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Nov 21 09 5:00 PM
Signed!! ETA. Not trying to teach anyone to suck eggs, but Australian Monday is U.S. Sunday, so there is now literally less than a day for the petition to be signed. My signature was in the low 300s.
Never discuss Scientology with the critic. Just discuss his or her crimes, known and unknown. And act completely confident that those crimes exist. Because they do.L. Ron Hubbard
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Celebrities lead charge against Scientology Hollywood figures quit 'rip-off' church as Australian prime minister threatens parliamentary inquiry into its activities Buzz up! Digg it Peter Beaumont in London, Toni O'Loughlin in Sydney, and Paul Harris in New York The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009 Article history The exterior of the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles in 2003. Photograph: Getty Images The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston's waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city's bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise. The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology's top legal adviser for a quarter of a century, Earle Cooley. The controversial head of Scientology worldwide, David Miscavige, delivered the eulogy, thanking his late friend for his contribution to the neo-religion during his career, much of which was spent pursuing journalists and former members who spoke out against it. Miscavige may since have wondered privately what Cooley would have made of the events of last week. Scientology, founded in 1953 by the late science fiction pulp novelist, serial fantasist and inveterate self-publicist L Ron Hubbard, is under fire again across the globe, following years of struggle to be recognised - with some success - as a legitimate church. The church has just been denounced in the strongest possible terms in the Australian parliament. Prime minister Kevin Rudd has expressed his concern over allegations of "a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality" and is contemplating a parliamentary inquiry. The organisation is under police investigation and yesterday angry ex-Scientologists, spurred on by the claims, converged on its Australian headquarters calling for its tax-exempt status to be revoked. And it is not only in Australia that Scientology is facing problems. A new book in America - Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of the Church of Scientology - by Marc Headley, an employee of the church's Los Angeles headquarters for 15 years, details - as others have - allegations of systematic abuse and bizarre episodes, such as the three weeks Headley claims he spent under instruction from Cruise in how to move bottles and other objects by concentrating on them. Headley's book follows a year in which Scientology has been plagued by unwelcome revelations from high-profile defectors and fresh media investigation into its practices. Last month the church narrowly avoided being banned in France after being prosecuted for fraud, following claims that four leaders - all given suspended jail sentences - had preyed financially on several followers in the 1990s. In Belgium, too, Scientology is embroiled in a long criminal investigation. Perhaps most embarrassing for an organisation that prides itself on its wealthy Hollywood followers, Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, an adherent of 30 years, abandoned Scientology in October, accusing it of homophobia. That is not all. Some of the worst damage done to Scientology in the past two years appears to have been self-inflicted. Earlier this year the official spokesman in the US, Tommy Davis, son of the actress Anne Archer, stormed out of an ABC TV interview with Martin Bashir when Bashir had the temerity to ask about one of its central beliefs - relating to an evil intergalactic warlord named Xenu. More ridicule was invited, unwittingly, by Cruise, the church's most high-profile member, in a leaked video produced for the organisation last year that went viral on the internet. It showed a rambling Cruise laughing inexplicably while saying that Scientologists were uniquely equipped with the knowledge necessary to cure most of the world's ills, including crime, drugs, mental health problems and violence. A religion to some, a business certainly, and a cult to many, whose innermost cadres wear pseudo naval uniforms, Scientology's religious tenets are a mixture of therapy-style self-improvement steps - at least at first - mixed with a weird space-opera metaphysics, which is revealed only to its highest acolytes. The church has frequently been accused of breaking up families and preying on the vulnerable. The history of Scientology and its critics has been a story played out in the courts in interminable proceedings that supported Cooley's very lucrative career, underwritten by a very lucrative religious practice in which followers pay large sums of money to progress through a series of training courses called "auditing". In a quote attributed in the US courts to the late Hubbard himself, it is made clear that the court cases serve a useful purpose, even when they are lost. According to Hubbard, "law can be used very easily to harass... If possible, of course, ruin… entirely." Scientology has attempted to sue newspapers, including the Washington Post. Time magazine beat off a court claim for $400m after describing the church on its cover as "the Cult of Greed". It has pursued authors, those who have campaigned against it, defectors and rivals. It has also made unsuccessful claims that details of its most secret practices should be regarded as both copyright and a trade secret. The repeated attempts to use the courts to silence critics have been criticised in the judgments that have been upheld against Scientology, including one in 1996 that described its "documented history of vexatious behaviour" and abuse of "the [US] federal court system by using it, inter alia, to destroy their opponents, rather than to resolve an actual dispute over trademark law or any other legal matter". So when Nick Xenophon stood up last week in the Australian parliament he was the latest critic in a long line. Xenophon made a carefully calculated decision - to use the protection of parliamentary privilege to denounce an organisation that he claims "abuses its followers, viciously targets its critics and seems largely driven by paranoia". Xenophon's aim was simple: to challenge the tax-exempt status of Scientology as a religion. If the allegations Xenophon detailed - including the claims by former high-ranking members that David Miscavige physically assaulted senior Scientologists - were familiar ones to critics of the movement, Xenophon's speech brought to the widest audience possible a synthesis of the recent and not so recent claims against the leadership of Scientology, allegations picked up worldwide within minutes of him speaking. He described claims of "false imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of church funds, physical violence, blackmail and the widespread deliberate abuse of information obtained by the organisation". At the centre of Xenophon's long, impassioned speech were the allegations of Aaron Saxton, who was "born" into Scientology and "rose to a position of influence in Sydney and the United States". According to Xenophon, Saxton's abuse started as a child when his mother was coerced into signing over guardianship of him to the organisation and he was made a security guard at the age of 16. "In 1991 Aaron says he was sent to Scientology headquarters in Florida where he was involved in… putting five individuals under house arrest" and "ordered by superiors to remove documents that would link a Scientology staff member to murder". "Aaron says women who fell pregnant were taken to offices and bullied to have an abortion. If they refused, they faced demotion and hard labour… Aaron says one staff member used a coat-hanger and self-aborted her child for fear of punishment. He says she was released from the organisation and the files were destroyed." Saxton also "ordered more than 30 people to be sent to Scientology's work camps, where they were forced to undertake hard labour", Xenophon said. He said another former Scientologist, Carmel Underwood, who worked as a financial officer in the organisation and claims to have been assaulted by another member, "witnessed a young girl who had been molested by her father being coached as to what she should say to investigating authorities in order to keep the crimes secret". In a letter described by Xenophon as "one of the saddest correspondences I have received", a father, Paul Schofield, admits to being part of a cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of his two daughters. The Church of Scientology in Australia's response last week was to accuse Xenophon of abusing parliamentary privilege and adding that the allegations were "unquestionably false". "This was not free speech. It was abuse and slander protected by the forms of our parliament," spokesman Cyrus Brooks said in a statement. It did not, however, reply to a series of written questions from the Observer about the cases detailed. But if something has changed in the past few years, it has been the emergence of an increasingly empowered and vocal global opposition to the Scientologists. The development has been fuelled in part by the internet's Anonymous movement - which posted the Tom Cruise video to YouTube last year - and has been behind a series of denial-of-service attacks on Scientology websites, protests and prank calls since the Scientologists had it removed it from the site, inevitably claiming copyright infringement. The Australian intervention by Xenophon was part of a wider and growing backlash against one of the world's most controversial movements. If there has been a catalyst for many of the Scientologists' most recent problems it has been provided by a newspaper in Tampa, Florida - the St Petersburg Times - which covers the area including the organisation's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater. The paper ran an investigative series featuring interviews with former members of the church's leadership. These included Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, two of the highest-ranking executives to leave Scientology. According to the two men's accounts - denounced as "lies" by Miscavige and Tommy Davis - Miscavige routinely assaulted his lieutenants, including Rinder, 50 times. In one article, citing the testimony of four former members, the newspaper described Miscavige administering a vicious beating to another senior church figure, Tom De Vocht. The men described a complex system of internal justice, enforced by security checks and the threat of isolation as a so-called "suppressive person" or SP. In the interviews the men admitted using violence against other members of the church, often, they claimed, at the behest of Miscavige, also alleging that the church used private information gathered on its members to bully them and force them to do its bidding. At least some of the recent allegations will be familiar to Jason Beghe, the American actor. Last year he became the first of its celebrity followers - for whom the church maintains a "Celebrity Centre" - to break with it, after giving Scientology more than $1m in donations over 12 years. These days Beghe prefers to warn that the church is "destructive and a rip-off". He claims that since his renunciation of Scientology he has been pursued to seminars in Europe - held to speak of its dangers - by private investigators employed by Scientology and "disconnected" from former friends who remain within it. The decision of Beghe and Haggis to quit Scientology appears to have caused the movement its greatest recent PR difficulties, not least because of its dependence on Hollywood figures as both a source of revenue for its most expensive courses and an advertisement for the religion. The involvement of such high-profile figures as Haggis, Cruise and John Travolta has acted as a reassurance for potential recruits against the allegations of its critics. And while Haggis quit the church over its attitude to gay marriage, his lengthy leaked letter of repudiation of Scientology, written to Davis, included another complaint: that he had lied on television about a key Scientology practice. Haggis said he had been stunned to see a CNN clip of Davis denying that the church practises a policy of "disconnection" by encouraging members to cut ties with non-members who may disapprove of their beliefs. "I was shocked," wrote Haggis. "We all know this policy exists. I didn't have to search for verification - I didn't have to look any further than my own home." He then detailed how his wife was ordered by the church to disconnect from her parents because they were themselves ex-members. His wife followed the orders and did not speak to her parents for a year and a half. "That's not ancient history, Tommy. It was a year ago… To see you lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: what else are you lying about?" The answer to that question may now be sought within the context of an Australian parliamentary inquiry. Notoriously litigious and undoubtedly secretive, Scientology is under the microscope again. After a bad year for Cruise's church, things could be about to become a whole lot worse. History of scientology Founded by L Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), a science-fiction novelist who turned to pulp writing after a wartime military career marked by a number of disgraces. It was while writing for Astounding Science Fiction in 1949 that he published his first article on the subject of dianetics, which would later become Scientology. It was described by one critic as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology". His book Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health was published in 1950. Attempts to set up dianetics as a therapeutic practice collapsed. 1952 Having failed to present dianetics as an empirically supported scientific system, Hubbard founded a religion called Scientology, which he claimed was the result of years of research. Using "e-meters" to "measure" the mind, he claimed it could be "cleared" by a process of "auditing". At this point based in England, he ran into problems with the authorities. He founded the Sea Organisation, or the Sea Org, which would become the movement's central group. 1970 Scientology establishes its celebrity centre in Los Angeles, aiming to attract Hollywood high flyers. 1977 Scientology runs into trouble in the US, this time for domestic espionage against the federal government, for which Hubbard's wife and a dozen other officials were convicted of conspiracy. 1986 Hubbard dies of a stroke in California. 1993 Scientology is declared tax-exempt as a church in the US, ending a 40-year battle. 1999 Refused tax-exempt status by the UK charity commission, which rules it is not a religion. However, in the years that follow it is recognised as a religion in a number of countries, including Sweden, New Zealand and Portugal. 2006 A repeat of a South Park episode that spoofs Tom Cruise and Scientology is pulled from the air.2009 The church is found guilty of fraud in France. Screenwriter Paul Haggis splits with Scientology amid accusations of homophobia. Tom Cruise and John Travolta are still members of the Church of Scientology.
Hollywood figures quit 'rip-off' church as Australian prime minister threatens parliamentary inquiry into its activities
The exterior of the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles in 2003. Photograph: Getty Images
The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston's waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city's bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise.
The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology's top legal adviser for a quarter of a century, Earle Cooley. The controversial head of Scientology worldwide, David Miscavige, delivered the eulogy, thanking his late friend for his contribution to the neo-religion during his career, much of which was spent pursuing journalists and former members who spoke out against it.
Miscavige may since have wondered privately what Cooley would have made of the events of last week. Scientology, founded in 1953 by the late science fiction pulp novelist, serial fantasist and inveterate self-publicist L Ron Hubbard, is under fire again across the globe, following years of struggle to be recognised - with some success - as a legitimate church.
The church has just been denounced in the strongest possible terms in the Australian parliament. Prime minister Kevin Rudd has expressed his concern over allegations of "a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality" and is contemplating a parliamentary inquiry. The organisation is under police investigation and yesterday angry ex-Scientologists, spurred on by the claims, converged on its Australian headquarters calling for its tax-exempt status to be revoked.
And it is not only in Australia that Scientology is facing problems. A new book in America - Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of the Church of Scientology - by Marc Headley, an employee of the church's Los Angeles headquarters for 15 years, details - as others have - allegations of systematic abuse and bizarre episodes, such as the three weeks Headley claims he spent under instruction from Cruise in how to move bottles and other objects by concentrating on them.
Headley's book follows a year in which Scientology has been plagued by unwelcome revelations from high-profile defectors and fresh media investigation into its practices.
Last month the church narrowly avoided being banned in France after being prosecuted for fraud, following claims that four leaders - all given suspended jail sentences - had preyed financially on several followers in the 1990s. In Belgium, too, Scientology is embroiled in a long criminal investigation. Perhaps most embarrassing for an organisation that prides itself on its wealthy Hollywood followers, Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, an adherent of 30 years, abandoned Scientology in October, accusing it of homophobia.
That is not all. Some of the worst damage done to Scientology in the past two years appears to have been self-inflicted. Earlier this year the official spokesman in the US, Tommy Davis, son of the actress Anne Archer, stormed out of an ABC TV interview with Martin Bashir when Bashir had the temerity to ask about one of its central beliefs - relating to an evil intergalactic warlord named Xenu.
More ridicule was invited, unwittingly, by Cruise, the church's most high-profile member, in a leaked video produced for the organisation last year that went viral on the internet. It showed a rambling Cruise laughing inexplicably while saying that Scientologists were uniquely equipped with the knowledge necessary to cure most of the world's ills, including crime, drugs, mental health problems and violence.
A religion to some, a business certainly, and a cult to many, whose innermost cadres wear pseudo naval uniforms, Scientology's religious tenets are a mixture of therapy-style self-improvement steps - at least at first - mixed with a weird space-opera metaphysics, which is revealed only to its highest acolytes. The church has frequently been accused of breaking up families and preying on the vulnerable. The history of Scientology and its critics has been a story played out in the courts in interminable proceedings that supported Cooley's very lucrative career, underwritten by a very lucrative religious practice in which followers pay large sums of money to progress through a series of training courses called "auditing".
In a quote attributed in the US courts to the late Hubbard himself, it is made clear that the court cases serve a useful purpose, even when they are lost. According to Hubbard, "law can be used very easily to harass... If possible, of course, ruin… entirely."
Scientology has attempted to sue newspapers, including the Washington Post. Time magazine beat off a court claim for $400m after describing the church on its cover as "the Cult of Greed". It has pursued authors, those who have campaigned against it, defectors and rivals. It has also made unsuccessful claims that details of its most secret practices should be regarded as both copyright and a trade secret.
The repeated attempts to use the courts to silence critics have been criticised in the judgments that have been upheld against Scientology, including one in 1996 that described its "documented history of vexatious behaviour" and abuse of "the [US] federal court system by using it, inter alia, to destroy their opponents, rather than to resolve an actual dispute over trademark law or any other legal matter".
So when Nick Xenophon stood up last week in the Australian parliament he was the latest critic in a long line. Xenophon made a carefully calculated decision - to use the protection of parliamentary privilege to denounce an organisation that he claims "abuses its followers, viciously targets its critics and seems largely driven by paranoia". Xenophon's aim was simple: to challenge the tax-exempt status of Scientology as a religion.
If the allegations Xenophon detailed - including the claims by former high-ranking members that David Miscavige physically assaulted senior Scientologists - were familiar ones to critics of the movement, Xenophon's speech brought to the widest audience possible a synthesis of the recent and not so recent claims against the leadership of Scientology, allegations picked up worldwide within minutes of him speaking.
He described claims of "false imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of church funds, physical violence, blackmail and the widespread deliberate abuse of information obtained by the organisation". At the centre of Xenophon's long, impassioned speech were the allegations of Aaron Saxton, who was "born" into Scientology and "rose to a position of influence in Sydney and the United States".
According to Xenophon, Saxton's abuse started as a child when his mother was coerced into signing over guardianship of him to the organisation and he was made a security guard at the age of 16. "In 1991 Aaron says he was sent to Scientology headquarters in Florida where he was involved in… putting five individuals under house arrest" and "ordered by superiors to remove documents that would link a Scientology staff member to murder".
"Aaron says women who fell pregnant were taken to offices and bullied to have an abortion. If they refused, they faced demotion and hard labour… Aaron says one staff member used a coat-hanger and self-aborted her child for fear of punishment. He says she was released from the organisation and the files were destroyed."
Saxton also "ordered more than 30 people to be sent to Scientology's work camps, where they were forced to undertake hard labour", Xenophon said.
He said another former Scientologist, Carmel Underwood, who worked as a financial officer in the organisation and claims to have been assaulted by another member, "witnessed a young girl who had been molested by her father being coached as to what she should say to investigating authorities in order to keep the crimes secret". In a letter described by Xenophon as "one of the saddest correspondences I have received", a father, Paul Schofield, admits to being part of a cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of his two daughters.
The Church of Scientology in Australia's response last week was to accuse Xenophon of abusing parliamentary privilege and adding that the allegations were "unquestionably false". "This was not free speech. It was abuse and slander protected by the forms of our parliament," spokesman Cyrus Brooks said in a statement. It did not, however, reply to a series of written questions from the Observer about the cases detailed.
But if something has changed in the past few years, it has been the emergence of an increasingly empowered and vocal global opposition to the Scientologists. The development has been fuelled in part by the internet's Anonymous movement - which posted the Tom Cruise video to YouTube last year - and has been behind a series of denial-of-service attacks on Scientology websites, protests and prank calls since the Scientologists had it removed it from the site, inevitably claiming copyright infringement. The Australian intervention by Xenophon was part of a wider and growing backlash against one of the world's most controversial movements.
If there has been a catalyst for many of the Scientologists' most recent problems it has been provided by a newspaper in Tampa, Florida - the St Petersburg Times - which covers the area including the organisation's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater. The paper ran an investigative series featuring interviews with former members of the church's leadership. These included Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, two of the highest-ranking executives to leave Scientology.
According to the two men's accounts - denounced as "lies" by Miscavige and Tommy Davis - Miscavige routinely assaulted his lieutenants, including Rinder, 50 times. In one article, citing the testimony of four former members, the newspaper described Miscavige administering a vicious beating to another senior church figure, Tom De Vocht. The men described a complex system of internal justice, enforced by security checks and the threat of isolation as a so-called "suppressive person" or SP.
In the interviews the men admitted using violence against other members of the church, often, they claimed, at the behest of Miscavige, also alleging that the church used private information gathered on its members to bully them and force them to do its bidding.
At least some of the recent allegations will be familiar to Jason Beghe, the American actor. Last year he became the first of its celebrity followers - for whom the church maintains a "Celebrity Centre" - to break with it, after giving Scientology more than $1m in donations over 12 years.
These days Beghe prefers to warn that the church is "destructive and a rip-off". He claims that since his renunciation of Scientology he has been pursued to seminars in Europe - held to speak of its dangers - by private investigators employed by Scientology and "disconnected" from former friends who remain within it.
The decision of Beghe and Haggis to quit Scientology appears to have caused the movement its greatest recent PR difficulties, not least because of its dependence on Hollywood figures as both a source of revenue for its most expensive courses and an advertisement for the religion. The involvement of such high-profile figures as Haggis, Cruise and John Travolta has acted as a reassurance for potential recruits against the allegations of its critics.
And while Haggis quit the church over its attitude to gay marriage, his lengthy leaked letter of repudiation of Scientology, written to Davis, included another complaint: that he had lied on television about a key Scientology practice.
Haggis said he had been stunned to see a CNN clip of Davis denying that the church practises a policy of "disconnection" by encouraging members to cut ties with non-members who may disapprove of their beliefs.
"I was shocked," wrote Haggis. "We all know this policy exists. I didn't have to search for verification - I didn't have to look any further than my own home." He then detailed how his wife was ordered by the church to disconnect from her parents because they were themselves ex-members.
His wife followed the orders and did not speak to her parents for a year and a half. "That's not ancient history, Tommy. It was a year ago… To see you lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: what else are you lying about?"
The answer to that question may now be sought within the context of an Australian parliamentary inquiry. Notoriously litigious and undoubtedly secretive, Scientology is under the microscope again.
After a bad year for Cruise's church, things could be about to become a whole lot worse.
Founded by L Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), a science-fiction novelist who turned to pulp writing after a wartime military career marked by a number of disgraces. It was while writing for Astounding Science Fiction in 1949 that he published his first article on the subject of dianetics, which would later become Scientology. It was described by one critic as "a lunatic revision of Freudian psychology". His book Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health was published in 1950. Attempts to set up dianetics as a therapeutic practice collapsed.
1952 Having failed to present dianetics as an empirically supported scientific system, Hubbard founded a religion called Scientology, which he claimed was the result of years of research. Using "e-meters" to "measure" the mind, he claimed it could be "cleared" by a process of "auditing". At this point based in England, he ran into problems with the authorities. He founded the Sea Organisation, or the Sea Org, which would become the movement's central group.
1970 Scientology establishes its celebrity centre in Los Angeles, aiming to attract Hollywood high flyers.
1977 Scientology runs into trouble in the US, this time for domestic espionage against the federal government, for which Hubbard's wife and a dozen other officials were convicted of conspiracy.
1986 Hubbard dies of a stroke in California.
1993 Scientology is declared tax-exempt as a church in the US, ending a 40-year battle.
1999 Refused tax-exempt status by the UK charity commission, which rules it is not a religion. However, in the years that follow it is recognised as a religion in a number of countries, including Sweden, New Zealand and Portugal.
2006 A repeat of a South Park episode that spoofs Tom Cruise and Scientology is pulled from the air.
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Nov 23 09 1:38 AM
Sabra Lane reported this story on Monday, November 23, 2009 12:38:00
Alternate WMA version | MP3 download
ELEANOR HALL: The brother of an Australian soldier who committed suicide two years ago is urging the Prime Minister to support a federal parliamentary inquiry into the Church of Scientology. Stephen McBride says his brother, Edward, paid $25,000 to the Church before he took his life and a coroner's report found that the church had sent files about Mr McBride to the United States deliberately, so that the information could not be handed to authorities. In Canberra, Sabra Lane reports. SABRA LANE: Edward McBride was 30, when he was electrocuted at a Brisbane sub-station in February 2007. The death of the soldier is the subject of two inquiries, one by a Queensland Coroner, the other by an army commission of inquiry. The coroner's declined to hand down his full findings, until the defence inquiry is complete. But the coroner handed down an interim finding last month, which found in the six months leading up to Edward McBride's death, he'd spent $25,000 on Church of Scientology courses. And in the days leading up to his death, Church of Scientology members had attempted to phone or text Edward McBride 19 times. Today in Canberra, his brother Stephen McBride appealed to the Prime Minister to support the setting up of a Senate inquiry into the church. STEPHEN MCBRIDE: It is hard to describe the anger that my family and myself feels about the church's conduct before and after my brother's death. The Church of Scientology gained $25,000 from my brother but Edward lost his life. My family are not able to reconcile these two facts. This organisation needs to be investigated by the police and by parliament. My family cannot cope if this was to happen to someone else's family. I honestly believe Kevin Rudd is a decent man and I believe he wants to do the right thing. This Senate enquiry is the right thing to do and I would simply say to every senator who will be voting on this issue, please, please, you know, just have this enquiry for Edward's sake and for all victims of Scientology. Please don't let my brother's death just be in vain. SABRA LANE: The Queensland coroner also found a Scientology file about Mr McBride was deliberately sent to the United States, making it unavailable to investigators. While the coroner says the church was legally entitled to do that, the action prevented him or the police from seeing the file, which may or may not have had any relevant information about Mr McBride's wellbeing. Again, Stephen Mcbride. STEPHEN MCBRIDE: We have been through a hell of a ride and you know, the sooner this is done and dusted, we can all get our lives back to normality. You know, I mean it will never, ever be the same. SABRA LANE: Independent Senator Nick Xenophon who raised the cases of seven former church members in parliament last week, sat alongside Mr McBride while he made the plea. The Senator says he does not have enough support yet to establish an inquiry. NICK XENOPHON: But I will continue to build my case. I am very grateful for the support of Bob Brown and the Greens in relation to this. I believe that there will be an inquiry eventually and my fellow senators need to know that even if a vote is lost either now or early next year, there is nothing to stop me from putting up a motion the very next day for another vote on it and I will continue to do so because this is clearly in the public interest. SABRA LANE: Last week the Prime Minister said he had concerns about the church, and it's understood many of the people who Senator Xenophon spoke about in parliament last week, have made attempts to speak with Kevin Rudd. NICK XENOPHON: When you consider that we have had Senate inquiries as to whether there should be an AFL team in Tasmania, whether a sports digital TV will affect sports broadcasting, banana imports, a whole range of other issues, you would have thought that this issue is clearly in the public interest for the Senate to look at. SABRA LANE: Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown also believes the inquiry should be established. BOB BROWN: I am going to be angry to, I rarely use that word, if the, if this proposal which Nick Xenophon has brought forward for an enquiry is blocked by the Government and/or the Opposition. It is because I think that is a failure in responsibility to the Australian public, the wider Australian public. ELEANOR HALL: That is Senator Bob Brown from the Australian Greens ending that report by Sabra Lane in Canberra.
Nov 23 09 1:45 AM
By Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop for AM and News Online
Posted Mon Nov 23, 2009 7:24am AEDT Updated 9 hours 51 minutes ago
DVD sent to schools: A Church of Scientology building in Sydney's CBD (AAP: Dean Lewins)
An international group sponsored by the Church of Scientology says it has been targeting children in schools across Australia for at least three years. The Youth For Human Rights group has been distributing DVDs and brochures that spread its message about rights and name Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard as a leader on the issue alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The New South Wales education minister confirmed yesterday that primary schools had been ordered not to hand out the material, but a volunteer from the group has revealed its efforts are far more widespread than the State Government appears to have suspected.
Tara Kuru, 25, was encouraged by the Church of Scientology to contact the ABC to hose down concerns about the material, but her attempt is likely to backfire. "Most schools in Australia would have at least seen the booklet once or twice," she said. "For like nine out of 10, I've had nothing but positive responses." The material, funded by the Church of Scientology, outlines the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and directs readers and viewers to contact the Youth For Human Rights group. Information about the Church of Scientology's involvement in the DVDs and brochures is left to the fine print. Ms Kuru says the declaration is clear enough. "The fact that the funding is provided by the Church of Scientology is not hidden at all..." she said. "In all the work that I've done, I've never promoted Scientology."
NSW education minister Verity Firth has described the material as "a marketing exercise for Year 6 students". A spokeswoman says the minister only found out on Friday, from a Sydney journalist, that the material had been sent to some of the state's primary schools. She ordered the Education Department to email all primary school principals, reminding them the church was not allowed to conduct activities in the state's public schools. But the NSW Government has been aware of Youth For Human Rights at least since March 2007, when the group held a seminar at Sydney's Parliament House and distributed the brochures to teenage participants. Ms Kuru says the group has sent the material to "most" primary and secondary schools over the past three years.
Federal independent Senator Nick Xenophon says the admission shows governments across Australia need to be more vigilant against Scientologists. "They're not being upfront about their affiliations," he said. "This shouldn't be used a recruitment mechanism for new members of the Church of Scientology." The Senator is pushing for a federal inquiry into the church's tax-free status, as well as allegations of abuse, forced abortions and imprisonment, fraud and blackmail. He suggests the religion has been plagued by misconduct since its foundation. "Putting L Ron Hubbard in the same league as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi is laughable, but it's also very serious in the context of the sorts of things that L Ron Hubbard got up to when he was running the Church of Scientology," Senator Xenophon said.
But Ms Kuru says the Scientology founder and science fiction author deserves to be on the group's list of "famous human rights leaders" because "he's made some very profound help towards human rights." "Going back into the things that he did, he wants people to promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because that's a basic of life, that's how people get along in life and that's like the foundation of the rules for human existence," she said. "People contribute to human rights in many different ways." Ms Kuru says she has personally approached several schools with the DVDs and brochures. A Sydney primary school has confirmed it received the material and threw it out.But NSW Primary Schools Principals Association president Geoff Scott says the reference to Scientology could have gone unnoticed at other schools. "It's possible, but generally, if there are things that are likely to be controversial, it raises a little concern in the minds of principals to check out the source of the material and I guess on this occasion there have been some concerns expressed," Mr Scott said.
The Church of Scientology describes Youth For Human Rights as a secular organisation. Ms Kuru grew up in a family of Scientologists but says she is no longer a member of the church and now has a Christian husband and a one-year-old son. She says she follows some aspects of Scientology but keeps her mind open about religion. The 25-year-old from Sydney says she discovered Youth For Human Rights by coincidence five years ago, when she was researching human rights on the internet. She says she went to the group's conference in New York in 2004 and decided to join. When asked by the ABC how old she was at the time, Ms Kuru misstated her age, first saying she was 17. Upon questioning, she said she was 18, before deciding she was "nearly 19". If she was nearly 19 in 2004, Tara Kuru would be 24 this year.
Asked how she would respond to those who may doubt her story, she said, "I don't care." "What religion I was brought up in doesn't matter," she said. "If I was helping World Vision which has a very Christian background which they promote, why would it matter? I'm helping people." Ms Kuru said she had neither experienced nor heard of allegations of the kind tabled by Senator Xenophon in Parliament last week.
Ms Kuru says Youth For Human Rights has chapters in most Australian states, with 20 to 100 members each, and 130 chapters internationally. She says the group has 30 sponsors in Australia and overseas, on top of the Church of Scientology. "Most of them are not even Scientologists. They're just interested in the Universal Declaration of Human rights being promoted..." she said. "I personally know of about three people in Sydney... One of them is a lady who works in a prison and she has no association to Scientology whatsoever. She is just a person who gave her money towards helping to print booklets because she's interested in people knowing about human rights as well. "I know of another local business, being a convenience store, and they have helped provide funding. And also a Chinese business within the city of Sydney, helping to promote the use for human rights in the Chinese community. None of those people are Scientologists."
Ms Kuru says she believes Senator Xenophon is to blame for the sudden interest in her group. She wants to water down the community's fears about Youth For Human Rights but her claims might just cause the concerns to swell.
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