On this day...

Scientology 'a high price racket'
Date: Thursday, 8 August 1968
Publisher: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Author: Alex Faulkner
Main source: link (57 KiB)

A DEVASTATINGLY critical account of Scientology appears today in the New York publication Women's Wear Daily, which is devoted essentially to fashions, but often explores matters far afield from them.

"A new and quite apparently phoney 'religion' called Scientology is beginning to emerge from the lower depths," it says. "In the United States it is still basically unknown except to cultists and a few curiosity seekers. But in recent days, Subway posters have appeared in New York urging everyone: "Step into the world of the totally free."

"Its bible is a compilation of mawkish platitudes offering instant happiness for $5 a course or a six-months' course in understanding for $1,500 [£624].

 

'Total freedom'

"Scientology is a racket with offices in key cities throughout the United States and England. Its main teaching is "total freedom" and it worships no god but its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, a sort of Western guru with an unholy smile.

"Its services are conducted on Sundays at 2 p.m. in Centrad Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Flower Children, Hippies, high school dropouts and disillusioned adults.

"And one of the principal 'dynamics' or commandments for the cult's worshippers is the sex act itself, pure and simple."

The debates which have raged in the House of Commons, says this publication, really boil down to the question of whether Scientology is, or is not, a religion.

 

'Confidence game'

"It isn't," it asserts. "It's a high-priced confidence game. However, as a movement, Scientology continues to grow at an astounding rate here in the United States and abroad. In New York city its membership reportedly has increased more than 500 per cent, in two years.

"At the Martinique Hotel on 32nd Street, headquarters of one of its thriving brances, follower of founder Hubbard include mini-skirted girls, bearded youth, part-time advisers and 'ministers.' There are also the curiosity seekers pondering whether to take the initial step called 'processing' at a cost of $15 [£6].

 

Press excluded

Members of the local Press were barred from a Scientology lecture in Altrincham, Cheshire, last night because a "doorman" said members of the Press would not be allowed to Scientology meetings "until the present witch hunt had ended."

Cult men seek allies by post
Date: Thursday, 8 August 1968
Publisher: Scottish Daily Mail (UK)
Main source: link (26 KiB)

SCIENTOLOGISTS in Edinburgh — some of whom have already been told that they may have to quit the country — are looking for help to keep the cult alive.

In the next few days, professional men — including doctors — welfare authorities, clubs, newspapers and private citizens in the city will be getting questionnaires through the post.

The questionnaire asks, among other things: Do you think Scientology is right or wrong? If you were able, are there any changes you would make?

 

Warning

A staff member in Edinburgh said last night: 'We have been told to get these things out as soon as possible. The people in charge want to find out the reaction to Scientology.'

Several students of Scientology — including some in Edinburgh — have been told to leave Britain by August 31.

Others have been asked to leave by the end of September, and the Home Office has warned that as Scientology is not recognised as an educational system, permits to stay will not be renewed.

Judge's ruling calls sect 'corrupt, immoral'
Date: Wednesday, 8 August 1984
Publisher: Clearwater Sun (Florida)
Author: George-Wayne Shelor
Main source: link (97 KiB)

A London High Court judge characterized the Clearwater-based Church of Scientology as "corrupt, immoral, sinister (and) dangerous" in delivering a damning indictment of the sect during a civil trial.

Mr. Justice Sir John Latey's July 23 comments concluded a six-month court battle over custody of two children whose father is a Scientologist but whose mother has left the sect.

In awarding care and control of the children to their mother, the British judge minced no words in his condemnation of Scientology, calling it "both immoral and socially obnoxious.

"(Scientology) is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real objective money and power for its founder (L. Ron Hubbard), his wife and those close to him at the top," Latey said from the bench, reading from a prepared statement.

"It is sinister because it indulges in infamous practices both to its adherents who do not toe the line unquestioningly and to those outside who oppose it.

"It is dangerous because it is out to capture people, especially children and impressionable young people, and indoctrinate and brainwash them so that they become the unquestioning captives and tools of the cult.

"The stranglehold is tight and unrelenting and the discipline ruthless ... the church resorts to lies and deceit whenever it thinks it will profit it to do so. For those of us old enough to remember, it is grimly reminiscent of the ranting and bullying of Hitler and his henchmen."

Richard Haworth, the Scientologist's spokesman in Clearwater, said Latey's ruling and comments are "the desperate decision of one judge that is of no consequence."

Justice Latey verified his statements Tuesday during a telephone interview with the Clearwater Sun, and his comments echo similar findings expressed by California Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, who called the sect "schizophrenic and paranoid" at the June 21 conclusion of a Los Angeles civil trial.

Breckenridge — whose decision exonerated former Scientology archivist Gerald Armstrong of charges he stole thousands of sect documents — also found that the evidence presented to his court "reflects on (Hubbard's) egoism, avarice, lust for power, greed and vindictiveness against all persons percieved by him to be hostile."

"He (Judge Breckenridge) seems to have come to very much the same conclusion that I did," Latey noted Tuesday.

Armstrong, at the conclusion of his nine-week trial in California, flew to London to testify in the child custody trial before Latey.

According to the London Daily Mail, although Latey awarded the mother custody of her children, ages 8 and 10, he said the children should not be cut off from their father, with whom they had been living.

The Daily Mail reported that even though the father, who has remarried since the couple's divorce in 1979, had promised to seek to correct the evils of Scientology, Latey declared there was very little the father could do.

"The result would be that he would be declared a Suppressive Person with all that that would entail for him and his family," Latey said. "The baleful influence of the church would, in reality, still be there and the children would remain gravely at risk."

Haworth said Tuesday the London trial was "biased (and) tainted by the infusion of psychiatric jargon."

"This case is just another symptom of the times in which we live where the integrity of the family and other cherished institutions are cast aside as the state assumes increasing control of every facet of our lives," Haworth said.

He also said the custody case, like the California theft case, will be appealed.

Scientology called 'daddy' of cults
Date: Thursday, 8 August 1991
Publisher: Winnipeg Sun
Author: Rene Pollett
Main source: link (88 KiB)

The Church of Scientology is a cult interested in making money, claims a local cult expert.

Gordon Gillespie of the Manitoba Cult Awareness Centre calls Scientology — which is linked to the drug-rehabilitation program Narconon, currently fund-raising in the city — the "daddy" of cults.

Gillespie said Scientology's church status gives it tax breaks, but it doesn't have churches and services like other religions.

"I'd like to say 'No, they're not successful,' but they're still here and they're persistent."

Winnipeggers who find flyers in their mail advertising a book called Dianetics, written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, should be aware it's a big money-maker for the organization, he said.

And people who get involved in the controversial group could end up in expensive training courses, he said.

"What they attempt to do is make you a better person. They have their own funny system for evaluating you. 

They say, 'We see all these weaknesses,' and they get (money) from you and they sell you a course to improve yourself," Gillespie claimed.

"That course leads to another and another."

And once a person becomes heavily involved in Scientology it's very difficult to get them out, he alleged.

"People who counsel kids coming out of cults are really reluctant to deal with Scientologists," he claimed. 

"It's really difficult."

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