The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology (24 page)

Very good, I said.

Next, it was the story of the drugs industry killing children. Yet again, there was some truth in what they were telling me. Over-prescription and over-use of drugs like Ritalin is a huge worry and a story reported by my colleagues on Panorama. But, yet again, those real worries morphed into a general, unhinged assault on all of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.

After that, the state’s abuse of children. More graphic photos, but more grim evidence of wrong-doing, extrapolated into a general assault on treating the mentally ill.

Hold on a second, Jan. I… these pictures are terrible. No civilised person could possibly endorse what has happened here, it is plainly wrong. And the state abuse of children is wrong and must be challenged wherever it happens.

‘And that’s why you have an organisation like CCHR. It is there to protect the rights of individuals, to give parents like this grieving mother information to stand up for their rights…’

Time to enter the brainwashing or Mind Control section of the exhibition which was dominated by images of victims of brainwashing. Perhaps the most striking was a colour photograph of black smoke belching from including the Twin Towers on 9/11. For the avoidance of doubt there was a sign saying ‘Mind Control’ in big letters above my head. Tommy swung into view. I was beyond punch-drunk.

He called me a bigot, again.

‘And because you are. See there’s a difference here because what I’m saying is true.’

What’s the time?

‘…and what you’re saying about me being brain washed isn’t.’

No, hold on, what’s the time?

‘It’s 12 o’clock.’

That’s the first bigot of the morning, I told him.

‘And they’ll keep coming.’

It was now three against one. Tommy did his usual riffs – the time he’d spent with me, my lack of respect, my bigotry blah blah – but standing right next to him were Jan and Marla, who would take a bite out of my brain, as it were, the moment he paused for breath. I was firing back, a brainwashing cult here, a brainwashing cult there, but there was something about the accumulated sediment of all that had happened that was sticking to my boots. I didn’t have a moment to reflect what was going on, what they were doing to my head.

‘I want her to explain to you what brainwashing is,’ said Tommy.

‘Do you know what the definition of brain washing is?’ asked Jan.

No. I am not an expert on brain washing.

Jan gave me a book. I read out loud: ‘Brainwashing is the use of isolation deprivation, torture and indoctrination to break the human will. OK.’

‘Torture,’ said Jan.

We knocked around brainwashing for a long time. They said they first uncovered CIA brainwashing; I said hadn’t the Soviets and the Chinese Communists done it too? We got into the Catholic Church and paedophilia. I told them there is a huge problem with the Catholic Church because of the unmarried priesthood, and that is one of the problems I personally have with the Catholic Church because I do not believe in a non-married priesthood.

And then I said: so that aside, what people who used to be Scientologists say, is that I now realise having left the Church, that it is a sinister brainwashing cult.

Tommy stepped in close: ‘We can just bring this down a couple of notches for a second? You keep accusing my religion, my faith, OK, my faith and the faith of a lot of people in this room, and a faith of millions of people the world over, OK, of engaging in something which by definition involves torture, drugs, sleep deprivation…’

Not necessarily drugs, I said.

‘Of inflicting bodily harm. OK. And what is the methodology? It is a methodology which is widely considered by many people who are not even Scientologists to be one of the most heinous and barbaric things you could ever do to another human being: brainwashing.’

Tommy was calm, smooth, perfectly fluent: ‘And you throw that term around with every Scientologist that you meet and you do it under the cloak of your preface “some people claim”. You claim to be an investigative journalist, which means you investigate things, you get to the bottom of them, and you find out the truth, OK? When you were interviewing and I quote your friend, Shawn Lonsdale, a convicted sex pervert…’

Shawn was the lone videographer, who filmed them filming him filming them. When I had interviewed him in Clearwater a zillion years ago – it was, in fact, only four days before – Tommy had interrupted our interview by reading out his criminal record for having consenting sex with men in a public place.

Hold on a second, I said, I want to say he is not my friend. He is not my friend.

‘I have you on camera…’

OK, I said, I am English, I use irony. Some of the words I use you should not take a literal meaning. It may be a cultural difference between us. But when I would say…

‘Some words you use you should watch what you use, because you are the one who says them.’

OK, I said. But I just think that you have a cultural problem with my use of irony. I am English. Sometimes I say ‘my friend’ when I actually mean, I don’t like this person. But actually that is a subtlety. But when Lonsdale…

‘Well, we’ll put a little endnote on our documentary.’

I turned to Reinhardt’s camera, and addressed it directly: hold on a second, have we got that? When I called Shawn Lonsdale a friend, I could well have been using English irony, and I didn’t actually mean those words.

‘So when you say you’re not friends that actually means that you’re enemies so I’ll remember that now.’

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect that I might have been falling into a trap that Tommy had made for me. Shawn was not my friend, and, as a BBC reporter, I did not want to appear overly close to him. But at the same time, as a human being, I felt, then and now, that Shawn was a singular and brave man and Tommy succeeded in thrusting this dichotomy at me so forcefully that I felt I had betrayed Shawn in some way, and I felt guilty about it. It is only on reading Lifton’s book on brainwashing, that I realise how successfully the Chinese Communists used guilt as a weapon to brainwash westerners. For example, an extraordinary brave Dutch priest, Fr Vechten, was racked with guilt generated by his captors long after his release. Tommy succeeded in making me feel guilty that I had betrayed Shawn. For the first time in my direct contact with the Church, I was in serious trouble. Keen to show proper distance from Shawn I now felt guilty that I had disowned him too much. Tommy smoked out my confusion, and went after it like a terrier.

‘When you interviewed him you didn’t once ask him, because he did also use that term brainwashing. And you say OK Shawn, what evidence do you have of that? Because I have investigated and the term brainwashing and the definition of brainwashing almost invariably involves sleep deprivation, lack of food, and things which by all definitions amount to torture. So what evidence, Shawn, do you have that people are tortured?’

I’m John, I pointed out, helpfully.

‘I am saying this is what you should have said to him. Ok what evidence, Shawn, do you have that people have been tortured?

Me: ‘No, hold a second Tommy…’

Tommy: ‘No, no, no I am not stopping you listen to me for a second. You are accusing members of my religion in engaging in brainwashing!’

His voice was raised, just shy of shouting at me.

I wish I had not done what I did next, but I could not help it. Had my father’s death had anything to do with it? I don’t think so. The previous evening’s session with Rick Ross may have had a paradoxical effect, of reinforcing and reawakening the fundamental reasonableness and common sense of objections to the Church and its teachings. I feared I was going to lose my mind, my sanity, my grip on reality. I feared they were out to brainwash me. If I didn’t fight it, then soon I would be saying that psychiatry was responsible for the Holocaust, that I had not been followed by sinister strangers in a Kia Sidona, that the man with the cowboy hat was just passing by the reception desk, that Tommy and Mike were not at our hotel at midnight, that I had made it all up. For the past hour – it felt like an eternity – my brain had been assailed by some of the darkest and cruellest images I have ever seen, and I have seen bad things. But these images were constructed and pressed home by fanatics, members of an organization which people who used to belong to it say is literally maddening; an entity so crazy that half of them didn’t know about the space alien Satan that threatens us all, and half of them did. Worst, for me, was the sense that I didn’t know enough about the history of psychiatry to be able to say clearly and with authority that they were not telling the truth. But about Shawn Lonsdale I knew what Tommy was implying was not true. I had asked Shawn a tough question at the very beginning of the interview. I had asked him: ‘You are a social outcast, a menace, a fruitcake, a nutter. Why would Scientology make those kinds of suggestions about you?’

That was a solid fact, and I could stand by it full square. They were not going to brainwash me. I saw red, my face turned into an exploding tomato. Our two faces were inches apart, back-lit in the curious sulphuric red light of the exhibition, set against the background of a huge blow-up picture of the Twin Towers burning. I had had enough of the Church of Scientology; more than enough; and I fought back, jet-engine loud, screaming my head off as loud as I could holler.

Me: ‘NO TOMMY YOU STOP!’

Tommy: ‘BRAINWASHING! BRAINWASHING IS A CRIME!’

Me: ‘YOU LISTEN TO ME!’

Tommy: ‘Brainwashing is a crime.’

Me: ‘YOU WERE NOT THERE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERVIEW. YOU WERE NOT THERE.’

Tommy: ‘Brainwashing is a crime.’

Me: ‘YOU DID NOT HEAR OR RECORD ALL OF THE INTERVIEW.’

Tommy: ‘Brainwashing is a crime.’

Tommy’s repeated mantra adds to the utter weirdness of the scene: it’s as if he had been trained to repeat a phrase over and over again, so that it gives the other party no break or opportunity to return to calmness. What I was driving at was that Tommy couldn’t say for a fact that I was cosy with Shawn because he wasn’t there at the beginning of the interview. Tommy only invaded it half way through – and our tape could prove that. Frankly, it was a very minor point to lose one’s temper over, as is often the case when you chuck your toys out of the pram.

Me: ‘Do you understand? Did you understand?’ Suddenly, weirdly, my voice drops in volume.

Tommy: ‘Brainwashing is a crime against humanity.’

Me: ‘YOU ARE QUOTING THE SECOND HALF OF THE INTERVIEW.’

I am back to yelling again: quite why I stopped shouting and then started again is inexplicable. Perhaps I should see a psychiatrist.

Tommy: ‘You are accusing my organisation of engaging in a crime.’

Me: ‘NOT THE FIRST HALF. YOU CANNOT ASSERT WHAT YOU’RE SAYING. Now will you listen to me?’

I shot a quick look at Mole, who flicked her eyes at me, once. Oh, dear, what had I done?

I apologised then and I apologise now.

CHAPTER TEN

The Tethered Goat

I
t was Mole’s fault. Sweeney’s iron law of TV: if things go well, the reporter picks up the awards. If they go badly, it’s the producer’s fault. For the record, it was, of course, my fault I lost my temper. Mole could do nothing to stop me once I’d gone tomato. But what happened was a wholly unplanned, unintended consequence of Mole’s cunning plan.

Back in 1971, journalist Paulette Cooper had written
The Scandal of Scientology
. This led to ‘Operation Freak-Out’ whose goal, according to Church documents, was to get Cooper ‘incarcerated in a mental institution or jail.’ The Church of Scientology sent bomb threats to itself, but faked them as if they had come from Cooper. She was indicted in 1973 for threatening to bomb the Church. Cooper endured 19 lawsuits by the Church but was finally exonerated in 1977 after FBI raids on the Church offices in Los Angeles and Washington uncovered documents proving the Church was behind the bomb plot. No Scientologists were ever tried over this scandal. Cooper’s blood parents were both killed at Auschwitz and she was adopted by American parents at the age of six – so the Church ended up trying to jail a child victim of the Nazis, an irony which its Nazi-obsessed museum neglects to mention.

In 1987, the Church did its best to stop the BBC Panorama team making the documentary,
The Road to Total Freedom?
Reporter John Penycate and producer Peter Malloy were spied on, filmed, lied to and faced preposterous legal threats.

Around the same time, L Ron’s biographer, Russell Miller, faced Scientology’s inquisition. He told me: ‘When we were researching the book in Los Angeles we were followed by a bright red sports car with huge wing mirrors so they obviously wanted me to know that I was followed. I was told my phone was tapped and the mail was intercepted. I was accused of various crimes. They said I was responsible for the murder of a private detective in south London, and I was an arsonist and I had set fire to a helicopter factory somewhere in the north.’

Are you a murderer and arsonist, I asked Russell?

‘No,’ he said.

What did they accuse you of?

‘I got a call from the police saying “what was I doing on this particular day?” and I said “why do you want to know?” and they said “we have had information that you were involved in the killing of a private detective in a car park pub in south London”. I said, obviously, I wasn’t. It became so frequent that I had a special number I could call every time I was accused of something. I said to the police, OK, don’t worry about this, the Scientologists are doing this, so call this number in a police station and that took the heat off me.’