His rant at a Scientology spokesman was a ratings winner, but the Panorama reporter insists there's more to him than just a loud voice Panorama reporters are not supposed to "lose it". Not on camera, anyway. So no wonder that John Sweeney's spectacular cartoonish strop with Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis three months ago - in which he resembled an incandescent frog, eyes bulging, voice croaking with rage - became one of those water-cooler TV moments, making headlines and propelling him to ...

A woman accused of killing her father and sister and injuring her mother was denied psychiatric treatment by her parents who were Scientologists, a court heard yesterday. They declined the treatment after the 25-year-old woman, who cannot be named, was diagnosed with a psychotic illness last year and instead gave her medication they got from America. Dr Mark Cross, consultant psychiatrist and clinical director of the Liverpool and Fairfield Mental Health Services, said it was not "psychiatric in nature". The woman, ...

The show is about karma and redemption, but could there be a deeper message? James Donaghy examines the influence of the Church of Scientology on hit comedy My Name Is Earl Do good things and good things will happen to you. Do bad things and it will come back to haunt you". Why can't all TV have a simple message like that at its heart? The brilliantly slick My Name Is Earl carries the karmic principle through to its logical/absurd conclusion ...

BBC reporter John Sweeney was last week seen losing his temper at the end of a sixmonth investigation into scientology. In 1994, The Argus published a damning exposé of the East Grinsteadbased "religion". Former chief reporter Paul Bracchi, who secretly infiltrated the cult, remembers how its followers relentlessly threatened and pursued him in revenge for criticising their deceptive and manipulative methods. Here Mr Bracchi, who now lives in London, tells the chilling story of how he was stalked and intimidated ...

The Church of Scientology last night launched a fresh attempt to discredit the Panorama reporter John Sweeney, following the broadcast of a prime time BBC1 programme investigating its controversial beliefs and recruiting methods. As Panorama editor Sandy Smith took to the airwaves to defend Sweeney's investigation following the furore around his furious YouTube outburst captured by Scientology cameras, the war of words and online propaganda intensified. Mike Rinder, a director at Church of Scientology International, said it was considering legal action ...

I'd be lying if I said I entered the Scientologists' sparkling new Life Improvement Centre in London with an open mind. It's not that I have anything against people who believe humanity's troubles began when an intergalactic ruler landed on earth 75 million years ago, imprisoning dead souls in a volcano, causing woes that can only be relieved with the expensive assistance of the Church of Scientology, it's just that - well, OK, that stuff doesn't help. But I wanted to ...

An internal review of the hospitality policy of City of London police was ordered yesterday after revelations that officers had been accepting invitations, dinners and gifts from the Church of Scientology worth thousands of pounds. Details of how the religious movement appeared to be cultivating officers in the force were revealed in a freedom of information inquiry made by the Guardian. Officers ranging from constables to a chief superintendent received free gifts such as invitations to a premiere of Mission Impossible ...

The building which opened a week ago in the City of London in a sea of confetti could have been any new five-star hotel or corporate headquarters. On its first day open, men and women in matching uniforms and automatic smiles darted across marble floors, the smell of fresh paint in the air. The grandiose premises now belonging to the Church of Scientology is a multimillion pound launchpad for the group's expansion in the UK. While Scientologists describe their "applied religion" ...

A cult information group has complained to a senior police officer about comments he made at the opening of the £24m Church of Scientology centre in London. It also emerged yesterday that four City of London police officers attended a lavish reception at the headquarters of the Scientology movement in East Grinstead on Saturday night. The officers, who have not been named, registered their attendance according to police rules on hospitality, according to a police spokeswoman. Chris Peeler, of the Family ...

The rain bounced off a podium fit for an Oscar ceremony, soaking the lavish red carpet, and pouring down the collars of celebrants sporting incongruous California tans and sunglasses. And still they smiled. Each wore a lapel badge marking them out as followers of one of the most controversial and fastest growing "religious" movements in the world, the Church of Scientology. For two hours yesterday Hollywood glitz supplanted British mundanity on the streets of London as the most senior figures within ...

Sect-like groups are profiting from the misery in riot-stricken French suburbs to attract new recruits under the guise of offering humanitarian aid, warns an official report. Organisations including the Church of Scientology, labelled a cult in France, are targeting vulnerable residents in the country's poor, high immigration suburbs, it claims. France's official sects watchdog, the Interministerial Mission in the Fight Against Cults (Miviludes), said the situation called for "extreme vigilance". It said the activities of sect-like groups had increased in three ...

Recruitment time in Aceh Not all who have responded to the pleas from the Acehnese of Indonesia for aid in the wake of the Boxing Day tsunami have put their self-interest aside, reported Vaudine England in the Hong Kong Weekly Standard (January 22/23). "Some groups are widely seen as cults, pushing a quasi-religious doctrine of healing and feeling. Other groups, particularly American evangelicals ... focus on a personal and direct relationship with a defined God through literal adherence to ancient texts. ...

For a second or so the needle proceeds smoothly along the dial. I watch its progress while clutching two can-shaped metal devices, wired to the small machine housing the dial. Suddenly, the needle jerks violently. 'What was that?' asks Janet Laveau, head of the UK Office of Special Affairs, the Church of Scientology's PR machine. I'm disturbed and temporarily impressed - the needle jumped just as I was thinking of a friend who is seriously depressed. How could the machine 'know' ...

A Church of Scientology advert claiming that its programmes had "salvaged" 250,000 people from drug abuse has been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority as unproved, following a complaint by the Church of England. The ruling related to a poster coinciding with a campaign run two years ago by the church. In effect it claimed that the church had saved all those who had completed drug programmes. It did not mention that its definition of drug use included an occasional alcoholic ...

After years of declining congregations, churches in England are reporting a strange phenomenon - pews have been filling up in the wake of the atrocities of 11th September. Whether it is a temporary conversion remains to be seen and the evidence so far is fairly ephemeral - 800 at evensong in Exeter instead of the normal 100, attendance at services 50% up in York Minster, 60% up at Winchester - but some clergy are noticing a new seriousness. Richard Chartres, Bishop ...

US officer obsessed by the conspiracy theory of President Kennedy's assassination It is appropriate that Fletcher Prouty, who has died of organ failure following stomach surgery at the age of 84, will best be remembered as the model for the mysterious Colonel X, played by Donald Sutherland, in Oliver Stone's film JFK. Prouty, who believed the assassination of President John F Kennedy was a coup d'état perpetrated by elements of the United States military and intelligence communities, was a career military ...

France has become the first country in the world to introduce specific legislation aimed at controlling the activities of cults. The objective is to combat the 175-odd movements of a quasi-religious nature considered a danger to society. The Scientology movement and the Unification Church of the Rev Sun Myung Moon immediately denounced the bill - endorsed almost unanimously on Wednesday by national assembly deputies - as anti-democratic and in breach of human rights laws. Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders have expressed ...

The right to set up a really rude website aimed at undermining the public image of big businesses and religions is being fought for by civil rights activists in the US. The battle comes in the wake of action by leading multinational companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's to stem the growth of websites which add "sucks", "kills" or "stinks" to the brand name. "This has become a constant issue," Barry Steinhart of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in New ...

The French parliament yesterday adopted Europe's toughest anti-sect legislation yet, creating a controversial new crime of "mental manipulation" punishable by a maximum fine of £50,000 and five years imprisonment. The move was applauded by Alain Vivien, head of a government committee that has identified 173 dangerous quasi-religious groups in France, but was denounced by both the Church of Scientology and the Unification Church as fascist, anti-democratic and in breach of basic human rights laws. Current French law, described as "inadequate to ...

Nick Ryan on the holy wars fought in cyberspace between religious movements and their critics Religion in the UK: special report August 12 1995 was a Saturday much like any other in the urban sprawl of Arlington, Virginia. Except that an alert went out over email and on Usenet groups to say that 10 people - including two federal marshals, two computer technicians, one a former FBI agent, and several attorneys - were raiding the home of former Scientologist Arnaldo Lerma. ...

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 ...

The controversial Church of Scientology had its application to be recognised as a religion turned down yesterday. After more than three years' deliberation, the Charity Commissioners rejected the organisation's claim saying that it did not qualify because it was not a religion and did not benefit the public. Critics of Scientology portray the organisation as a wacky cult that brainwashes individuals and exists to make money. But adherents say such hostility amounts to religious persecution and that Scientology puts them on ...