Scientology’s drug rehab facilities have been much in the news lately for several lawsuits that have questioned the way these “Narconon” programs treat adults who go to them seeking treatment for their addictions. Now, a Narconon center in Nevada is being sued by a family over the experiences of their fifteen-year-old.
On March 8, Mark and Nicole Peet, residents of upstate New York, sent their son to the Rainbow Canyon Retreat, a Narconon drug rehab center that relies on the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The young man was back home by May 13. In the lawsuit they filed in Nevada on November 21, the Peets allege that their son (whose name we’re withholding because of his age) went through disturbing mistreatment at the hands of older patients, including “branding” him with a hot iron.
The Peets are suing to get back the $39,000 they paid Rainbow Canyon, and are also asking for punitive damages, alleging that their son was so affected by his experience at the facility, it led to his attempting suicide on September 5.
How’s this for a bonus Friday afternoon post — John Sweeney and Marc Headley driving to Scientology’s Trementina Base in New Mexico, footage that Sweeney has put together as a trailer for his book, The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology.
In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard published the book that changed his life, transforming him from a well known writer of pulp fiction into an even more well known leader of a worldwide organization that came to be known as the Church of Scientology.
That book was Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, and for some time we’ve had plans to examine it in weekly installments, using a first edition copy of the book that was given to us by researcher Jeff Jacobsen.
Today, we launch that project, and announce the best part of our plans: we’ll be making use of the invaluable help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, and writer Vance Woodward.
A tip of the hat to Jane White, who spotted this disturbing photo at the Facebook page for Clear Ghana, which describes itself as a “group of Scientologists working…to bring this technology to as many people of Africa as possible.”
That apparently includes presenting the standard Sea Org contract to a couple of youngsters who don’t look much more than 10 years old. The sad truth is, we’ve documented cases of children that young signing the commitment form, which asks them to serve Scientology for a billion years.
Scientology is a very small, if wealthy, organization of probably no more than about 40,000 people around the world. But one of the reasons it garners so much attention, particularly online, is the way it repeatedly has taken on the Internet as one of its chief foes.
In the 1990s, Scientology tried to keep its secret teachings off of Usenet, and tried to crush the people who kept putting them there. It also handed out software to its members to keep them from visiting certain websites with negative information about the church. And to this day, members police each other on Facebook, making sure they don’t accidentally “friend” people who have been excommunicated.
In the last couple of years, however, we’ve noticed that Scientology has been making better use of the Internet, and has been encouraging its members to take advantage of its jim-dandy whizzer features.
And now, with a new “IAS sponsored Scientology Internet Campaign,” the church is ready to join the early 2000s!
Simi Valley sent us a remarkable e-mail a couple of weeks ago. She wanted us to know that she’s no longer an “independent Scientologist” — she’s out all the way.
“It was a year ago that Debbie Cook sent out her e-mail and I finally woke up. But now a year later I’ve really woken up all the way,” she said in a phone conversation we had a few days ago.
We thought we’d start off 2013 by writing about Simi’s journey, which reflects a trend we’ve been watching for the last couple of years.
As much as the growth of a breakaway “independent Scientology” movement has been a huge part of the crisis gripping the Church of Scientology, we’ve noticed a tendency for some ex-church members to spend only a short time as “indies” before they ditch Scientology altogether.
“On January 1, 2012 I was off the Miscavige Kool-aid. But now, a year later, I’m off the Hubbard Kool-aid,” Simi told us.
Earlier this year, we put together a comprehensive article about the strange vaults that one of Scientology’s most secretive entities, the Church of Spiritual Technology, has also dug in California and Wyoming in order to secure L. Ron Hubbard’s writings and lectures against nuclear attack. For our piece, we had the help of a former CST employee, Dylan Gill, who gave us some rare insights about these strange facilities.
As his Sun article indicates, Sweeney and Headley were stopped at the gate before they could get inside the base and look around. What a shame. After all, Sweeney has demonstrated that he can put on a good show when he’s let in the door!
With our year in review finally over, we’re left with one last Sunday in 2012, and what would a Sunday be without Funnies?
Our tipsters have been terrific this year, and we’re still getting great stuff from them every day. So let’s send 2012 out in style by looking at the latest fundraising mailers that Scientology has sent to its members.
Now, if you live in the Los Angeles area — and many of the dwindling remainder of Scientologists do — then you know all about the Rose Parade, the thing you do your best to wake up for and watch bleary-eyed on your television while fighting a nasty hangover.
Or, if you’re actually in Pasadena, you might secure your seat next to the parade route by partying all night on New Year’s Eve on Colorado Boulevard. We’ve done it, and a great freaky scene of street drunkenness it is.
And so we come to the end of this lengthy year in review, which no doubt has already gone on far too long for some readers.
If we’ve been longwinded, our excuse is that 2012 has been such an exceptional year for Scientology, and there were so many disasters for the church right up to the last few weeks.
On December 10, with Gawker’s help, we brought to the world a very unusual video. During our recent visit to Los Angeles, former church member Tiziano Lugli played for us a funny song that featured several ex-Scientologists rapping about what it was like to work for David Miscavige at the International Base. We thoroughly enjoyed the rap stylings of Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder (seriously, it was dope), but what made the video go viral was that one of the people who performed on the song was Nazanin Boniadi, and she specifically name-checked the church’s three big celebrities, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley. Boniadi had become famous in Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair story in September, but here was the first evidence of Boniadi speaking out on her own about her disillusionment with Scientology.
