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 ...