Six-month project Julie Edgar, 28, has worked for The Daily Tribune since 1987. Edgar, a Farmington native and graduate of the University of Michigan, wrote this report following six months of research and interviews. —– Church of Scientology members hawking free "personality test" used to be a common sight on Main Street in Royal Oak. That was before the church moved from its previous location at the corner of Main and Third streets to a building at Williams and Fourth streets ...

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STATE OF OKLAHOMA August 25, 1989 OPEN LETTER TO CITIZENS OF NEWKIRK AND KAY COUNTY: In response to your packet and the numerous letters of protest concerning the Narconon Drug treatment facility to be located at the Chilocco Indian School complex, I want you to know that I, too, am extremely concerned and am doing everything I know to stop this development. I have contacted and expressed my concerns to every individual and entity in state government that ...

Newkirk's School Board, City Commission, and Chamber of Commerce have jointly sent a 67 page document to 16 State and National leaders asking them to support a special review of the Narconon-Chilocco drug rehabilitation program and it's connection with Scientology. The cover letter of the package of exhibits says in part, "Based on this information, it appears that Narconon's primary objective is Scientology recruitment and not drug abuse treatment. Our community is very concerned and we are requesting your help in ...

NEWKIRK, Okla. — The people of this farming hamlet near the Oklahoma-Kansas border thought the idea was the perfect tonic for their rural economic ills. Out-of-state investors offered to take over the abandoned Chilocco Indian School and transform it into a major drug and alcohol treatment center. They signed a 25-year lease — worth an estimated $16 million — with the five tribes that control the campus. They brought expectations of new jobs and increased business for the area. Now, only ...

Newkirk Mayor Garry Bilger says in the past two weeks he has been receiving mail from all over the country since an Associated Press article concerning Narconon Chilocco was released. The article, which appeared in newspapers from Corpus Christi, Tx. to the New York Times, seems to have prompted the letters to Bilger. "I haven't received a letter favorable to the Narconon program yet... they are all negative." For example, a writer from Illinois says, "I can empathize with your town' ...

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

Because the number of idealistic, self-sacrificing college students is particularly high, U.S. college campuses are the prime recruiting grounds for potentially dangerous cults, according to the director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Louis Joylan West, who is also psychiatrist-in-chief at the UCLA Medical Center, talked about "totalist" cults and their methods of coercive persuasion last week as part of the Learn-at-Lunch series. "Totalist" cults are those that use deceptive and harmful coercive techniques to draw in new members. Approximately 25,000 cults ...

Three workers at a prominent Silicon Valley electronics company claim they were forced by their superiors to take communications courses taught by firms connected with the Church of Scientology – with practices that included staring into co-workers' eyes for four hours at a time to "guide and control communication." The workers said they left Applied Materials Inc. of Santa Clara after being harassed over their refusal to take the courses. They [...]

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 ...

Usted ana de esas personas interesadas en conocer mas acerca de si mismo? (Are you one of those people interested in knowing more about yourself?) That's the nice, clean, formal Spanish that begins, innocently enough, a four-page text (pink with black ink) stuffed between the news and sports sections of a recent issue of La Opinion. Such inserts are not uncommon — they're great marketing ploys. What with everyone jumping on the hot "Hispanic" market these days, we suppose no one ...

SAN FRANCISCO — In a major ruling on the separation of church and state, the California Supreme Court held Monday that a religious organization may be sued for fraud for allegedly "brainwashing" unknowing recruits into joining the church. The justices ruled 6 to 1 that two former members of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church can proceed to trial with claims that they were tricked by recruiters who denied they were church members and then used subtle "mind-control" techniques to ...

The 'Big League Sales' Church AS the perpetrator of the supposed 'hooligan antics' against the Concerned Businessman's Association at the May Fayre, could I reply to the Scientology Public Relations officer's allegations? Worried by the Courier's recent story on the tactic of luring children into Scientology via front groups, I stopped by at the Concerned Businessman's Association stand to find whether they admitted any link to Scientology. Asked the question, one of the scientologists on the stand said 'yes', the other ...

Seventy-four-year-old Catherine, recently widowed, joined a religious group at a neighbor's urging in the hope of learning how to prepare her soul for death. Over time, Catherine's daughter Susan noticed that her usually healthy mother was losing weight and was tired and withdrawn. After nine months, Catherine abruptly decided to move to the group's headquarters in a neighboring state. She liquidated all her assets, removed her daughter's name from their joint bank account and withdrew thousands of dollars of her life ...

Description of video is in italics. VO=VOICEOVER shot of Church of Scientology, Los Angeles; apparently group of ex-members VOICEOVER: The Church of Scientology, one of the largest and richest new religious movements, is being sued for a billion dollars by former members for fraud and breach of trust. They regard Scientology as a dangerous cult. group of Scientologists VO: Yet the church goes on expanding, making converts and claiming it is "The Road to Total Freedom". ''"Panorama" opening credits; while music ...

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 ...

Three years after publishing a best-selling book in 1950 about his theories for improving mental health, L. Ron Hubbard, 42, was living in Spain and worrying about money. An idea struck him. Why not present Scientology as a religion, he suggested in a letter written to Helen O'Brien, then the head of an organization for marketing his mental health concepts known as the Hubbard Association of Scientologists. This was the formative stage of the Church of Scientology. Over the next 30 ...

A plan by an affiliate of the Church of Scientology to buy a former hospital in the foothills above Altadena to house church archives and to serve as a training center for ministers is running into opposition from neighbors. "There's a lot of fear and worry," said William Kellogg, chairman of the Altadena Town Council's Land-Use Committee. Most of the concern centers on Scientology and its adherents, Kellogg said, rather than on the use of the 198-acre property, which was occupied ...