Rick Ross, self-confessed "cult deprogrammer" and ATF advisor in the Waco holocaust has been charged, in the United States, with the 1991 abduction of a Christian teenage boy. Ross and his accomplices, Mark Workman and Charles Simpson, were charged in July with unlawful imprisonment in the abduction of Jason Scott. If convicted they face a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. The charges against the three were the most recent in a string of legal actions brought against deprogrammers by ...

Now [Nancy] Cartwright is appearing on television in another role: a 30-minute television program that the Church of Scientology hopes will expose more people to [L. Ron] Hubbard's message and increase the number of people seeking Scientology counseling. Now, next to those telephone-order woks and real-estate courses comes Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the 1950 self-help classic from Hubbard, whose writings and research are the gospel of Scientology. The group has its spiritual headquarters in Clearwater. Scientology is never ...

THE drama of David Koresh that has been played on the front pages of newspapers and on the televisions in living rooms across America has stirred many troublesome questions about cults. Groups such as Koresh's Branch Davidians are certainly not a new phenomenon. And the real story is not that this violence has occurred, but that there are many other groups in society that could turn to such dangerous behavior. It is true, however, that there are some groups that are ...

Religion: Judge says Cult Awareness Network must let church members attend L.A. convention. But conference organizers fear longtime foes will disrupt activities. Members of the Church of Scientology won a court victory over a longtime foe Friday, clearing the way for a group of Scientologists to attend the Cult Awareness Network's national convention in Los Angeles next week. The ruling in Los Angeles County Superior Court is the latest development in an escalating feud between the two organizations. The battle erupted ...

BOSTON — Scientologists, long a target of deprogrammers, have gone to court to try to turn the tables, claiming that they were illegally barred from joining an anti-cult group. In a flurry of lawsuits filed around the nation, dozens of members of the Church of Scientology said they tried to join the Cult Awareness Network but were rejected because of their church affiliation. Many of the lawsuits were filed last week after a federal grand jury indicted three alleged members of ...

Seven self-professed "parishioners" of the Church of Scientology have filed religious discrimination lawsuits against the Cult Awareness Network and five members of the group, including a Glendale resident, in Glendale Superior Court. In the lawsuits, filed Friday and Monday, the plaintiffs allege that they have been denied access to the Cult Awareness Network's national convention, to be held in November, on grounds of their religious beliefs. The seven lawsuits — practically identical except for the plaintiffs' names — claim that the ...

The Church of Scientology uses private detectives and bulldog litigators to pursue its numerous detractors. It also hires low-key establishment lawyers who work quietly within the system. So who is directing the $416 million libel suit against Time? On April 27, 1992, lawyers for the Church of Scientology International filed a $416 million libel action in federal court in New York against Time Warner, Inc., Time Inc. Magazine Company [Time Warner is a partner in American Lawyer Media, L.P.], and writer ...

PETROLIA, Humboldt County — The people who have been allowed to see the colossal tube that's buried in a velvety green hill just up the road from Petrolia say it's the strangest thing they've ever laid eyes on. And the most mysterious. The huge, pipe-shaped vault is as wide and high as the cabin of a Boeing 747. It is more than 140 feet longer than one of the jumbo jets. Disciples of the late L. Ron Hubbard, founder of what ...

A man who called a news conference Monday in Los Angeles on the 13th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre told reporters that he had falsely claimed to be a survivor of the Guyana tragedy in order to raise "hundreds of thousands of dollars" for the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago. Gary Scarff said that network personnel encouraged him to tell untrue stories about surviving the blood bath that claimed 914 lives in order to finance their cult deprogramming work. Cynthia Kisser, ...

And now, the next Walt Disney Studios— the Church of Scientology! That is, if entrepreneurs connected with the Hollywood based cult can muscle into the film business with their proposal to homogenize films by tailoring them to the tastes of the unwashed masses. It all began last July, when Future Films, a new, eccentric studio, began running ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter touting its revolutionary ideas. No one knew what to make of it all. The grand concept, to ...

L. Ron Hubbard was a writer who conjured up tales of time travel and rocket ships to Mars. But science fiction was not all that sprang from Hubbard's pen. He also wrote the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In it, Hubbard described a new kind of counseling, which he said could help people increase their IQs, cure themselves of arthritis, allergies, asthma and migraine headaches, and reduce their chances of having a car wreck. The book was published ...

The Church of Scientology has a long and undistinguished history of harassing its detractors — but that shouldn't stop the media or anyone else from speaking out against it, cult experts say. The church commonly threatens lawsuits, tries to have detractors arrested, and harasses sources and individual reporters, said Cynthia Kisser of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago. And recent Sun stories linking the church — alleged by experts to be a dangerous, mind-control cult — to Narconon, a drug rehabilitation ...

Winnipeggers should steer clear of the Church of Scientology and its many organizations, which include a drug rehabilitation program called Narconon, a U.S cult expert said yesterday. "There are far safer programs," Cynthia Kisser, executive director of the Cult Awareness Network, said in an interview from Chicago. "Narconon is more likely to do harm than good." The Sun reported Sunday about 60 Winnipeg teenagers have been hired to sell pepperoni and T-shirts door-to-door to raise money for Narconon. However, a Narconon ...

The following is the first of a two-part series to be concluded in the next issue. The impact of Scientology's ongoing war on psychiatry, now focused on the antidepressant drug Prozac, was a topic of discussion in the corridors and lecture halls of this year's annual meeting in New Orleans. Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) director Frederick Goodwin, M.D., discussed the anti-Prozac campaign of the Scientologist's antipsychiatry affiliate, the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). "The disingenuously named ...

Petrolia — A few miles outside of this coastal community, a massive 400-foot subterranean vault constructed of steel and concrete lies beneath a peaceful knoll overlooking the Pacific. The breadth and dimension of the vault stagger the imagination: 100 feet longer than a football field and 20 feet in diameter, the two-story sarcophagus is almost complete. It is designed to withstand the ravages of nature as well as man-made destruction. Humboldt County is now home to one of the most impregnable ...

A personal aide to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for eight of her nearly 20 years with the group says that fluoxetine (Prozac) and therapy have finally stopped the depression and suicidal ideation she had suffered since 1976. "I have to speak out." Hana (Eltringham) Whitfield told The Psychiatric Times. "The Scientologists choose the most prominent psychiatrists and the most successful drugs to attack. That's why they attacked Ritalin, and that's why they are now attacking Prozac." Although ...

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in ...

Scientologists Claim Prozac Induces Murder or Suicide, Though Evidence Is Scant Campaign Dismays Doctors INDIANAPOLIS—L. Ron Hubbard, the late founder of the Church of Scientology, long harbored a profound and obsessive hatred for psychiatrists, who, he declared, were "chosen as a vehicle to undermine and destroy the West!" Five years after Mr. Hubbard's death, Scientologists are still waging war on psychiatry. The quasi-religious/ business/ paramilitary organization's latest target is Prozac, the nation's top-selling medicine for severe depression. The group is calling ...

The principal of a Sherman Oaks elementary school has canceled an assembly by an environmental group because of fears that parents would object to the organization's connection with the Church of Scientology. The Sherman Oaks School's 927 students were scheduled to watch skits and hear songs Monday performed by Cry Out, an environmental group affiliated with Scientology. The event, which was to include an appearance by child actor Vonni Ribisi, was to kick off a yearlong study of environmental issues such ...

A festering dispute between a nontraditional religion and an anti-cult group has escalated to the point where each camp is accusing the other of using Nazilike tactics. Chances of a truce between the Church of Scientology and the Cult Awareness Network appear slim. Each denies the other's allegations of employing techniques that fleece victims of money and inflict psychological damage. The two have been at odds for at least a decade. The faceoff heated up in a recent solicitation letter from ...