Much is being made in the press that today, Kelly Preston will appear on television and for the first time acknowledge that her late son Jett Travolta was autistic.
Jett died in 2009 after having a seizure in a bathtub while the family was in its Bahamian estate. At the time, a family spokesman confirmed that Jett had been prescribed anti-seizure medicine, but his parents — actors John Travolta and Preston, longtime Scientologists — had taken him off the medicine.
In the years since, the press has insisted that in Scientology, autism is a fiction of the evil psychiatry industry, which is why Travolta and Preston could never admit that their son suffered from it and instead promoted the idea that he had a rare condition called Kawasaki disease. Acknowledging publicly that their son was actually autistic, it was believed, would go against their religious beliefs.
And now that Preston is finally using the word “autism” in public, reporters are characterizing it as a “rebellion” against Scientology (just as they did when Travolta used the word a few years ago).
Here at The Underground Bunker, however, we noticed long ago that Preston is often trotted out to talk about her diet successes and other frippery whenever the church is in dire need of some positive publicity. Could she really now be speaking out in a way that challenges the church? Is Preston beginning to break away from her role as Scientology happy person?
The lack of any new developments in the ongoing investigation of deaths at Scientology’s flagship Narconon drug rehab center in Oklahoma didn’t prevent the Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City from putting together this lengthy and hard-hitting two-part series, which aired last night.
A lesson for other media: This is how you keep a story in the public consciousness, even as you’re waiting for the next news peg.
Ken Dandar called us after he got out of the hearing on his federal lawsuit in Tampa, Florida today.
He said he was unable to convince Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington to grant him an injunction that would prevent a state court from saddling him with huge fees demanded by the Church of Scientology.
Next Monday, November 26, in a hearing that will be closed to the public or press, retired state Judge Crockett Farnell will decide what to award Scientology, and Dandar has said he expects that amount to be more than a million dollars.
While Scientology’s private eyes were tailing us around a different part of Los Angeles yesterday, one of our tipsters kept an eye on Sheriff Lee Baca’s appearance in Inglewood to promote L. Ron Hubbard’s 1980 booklet, The Way to Happiness.
We have a couple of photographs of the event, as well as some notes about who attended — which included the voice of Bart Simpson, actress and Scientologist Nancy Cartwright!
Mark Bunker has uploaded to YouTube a 16-minute interview he did with former high-ranking Scientology executive Marty Rathbun for his movie Knowledge Report. It contains more details of the news that rocked Scientology this week: In attorney Ken Dandar’s federal lawsuit, Rathbun is alleging that the church spent $30 million fighting the criminal investigation of Lisa McPherson’s death, including an operation to improperly influence county medical examiner Joan Wood.
McPherson was a troubled church member who had a mental breakdown in 1995 and then was taken to be cared for at Scientology’s headquarters at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida. Seventeen days later, she was rushed to the hospital and died on the way. Scientology was then the subject of a criminal investigation which relied in part on the death certificate that Wood issued. Wood later changed the cause of McPherson’s death from “undetermined” to “accident” in 2000, which stopped the state’s criminal investigation of Scientology in its tracks. In Bunker’s interview, Rathbun talks about how the church applied pressure to convince Wood to make that change.
Last night, the St. Petersburg, Florida CBS affiliate, WTSP, broke news that Marty Rathbun has made blockbuster allegations in sworn testimony that the Church of Scientology spent millions in an attempt to influence Florida judges as it was fighting the criminal investigation and then civil litigation following the 1995 death of church member Lisa McPherson.
We’ve talked to Rathbun about his testimony, we have a copy of his deposition, and we’ve also asked our legal department — Manhattan attorney Scott Pilutik — to give us his thoughts about these stunning new allegations that Scientology spent freely to influence judges in Florida.
This Saturday, Scientologists in the Los Angeles area are being asked to come to a “confidential briefing” that is so secret, they will be asked to sign special bonds at the door.
At that briefing, they will be told for the first time about major changes coming to the Church of Scientology — changes that we first told you about in June.
What has been rumored for months is actually here: Scientology leader David Miscavige is taking one of the biggest risks of his life and is revealing the alterations he is making to L. Ron Hubbard’s “standard tech.”
But is the Church of Scientology actually ready for his “Golden Age of Tech 2”?
Given its rather unsavory reputation, the Church of Scientology usually has a hard time getting much love from politicians or other prominent personalities. For every glittering movie star that actually belongs to the wacky group, many, many more would never have anything to do with it.
But it’s those exceptions — big names that agree to shill for David Miscavige’s church — that tend to grab our attention.
In particular, the willingness of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to go to bat for Scientology has been something of a curiosity over the years. And just today, we were forwarded by one of our tipsters a rather surprising notice that Baca, this Sunday, will be helping out the church in an interesting way.
Big news for Scientology watchers: Alfred A. Knopf announced today that it will be releasing Lawrence Wright’s highly anticipated book about Scientology on January 17, which is a couple of months earlier than we had heard it would appear.
Jenna Miscavige Hill’s tell-all, meanwhile, appears to have been moved back to February, a month later than had previously been announced.
After the jump, we have the full press release from Knopf about Wright’s book.
Over at The Hairpin, on Monday “Stella Forstner” put up the second installment of her series on growing up in Scientology. This second chapter was about Scientology beliefs, and like the first, it’s very well written and smarter than your average church tell-all.
Forstner helps an outsider understand the appeal of auditing, and does her best to make the idea of tracking down traumas from your past lives in order to improve your current life sound like the most natural thing in the world.
But her real beef in this essay is that she wants the rest of us to lay off Xenu, already.
Much is being made in the press that today, Kelly Preston will appear on television and for the first time acknowledge that her late son Jett Travolta was autistic.
