i sort of feel sorry for the members of this (what i personally perceive to be a cult) 'religion'. when one gets sucked into something like this, that means one is missing a part of themselves. they have a big old hole in their own souls. they're crying out for it to be filled. members of cults do that. pretend they're your friends and family in order for you to get that (false) feeling of security and trust. then again shortly thereafter, my sympathy goes right out the window and i see these shites for who they really are
Scientology: The Truth Rundown, Part 1 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology
By Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin, Times Staff Writers
Part ONE of THREE
The leader of the Church of Scientology strode into the room with a boom box and an announcement: Time for a game of musical chairs.
David Miscavige had kept more than 30 members of his church's executive staff cooped up for weeks in a small office building outside Los Angeles, not letting them leave except to grab a shower. They slept on the floor, their food carted in.
Their assignment was to develop strategic plans for the church. But the leader trashed their every idea and berated them as incompetents and enemies, of him and the church.
Prove your devotion, Miscavige told them, by winning at musical chairs. Everyone else — losers, all of you — will be banished to Scientology outposts around the world. If families are split up, too bad.
To the music of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody they played through the night, parading around a conference room in their Navy-style uniforms, grown men and women wrestling over chairs...........
Death in slow motion: Part 2 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology
By Thomas C. Tobin and Joe Childs, Times Staff Writers
The night after Lisa McPherson died, the leader of the Church of Scientology sent word for one of his top lieutenants to wait by a pay phone at the Holiday Inn Surfside on Clearwater Beach.
When Marty Rathbun answered the ringing phone in the lobby, David Miscavige let him have it:
Why aren’t you all over this mess? The police are poking around. Do something.
“Yes sir,” Rathbun said.
McPherson, a 36-year-old parishioner in apparent good health, had spent 17 days in a guarded room at the church’s Fort Harrison Hotel. Scientology staffers tried to nurse her out of a mental breakdown, but she became ill. She drew her last breaths in the back seat of a van as they drove her to a hospital in the next county.
Her death on Dec. 5, 1995, triggered nine years of investigations, lawsuits and worldwide press coverage. Alive on the Internet, it stains Scientology’s reputation still...........
Scientology: Ecclesiastical justice, Part 3 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology
By Thomas C. Tobin and Joe Childs, Times Staff Writers
The four high-ranking executives who left Scientology say that church leader David Miscavige not only physically attacked members of his executive staff, he messed with their minds.
He frequently had groups of managers jump into a pool or a lake. He mustered them into group confessions that sometimes spun into free-for-alls, with people hitting one another.
Mike Rinder, who defended the church to the media for two decades, couldn't stomach what was happening on the inside.
The tactics to keep executives in line "are wrong from a Scientology viewpoint,'' said Rinder, who walked away two years ago. "They are not standard practice of Scientology. They are just not humanitarian. And they are just outright evil.''............
Posts
