Part 27 (1/2)
* In 2002, the Church of Scientology finally agreed to pay Larry Wollersheim $8.6 million, most of which Wollersheim said went to cover his legal fees.
[back]
* Scientology's attorneys were not always wholly independent. One Los Angeles-based lawyer for the church, cited as ”outside counsel,” was Kendrick Moxon, a Scientologist and former Guardian's Office legal officer who, like L. Ron Hubbard, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in Operation Snow White.
[back]
* According to Marty Rathbun, anyone suspected of blocking Miscavige's quest for tax exemption was perceived as an enemy, including the onetime church executive Terri Gamboa, a former Messenger to L. Ron Hubbard aboard the Apollo, who'd left Scientology with her husband in 1989. Gamboa had been the executive director of Author Services when it was the main financial organ of the church, and thus knew a great deal about financial irregularities concerning Hubbard, Miscavige, and the Church of Scientology overall. That she left was ”a seven-alert fire,” said Rathbun, which Miscavige dealt with by dispatching a team of officials, including Rathbun, to confront Gamboa while she was on a trip with her husband and simultaneously break into a briefcase kept in her car, which Miscavige feared contained doc.u.ments pertaining to L. Ron Hubbard's estate. ”As it turns out the briefcase had nothing of use in it and it was returned to Terri's car,” said Rathbun. Gamboa never uttered a word publicly about church finances.
[back]
* In 1998, the agency was ordered by a district court to release internal doc.u.ments relating to the negotiations. At about the same time, the settlement doc.u.ment was leaked to the press.
[back]
* Scientologists are allowed to deduct only 80 percent of the cost of auditing as charitable contributions.
[back]
Equating a religious education like that received at a yes.h.i.+va with Scientology auditing is in some ways a bad a.n.a.logy. Far better would be to equate the education Scientologist children receive at Applied Scholasticssponsored schools, which reinforce Hubbard's principles. These schools were given tax exemption under the 1993 agreement, and parents may deduct the cost of these schools from their income taxes-as well as deduct any donations they might make directly to ABLE, the a.s.sociation for Better Living, a nonprofit organization set up by the Church of Scientology to administer its social betterment programs, including the Applied Scholastics program.
[back]
* This comment, like many remarks Lisa made about her early life, were later recorded in various church-ordered confessionals, including the ”life history” that Lisa was required to write as part of her indoctrination into Scientology.
[back]
* Doctors have questioned the effectiveness of the Purification Rundown, which has never been scientifically proven as effective and might in fact be dangerous. Its central component, niacin, is administered in extremely high doses. The recommended daily allowance of niacin is fifteen milligrams; the Purification Rundown calls for it to be administered in c.o.c.ktails containing one hundred to five thousand milligrams, gradually increasing in potency over time. Such high doses produce a flush on the skin, which Hubbard interpreted as a sign that the body was expelling impurities. Dosages of this size can also cause liver damage. Nonetheless, the Purification Rundown is required of every new member with a history of drug use, which Lisa McPherson had.
[back]
* Though not in vogue when Hubbard first adopted it, the concept of ”learning styles,” meaning that different approaches to presenting material-visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and so on-suit different students, is now accepted and informs educational practice in many U.S. schools.
[back]
* A pseudonym.
[back]
* The pressure to sign up for these services can be intense. Owners of a small business in Florida, Mercer and her husband routinely found Scientology salespeople sitting outside their house. ”They would call you maybe the day before to feel you out and see how much cash was available. Then the pressure would begin to build until they'd come sit at your doorstep. I had registrars circling my house, waiting for us to get home, and they would sit all around the house, knocking on the doors and windows to get money out of us.”
[back]
* Indeed, as the St. Petersburg Times later reported (in its issue of March 25, 1976), on December 1, 1975, the day the sale was finalized, the United Churches sold the Fort Harrison to the Church of Scientology for $10.
[back]
* The first service Lisa did at Flag was an expensive auditing process called the L-11 Rundown, which is offered only in Clearwater. In 1995, the Flag Service Organization listed the price of the L-11 rundown as $10,000 per intensive. A minimum of two intensives, or twenty-five hours of auditing, are required to complete this process, raising the cost to at least $20,000.
[back]
* According to L. Ron Hubbard, ”Level IV Search and Discovery,” HCO Bulletin, November 24, 1965, all PTS cla.s.sifications connect to the doctrine of suppression. An SP (Suppressive Person) is actually present in the life of a Type One individual; a Type Two believes himself or herself to be presently connected to an SP, when in fact, the ”actual” SP can be traced back well into the past; a Type Three has become suppressive himself or herself, and thus is ”entirely psychotic.”
[back]
* Scientology's Bridge is divided into two tracks: the auditing track, by which members advance through the various levels of enlightenment, and the training track, by which members learn to audit others. Hubbard envisioned Scientologists progressing on both tracks, often simultaneously, and all Scientologists are required to learn how to audit in order to advance to the upper levels. Only a select group of Scientologists, however, become true technical experts in the subject of auditing, and these ”professional auditors,” as they are known, are responsible for most of Scientology's counseling. The most elite of these professionals, who are also Sea Org members, work at Flag and are held in particularly high esteem by other church members.
[back]
*s In her exhaustive ”overt/withhold write-up” of Halloween 1995, Lisa specifically noted that during her breakdown in the summer of 1995, Scientology's international management had become involved ”to sort me out,” which, she noted guiltily, ”took time away from their expansion or helping someone who wasn't as able as I was.”
[back]
* One possible reason for Lisa's bruising was the numerous times she had been restrained by her caretakers and security guards so that the Flag dentist, Dr. David Houghton, could administer a concoction of Benadryl, aspirin, and orange juice, which he and other officials believed might help calm her. Houghton, who, like Janis Johnson, was not licensed to practice medicine in the state of Florida, administered this potion with a turkey baster-like syringe on several occasions between November 25 and November 28, 1995, each time with others holding Lisa down. When Judy Goldsberry-Weber found out about this, she was incensed. Johnson, as Goldsberry-Weber later said, told her to ”b.u.t.t out.”
[back]