The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology

by Sweeney, John

  What is his name, I asked her.

  ‘The guy from Clearwater? Dennis…’

  She had not been paying proper attention. No, I was thinking of Shawn. It was like a mad, mad parlour game.

  Why are you so terrified of criticism, I asked?

  ‘Do I look terrified to you?’

  She did not. I had meant the Church as a whole, but never mind.

  We did the Church’s Volunteer Ministers at Hurricane Katrina, her admiration for British people, the BBC and The Vicar of Dibley – she was prepping up to do the American version of the BBC comedy about an Anglican woman vicar; the series was never broadcast – and then it was back to me: ‘talk about immoral, and talk about creepy…this is creepy.’

  Talk about creepy? I hadn’t talked about creepy with Kirstie at all. The last mention of the word ‘creepy’, I think, had occurred much earlier when I had challenged Tommy about the car chase and he had flung the ‘creepy’ word back at me. Kirstie could only have picked up on ‘talk about creepy’ from the celebrity real-time screening upstairs, so when Tommy had a go at me earlier he was very much on display mode. At the time I was so punch-drunk I didn’t properly understand the game they were playing with me and just carried on.

  OK, I said. What is the RPF?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  You haven’t heard of it? Do you use the internet?

  ‘No, I don’t because I am a little bit stupid on the internet. I am a little bit in the 1940s. I can’t do the internet.’

  Had I known about it then, I would have ticked Lifton’s test number one for information control.

  We did Narconon; she thought it was great and had seen the real effect it had on improving people’s lives; I reported what the doubting doctor had told me, that heroin was not fat-soluble, that there was no scientific basis to Narconon’s claims. Then we discussed the founder of the Church. To Kirstie, Mr Hubbard was ‘a very intelligent man who really cared a lot about mankind and really wanted to help people and I believe that his goals were, which are the goals of the Church of Scientology, a world without insanity, a world without criminality, and a world without war.’

  There is stuff on the internet…

  ‘I am not on the internet, John remember?’

  Scientology in my experience, I told her, is the first ever ‘religion’ that I have ever dealt with which the moment I am talking to a critic rushes out, finds me, hands over a copy of a criminal record. The Church of Scientology seems to be uniquely a religion – or it claims to be a religion – that is so incredibly damning of people who criticise it.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  My own observation.

  ‘Your own observation. I am probably damning of you because you are calling it a cult. You are doing nice polite things like calling it a cult, money-mongering, I don’t remember your other terminology. You have called me brainwashed. So am I supposed to sit here with manners? I don’t know, do brainwashed people behave like this? I always thought that brainwashed people behaved like sort of like zombies. That’s what I thought. Because I thought actually if you read that research on brainwashing which they used during wars, they deprive people of sleep, food and they administer torture. Isn’t that how you brainwash somebody?’

  And that is exactly what some ex-Scientologists say happened to them inside Scientology.

  ‘Is it possible that those ten people who do this as a living, is it possible that they are the nuts? And not the millions of people who just go on about their lives and try and do better in their lives and then the ten dudes are the weird asses? Isn’t that possible?’

  Yes, it is possible. So if that is possible, then why spend so much energy attacking them?

  ‘I don’t spend one ounce of time in my life attacking or vilifying them. You are doing a show for the BBC. If this shows airs in front of millions of people, so if you decide to take a slant which I think you already have that this is a whatever it is, a mind-warping thing that you have got going, I would just love the opportunity to say to the British people y’know that is not me, and if you care to know about my religion, read a damn book, read a book. That will teach you what Scientology is and you can decide to do it or not do it, I don’t care.’

  I brought up Xenu, again.

  ‘The guys that are telling you these crazy alien things, they are nuts. Do you think the guys who see the aliens in their backyard… Look, John, I wish there were aliens. I wish we had an ET or two around. I would hope that some place in all of the stars and all of the planets and all the galaxies there is some other form of life, because we are destroying this planet. And I would love to have another planet to go to.’

  Money came up. It is a pay as you go religion?

  ‘No. You can do a lot of things in Scientology for free. You can’t build churches for free. And I don’t know any other religion where you can. Do you?’

  The difference is that say, for example, Christianity, the scriptures are open and freely available. Not with yours. Your religion is different.

  ‘I don’t know that Christianity that they are all open and available. I don’t know that.’

  The bible is.

  ‘I know the bible is.’

  If you don’t hand over the cash, you don’t get to know, you don’t go up a level?

  ‘That is a lie… You are so loving the gossip and the bad news and the creepy little things of life, don’t you? It makes me wonder about you personally because you love such creepy little creepy things that I wonder what you are up to really on your weekend off.’

  Her implication hinted at some inner darkness I might possess. On my weekend off, I go to the pub, walk the dog, watch Dr Who, spend time with my family, snooze over the Sunday papers, go to the pub.

  Why should the rest of the world think that Scientology is a religion, I asked?

  ‘Because the IRS does.’

  The American tax man?

  ‘Because it acknowledges the religion in most countries in the world. Because it deals with the spiritual being, because it deals with the here and now and the hereafter and faith, I don’t know. I think that is the definition of a religion, John. So I think it is a religion. It doesn’t have one element to it that does not make it a religion.’

  Then the tape ran out. Alleluia. The interview with Kirstie was supposed to have lasted five minutes. It felt like five years.

  They fielded four more celebrity Scientologists that day, Megan Shields, Bob Adams, Bobby Wiggins and Michael Duff, none of whom I’d ever heard of, all of whom said nothing different in substance from what Anne, Leah and Kirstie had told me. It was as if I had spoken to not Scientology’s Magnificent Seven but one person alone.

  Of the four also-rans Bobby Wiggins stood out a bit as an expert on Narconon. He asked me whether I had any problems with addictive drugs. I told him alcohol. Knowing how the Church works, I reckoned that telling them something everyone who knows me knows was the better policy than absolute denial or a blank refusal to discuss the matter. He suggested I take up Narconon to solve my problems with alcohol, advice which, I fear, I have yet to heed.

  Interviews over, it was time to get out of there. It wasn’t just a question of feeling mentally exhausted, although I was, deeply. There was an extra dimension to how I felt, a kind of spiritual exhaustion, too. My soul, if I have one, was burnt out. Tommy had different ideas. He launched at me, yet again: ‘And that you sit in this room across from these esteemed women and treat them disgustingly.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand the nature of journalism, with respect,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, no. I understand the nature of you as a person.’

  ‘Very good, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You have no objectivity whatsoever - zero. Because Shawn Lonsdale, convicted sexual pervert, is your pal that you are chauffering around Clearwater?’

  I told Tommy that Shawn was not my pal. He attacked me for asking the interviewees whether they were in a brainwashing cult. I told him
that I am a reporter, and we interview people who are critical of things, and I will talk to anybody on the planet about anything if I think it necessary.

  ‘Have I ever complained about you talking to them?’ asked Tommy with a mind-warping lack of self-knowledge. He had done nothing but complain about them.

  He told me that I had been far more ‘lenient and forgiving’ with Shawn than with their celebrities. I batted that away politely, and told him, yet again, that we were making our film on our terms.

  ‘No, you are making this film with no objectivity, from a bigoted, slanted, pre-conceived already determined idea of exactly how it is going to go because you decided what Scientology was the day, long before you ever even called us.’

  ‘OK, that’s it. We need to go.’

  As we took the lift down – I can’t be sure this happened at this moment or another time at the Celebrity Centre – Tommy carried the camera tripod. In the lift, with no cameras running, he was charming, polite, chatty, convivial. The switch from Tommy Nasty, ranting, preposterously in-yer-face thug, to Tommy Nice, was mind-bending. Is this the same person? Am I really seeing this? Is this happening? Am I going mad?

  We got in our car and drove away. One block, two blocks, three, four, five. And then I started to scream, a long roar of frustration, fuelled by fear that I was losing my grip on reality. Collectively and cumulatively, they were doing my head in.

  And them? How had our day at the Celebrity Centre gone for the Church? According to the Sci’gy-Leaks messages between Tommy Davis and Mike Rinder and the Leader’s Communicator, Lou Stuckenbrock, who speaks on his behalf, rather well. Last time we looked inside the mind of the organization it was the evening of Wednesday, 21st March, after I had interviewed Anne Archer, Leah Rimini and Kirstie Alley and the other chaps I had never heard of. The Communicator had wanted to know whether there were any areas they should avoid and how many ‘new (torn wall to wall) assholes’ my body now had.

  Mike answered: ‘Dear Sir. They are staying in best western hotel on sunset at sunset plaza.’

  The location of our hotel was information we did not share with the Church.

  ‘They definitely have many new assholes and more to come tmro… Kirstie, anne, leah, bobby wiggins, bob adams, michael duff, megan shields all went after him today. He was repeatedly exposed as a bigot and tabloid bottomfeeder. Anne and kirstie in particular went for the jugular on his bias.’

  What is so striking is that those two phrases, bigot and tabloid bottom-feeder, were thrown at me again and again. Were the Scientology seven rehearsed in their responses to me? Who knows?

  ‘He was demolished on NN [Narconon] and didnt know how to handle the facts when confronted with them as had been relying on assertion that heroin doesnt lodge in fatty tissues. We are right now briefing CCHR [The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology front group that campaigns against psychiatry] ppl for tmro. They headed west on sunset from their hotel. Ml Mike.’

  It wasn’t a good enough answer for the Leader’s Communicator.

  ‘The only specific you give is on Heroin in fatty tissue. Screw that. Not that it doesn’t, but people get off drugs!!!!!!!! I guess he doesn’t care about that????

  Were these ass rippings on camera? What did he think when Anne went after him for saying her son is brainwashed. Any other details you Generality infested CSMF?’

  The ‘ass rippings’ Miscavige’s Communicator was concerned about were filmed on five cameras. Generality means waffle. CSMF stands for ‘Cock Sucking Mother Fucker’, not a phrase normally associated with say, His Grace, The Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Mike replied: ‘He got flustered when anne said he was a bigot and had accused her son of being brainwashed. he even said that ‘some ppl say u (anne) r brainwashed… He was v upset and tried to argue with her that he isnt a bigot.’

  ‘Kirstie derided him… Leah disarmed him entirely as she was very polite…

  ‘He asked anne, kirstie and leah why we were afraid of critics in general and why wld david miscavige be afraid of being interviewed by the BBC. This was stuck up his ass that this was ridiculous and that cob [Chairman of the Board: Miscavige] fear’s nothing…

  The Leader’s office even got to hear about our team trip to the toilet: ‘Sweeney, Sarah [Mole] and the cameraman all going into the bathroom together to talk (which we have on. Video with tommy at the door asking why they are hiding in the bathroom together).’

  How this can be written us as victory for the Church I do not understand. It was an elephant trap of a joke at the Church’s expense, and they fell for it, tuskers and all.

  ‘Throughout the day we hammered him with the majority of the 120+ questions we had put together…’

  It felt like 120,000.

  ‘Bobby got sweeney talking so much that he told bobby that he is an alcoholic and does himself abuse alcohol and that it is a problem for him. Bobby told him how narconon cld help him with that.’

  I like a drink but I’m not an alcoholic. But as far as Narconon goes, I’d rather drown, like the poor Duke of Clarence in Shakespeare’s Richard III, in a butt of malmsey.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘They want you to be afraid.’

  It’s hard to get across just how weird all of this was. I had spent the whole day inside a mock-French chateau in Hollywood talking to seven people all of whom denied being in a cult and passed the evening with a man who said oh yes they were. It was like being trapped inside a cosmological panto, Xenu in Boots. Black is white! Oh no it’s not. Xenu doesn’t exist. Oh yes he does. Is Scientology’s a cult? Oh no it’s not. Oh yes it is.

  Rick Ross is probably the leading expert on cults in the western world. His mentor was Margaret Singer, the gutsy psychologist who in her 80s once scared a cult member off her property with a shotgun and believed that cults were con tricks. Singer was on the board of the Rick A. Ross Institute. Rick’s website is one of the most extensive archives of cult activity on the planet. As Kentucky Fried Chicken is to Colonel Saunders, then counter-cults is to Rick Ross, if you get my breaded chicken leg.

  Or, if you believe the Church, Rick is nothing more than a convicted felon with ‘an extensive history of mental instability and dangerous conduct dating back to childhood, which psychiatrists concluded stems from his anti-social, manipulative behaviour and his sexual problems.’ I found him to be a rock of common sense.

  We’d first met Rick when we made the film about the Kabbalah Centre. His view on Madonna’s ‘religion’ was a world apart from that of Kirstie Alley: ‘The Kabbalah Centre caters to the narcissism of many celebrities. They want to have enlightenment, they want to be happy and they want people to cater it. Just like the catering trucks on location for their movies.’

  Is Scientology a force for good as they say, I asked Rick.

  ‘I don’t see anything wrong with respecting Scientology’s right to practice their religion. The problem is the harm that they have done over the years to people. It is expensive, and it can be harmful to people and it can cause a great deal of distress.’

  What harm?

  ‘First, Scientology is very expensive, so when people take courses or they go through auditing or through the purification run down or whatever they do, it costs money. I receive complaints from families that say, unlike some of the movie stars who can easily afford Scientology, they can’t. It has caused them financial distress. And I would say that the basis for Scientology, specifically some of the claims made by L Ron Hubbard, just don’t bear any close scrutiny. They are just not factually based.’

  Ross gave the Narconon programme as an example: ‘Hubbard said that you needed to do the purification run down because toxins or poisons are stored indefinitely within the fatty tissues of the body. That’s just not true, according to medical science. That’s why the Narconon programme was asked here in California to leave the public school system because their programme was not scientifically or factually based.’

  They told me that is not true, I sai
d.

  ‘They don’t have the support of the school system as they once did. But for them it was a matter of faith. The faith that when L Ron Hubbard says something it is true, whether the science supports it or not. The problem is with many of the things that L Ron Hubbard taught that there is no scientific basis for it. He was a science fiction writer, not a scientist.’

  They denied Xenu. Is that right?

  ‘Well, they are not really answering you. They may give you a kind of evasive answer, they may say it is ridiculous, they may say it is preposterous, “who told you that?” But the point is, if they have reached Operating Thetan Level III, OT3, they have been told about the incident, which includes a galactic overlord named Xenu, it includes space-ships coming to earth. It includes a residue of space aliens that remain, on you, on me, and we need Scientology to get rid of them. Now if you are in OT3 or higher in Scientology, you know that. But according to the church if you are not an OT3 you are not prepared to hear it. And so they may withhold that information because John, they think you are not ready yet.’

  But that means that their theology requires them to lie to people?

  ‘Well they may parse their language and talk in circles. But if you ask them: “Is it true that if you have reached OT3, you were told about an incident? And that incident involved aliens from outer space coming to a planet called Teegeeack now known as Earth, and that that incident had a direct impact upon the world then and continues to have an impact upon humanity today?” they would have to either stonewall you or admit well yes, there are bits and pieces of that that are true. And in some interviews Scientologists have admitted bits and pieces.’

  Is it a cult?

  ‘They seem to fit the criteria that most people that examine cults would attribute to a cult: that the group is personality driven, and that personality would be L Ron Hubbard. He is dead now, but he has been replaced by David Miscavige. So the group has an absolute totalitarian leader that has no meaningful accountability. Ask Tom Cruise when the last time was that David Miscavige ran for re-election. He won’t have an answer for you.’