The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology (30 page)

‘It’s because we’ve got a bloody camera in our car, that’s why he’s looking back at us,’ said Mole, boringly.

I drove off, very slowly, the speed of a milk float, so slowly that anyone tailing us would have to crawl along at a suspicious snail’s space too. One of the suspect cars overtook us then turned down the far-side of a crescent, perhaps hoping to come back on our tail. I went down the near side of the crescent. We met mid-way, as he rocketed along, almost smashing into us. The guy was jabbering away into a head-set mobile phone, as if demented, but at the last moment he flicked his wheel and we did not crash. Pity. It would have made for a most interesting court case.

Our next defector was ex-Scientologist Tory Christman who we met in Griffith Park. A Scientologist for three decades, she left in 2000, taking my tally of defectors’ time inside to 138 years. She, too, had a grim story to tell, of early infatuation turning into years of abuse before she quit. Tory had suffered from epilepsy but medication stopped her fits. However, when she joined the Sea Org, she said, she was told to get off her medication. The fits came back: ‘My mom started calling me, saying “Tory, they are going to kill you.”’

When Tory started taking medication again, the fits stopped. Once she was utterly loyal. Now she hates the Church, and the Church seems to hate her. She said that she had been defamed by the Church, that its then spokesman Mike Rinder had called her a ‘wacko’ and her story ‘absolute bullshit’.

The ‘Religious Freedom Watch’ website, keenly antagonistic to any effective critic of the Church of Scientology, says this about Tory: ‘a run-away housewife who abandoned her husband when some “new friends” she met over the internet promised her an exciting new life. Christman’s new friends are anti-religious extremists… Despite her lies, the media is getting wise to the tall tales of Tory Christman.’

Well, I liked her.

Tory explained the Church’s logic in attacking her: ‘Hubbard wrote a thing called “Black PR” where he said, “Lie, cheat, steal, destroy someone utterly if they are against Scientology.” Because I speak out trying to inform people about scientology they have to slander me, that’s what they feel. They have followed me, they have flattened my tyres when I tried to help a family get out. They have not only lied all over the internet about me, they have done all kinds of nasty things.’

Private investigators?

‘They sent two private investigators to two of my best friends saying that they were looking for information, was I slandering Tom Cruise? Luckily, my two friends are ex-Scientologists.’

What were you saying about Tom Cruise, I asked?

‘I said, I want to thank Tom Cruise for showing the world what an Operating Thetan actually looks like.’

We had to wrap up the interview with Tory quickly and head to the airport.

Back in the twilight zone of Sci-gy Leaks, Mike told the Communicator:
‘We are putting togther “greatest hits” clips for BBC execs and compiling everything we have shown, offered and made available and how they hv spent money getting crap and the same disproven crap they had in 87 and it is proven to be so. He is definitely desperate and now we hv to get this put together and have BBC shitcan him as well as our get our own documentary done.

Thay hv checked out of hotel and hv flight at 945 tonite. ML Mike’

We hadn’t shared out flight plans with the Church. Tommy rejoined the conversation:
‘we can cut together all the interviews he did and show these beautiful elegant women and dignified men he interviewed and cut to their facial reactions to his off the wal questions and then show photos of the psychotic degraded people he chauffered around CW and SFO (Hines, lonsdale, etc) and show how they are totally DB…’

DB stands for Degraded Being.

‘…and weird and crim and gross. Juxtapositioned against anne archer? Fred shaw? Dr. Root?’

Fred Shaw and Dr Root were the Scientology figures I had interviewed at the Celebrity Centre whom I had never heard of.

‘Sweeney,’ Tommy continued, ‘will look like the complete psychopath that he is and I haven’t even gotten to the footage of him screaming his head off and then explaingin it away as something to do with a high school play he did or that he was brainwashed. Just gonzo.’

I’m rather proud of that description.

Tommy sent another message immediately after that, referring to a phone conversation the previous day, seemingly with Miscavige: ‘
Sir, I want to correct what I said yesterday on the phone with cob. I was and am ready for that interview. I have read every DA
[Dead Agent]
pack I cld get my hands on, went onto the net and saw every disgusting site and read everything I cld about hawkins, hines, donna shannon, lawnsdale and more. I had stacks of the religious expertises ready to literally throw at him and also the DA docs for the OT VII forgery on the net, the san Francisco crap on Narconon and more. I was very entubulated about screwing cob over on wed at cchr
[when he told Mole that he reported to Miscavige directly]
and kicking myself as every other time sweeny brought up cob I said no way and especially not an intervuew with you. I jsut went effect and it was inexcuseable. I have since talked to sweeney today and I went BALLISTIC when he brought up COB and made it very clear that it would be over my dead body that he would ever talk to cob ever. I was being temporarily defeatist when on the phone with cob.’

The message suggests that they were planning an interview in which Tommy would endeavour to make me go tomato, again, but that his talking about his proximity to the Leader has scuppered it. The logic of that last point seems warped, but never mind:
‘I never had any questions a bout m ability to do that interview and was actually looking forward to it after having drivn sweenmey psychotic on wednesday as I figured I could do it againa d that I would get him to pop off with the most outrageous things. Well this is exactly what happend when I talked to him on the phone today and got him to say that we had brainwashed him!!! And I have this on tape and we are verifying we’re got it on video too. He has lost it and I am definitely the person who drives him more psychotic than anyone. He goes nuts around me. And I’m going to keep it up. Ml, Tommy’

The boast that a member of a Church’s Holy Order can drive someone ‘more psychotic’ than anyone else seems an odd one for a member of a religious order to make. To put it mildly, it wants charity.

The next message is also from Tommy: ‘
Sir, I’m sorry about not briefing you on Donna. She is a nobody…
’

Donna is not a nobody, but a feisty woman of quality.

‘
…Sweeney is nuts and we have it documented and he is such a psycho he’s the star of the exposé…
’

The very last message from the Sci’gy-Leaks hoard is also from Tommy: ‘
Sir, he already told me he is leaving tonight. He and Sarah both told me that. However I was planning on calling him and saying, “hey what’s the deal? I spent the last two weeks of my life being available to you for your show and offered you everything. Now from what you told me you are probably leaving soon and you haven’t even called to say you are going? I have no doubt you called your good friends Shawn lonsdale, donna shannon and bruce hines. Didn’t you? Well good bye John. I can’t say it been a pleasure getting to know you but I have no doubt you’ll be hearing more from me. Cheers
’

We packed up and drove to LAX. After we had checked in, we went to a bar and drank mojitos. A suspicious-looking man with a briefcase sat extremely close to us and affected not to be interested in us. I stood inches from him and slurped my drink like a baby elephant sucking up water through its trunk, extremely noisily. He didn’t run away – proof, if proof were needed, that he must have been an agent. Mole noted: ‘We went to the bar and you made awful slurping noises next to some poor passenger.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘Panorama Exposed’

T
he Church of Scientology’s ‘Psychiatry: Industry of Death’ exhibition turned out to be a moveable feast. A few days after I had lost my temper in its permanent manifestation on Sunset Boulevard, LA, it popped up on Westbourne Grove, just down the road from Notting Hill, West London. We decided it might be a bright idea to ask a shrink to go along and have a peek and then interview him afterwards about the accuracy of the exhibition. Patrick Barrie, our Assistant Producer, arranged to meet the psychiatrist in the Portobello Gold pub beforehand.

Patrick takes up the story: ‘I was sitting in the pub – it was deserted – waiting for him when two women, one much older than the other, walked in and marched up to me. The older one, who I later realized as the UK press representative of the Church, Janet Laveau, said something like: “You are Patrick and you have no right to be here. You were told you weren’t invited.” I was a bit lost for words, but after she droned on a bit more I asked her how she knew who I was and quick as a flash, she said: “From the photos in LA.” I told her I thought this was creepy and walked out in a mild state of frenzy.’

I love this story because Patrick is the kind of person who might say that was paranoid, and yet he claims he was frenzied out of a London pub by a Scientologist. No-one will ever believe him. 

After the shrink had popped into the Church’s unusual House of Horrors travelling show, I asked psychiatrist Dr Trevor Turner what he made of ‘The Industry of Death’ exhibition? He said: ‘A monstrous interpretation of what psychiatry is all about.’

What struck Trevor most was, ‘the assault on psychiatrists, on oppressing minorities, causing all the ills of the twentieth century, generating the Holocaust. It’s bitter and I don’t quite understand why they’re so against us.’

Are psychiatrists Nazi?

‘Of course not. Clearly any kind of science can be misused in any kind of vicious regime but the idea that we were the cause of the Nazi Holocaust is just part of the logic they mis-use, the association versus causation trick. Because psychiatrists were trying to find out and understand the genetic basis of mental illness, therefore, somehow, they’re the cause of Hitler deciding he wanted to round up and kill all the Jews. It’s a monstrous form of inappropriate logic.’

Dr Turner had no idea what was Scientology’s assault on psychiatry: ‘They shout and yell at us in our meetings. They accost us in the streets and film us. They took a photograph of me. I really do not understand. As far as I’m concerned, psychiatrists are doctors doing their best to help seriously unwell people. I suspect it’s part of a stigma associated with our patients. As a result of that stigma, desperate remedies have been tried on dreadfully ill people in the past: asylums, lobotomies, ECTs [Electro-Convulsive Therapy]. Looking back retrospectively rather dangerous things have been done in the name of science.’

Some of the images I saw in the exhibition were genuinely horrific.

‘Of course. If you or I had been in a psychiatric asylum in the 1930s we would have been terrified. The smells, the sounds, the images, the dreadfully unwell people howling and hallucinations and disturbed thoughts. They were terrifying places because people were horribly unwell. The reason why these remedies were undertaken – ECT, prolonged sleep narcosis, lobotomies – was because in a sense you would do anything to get your relative rescued from that living hell.’

Was there anything in the exhibition that concerned you professionally?

‘If I had paranoid schizophrenia and I went to that, I would be very tempted to stop my medication at once. If I was the relative of someone with a severe illness, I’d be very upset by that because it is frightening. It uses lurid images and negative associations and false logic to decry what are effective ways of treatment.’

We went to film the ‘Industry of Death’ – the London version – from the pavement. A Scientology cameraman filmed us from inside the exhibition but we were also being filmed by a second agent, much more discreetly, in a dark suit carrying a newspaper. ‘You could be forgiven for feeling a little paranoid,’ I told our cameraman Bill Browne.

I approached the entrance but was swiftly banned from entering by Janet Laveau. That was understandable. Then the Church called the Old Bill. A police van and a police car rocked up and Janet and the Church’s Graham Wilson gave the officers the run-down on me. I suspect that they showed the police my impression of an ‘exploding tomato’ – remember this is weeks before our Panorama setting the context to that explosion was broadcast. All I can be certain of is that the police seemed to be rather wary of me. I walked over to the boss copper: ‘Can I put forward the BBC’s point of view?’

‘Wait over there,’ the officer said, not overly friendly.

A third police car pulled up, and two officers got out. I looked around for the drugs bust going down, but it seems they too were on my case: ‘They’ve brought in the Sixth Cavalry,’ I said. Some plastic bobbies – Community Service officers – wafted in like dandelions on a breeze, adding to the police presence. Enter a police van, making my running total: four police vehicles and seven law enforcers.

A nice lady who lived on the street brought out an ostentatious cup of tea for me. The natives of Notting Hill seemed friendly.

After around 40 minutes a copper finally set out the score: ‘Effectively, there’s no allegations of criminal behaviour made about the incident today.’

What incident, I asked, incredulous?

‘Effectively you coming here and filming. Whatever we’re called to we come to.’

I told the officer that he was dealing with, some people say, a sinister, brainwashing cult that believes that psychiatrists are Nazi pseudo-scientists; that, some say, its leader goes around thumping people and, some say, they have a dungeon of the mind. He took all this in with a dead-pan expression on his face. You’ve got to feel sorry for the police: they have to put up with some right nutters.

The coppers started to leave. So I’m in the clear? The boss copper almost laughed, and we were left to pursue our lawful business, filming them, filming us. It was beyond surreal, and the day was going to get madder yet.