CLEARWATER, Fla. — Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org. They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most. But after ...

TAMPA (2010-2-25) - The Church of Scientology is deploying a new weapon in its three-decade battle with the St. Petersburg Times: award-winning investigative journalists. Those reporters completed their own review of the newspaper's coverage of Scientology, but church officials won’t release it. In 1980, The St. Petersburg Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the secretive religion, headquartered in Clearwater. Since then, church officials have said the newspaper’s coverage is unfair. So church officials decided to do something about ...

Last week, the Senate Privileges Committee permitted the Church of Scientology to respond in Hansard to issues raised by Senator Nick Xenophon in November last year. The Scientologists promptly issued a press release declaring they had responded to Xenophon “in Parliament”, as if they had some sort of elected status. In allowing the Scientologist response into Hansard, the Privileges Committee has allowed itself to be made party to an attack on individuals who were brave enough to raise their treatment at ...

[Picture of property] Built in 1925 on 6.4 acres, the Fenway resort on the shore of St. Joseph Sound served as a waterfront getaway for Jazz Age high society. It has also been the campus of two colleges. DUNEDIN — George Rahdert invested $6 million of his money into the Fenway renovation, hoping profits from hotel customers and condo sales would follow its timely completion. Yet after four years and another $6 million in borrowed money, not a single shovel has ...

A former Scientology leader says bullying is widespread in the church, writes investigations reporter Nick O'Malley. Coerced abortion, violence, intimidation and demands for ever greater "donations" have become unofficial Church of Scientology policy, beginning at its Florida head office and leaching around the world, the church's most senior defector has said. Marty Rathbun, who until 2004 was the church's second-most powerful man, answering only to the present leader, David Miscavige, said the church leadership was obsessed with destroying dissent and increasing ...

Hollywood figures quit 'rip-off' church as Australian prime minister threatens parliamentary inquiry into its activities The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston's waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city's bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise. The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology's top legal adviser for ...

Over the last several months, The St. Petersburg Times published a series of scathing articles on the Church of Scientology under the rubric “The Truth Rundown.” In 1980, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for an investigation of the church’s inner workings. Coverage of Scientology has long been an important story for The St. Petersburg Times, given that the church’s spiritual headquarters is located in nearby Clearwater, Fla. So it came as a bit of a shock when, on Friday, the ...

The Times Publishing Co., parent company of the St. Petersburg Times, has agreed to sell Governing magazine to a California media company. Governing has operated out of Washington, D.C., since its beginnings in 1987. It covers local and state government. The buyer is e.Republic, based in Sacramento. The purchase will close the week after Thanksgiving for a price neither side would disclose. E.Republic was chosen from among six bidders for the magazine, said Andrew Corty, corporate vice president of Times Publishing. ...

The American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed., 2009) defines "obsession" as "(a) compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion." There could be no better example to illustrate this definition than the Times' ongoing coverage of the Church of Scientology. Once again, the Times turns a deaf ear to any voices save those of a handful of disaffected former Scientologists — people who have admitted lying, suborning perjury and obstructing justice — because their falsehoods support the Times' compulsive and unreasonable views ...

[Picture of Tom Cruise / Caption: Would you like having this guy as your news editor?] You may think it’s extremely tough to find well-paying, longform investigative writing work these days, but maybe you’re not looking in the right places. Maybe you’re not looking toward Scientology. Freedom Magazine, the official investigative reporting arm of the Church of Scientology, is looking for sleuths: Company: 'Freedom Magazine Position: INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER NEEDED Location: Clearwater, Florida Job Status: Freelance Salary: Negotiable Description: Freedom Magazine ...

I knew Scientology was in trouble when the media moved on from the usual silly gossip about its celebrity members to much darker, disturbing issues at the heart of the movement. After a Paris court last month convicted several Scientologists and two organisations associated with the movement in France of organised fraud, and amid other investigations in France looking at a suicide and an alleged abduction, Oscar-winning film-maker Paul Haggis, a long-time member, quit Scientology. Haggis, who wrote and directed Crash, ...