catalog early this year, newsgroups such as alt.religion.scientology buzzed with conspiracy theories. Then, in June, Amazon.co.uk, the online bookseller's British division, expunged a controversial book, The Committee , which implicates David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party, in atrocities against Catholics. Amazon's decision to remove two books from its online list demonstrates the perils of balancing a billion-dollar book business with a ...
Jun 9, 1999
Scientologists pay for libel — Guardian Unlimited
Type: Press
Author(s):
Clare Dyer Source:
Guardian Unlimited The Church of Scientology agreed yesterday to pay £55,000 libel damages to a former member the church accused of waging a "hate campaign" against it. The controversial church, founded in the early 1950s by the late science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, apologised at the high court in London for publishing a defamatory leaflet about Bonnie Woods, an American who became a Scientologist in the 1970s but left the church in 1982. The out of court settlement ends a six-year legal ...
May 12, 1999
Scientology files motions to drop charges — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)More: pqasb.pqarchiver.com
Type: Press
Author(s):
Thomas C. Tobin Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) The Church of Scientology in Clearwater says it is immune from criminal prosecution in the death of Lisa McPherson and wants the felony charges against it dismissed. In lengthy motions filed this week, Scientology's lawyers argue that the charges filed against the church last November "are both unnecessary and impermissible." Church staffers gave "spiritual assistance" to McPherson, a fellow Scientologist, in the days before she died, thus their actions were protected under the First Amendment and the state's new Religious Freedom ...
May 9, 1999
Is Scientology above the law? — France 2
Apr 1, 1999
Theology of Scientology — Discerner
Mar 30, 1999
Scientologists settle legal battle — CNET
Type: Press
Author(s):
Courtney Macavinta Source:
CNET The Church of Scientology International has settled a long-standing legal battle to repossess about 2,000 unpublished and copyrighted documents and keep them from being accessed by computer users in the future. Under a settlement reached in a U.S. district court earlier this month, a Colorado-based nonprofit group called FACTNet is permanently enjoined to pay the church $1 million if FACTNet is found guilty of future violations of church copyrights. FACTNet, started by former Scientologist Lawrence Wollersheim, also promised to return all ...
Mar 29, 1999
Abroad: Critics public and private keep pressure on Scientology — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Lucy Morgan Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) Scientology leaders say they want peace. They say they want to stay out of court. But with both foes at home and foes abroad, that goal may be elusive. The spiritual home of the Church of Scientology is in Clearwater, but for many years now its leaders have had worldwide ambitions. But as disciples have carried L. Ron Hubbard's teachings away from America's shore, the reception has been almost universally chilly at best – and at times openly hostile. At one ...
Tag(s):
Anti-psychiatry •
Bankruptcy •
Bonnie Woods •
Canada •
Casey Hill •
Church of Scientology of Toronto •
Copyright, trademark, patent •
Death •
Denmark •
Detox •
France •
Fraud, lie, deceit, misrepresentation •
Germany •
Greece •
Hard sell •
Heber C. Jentzsch •
Infiltration •
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) •
Italy •
Karin Spaink •
Lawsuit •
Legal •
Lucy Morgan •
Medical claims •
Membership •
Mental illness •
Michael J. "Mike" Rinder •
Monique E. Yingling •
Nazi labelling •
Netherlands •
Office of Special Affairs (OSA) (formerly, Guardian's Office) •
Oxford Capacity Analysis (aka, "free Scientology personality test" aka "U-Test" aka "Pape Test") •
Patrice Vic •
Private investigator(s) •
Purification Rundown ("Purif") •
Recruitment •
Refunds •
Richard Woods •
Russia •
Silencing criticism, censorship •
Spain •
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) •
Suicide •
Sweden •
Switzerland •
UK Charity Commission •
United Kingdom (UK) •
Xenu (Operating Thetan level 3, OT 3, Wall of Fire) •
Zenon Panoussis Mar 29, 1999
Internet is battleground in foes' war of information — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Lucy Morgan Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) Around the clock, from Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and every corner of the United States, the critics of Scientology discuss the controversial organization and its practices. A court decision in Sweden is quickly posted to the news group, followed quickly by a full translation. Daily transcripts of a trial in Northern California are up before daybreak the next day, and news accounts from all over the world are quickly translated and reproduced. Many of those who post messages to the central ...
Mar 23, 1999
Anti-Cult Group Must Pay Award — Seattle Times
Type: Press
Author(s):
Janet Burkitt Source:
Seattle Times Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling upholding a more than $1 million award against a national anti-cult group would seem a straightforward victory for a onetime local man. Jason Scott was 18 in 1991 when he was taken from his mother's Bellevue home to an isolated beach house on the Washington coast for five days of religious "deprogramming." He sued the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), and the Supreme Court has now agreed that it must pay up. But in the case of Cult ...
Dec 1, 1998
Scientology pleads not guilty in 1995 death — New York TimesMore: link
Nov 14, 1998
Church of Scientology charged in member's death — CNN
Type: Press
Source:
CNN CLEARWATER, Florida (CNN) — The Church of Scientology was charged by Florida prosecutors Friday in the death of a member. The State Attorney's office in Pinellas County filed the felony charges after a lengthy investigation into the 1995 death of Lisa McPherson. McPherson had been a member of the church for 18 years and, according to relatives, had been talking about leaving the church. McPherson, 36, died December 5, 1995, after being confined for 18 days to a Scientology property called ...
Nov 14, 1998
Scientology charged in member's death — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Author(s):
Thomas C. Tobin Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) The church faces two felony charges in its treatment of Lisa McPherson. The Church of Scientology in Clearwater has been charged with criminal neglect and practicing medicine without a license in the 1995 death of Lisa McPherson, the mentally disturbed Scientologist who turned to outsiders for help before church officials intervened and placed her under their care. Unlicensed Scientology staffers "medicated her without her consent," isolated her and took other measures to treat her physical and mental condition at Scientology's Fort ...
Nov 13, 1998
Church of Scientology charged in member's death — St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
Type: Press
Source:
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) 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. ...
Oct 14, 1998
Legal crackdown on cults — The Australian
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