Is Scientology breaking the law?

Allegations of illegal imprisonment by Scientology

Excerpted from http://www.scientology-lies.com/re.cgi?http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/mpoulter/sods/sby.html . Please see that page for the full text.

Emphasis added in red . Editorial comments, when added, are in purple .


Declaration of Stacy Brooks Young

4. I was a Scientologist for nearly 15 years, from January 1975 until July 1989. I was in the Guardian Office ("GO") and its successor (a name change only), the Office of Special Affairs ("OSA"), for most of that time. I also worked in another part of Scientology called Author Services, Inc. ("ASI").

10. ... Violations of civil and human rights, to say nothing of common decency, are so rampant in this organization that it is extremely difficult for an outsider to comprehend why anyone would remain in such a group.

11. Indeed, this is precisely why the Scientologists continue to get away with such abuse. Former members have such bizarre, outrageous tales to tell that outsiders find their stories very difficult to believe, and the Scientologists do everything they can to discredit the former members as mercenaries, liars, thieves, lunatics and worse (as evidenced by the language that has been used by Scientoloqy leaders and their attorneys to describe me during the course of this litigation). The result is that while declaration after declaration has been filed detailing horror stories of sleep deprivation, starvation, involuntary incarceration, loss of consortium, child abuse, suicide, financial crimes and more , Scientology has successfully convinced many courts that the authors of such statements were nothing more than "embittered apostates," as they have now described me.

13. ... methods of "reverse processing" are employed as control tactics against Scientology staff members on a regular basis. ... Such methods include brutal interrogations in which two or more people gang up on someone (who has usually been deprived of sleep for days) in locked room and scream abuses until the person confesses to anything they want him or her to confess to; "overt/withhold" writeups in which the person is forced to continue writing up "crimes," whether real or imagined, until someone decides he or she has "come clean" and is allowed to stop; "ethics conditions" in which one is not "upgraded" to the next condition until one has satisfied the ethics officer or senior that one has "fully confronted" one's criminality; group "musters" at which staff members are publicly condemned for their "crimes" (this is reportedly a favorite pastime of Miscavige at the high- security Hemet compound), denounced to their peers and ordered to jump into a freezing lake as punishment.

14. ... both my husband and I have been on the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF. ... There is no recourse short of leaving Scientology; there is no way off the RPF except to finish the program, and the product of the program is a person who will be utterly, uncritically compliant with his or her seniors without question. Until that is achieved the person is not a product" and must remain on the RPF. ... I note that there are many things I stated in my declarations which have not been challenged by Mr. Moxon, Mr. Jentzsch, Mr. Miscavige, Mr. Starkey or any of the other Scientology leaders in their declarations. This is because what I have said is true, and they would be perjuring themselves to state otherwise. They malign my character; they call me many names; but they do not dispute the facts contained in my declarations. I am "vile" and "scurrilous" not because I am lying, but because I am telling the truth to people outside of Scientology.

23. I also feel it is imperative upon the Court not to seal what I and other Scientology experts like me have to say. There are citizens of the United States, right now, whose civil rights are being trampled upon and who have no recourse to the laws of this country. This is happening right in Los Angeles and many other cities. There is a compound (called "the base" or "Int") near Hemet, California, in Riverside County, where security guards keep watch on the staff members to make sure they do not leave the compound. If these people violate the Scientology rules they risk being refused food and shelter. Others are being involuntarily imprisoned.

24. My expert declarations have nothing to do with religious beliefs. They have to do with serious violations of civil rights of U.S. citizens. This is not the view of an "embittered apostate; this is the view of a citizen of this country who feels that all Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no matter what their religious beliefs. If the Court were to silence voices like mine, as the Scientologists would like the Court to do, there would be no one to speak for the people who are being victimized and destroyed by this group, people like Fishman and Dr.Geertz whose only crime has been to tell the truth to the best of their knowledge.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America and the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed in Los Angeles, California, this day of March, 1994.

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