Scientology

The Church of Scientology is going through a difficult season. Over the course of two days last week, a French court convicted the church of fraud and Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis' resignation from the church over a litany of concerns was aired publicly. On one hand, it was just another bad press week for the embattled institution founded in 1953 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. But for former Scientologists and scholars of the movement, the setbacks pose a greater challenge coming on the heels of defections of top-level Scientologists who lifted a veil of secrecy on the organization and alleged ... Read Full Story

A French court fined the Church of Scientology on Tuesday for defrauding vulnerable followers, but officials voiced regret that a recent change in the law prevented France from banning it outright. Scientology's Celebrity Centre and its bookshop in Paris, the two branches of its French operations, were ordered to pay 600,000 euros (900,000 dollars) in fines for preying financially on its followers in the 1990s. Alain Rosenberg, the French leader of a movement best known for its Hollywood followers Tom Cruise and John Travolta, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros on the same charge. "Religious freedom is in danger ... Read Full Story

There is currently an “epidemic” of rape by psychiatrists, according to officials of Scientolog y front group “Citizens Commission on Human Rights” (sic), or CCHR. In addition, the officials assert that psychiatrists intentionally network their “pet” sex offenders, in lieu of treating them, so that the sex offenders can “compare notes,” and then form “terror cells” in ordinary communities. In the first part of a recently released video compiled from interviews on two Florida local cable access Scientology-oriented TV shows, former CCHR president Dennis H. Clarke contends that rape of patients by psychiatrists is very common, and that all psychiatrists are sexual perverts. Host: ... Read Full Story

At the annual AARP (Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons) convention in the Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, the Stories from the Golden Age booth attracted a lot of interest... ...not only because buccaneer Tom Bristol, Captain of the HMS Terror in L. Ron Hubbard's Under the Black Ensign , made an appearance... ...but also because a troupe of actors performed the science fiction story The Professor Was a Thief by Mr. Hubbard right in the convention center hall. Actors John Mariano, Jim Meskimen, R. F. Daley and Josh Robert Thompson created a stir with their performance of the L. Ron Hubbard science ... Read Full Story

Paul Haggis, who directed 2006’s Oscar winner “Crash” has quit Scientology after 35 years over the church’s position on gays and lesbians and Proposition 8. In a letter to Tom Davis , who is spokesman for Scientology’s head David Miscavige, Haggis gives his reasons for leaving the often maligned and ridiculed church. As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens ... Read Full Story