Religion: Judge says Cult Awareness Network must let church members attend L.A. convention. But conference organizers fear longtime foes will disrupt activities. Members of the Church of Scientology won a court victory over a longtime foe Friday, clearing the way for a group of Scientologists to attend the Cult Awareness Network's national convention in Los Angeles next week. The ruling in Los Angeles County Superior Court is the latest development in an escalating feud between the two organizations. The battle erupted ...

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to pay the Church of Scientology $16,881 for legal fees it incurred during a two-year battle over records requested under the Freedom of Information Act. In 1989, the Scientologists filed a request for any government files indicating that the church had been designated a "tax protester." The IRS refused to turn over that information, and the Scientologists filed suit to force its release. Eventually, the IRS turned over a ...

Your article April 14 regarding the Church of Scientology boarding school gave a slightly false picture. The Church has owned the property on Bouquet Canyon Road, which is at least six miles southeast of Green Valley, for almost two years. Church representatives approached the Green Valley Town Council about 10 times since August of 1991 to present the plans for the school as a matter of courtesy to the community. However . . . we are not located in Green ...

INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge in Arlington, Va., on Friday dismissed a $20-million libel lawsuit that the Church of Scientology had filed against an executive with Eli Lilly & Co., the maker of Prozac. The lawsuit accused Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., a vice president of the Indianapolis-based pharmaceuticals company, of maligning the church in comments published in USA Today. The newspaper was not named as a defendant. The church believes that Prozac, an antidepressant, is unsafe and can lead to suicidal ...

Green Valley: Under the proposal, 250 students would board at the campus. A county spokesman says approval of a permit would be based on land-use issues. The Church of Scientology is seeking permission from Los Angeles County to open a boarding school for 250 students on the site of a former juvenile detention camp near Green Valley. The proposal has worried some of the 1,200 residents in the rural community, who voiced concerns about it at a public meeting Monday night. ...

In October of 1989, a private detective was called into the Church of Scientology's offices in Los Angeles and asked to conduct an investigation in Northern California. Ted Heisig, a non-Scientologist based in Orange County, said he was led into a room and shown five file cabinets filled with documents Scientology had been collecting for years. The subject: Werner Erhard, founder of the worldwide self-awareness movement known as est. "They had contacts (in the file cabinets) dating back to his childhood ...

A man who called a news conference Monday in Los Angeles on the 13th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre told reporters that he had falsely claimed to be a survivor of the Guyana tragedy in order to raise "hundreds of thousands of dollars" for the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago. Gary Scarff said that network personnel encouraged him to tell untrue stories about surviving the blood bath that claimed 914 lives in order to finance their cult deprogramming work. Cynthia Kisser, ...

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 ...

Scientologists believe they are saving the world from insanity, war and crime. "Saving the world is an understatement," said former member Kenneth Wasserman. "Saving the universe" is more like it, he said. This intense sense of purpose explains why some Scientologists are willing to work 12-hour days for $30 a week. Others pay up to $800 for an hour of counseling, and one couple brought a $35,000 counseling package. Critics say this sense of mission has another consequence: Next to saving ...

Setting: Yaddo-Way-North, an artists and writers colony for the deceased. Folding chairs are arranged in a circle in a church basement. A coffeepot is perking away on a dilapidated metal table in the far corner. Slowly, one by one, the authors enter. They shuffle over to the coffeepot and pour themselves a paper cup of java. Each has a book tucked under his or her free arm. [...] Hemingway: Writers, writers, please, we're gathered here to help each other, to say ...

PAY-TO-PLAY MAY RULE ON THE SUNSET STRIP, BUT WOULD-BE ROCKERS WILL BE glad to hear that there's still one Hollywood hotspot where the gigs are free, easy to book, and where an enthusiastic crowd is guaranteed. Sound like a rock & roll heaven on earth? Actually, it's the Scientology Celebrity Center (5930 Franklin Ave.), where every Sunday night at 7:30 you can find an open-mike talent show that ain't fooling when it boasts "Everybody Is Welcome." Whether you're an Operating Thetan ...

The tangled murder-suicide case of a British stripper and her husband has prompted the slain man's children to file a civil suit against a psychiatrist whose handgun was used in the Sherman Oaks couple's deaths. The suit filed Friday in Van Nuys Superior Court also seeks unspecified damages against Eli Lilly & Co., the maker of the controversial antidepressant Prozac, claiming that Victoria Howden's use of the drug contributed to her June 10 murder of the children's father, Charles House, and ...

ROCKVILLE, Md. — A panel of experts told the Food and Drug Administration on Friday that there is no sound evidence to conclude that Prozac or any other antidepressant causes suicides or other violent behavior. The scientists said they were moved by the many stories they heard earlier in the day about suicides and other violence committed by people taking Prozac, but they voted 6 to 3 to recommend against any label changes for antidepressant drugs. A vote rejecting a link ...

Scientologists emerge as creators of mystery-shrouded movie firm Is it just a movie company, this one owned and run by members of a controversial church? Or is it a front? Future Films, the mysterious movie company that arrived in Burbank and in Garland, Texas, last month with ambitious goals and a huge marketing splash, is financed and managed by a small group of high-level members of the Church of Scientology. Critics of the church, who label the religion a cult and ...

Public relations superstar Frank Mankiewicz is only too happy to rattle off the rather murky international clients that his giant PR firm has received inquiries from—and rejected. "We turned down the government of Libya. We turned down the Contras. We turned down the government of Colombia," said Mankiewicz, now vice president at the Washington office of Hill & Knowlton and one-time architect of Sen. George McGovern's unsuccessful presidential campaign. "With international clients, we always look to see if their interests are ...

Church: The lawsuit accuses them of waging a 33-year campaign against the organization and a large number of its members. It seeks $120 million. The Church of Scientology International filed a $120-million federal lawsuit against 17 Washington- and Los Angeles-based Internal Revenue Service officials Monday, accusing them of waging a 33-year campaign of illegal acts against Scientology and a large number of its members. According to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, documents obtained under the Freedom ...

The Church of Scientology has a long and undistinguished history of harassing its detractors — but that shouldn't stop the media or anyone else from speaking out against it, cult experts say. The church commonly threatens lawsuits, tries to have detractors arrested, and harasses sources and individual reporters, said Cynthia Kisser of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago. And recent Sun stories linking the church — alleged by experts to be a dangerous, mind-control cult — to Narconon, a drug rehabilitation ...

INDIANAPOLIS — A cousin to the antidepressant Prozac may receive federal approval before the end of the year for treatment of obesity, representing a new wave of sales growth for this class of drugs. Prozac, now in its fourth year on the market and approaching $1 billion in annual sales worldwide, has been dogged for the past year by claims that it causes violent behavior including suicide. A Harvard researcher's study describing six patients who developed violently suicidal thoughts while treated ...

Last June, the Los Angeles Times published a damning series on the Church of Scientology. Scientologists responded by extracting a few good things the writers had to say about their organization and putting those quotes in foot-high letters on billboards all over town. On May 6 of this year, Time magazine published a cover story on Scientology. It had even fewer good things to say, and now the church has responded with an even more aggressive counterattack. Scientology's campaign of daily ...

I ARRIVED FOR MY APPOINTMENT AT THE L. RON Hubbard Life Exhibition Hall a few minutes early. Unlike in other commemorative mausoleums, such as the Nixon Library and Birthplace, you're not allowed to walk around the Hubbard by yourself. Instead, you must sign up for an hour-and-a-half guided tour. Possibly they don't trust the unassisted viewer to fully reap the museum's rewards, though it might also be a matter of security. The presence of a young guard dressed in the Church ...

On a 3,000-acre ranch in rural Humboldt County, devotees of Church of Scientology-founder L. Ron Hubbard are building a 375-foot-long underground vault. The vault is being built on the Sunset View Ranch in Petrolia, a small town located about 20 miles south of Ferndale, by the Church of Spiritual Technology (COST). COST is linked to the controversial Church of Scientology, whose operations, according to court documents, include a lack of financial records, public policy violations, deceptive practices and the maintenance of ...

The principal of a Sherman Oaks elementary school has canceled an assembly by an environmental group because of fears that parents would object to the organization's connection with the Church of Scientology. The Sherman Oaks School's 927 students were scheduled to watch skits and hear songs Monday performed by Cry Out, an environmental group affiliated with Scientology. The event, which was to include an appearance by child actor Vonni Ribisi, was to kick off a yearlong study of environmental issues such ...

Investing: The Feshbach brothers of Palo Alto have made a fortune betting that stocks will go down. But some critics question their short-selling methods. PALO ALTO — One quick glance around the Palo Alto offices of Feshbach Bros. suffices to show that this is no typical bullish investment firm. First, there are the bears: stuffed Teddy bears, bronze bears, ceramic bears, crystal bears, paintings of bears. Then there is the bust of the late L. Ron Hubbard, self-styled management guru and ...

PARIS — The president of the French branch of the Church of Scientology and five colleagues have been arrested in a probe of alleged fraud and illegal practice of medicine, court and church officials said Saturday. The president, Daniele Gounord, was arrested Friday in Paris along with the church's treasurer and the head of a church foundation. They were placed under court supervision, but not jailed Three officials of the Scientologists' branch in Lyon were arrested there in the last 10 ...

The Church of Scientology hates "squirrels." That is the scornful word L. Ron Hubbard used to describe non-church members who offer his teachings, sometimes at cut-rate prices. Most are ex-Scientologists who say they believe in Hubbard's gospel but left the church because its hierarchy was too oppressive. "We call them squirrels," Hubbard once wrote, "because they are so nutty." Hubbard contended that only church members are qualified to administer his self-improvement-type courses. Outsiders, he said, inevitably misapply the teachings, wreaking spiritual ...