Inside the Church of Scientology What's the Church of Scientology all about? Sunday Herald Sun reporter Hamish Heard joined to find out. AFTER barely an hour in the Church of Scientology's new Melbourne headquarters the verdict is in: I am deeply flawed. It appears I am in denial of a deep-seated depression, I am close to unlikable and a decade and a half of social indulgence has left me borderline dim. On the plus side, Mark - my new mentor in ...

SCIENTOLOGISTS are planning to spend £2.5million on renovating the Royal Fleet Hotel and employ 150 staff to run it. In a detailed interview with The Herald, Church of Scientology members also said they expected 'tens of thousands' of people to visit the Devonport site each and every year. It follows news earlier this month that the church had bought the historic 110-year-old Morice Square site for £1million. Graeme Wilson, a Church of Scientology public affairs director, said people in Devonport had ...

DEVONPORT'S iconic Royal Fleet Hotel has been sold to the Church of Scientology. The Herald has learned agents representing the hotel's owner — Midlands-based businessman Kailash Suri — completed the sale of the historic building on Friday. Last month, Mr Suri announced the hotel was set to close, 18 months after he bought it promising a multi-million-pound makeover. He claimed the Morice Square building was losing money "drastically". But yesterday, Mr Suri, the Church of Scientology and property consultants King Sturge ...

A LEAFLET advertising the Athena School in Newtown has been referred to the state's consumer watchdog for allegedly obscuring the school's link to Scientology. The NSW Greens yesterday lodged a complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, claiming the leaflet represented false advertising and a potential breach of the Trade Practices Act. The Applied Scholastics logo, the education arm of Scientology, appears in the bottom corner of the leaflet, which includes the words ''education services and materials based on the ...

FEWER than 100 children will benefit from more than $1.6 million in Federal Government subsidies over four years to two schools strongly linked to the Scientology movement. The Athena School in Newtown will receive $751,519 in recurrent funding from the Federal Government for the 2009 to 2012 funding period. It has also been allocated $135,287 for a new library, $114,713 for primary classroom refurbishments and $50,000 for other refurbishments under the Rudd Government's Building the Education Revolution program. The Athena School ...

THE PRIME MINISTER, Kevin Rudd, has expressed concern about the Church of Scientology but will provide subsidies worth more than $1 million to a Sydney school that promotes the teaching of the church's founder, L.Ron Hubbard. Mr Rudd said he shared some of the concerns of the independent senator Nick Xenophon, who used parliamentary privilege last week to level allegations of torture, perjury and financial coercion against the church. Newtown's Athena School is licensed by Applied Scholastics International, which is strongly ...

SCIENTOLOGISTS in Plymouth are planning to buy a £1million property in the city centre and convert it into a church. They say the "bold" and "prominent" building is being planned as the popularity of the religion grows in Plymouth and the South West. Two undisclosed buildings are currently being looked at in the centre of Plymouth. Marianne Rowell, spokeswomen for the Church of Scientology, said the plan was to buy the building by the end of the year, and open it ...

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, ...

THE celebrity-studded Church of Scientology in Australia wants negative media reports about the controversial religion outlawed. Scientology, which boasts members including Tom Cruise, said it wanted a law "to prevent the dissemination of anti-religious propaganda in the media, which is based on unfounded hearsay and either known or reasonably known to be untruthful". Churches and individuals who have been "defamed" should be able to sue for damages, the religious organisation said in a submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Scientology ...

KATIE Holmes is about to start filming her new movie, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark, but some questions from the crew will not be allowed. The Batman Begins actor will begin filming on the closed Docklands set this week, as she, husband Tom Cruise and daughter Suri continue to explore Melbourne's sights and stores. One film source from the set said that each crew member had signed agreements saying they would not ask the superstar about her religion, Scientology. The ...

On May 29th, Scientologist Stephen Brackett, 54, committed suicide by jumping off the Highway 1 Bixby Bridge on the Big Sur Coast of California at around 5:30 a.m. [1] He left behind a son and daughter. According to The Monterey County Herald, “there were no indications of foul play, and friends and relatives of Brackett said he was despondent because of financial troubles with his business.” I had worked for Brackett for two years starting in 2000. He was a Scientology ...

The body of a Los Angeles man, who apparently leaped to his death from the Highway 1 Bixby Bridge on the Big Sur Coast, was discovered Thursday. A hiker found Stephen Brackett, 54, about 5:30a.m., said Dan Robison, a detective with the Monterey County Sheriff's Coroner division. Brackett, who was supposed to be visiting friends, disappeared Sunday. Robison said Brackett died from injuries suffered after the nearly 200-foot fall from the bridge. There are no indications of foul play, and friends ...

COMING to a doctor's surgery near you: a sparky little DVD, saying "psychiatrists occupy the lowest rung of the medical profession", has been dispatched to GPs across Australia. The DVD says that psychiatrists are money-grubbing quacks who invent diseases so that they can become rich by prescribing drugs. Those evil dudes also kill 3000 people a month by prescribing psychotropic drugs, it says. While Tom Cruise's comely visage does not feature on the DVD, it is the product of that crazy ...

WILLEMSTAD—During refurbishing and reparatory work, which involved removing the ceiling and panelling on cruise ship Freewinds, blue asbestos was released and ended up in the ventilation system. Freewinds captain did not report this when it's own personnel were working on the ship on the Mathey warf in Otrobanda. The Curaçao Drydock Company (CDM), where the ship was taken for reparatory work on the hull, heard from the surveyor that there may be asbestos on the ship. The captain acknowledged the incident ...

[...] Xenu is Loose! The Musical! follows the plight of Jen, a not-quite-convert to Scientology as she is charmed and seduced by a handsome member of the church during her initial tour. Meanwhile, Xenu has escaped from his native planet and has murder in mind. The characters at the church are good at the smooth, reassuring Scientology-speak, and Xenu is great fun as the preening, speechifying, killing machine, but there are plenty of missed opportunities here for some great satire. More ...

VICTORIA'S Scientology population has almost doubled in a decade, figures reveal. There are 629 Scientologists in Victoria, compared with 324 in 1996. Census data prepared for the Herald Sun shows that Melbourne's Yarra Ranges and Whitehorse areas are the state's Scientology capitals. Australia-wide, there were 2507 Scientologists in 2006, up from 1489 a decade ago. Experts say the religion's popularity is in line with the growth of other alternative religions and has been boosted significantly by Scientology's celebrity links. High-profile Scientologists ...

After years of conflict, the church and the media seem to have reached a truce. Is it because Scientology has become less confrontational — or because the press is scared? For anyone interested in the Church of Scientology, the May 6, 1991, issue of Time magazine remains a milestone in news coverage. For those who back the church, it ran an outrageously biased account that eventually led to a libel suit by the church — later dismissed — and prompted Scientology ...

WILLEMSTAD–Movie star Tom Cruise visited Curaçao. He rented the Dolphin Academy at the Curaçao Seaquarium and swam around with the dolphins for an hour. He also visited Baya Beach Club and the Freewinds cruise ship. The ship belongs to the Scientology Church, of which Cruise is a member. He came to the island on his own yacht, which he moored at Caracasbaai and Spanish Water. No one was allowed to take photos at the sites visited by the celebrity and his ...

Quaint Clarkson, tucked away on the westernmost edge of Mississauga, seems as unlikely a place as any to find L. Ron Hubbard, sci-fi-writer-turned-icon and founder of the much-vilified Church of Scientology. But here, just past the picket fences and over the train tracks where the old post office used to be, the portrait that graces Hubbard's opus Dianetics: The Modern Science Of Mental Health – sailor cap, face turned upward, blue sky in the background – hangs in the foyer of ...

The Church of Scientology, stung by a five-part series in the Boston Herald that raised questions about its practices, has hired a private investigator to delve into the Herald reporter's private life. The Rev. Heber Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology International, confirmed that the church's Los Angeles law firm hired the private investigative firm to look into the personal life of reporter Joseph Mallia, who wrote the series. "This investigation will have to look at what's riving this" coverage, ...