In the wake of public requests for a re-examination of Scientology’s relationship to medicine following the tragic death of 16 year old Jett Travolta, Scientology now faces a potentially devastating lawsuit against it for massive labor exploitation of its staff.

On January 5, 2009 attorney Barry Van Sickle filed a complaint on behalf of former Scientology Sea Org staff member Marc Headley in the Superior Court of the State of California in Los Angeles. In his excellent analysis on his blog reality based community, internet law attorney and Scientology critic Scott Pilutik sums up the suit this way:

A potentially devastating lawsuit [PDF] [downloadable version here] was filed by Marc Headley in Los Angeles County Court on January 5 against the Church of Scientology International (CSI), alleging that CSI violated California labor law by failing to pay Headley, and others similarly situated, minimum wage or for the overtime he routinely worked as an employee of Golden Era Productions, an unincorporated entity which is chiefly responsible for producing and selling Scientology’s promotional videos and materials. Headley estimates that he was paid approximately 39 cents an hour for the time he worked at Golden Era between 1989 to 2005, during which time he sometimes worked 100+ hour, 7 day weeks uncompensated for his overtime.

Headley also alleges that he was forced by Scientology to sign various documents, under duress, acknowledging that he had no rights as an employee, and that he was not given copies of these documents.

Since this is a test case, as was the famous Scopes Trial Evolution case in 1925, it could set a powerful precedent and cause chaos for organized Scientology. Scientology claims that its staff members are members of a religious order, and are therefore exempt from the provision of state and federal labor laws. The outcome of this case could significantly alter the discussion about tax exemptions for religious organizations. Scott Pilutik’s analysis cites relevant case law. Though this is a California labor law case filed under California’s Business & Professional Code (sec. 17203), important First Amendment issues are involved.

Former Scientology executive Lawrence Brennan has detailed in his important affidavit how organized Scientology engaged in a program of religious cloaking precisely to gain exemption not only for both itself as an organization and its members/”parishioners”/customers, but also exemption from minimum wage and working condition laws for its workers.

After having lost its tax exempt status in 1967, Scientology regained it in dubious circumstances in 1993 after all-out warfare by the Church. Brennan also alleges perjury on the part of Church head David Miscavige, about which I have written elsewhere, in representations made to the IRS on which the Church’s tax exemption was granted.

The middle and upper management of the Church of Scientology are all members of the Sea Org, including the head of the Church, David Miscavige. This is a para-military organization organized on a strict, hierarchical, command-and-control model, replete with Naval ranks and uniforms. Members sign a billion year contract and in exchange receive food, clothing, shelter and “wages” of 39 cents an hour. Most important to the indoctrinated member inducted into Scientology’s elite management, however, is free auditing, Scientology’s intrusive indoctrination counseling and therapy. Since it costs upwards of $350,000 to complete all the courses and levels alleged to lead to “Total Spiritual Freedom”, this is a considerable allure to the (mostly young) people who join the Sea Org.

Part of the religions cloaking program was to call the Sea Org a religious order. The model here is the Catholic church, with its extensive network of varied and ancient religious communities. In basic terms, men and women enter into religious life under vows to live in community, observe simplicity of life, and dedicate their lives to prayer, liturgy, and service. Many, if not most, take an explicit vow of poverty. They rely on the community for their material needs, working for free and turning over to the community any money they make outside it.

This suit should set off alarm bells among churches, because it threatens their privileges by calling into question exemptions for religious orders and religious workers. The vast number of churches are law-abiding and scrupulous in their obligations, but the loss of this case represents a potential threat to their current status through reinterpretation or revision of existing legislation. Most assuredly the Church of Scientology will use the inter-faith connections it has built up over the years to gain support for their cause. But will the churches in California support Marc Headley or CSI, given situations like this in Sacramento?

This would be a second major religious case concerning Scientology in the last few years, the other being that of Michael and Maria Sklar, a Jewish couple who sought to deduct part of their children’s Jewish school tuition on their income tax, claiming Scientologists get favored tax-exempt treatment since they are allowed to deduct the cost of Scientology courses and auditing. Though the Sklars lost, the issue of Scientology’s tax-exempt status is still alive and is now being raised again by Headley vs CSI.

The Headley case goes right to the heart of a major item on organized Scientology’s Statement of Revenues and Expenses: Labor costs of $200+ million a year. Headley, who posts pseudonymously as Blownforgood on the Scientology-critical site Operation Clambake (OCMB), writes:

The truth is, right now the Scientology enterprise pays out around $250,000 per week in wages. If (when) they lose this lawsuit, they will be paying 4 million per week to existing staff alone, not to mention past staff members that are owed unpaid wages.

Scientology’s response is predictable. First, they will intimidate Headley and others into withdrawing the lawsuit through agents from OSA, (Office of Special Affairs), the Church’s intelligence agency. Then they will begin a huge smear campaign against everyone supporting him, including Anonymous. There will be protracted lawfare to grind down his resolve according to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s dictum: the purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. There will be unending attempts to get Headley to settle and shut up.

Assuming the suit goes forward, it represents a new challenge to Scientology. It will be the first high-profile case to be prosecuted in the Web 2.0 era. There was massive fair gaming against a generation of former Scientologists and critics who were sued to a fare-thee-well in the 1990s when few people got their news from the internet and much of the Church’s ugly thuggery could be hidden. Indeed, it was successful in silencing the media as a whole until very recently after it sued and fair gamed Richard Behar, writer of Time’s 1991 cover story Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.

But this is the era of social networking and of Anonymous. The Church of Scientology now has thousands of net-savvy activist eyes focused on its every move. A year ago this coming January 21, Anonymous declared war in their famed video Message to Scientology. That video galvanized thousands of young people, who have since been joined by thousands of older people, to form the first ever social protest movement created solely on the internet.

“Anons” are relentless. Raids, or demonstrations, occur regularly all over the world. In a remarkable activity summary for 2008, Anonymous San Francisco reported carrying out 42 demonstrations in 12 months. More importantly, they, along with Anonymous cells in over a hundred cities around the world have created self-sustaining online and IRL (in real life) communities of enormous creativity, inventiveness, and hilarity lulz. Battle-hardened by a year of “combat”, Anonymous has become the activist vanguard of a world-wide anti-Scientology human rights and free speech protest movement.

The Anonymous website Why We Protest has become a significant center of information for the world. Thousands of new readers flocked to the Jett Travolta Situation Room and some have stayed to join the ranks. If you want to know what is happening with Anonymous and Scientology, WWP is the place to go.

The key to the entire case is Marc Headley’s resolve. If Scientology believes they can break this man, they are deluded. Headley left quite recently, in March 2005, and has plenty of knowledge of CSI’s inner workings. From 1990 – 2000, he worked at Gold Base, the West Coast Kremlin of Scientology, where the executive offices of CSI and Scientology front organizations are located. Over the last few years he has regularly leaked reports about human rights abuses in the Sea Org happening right under the nose of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. He has a book deal for his experiences, and is not about to be shut up.

Another new challenge is that there is class-action potential for the suit, since Headley has invited other former Scientology staffers to join him:

If anyone reading this from the sidelines thinks that they too might have had some rights that were violated, you are probably right. You may have rights you did not even know about. Any people seriously interested in this can write to [email protected] . You must provide your full name and details regarding your employment history. If it appears that your rights might have been violated, you will be given additional information on what you might do about it.

Headley is opening up a huge can of worms. The suit is focused on wages, but the real horrors in the Sea Org are its human rights violations: its policy of coerced abortions, its labor re-education camps, its medical malpractice, and its deaths and suicides. Headley has astutely left all that out. Anonymous will be sure everything reaches public attention, “for great justice”, as theysay.

In a remarkable coincidence of timing, the suit was filed three days after the death of Jett Travolta, when public interest in Scientology was, and continues to be, at a new high. It is now impossible for a Scientology-supporting celebrity to do anything without it becoming an occasion for Anonymous to further educate the public about the true harms of Scientology.

A Scientology official has recently stated that dealing with Anonymous is like swatting flies. After a year of relentless Anon internet and IRL raiding, however, Tom Cruise has vowed not to speak publicly about Scientology, and has built a $10 million bunker to defend himself against invasion by space aliens and perhaps hordes of 18-year anons who love “raiding and rickrolling the local org”. Above all, Anonymous loves trolling pranks like the one Headley designed into his law suit:

As Larry Brennan mentioned in a post somewhere, there were a few others that were also part of the initial complaints that were filed. These names were intentionally listed to test what would happen with these people. Within hours of the complaints being filed, these people’s families were contacted and eventually some of these people would drop out of the case. The intimidation was swift and effective. This was expected and predicted. It was also illegal. So be it. It just made the case that much stronger. Additional evidence that backs up the case is created by the Scientology enterprise daily. [emphasis added]

Scientology should be very wary of Marc Headley and his legion of supporters. As Headley puts it:

Some would say that I have the upper hand. I have spent nearly 20 years studying Scientology and how they operate. They have only just begun to study Blownforgood.

So OSA, while you have been watching my house, following me to the grocery store, bugging my friends, digging through my trash and taking pictures outside my company, I have been doing my homework for the upcoming work at hand.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

[Cross-posted from For Great Justice]

In the wake of public requests for a re-examination of Scientology’s relationship to medicine following the tragic death of 16 year old Jett Travolta, Scientology now faces a potentially devastating lawsuit against it for massive labor exploitation of its staff.

On January 5, 2009 attorney Barry Van Sickle filed a complaint on behalf of former Scientology Sea Org staff member Marc Headley in the Superior Court of the State of California in Los Angeles. In his excellent analysis on his blog reality based community, internet law attorney and Scientology critic Scott Pilutik sums up the suit this way:

A potentially devastating lawsuit [PDF] [downloadable version here] was filed by Marc Headley in Los Angeles County Court on January 5 against the Church of Scientology International (CSI), alleging that CSI violated California labor law by failing to pay Headley, and others similarly situated, minimum wage or for the overtime he routinely worked as an employee of Golden Era Productions, an unincorporated entity which is chiefly responsible for producing and selling Scientology’s promotional videos and materials. Headley estimates that he was paid approximately 39 cents an hour for the time he worked at Golden Era between 1989 to 2005, during which time he sometimes worked 100+ hour, 7 day weeks uncompensated for his overtime.

Headley also alleges that he was forced by Scientology to sign various documents, under duress, acknowledging that he had no rights as an employee, and that he was not given copies of these documents.

Since this is a test case, as was the famous Scopes Trial Evolution case in 1925, it could set a powerful precedent and cause chaos for organized Scientology. Scientology claims that its staff members are members of a religious order, and are therefore exempt from the provision of state and federal labor laws. The outcome of this case could significantly alter the discussion about tax exemptions for religious organizations. Scott Pilutik’s analysis cites relevant case law. Though this is a California labor law case filed under California’s Business & Professional Code (sec. 17203), important First Amendment issues are involved.

Former Scientology executive Lawrence Brennan has detailed in his important affidavit how organized Scientology engaged in a program of religious cloaking precisely to gain exemption not only for both itself as an organization and its members/”parishioners”/customers, but also exemption from minimum wage and working condition laws for its workers.

After having lost its tax exempt status in 1967, Scientology regained it in dubious circumstances in 1993 after all-out warfare by the Church. Brennan also alleges perjury on the part of Church head David Miscavige, about which I have written elsewhere, in representations made to the IRS on which the Church’s tax exemption was granted.

The middle and upper management of the Church of Scientology are all members of the Sea Org, including the head of the Church, David Miscavige. This is a para-military organization organized on a strict, hierarchical, command-and-control model, replete with Naval ranks and uniforms. Members sign a billion year contract and in exchange receive food, clothing, shelter and “wages” of 39 cents an hour. Most important to the indoctrinated member inducted into Scientology’s elite management, however, is free auditing, Scientology’s intrusive indoctrination counseling and therapy. Since it costs upwards of $350,000 to complete all the courses and levels alleged to lead to “Total Spiritual Freedom”, this is a considerable allure to the (mostly young) people who join the Sea Org.

Part of the religions cloaking program was to call the Sea Org a religious order. The model here is the Catholic church, with its extensive network of varied and ancient religious communities. In basic terms, men and women enter into religious life under vows to live in community, observe simplicity of life, and dedicate their lives to prayer, liturgy, and service. Many, if not most, take an explicit vow of poverty. They rely on the community for their material needs, working for free and turning over to the community any money they make outside it.

This suit should set off alarm bells among churches, because it threatens their privileges by calling into question exemptions for religious orders and religious workers. The vast number of churches are law-abiding and scrupulous in their obligations, but the loss of this case represents a potential threat to their current status through reinterpretation or revision of existing legislation. Most assuredly the Church of Scientology will use the inter-faith connections it has built up over the years to gain support for their cause. But will the churches in California support Marc Headley or CSI, given situations like this in Sacramento?

This would be a second major religious case concerning Scientology in the last few years, the other being that of Michael and Maria Sklar, a Jewish couple who sought to deduct part of their children’s Jewish school tuition on their income tax, claiming Scientologists get favored tax-exempt treatment since they are allowed to deduct the cost of Scientology courses and auditing. Though the Sklars lost, the issue of Scientology’s tax-exempt status is still alive and is now being raised again by Headley vs CSI.

The Headley case goes right to the heart of a major item on organized Scientology’s Statement of Revenues and Expenses: Labor costs of $200+ million a year. Headley, who posts pseudonymously as Blownforgood on the Scientology-critical site Operation Clambake (OCMB), writes:

The truth is, right now the Scientology enterprise pays out around $250,000 per week in wages. If (when) they lose this lawsuit, they will be paying 4 million per week to existing staff alone, not to mention past staff members that are owed unpaid wages.

Scientology’s response is predictable. First, they will intimidate Headley and others into withdrawing the lawsuit through agents from OSA, (Office of Special Affairs), the Church’s intelligence agency. Then they will begin a huge smear campaign against everyone supporting him, including Anonymous. There will be protracted lawfare to grind down his resolve according to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s dictum: the purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. There will be unending attempts to get Headley to settle and shut up.

Assuming the suit goes forward, it represents a new challenge to Scientology. It will be the first high-profile case to be prosecuted in the Web 2.0 era. There was massive fair gaming against a generation of former Scientologists and critics who were sued to a fare-thee-well in the 1990s when few people got their news from the internet and much of the Church’s ugly thuggery could be hidden. Indeed, it was successful in silencing the media as a whole until very recently after it sued and fair gamed Richard Behar, writer of Time’s 1991 cover story Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.

But this is the era of social networking and of Anonymous. The Church of Scientology now has thousands of net-savvy activist eyes focused on its every move. A year ago this coming January 21, Anonymous declared war in their famed video Message to Scientology. That video galvanized thousands of young people, who have since been joined by thousands of older people, to form the first ever social protest movement created solely on the internet.

“Anons” are relentless. Raids, or demonstrations, occur regularly all over the world. In a remarkable activity summary for 2008, Anonymous San Francisco reported carrying out 42 demonstrations in 12 months. More importantly, they, along with Anonymous cells in over a hundred cities around the world have created self-sustaining online and IRL (in real life) communities of enormous creativity, inventiveness, and hilarity lulz. Battle-hardened by a year of “combat”, Anonymous has become the activist vanguard of a world-wide anti-Scientology human rights and free speech protest movement.

The Anonymous website Why We Protest has become a significant center of information for the world. Thousands of new readers flocked to the Jett Travolta Situation Room and some have stayed to join the ranks. If you want to know what is happening with Anonymous and Scientology, WWP is the place to go.

The key to the entire case is Marc Headley’s resolve. If Scientology believes they can break this man, they are deluded. Headley left quite recently, in March 2005, and has plenty of knowledge of CSI’s inner workings. From 1990 – 2000, he worked at Gold Base, the West Coast Kremlin of Scientology, where the executive offices of CSI and Scientology front organizations are located. Over the last few years he has regularly leaked reports about human rights abuses in the Sea Org happening right under the nose of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. He has a book deal for his experiences, and is not about to be shut up.

Another new challenge is that there is class-action potential for the suit, since Headley has invited other former Scientology staffers to join him:

If anyone reading this from the sidelines thinks that they too might have had some rights that were violated, you are probably right. You may have rights you did not even know about. Any people seriously interested in this can write to [email protected] . You must provide your full name and details regarding your employment history. If it appears that your rights might have been violated, you will be given additional information on what you might do about it.

Headley is opening up a huge can of worms. The suit is focused on wages, but the real horrors in the Sea Org are its human rights violations: its policy of coerced abortions, its labor re-education camps, its medical malpractice, and its deaths and suicides. Headley has astutely left all that out. Anonymous will be sure everything reaches public attention, “for great justice”, as theysay.

In a remarkable coincidence of timing, the suit was filed three days after the death of Jett Travolta, when public interest in Scientology was, and continues to be, at a new high. It is now impossible for a Scientology-supporting celebrity to do anything without it becoming an occasion for Anonymous to further educate the public about the true harms of Scientology.

A Scientology official has recently stated that dealing with Anonymous is like swatting flies. After a year of relentless Anon internet and IRL raiding, however, Tom Cruise has vowed not to speak publicly about Scientology, and has built a $10 million bunker to defend himself against invasion by space aliens and perhaps hordes of 18-year anons who love “raiding and rickrolling the local org”. Above all, Anonymous loves trolling pranks like the one Headley designed into his law suit:

As Larry Brennan mentioned in a post somewhere, there were a few others that were also part of the initial complaints that were filed. These names were intentionally listed to test what would happen with these people. Within hours of the complaints being filed, these people’s families were contacted and eventually some of these people would drop out of the case. The intimidation was swift and effective. This was expected and predicted. It was also illegal. So be it. It just made the case that much stronger. Additional evidence that backs up the case is created by the Scientology enterprise daily. [emphasis added]

Scientology should be very wary of Marc Headley and his legion of supporters. As Headley puts it:

Some would say that I have the upper hand. I have spent nearly 20 years studying Scientology and how they operate. They have only just begun to study Blownforgood.

So OSA, while you have been watching my house, following me to the grocery store, bugging my friends, digging through my trash and taking pictures outside my company, I have been doing my homework for the upcoming work at hand.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

And then people who have epilepsy, which is a type of disease which gives
them seizures, are almost always found on some minor drug that prevents them from getting these—they call them petit mal seizures. Thats epilepsy. I dont care how they call it. Sometimes they really seize and sometimes its just slight. One of those, if an epileptic ever took you by the hand and so forth, he’s liable to break every bone in your hand, if he suddenly had a seizure. But the doctors keep them on something to prevent this. Its just a tranquilizer and they keep them on that one year, year in and year out. And then you come along as an auditor and you try to audit the PC [pre-clear] and you tell the PC that he’ll have to go off that drug. And then all of a sudden, why something will happen from someplace or another that the PC will tell the doctor that they have been taken off the drug by the auditor. And the doctor will call up plaintively asking you to please put her back on the drug because she needs this. And you get into a collision between medical treatment and so on. Now I’ve been using a lot of medical words here or chemical words really. Just don’t pay any attention to them because they’re mostly gobbledygook, and there’s an awful lot of gobbledygook words. Gobbledygook just means nonsense chatter, you see. There’s an awful lot of them. 

Tory Christman, a former Scientologist who is now one of the most vocal critics of the “Church”, struggled for years to keep taking her epilepsy medication. In 1971, she joined Scientology’s “elite” upper echelon the Sea Organization and was ordered to stop taking her anti-seizure medication and start taking vitamin pills instead. Inevitably, she started having seizures which increased in number and in magnitude. She states in an affadavit written in 2001:

This went on for I think 3 months. I was losing my memory due to all of the seizures. I would wake up in the morning and try to dash into the refrigerator. Daily I would have a petit mal (small seizure), and come to with all of the vitamins spread out all over the kitchen floor. The lady I was renting a room from had two children. Constantly they would come in and find me on the floor, and yell “Mommy, Tory dropped her vitamins again”. This woman was one of the kindest people to me, and I will never forget her. Her name is Mary Jessup, and she was married previously to Nate Jessup. All during this time the Scientologists were very evaluative to me, and many treated me like a leper, but not Mary. She was always very compassionate. She had left Scientology some time earlier.

Finally one morning in the shower I knocked my front teeth out during a Grand Mal seizure. All during this time my mother was begging me to go back on all of my medication. Being new in Scientology, I assured her Dianetics and Scientology would handle this. Finally, after so many seizures and so much trauma, I realized no matter what these people thought, I wasn’t going to live if I kept doing this. At that point I decided to go back on my medication in full, no matter what.

She eventually was allowed to take her anti-seizure medicine again, after stubborn persistence, and at the cost of a career in the Sea Org.

It was earlier reported that Jett Travolta was on the anti-seizure medication Depakote, but was taken off it because it supposedly caused health problems. This could be a plausible explanation, given that Depakote can cause liver damage. But was Jett Travolta taken off Depakote cold turkey, without being prescribed another anti-seizure medication? There is a list of other anti-seizure medication with fewer side-effects than Depakote, but there is nothing to suggest that Jett was on another medication.

Did the “Church” of Scientology persuade the John Travolta and Kelly Preston to give up on conventional medicine and instead treat their son with Scientology’s “alternative” therapy?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In the wake of Jett Travolta’s death from a seizure, it is timely to present this audio recording of L. Ron Hubbard speaking about epilepsy:

And then people who have epilepsy, which is a type of disease which gives
them seizures, are almost always found on some minor drug that prevents them from getting these—they call them petit mal seizures. Thats epilepsy. I dont care how they call it. Sometimes they really seize and sometimes its just slight. One of those, if an epileptic ever took you by the hand and so forth, he’s liable to break every bone in your hand, if he suddenly had a seizure. But the doctors keep them on something to prevent this. Its just a tranquilizer and they keep them on that one year, year in and year out. And then you come along as an auditor and you try to audit the PC [pre-clear] and you tell the PC that he’ll have to go off that drug. And then all of a sudden, why something will happen from someplace or another that the PC will tell the doctor that they have been taken off the drug by the auditor. And the doctor will call up plaintively asking you to please put her back on the drug because she needs this. And you get into a collision between medical treatment and so on. Now I’ve been using a lot of medical words here or chemical words really. Just don’t pay any attention to them because they’re mostly gobbledygook, and there’s an awful lot of gobbledygook words. Gobbledygook just means nonsense chatter, you see. There’s an awful lot of them. 

Tory Christman, a former Scientologist who is now one of the most vocal critics of the “Church”, struggled for years to keep taking her epilepsy medication. In 1971, she joined Scientology’s “elite” upper echelon the Sea Organization and was ordered to stop taking her anti-seizure medication and start taking vitamin pills instead. Inevitably, she started having seizures which increased in number and in magnitude. She states in an affadavit written in 2001:

This went on for I think 3 months. I was losing my memory due to all of the seizures. I would wake up in the morning and try to dash into the refrigerator. Daily I would have a petit mal (small seizure), and come to with all of the vitamins spread out all over the kitchen floor. The lady I was renting a room from had two children. Constantly they would come in and find me on the floor, and yell “Mommy, Tory dropped her vitamins again”. This woman was one of the kindest people to me, and I will never forget her. Her name is Mary Jessup, and she was married previously to Nate Jessup. All during this time the Scientologists were very evaluative to me, and many treated me like a leper, but not Mary. She was always very compassionate. She had left Scientology some time earlier.

Finally one morning in the shower I knocked my front teeth out during a Grand Mal seizure. All during this time my mother was begging me to go back on all of my medication. Being new in Scientology, I assured her Dianetics and Scientology would handle this. Finally, after so many seizures and so much trauma, I realized no matter what these people thought, I wasn’t going to live if I kept doing this. At that point I decided to go back on my medication in full, no matter what.

She eventually was allowed to take her anti-seizure medicine again, after stubborn persistence, and at the cost of a career in the Sea Org.

It was earlier reported that Jett Travolta was on the anti-seizure medication Depakote, but was taken off it because it supposedly caused health problems. This could be a plausible explanation, given that Depakote can cause liver damage. But was Jett Travolta taken off Depakote cold turkey, without being prescribed another anti-seizure medication? There is a list of other anti-seizure medication with fewer side-effects than Depakote, but there is nothing to suggest that Jett was on another medication.

Did the “Church” of Scientology persuade the John Travolta and Kelly Preston to give up on conventional medicine and instead treat their son with Scientology’s “alternative” therapy?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Counterknowledge contributor Damian DeWitt has added his thoughts at his Scientology-related blog, For Great Justice:

We have as yet no firm information on Jett’s medical condition. John Travolta and Kelly Preston have only publicly spoken of their son’s having had Kawasaki Syndrome, an unlikely source of seizures, for which they treated him with Scientology’s vitamin, sauna, and running therapy known as the Purification Rundown. There has also been considerable speculation on whether Jett was autistic or had Asperberger’s Syndrome. While a confirmed diagnosis has not been made public, reports of Jett’s behavior make such a diagnosis more likely than not. At the very least, he suffered some sort of neurological impairment that contributed to his fatal seizure.

The death of a child, for whatever reason, is a pain that for most families lasts a life time. No other human loss is as devastating. What makes this loss even more tragic is that it may well have been preventable.

Is it possible that this tragedy will prompt John Travolta to rethink his support for the “Church”?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Former Scientologist and prominent critic of the “Church” Michael Pattinson has written an interesting post at the Why We Protest forums entitled “What Scientology will probably do about the tragic death of Jett Travolta”.

Counterknowledge contributor Damian DeWitt has added his thoughts at his Scientology-related blog, For Great Justice:

We have as yet no firm information on Jett’s medical condition. John Travolta and Kelly Preston have only publicly spoken of their son’s having had Kawasaki Syndrome, an unlikely source of seizures, for which they treated him with Scientology’s vitamin, sauna, and running therapy known as the Purification Rundown. There has also been considerable speculation on whether Jett was autistic or had Asperberger’s Syndrome. While a confirmed diagnosis has not been made public, reports of Jett’s behavior make such a diagnosis more likely than not. At the very least, he suffered some sort of neurological impairment that contributed to his fatal seizure.

The death of a child, for whatever reason, is a pain that for most families lasts a life time. No other human loss is as devastating. What makes this loss even more tragic is that it may well have been preventable.

Is it possible that this tragedy will prompt John Travolta to rethink his support for the “Church”?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Jett Travolta (Picture: AP)

This week, we learned that 16-year-old Jett Travolta died after hitting his head during a seizure. His parents have always denied his autism, claiming instead that he suffered from an obscure condition known as Kawasaki syndrome, contracted from “carpet-cleaning chemicals”.

According to For Great Justice:

John Travolta and Kelly Preston have only publicly spoken of their son’s having had Kawasaki Syndrome, an unlikely source of seizures, for which they treated him with Scientology’s vitamin, sauna, and running therapy known as the Purification Rundown. There has also been considerable speculation on whether Jett was autistic or had Asperberger’s Syndrome. While a confirmed diagnosis has not been made public, reports of Jett’s behavior make such a diagnosis more likely than not. At the very least, he suffered some sort of neurological impairment that contributed to his fatal seizure.

In truth, Jett Travolta’s autism has been known about for years. In 2007, Hollywood Interrupted reported:

Tim and Patricia Kenny are the proud parents of a 4 year-old autistic girl, believe that it might be time for Child Protective Services to look into John Travolta and wife Kelly’s negligence in acknowledging their son Jett’s reported autism.

The Kennys also claim that Kelly and John “let Jett sit in front of video games all day eating junk food, while they eat the best organic food money can buy. They exclude Jett from all social events because they are embarrassed.”

“Once,” reports Kenny, “when Kelly took him to the movies, Jett started to have a meltdown and Kelly pointed at the nanny and ordered, ‘Take care of it.’”

“Jett does not speak at all,” confirms Kenny. “He has not even been taught how to communicate. We struggle every week to pay for our daughter’s therapy. How dare he [Travolta] ruin his own son’s chances of recovering! We want to get the word out on this.”

The Travolta family are prominent Scientologists. Scientology doesn’t “believe in” autism, and eschews conventional medicine – including anti-convulsive and anti-seizure medication – in favour of a cocktail of quackery with no basis in medical science. Jett is not the first person to suffer as a result of this kind of “therapy”.

Amid the concomitant tabloid circus, it is easy to forget that this was a real human being: a child suffering from autism. And Jett Travolta did not get the treatment his condition required because his parents subscribe to a cult that recommends pseudo-scientific remedies for serious and debilitating medical conditions.

This morning, a commenter on Damian Thompson’s Holy Smoke blog wrote:

Kelly Preston, Jett’s mother, was on the board of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights which is virulently anti-psychiatry and anti-medication. How many children’s lives have been negatively interfered with by the influence of this Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which is part of Scientology, we shall never know. There is, therefore, a kind of justice that the mother, who demonstrated against psychiatric and medical treatment and who would have been involved in the threatening of psychiatry, has lost a son as a result of this anti-medicine belief that has distressed other parents all over the world.

How true that is. And how easy it is for us to laugh at Scientology – at the ridiculous space opera stories, the E-meters, and the obviously bogus science.

But a child has just died. Whether or not his death was accelerated by the tenets of Scientology, it seems certain that while he was alive, his quality of life was severely impaired by parents who hid him because they were ashamed of him, who were unaware of his death for several hours (his body was discovered by a caretaker), and who denied him the treatment he needed, all as a result of their faithfulness to the principles of Scientology.

It is time that the authorities took the Church of Scientology’s quackery seriously.

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This week, we learned that 16-year-old Jett Travolta died after hitting his head during a seizure. His parents have always denied his autism, claiming instead that he suffered from an obscure condition known as Kawasaki syndrome, contracted from “carpet-cleaning chemicals”.

According to For Great Justice:

John Travolta and Kelly Preston have only publicly spoken of their son’s having had Kawasaki Syndrome, an unlikely source of seizures, for which they treated him with Scientology’s vitamin, sauna, and running therapy known as the Purification Rundown. There has also been considerable speculation on whether Jett was autistic or had Asperberger’s Syndrome. While a confirmed diagnosis has not been made public, reports of Jett’s behavior make such a diagnosis more likely than not. At the very least, he suffered some sort of neurological impairment that contributed to his fatal seizure.

In truth, Jett Travolta’s autism has been known about for years. In 2007, Hollywood Interrupted reported:

Tim and Patricia Kenny are the proud parents of a 4 year-old autistic girl, believe that it might be time for Child Protective Services to look into John Travolta and wife Kelly’s negligence in acknowledging their son Jett’s reported autism.

The Kennys also claim that Kelly and John “let Jett sit in front of video games all day eating junk food, while they eat the best organic food money can buy. They exclude Jett from all social events because they are embarrassed.”

“Once,” reports Kenny, “when Kelly took him to the movies, Jett started to have a meltdown and Kelly pointed at the nanny and ordered, ‘Take care of it.’”

“Jett does not speak at all,” confirms Kenny. “He has not even been taught how to communicate. We struggle every week to pay for our daughter’s therapy. How dare he [Travolta] ruin his own son’s chances of recovering! We want to get the word out on this.”

The Travolta family are prominent Scientologists. Scientology doesn’t “believe in” autism, and eschews conventional medicine – including anti-convulsive and anti-seizure medication – in favour of a cocktail of quackery with no basis in medical science. Jett is not the first person to suffer as a result of this kind of “therapy”.

Amid the concomitant tabloid circus, it is easy to forget that this was a real human being: a child suffering from autism. And Jett Travolta did not get the treatment his condition required because his parents subscribe to a cult that recommends pseudo-scientific remedies for serious and debilitating medical conditions.

This morning, a commenter on Damian Thompson’s Holy Smoke blog wrote:

Kelly Preston, Jett’s mother, was on the board of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights which is virulently anti-psychiatry and anti-medication. How many children’s lives have been negatively interfered with by the influence of this Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which is part of Scientology, we shall never know. There is, therefore, a kind of justice that the mother, who demonstrated against psychiatric and medical treatment and who would have been involved in the threatening of psychiatry, has lost a son as a result of this anti-medicine belief that has distressed other parents all over the world.

How true that is. And how easy it is for us to laugh at Scientology – at the ridiculous space opera stories, the E-meters, and the obviously bogus science.

But a child has just died. Whether or not his death was accelerated by the tenets of Scientology, it seems certain that while he was alive, his quality of life was severely impaired by parents who hid him because they were ashamed of him, who were unaware of his death for several hours (his body was discovered by a caretaker), and who denied him the treatment he needed, all as a result of their faithfulness to the principles of Scientology.

It is time that the authorities took the Church of Scientology’s quackery seriously.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Mayor Martin Chavez insists that this eviction notice comes only because of the violation of the terms of the lease, not because of its affiliation with the “Church” of Scientology. Perhaps he and other public officials in Alberquerque, and the state of New Mexico, need more education on the pseudoscience of the “Church” of Scientology’s so-called drug rehabilitation treatment. I touched upon Narconon briefly in a recent article about Scientology front groups. The treatment used in Narconon facilities is called the Purification (or Purif for short) Rundown, which is given to Scientologists who want to get rid of any traces of drugs supposedly still in their system. However, in this internal memo from L. Ron Hubbard in 1982, the Purif Rundown is also intended to be used to “bridge masses of people into Scientology”. Like many patients at Narconon facilities, the inmates at Second Chance are treated to high doses of niacin and long hours in a sauna. Long hours in a sauna can cause dehydration, and high doses of niacin can cause liver damage.

The quackery of this drug detoxification “treatment” is bad enough. What makes it worse is the “Church”’s useful idiots in public office who unwittingly push for Narconon facilities to be built in their communities.

Second Chance was started by two prominent Scientologists named Joy Westrum and Rick Pendery in Tijuana, Mexico. After bringing a New Mexico state legislator named Anna Crook to see the Tijuana facility, they got the support needed to bring Second Chance to Alberquerque. According to this suspiciously positive article about the so-called success rate of Second Chance (authored by Kris Nickerson), recidivism has been reduced by 90 percent thanks to the “wisdom” of L. Ron Hubbard.

As is the case with all Scientology front groups, the only thing accomplished is the recruitment of more fresh blood into Scientology’s ranks. Even military recruiters are more ethical than this. Kim Gawlick, a former patient at a Narconon facility in Vista Bay, California, says Narconon staff members pushed her to join the “Church” of Scientology (see page 5). As a result, she left after one month, fearing for her life. This point is sadly lost in Mayor Chavez’s decision to evict Second Chance: Second Chance has done more than just house violent criminals. It has taken advantage of people at their most vulnerable and given them a new drug, worse than any other: Scientology.

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A drug rehabilitation facility run by the “Church” of Scientology front group Narconon in Alberquerque, New Mexico, had its lease agreement terminated for violating its terms. Second Chance was only intended to house non-violent criminals from the local county jail. However, the facility housed violent criminals as well – and covered it up. According to police officer Peter Dinelli, 11 inmates of the total population of 46 had committed crimes such as “aggravated battery, robbery, battery, assault on a household member, armed robbery, kidnapping”. Second Chance has 30 days to somehow salvage their lease, or it will be kicked out of its current premises.

Mayor Martin Chavez insists that this eviction notice comes only because of the violation of the terms of the lease, not because of its affiliation with the “Church” of Scientology. Perhaps he and other public officials in Alberquerque, and the state of New Mexico, need more education on the pseudoscience of the “Church” of Scientology’s so-called drug rehabilitation treatment. I touched upon Narconon briefly in a recent article about Scientology front groups. The treatment used in Narconon facilities is called the Purification (or Purif for short) Rundown, which is given to Scientologists who want to get rid of any traces of drugs supposedly still in their system. However, in this internal memo from L. Ron Hubbard in 1982, the Purif Rundown is also intended to be used to “bridge masses of people into Scientology”. Like many patients at Narconon facilities, the inmates at Second Chance are treated to high doses of niacin and long hours in a sauna. Long hours in a sauna can cause dehydration, and high doses of niacin can cause liver damage.

The quackery of this drug detoxification “treatment” is bad enough. What makes it worse is the “Church”’s useful idiots in public office who unwittingly push for Narconon facilities to be built in their communities.

Second Chance was started by two prominent Scientologists named Joy Westrum and Rick Pendery in Tijuana, Mexico. After bringing a New Mexico state legislator named Anna Crook to see the Tijuana facility, they got the support needed to bring Second Chance to Alberquerque. According to this suspiciously positive article about the so-called success rate of Second Chance (authored by Kris Nickerson), recidivism has been reduced by 90 percent thanks to the “wisdom” of L. Ron Hubbard.

As is the case with all Scientology front groups, the only thing accomplished is the recruitment of more fresh blood into Scientology’s ranks. Even military recruiters are more ethical than this. Kim Gawlick, a former patient at a Narconon facility in Vista Bay, California, says Narconon staff members pushed her to join the “Church” of Scientology (see page 5). As a result, she left after one month, fearing for her life. This point is sadly lost in Mayor Chavez’s decision to evict Second Chance: Second Chance has done more than just house violent criminals. It has taken advantage of people at their most vulnerable and given them a new drug, worse than any other: Scientology.

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Clearly, this is a violation of California and even Federal law. But the lawyers for Diskeeper argued that the lawsuit ought to be dismissed in a “motion to strike” filed in December. The motion alleges Godelman and Le Shay “seek to have the Court dismantle Mr. Jensen’s and defendent’s entire way of doing business, as these methods, the Hubbard Management Technology and the Hubbard Study Technology, are supposedly religious”. In a word, yes: they are definitely religious. Study Technology is supposedly a “secular” off-shoot of the “spiritual technology” of the “Church” of Scientology. Yet, in an executive directive issued in 1972, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote “Study Tech is our primary bridge to Society”. The Study Tech manuals often bear striking similarities to the “Church” of Scientology’s “religious” literature. You can find examples of that in this essay written by Columbia University professor Dr. David Touretzky.

For a time, the insurance company AllState trained it’s managment using Hubbard Management Technology. Scientology concepts such as the “tone scale” and the concept of “up stats” were taught to upper level management from 1988 to 1992. The whole “up stat” concept is what also drives the “religious” aspect of Scientology: in this Hubbard Policy Letter, L. Ron Hubbard wrote:

We are not in the business of being good boys and girls. We’re in the business of going free and getting the org production roaring. Nothing else is of any interest then to Ethics but (a) getting tech in, getting it run and getting it run right and (b) getting production up and the org roaring along. Therefore if a staff member is getting production up by having his own statistic excellent. Ethics sure isn’t interested. But if a staff member isn’t producing, shown by his bad statistic for his post, Ethics is fascinated with his smallest misdemeanor.

A “stat” in Scientology is an individual new recruit to Scientology, so if a Scientology staff member brings in a lot of new recruits, they are considered “up stat” and “[i]n short a staff member can get away with murder so long as his statistic is up and can’t sneeze without a chop if it’s down”.

With enough proof, plaintiffs Godelman and Le Shay can prove that Diskeeper, which is a major supplier of software to Microsoft, improperly forced “religious” indoctrination on them, violating their First Amendment rights.

But what if Diskeeper is successful in getting the lawsuit dismissed? This could pave the way for an evangelical Christian to require all employees to attend church on Sunday. Or for a Muslim to require all female employees to wear the hijab, regardless of their faith.

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Two ex-employees of Diskeeper Corporation have filed a lawsuit against their former employer after they were wrongfully dismissed for refusing to undergo compulsory “religious” indoctrination. Alexander Godelman, the former CIO, and Marc Le Shay allege that the owner of Diskeeper, Craig Jensen, forced them to “study, learn, and apply the fundamental principles of the Scientology religion”. Their refusal to comply with this company requirement (Godelman and Le Shay are both Jewish) led to the termination of their employment on October 16th, 2006. The two plaintiffs allege that the firing was unlawful according to the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, which is supposed to prevent discrimination because of age, race, sex, disability, and religion, among other things.

Clearly, this is a violation of California and even Federal law. But the lawyers for Diskeeper argued that the lawsuit ought to be dismissed in a “motion to strike” filed in December. The motion alleges Godelman and Le Shay “seek to have the Court dismantle Mr. Jensen’s and defendent’s entire way of doing business, as these methods, the Hubbard Management Technology and the Hubbard Study Technology, are supposedly religious”. In a word, yes: they are definitely religious. Study Technology is supposedly a “secular” off-shoot of the “spiritual technology” of the “Church” of Scientology. Yet, in an executive directive issued in 1972, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote “Study Tech is our primary bridge to Society”. The Study Tech manuals often bear striking similarities to the “Church” of Scientology’s “religious” literature. You can find examples of that in this essay written by Columbia University professor Dr. David Touretzky.

For a time, the insurance company AllState trained it’s managment using Hubbard Management Technology. Scientology concepts such as the “tone scale” and the concept of “up stats” were taught to upper level management from 1988 to 1992. The whole “up stat” concept is what also drives the “religious” aspect of Scientology: in this Hubbard Policy Letter, L. Ron Hubbard wrote:

We are not in the business of being good boys and girls. We’re in the business of going free and getting the org production roaring. Nothing else is of any interest then to Ethics but (a) getting tech in, getting it run and getting it run right and (b) getting production up and the org roaring along. Therefore if a staff member is getting production up by having his own statistic excellent. Ethics sure isn’t interested. But if a staff member isn’t producing, shown by his bad statistic for his post, Ethics is fascinated with his smallest misdemeanor.

A “stat” in Scientology is an individual new recruit to Scientology, so if a Scientology staff member brings in a lot of new recruits, they are considered “up stat” and “[i]n short a staff member can get away with murder so long as his statistic is up and can’t sneeze without a chop if it’s down”.

With enough proof, plaintiffs Godelman and Le Shay can prove that Diskeeper, which is a major supplier of software to Microsoft, improperly forced “religious” indoctrination on them, violating their First Amendment rights.

But what if Diskeeper is successful in getting the lawsuit dismissed? This could pave the way for an evangelical Christian to require all employees to attend church on Sunday. Or for a Muslim to require all female employees to wear the hijab, regardless of their faith.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
— Charles Baudelaire 

The video above is a Public Service Announcement from “Youth For Human Rights International”. Youth For Human Rights certainly seems like a laudable initiative at first glance, doesn’t it? In an age where young people are more apathetic than ever, it’s encouraging to see them standing up for human rights. The PSA has a catchy beat and a positive message. Why then am I including this video as an example of the devil’s age-old trick?

Because this organisation is a front group for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, Mary Shuttleworth, is a Scientologist and the organization is mostly staffed by Scientologists.

Many young people unwittingly join YHRI, not realising it is a front group for Scientology. Their good intentions to make the world a better place are misused by people who intend to push L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology”. YHRI was been established with the sole purpose of drawing young people into Scientology.

Why the furore over Will Smith’s new private school?

Many people must be wondering about the controversy surrounding the New Village Academy, a school set up by actor Will Smith and his wife Jada. The New Village Academy intends to employ a lot of educational approaches in this new type of school. But one stands out the most: the employment of “Scientology Study Technology”. Since this revelation came out in the media, Jacqueline Olivier, the principal of New Village Academy, and Will Smith have both strongly insisted the new school is not a Scientology school. But why is Study Tech controversial?

Study tech is founded on 3 principles: Using visual images to teach concepts, breaking down complex concepts, and using the dictionaries to find the meanings for unfamiliar words. Seems reasonable enough, given that’s how children are taught in the first few grades of elementary school. But Study Tech is unavoidably tainted with Scientology related teachings. There have been numerous attempts to slip Study Tech into public schools as well, which is much worse than Will Smith’s private school employing Study Tech. Study Tech in itself is just a concept, not a front group. The relevant front group that pushes it in public schools is Applied Scholastics, which is a misnomer.

Drug pushers of another kind: Narconon

In an age of widespread drug use and abuse, there is a desperate need for rehabilitation clinics all over the world. The “Church” of Scientology has recognised this need, and sought to capitalise on it. The Church started Narconon in 1966 and it was run by the Guardian’s Office, the “Church” of Scientology’s intelligence and public relations wing, until 1980. To this day, Narconon denies its ties with the “Church” but this document shows that Narconon is indeed a front group of the “Church”. If you want more recent proof, here is an interview Tom Cruise gave to Der Spiegel in 2005:

Cruise: I’m a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It’s called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That’s not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

Cruise: You don’t understand what I am saying. It’s a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period.

SPIEGEL: With all due respect, we doubt that.

While developing his drug “therapy”, L. Ron Hubbard observed that giving a large dose of niacin to a person causes the skin to looked flushed: blood vessels dilate and release histamine, which is the same physiological reaction that occurs when someone suffers from a rash or an allergy. Flushing of the skin is also a sign of toxicity, and the levels of niacin that Narconon gives to clients is very high. The tolerable upper intake level for adults is 35 mg, but Narconon gives their clients up to 500 mg/day, increasing each dose by 3mg daily.

Hubbard theorized, wrongly, that drugs, including water-soluble ones, can be stored in fat cells, and that niacin works to release fat from adipose tissue into the bloodstream, thereby “flushing out” drug residue from the body. This idea has been conclusively discredited. Hubbard also theorized that large doses of niacin can flush out radiation. But niacin can do nothing to the free radicals in the body caused by radiation. There are many examples of L. Ron Hubbard’s poor grasp of nuclear physics, and science in general – they are too numerous to list here. Despite this, Narconon is being used to “bridge masses of people into Scientology”.

CCHR: An Industry of Fear and Paranoia

Another misnomer for a front group name is the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights. The CCHR was established in 1969 by the “Church” of Scientology and non-Scientologist psychiatry critic Thomas Szasz. Since then, it has been spreading lies and misinformation about psychiatry and psychology. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote of psychiatrists:

“Crimes of extortion, mayhem and murder are done daily by these men in the name of ‘practice’ and ‘treatment’. There is not one institutional psychiatrist alive who, by ordinary criminal law, could not be arraigned and convicted of extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them.” [SOURCE]

The CCHR formed a website called PsychCrime, which tracks down crimes committed by individual mental health professionals. Granted, crimes are committed by individual psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals, but the CCHR takes individual crimes as evidence that the whole professions is “evil”. In 2005, the CCHR debuted its notorious “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” museum exhibit, which blames psychiatry for everything from Hitler and the Holocaust to Kurt Cobain’s suicide.

The CCHR is one of the worst Scientology front groups because it uses lies and half-truths to instill paranoia not only into Scientologists, but also into the general public. It is this paranoia that led to the death of Elli Perkins by her schizophrenic son Jeremy. It also eventually killed Lisa McPherson, who died in the care of Scientologists.

More focus needed

There are lots of other front groups not mentioned here, but a quick Google search will bring up complete listings of Scientology front groups. So far, the monthly Anonymous protests have dealt with the Church of Scientology’s tax-exempt status, the disconnection policy, the fair game policy, and the Church of Scientology’s elite Sea Organization. The upcoming protest on July 12th deals with the subversive activities of OSA. Scientology’s front groups deserve focus because they are the “secular” fronts of Scientology. Their ties with Scientology are not always obvious. More public scrutiny is needed.

[Author's note: a version of this article originally appeared on Glosslip in July 2008.]

If you enjoyed this post, why not subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter? You might also consider making a donation to the Counterknowledge.com fighting fund.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
— Charles Baudelaire 

The video above is a Public Service Announcement from “Youth For Human Rights International”. Youth For Human Rights certainly seems like a laudable initiative at first glance, doesn’t it? In an age where young people are more apathetic than ever, it’s encouraging to see them standing up for human rights. The PSA has a catchy beat and a positive message. Why then am I including this video as an example of the devil’s age-old trick?

Because this organisation is a front group for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, Mary Shuttleworth, is a Scientologist and the organization is mostly staffed by Scientologists.

Many young people unwittingly join YHRI, not realising it is a front group for Scientology. Their good intentions to make the world a better place are misused by people who intend to push L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology”. YHRI was been established with the sole purpose of drawing young people into Scientology.

Why the furore over Will Smith’s new private school?

Many people must be wondering about the controversy surrounding the New Village Academy, a school set up by actor Will Smith and his wife Jada. The New Village Academy intends to employ a lot of educational approaches in this new type of school. But one stands out the most: the employment of “Scientology Study Technology”. Since this revelation came out in the media, Jacqueline Olivier, the principal of New Village Academy, and Will Smith have both strongly insisted the new school is not a Scientology school. But why is Study Tech controversial?

Study tech is founded on 3 principles: Using visual images to teach concepts, breaking down complex concepts, and using the dictionaries to find the meanings for unfamiliar words. Seems reasonable enough, given that’s how children are taught in the first few grades of elementary school. But Study Tech is unavoidably tainted with Scientology related teachings. There have been numerous attempts to slip Study Tech into public schools as well, which is much worse than Will Smith’s private school employing Study Tech. Study Tech in itself is just a concept, not a front group. The relevant front group that pushes it in public schools is Applied Scholastics, which is a misnomer.

Drug pushers of another kind: Narconon

In an age of widespread drug use and abuse, there is a desperate need for rehabilitation clinics all over the world. The “Church” of Scientology has recognised this need, and sought to capitalise on it. The Church started Narconon in 1966 and it was run by the Guardian’s Office, the “Church” of Scientology’s intelligence and public relations wing, until 1980. To this day, Narconon denies its ties with the “Church” but this document shows that Narconon is indeed a front group of the “Church”. If you want more recent proof, here is an interview Tom Cruise gave to Der Spiegel in 2005:

Cruise: I’m a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It’s called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That’s not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

Cruise: You don’t understand what I am saying. It’s a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period.

SPIEGEL: With all due respect, we doubt that.

While developing his drug “therapy”, L. Ron Hubbard observed that giving a large dose of niacin to a person causes the skin to looked flushed: blood vessels dilate and release histamine, which is the same physiological reaction that occurs when someone suffers from a rash or an allergy. Flushing of the skin is also a sign of toxicity, and the levels of niacin that Narconon gives to clients is very high. The tolerable upper intake level for adults is 35 mg, but Narconon gives their clients up to 500 mg/day, increasing each dose by 3mg daily.

Hubbard theorized, wrongly, that drugs, including water-soluble ones, can be stored in fat cells, and that niacin works to release fat from adipose tissue into the bloodstream, thereby “flushing out” drug residue from the body. This idea has been conclusively discredited. Hubbard also theorized that large doses of niacin can flush out radiation. But niacin can do nothing to the free radicals in the body caused by radiation. There are many examples of L. Ron Hubbard’s poor grasp of nuclear physics, and science in general – they are too numerous to list here. Despite this, Narconon is being used to “bridge masses of people into Scientology”.

CCHR: An Industry of Fear and Paranoia

Another misnomer for a front group name is the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights. The CCHR was established in 1969 by the “Church” of Scientology and non-Scientologist psychiatry critic Thomas Szasz. Since then, it has been spreading lies and misinformation about psychiatry and psychology. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote of psychiatrists:

“Crimes of extortion, mayhem and murder are done daily by these men in the name of ‘practice’ and ‘treatment’. There is not one institutional psychiatrist alive who, by ordinary criminal law, could not be arraigned and convicted of extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them.” [SOURCE]

The CCHR formed a website called PsychCrime, which tracks down crimes committed by individual mental health professionals. Granted, crimes are committed by individual psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals, but the CCHR takes individual crimes as evidence that the whole professions is “evil”. In 2005, the CCHR debuted its notorious “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” museum exhibit, which blames psychiatry for everything from Hitler and the Holocaust to Kurt Cobain’s suicide.

The CCHR is one of the worst Scientology front groups because it uses lies and half-truths to instill paranoia not only into Scientologists, but also into the general public. It is this paranoia that led to the death of Elli Perkins by her schizophrenic son Jeremy. It also eventually killed Lisa McPherson, who died in the care of Scientologists.

More focus needed

There are lots of other front groups not mentioned here, but a quick Google search will bring up complete listings of Scientology front groups. So far, the monthly Anonymous protests have dealt with the Church of Scientology’s tax-exempt status, the disconnection policy, the fair game policy, and the Church of Scientology’s elite Sea Organization. The upcoming protest on July 12th deals with the subversive activities of OSA. Scientology’s front groups deserve focus because they are the “secular” fronts of Scientology. Their ties with Scientology are not always obvious. More public scrutiny is needed.

[Author's note: a version of this article originally appeared on Glosslip in July 2008.]

If you enjoyed this post, why not subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter? You might also consider making a donation to the Counterknowledge.com fighting fund.

The Sklars’ main argument was that section 170(f)(8) and 6115 of the IRS code authorized deductions for donations made to religious institutions if they provided “intangible religious benefits”. Scientologists can claim deductions for “religious” services provided by the “Church”, and the Sklars argued that they too should be allowed to utilize this benefit. If the “Church” of Scientology is allowed to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, then they should be able to do the same thing in the name of consistency. The Ninth Circuit Court rejected this argument because “[t]o conclude otherwise would be tantamount to rewriting the Tax Code, disregarding Supreme Court precedent, only to reach a conclusion directly at odds with the Establishment Clause — all in the name of the Establishment Clause.”.

The court ruled wisely in favor of not violating the First Amendment, which unequivocally states that no religion should have an advantage over the other. But what to say about the “Church” of Scientology’s special privilege, which they allegedly obtained by shady means. Three years after the “Church” was established by L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, the IRS gave it tax-exempt status. However, in 1967, their tax-exempt status was stripped away because it was determined that the activities of the “Church” were commercial, and several US courts agreed. This meant war between the IRS and the “Church”, which continued for 25 years.

In 1973, L. Ron Hubbard initiated Operation Snow White against the governments of several countries, including the United States. The main target of “Project Hunter”, the American branch of Snow White was the IRS. Operation Snow White called for the infiltration of the IRS and other US government agencies in order to steal documents related to L. Ron Hubbard and the “Church” of Scientology. Eventually, several Scientologists, including L. Ron Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue, were caught, and the FBI invaded Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington DC. In 1979, eleven Scientologists, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were sentenced to five years in prison. That did not stop the war against the IRS. Private investigators were hired by the cult to dig up dirt on various IRS officials, and in many cases, they found enough damning evidence to blackmail these officials.

Finally, in 1993, then IRS Comissioner Fred Goldberg met with current “Church” leader David Miscavige and reached an agreement that would end all lawsuits against the IRS by the “Church” of Scientology: the war was finally over. Attempts by various IRS watchdogs to get the IRS to disclose this agreement were unsuccessful, even though by law the IRS has to release it.

The question to ask is: why is a pseudo-religion started by a charlatan solely to make money allowed these special privileges, while legitimate religions are not? This IRS agreement violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by making it a de facto “established” religion. It was wise on the part of the Ninth Circuit Court to reject Michael and Marla Sklar’s argument, but the “Church” of Scientology must be called out for this circumvention of the US Constitution.

Let me leave you with a quote from L. Ron Hubbard:

“Somebody some day will say ‘this is illegal’. By then be sure the orgs say what is legal or not.”

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An American court ruled this week that an Orthodox Jewish couple could not use tax deductions that Scientologists can use (deductions they obtained by way of a secret 1993 agreement with the Internal Revenue Service). In the case Sklar v. Commissioner of the IRS, Michael and Marla Sklar tried to claim their childrens’ tuition for their Jewish day school as a tax deduction but their argument was rejected by the US Ninth Circuit Court because it violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states in the first sentence that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.

The Sklars’ main argument was that section 170(f)(8) and 6115 of the IRS code authorized deductions for donations made to religious institutions if they provided “intangible religious benefits”. Scientologists can claim deductions for “religious” services provided by the “Church”, and the Sklars argued that they too should be allowed to utilize this benefit. If the “Church” of Scientology is allowed to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, then they should be able to do the same thing in the name of consistency. The Ninth Circuit Court rejected this argument because “[t]o conclude otherwise would be tantamount to rewriting the Tax Code, disregarding Supreme Court precedent, only to reach a conclusion directly at odds with the Establishment Clause — all in the name of the Establishment Clause.”.

The court ruled wisely in favor of not violating the First Amendment, which unequivocally states that no religion should have an advantage over the other. But what to say about the “Church” of Scientology’s special privilege, which they allegedly obtained by shady means. Three years after the “Church” was established by L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, the IRS gave it tax-exempt status. However, in 1967, their tax-exempt status was stripped away because it was determined that the activities of the “Church” were commercial, and several US courts agreed. This meant war between the IRS and the “Church”, which continued for 25 years.

In 1973, L. Ron Hubbard initiated Operation Snow White against the governments of several countries, including the United States. The main target of “Project Hunter”, the American branch of Snow White was the IRS. Operation Snow White called for the infiltration of the IRS and other US government agencies in order to steal documents related to L. Ron Hubbard and the “Church” of Scientology. Eventually, several Scientologists, including L. Ron Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue, were caught, and the FBI invaded Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington DC. In 1979, eleven Scientologists, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were sentenced to five years in prison. That did not stop the war against the IRS. Private investigators were hired by the cult to dig up dirt on various IRS officials, and in many cases, they found enough damning evidence to blackmail these officials.

Finally, in 1993, then IRS Comissioner Fred Goldberg met with current “Church” leader David Miscavige and reached an agreement that would end all lawsuits against the IRS by the “Church” of Scientology: the war was finally over. Attempts by various IRS watchdogs to get the IRS to disclose this agreement were unsuccessful, even though by law the IRS has to release it.

The question to ask is: why is a pseudo-religion started by a charlatan solely to make money allowed these special privileges, while legitimate religions are not? This IRS agreement violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by making it a de facto “established” religion. It was wise on the part of the Ninth Circuit Court to reject Michael and Marla Sklar’s argument, but the “Church” of Scientology must be called out for this circumvention of the US Constitution.

Let me leave you with a quote from L. Ron Hubbard:

“Somebody some day will say ‘this is illegal’. By then be sure the orgs say what is legal or not.”

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In the post 9/11 era, new terms and new ideas to describe how war is being fought today have emerged in the media. One such term is “lawfare”. On page 55 of the book Unrestricted Warfare, authors Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui call for the use of “international law warfare” (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations) along with a set of other types of warfare that an enemy with more firepower cannot withstand for long. Since 2001, the term has been used to describe how individual supporters of terrorism have tried to silence those who expose them. Take the case of Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi Arabian billionaire who sued American author Rachel Ehrenfeld for libel in the UK because in her book Funding Evil she named him as a major financial contributor to terrorist organisations. British libel laws place the burden of proof on the defendant, and given Dr. Ehrenfeld’s limited resources – even with government documents as proof – she lost. By contrast, in 2008, Governor George Pataki of New York signed Rachel’s Law, which grants protection to American citizens being sued by ”libel tourists”. The laws of the USA and the UK differ radically when it comes to freedom of speech.

“Lawfare” is the use of a country’s legal system by an individual or corporation to utterly crush their adversaries. The term is currently used in the context of the War on Terror, but the definition can be broadened to include any other individual or group who tries to ruin an adversary in court – including the “Church” of Scientology.

“We are going to sue your ass… and your balls!”

Earlier this year, the Canadian magazine Maisonneuve published an article on long-time Scientology critic Gerry Armstrong, detailing the sustained harassment campaign against him. The author of the article goes so far as to call him Scientology’s Salman Rushdie because of the severity of the Church’s harassment. Armstrong was once in the inner circle of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and was asked to help author Omar Garrison to compile a biography of Hubbard. When he found out the innumerable “discrepancies” in the official version of Hubbard’s life story, Armstrong declined to continue work on the project.

When he left the cult in 1981, Armstrong did so in possession of “boxes of material” on L. Ron Hubbard. In 1986, he signed a gag agreement with the Church of Scientology, but couldn’t remain silent. Since he has broken that agreement, the Church has sued him many times in the state of California. He fled to his hometown of Chilliwack, Canada but, even there, Gerry Armstrong gets no rest.

“To get PC incarcerated in a mental institution or jail, or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks”

In 1968, a young author from New York wrote an expose about Scientology, which later was expanded into her 1971 release The Scandal of Scientology. At the time, Paulette Cooper could not have known that this would bring about a campaign to destroy her. The Church of Scientology even went so far as to frame her for bomb threats the Church is thought to have itself with stationary stolen from Cooper’s apartment. Forensic evidence cleared her of any crime, but then, in the 1970s, the Scientologists did a pretty good job in framing her for another crime she did not commit: this time, she faced 15 years in prison. (In 1977, the FBI raided Scientology offices around the country, and discovered Operation Freak Out, a plan that expanded on their success with the previous forged bomb threat. After that discovery, Cooper was finally exonerated of all charges.)

Cooper later wrote: “As for me, I often wish I had never ever heard the word ‘Scientology’. But given the same situation, I would still do it all over again. I would not have been capable of remaining quiet, because I learned too many scary things and talked to too many people who were being hurt.” Cooper paid a huge price to expose Scientology, not just through her book but also through what happened in her life for more than a decade. That is lawfare. For the entire decade, they did not let her go on with her career or her life, and she paid a price for it.

The wolves in watchmens’ clothing

Where previously Scientologists who wanted to leave the Church could call the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) hotline to get help, since 1996 the Church of Scientology has operated CAN as another of its “front groups”. The Church of Scientology launched a massive lawsuit against CAN and its former director Cynthia Kisser, and in 1996 the CAN declared bankruptcy. As part of the ruling against the CAN, it had to turn over boxes of confidential files on all the cults it tracked, including Scientology. Nowadays if one visits the website for the new CAN, one can see how different it is from the old CAN: there is no section on Scientology, and all the sections on other cults blame psychiatry for the actions of those cults. The scapegoating of psychiatry should be a dead give-away for those familiar with the Church of Scientology.

This is lawfare: crippling an adversary through lawsuits and then administering a hostile takeover.

Pleading the First in court

The Church of Scientology is well known for relying on the “religious freedom” defence; specifically, the right to practice a religion other than Christianity. They claim this is covered by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Church of Scientology appealed the initial ruling for the Wollersheim vs. Church of Scientology of California case, saying the practice of “fair game” against critics and former Scientologists is “a core practice of Scientology and therefore protected as religious expression”.

Think what a heinous precedent that would set. Other groups and individuals that wage lawfare on their opponents could easily argue that it’s a “religious practice”. Lawfare would become more prevalent in American - and other countries’ - courtrooms than ever.

[Author's note: An earlier version of this article on a celebrity gossip blog called Glosslip but this article is still relevant today. In this article, I wrote mainly about how the "Church" used the American legal system to their advantage, but the same can be said of the UK's legal system as well, especially in light of the suppression of the book The Complex by John Duignan. Additional comments made in this article are in italics]

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

[Note: if you're using Internet Explorer, er, don't. But seriously – you might need to click here to see the video]

In the post 9/11 era, new terms and new ideas to describe how war is being fought today have emerged in the media. One such term is “lawfare”. On page 55 of the book Unrestricted Warfare, authors Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui call for the use of “international law warfare” (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations) along with a set of other types of warfare that an enemy with more firepower cannot withstand for long. Since 2001, the term has been used to describe how individual supporters of terrorism have tried to silence those who expose them. Take the case of Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi Arabian billionaire who sued American author Rachel Ehrenfeld for libel in the UK because in her book Funding Evil she named him as a major financial contributor to terrorist organisations. British libel laws place the burden of proof on the defendant, and given Dr. Ehrenfeld’s limited resources – even with government documents as proof – she lost. By contrast, in 2008, Governor George Pataki of New York signed Rachel’s Law, which grants protection to American citizens being sued by ”libel tourists”. The laws of the USA and the UK differ radically when it comes to freedom of speech.

“Lawfare” is the use of a country’s legal system by an individual or corporation to utterly crush their adversaries. The term is currently used in the context of the War on Terror, but the definition can be broadened to include any other individual or group who tries to ruin an adversary in court – including the “Church” of Scientology.

“We are going to sue your ass… and your balls!”

Earlier this year, the Canadian magazine Maisonneuve published an article on long-time Scientology critic Gerry Armstrong, detailing the sustained harassment campaign against him. The author of the article goes so far as to call him Scientology’s Salman Rushdie because of the severity of the Church’s harassment. Armstrong was once in the inner circle of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and was asked to help author Omar Garrison to compile a biography of Hubbard. When he found out the innumerable “discrepancies” in the official version of Hubbard’s life story, Armstrong declined to continue work on the project.

When he left the cult in 1981, Armstrong did so in possession of “boxes of material” on L. Ron Hubbard. In 1986, he signed a gag agreement with the Church of Scientology, but couldn’t remain silent. Since he has broken that agreement, the Church has sued him many times in the state of California. He fled to his hometown of Chilliwack, Canada but, even there, Gerry Armstrong gets no rest.

“To get PC incarcerated in a mental institution or jail, or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks”

In 1968, a young author from New York wrote an expose about Scientology, which later was expanded into her 1971 release The Scandal of Scientology. At the time, Paulette Cooper could not have known that this would bring about a campaign to destroy her. The Church of Scientology even went so far as to frame her for bomb threats the Church is thought to have itself with stationary stolen from Cooper’s apartment. Forensic evidence cleared her of any crime, but then, in the 1970s, the Scientologists did a pretty good job in framing her for another crime she did not commit: this time, she faced 15 years in prison. (In 1977, the FBI raided Scientology offices around the country, and discovered Operation Freak Out, a plan that expanded on their success with the previous forged bomb threat. After that discovery, Cooper was finally exonerated of all charges.)

Cooper later wrote: “As for me, I often wish I had never ever heard the word ‘Scientology’. But given the same situation, I would still do it all over again. I would not have been capable of remaining quiet, because I learned too many scary things and talked to too many people who were being hurt.” Cooper paid a huge price to expose Scientology, not just through her book but also through what happened in her life for more than a decade. That is lawfare. For the entire decade, they did not let her go on with her career or her life, and she paid a price for it.

The wolves in watchmens’ clothing

Where previously Scientologists who wanted to leave the Church could call the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) hotline to get help, since 1996 the Church of Scientology has operated CAN as another of its “front groups”. The Church of Scientology launched a massive lawsuit against CAN and its former director Cynthia Kisser, and in 1996 the CAN declared bankruptcy. As part of the ruling against the CAN, it had to turn over boxes of confidential files on all the cults it tracked, including Scientology. Nowadays if one visits the website for the new CAN, one can see how different it is from the old CAN: there is no section on Scientology, and all the sections on other cults blame psychiatry for the actions of those cults. The scapegoating of psychiatry should be a dead give-away for those familiar with the Church of Scientology.

This is lawfare: crippling an adversary through lawsuits and then administering a hostile takeover.

Pleading the First in court

The Church of Scientology is well known for relying on the “religious freedom” defence; specifically, the right to practice a religion other than Christianity. They claim this is covered by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Church of Scientology appealed the initial ruling for the Wollersheim vs. Church of Scientology of California case, saying the practice of “fair game” against critics and former Scientologists is “a core practice of Scientology and therefore protected as religious expression”.

Think what a heinous precedent that would set. Other groups and individuals that wage lawfare on their opponents could easily argue that it’s a “religious practice”. Lawfare would become more prevalent in American - and other countries’ - courtrooms than ever.

[Author's note: An earlier version of this article on a celebrity gossip blog called Glosslip but this article is still relevant today. In this article, I wrote mainly about how the "Church" used the American legal system to their advantage, but the same can be said of the UK's legal system as well, especially in light of the suppression of the book The Complex by John Duignan. Additional comments made in this article are in italics]

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The ordinance pushed by the “Church” would restrict picketers by prohibiting them from protesting within 300 feet of Gold Base. The “Church” and their friend inside Riverside County, Supervisor Jeff Stone, argued that Gold Base is a residential area, and there is already a law that prohibits picketers from picketing a person’s home. During the hearings, proponents tried to argue that Anonymous is a hate group by pulling images from imageboard 4chan, which is regarded as the “birthplace” of Anonymous. (4chan is an image board which has spawned many internet inside jokes and memes such as the Rick Roll. Its humour is often explicit, and, admittedly, sometimes offensive.)

Free speech has not quite won this battle yet: the Riverside County board of supervisors still think this ordinance is worth “massaging and tweaking” so that a compromise can be reached. But, for now, this is a temporary victory for Anonymous, and a temporary loss for the tyrannical “Church” of Scientology.

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Recently, the “Church” of Scientology pushed an ordinance in Riverside County, California, to keep “members” of the group Anonymous away from their fortress-like Gold Base, and it was passed almost unanimously by Riverside County supervisors. But today, Riverside County decided to back away from that decision, at least for now because of the inevitable fall-out from such a restrictive ordinance.

The ordinance pushed by the “Church” would restrict picketers by prohibiting them from protesting within 300 feet of Gold Base. The “Church” and their friend inside Riverside County, Supervisor Jeff Stone, argued that Gold Base is a residential area, and there is already a law that prohibits picketers from picketing a person’s home. During the hearings, proponents tried to argue that Anonymous is a hate group by pulling images from imageboard 4chan, which is regarded as the “birthplace” of Anonymous. (4chan is an image board which has spawned many internet inside jokes and memes such as the Rick Roll. Its humour is often explicit, and, admittedly, sometimes offensive.)

Free speech has not quite won this battle yet: the Riverside County board of supervisors still think this ordinance is worth “massaging and tweaking” so that a compromise can be reached. But, for now, this is a temporary victory for Anonymous, and a temporary loss for the tyrannical “Church” of Scientology.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!