DANGEROUS dismissal of psychiatry and mental health problems must be part of a Senate inquiry into the Church of Scientology, a Melbourne cult counsellor said yesterday. Cult Counselling Australia director Raphael Aron said Scientologists put vulnerable people at risk by taking them off psychiatric drugs and treatment, instead treating them with vitamins and E-meter readings. Mr Aron supported Senator Nick Xenophon's call in Federal Parliament on Tuesday for a Senate inquiry into the Scientologists. The senator tabled letters citing forced abortions, ...

Free the lovebirds! And then, let them kill each other. Karla Giraldo is a bona fide spitfire – 115 pounds of piss, vinegar and endless devotion to her tempestuous honey, state Sen. Hiram Monserrate. Frowning, pouting and drinking water from a – thankfully – plastic cup, the shapely lady who took 30 stitches in the head from Hiram's drinking glass in the wee hours of Dec. 19 testified in his assault trial yesterday. She opened her mouth publicly for the first ...

Lawyer for actor seen negotiating with two defendants in Bahamas trial Is it the smoking gun? The trial of two defendants accused of trying to extort $25 million from John Travolta in return for handing over a document relating to the death of the star's 16-year-old son, Jett, continued in the Bahamas Friday. Meanwhile, PEOPLE has watched videotape of conversations recorded by the Royal Bahamas Police between Travolta's attorney and the two defendants — paramedic Tarino Lightbourn and his lawyer, Pleasant ...

[...] Synanon, I learned later, had taught such cults as Peoples Temple and Scientology how to manage the media through intimidation and litigation. (Two members of Synanon would be arrested only weeks before the Jonestown massacre for putting a live rattlesnake in a critic's mailbox, almost killing him.) [...]

In response to the July 24 Post-Gazette news articles "Scientology Comes to Town": As a 60-year resident of Pittsburgh and a 20-year member of the Church of Scientology, I am compelled to set the record straight on your July 24 articles about Scientology. The article missed the help the church and its members are extending to millions around the world, including residents of Pennsylvania. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a rude awakening for everyone. For many of ...

While the focus of Tom Cruise news is his romance with young actress Katie Holmes as well as his upcoming movies — "War of the Worlds" and "Mission Impossible III" — the actor took time out of his busy schedule to blast Brooke Shields for taking Paxil. New York's Daily News reports that Scientology evangelist Cruise told "Access Hollywood" that Shields was misguided when she took the anti-depressant to fight postpartum depression. Shields, for her part, is currently starring in the ...

What kind of special tax privileges are members of the Church of Scientology receiving that members of other religions are not? That is a question the Internal Revenue Service refuses to answer - even for a federal appeals court. The IRS claims it has a legal obligation to keep tax return information confidential, and for years it has extended that justification to the details of a 1993 agreement between the church and the IRS. Reportedly, in exchange for the church dropping ...

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 ...

IN THE '70s, Jim Jones moved his Peoples Temple from San Francisco to Guyana to escape what he saw as persecution. In the U.S., the temple had run a free clinic and a drug-rehab program, but reports from Guyana began detailing brutality. Tim Reiterman was there when 913 people died in what we now call "Jonestown." OAKLAND, Calif. - For 20 years now, they have come to a grassy hillside overlooking San Francisco Bay to share tears, hugs and their private ...

Kate Ceberano and Nicole Kidman join Scientology, the fastest-growing religion in the world - and one of the weirdest Showbiz types find religion - in a church founded by sci-fi writer by Terry Bourke Two showbiz babies are the latest celebrity recruits to the strange Scientology sect. And one is the centre of anger among Elvis Presley fans. The innocent babies know nothing of the controversial cult which will rule their lives - but their parents do. Partners Tom Cruise and ...

Glen entered the trap willingly and, for a while, he didn't even realise that he'd been caught Glen McClelland has the look of hate in his eyes as he remembers what he's just been through. Now 28, Glen spent four years as a convert to the Church of Scientology. For him, this wasn't so much a religion as a way of life. And it nearly cost him his family and girlfriend, his sanity — and bank balance, too. The story starts ...

About 150 people rallied at a park in downtown Los Angeles to protest a $25-million fraud suit filed against the Church of Scientology by a former member. Police said the gathering at the Court of Flags Park on North Hill Street was peaceful. Church members said they expected 2,000 to attend the daylong rally; police said they had anticipated about 1,000. While the rally was proceeding, lawyers for the church argued pretrial motions before Superior Court Judge Alfred Margolis. The lawsuit ...

Hours after hearing the good news, Melbourne scientologists were deciding how they were going to spread it. "We're going to have TV ads, and we'll promote the book 'Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health', the young scientologist said. David Griffiths, 28, son of a Uniting Church minister, was sitting on a pile of books in the foyer of the church's Russell Street headquarter. He was delighted by the victory, and by the knowledge that finances were going to improve with ...

To the Editor: I was touched to be still known in Preble County. And, not strange at all, well remember Preble County, but for different reasons than were given in your very nice article on me in your issue of July 21, 1983. You recounted that my fellow pilot Browning landed low on fuel in George Swisher's field. And it is very true that Raymond Boomershine offered to buy us gas if we would take him for a ride and ...

[Picture / Caption: Scientology's headquarters in L.A. was formerly the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. The church purchased It for $5 million In 1977.] Last October in San Francisco, some 70 local leaders of the Church of Scientology gathered to hear nine church executives harangue them about their shortcomings. Styling themselves with titles that ranged from the quasi-military ("Commander," "Warrant Officer") to the quasi-lunatic ("International Finance Dictator"), the men announced that they represented the new hierarchy of the organization, and that they ...

The Fort Harrison Hotel in downtown Clearwater could be the scene of another Jonestown-type mass suicide when Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard dies, a former high-ranking church official said Wednesday. Edward Walters, the first witness called during Clearwater's public hearings into Scientology practices, said under oath that many Scientologists are "addicted" to Hubbard the way members of the People's Temple were to their leader, the Rev. Jim Jones. "If Hubbard decides to leave this planet he'll take the others with him—they ...

Since its founding by a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard in 1954, Scientology has been among the growth stocks on the self-help market: a quasireligious, quasiscientific cult that has attracted three million U.S. followers (some highly touted celebrities among them) and estimated annual revenues in the hundreds of millions, much of it tax-exempt. Until recently Scientology's only certifiable vice was eccentricity, but within a week a federal grand jury in Washington is expected to hand down a bulging sheaf ...

HE IS SENDING OUT SPIES TO SMEAR ANYBODY WHO DARES ATTACK HIS STRANGE CULT [Photos / Caption: Mr. Hubbard . . . from him, dangerous words.] [Photos / Caption: Mr. Sharpe . . . from him, angry words.] BEHIND the elegant walls of a country mansion in Sussex, a nasty enterprise is being directed by the head of a strange American cult. It is an evil plan which will offend every fair-minded citizen in this country. The man is Lafayette Ron ...