Reader's Digest, September 1981
Eighteen months ago, the U.S.-based Church of Scientology
launched a global -- and unsuccessful -- campaign to prevent
publication of a Reader's Digest report called "Scientology:
Anatomy of a Frightening Cult." The church engaged a detective
agency to investigate the author, Digest Senior Editor Eugene
H. Methvin. Digest offices in a half-dozen nations were
picketed or bombarded with nuisance phone calls. In Denmark,
South Africa and Australia, the church sued unsuccessfully to
prevent publication.
In the months since the article appeared, in May 1980, a flood
of reader reaction both here and abroad has convinced us that
our article only scratched the surface. Indeed, there is every
indication that Scientology's international operations are at
least as chilling as the U.S. operations described in our May
'80 article. And they continue to grow at an alarming pace.
Here, then, is a follow-up look at Scientology worldwide.
Scientology: The Sickness Spreads
by Eugene H. Methvin
o In Brescia, Italy, radio-station owner Rodolfo Zucca receives
repeated personal threats. His car is vandalized. Twice, the
wires from his broadcasting studio are cut, forcing him off the
air.
o In Paris, university professor Yves Lecerf learns that all
the neighbors in his apartment building have been telephoned by
someone posing as a health-ministry official. The bogus
official has told them that Professor Lecerf is a danger to his
neighbors' children.
o In St. Petersburg, Fla., Andrew Orsini, executive director of
the Easter Seal Society for Crippled Children and Adults, is
accused in anonymous letters to newspapers and state and city
agencies of criminal misconduct in the charity's financial and
administrative affairs. The letters demand Orsini's arrest and
prosecution.
These diverse people share one common connection: each had
attracted the enmity of the "Church of Scientology" -- which in
1978 claimed more than five million adherents, with thousands
more joining yearly.
Scientology is far more than mere religion. An analysis of
sworn testimony and the findings of official tribunals in 12
nations, plus independent investigation, reveals it to be a
multinational racket masquerading as a religion.
Operating from centers in Clearwater, Fla., Los Angeles,
Calif., Saint Hill Manor in Sussex, England, and Copenhagen,
Denmark, an elite corps of "missionaires" shuttles between 79
Scientology churches and 172 missions and "study groups" in 34
nations -- from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Operating with 19
volumes of manuals on how to bamboozle the unwary, they
administer what amounts to franchises-for-fraud -- schemes
based on a largely secret hocus-pocus dogma.
The church in 1978 claimed 6559 full-time staffers throughout
the world. They live mainly off "ministerial" counseling
services for which naive converts pay a minimum of $175 per
hour. Advanced courses of enlightenment and salvation cost as
much as $16,100. The profits? Enormous. According to U.S.
government information, the church has been grossing more than
$150 million a year in the United States alone.
Just what *is* the cult called Scientology, and how did it
reach its present proportions?
In the beginning, founder L. Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction
writer, touted his theories not as religion but as "the most
advanced and most clearly presented method of psychotherapy and
self-improvement ever discovered." In 1950, he published his
theories in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, a
supposed cure-all for the ills of mankind. Two years later, he
published another, Scientology: A History of Man. In 1954,
Hubbard, then 42, established the first Church of Scientology
in Washington, D.C.
He had, he said, scientifically established that the
personality is an immortal spirit, called a "Thetan," that can
separate from the body without death or derangement. Using an
"E-meter," Hubbard claimed he could "audit" or "process"
recruits into supernatural "Operating Thetans" who can make
vast space journeys and return to their bodies at will.
Hubbard's E-meter is no more than a battery-powered
galvanometer. Using a needle dial wired to two tin cans, it
functions as a crude "lie detector." Candidates for
indoctrination grip the cans and supply the most personal
details of their lives (which former Scientology officials have
sworn are recorded and filed away for possible future blackmail
use). Skin perspiration causes the needle to jump, and, when
this occurs, the candidate is told that an "engram" -- a recall
of unpleasant experiences either in this life or in former
incarnations -- has been detected. When these experiences are
confronted, he will become "totally free," restored to a
superhuman state.
The true believer is told he is an elite Thetan -- a hero of a
long-lost intergalactic civilization slaughtered by evil forces
[Xenu] on the planet Helatrobus some 40 trillion years ago. The
defeated Thetans were then exiled to the planet Earth
[Teegeeack], where they remained, in ignorance, until Hubbard
summoned them to resume their rightful place in the Galactic
Confederation.
A genius at propaganda and organization, Hubbard reveals these
secret doctrines only in stages. "If they were to tell you that
stuff at the start, you'd just laugh and walk out," explained
one "auditor" who defected after ten years in Scientology. "It
seems incredible now, but I came to *believe* it."
Hubbard attracts recruits by preying on their anxieties and
loneliness with an unholy brew of hypnosis, Pavlovian
conditioning and twisted psychotherapy. In monthly magazines
and "personal" letters, he advertises that Scientology can
remedy ailments from cancer to the common cold -- and even
promises that his "auditing" will increase I.Q. one point per
hour. Scientologists, Hubbard brags, are "the upper tenth of
the upper tenth in intelligence."
Hubbard also directs Scientology "ministers" to watch
newspapers for stories of accident, illness or death. "As
speedily as possible, make a personal call on the bereaved or
injured person," he orders. "Unless you have bodies in the
shop, you get no income. So, on any pretext, get bodies in the
place."
In Vancouver, Wash., Alan Wilson, recovering from a mangled hip
suffered in an auto accident, met a Scientology "field-staff
member" working on a ten-percent commission. Promised a cure,
he took some courses and soon found himself fleeced of his
$7000 accident-insurance settlement. Vibeke Damman, a Danish
woman who spent six years in Scientology, explained: "You get
this blaze of attention. You're important, but only -- you
discover later -- because you have money."
And Hubbard's moneymaking machine succeeds phenomenally. One
French Scientologist spent $200,000 for a few weeks' "services"
at the Florida center. A son of a former U.S. ambassador to
London poured in $123,000. A German couple took out a $125,000
mortgage to pay for "advanced" enlightenment in Copenhagen.
And at the end of this galactic fantasyland of salvation? Once
Hubbard is firmly in control of mind and money, he reduces
converts to emotional serfs working 16 hours a day for $10 or
$20 a week, fervidly proselytizing and delivering more recruits
and more money to "help Ron clear this planet" of insanity,
crime and evil.
The result is an international trail of tragic victims. In
Australia, a woman subjected to more than 60 hours of
Scientology "processing" had to be committed to a mental
institution. In Germany, a young man who struggled for two
years to free himself from the cult's hold left his parents'
home on Christmas Day and lay down in front of a train. A young
man in Paris who underwent the cult's processing quit his job,
closeted himself and slashed his veins. As he bled to death, he
scrawled on a memo pad: "Go to Scientology and you will
understand all!"
In 1966, as the uproar over Scientology grew, Hubbard created a
clandestine enforcement arm called the World-Wide Guardian
Office [now called OSA] to silence it. His third wife, Mary
Sue, and Jane Kember, a fanatically loyal South African, were
named to head the Guardians. "Don't ever defend. Always
attack," Hubbard's standing orders exhort. "Find or
manufacture* enough threat against them to cause them to sue
for peace. Originate a black PR campaign to destroy the
person's repute and to discredit them so thoroughly they will
be ostracized. Be very alert to sue for slander at the
slightest chance so as to discourage the public presses from
mentioning Scientology. The purpose of the suit is to harass
and discourage rather than to win."
When Hubbard secretly moved his Scientologists into Clearwater,
Fla., Mayor Gabriel Cazares denounced them for "lying" about
their covert multimillion-dollar property acquisitions and for
deceiving local ministers. From Saint Hill in England, Jane
Kember telexed Guardian Program Order 398, a "Mayor Cazares
Handling Project," to their U.S. operatives.
The Guardians sued Cazares for one million dollars for
violating the Scientologists' "freedom of religion." They
staged a fake hit-and-run accident in a plot to smear him, then
infiltrated and disrupted his campaign organization at election
time. Ultimately, a federal judge ruled the cult's suit
"frivolous, unreasonable and groundless," and made the
Scientologists pay Cazares's legal costs of $36,022.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Los Angeles Times were
compelled to spend thousands of dollars to defend investigative
reports into Scientology activities. The newspapers were
ultimately upheld by the courts. According to former Guardians,
their agents burglarized law firms representing the St.
Petersburg Times and penetrated and stole papers from another
firm representing the Boston Globe to obtain information about
the newspapers' actions on Scientology.
"Suits filed by the church were for the sole purpose of
financially bankrupting its critics and to create an atmosphere
of fear so that they would shy away from exercising their
fundamental rights of free speech," declared Assistant U.S.
Attorney Ray Banoun in court. Banoun has prosecuted to
conviction Hubbard's top 11 Guardian aides on charges of
conspiracy, burglary or theft of secret documents from U.S.
government offices. (The cases are on appeal.)
But Guardians do not deal solely with Scientology detractors.
In 1975, Hubbard ordered his troops to cash in on government
grants for mental health, education and other social causes by
setting up a series of front groups that would qualify for
taxpayer support. To this end, a "Social Coordination Bureau"
was added at Saint Hill and in Guardian offices throughout
Europe and America.
In Copenhagen, the church operates two schools to exploit the
Danish government's subsidy of up to 85 percent of the cost of
private schooling. In America, 22 so-called Apple Schools
operated under concealed Scientology management, subjecting
children to Hubbard's intergalactic processing.
But Scientology's biggest social-reform gimmick to date has
been the "narCONons," fronts that allegedly rehabilitate drug
addicts. Guardian legal experts at Saint Hill designed a whole
package of "correspondence" and phony minutes of directors'
meetings to make the narCONons appear independent and justify
government cash payments for "consultation" fees. Ignorant of
the Scientology connection, at least one political figure and
several Hollywood stars were persuaded to lend their names as
endorsers; last September the celebrities were touted in a
Congressional hearing in Washington. narCONon charges $530 for
its basic two-week detoxification program, and more for
advanced courses. And they claim an 86-percent "cure" rate.
Impressed, two Idaho school systems hired narCONon "experts" to
lecture their schoolchildren on drugs. Michigan's Department of
Corrections paid narCONon more than $100,000 to rehabilitate
its prisoners. (Only later did its study of 29 narCONon
subjects show that they did *worse* than other prison parolees
after six months in the community.) And in West Berlin, city
authorities wasted an estimated $700,000 before press and
television exposed the narCONon operation. A West Berlin senate
investigation found only about ten percent of those treated
really 'cured.'
Hubbard reportedly lives in seclusion on a Southern California
resort ranch. According to a former member of his retinue of
"communicators," he has bought and sold gold, silver and other
precious commodities with the millions of dollars harvested by
his worldwide missions. Meanwhile, he directs an army of
lawyers in appeals designed to keep his 11 convicted aides out
of jail while holding other law-enforcement agencies and civil
suits at bay. Last December, in his traditional Christmas Day
"Executive Directive," he declared: "I am as well as can be
expected for anyone several trillion years old ... The future
*is* ours."
But the future may instead belong to cult victims and their
families. In Europe and America, they have joined to provide
legal and psychological help for those still entrapped, and to
take their fight to courts and legislatures. In Paris, the
Association for Defense of the Family and Individuals helped a
victim bring criminal fraud charges that resulted in the
conviction (in absentia) of Hubbard, a top French executive and
a former French executive. If he ever shows up in France,
Hubbard faces four years in prison and a $7000 fine. (A fourth
defendant was convicted but the conviction was reversed by the
appeals court on grounds of his youthfulness, sincere beliefs
and peripheral involvement.) [Miscavige?]
Lorna Levett of Calgary, Alberta, founded a Scientology mission
and headed it for six years until she came to realize "we are
involved in an international conspiracy." In 1974, she led a
mass defection of 43 fellow members. Despite smears, harassment
and a $100,000 lawsuit, they have successfully resisted every
Scientology effort to silence them. Speaking for disillusioned
cult members and their families everywhere, Ms. Levett
declares: "Psychological coercion by dangerous mind-bending
cults under cover of religion can only occur, like disease,
when there is no immunization against it. In this case, the
immunization is freedom of speech. The cults, using tax-free
dollars, can violate human rights only when the truth is
allowed to go unpublished."
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