FACTnet

Church of Scientology… “And the walls came crumbling down…”

David Pike — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:07:35 +0000

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Scientology.aspx?cp-searchtext=Scientology%20+%20French%20Fraud%20Case%20+%20Paul%20Haggis%20Defection&form=msnsea

IMHO
FACTNet

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This editorial/opinion/news alert has been provided or distributed by FACTNet, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network.) Re-distribution and re-posting of this document using proper net etiquette when doing so, is appreciated!

Australian Senator Speaks Out… He calls Scientology a “criminal organization”.

David Pike — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:57:51 +0000

Extraordinary attack: Senator Xenophon said, under privilege, the church was abusive and manipulative.
Wed Nov 18, 2009 ABC TV Breakfast News

The Church of Scientology says allegations made in Federal Parliament by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon are an abuse of parliamentary privilege.

Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment and forced abortion.

He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status.

“I am deeply concerned about this organisation and the devastating impact it can have on its followers,” he told the Senate.

A spokeswoman for the church, Virginia Stewart, says she is shocked to hear Senator Xenophon’s claims, as no-one within the church seems disgruntled.

“If these people had key issues, then how come they haven’t contacted the church officially?” she said.

“We actually have an entire section that responds to people. So if someone has a complaint about the church, we really are so happy to meet with them.”

Ms Stewart says the church tried to contact Senator Xenophon earlier this year after he spoke about Scientology on television.

“We offered to meet with him, to be completely open, answer any of his questions,” she said.

“He didn’t even bother to reply so I think it’s a bit disingenuous that someone stands up in Parliament, where they can say whatever they want.

“He hasn’t even spoken with us before, and we have attempted to speak with him.”

Parliamentary speech…

Senator Xenophon told Parliament the Church of Scientology was a criminal organisation that hides behind its “so-called religious beliefs”.

“Do you want Australian tax exemptions to be supporting an organisation that coerces its followers into having abortions? Do you want to be supporting an organisation that defrauds, that blackmails, that falsely imprisons?” he asked.

“Because on the balance of evidence provided by victims of Scientology you probably are.

“The letters received by me which were written by former followers in Australia contain extensive allegations of crimes and abuses that are truly shocking.

“These victims of Scientology claim it is an abusive, manipulative and violent organisation.”

VIDEO

More storys out of Australia about The Government probe into Scientology…

http://www.theage.com.au/national/scientology-practices-putting-people-at-risk-20091119-ioy0.html#

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/police-take-up-scientology-complaints/story-e6frg6nf-1225799494770

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/pm-worry-on-scientology/story-e6frf7l6-1225799499699

IMHO
FACTNet

In a Court of Law… when a child dies, faith is no defense.

David Pike — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:10:23 +0000

“Suffer little children to come to me.” So begins one of the most cited passages in the Bible. Yet, in cases involving the deaths of children in faith-healing families, the second half of Jesus’s admonition from Luke 18:16 is at the heart of legal controversy: “. . . and forbid them not.”

Why do courts give believers a pass?

In the past 25 years, hundreds of children are believed to have died in the United States after faith-healing parents forbade medical attention to end their sickness or protect their lives. When minors die from a lack of parental care, it is usually a matter of criminal neglect and is often tried as murder. However, when parents say the neglect was an article of faith, courts routinely hand down lighter sentences. Faithful neglect has not been used as a criminal defense, but the claim is surprisingly effective in achieving more lenient sentencing, in which judges appear to render less unto Caesar and more unto God.

This disparate treatment was evident last month in Wisconsin, a state with an exemption for faith-based neglect under its child abuse laws. Leilani and Dale Neumann were sentenced for allowing their 11-year-old daughter, Madeline Kara Neumann, to die in 2008 from an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. The Neumanns are affiliated with a faith-healing church called Unleavened Bread Ministries and continued to pray with other members while Madeline died. They could have received 25 years in prison. Instead, the court emphasized their religious rationale and gave them each six months in jail (to be served one month a year) and 10 years’ probation.

During their sentencing, Marathon County Circuit Court Judge Vincent Howard said the Neumanns are “very good people raising their family who made a bad decision, a reckless decision.” He then gently encouraged them to remember that “God probably works through other people, some of them doctors.”

Compare the Neumanns’ legal treatment with a couple of other recent cases in which children were injured or killed by nonreligious neglect. Russell J. Wozniak Jr. and Jennifer Ann Wozniak, of Chippewa Falls, Wis., received basically the same sentence as the Neumanns for, the criminal complaint said, allowing their 2-year-old to wander around covered in vomit and wearing a full diaper.

Then there are the parents of Alex Washburn. The 22-month-old died after hitting his head at home in Cross Lanes, W.Va. His parents, Elizabeth Dawn Thornton and Christopher Steven Washburn, said the boy fell a lot and hit his head on the corner of a table and his chin on a toilet. They apologized for not seeking medical help and agreed to terminate their parental rights to their other children, handing over custody to the state. “I wish I did seek medical treatment for my son faster,” Washburn told the court. “That will definitely be with me for the rest of my life.” The court sentenced both parents to three to 15 years in prison.

So the Neumanns got one month in jail for six years and kept custody of their children, and the Washburns got up to 15 years in prison and agreed to give up their kids.

In a nation founded on the free exercise of religion, the legal system struggles with parents who act both criminally and faithfully in the deaths of their children. This paradox has perplexed courts for centuries. One of the earliest prosecutions of such a case occurred in England in the 1800s, when the crown charged followers of a sect known only as the Peculiar People, a name derived from a translation of the phrase “chosen people” from the book of Deuteronomy. They were accused of killing numerous children as a result of faith-healing practices.

Today, the Old Peculiars are largely gone (their faith-healing views thinned their numbers considerably), but many other sects such as Unleavened Bread Ministries have prospered. While the vast majority of fundamentalist and faith-healing parents avail themselves of a doctor’s care when faced with a dire medical condition, some religious parents continue to maintain that belief in God means belief in His power and discretion to heal. They take literally the fact that one of the names of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah-Rapha, means “I am the Lord your Physician,” and point to Exodus 15:26, where God says, “I am the Lord that heals you.”

In the four Gospels, Jesus heals the sick, including in Mark 5:34, where He cures a hemorrhaging girl who was unsuccessfully treated by doctors, saying: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace! Be cured from your illness.”

Some parents go to incredible lengths to prevent doctors from doing God’s work. Colleen Hauser of Minnesota gained national attention in May when she went into hiding with her 13-year-old son to avoid a court order that he receive chemotherapy for a Hodgkins lymphoma tumor growing in his chest. She was eventually forced to yield; this month, her son finished his final radiation treatment and his family says his cancer is gone.

But the Hauser case is an exception. The advocacy group Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty estimates that roughly 300 children have died in the United States since 1975 because care was withheld. When such parents appear in court, they often insist that they love their children and their God — an argument that receives a sympathetic hearing from judges and prosecutors.

While defendants generally show contrition for their actions, the Neumanns remained unrepentant about not calling emergency personnel until after Madeline stopped breathing. Leilani Neumann said: “I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter’s health.” Dale Neumann told the court: “I am guilty of trusting my Lord’s wisdom completely. . . . Guilty of asking for heavenly intervention. Guilty of following Jesus Christ when the whole world does not understand. Guilty of obeying my God.”

In Oregon, the Followers of Christ church has been cited for injuries and deaths associated with its faith-healing beliefs for decades. In one 10-year period, estimated Larry Lewman, an Oregon state medical examiner, the church experienced 25 child deaths related to faith-based medical neglect. A recent case involved Ava Worthington, a 15-month-old who fell ill in 2008. Rather than call doctors, her parents – Carl Brent Worthington and Raylene Worthingon – allowed a simple cyst on her neck to grow to the size of a softball as they anointed her with oil and administered small amounts of wine, according to testimony at the trial. She died of a blood infection and pneumonia.

Judge Steven L. Maurer, a circuit court judge in Clackamas County, Ore., said he would “stand by my assessment that this was wrong, wrong, wrong. This was an unnecessary tragedy.” However, the prosecutor asked for six months in prison, half the maximum sentence for misdemeanor criminal mistreatment. Maurer gave Carl Brent Worthington two months in jail and five years’ probation. Despite the record of deaths and injuries at their church, the Worthingtons were allowed to keep custody of their 5-year-old daughter and a new baby that was coming in a matter of months. They needed only to promise to bring them to a doctor for scheduled checkups.

Now another trial is pending for the family: Raylene Worthington’s parents, Jeff and Marci Beagley, were charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son, Neil Beagley. He died in 2008 from a urinary tract blockage that could have been treated with a minor surgical procedure. In cases such as this, in which courts confront repeated faith-based fatalities in a single religious community, the legal system risks becoming a facilitator, if not an accessory, to the crimes through lenient sentencing.

These cases have thrived in a gray zone left by the Supreme Court decades ago. In 1944, in Prince v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death.”

The court, however, did not expressly forbid the use of faith as a mitigating factor in sentencing — a matter left to the states. Not only does this use place children at risk, it results in the troubling image of courts favoring religious parents over nonreligious parents in a nation committed to the separation of church and state.

The key to the use of such a defense is that it must involve belief in a divine being, not a particular lifestyle. In 2007, Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas of Atlanta were convicted of malice murder and given life sentences for the death of their 6-week-old child. The defense attorneys cited the couple’s strict vegan lifestyle to explain why they fed their newborn son a diet of soy milk and organic apple juice, though during the trial Sanders said she had also breast-fed her son, who died in an emaciated state at 6 weeks, weighing just 3 1/2 pounds. The prosecutor and court had no qualms in treating this couple’s beliefs as a poor excuse for murder, calling a nutritionist and vegan expert as a witness to show that a vegan diet can be safe for an infant. The prosecutor even told the jury: “They’re not vegans, they’re baby-killers.”

The next test of the faith-based defense will be in Philadelphia, where prosecutors last month charged Herbert and Catherine Schaible in the January death of their son, Kent Schaible, 2, from bacterial pneumonia. His parents and other adults prayed around him, practicing faith-healing for two weeks without seeking medical assistance. Then they called a funeral home. The couple were charged with involuntary manslaughter and other related crimes.

Denying children critical care may be divinely ordained for some parents, but it should not be countenanced by the legal system. Until courts refuse to accept religion as a mitigating factor in sentencing in such cases, children will continue to die, neglected as an article of their parents’ faith.

Jonathan Turley is a professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense lawyer. He’ll be online to chat with readers about this piece on Monday

IMHO
FACTNet

FLDS: Second member of the sect, Allen Keate, trial date set for sexual abuse of a child…

David Pike — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:22:51 +0000

Go SanAngelo Standard-Times Nov 12, 2009

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Jury members will again be pulled from Schleicher County for a second sexual assault of a child trial involving a member of a polygamist sect.

Authorities decided Thursday afternoon to hold the jury trial in Eldorado, according to district clerk administrators.

District Clerk Peggy Williams said she plans to send out 300 notices today. Jurors will be pulled from voter registration rolls and driver’s license records.

Allen Keate will be tried Dec. 7 on a charge of sexual abuse of a child, a second-degree felony that carries a punishment of two to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

An April 2008 raid of the sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado resulted in the removal of more than 400 children and criminal charges against 12 Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints men.

The Texas Supreme Court later ordered the state to return most of the children to their parents.

In the first trial against Raymond Merril Jessop, nearly half of the 300 prospective jurors were excused or exempted before prospective voire dire, a time when jurists are questioned on their backgrounds and potential biases against the defendant.

The jury convicted Jessop of sexual assault of a child last week. The jury earlier this week sentenced Jessop to 10 years in prison and fined him $8,000. He remains in jail in Schleicher County pending a transfer to state prison.

IMHO
FACTNet

Documentary coming soon… Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult

David Pike — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:28:32 +0000

Wednesday, 11 November, 2009 - 17:50
Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult-Voxy.co.nz

Cult-like groups are on the rise in New Zealand. Now the two-part Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult documentary uncovers what really goes on inside these often controversial groups. Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult kicks off on Wednesday, November 25th at 9:30pm, and concludes on Wednesday, December 2nd.

Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult gives viewers an intimate view of what life is like inside groups that some former followers say are cults operating in New Zealand.

“These former members have consistent stories about how the different organisations actually work,” explains producer Gary Scott, “and the techniques they say were used to control them, even though the belief systems can be miles apart.”

“The modern rise of cult-like groups is not something experts can easily quantify, but there is a proven trend away from mainstream churches, towards other forms of spirituality. There has been a lot of talk about Destiny Church, since the covenant of 700 followers.”

The two-part documentary consists of ex-believers’ stories, and investigates the similarities they say exist between groups including the Exclusive Brethren, Scientology, Centrepoint, Gloriavale, Avatar and the International Church of Christ.

The documentary includes abuse survivors who have never spoken before, including the first ever interview with a young woman born into the controversial Centrepoint commune, the first of her generation to speak out.

How To Spot A Cult also features Ualesei Vaega, a New Zealand survivor from Waco, Texas, where an FBI seige ended with the death of 86 followers of David Koresh in a devastating fire.

“As you would expect, the effects of something like Waco are deeply traumatic,” Scott continues. “Ualesei Vaega’s story is even more powerful because he witnessed Koresh go down the path of collecting guns, having sex with young girls, and yet Ualesi came back to New Zealand even though people around him were too deeply brainwashed to make that key decision to leave.”

Ualesi Vaega lost his brother, sister in law and many good friends in the tragic fire. As the documentaries show, a similar armed stand-off was only narrowly avoided in New Zealand at Camp David, a walled compound north of Christchurch.

“The scary things about Camp David,” says Scott, “is that when the police raided their weapons stockpile, the members were hidden and watching them arrive through rifle scopes. Many of those guys had military training. Even today, some say there is still a stockpile of weapons buried on the West Coast.”

How To Spot A Cult will reveal all this as well as the tactics cult-watchers and academics say should warn people that a group may want total control of their followers’ lives.

Make sure not to miss the first installment of this two-part documentary when Inside New Zealand: How To Spot A Cult - Part One screens on Wednesday, November 25th at 9:30pm on 3.

FACTNet newsblog editor’s comment: I will post a link to view this documentary whenever it becomes available on the web…

IMHO
FACTNet

Arkansas evangelist, Tony Alamo, gets 175 years for child sex…

David Pike — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:37:50 +0000

Preacher Tony Alamo had been accused of getting ‘married’ to young girls

AP News Friday the Thirteenth

TEXARKANA, Arkansas - A federal judge on Friday sentenced Evangelist Tony Alamo to 175 years in prison for child sex crimes.

Several of the child “wives” who helped convict evangelist Tony Alamo of federal sex charges took the witness stand during his sentencing hearing.

The 75-year-old leader of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries was convicted in July on a 10-count indictment accusing him of taking young girls across state lines for sex.

After the jury’s decision, the apocalyptic preacher told reporters: “I’m just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel.”

In court filings, federal prosecutors said three of the women Alamo “married” at ages as young as eight had submitted written statements for Alamo’s sentencing report.

During the trial, Alamo’s child “brides” described how he “married” them in private ceremonies while they were minors, sometimes giving them wedding rings. Each detailed trips beyond Arkansas’ borders during which Alamo had sex with them.

With little physical evidence, prosecutors relied on the women’s stories to paint an emotional portrait of a charismatic religious leader who was in charge of every aspect of his subjects’ lives.

With defense witnesses, Alamo’s lawyers offered questions trying to show that the his trips out of state came from business, ministerial or personal reasons. Defense lawyers largely left the issue of Alamo having sex with the girls alone.

FBI agents and Arkansas State Police troopers had raided Alamo’s Fouke compound on Sept. 20, 2008, searching for evidence of the photos the evangelist took of the underage girls he abused. He was arrested five days later in Arizona.

IMHO
FACTNet

Raymond Jessop, FLDS Polygamist , sentenced to 10 years in Texas for underage sexual assault…

David Pike — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:49:53 +0000

2009 The Associated Press Nov. 10, 2009, 8:13PM

ELDORADO, Texas — The first polygamist sect member to face criminal trial following the raid of a West Texas ranch was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting an underage girl with whom he had a so-called “spiritual marriage.”

Jurors who last week convicted Raymond Jessop, 38, handed down the sentence that includes an $8,000 fine. His attorneys had sought probation for the conviction that could have brought him up to 20 years in prison.

Jessop, who prosecutors allege has nine wives, still faces a separate bigamy charge to be tried later. He is the first member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to go on trial since authorities raided the sect’s Yearning For Zion Ranch in April 2008.

The girl in the assault case, now 21, was previously in a spiritual marriage with Jessop’s brother before being “reassigned” to Jessop when she was 15, according to documents seized at the ranch. She became pregnant at age 16.

An appeal, planned “as quickly as it can be filed,” will challenge the search warrants initially obtained with what authorities now acknowledge were false calls to a domestic abuse hot line, said Willie Jessop, an FLDS spokesman and Raymond Jessop’s distant cousin.

“We believe he will be released when the government is held accountable,” Willie Jessop said in an interview Tuesday.

The weeklong ranch raid was hounded by missteps early on. After scouring the ranch for days in April 2008 in search of a caller who claimed to be an abused girl, law enforcement acknowledged “Sarah Barlow” didn’t exist.

Forensic experts who testified during Raymond Jessop’s trial said there was a nearly 100 percent probability Jessop fathered the now 4-year-old daughter of the woman in the case. The woman was on the prosecution’s witness list at trial, but did not testify.

Eleven other sect members, including its jailed leader Warren Jeffs, still face separate trials for charges ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault and bigamy.

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago and does not recognize the FLDS.

Jeffs, revered by the FLDS as the group’s prophet, has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. He awaits trial in Arizona on charges related to underage marriages there. He’ll then face separate sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.

Jeffs led followers six years ago to buy a 1,700-acre Texas ranch, where they built a towering limestone temple and sprawling log cabin homes. They remained an insular group until Texas authorities raided the ranch and swept 439 sect children into foster care.

Appellate courts forced the return of the children to their parents or other relatives, but documents seized in the raid were used to build criminal cases against sect men.

IMHO
FACTNet

“Cult” program in NYC schools…

David Pike — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:27:23 +0000

By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter November 9, 2009 New York Post

Thousands of city public-school students and teachers are participating in a “Brain Education” program run by a group with ties to an alleged cult.

For the past three years, the Department of Education has shelled out nearly $400,000 for 44 schools to participate in the Power Brain Education company’s lessons and workshops.

But dozens of former employees of an organization called Dahn Yoga — whose founder developed the teachings for Brain Education — said the school program is run by a group that is part of a vast web of interrelated companies conning participants into investing all their time and money in unproven health and healing activities.

The former workers of Dahn Yoga, which operates 130 health centers and two training retreats across the country, filed a federal lawsuit in Arizona in May charging that its activities are abusive and grow increasingly devotional over time to the group’s founder and spiritual leader, 57-year-old Seung Huen “Ilchi” Lee.

“If my child was [participating in Power Brain], I would pull them out in about two minutes,” said lawyer Terry Brostowin, who settled a wrongful-death suit against Dahn Yoga last year. “I would be very scared.”

Brostowin sued Dahn Yoga in 2005 on behalf of the family of Julia Siverls — a fit, 41-year-old CUNY professor who collapsed and died during an endurance hike at the group’s Sedona, Ariz., retreat.

Her family alleged that Siverls had been drugged and forced to hike in desert heat with 40 pounds of rocks in her backpack and with little water.

Another former Dahn employee who alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Lee settled her case against him in 2002.

Although Dahn Yoga officials claim there’s no direct link between Lee and the city schools’ program, one of Lee’s own Web sites describes Power Brain Education as “Ilchi Lee’s Brain Education,” and he wrote a book called “Power Brain Kids.”

This year, Lee visited PS 65 in The Bronx — which is using the Power Brain program — and personally taught a lesson to the students.

Foes said the organization reels people in with lovey-dovey, group-building activities before steadily ratcheting up the pressure for more involvement and money.

This includes taking expensive training courses and retreats that cost as much as $10,000 per week to become “Dahn Masters,” who help operate the health centers and recruit new members under high-pressure quotas, according to the ex-workers’ lawsuit.

One of the former employees says in the lawsuit that coercion was so great that she was sexually assaulted by Lee in 2006.

Joseph Alexander, a vice president at Dahn Yoga, insists that the suit is without merit.

“They just made all these allegations and accusations with nothing to back it up,” he said.

Alexander also said there was no business connection between either Lee or Dahn Yoga and Power Brain Education. He said the only relation between the groups was that the school programs were adapted from Lee’s Brain Education teachings. “He’s treated as the founder of the philosophy, but as far as that business is concerned, he’s not involved with it,” Alexander said.

Last Thursday, at a Bronx elementary school, a 25-minute demonstration of the Power Brain lesson was full of positive language and activities the kids seemed to enjoy.

Kids were told to say, “I love your Power Brain face,” to one another and to rap songs with lyrics like “I love my thalamus.”

City Department of Education officials — who have known about the former employees’ lawsuit since late summer — said principals selected the program on their own and that many felt it had benefits for students.

But they said they are pulling it for now, after The Post inquired about the program and the controversy surrounding Lee.

“There do not appear to be any allegations against the company that offers [the program],” said DOE spokesman David Cantor. “Given the allegations, however, we will discontinue the program until we determine whether it is inappropriate or improper.”

Additional reporting by E.J. Kessler

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

More articles on Dahn Yoga at ReligionNewsBlog.com

IMHO
FACTNet

Cult Expert perplexed at NYTs writers blandishing article on The Church of Scientology…

David Pike — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:12:00 +0000

FACTNet news blog editor:
Leading expert and well known cult exit counselor Steve Hassan, was quite taken aback when he read Ariel Kaminer’s article on the Church of Scientology in downtown Manhattan. He interpreted the article as almost a soft sell piece or a somewhat kit glove handling of a dangerous, powerful and influential cult. I will leave that to the readers to form their own opinions. My opinion? I think the NewYorkTimes doesn’t want to offend Hollywood’s affluent readers and Ms. Kaminer’s LA Entertainment/Arts&Leisure constituents. Here is the story followed by Mr. Hassan’s response…

City Critic: In Scientology’s Door, but Not Much Farther
By ARIEL KAMINER NewYorkTimes
Published: November 6, 2009

For all the rumors that swirl around the Church of Scientology — the accusations that it is a cult, the hints about its supernatural teachings, the means by which it attracts so many celebrities — its center on West 46th Street, tucked between the soignée Paramount Hotel and the workaday Edison, is a rather straightforward presence.

The building looks more like a modern corporate headquarters than a religious outpost, with shiny black granite and a display of the founder’s books. A large stained glass panel is the only visual clue to the group’s religious claims.

Down a half-flight of stairs, placards celebrate the accomplishments of Scientologists working with drug addicts or performing missionary functions around the world. Every few feet, videos scored with triumphal music explain things like the relationship of the spirit to the body.

A woman welcomed me with a warm grin. When I said I was a writer — I did not say what kind — she asked if I had written any books. Alas, no. “Well, maybe we’ll find out why not,” she said. “Scientology makes able people more able.”

The first step was a personality test with 200 sometimes puzzling questions. Many addressed my interactions with others. Some asked about depression and suicide. A few were out of the blue: “Do you consider the modern ‘prisons without bars’ system to be doomed to failure?”

I tried to answer honestly: Yes, past failures sometimes trouble me. Though even as I filled in the oval, I thought: Tom Cruise would never admit such weakness.

The results were plotted along 10 axes, like stable/unstable, happy/nervous. I scored in the top 25 percent for most categories, and I saw a few eyebrows rise approvingly. But the test said I had only average communication skills and was overly critical: Interesting, given my job.

When I returned the next morning, everyone seemed very happy to see me. A platinum-haired woman sat me down and asked a big question: What had I heard about Scientology?

This summer, the latest in a series of defectors went public with accusations of intimidation by the group’s leaders. Last month a French court fined the group nearly $900,000 for fraud. Other European countries have further curtailed its activities.

I said that I knew some were critical of the church (“a few groups of people,” she said, “mostly manipulators, like bankers”), but that I wanted to learn more.

The test, for example: Was it sound? If I’m asked, say, whether people enjoy my company, does my response show how well I know myself, or how little? Could the test just be a survey of the lies we tell ourselves?

She did not see it that way. She felt that an introduction to Scientology course ($84 for 10 hours of personal instruction) could help an “upstat” — high scoring — person like me achieve my long-term goals.

As our discussion neared 90 minutes, I started to think, celebrity nonsense notwithstanding, what if Scientology’s basic method really does produce clarity of mind? I pictured my friends’ faces if I were to start preaching my new gospel. The improbability of it all made it that much more appealing.

I agreed to take the course. Just one thing: would I fill out this card for a six-month church membership?

Well, no. I was game to learn more, but not about to join. I was reluctant even to give my last name.

That didn’t sit well, with her or her supervisor, who talked to me for quite some time. Eventually I coughed up a last name — my husband’s.

Two pro forma questions: Am I wanted by the law? Am I in psychiatric care? Good. Then all that remained was to sign the waiver:

“By signing this agreement I recognize, acknowledge and agree that: A. Scientology is a religion and all the services and activities of the Scientology religion are exclusively religious in nature and intended for the betterment and well-being of mankind,” it read in part. “B. The Founder of Scientology is L. Ron Hubbard. The writings and the recorded spoken words of Mr. Hubbard on the subject of Scientology present a guide intended to…” etc.

What?

I had not read a single word of Hubbard, and wasn’t about to attest to things just because someone said they were true. But no waiver, no course.

I could, however, take a correspondence course — and to be nice, they let me start right there in the library. To reciprocate, I gave my real last name. And then I got down to studying.

The introduction to Mr. Hubbard’s “A New Slant on Life” tells readers to look up any words they don’t know. After I’d read a few chapters, a friendly young instructor quizzed me on some of the words they contained: Did I know what esoteric meant? Nobility? Critical? He seemed really impressed that I did.

One of the book’s main ideas is that people can learn only by questioning. Many pages are spent explaining the folly of believing something just because an authority figure said it was true. So then what about that waiver?

While I pondered this paradox, the instructors exchanged a few whispers, then asked everyone to leave for a short break. As they exited, a man in a tan suit entered, and extended his hand to me. He was the president of the New York chapter. Apparently while I had been studying, someone had been Googling. He complimented me on my articles in The New York Times. And my adventure in the press-shy Church of Scientology came to a halt.

He was very polite, even inviting me back for a tour. But after a few minutes, he escorted me out.

He said that location attracted 700 to 800 visitors a week. That would be more than 100 a day. I did not see anything close to that, but who knows. I would have liked to stick around longer and learn on my own what the group so often in the headlines was all about.

Perhaps the very nice people I met along the way will now dismiss me as one of the manipulators, in league with price-fixing bankers. Or perhaps they still view me as a potential member. For anyone who’s curious, the doors are open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Just be careful what you sign.

Email: citycritic@nytimes.com

and here is Mr Hassan’s response to the article and it’s writer…

From: freedomofmind@verizon.net
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 09:35:39 -0500
Subject: scientology 11/8/09 (permission to post or print)
To: citycritic@nytimes.com

Dear Ariel Kaminer,

I was very disappointed by your story this morning. Especially disappointed with your ending and your invitation to readers to go check out the group. Your piece did little to warn a person who hasn’t read the facts about why this group is a mind control cult. Admittedly, the group is in the spotlight again, and therefore they are probably on their best behavior. Making sure that objections are minimal (as was evidenced by your story).

However, in my opinion, the subtlety of your story does not serve the public.

I would like to propose that you do another piece that actually tells facts. Or perhaps you ask some real questions and try to get a comment from a scientology representative? For example, with the group’s strict negative opinions and rules about psychiatry and medication, why was psychiatric medication found in L. Ron Hubbard’s bloodstream according to the autopsy and in the police report and a matter of public record?

Or something even less confrontative, like what scientific validation can they provide for the personality test that you took?

Or how about bringing up Douglas Franz’s two part New York Times series on how Scientology managed to get tax exemption (and religious status) after 25 years of not having it? To give you the summary, Frantz reported that Scientology hired P.I.’s to dig up dirt on the IRS commissioners, and then had a private, secret meeting and they got status as a religion?

As a mental health professional who has been counseling members and ex-members of Scientology for more than twenty years, I am obviously a person who strongly believe they are a cult and that the group should be stripped of its tax-exempt status. As a taxpayer I am fed up subsidizing groups like Scientology who systematically defrauds the public and according to former high level and long time employees, does not respect their member’s human rights.

I sincerely hope that no one gets suckered into Scientology because they thought, “she didn’t get pressured and didn’t report any high pressure, deceptive tactics, so I can check it out too.”

Sincerely,

Steven Hassan

Steven Alan Hassan M.Ed. LMHC, NCC
Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc.
57 Adams Street Suite Two
Somerville, MA. 02145
U.S.A.

617 628-9918 fax: 617 628-8153
—————————————————————————
Steven Alan Hassan M.Ed. LMHC center@freedomofmind.com
Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc. http://www.freedomofmind.com

“I know but one freedom & that is the freedom of the mind”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

IMHO
FACTNet

FLDS Elder in Eldorado TX is convicted of Sexual Assault of an underaged girl…

David Pike — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:40:58 +0000

Jury convicts Raymond Jessop

ELDORADO, Tex. — One of the leaders of a polygamist sect was convicted Thursday night of sexually assaulting an under-age girl whom the church elders had assigned to him as one of his nine wives.

A jury of seven men and five women deliberated 2 hours 20 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty in the first trial of a dozen members of the Yearning for Zion Ranch just outside this rural hamlet in West Texas.

The defendant, Raymond M. Jessop, 38, seemed unperturbed as Judge Barbara Walther of State District Court read the verdict. Mr. Jessop was immediately handcuffed and taken into custody by the Schleicher County sheriff. He smiled and nodded to several other men in his religious group, who sat grave-faced as he was led away.

Mr. Jessop will be sentenced after a second hearing before the jury on Monday. He faces penalties ranging from 2 years’ probation to 20 years in prison.

His lawyer, Mark Stevens, declined to say if he would appeal, though the defense had argued in hearings before trial that the state illegally seized the church documents that were crucial to the case during a raid on the ranch in April 2008.

Mr. Jessop is one of the most prominent members of a breakaway sect that has at least four other communities in Arizona and Utah. He is close to Warren S. Jeffs, the self-styled prophet and leader of the sect.

Mr. Jeffs has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape, a charge related to his role in ordering the “spiritual marriage” of an under-age girl to one of his followers. He is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges and has been charged in Texas with sexual assault and bigamy.

The trial of Mr. Jessop offered a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group that split from the Mormon Church. Followers believe polygamy brings heavenly rewards and treat Mr. Jeffs as a modern-day prophet.

The ranch first came to national attention a year and a half ago when the Texas authorities descended on it, seeking a girl who had complained in a telephone call to a San Angelo women’s shelter that she was being sexually abused. The girl was never found, and the Texas Rangers acknowledge that the tip was a hoax.

But in the course of executing search warrants, social workers and the Rangers uncovered evidence that at least a dozen girls had been coerced by church elders to serve as wives to older men. Seven had borne children.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols, put several Rangers on the stand along with a former member of the church to introduce several church documents seized from a vault on the ranch.

Since the woman said to be the victim, who is now 21, did not testify, Mr. Nichols used the documents, along with her photo album, to prove she lived with Mr. Jessop as one of his wives and was impregnated by him when she was 16.

The state’s case also rested heavily on genetic evidence that showed there was a 99.9 percent chance Mr. Jessop was the father of the child, who is now 4.

In his closing argument, Mr. Nichols attacked the theory that the teenager had consented to be Mr. Jessop’s wife. “Any act of sexual assault is a horrendous crime,” he said, “but an act of sexual assault on a child is of such an extreme nature we don’t even consider whether the victim was able, much less did, consent.”

One of the most damning pieces of evidence presented in court was a written record of Mr. Jeffs’s instructions in August 2005 not to take the girl to a hospital even though she had been struggling in labor for three days at a clinic on the ranch.

“I knew the girl, being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there,” Mr. Jeffs was quoted as saying.

Some of the most revealing testimony came from another witness for the prosecution, Rebecca Musser, a former member of the church who had been married to Rulon T. Jeffs, the sect’s founder and the father of Warren Jeffs. She left the church in 2002 after the elder Mr. Jeffs died.

Ms. Musser testified that Mr. Jeffs had controlled every aspect of the women’s lives, including how they dressed and what they ate. He also controlled whom they married and when.

“Age was not a factor,” she said. “It was when the prophet deemed she was worthy.”

Mr. Stevens mounted a technical defense, arguing that the state could not prove the crime had taken place in Texas since the evidence it had was purely circumstantial. He did not present any witnesses.

“It’s dangerous when we start trying to convict people based on documents and we are not sure where those documents came from,” he said. -James McKinley Jr., New York Times, Nov. 5, 2009

and from the The Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 5, 2009 -Brooke Adams…

Eldorado, Texas » A Schleicher County jury took about two hours to find a polygamous sect member guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in 2004.

Raymond Merril Jessop, 38, stood as 51st District Judge Barbara Walther read the verdict reached by the seven men and five women who heard the case. He was immediately handcuffed and escorted across a lawn by at least four law officers to the Schleicher County Jail to await sentencing on Monday.

Jessop did not react as the verdict was read. As he left the courtroom he gave a slight smile and nodded his head at six FLDS members seated in the audience.

None of the attorneys would comment until a sentencing phase concludes Monday.

Willie Jessop, spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also declined comment.

The jury will decide on a sentence after hearing additional witness testimony on Monday. Jessop’s attorneys will likely push for probation, something they asked jurors about during the selection process.

Jessop’s attorneys will likely push for probation, something they asked jurors about during the selection process.

The second-degree felony crime is punishable by two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

As the jury returned to the courtroom for the verdict, one of the original 12 jurors — a woman whose husband served as foreman of the grand jury that indicted Jessop — wasn’t among the group. An alternate juror had been substituted in the missing woman’s place. Court Clerk Peggy Williams
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would not comment as to why the juror had been replaced.

The grand jury indicted Jessop last summer based on evidence gathered during an April 2008 investigation at the Yearning For Zion Ranch, located about three miles from the courthouse. The ranch is home to FLDS members.

The state’s investigation was triggered by a call now acknowledged as a hoax but Walther ruled in September that evidence was taken legally from the ranch.

The jurors, selected from a pool of 300 county residents, heard a week’s worth of testimony.

The state used birth records, a marriage certificate and FLDS church records to show Jessop, already married, took the girl as a spiritual wife in 2004 when she was 15.

She conceived a child several months later and gave birth to a daughter in August 2005. DNA experts testified there was virtually no doubt that Jessop is the child’s father.

Prosecutor Eric Nichols told jurors Thursday in his closing argument that the best evidence that Jessop was guilty of sexual assault is that child, whose face was projected on a screen during his remarks.

The girl, now four, is the “snow on the ground, the pools of water on the ground, that represents the terrible crime of sexual assault,” said Nichols, who used a storm metaphor to validate the state’s reliance on circumstantial evidence.

Nichols pointed at Jessop repeatedly as he tried to seal jurors’ opinions, reminding them of the DNA tests that had so many 9s he couldn’t keep track of them all. There also was corroborating evidence that confirmed the test results, he said.

Earlier Thursday, jurors heard testimony from Texas Ranger Nick Hanna about dictations made by FLDS leader Warren S. Jeffs’ that discussed Jessop’s marriage to the victim, now 21; three-day labor in August 2005; the name bestowed on the baby; and Jessop’s assignments at the ranch.

Nichols said the state did not have to prove an exact date for the sexual assault under Texas law, only that the crime occurred before Jessop was indicted in July 2008 and before a statute of limitations expired.

“Common sense, common experience” provided an estimate that it occurred on or about Nov. 19, 2004, he said.

“Children are our most precious resource and we would never impose on a child the responsibility associated with consenting to being placed in a spiritual marriage . . . much less consenting to an act of sexual violence,” he said.

The defense objected to much of the state’s evidence on constitutional grounds and tried to raise doubt with the jury about the DNA test linking Jessop to the victim’s child.

Defense attorneys Mark Stevens and Brandon T. Hudson told jurors the state did not prove the “most obvious” element of the charge: that Jessop was in Schleicher County, let alone at the ranch, at the time the crime was alleged to have occurred.

Stevens called the trial a “paper case” and said there was no evidence that Jessop ever saw, contributed to or commented on documents, such as the dictations, the state seized from a locked vault in a Temple Annex at the ranch.

“It’s dangerous when we start trying to convict people on documents and we’re not sure where the documents came from,” Stevens said.

“Can you guess a man into a guilty verdict?” he asked, then added that despite the state’s huge mass of documents, “it is not proof of a crime.”

Hudson told jurors the state “didn’t bring you what you need.”

“There is not one piece of evidence in that entire box, on all those computers, in that DNA [that tells you] where Raymond was” in November 2004, he said.

But Nichols, who gave the final statement to the jury, said the state’s allegations weren’t a paper case at all but one “based in flesh and blood” — that of the child and her mother.

“Crimes that are committed behind locked metal gates and fences and walls are just the same kind of crimes that occur out on the street corner,” Nichols said.

The important thing is that law officers are able to get whatever evidence they can to bring to jurors, he said, to address serious crime.

Jessop was one of 12 men indicted by the grand jury last summer. Walther has scheduled their trials one after another over the next year. Allen E. Keate is scheduled to stand trial beginning Dec. 7 on the same charge Jessop faced — sexual assault of a child.

A man who stopped a reporter in the parking lot of the county complex to ask if the jury had reached a verdict responded with just one word when told the outcome.

“Good,” he said.

and from Michelle Roberts at the Associated Press, Nov. 5, 2009

ELDORADO, Texas — The first polygamist sect member to face criminal trial following last year’s raid at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in West Texas was convicted Thursday of sexually assaulting an underage girl with whom he had a so-called “spiritual marriage.”

Raymond Jessop, 38, didn’t visibly react when the verdict was read after just more than two hours of jury deliberations. Free on bond during trial, he was immediately handcuffed and led to jail. Jurors were expected to return to court Monday to begin deciding his sentence on the child sexual assault conviction. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Lawyers in the case declined to comment on the verdict Thursday.

Jessop allegedly has nine wives. He also faces a bigamy charge, but that case is to be tried later. The girl in the assault case, now 21, was previously in a spiritual marriage with Jessop’s brother before being “reassigned” to Jessop when she was 15, according to documents seized at the ranch. She became pregnant at age 16.

During closing arguments, Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols stood before photos of the young mother and toddler in prairie dresses.

“There is a sound foundation based not just in documents — based in DNA evidence for which the documents serve as corroboration … that Raymond Merril Jessop behind those gates, behind that guard house, behind those walls, sexually assaulted” the then-teen, he said.

Forensic experts who testified during the trial, which began with the largest jury pool in the small county’s history on Oct. 26, said there was a nearly 100 percent probability Jessop was the father of the woman’s daughter, who is now 4.

Jessop’s attorneys had argued that no witness placed Jessop in Schleicher County at the time of the alleged assault in November 2004. They said prosecutors instead relied on only small snippets of documents to place Jessop and the teen at the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at the time. Many of the documents were seized from enormous cement vaults inside the temple and temple annex at the ranch.

“It’s dangerous when we start trying to convict people based on documents and we’re not sure where the documents came from,” said Stevens, noting there was no evidence Jessop ever had seen the documents prosecutors used to place him at the ranch in 2004 and 2005.

But the defense offered no witnesses at trial and provided no evidence Jessop was elsewhere.

Nichols used a photo album, family records and dictations by jailed sect leader Warren Jeffs to establish a time line that put Jessop and the teen at the ranch when she became pregnant. The records covered parts of 2004 and 2005, but not specifically the time of the alleged assault.

The woman was on the prosecution’s witness list, but did not testify.

Generally, under Texas law, no one under 17 can consent to sex with adult.

“Any act of sexual assault is a horrendous crime, but an act of a sexual assault of a child is of such an extreme nature we don’t even consider whether the victim was able — much less did — consent,” Nichols said.

Documents given to the jury were heavily redacted to minimize any references to plural marriages. The jury was told Jessop was legally married to another woman before entering the spiritual marriage, but only as proof Jessop could not have been legally married to the teen.

In all, 12 FLDS men have been indicted on charges ranging from failure to report child abuse to sexual assault since authorities raided the ranch last year. The 439 children taken from the property and placed in foster care following the raid all have been returned to their parents or other relatives.

Jeffs, revered by the FLDS as the group’s prophet, was convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. He awaits trial in Arizona on charges related to underage marriages there. He’ll then face separate sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago and does not recognize the FLDS.

Historically based around the Arizona-Utah state line, the FLDS bought a ranch about 150 miles northwest of San Antonio, in Eldorado, six years ago, and began building massive log homes and a towering temple.

The raid of the insular group made national headlines as women in prairie dresses and braids were moved off the ranch, and child welfare officials took custody of their children in one of the largest custody cases in U.S. history.

IMHO
FACTNet