How a Portland jury got a crash course in one of the oddest "religions" ever created and awarded the plaintiff more than $2. million Note: This summer, a jury in Portland spent a month listening to testimony in a $4 million lawsuit over the practices of the Church of Scientology there. The plaintiff: Julie Christofferson, a young Portland woman who was a follower of Scientology in 1975 and 1976. The defendants: three local Scientology organizations and one of their leaders. ''Richard ...

A former follower of the controversial Church of Scientology has filed suit claiming she was harassed and shamed into contributing more than $7,000 to the church. Saundra Haynes, in a fraud suit filed Thursday by attorney Hiram M. Martin, claimed that she went along with the urgings because she hoped the church's "auditing" procedures would enable her to "go clear," as the church calls it, and "rid her of her deep depressions and suicidal attempts." At one point, she claimed in ...

Like any other religion, Scientology has its trappings. Not crisp, rich-colored vestments. Not silver chalices, nor flasks of holy water. No, there are other things. Like personality tests and E-meters. E-meters? Scientologists rely heavily on counseling methods to cure psychosomatic ills and mental blocks. They believe in the powers of the "reactive mind" — a portion of the mind which records unpleasant experiences which may later be triggered by outside influences. TO CLEAR the mind of "engrams" (the unsavory experiences), Scientologists ...

The Church of Scientology contends that for more than 20 years it has been the target of a systematic campaign by the United States government, together with "vested-interest pressure groups" such as the medical professions, to "suppress the church's spiritual practice and expansion." The church advances this accusation as the fundamental rationale for its aggressive policies of defense-by-attack against individual critics, private groups and government agencies perceived as "harassing" Scientology. Church spokesmen, moreover, expand upon the allegation of systematic persecution to ...

"The DEFENSE of anything is untenable. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversations, public debate, or a court of law." — L. Ron Hubbard For more than a decade, the worldwide Church of Scientology, one of the burgeoning new religions of the 1960s and '70s, has conducted sophisticated intelligence and propaganda operations on an international ...

On May 14, 1951, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard wrote to the U.S. attorney general to plead for help in fending off a Communist conspiracy, dedicated, he averred, to destroying him. "When, when, when," he wrote, "will we have a roundup?" Rambling through seven single-spaced typewritten pages, the letter was, to all appearances, the heartfelt cry of a troubled man. A successful science fiction writer in the 1940s, L. Ron Hubbard, as he signed himself, had gone on to bigger things. ...

RON L. Hubbard, the American born founder of the Church of Scientology, who turned Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, into the world headquarters of the movement, was sentenced in his absence to four years in prison and fined 35,000 Francs for fraud by the Paris Criminal Court last week.

The Church of Scientology attempts to reform individuals through its counseling and teaching techniques. It also has a large operation dedicated to reforming society. This comes under the heading of traditional religious activism, Scientologists say, but various government agencies say it goes far beyond. In this, the fourth and final segment of a series on Scientology, the Valley News explores the legal and political entanglements of the church. By BRIAN ALEXANDER The "applied religious philosophy" of Scientology has political as ...

The Church of Scientology offers a free personality evaluation to persons interested in its counseling services. Valley News staff writer Brian Alexander took the test at the Sherman Oaks Scientology center, posing as a college student and using an assumed name. As the second segment of a four-part series on the church, he tells what happened. —– The Church of Scientology's free personality test is like a warm handshake, but the grip is too tight. The counselor who evaluates ...

The sociology of marginal medicine is a neglected field of endeavor. There exist only a mere handful of brief accounts of unorthodox therapeutic practices and their development in Western societies. I shall seek, therefore, to provide a contribution to this scant literature, in the belief that such studies are not only of intrinsic interest but also provide insight into a number of strains and tensions generated by advanced industrial societies and into some of the less orthodox methods of coping with ...

The mystery began to unfold last fall in sleepy, sun-drenched Clearwater, Fla. The Southern Land Development and Leasing Corp. decided to buy the 270-room Fort Harrison Hotel, a downtown landmark, and a nearby bank building. Southern Land stated that the hotel would stay open, but another spokesman announced that it would become a center for the United Churches of Florida, a new ecumenical outfit that soon won endorsement from twelve local clergymen. When 200 tight-lipped strangers moved into the hotel, rumors ...