NEWKIRK, Okla., July 16—When a California group received Oklahoma's permission to open a 75-bed drug and alcohol treatment center on an Indian reservation, people in nearby Newkirk thought the project would ease local economic troubles brought on by slumps in the oil and farming businesses. The initial euphoria has been replaced by distrust, frustration and fear. Townspeople say the California group, Narconon International, has not been honest about its affiliation with the Church of Scientology, its financing, its medical credentials and ...

[This is a reprint of an article published on December 23, 1988 in the St. Petersburg Times.]

After years of sparring with the townsfolk and veiling itself in secrecy, the Church of Scientology has succeeded in turning Clearwater into its spiritual mecca. Scientologists quietly run teen nightclubs, schools, day-care centers, management consulting firms and other businesses, records and interviews show. Now the strategy of the organization, longtime observers say, is to confront controversy, gain converts and make money - lots of it. Scientology's Clearwater operation brings in $1.5-million to $2-million a week, say church watchers who include Clearwater ...

TWO West Country doctors have been channeling patients to the controversial Church of Scientology cult. A Sunday Times Investigation has revealed that Dr Edward Hamlyn and his wife, Dr Dorothy West, who run a surgery in Ivybridge, Devon, are members of the Church of Scientology and both act as local recruiting agents for the cult. They refer patients to Plymouth Scientology centre for a commission. Scientology is the money-spinning brainchild of the late Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, an unsuccessful postwar science fiction ...

MONEY PROBLEMS AS NOTED IN THE MAIN ARTICLE, the one subject church leaders would not discuss in detail is money — notably, how much the church takes in and where it specifically goes. With 40,000 members in L.A alone, some of them spending tens of thousands on auditing, the sums can clearly be large. A 1974 internal memo indicated the church grossed $24 million that year; former Scientologists have put the current gross at $100 million, a figure that cannot be ...

Why a Portland jury awarded $39 million in damages against one of the world's most profitable cults. ONE SUNNY AFTERNOON last week, an elderly man, who looked as though he had probably spent the past few nights sleeping under the stars, stood in the southeast corner of Lownsdale Square in downtown Portland gazing in bewilderment at the scene before him. Several hundred people, many wearing T-shirts proclaiming something about a crusade for religious freedom, gathered around a large stage in the ...

After winning a $39 million judgment against the Church of Scientology late Friday afternoon, Julie Christofferson Titchbourne said she hoped to establish a foundation to help other victims of thought-control organizations. Titchbourne, a soft-spoken civil engineer who hugged her mother, husband and lawyers after hearing the jury's decision, said she hoped her experience could be turned to an advantage for others whose lives need rebuilding. During a brief appearance before reporters outside the courtroom door, neither Titchbourne nor one of her ...

The Church of Scientology started making plans in 1980 to "insulate" church founder L. Ron Hubbard from legal attack and to protect his secret church-related income in advance of his disappearance from public view, a former Scientologist testified Friday. Laurel J. Sullivan, who used to work on Hubbard's personal staff, said she learned in February 1980 that Hubbard planned to go into hiding. She said she was assigned to a special mission "to insulate L. Ron Hubbard and his income lines ...

A former personal secretary to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, told a Portland jury Thursday about a secret system Hubbard used in the 1970s for collecting personal income from church organizations. Laurel J. Sullivan, who said she worked closely with Hubbard until he disappeared from public view in 1980, also testified that Hubbard held managerial control over numerous Scientology organizations despite his publicly announced "retirement" from church management in 1966. Contrary to a 1972 church policy ...

A former Scientologist who said he helped manage L. Ron Hubbard's bank accounts testified Monday that the Scientology founder collected income of $200,000 to $1 million per week during a six-month period in 1982. Howard D. Schoemer, who left the Church of Scientology in December 1982, told a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury that the money was routed to Hubbard through Author Services Inc., a corporation that "supposedly had nothing to do with the church." Schoemer said the income to Hubbard ...