Scientology and Society

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Scientology and Drugs
March 27, 1953Arrest Gives Pair Fine New Engrams Two Dianetics practitioners were arrested and released in Detroit. Police are deciding whether to bring charges, and what charges to bring. Six E-meters were seized.
April 20, 1970Dear South End - Scientology A chapter of the Church of Scientology is now in the process of forming on the campus of Wayne State. These people seem quite sincere in what they are doing. They want to make the world a better place in which to live by making man better. However, their sincerity seems more like $incerity. The first of four levels cost only $650.00 and as far as I could tell each successive level costs more.
April 22, 1980Scientologists Tried To Silence Enemies The Las Vegas Church of Scientology attempted to silence its enemies and critics in Nevada by waging propaganda and espionage campaigns against Las Vegas law-enforcement and business agencies. Documents seized from the church by the FBI reveal the church on a national scale conspired to steal grand jury transcripts, attempted to infiltrate the CIA, and launched a myriad of dirty tricks against public officials.
April 11, 1986Scientologists Told To Leave Denmark The Danish Government ordered yesterday that 40 leaders of the Church of Scientology's European and African headquarters leave Denmark when their visas expire. Jens Moeller, a department chief in the Justice Ministry, said the Scientologists were informed last July that their two-year missionary visas would not be renewed.
June 27, 1990Los Angeles Times: Courting the Power Brokers From politicians to the leaders of business, the courts and the media, Scientology works to win allies to smooth the way for expansion. To create a favorable environment for Scientology's expansion, church executives are working to win allies among society's power brokers and opinion leaders.
June 29, 1990Los Angeles Times: Suits, Protests Fuel a Campaign Against Psychiatry The Ritalin controversy seemed to emerge out of nowhere. It frightened parents, put doctors on the defensive and suddenly called into question the judgment of school administrators who authorize the drug's use to calm disruptive, hyperactive children. The uproar over Ritalin was triggered almost single-handedly by the Scientology movement.
June 29, 1990Los Angeles Times: The Battle with the I.R.S. Among its many adversaries, the Church of Scientology's longest-running feud has been with the Internal Revenue Service. So far, neither combatant has blinked. The IRS has revoked the tax-exempt status of various Scientology organizations, accusing them of operating in a commercial manner and of financially benefiting private individuals. From the late 1960s through mid-1970s, IRS agents classified Scientology as a "tax resister" and "subversive," a characterization later deemed improper by a judge.
April 20, 1992Scientologists Cited For Crowded Apartments The Church of Scientology has been cited by city building officials for overcrowding in apartments. In recent inspections, city officials determined that 34 apartments were overcrowded at Scientology's Hacienda Gardens complex. Housing inspectors said they found as many as 10 beds in an apartment, and said beds often were set up not only in the bedrooms but in the living and dining rooms of the apartments.
April 15, 1994Escape Route From Scientology 'Has Never Been Busier' A husband and wife team who help Church of Scientology members leave the controversial organisation say they have never been busier after a spate of national coverage surrounding the cult. Bonnie Woods, a former Scientologist, and her husband Richard formed Escape nearly three years ago and operate from their East Grinstead home. The couple claim to have given advice to about 100 former cult members.
April 12, 1996Again, Scientology's Secrecy Arouses Suspicion Two decades after Scientology secretly started buying property and establishing its considerable presence downtown, there remains an enormous amount of mistrust about its goals and motives. Unfortunately, Scientology has no one to blame but itself for much of the criticism its leaders adamantly argue is unwarranted. Scientology's recent secret purchase of three small motels north of downtown Clearwater will heighten suspicion. That secretiveness reminds Scientology critics of how the church secretly started buying land 20 years ago under the name United Churches of Florida.
April 13, 1996Scientology Files Stay Secret In Deal Clearwater officials have agreed to keep secret old police files on the Church of Scientology in order to settle the last remaining court battle between the city and the group. The agreement would require a judge's order to see the files, which are supposed to be open under the state Government in the Sunshine Law. The dozens of file boxes in question contain the results of numerous city police investigations dating to 1979, according to court records.
April 10, 1997Scientologists Lose Case Against Germany The European Commission of Human Rights today threw out a discrimination case brought by the Church of Scientology against Germany on grounds that the sect had not exhausted domestic legal channels. Scientologists complained that the Government considers their church a commercial enterprise, rather than a religion. The church has also asserted that several German states have banned Scientology members from some jobs.
April 15, 1997Scientology's Publication Is Critical Of Police Scientology criticized the Clearwater Police Department in a blistering series of articles published in their tabloid "Freedom". Citing "an informed source" who is not named, the latest edition of the Scientology publication Freedom states that Clearwater police discriminate against black people, have a poor record of drug enforcement, and pad their law enforcement statistics. Police Chief Sid Klein said, "Freedom is at best journalistically bankrupt."
March 29, 1998Scientology's Influence Grows In Washington After years of holding the U.S. government in contempt, the Church of Scientology is enlisting members of Congress, the U.S. State Department and even President Clinton to advance its agenda in foreign lands, prodded by the Scientologists' paid lobbyists and its cadre of sympathetic entertainers.
April 5, 1998Anti-Ritalin Campaign Misleading, Critics Say Twelve-page pamphlets are being handed out on street corners across the U.S., sounding frightening alarms about Ritalin, a prescription drug used for three decades to calm hyperactive children. Researchers and government regulators looking into the legitimate worries about misuse or over-prescription of Ritalin ridicule these "facts" as distortions and exaggerations of their work. Because the claims are constantly recycled without qualification or context, they say, parents are panicking unnecessarily.
March 28, 1999Hardball In a 14-month, worldwide survey, the St. Petersburg Times has documented a consistent pattern of church officials relentlessly pursuing its critics in legal actions that some charge are designed as much to harass as to achieve legal victory. In one year alone, the Times has found, Scientology spent more than $30-million on legal and professional fees.
March 28, 1999Scientology: 'We like to make peace' In two days of interviews, officials from the Church of Scientology and five of its lawyers answered a wide range of questions in an effort to combat the church's reputation as litigious, secretive and closed to scrutiny.
April 3, 2000Cynical Sales in Scientology Professional Danish sales representatives strongly distance themselves from the methods employed by Scientology in selling their message. - It's a cynical, brutal and hard sales method. People are pushed into a corner, and their only way of getting out is to say "yes, please", says Dennis Rasmussen, advisor in "Danske Saelgere" - the organization of professional sales people.
April 9, 20002 Judges, 2 Counties, and a Lot of Baloney How to explain the mental nose dives of the medical examiner and the chief circuit judge when they were confronted with the story of the slow, miserable death in 1995 of Scientologist Lisa McPherson at the Fort Harrison Hotel? This is the part I gag on: The Internal Revenue Service gave Scientology the tax-exempt protection of a religion. If what they do at Scientology headquarters in Clearwater is a religion, then I'm a planet. Saturn, say, rings and all.
March 22, 2001Police work for Scientology Scientology has paid nearly $150,000 to 110 police officers since January 2000. The situation seems bizarre to observers who know that since the church moved into Clearwater under a false identity in the 1970s, the relationship between Scientology and the Clearwater Police Department has been cool at best, outwardly hostile at worst.
April 4, 2001Letters: Scientology Should Be Treated Differently Leaders of Scientology, represented by at least one lawyer who works with Pope, were convicted in a plot involving infiltration and burglary of federal government offices. Scientology officials and organizations have been criminally convicted in Canada. If attorney Wallace Pope and Clearwater police Chief Sid Klein can't tell the difference between Calvary Baptist Church and a syndicate like Scientology, they are a lonely pair indeed.
April 6, 2003Inmates Did Renovation Work At Scientology Church Buffalo's Church of Scientology turned to Erie County prison inmates to help get its new Main Street home ready. Sheriff Patrick M. Gallivan, questioned by The Buffalo News about a government agency providing free labor to a church, removed the prison crew from the building several hours later.
April 10, 2003Neighbors Worry As Scientology Moves In "I'm not happy they are here," said Tennyson, who lives adjacent to the church. "I think they bring down the value of our homes because they have a cult type of stigma. I moved here because it's a family neighborhood, and that has been taken away." Earl Haugabook, president of the West Tampa Chamber of Commerce, said he is concerned if the church plans to grow in West Tampa. "We want a diversified community with businesses who are going to come in and offer jobs and keep the West Tampa mystique. We don't want West Tampa known as the Scientology capital."
January 30, 2005Buffalo News: Englightenment's Dark Side Because Jeremy Perkins and his mother shared the church's adamant opposition to psychiatry, he didn't take drugs that medical professionals say could have staved off his illness - and saved his mother's life.
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