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Where's the Science in Scientology? (cont.)
Searching the Web The method they're using to attack the multibillion-dollar, multi-operational, worldwide institution is surprisingly simple: exposing Scientology's darkest secrets, which for nearly 50 years were only revealed to their top members, on the Internet. And the church has responded by softening some of its more blatant recruitment tactics while its leaders claim its more extreme aspects are aberrations of the past. Is the latest wave of publicity, caused by Cruise's aggressive proselytizing and anti-psychiatric arguments, a desperate and clueless attempt to win back young minds and reverse the slide? Renowned ex-Scientologist Arnie Lerma notes that the church realized it had to soften its approach. Gone were most of the hard-sell membership-drive techniques of the past, when church members needled passersby to take "personality tests" that would reveal the “stressful areas” Scientology could help a person eliminate and then sign them up for books and classes. As the head of Lermanet.com, Lerma has drawn on his decade-long membership in Scientology to craft perhaps the most extensive and highly updated anti-Scientology Web site in the world. Lerma was working for Scientology in 1969, having joined at 17 after believing Hubbard's tales of being a war hero and nuclear physicist. He was around for the early days of Clearwater and got to know Hubbard on a very close level. Ultimately, that closeness to Hubbard would be key to Lerma's break with Scientology, as he fell in love with the founder's daughter, Suzette. As marriage and family are frowned upon within Sea Org as unnecessary distractions from church devotion, they were about to elope when she spilled the beans in one of her auditing sessions. "I was given the option of leaving Florida with all my body parts intact if I told her the wedding was off, and that's a quotable fact," said Lerma. "So I told her, and she cried. I was shocked like shock therapy and that woke me up. I was free." Indeed, Lerma has become one of Scientology's most fervent critics. He says he was there the day Hubbard ordered the Satanic Crosses rolled into church offices, as the church replaced its secular signs and symbols across the board with occult imagery designed to mislead the public and more importantly, the government into believing it was a fairly mainstream religion. He has experienced retaliation for his Web work, in the form of a raid on his house by Scientologists and U.S. Marshals who searched all his computer drives for the church's copyrighted materials, including information on thetans and climbing the Bridge. Nothing was found worthy of shutting his efforts down. In contrast, a decade ago Scientologist lawyers were able to launch 100 suits at a time against the former top anti-cult group, the Cult Awareness Network, drive it into bankruptcy, and then purchase the name. Today, calls to CAN are fruitless, as Scientology members trick concerned family members with claims that CAN is objective and membership in the church is harmless. The very fact that Lerma is up and thriving online is just one sign that the church might be losing its grip. "They love luring celebrities because they think it helps them win over countless more young people, and the celebrities stay with it both because every imaginable whim is catered to but because they've revealed every blackmail-able secret in their auditing sessions over the years," said Lerma. "Meanwhile, those stars' needs are met by staffers who are either in it for life and vastly underpaid or by members who have run out of money for the church's services and are basically slaving to pay it off." Just as the roots of Scientology began in California with the bizarre friendship of Hubbard and Jack Parsons, its weaknesses with the Web also began there, in a U.S. District Court. The case of the Church of Scientology International vs. Fishman and Geertz resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco denying Scientology's appeal to seal its "upper level materials" about the OT levels, Xenu, and other high-level church secrets. The case began with a 1991 lawsuit against former Scientologist Steven Fishman and his psychiatrist, Dr. Uwe Geertz, after they were quoted at length in a classic Time magazine exposé on the church. Fishman had been convicted several years before of taking part in a Scientology securities class action fraud scheme in Florida, and in order to defend himself fully in this lawsuit, without a lawyer, he had won the right to use the previously secret materials in his defense. Geertz's attorney, Graham Berry, heard about Fishman's materials and offered to help him as much as he could for free. When the men teamed up to accomplish a staggering success against Scientology that enabled the "upper materials" to stay open and be read anywhere, the truth was finally free and available to anyone exploring Scientology on the Web. "Robert Vaughn Young was a high-level Scientology executive who escaped the church, and he said the Internet would prove to be the church's Waterloo," said Berry, who has spent the past decade as a living victim of the church's retaliatory techniques. "I believe that's self-evident with the fact Fishman filed a worldwide affidavit where the information on Scientology is on the 'Net for free while its members traditionally paid up to a half-million dollars to reach the same level of knowledge." After helping win the Fishman case, Berry found his homosexuality outed on the Web, along with further accusations that he was a pedophile. He believes that Scientologists set out to slander him on nearly every level and managed to break him financially by tying up all his time through a string of lawsuits. The final blow came when Scientologists convinced the state's judicial system to label Berry a "vexatious litigant," a label that cost him his ability to practice law in California and, amazingly, can't appeal his way out of. Yet even now, living off government assistance and the kindness of friends and acquaintances, Berry remains unbowed and to this day travels to conferences around the world to speak out against the church's ruthless tactics. "Scientology will never understand how strongly friends can support you, and it drives them nuts that I'm not in a gutter somewhere," Berry noted. "But I will not remain silent, for they already have done all they can against me. I have nothing left to lose, and sometimes that's the most powerful state to be in."
Carl Kozlowski is a regular Arriviste contributor and the co-author of the satirical
self-help guide Life: The Final Frontier. (Pick
this up!) He has also performed standup coast to coast and written
for the Chicago Tribune, New City Weekly in Chicago, Chicago
Reader and Pasadena Weekly.
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