Word: scientologists
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...rights survey this Thursday. According to the Post, the survey would criticize German authorities for a "campaign of harassment and intimidation" against the controversial church, which has seen such bizarre actions as youth groups calling for a boycott of the Tom Cruise movie "Mission Impossible" because Cruise is a Scientologist. The German diplomat told TIME Daily that after the Post reported the story Monday, a senior U.S. official called the German embassy to issue a clarification: "He assured us there will be some criticism in the report, but not that severe." As recently as 1995, the U.S. report had merely...
...from a tabloid for an account of his alleged two-year liaison with the celebrity. Travolta refuses to comment, and in December his lawyer dismissed questions about the subject as "bizarre." Two weeks later, Travolta announced that he was getting married to actress Kelly Preston, a fellow Scientologist...
Harriet Baker learned the hard way about Scientology's business of selling religion. When Baker, 73, lost her husband to cancer, a Scientologist turned up at her Los Angeles home peddling a $1,300 auditing package to cure her grief. Some $15,000 later, the Scientologists discovered that her house was debt free. They arranged a $45,000 mortgage, which they pressured her to tap for more auditing until Baker's children helped their mother snap out of her daze. Last June, Baker demanded a $27,000 refund for unused services, prompting two cult members to show...
Occasionally a Scientologist's business antics land him in jail. Last August a former devotee named Steven Fishman began serving a five-year prison term in Florida. His crime: stealing blank stock-confirmation slips from his employer, a major brokerage house, to use as proof that he owned stock entitling him to join dozens of successful class-action lawsuits. Fishman made roughly $1 million this way from 1983 to 1988 and spent as much as 30% of the loot on Scientology books and tapes...
Alan Walter, a Scientologist for 20 years and a mission holder in the Middle West, contends that "Hubbard was a genius in many ways. He was set up by these kids. They were doing insane things. It was a reign of terror." Larry Wollersheim, who considered himself "a cult salesman," says that he was trained to locate the assets of church members and then help them devise explanations to relatives for why they needed so much money. "I was constantly hammered to coerce people to get loans," he claims...