The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology (21 page)

‘Mike Rinder can be very harsh. He can describe Scientology’s enemies in a very harsh way. And you know it is important to understand how that all evolved. It was all part of L Ron Hubbard’s teachings. That is go after those that are your enemies before they can get you, get them first. And get them better. And find out what their vulnerable areas are and exploit them. It is all part of Scientology’s teachings. The teaching of their prophet Hubbard.’

Why do celebrities get involved in Scientology?

‘Because L Ron Hubbard said so. L Ron Hubbard taught that by recruiting celebrities or important people, VIPs, that you could garner the attention that you wanted in order to recruit other people. So Hubbard taught his followers that they should specifically target notable people, celebrities, movie stars. And they have done exactly that. The creation of the Celebrity Centres is dedicated to that principle. That if you can get someone like Tom Cruise to join Scientology, or John Travolta, these people are icons in pop culture. And you can influence the public, and then you can garner attention and use that to recruit even more people.’

Rick reflected on how the Church deals with critics: ‘Scientology has used litigation at times almost like an article of faith. They have sued anyone that criticised them. They sued Time magazine and they sued an organisation called the Cult Awareness Network here in the United States more than 70 times until they bankrupted the organisation and then they bought its name, its files, its phone number and even I think its post office box, whatever assets it had, in a bankruptcy liquidation sale. They literally took over their former enemy. It would kind of be like the Anti Defamation League of the United States which is run by Jews being taken over by Neo-Nazis.’

The Church’s celebrities dissed the internet. What did he make of that?

‘So Scientology has – probably more than any other single organisation that I can think of that has been called a cult – fought a kind of war on the internet to silence their critics, to purge them from the net, and to keep information that they don’t want their members to read, from appearing on the internet.’

I asked Rick about auditing, the intimate questions about your sex life. Is it possible that that could open you to blackmail?

‘When you are being audited, John, they are taking copious notes. That goes into what is called your pre-clear file or folder. And whatever you say can become part of that file. And many people that become involved in auditing sign a release in which they give Scientology rights over that file that they relinquish. So what that means is that your innermost secrets, the darkest things that you have in your history, in your life, may be revealed and brought out and examined through auditing, which I would see more like interrogation. And the E-meter as a kind of apparatus similar to a lie detector.’

That raises the possibility that you could be blackmailed?

‘Persistent rumours that have come out about Scientology and in particular about celebrities is that they are reluctant to leave the Church because they are afraid. They are afraid of what Scientology knows about their personal life. And I have had calls from former members of Scientology who are not only afraid of what the organisation has on them, but they are afraid that they will no longer be able to communicate with family members that are still in the church. So that is a concern. There are many ways that they can retaliate against someone who has left the organisation.’

That was the gist of the verdict given by Judge Breckenridge in 1984. Rick Ross was saying that nothing much had changed. We left Rick to his lonely war, and went for a bite, wondering what on earth the morrow would bring.

CHAPTER NINE

The Industry of Death

A
t 6616 Sunset Boulevard you can find the ‘Psychiatry: An Industry of Death’ exhibition. Tommy led me along the line of greeters: Jan Eastman, a blond, middle-aged Australian lady, President of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), Bruce Wiseman, President CCHR for the USA, Marla Filidei, a blond American and the Vice President of the CCHR, Fran Andrews, the executive director, and Rick Moxam, General Counsel for the CCHR – fancy talk for a lawyer. Someone handed me a cup of tea and I stared at the entrance to the exhibition, a great black steel door, suggesting the entrance to a gas chamber or a totalitarian torture chamber, or, to be more precise, a Hollywood set designer’s idea of the above.

Tommy kicked off by introducing me to the lawyer, Moxam: ‘You may recall from the event’ – I think he was referring to one of the ultra-long videos they showed us at Saint Hill what seemed a trillion years ago – ‘Rick was the one who did the brief that went to the Supreme Court on the admissibility, on psychiatrists being no more valid to give testimony on someone’s sanity in a case than anybody else. Do you remember that from the event?’

I did not.

‘Sure thing,’ I told Tommy.

‘OK, good,’ he said.

The CCHR claims to be wholly separate from the Church of Scientology. Ex-

Scientologists say the CCHR is its creature. Tommy just so happened to address what was on my mind. He indicated Team CCHR: ‘They also happen to be Scientologists. Jan is OT5, Bruce is 7, Marla is Clear, Fran is Clear and Rick is 7.’

Clear is where?

‘Before you start the OT levels,’ said Tommy.

Very good.

‘Makes sense? Any questions?’

What is your level? I asked Tommy.

‘Clear.’

That was weird. Tommy was clearly a senior figure in the Church presiding over this unprecedented access and yet he was low down in the pecking order, almost at the bottom rung of LRH’s Road to Total Freedom.

Good. I turned to Mike. And…?

Mike: ‘I am not telling you.’

Well, everybody else has…

Mike: ‘OT5.’

Very good.

Remember: OT3 is the ‘Wall of Fire’, when you find out about the space alien Satan, Xenu. The different OT levels mean that of the seven Scientologists present, Bruce, Rick, Jan and Mike knew about Xenu, but Marla, Fran and Tommy did not; nor could Bruce, Rick, Jan and Mike tell Marla, Fran and Tommy about Xenu lest they kill them by telling them the secret their minds were not ready for. During the previous day at the Celebrity Centre, Tommy professed not to know about Xenu – so if the Xenu story is correct he did not lie, but his mum, Leah, Kirstie and Mike did. The Scientologists were not just lying to me; they were lying to each other. This is the hard-wiring problem which results from a ‘religion’ which keeps its Holiest Writ secret from the lower levels. In Lifton’s book, he tells the story of a Catholic bishop unsuccessfully brainwashed by the Chinese Communists who, upon his release, summed up his admiration-tinged condemnation of his captors in the simple statement: ‘They lie so truly.’

Is the CCHR separate from the Church? Jan told me that it included non-Scientologists and was set up ‘independently by the Church’ which didn’t sound very independent to me. Very good, I said, and asked, what was the ratio of non-Scientologists to Scientologists?

‘Wouldn’t have a clue,’ said Jan.

Are you sure?

‘Absolutely.’

As of that moment outside the CCHR, the organisation’s ratio of non-Scientologists to Scientologists was zero-to-seven.

Very good, smashing, lovely cup of tea, thank you. Shall we go into Dante’s gates of hell?

The great steel door swung open to reveal an interior of Stygian gloom.

From the early 1950s, psychiatrists blew the whistle on the Church. In return, L Ron demonised the doctors of the mad, accusing ‘psychs’ of ‘extortion, mayhem and murder’. Hubbard believed that psychiatrists were plotting a conspiracy to take over the world on behalf of the Soviet Union: ‘Our enemies are less than twelve men. They are members of the Bank of England and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains and they, oddly enough, run all the mental health groups in the world… Their apparent programme was to use mental health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock and prefrontal lobotomy, to remove from their path any political dissenters. These fellows have gotten nearly every government in the world to owe them considerable quantities of money through various chicaneries and they control, of course, income tax, government finance. [Harold] Wilson, for instance, the current Premier of England, is totally involved with these fellows and talks about nothing else.’

Harold Wilson, for all his many faults, did no such thing. Hubbard’s hatred of psychiatry spawned a novel
Battlefield Earth
, which John Travolta turned into a film of the same name in 2000. The plot of both turns on the war between the evil Catrists, which is, perhaps, a pun on the back-end of the word ‘psychiatrists’, and the alien Psychlo species. Critics say the wretched Psychlos of
Battlefield Earth
are L Ron’s prophecy of how humanity would end up under the thumb of psychiatry were it not for Scientology.

Critical reception of
Battlefield Earth
the movie was something of a curate’s egg: ‘a cross between
Star Wars
and the smell of ass’ cracked Jon Stewart; the
Washington Post
said: ‘A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a million years to create anything as cretinous as
Battlefield Earth
… so breathtakingly awful in concept and execution, it wouldn’t tax the smarts of a troglodyte’; the
New York Times
said it ‘may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century’ and even Jonathan Ross, who sticks up for Scientology in his biography, said: ‘Everything about
Battlefield Earth
sucks. Everything. The over-the-top music, the unbelievable sets, the terrible dialogue, the hammy acting, the lousy special effects, the beginning, the middle and especially the end.’

The Industry of Death museum flows from the same creative spring. My guide was Jan Eastman. The very first thing that hits you in the exhibition is a quote from a gent in eighteenth century get-up, Benjamin Rush, talking about how terror acts powerfully upon the body through the medium of the mind and should be employed in the cure of madness.

That is evil nonsense, I said.

Jan said: ‘Benjamin Rush is the father of American psychiatry.’

I did not know anything about Benjamin Rush, then.

‘That’s a psychiatrist that has actually said that.’

That man was talking evil nonsense, I said. But that doesn’t knock out the whole of modern psychiatry.

‘Well, why don’t we actually go through the museum, because you are actually jumping to conclusions.’

The exhibition was organized chronologically, starting with medieval abuses of the mad, moving up to twenty first century torture. I was staring at a medley of pictures of Bedlam, the old London lunatic asylum, where the mentally ill were put on public show and treated cruelly.

They used to poke people with a stick, didn’t they? I said.

‘Yes, so you essentially have that concept that if you use pain, terror, punishment in order to change a person’s behaviour. You seem to have a pre-disposition to talking about brainwashing.’

I hadn’t mentioned brainwashing. How did she know I had brainwashing on the brain?

‘Oh, because I have watched some of your stuff.’

You have already watched the Scientology tapes of me?

‘Absolutely.’

Very good. Has everybody, just out of interest?

‘No,’ said Jan. ‘I personally wanted to see who I was doing an interview with. So if you look at the 1500s you had Bedlam, that actually used again pain, terror in order to change a person’s belief system. And if a psychiatrist or a person or even a relative didn’t like your behaviour this was used in order to change a person’s behaviour or to incarcerate them. So rather than just go into a whole interview about it now, what I want you to see is the first documentary which sets up the whole biological model of psychiatry.’

So long as they are not three hours, that’s fine, I said. I had spoken too soon.

The first video started, illustrated by paintings and drawings of 18th century wretches suffering revolting treatments at Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London, one of the world’s first psychiatric institutions, commonly known as Bedlam. The tone of the voiceover was grim: ‘The hospital was little more than a warehouse for those deemed mad. Inmates were confined to cages, closets, and animal stalls, chained to walls and flogged while the asylum charged admission for public viewers. In the 18th century, William Battie was the first to promote that his institutions could cure the mentally ill. Battie’s madhouses made him one of the richest men in England. But his treatments were every bit as inhumane as those practised in Bedlam with not a single patient cured. His financial success triggered a boom in the asylum business, and an opportunity for psychiatrists to cash in on this new growth industry.’

I knew precious little about the history of the treatment of the mad, then. I do now. This is junk history. Some of the grim material, audio and visual, was true and historically correct. Much of it was not. I was being indoctrinated with facts which, once you study them, are not facts; assertions which either cannot be born out or are obviously untrue. All of it was manufactured to make one hate the idea of psychiatry, which is nothing more than the study of how to cure people with sick minds. No doubt, the early doctors of the mad made terrible mistakes. But they were grappling with the unknown, and some of them did good.

Take William Battie, demonized by the Church as a money-grubber who grew rich out of madness. Born in 1703, history tells us that Battie was, for his time, an enlightened doctor, who challenged the conventional wisdom that lunatics should be chained and kept in dungeons. The man who ran Bedlam disliked Battie greatly because of his open criticisms of the very cruelties that are exhibited in the Scientology museum. Battie’s book ‘Treatise on Madness’ – which now, if you dare to use the internet, you can read – sets out in eighteenth century English why a series of cruel and abusive treatments of the mad do not work. There is much wrong in this book, we now know, but it strikes me as an honest attempt to think about the mentally ill rationally and with kindness.