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After an embarrassing string of high-profile defection and leaked videos, Scientology is under attack from a faceless cabal of online activists. Has America’s most controversial religion finally met its match?
Clearwater is prepared for its enemies. It’s a warm, if overcast, Saturday in February, but all the storefronts lining the sidewalks of this sleepy town on […]

Nearly 300 demonstrators jammed the sidewalks out front on March 15, many of them young computer geeks in plastic Guy Fawkes masks honoring the 16th-century British subversive. Some hid behind party masks and bandanas. They hoisted signs: “Religion is free, Scientology is not,” “They want your money and your sanity,” and, in a reference to a string of mysterious tragedies involving members of Scientology, “How many more must die?”

Globally, the Narconon network has run into problems in several countries in the past. In 1988 in Madrid, Spain, 11 members of the Church of Scientology were arrested, according to the St. Petersburg Times, and a local judge decried how Narconon swindled its clients and lured them toward Scientology. In 2003, the state of Oklahoma in the United States narrowly voted down a resolution honouring the work of Narconon Arrowhead, reported the Tulsa World. Last year, the United Kingdom’s prison systems ombudsman recommended Narconon not to be allowed in jails due to its connection to Scientology, reported the Sunday Times.

“We were born. We grew up. We escaped.”

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

Mutchler, president of the Western Michigan chapter of the Michigan Psychiatric Society, had not heard about the event, but she has encountered pickets at conventions and once en route to a meeting in Atlanta listened to an anti-psychiatry rant by a cab driver who was a Scientologist.

“I had no idea people thought we did harm,” she said. “All I can do is go back to the research we have that shows it’s solid science.”

A psychiatric report tendered in court said the woman had been diagnosed at Bankstown Hospital as having a mental illness, but her parents denied her the appropriate psychiatric medication because of their Scientology beliefs.

One clue to this interpretation can be seen in other protesters’ signs: “Religion Is Free, Scientology Is Not” and “Trade Secrets Are For Business, Not Religion.” I’m a scientist who studies belief systems for a living, so take it from me: Scientology is unlike any other religion in history. Although the Church of Scientology is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt religion (despite years of litigation by the IRS to collect taxes on its income), no other religion I know of considers theological doctrines and core religious tenets to be intellectual property accessible only for a fee.

Envision converting to Judaism but having to pay to learn the story of Abraham and Isaac, Noah and the flood or Moses and the Ten Commandments. Or imagine joining the Catholic Church but not being told about the crucifixion and the resurrection until you have reached Operating Theological Level III, which takes many years and many tens of thousands of dollars.

I was skimming through High Winds when I came across an article winningly headlined ‘Handling Suppression on the Fourth Dynamic’ (by then I had learnt that the ‘fourth dynamic’ meant the whole of mankind). In a tone of unforgiving militancy, it talked of ‘eradicating SPs’, and crowed about how they had ’shut down’ one particular defector who had criticised the movement. ‘Unemployed and abandoned by his family, this squirrel had schemed to make money by hawking his lies in a book. But the Office of Special Affairs had a court declare his book libellous. He has now been forced into bankruptcy…’

Despite frigid weather, 40 to 50 people - many concealing their identities with plastic masks, wigs and sunglasses - gathered in the South Side across from the Church of Scientology’s small Pittsburgh office yesterday afternoon, just as similar protests against the controversial religious movement were taking place in cities across the globe.

Dressed in black, sporting masks and handing out leaflets on a sunny Sunday morning, more than 30 people stand on an Edinburgh pavement protesting against the Church of Scientology in Scotland.
John is among them, a 29-year-old from Edinburgh who lifts up his grinning Guy Fawkes mask so he can explain why he’s standing with complete strangers on the city’s South Bridge with a flyer urging Scots not to “let a UFO cult take us back to the Middle Ages”.