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 [...]