Celebrities lead charge against Scientology
Hollywood figures quit 'rip-off' church as Australian prime minister threatens
parliamentary inquiry into its activities
* Peter Beaumont in London, Toni O'Loughlin in Sydney, and Paul Harris in
New York
* The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009
[The exterior of the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles in
2003. Photograph: Getty Images]
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 a
quarter of a century, Earle Cooley. The controversial head of Scientology
worldwide, David Miscavige, delivered the eulogy, thanking his late friend for
his contribution to the neo-religion during his career, much of which was spent
pursuing journalists and former members who spoke out against it.
Miscavige may since have wondered privately what Cooley would have made of the
events of last week. Scientology, founded in 1953 by the late science fiction
pulp novelist, serial fantasist and inveterate self-publicist L Ron Hubbard, is
under fire again across the globe, following years of struggle to be recognised
â" with some success â" as a legitimate church.
The church has just been denounced in the strongest possible terms in the
Australian parliament. Prime minister Kevin Rudd has expressed his concern over
allegations of "a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality" and is
contemplating a parliamentary inquiry. The organisation is under police
investigation and yesterday angry ex-Scientologists, spurred on by the claims,
converged on its Australian headquarters calling for its tax-exempt status to
be revoked.
And it is not only in Australia that Scientology is facing problems. A new book
in America â" Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of the Church of
Scientology â" by Marc Headley, an employee of the church's Los Angeles
headquarters for 15 years, details â" as others have â" allegations of
systematic abuse and bizarre episodes, such as the three weeks Headley claims
he spent under instruction from Cruise in how to move bottles and other objects
by concentrating on them.
Headley's book follows a year in which Scientology has been plagued by
unwelcome revelations from high-profile defectors and fresh media investigation
into its practices.
Last month the church narrowly avoided being banned in France after being
prosecuted for fraud, following claims that four leaders â" all given
suspended jail sentences â" had preyed financially on several followers in the
1990s. In Belgium, too, Scientology is embroiled in a long criminal
investigation. Perhaps most embarrassing for an organisation that prides itself
on its wealthy Hollywood followers, Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, an
adherent of 30 years, abandoned Scientology in October, accusing it of
homophobia.
That is not all. Some of the worst damage done to Scientology in the past two
years appears to have been self-inflicted. Earlier this year the official
spokesman in the US, Tommy Davis, son of the actress Anne Archer, stormed out
of an ABC TV interview with Martin Bashir when Bashir had the temerity to ask
about one of its central beliefs â" relating to an evil intergalactic warlord
named Xenu.
More ridicule was invited, unwittingly, by Cruise, the church's most
high-profile member, in a leaked video produced for the organisation last year
that went viral on the internet. It showed a rambling Cruise laughing
inexplicably while saying that Scientologists were uniquely equipped with the
knowledge necessary to cure most of the world's ills, including crime, drugs,
mental health problems and violence.
A religion to some, a business certainly, and a cult to many, whose innermost
cadres wear pseudo naval uniforms, Scientology's religious tenets are a mixture
of therapy-style self-improvement steps â" at least at first â" mixed with a
weird space-opera metaphysics, which is revealed only to its highest acolytes.
The church has frequently been accused of breaking up families and preying on
the vulnerable. The history of Scientology and its critics has been a story
played out in the courts in interminable proceedings that supported Cooley's
very lucrative career, underwritten by a very lucrative religious practice in
which followers pay large sums of money to progress through a series of
training courses called "auditing".
In a quote attributed in the US courts to the late Hubbard himself, it is made
clear that the court cases serve a useful purpose, even when they are lost.
According to Hubbard, "law can be used very easily to harass... If possible, of
course, ruin⦠entirely."
Scientology has attempted to sue newspapers, including the Washington Post.
Time magazine beat off a court claim for $400m after describing the church on
its cover as "the Cult of Greed". It has pursued authors, those who have
campaigned against it, defectors and rivals. It has also made unsuccessful
claims that details of its most secret practices should be regarded as both
copyright and a trade secret.
The repeated attempts to use the courts to silence critics have been criticised
in the judgments that have been upheld against Scientology, including one in
1996 that described its "documented history of vexatious behaviour" and abuse
of "the [US] federal court system by using it, inter alia, to destroy their
opponents, rather than to resolve an actual dispute over trademark law or any
other legal matter".
So when Nick Xenophon stood up last week in the Australian parliament he was
the latest critic in a long line. Xenophon made a carefully calculated decision
â" to use the protection of parliamentary privilege to denounce an
organisation that he claims "abuses its followers, viciously targets its
critics and seems largely driven by paranoia". Xenophon's aim was simple: to
challenge the tax-exempt status of Scientology as a religion.
If the allegations Xenophon detailed â" including the claims by former
high-ranking members that David Miscavige physically assaulted senior
Scientologists â" were familiar ones to critics of the movement, Xenophon's
speech brought to the widest audience possible a synthesis of the recent and
not so recent claims against the leadership of Scientology, allegations picked
up worldwide within minutes of him speaking.
He described claims of "false imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of
church funds, physical violence, blackmail and the widespread deliberate abuse
of information obtained by the organisation". At the centre of Xenophon's long,
impassioned speech were the allegations of Aaron Saxton, who was "born" into
Scientology and "rose to a position of influence in Sydney and the United
States".
According to Xenophon, Saxton's abuse started as a child when his mother was
coerced into signing over guardianship of him to the organisation and he was
made a security guard at the age of 16. "In 1991 Aaron says he was sent to
Scientology headquarters in Florida where he was involved in⦠putting five
individuals under house arrest" and "ordered by superiors to remove documents
that would link a Scientology staff member to murder".
"Aaron says women who fell pregnant were taken to offices and bullied to have
an abortion. If they refused, they faced demotion and hard labour⦠Aaron says
one staff member used a coat-hanger and self-aborted her child for fear of
punishment. He says she was released from the organisation and the files were
destroyed."
Saxton also "ordered more than 30 people to be sent to Scientology's work
camps, where they were forced to undertake hard labour", Xenophon said.
He said another former Scientologist, Carmel Underwood, who worked as a
financial officer in the organisation and claims to have been assaulted by
another member, "witnessed a young girl who had been molested by her father
being coached as to what she should say to investigating authorities in order
to keep the crimes secret". In a letter described by Xenophon as "one of the
saddest correspondences I have received", a father, Paul Schofield, admits to
being part of a cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of his two
daughters.
The Church of Scientology in Australia's response last week was to accuse
Xenophon of abusing parliamentary privilege and adding that the allegations
were "unquestionably false". "This was not free speech. It was abuse and
slander protected by the forms of our parliament," spokesman Cyrus Brooks said
in a statement. It did not, however, reply to a series of written questions
from the Observer about the cases detailed.
But if something has changed in the past few years, it has been the emergence
of an increasingly empowered and vocal global opposition to the Scientologists.
The development has been fuelled in part by the internet's Anonymous movement
â" which posted the Tom Cruise video to YouTube last year â" and has been
behind a series of denial-of-service attacks on Scientology websites, protests
and prank calls since the Scientologists had it removed it from the site,
inevitably claiming copyright infringement. The Australian intervention by
Xenophon was part of a wider and growing backlash against one of the world's
most controversial movements.
If there has been a catalyst for many of the Scientologists' most recent
problems it has been provided by a newspaper in Tampa, Florida â" the St
Petersburg Times â" which covers the area including the organisation's
spiritual headquarters in Clearwater. The paper ran an investigative series
featuring interviews with former members of the church's leadership. These
included Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, two of the highest-ranking executives
to leave Scientology.
According to the two men's accounts â" denounced as "lies" by Miscavige and
Tommy Davis â" Miscavige routinely assaulted his lieutenants, including
Rinder, 50 times. In one article, citing the testimony of four former members,
the newspaper described Miscavige administering a vicious beating to another
senior church figure, Tom De Vocht. The men described a complex system of
internal justice, enforced by security checks and the threat of isolation as a
so-called "suppressive person" or SP.
In the interviews the men admitted using violence against other members of the
church, often, they claimed, at the behest of Miscavige, also alleging that the
church used private information gathered on its members to bully them and force
them to do its bidding.
At least some of the recent allegations will be familiar to Jason Beghe, the
American actor. Last year he became the first of its celebrity followers â"
for whom the church maintains a "Celebrity Centre" â" to break with it, after
giving Scientology more than $1m in donations over 12 years.
These days Beghe prefers to warn that the church is "destructive and a
rip-off". He claims that since his renunciation of Scientology he has been
pursued to seminars in Europe â" held to speak of its dangers â" by private
investigators employed by Scientology and "disconnected" from former friends
who remain within it.
The decision of Beghe and Haggis to quit Scientology appears to have caused the
movement its greatest recent PR difficulties, not least because of its
dependence on Hollywood figures as both a source of revenue for its most
expensive courses and an advertisement for the religion. The involvement of
such high-profile figures as Haggis, Cruise and John Travolta has acted as a
reassurance for potential recruits against the allegations of its critics.
And while Haggis quit the church over its attitude to gay marriage, his lengthy
leaked letter of repudiation of Scientology, written to Davis, included another
complaint: that he had lied on television about a key Scientology practice.
Haggis said he had been stunned to see a CNN clip of Davis denying that the
church practises a policy of "disconnection" by encouraging members to cut ties
with non-members who may disapprove of their beliefs.
"I was shocked," wrote Haggis. "We all know this policy exists. I didn't have
to search for verification â" I didn't have to look any further than my own
home." He then detailed how his wife was ordered by the church to disconnect
from her parents because they were themselves ex-members.
His wife followed the orders and did not speak to her parents for a year and a
half. "That's not ancient history, Tommy. It was a year ago⦠To see you lie
so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: what else are you lying about?"
The answer to that question may now be sought within the context of an
Australian parliamentary inquiry. Notoriously litigious and undoubtedly
secretive, Scientology is under the microscope again.
After a bad year for Cruise's church, things could be about to become a whole
lot worse.
History of scientology
Founded by L Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), a science-fiction novelist who turned to
pulp writing after a wartime military career marked by a number of disgraces.
It was while writing for Astounding Science Fiction in 1949 that he published
his first article on the subject of dianetics, which would later become
Scientology. It was described by one critic as "a lunatic revision of Freudian
psychology". His book Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health was
published in 1950. Attempts to set up dianetics as a therapeutic practice
collapsed.
1952 Having failed to present dianetics as an empirically supported scientific
system, Hubbard founded a religion called Scientology, which he claimed was the
result of years of research. Using "e-meters" to "measure" the mind, he claimed
it could be "cleared" by a process of "auditing". At this point based in
England, he ran into problems with the authorities. He founded the Sea
Organisation, or the Sea Org, which would become the movement's central group.
1970 Scientology establishes its celebrity centre in Los Angeles, aiming to
attract Hollywood high flyers.
1977 Scientology runs into trouble in the US, this time for domestic espionage
against the federal government, for which Hubbard's wife and a dozen other
officials were convicted of conspiracy.
1986 Hubbard dies of a stroke in California.
1993 Scientology is declared tax-exempt as a church in the US, ending a 40-year
battle.
1999 Refused tax-exempt status by the UK charity commission, which rules it is
not a religion. However, in the years that follow it is recognised as a
religion in a number of countries, including Sweden, New Zealand and Portugal.
2006 A repeat of a South Park episode that spoofs Tom Cruise and Scientology is
pulled from the air.
2009 The church is found guilty of fraud in France. Screenwriter Paul Haggis
splits with Scientology amid accusations of homophobia. Tom Cruise and John
Travolta are still members of the Church of Scientology.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/22/scientology-cruise-haggis-us-australia)
