Narconon – The Underground Bunker

Tom Cruise Sues, UK Scientologists Sue, Narconon Is Sued: It’s a Legal Free-For-All!!

Tony Ortega — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:00:52 +0000

By now you’ve no doubt heard that Tom Cruise has filed a $50 million lawsuit against Bauer Publishing and two of its magazines, Life & Style and In Touch, for claiming on the covers of a couple of issues in July that, following his divorce to Katie Holmes, Cruise had “abandoned” his daughter, Suri.

Cruise, in a complaint filed by his attorney, Bert Fields, accuses the magazines of writing checks on their covers that they couldn’t cash inside — in other words, the stories themselves didn’t have facts proving that Cruise had “abandoned” his daughter. While Tom did have a heavy work schedule following the divorce, Fields insists that the actor at least talked to his daughter on the phone every day.

Well, he may have a point there. But does that mean Cruise is going to get $50 million out of Bauer?

We’ll check in with our legal department in a minute. But first, we wanted to point out that our own reporting on Cruise was very different from what Life & Style and In Touch were promoting.

In fact, we had pointed out that, from a Scientology perspective, Cruise seemed to be getting special dispensation in the opposite direction — according to the rules that rank-and-file church members are subject to, a Scientologist in Cruise’s position would normally be forced to abandon his daughter and her she-devil mother, Katie Holmes, after the way she walked out on him.

But because of who he is, Cruise is clearly getting around the Scientology policy of “disconnection” and can have all the contact he wants with his daughter and ex-wife.

Anyway, we checked in with attorney Scott Pilutik to get his thoughts on Tom’s lawsuit:

Public figures, a category into which Cruise easily fits, have an extremely high burden of proof in US defamation cases, which is why they’re so rarely filed. The burden, per New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, requires the plaintiff to show not only that (1) the statement was false; and (2) that it in fact damaged the plaintiff’s reputation; but also (3) that the publisher *knew* that the offending statement was false (i.e., the “actual malice” standard).
#1 (Falsity) seems easy enough to prove, so we’ll give Tom that one, though Life & Style has a tiny bit of wiggle room if the court is willing to distend the meaning of “abandoned.”
#2 (Harm), however, is problematic because it’s really not clear that he’s been harmed by the Life & Style article. For some categories of defamation you don’t need to show harm because the harm is presumed (e.g., imputation of a loathsome/sexual disease, false statement of professional ability, imputations of criminality, and, often, affiliation with a notorious party, such as the KKK), but the suggestion that someone is a “bad father” isn’t one, so damages must be proved. How do you do that? If you were a private figure you would get testimony from, say, employers who declined to hire you because of the defamatory statement, or neighbors who shunned you. Cruise obviously can’t do that, so perhaps his attorneys can statistically poll his audience via surveys etc.? I can’t imagine that’d be easy.
#3 (Actual Malice), finally, requires Cruise to show that Life & Style knew their headline was false and published it anyway in order to smear Cruise’s name. The reality finds it more likely that Life & Style wanted to sell magazines and were fast and loose with the meaning of “abandoned.” Reckless? Perhaps, and courts will often view recklessness as satisfying the actual malice test. The edge goes to Life & Style here too, but I think the bigger problem for Cruise and Fields will be to show that Cruise’s reputation was damaged by this particular story.

We have to agree with Scott — this lawsuit feels thin. Sure, it will suck up a lot of attention and cost both sides a pretty penny. But in the end, there doesn’t seem to be much to it.

…unless, that is, you were hoping to get the press to stop talking about that other story printed about you recently. You know, the one about filing down incisor teeth, etc.

Clever.

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English Scientologists Fight For the Right To Marry

So this couldn’t happen there either?

In what seems a calculated move to gain sympathy at a time when it is reeling from bad press, Church of Scientology officials petitioned London’s High Court yesterday to allow a Scientologist couple to marry at a Scientology church, which is banned in England.

Wait a minute. English Scientologists can’t get married at a Scientology org? What kind of a country are you Limeys running over there?

According to the Independent, “religious” marriages can only be performed at officially-recognized “places of worship,” and the English government has refused to grant Scientology churches that status.

Have to admit, our first reaction here in the bunker was to shake our heads at such misguided Old World thinking. After all, over here in the land of the free, our firewall between church and state would never allow such a thing to happen.

After our knees got done jerking, however, we started to wonder if this might actually set up an intriguing court fight there across the pond.

Sure, it might not fit with American values, but why not make Scientology prove to an English court’s satisfaction that listening to L. Ron Hubbard lectures and exploring (with scientific certitude) billion-year-old past lives while hooked up to a jackleg lie detector machine is somehow a form of “worship.”

Hey, that could actually be a pretty good show.

For a UK perspective, we talked to Pete Griffiths, who lives in Ireland but was recently in England to lead a protest by ex-Scientologists of this year’s big International Association of Scientologists gala in East Grinstead.

What did he make of the move by Scientology to get recognition as a “place of worship”?

In my day we knew we weren’t really a religion, but if any outsider dared say so we’d defend our religiousness to the death. It’s classic Scientology hypocrisy and double-think.

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Another Narconon Lawsuit, Filed Days After a Family’s Loss

If you’ve been following the disastrous fortunes of Scientology’s drug rehab program, Narconon, then you probably saw NBC’s August Rock Center episode that featured Shirley and Emmett Gilliam (seen above) discussing with Charles Smith the death of Shirley’s son, Gabriel Graves.

Graves, 32, was one of three Narconon patients at its Oklahoma flagship facility who died within a nine-month period. The deaths are the subject of multiple local and state investigations.

Sadly, on October 16, just weeks after this episode aired, Emmett Gilliam died at only 64 years of age. A former country musician who had worked for Garth Brooks for 22 years, most recently as project manager, Gilliam was memorialized on Saturday in Oklahoma, and Brooks attended and gave a eulogy. The famous musician took time out for the service even though the next day he was installed at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Yesterday, Shirley Gilliam filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of her son, whose cause of death could not be determined by the Oklahoma state Medical Examiner’s Office. Graves died on October 26, 2011, and the Tulsa World unearthed a letter from another patient at the center who described that Graves was suffering from severe headaches as he was going through Narconon’s treatment, consisting of heavy sauna use.

On April 11, Narconon patient Hillary Holten died, and the cause of her death has also not been determined. Stacy Murphy was the third death, on July 20, and investigators are still waiting for the results of her autopsy.

It’s disturbing that the state medical examiner could find no cause of death for Graves and Holten. We asked Gilliam’s attorney, Gary Richardson, who is also representing Robert Murphy in the lawsuit filed in the death of his daughter, Stacy, whether he thought those undetermined causes of death might hurt or help these lawsuits.

“If I had to pick one. I would say help,” he wrote to us. “Can you imagine being paid thousands of dollars to provide care for someone in a ‘controlled’ area, having advertised that you have all these professionals on staff and in excess of 100 staff members, and then have three patients die in less than a year and have no explanation for it? As I say, the first time something happens its an ‘incident,’ the second time it’s a ‘co-incident,’ but the third time it’s a ‘trend’.”

Another Narconon Lawsuit, Oregon Dentist to Fight Order, and More Scientology Links

Tony Ortega — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:05:49 +0000

Stacy Dawn Murphy

Friday turned out to be an incredibly busy day for Scientology watchers. After putting up our morning post about the church’s troubles in Atlanta, where its drug rehab program, Narconon, is being investigated by the state of Georgia, we then had to scramble when we received an e-mail from a state agency in Oregon.

That e-mail contained the 69-page order that requires Bend dentist Andrew Engel to pay nearly $348,000 to his former dental hygienist, Susan Muhleman, for religious harassment because she felt forced to quit her job when he kept insisting that she attend a three-day Scientology symposium.

At the same time we were jamming to get that story up, however, we were aware that the Murphy family in Oklahoma was making public that it had filed a lawsuit against Narconon’s flagship operation in that state, where their daughter Stacy Murphy, 20, died in July. And much more was happening. So let’s catch up this morning with some links…

Jarrel Wade of the Tulsa World and Jeanne LeFlore of the McAlester News-Capital remain on top of developments in eastern Oklahoma, where Scientology’s drug rehab program is dealing with multiple lawsuits and government investigations. They reported yesterday that Robert Murphy and Tonya White, the parents of Stacy Murphy, filed their lawsuit against not only the Narconon facility but also the osteopath who was listed as the center’s medical director. The family of Hillary Holten is also suing the Narconon facility after their daughter died on April 11 following a short stay at the Narconon Arrowhead rehab center. Gabriel Graves, 32, also died at the center in October 2011.

“You think it’s something that’s going to fill the void, but it will be an empty victory,” Robert Murphy told the Tulsa World.

The lawsuit itself spells out the familiar story with Narconon, involving distraught parents looking for a place to put a child addicted to drugs, and relying on a slick website that portrays Narconon as a reputable drug treatment center where patients get effective drug counseling in a safe setting with highly trained staff and medical supervision. In reality, what patients get is Scientology training, not drug counseling. They get unscientific treatments of sauna use with high dosage of vitamins. And staff at the facilities tends to be former patients, not medical staff.

We’ll be watching this case closely.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, dentist Andrew Engel says he’s going to fight the state’s order that he pay nearly $348,000 to his former dental hygienist, Susan Muhleman, after she had to move out of state to find another job when she refused his request to attend a Scientology symposium.

Last night, Portland’s KTVZ-TV reported that Engel will be appealing the case, and that Muhleman might not see the money “for years, if at all.”

And up in Montreal, CJAD radio host Barry Morgan had a conversation with Jefferson Hawkins, one of the most interesting ex-Scientologists. It was Hawkins who was behind Scientology’s big 1980s advertising push, and helped the church reach its greatest expansion. Hawkins had access to enrollment documents, and is perhaps the best authority on the actual size of the organization. Some time ago, we used his expertise to estimate that the number of actual, active Scientologists is only about 40,000 around the world. But now, Hawkins says the church is still dwindling, and he puts worldwide membership at only about 25,000. Yikes!

And yet more news out of Portland, Oregon. Synthia Fagen brought this one to our attention: the renovation of Scientology’s “Ideal Org” has stopped after apparently running out of money. We’ve seen similar money woes at other Ideal Orgs (New Haven, for example), and we expect this may become something of a trend.

Most of the longtime, formerly loyal church members who are leaving and declaring their independence — often in long-winded online screeds — invariably point to Scientology leader David Miscavige’s Ideal Org scheme as one of the key reasons for their disillusionment. For about a decade, Miscavige has pushed local church members to raise huge sums, so that their perfectly adequate (and not full) local “orgs” can be replaced by fancy new facilities, often put in a historic building. But the purchase, renovation, and upkeep of that new “Ideal Org” is all put on the locals, who are not numerous to begin with. For years, we’ve been documenting what the locals are put through as they have to attend one fundraiser after another in order to raise the money for buildings that aren’t really needed anyway. Is it any wonder that those buildings may then become money-draining liabilities? We’ll be keeping an eye on this.

And finally, we noticed that attorney Scott Pilutik had some really interesting things to say about the Engel decision in the comments section last night. They deserve to be seen, so we’re posting them here as well:

This is a fantastic decision and I applaud the ALJ/Bureau for its thoroughness. I’m not familiar with Oregon administrative law but I’m guessing the precedential weight of this is akin to a state circuit (trial) court decision and that the next step is the court of appeals.
The best part of this decision can be found in footnotes xi — xiv, where the ALJ discusses Scientology’s religiosity, noting that the complaint alleges that all of LRH’s non-fiction writings are necessarily religious in nature and the dentist declined to dispute… And that one of the dentist’s arguments was that the Tone Scale used by the consultant was different than the Tone Scale used by the CoS. Oh really? Is Silkin a new word for Squirrel?
This decision is already useful regardless of whether it’s appealed because it definitively establishes that the Tone Scale is religious, meaning that any CoS front group using the Tone Scale which somehow got government money is vulnerable. Even if the decision is reversed on appeal that reversal may be grounded in some other basis (the decision doesn’t necessarily have to rest on Scientology’s religiosity), but I think that the ALJ was mindful it would be appealed and accordingly did an exceptional job immunizing it–it’s 69 pages for a reason.
Now that the Tone Scale’s religiosity has been so concretely established I wonder whether Scientology removes the religious designation of it on their website or simply instruct all the ostensibly secular front groups that it’s off limits.

Mark Bunker Speaks, and Atlanta Burns

Tony Ortega — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:00:06 +0000

A FULL HOUR of Wise Beard Man? Grab some popcorn and find a comfy chair, because you’re going to want to hear Radio Paul interview Mark Bunker about his experiences as one of the most reliable and level-headed of Scientology Watchers.

Hearing this only makes us want to see his movie Knowledge Report more than ever. Get that thing done, Bunker!

Also, we are deeply grateful for the shout-out from WBM, who explained to folks at home how to find this blog.

Just a few more links today — after yesterday’s big picture story, we’re taking a bit of a breather.

First, continuing the horn-tooting, we see that Wisconsin Public Radio has now put up the extended version of the interview we did about The Master. The discussion did go into a number of other areas. Maybe someone will find it interesting, who knows.

Over at the Morton Report, Skip Press writes about the murderous rampage of Sons of Anarchy actor Johnny Lewis in a connect-the-dots essay about Hollywood, Scientology, and some of the wild things he saw as a church member in the 1970s and 1980s. Another roller-coaster ride from Skip, to be sure.

Meanwhile, things are really heating up down in Atlanta, where WSB radio’s Pete Combs and WSB-TV’s Jodie Fleischer continue to knock the stuffing out of Scientology’s drug rehab center down there, Narconon Georgia. The documents in this case are truly shocking, and to their credit these reporters are not treating the subject with kid gloves. If only other news organizations in this country could watch how this is being done — it’s a textbook case for how local media can take a stand and get results.

On the other hand, there’s this kind of thing. Now, we’re certain that some of our readers will take some pleasure in hearing that 70 percent of Americans, in a recent poll, said that they don’t consider Scientology a “true religion.”

But that phrase — “true religion” — is so problematic it makes this poll mostly useless in our eyes.

Unless you’re talking about the brand of jeans they’re wearing, let’s leave that phrase out of the equation and talk instead about how Scientology treats people. For us, that’s what really matters.

Scientology’s Georgia Drug Rehab Hit with Double-Barreled Media Onslaught

Tony Ortega — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:00:55 +0000

For years, people like Mary McConnell and Carnegie Mellon University professor Dave Touretzky have worked tirelessly to get the word out about the deceptive practices and documented abuses at Scientology’s drug rehab program, Narconon.

Several recent deaths at Narconon’s flagship facility in Oklahoma have received a lot of attention lately, but Touretzky urged us to look into a 2008 death in the Atlanta area and an ensuing lawsuit.

We wrote several stories about the death of Patrick Desmond (pictured) and the stunning allegations of deception in the documents of that lawsuit. But now, McConnell and Touretzky’s perseverance is really paying off. Starting yesterday, a coordinated investigation by Atlanta radio and television stations kicked off a multi-part series, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is also reportedly getting in on the act.

It’s Armageddon for Narconon in Georgia.

The allegations in the case are infuriating. Desmond, the son of a Green Beret, had alcohol problems and was sentenced by a Florida court to spend six months in an in-patient rehab program. His mother, like so many before, fell victim to a slick online come-on by Narconon’s facility in the Atlanta area, which promised in-patient, residential care, and effective drug counseling. What the Desmond family wasn’t told, however, was that Narconon Georgia has never had a license to house patients, and, like all Narconon facilities, what it offers is Scientology training, not drug counseling.

Documents in the lawsuit show that Narconon Georgia’s executive director, Mary Rieser, had set up a housing facility by having a couple of Scientologists lease a set of nearby apartments. But Narconon’s own documents show that the apartment building, One Sovereign Place, was poorly supervised by former patients who were drinking and doing drugs with the current patients. It was in that environment that Patrick Desmond drank heavily, then experimented with heroin, overdosed, and died.

His parents are suing Narconon Georgia and Narconon International, and the depositions and documents in the case are jaw-dropping. As we reported before, one of the rehab center employees testified that Rieser was purposefully changing the center’s letterhead when communications were made with Desmond’s Florida court, so that its nature as an outpatient-only clinic was hidden from the court. (We interviewed the court officer who was lied to, and she wasn’t happy about it.)

We were also stunned by what Narconon’s own expert witness, Dr. Louis A. Casal, testified to in a deposition with Desmond family lawyer Jeff Harris. As WSB radio reporter Pete Combs shows in a part of his excellent series, Casal at certain points in his testimony sounds like a witness for the Desmonds!

Casal appears deeply skeptical of Narconon’s claims to have a 70 percent success rate (some Narconon centers claim up to 90 percent success), when most legitimate centers work hard to make sure even 25 percent of their patients remain sober long term.

Casal also admits that it’s pure scientific bunk to say that sitting for hours in a sauna somehow sweats “toxins” out of the body, the central tenet of L. Ron Hubbard’s vaunted “purification rundown,” which forms one of the key parts of Narconon’s program.

While Combs is taking Narconon’s case apart on radio, WSB-TV Channel 2’s Jodie Fleischer put together her own stunning presentation of the case yesterday.

After listening to Combs and watching Fleischer (and the AJC is reportedly joining in), you have to assume that many people in Georgia are asking themselves the questions that others have been asking for years…

Why is an unscientific, deceptive program allowed to hoodwink judges, court officers, and parents, and, in this case, deceive the state’s licensing authority? How many more patients have to die before government authorities start doing their jobs to protect the most vulnerable people in our society from these practices?

UPDATE: After asking that last question, we might have found an answer to it. Why do government authorities have a hard time enforcing the law when it comes to Scientology’s front groups? Oh yeah, because of other government officials…

That image is taken from one of Narconon’s websites. With Atlanta’s mayor on board, how could they go wrong?