http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22058312-28737,00.html

The risk of litigation was deemed too great. Even now Aron chooses his words carefully; the coffers of Scientology are deep, thanks to slick marketing and the remarkable dedication of members relentless in taking on critics.

After the group's teachings were exposed in court this week following a double-slaying in Sydney, cult watchers including Aron see a rare opportunity to conduct a public debate about Scientology's influence on mental health and safety. "The (Scientologists) are probably hoping this will all go away and I'm hoping it won't just go away this time," Aron says. "Governments should be looking closely at this, at least to see if (Scientologists) are breaching a duty of care and if they are complicit in a terrible double tragedy. It is a very significant matter that needs to be looked at laterally and level-headedly. It is just amazing that nothing like this has happened before to force the issue into the public arena."

In Bankstown Local Court, documents describe a 25-year-old mentally disturbed woman whose parents were devoted Scientologists. Her condition was acute. Under normal circumstances she would have been afforded psychiatric care and medication to minimise the risk of harm to herself, members of her family or bystanders.

But as Hubbard had declared war on psychiatrists, denouncing them as evil and comparing their work with terrorism, many Scientology leaders and their devotees are compelled to maintain his rage.

After receiving initial care, the Sydney woman's parents are believed to have declined to provide her with follow-up care because of their Scientology beliefs. By the time she received help it was too late. She allegedly stabbed to death her father, 53, sister, 15, and critically wounded her mother.

Hubbard's hardline position against psychiatry may have been influenced by the American Psychological Association's advice to its members that they should not adopt the techniques advocated in Hubbard's 1950 publication, Dianetics.

In a subsequent Scientology journal, Hubbard wrote an article, "Today's Terrorism", in which he declared that "the psychiatrist and his front groups operate straight out of the terrorist textbooks. The Mafia looks like a convention of Sunday school teachers compared to these terrorist groups." Elsewhere, he wrote: "There's only one remedy for crime: get rid of the psychs! They are causing it."

I don't  know much about scientology but naturally i do not like cults in general. I also however have some perhaps healthy cynicism about at least some members of the mental health profession. I agree that of their daughter needed help then they should have obtained it for her.

yes, cults are a brain/spirit crippling danger. All cults. 
They deny freedom and demand total compliance to "their" ways.


I think scientology denied any contact with her or that family. Not surprising they claim that.
Seems the incident has generally disappeared from the media ??

Of course he's not going to show the church of scientology. The church is not known for it's willingness to engage in debate by using it's fair right of reply. it is known for attempting to sue and censor critics using every legal means available.

http://news.smh.com.au/unauthorised-biography-of-tom-cruise-sparks-angry-denials/20080116-1mba.html

An explosive and unauthorised biography of Hollywood star Tom Cruise hit US bookshelves on Tuesday, despite an angry denial of the book's most startling allegations from The Church of Scientology.

Cruise, one of the most high-profile members of the group, had no immediate comment to make on the book, according to his publicist's office, while the church described the book as "a bigoted, defamatory assault replete with lies."

Penned by British journalist and writer Andrew Morton, who lifted the lid on Princess Diana's marriage in "Diana: Her True Story," the book offers a mostly unfavourable portrait of Cruise as a calculating control freak.

The Church of Scientology, which comes across as the real subject of the book, issued a lengthy statement rebuffing some of the book's most lurid allegations and insisted Morton had not given it the right to reply.

"The Church of Scientology requested to be interviewed or be presented with any allegations so we could respond. Morton refused despite our insistence in offering our cooperation," it said in a statement issued to the US press.

"At no time did he request interviews nor did he attempt to get any information from us. Accuracy and truth were not on Morton's agenda," it added.

The book details lawsuits the Hollywood star has filed over the years against media reports alleging he was homosexual and infertile, while examining the role Scientology played in his marriage to fellow Hollywood star Nicole Kidman.

"Insinuations that Mr. Cruise is second-in-command of the Church are not only false, they are ludicrous," it added.

In response to perhaps the most bizarre claim of the book it said: "Is it possible Katie (Holmes -- Cruise's wife) and Tom's baby could be the vessel for L. Ron Hubbard's (the founder of Scientology) spirit?...

"The Church does not, and never has believed any newborn is the reincarnation or the offspring of its founder, Mr. Hubbard."

"Was Katie impregnated by L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm? ... As distasteful as it is to have to say it, Mr. Hubbard's sperm was never frozen."

The book routinely refers to scientology as a "cult" saying it "likes to market itself, falsely as an 'applied religion.'"

Litigation surrounding the book seems a distinct possibility. It is not being published in Britain for legal reasons, but the Church of Scientology is reportedly considering legal action against US publishers St Martin's Press.

The church did not comment on the reports when contacted Tuesday.

Seemingly aware of Cruise's history of libel challenges, the book quotes the star as telling Harper's Bazaar "I don't like suing people ... I take no pleasure in it.

"But there comes a point where it's beyond silly; it's destructive. I will sue. I will sue every single time that I can until it stops. And when they stop, I will stop."

Regardless of possible legal maneuvers, the buzz surrounding the book, entitled "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography," had already helped propel the book to number nine in Amazon.com's list of top sellers Tuesday.

I think they believe we were put here by aliens and that our spirits are trapped in a volcano somewhere. South Park did a good story on them.

http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/03/scientology_anonymous_protests_tom_cruise_01.php

After an embarrassing string of high-profile defection and leaked videos, Scientology is under attack from a faceless cabal of online activists. Has America's most controversial religion finally met its match?

It's been a bad couple of months for the Church of Scientology. In December, German authorities took a significant step toward outlawing the group, announcing that they "do not consider Scientology an organization that is compatible with the constitution." In January, St. Martin's Press published Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, which painted a scathing portrait of the actor's chosen religion as a money-mad, fascist mind-control sect led by Cruise's closest friend, David Miscavige, a gun-loving high-school dropout with a Napoleon complex who runs his religion like a paramilitary group. Morton's book kicked off yet another blistering round of bad PR for the image-obsessed Church, with headlines about its efforts to draw in Katie Holmes, allegations that Cruise functions as the Church's second-in-command, and the far-fetched belief among some Scientology "fanatics" that Suri Cruise was actually sired using Hubbard's frozen sperm. It debuted at number one on the New York Times best-seller list.

Then came the video. You've probably seen it by now—leaked footage of Tom Cruise accepting the Church's Freedom Medal of Valor award at a 2004 gathering of the International Association of Scientologists. Slickly produced, with the theme from Mission: Impossible pumping along in the background, the clip features a manic Cruise exhorting his co-religionists to commit themselves to the cause. "Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it's not like anyone else," he says. "As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it. Because you're the only one who can help."

The Tom Cruise video first appeared on YouTube on January 14, the day before Morton's biography went on sale. (According to one longtime critic of Scientology who is in contact with other anti-cult activists, the leak was purposefully timed to coincide with the book's release.) It was up for one day before the Church forced YouTube to take it down, citing copyright infringement. The clumsy attempt at censorship angered many on the Web, including the Manhattan media site Gawker, which obtained its own copy and continues to host the video despite the threat of a lawsuit. At press time, the footage had been viewed more than 2.7 million times.

Then came Anonymous. On January 21, a video titled "Message to Scientology" appeared on YouTube. A brilliant work of agitprop, the video (embedded below) features a monotone, computer-generated voice speaking in staccato against a mesmerizing backdrop of gathering clouds. The message, which bears quoting at length, is ominous:

"Hello, Scientology. We are Anonymous. Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation, suppression of dissent, your litigious nature: All of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. ... We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."

Within hours of the video's posting, all hell broke loose. Almost immediately, the Church's main website, scientology.org, went down under a distributed denial of service attack, a classic hacker technique that overwhelms a target's website with phantom user traffic until it crashes. Scientology offices worldwide were flooded with prank phone calls and so-called black faxes—pages upon pages of blank black pages—tying up their phone lines and emptying ink cartridges. Dozens of proprietary Church documents—videos, lectures, and course materials worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in Scientology's pay-to-pray scheme—began showing up on YouTube, BitTorrent, and countless websites.

Anonymous is the catchall term for an amorphous group of online activists-slash-hackers-slash-pranksters-slash-dadaists organized loosely around two online message boards, 4chan.org and 711chan.org. Anons, as they call themselves, are steeped in the anarchic and exceptionally juvenile culture of the Internet, and function as something like online yippies. The lolcats meme, for example—a series of inexplicably funny pictures of cats with comically misspelled captions like, "I can has cheezburger?"—first emerged on the 4chan boards, and its members have claimed responsibility for a long list of feats, including taking down white nationalist websites and stealing the passwords to 72,000 MySpace pages.

Anonymous managed to disrupt the Scientology website for three days. And in a show of force—and a surprising departure from its previous, Internet-focused projects—it also dispatched legions of real live protesters to Scientology facilities around the world for coordinated pickets.

Add to that the recent defections of several prominent Church members, including David Miscavige's own niece, Jenna Miscavige Hill—who is openly attacking her uncle and the Church—and Mike Rinder, the Church's former chief spokesman and public face, and you can see why the folks in Clearwater are wary of outsiders.