Table Of ContentCONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1 The Escapee
Chapter 2 Ron’s War
Chapter 3 Dianetics
Chapter 4 Dianetics Goes South
Chapter 5 Old Ron’s Con
Chapter 6 Bunkumology
Chapter 7 The Scammer Scammed
Chapter 8 The Anderson Inquiry
Chapter 9 The Riff-raff of Australia
Chapter 10 All Aboard
Chapter 11 The Church of Spyentology
Chapter 12 Celebrity and New Faith
Chapter 13 The Rock Concert
Chapter 14 Deep Sleep
Chapter 15 The Greatest Game of All
Chapter 16 The Gillhams Blow
Chapter 17 Julian Assange’s Noisy Investigation
Chapter 18 Cruise and Kidman
Chapter 19 The Packer Acquisition
Chapter 20 Mike Rinder Leaves the Building
Glossary of Terms
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Index
Photos Section
Copyright
PREFACE
UNTIL 2010, I WAS ignorant of the activities of the Church of Scientology. I was
12 months into one of the best jobs in the Australian media, working as a
reporter for ABC TV’s Lateline program. I was looking around for a story to
get my teeth into. I didn’t have to wait too long. Lateline’s Executive
Producer, John Bruce, called me into his office and in his formidable baritone
said, ‘I think I’ve got something for you …’
Quentin McDermott had just aired his Four Corners program ‘The Ex-
Files’. It contained a series of explosive allegations about forced abortions,
punishment camps, abusive work practices and families being torn apart by
Scientology. Quentin had two strong leads he had been unable to follow up
on and had generously passed them on to Lateline.
The stories related to former Scientologists Scarlett Hanna and Carmen
Rainer. Scarlett was the daughter of Vicki Dunstan, the head of the Church of
Scientology in Australia. Scarlett wanted to blow the lid off one of
Scientology’s dark secrets – how children were treated inside the cult. She
told me she had been separated from her parents and forced to live in a unit
with 25 other children of Sea Org members. She said children were treated
like cattle. Scarlett said she did not see her father, Mark Hanna, for several
years after he was sent to the US as punishment for failing to prevent a
critical story airing on Australian TV.
Carmen Rainer had been sexually abused between the ages of 8 and 11,
by her Scientologist stepfather, Robert Kerr. She told me that a senior
Scientologist, Jan Eastgate, had coached her to lie to police and community
services about the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her
stepfather, an allegation that Eastgate denied. Carmen also said that
Scientologists had told her the abuse was her fault because she had been bad
in a previous life.
The Church of Scientology did all it could to prevent Scarlett and Carmen
from telling their stories. Lateline was threatened with an injunction and
defamation writs. Scarlett said her father had threatened to sue her if she went
ahead and spoke to me. The night before the interview was due to be
recorded, Vicki Dunstan spent the night at her daughter’s unit pleading with
her not to talk to me.
When it was clear the stories were going ahead, the Church of
Scientology did all it could to make life hard for me. No-one at the centre of
the allegations would speak to me. Negotiating an interview with their
spokeswoman, Virginia Stewart, was a painstaking process. Finally, after
much back and forth, she agreed to be interviewed. But when the cameras
were due to roll, she simply failed to turn up. When we rescheduled for
another day she brought along Sarah McClintock, a committed Scientologist,
who disputed Scarlett’s version of events.
The Church of Scientology wanted to film the interviews on a video
camera, which was no problem to me. But when I started asking difficult
questions of McClintock, Sei Broadhurst, the Scientology public affairs
representative who was filming the interview, abruptly yelled out, ‘I have to
change my batteries!’ It seemed like a preordained tactic to give Sarah
thinking time once the questions got too tough.
When the stories aired, the blowback began. The ABC and Lateline were
bombarded with complaints from Scientologists. I was accused of bias and
interacting with members of a cyber terrorist group (by this they meant I
spoke to members of Anonymous as a reporter might do while filming an
anti-Scientology protest). They complained about my stories but never sued.
They said the allegations were egregiously false but the organisation with a
well-earned reputation for silencing journalists and publishers with
aggressive litigation never took it to the courts.
Included in the correspondence I received following those stories was an
email from Virginia Stewart’s father, Allen Wright. In her on-camera
interview Scientology’s spokeswoman had denied that children and parents
were routinely separated by the church. Her father, by now living in
Switzerland, had seen the program and was disgusted by the comments. He
wrote me the following note:
I am Virginia Stewart’s father.
I was a Scientologist, doing up to OT 5 in the Church of Scientology
and being on staff in Sydney, but I saw the whole place turn from
something fantastic to a good approximation of a Nazi concentration
camp after 1982, so I just left when my staff contract was up.
I still had great relationships with both of my daughters until
1988, when Virginia phoned me to say she was joining the Sea Org
and could no longer have any communication or connection with me.
Since then she has kept that decision and never once originated a
communication, or replied to any from me across the intervening 22
years.
I wished to grant her complete freedom of choice in her life, no
matter how much I disagreed with her choice, and how much I missed
her, but her directly lying publicly on your show has really pissed me
off and I’m willing to make this story public, if you are interested.
Please feel free to email or phone me if it will help put some
control in on this criminal organisation.
Regards,
Allen Wright
Virginia Stewart’s father had made a similar post on an Internet forum
known as the Ex-Scientologist’s Message Board. He said, ‘I even sent her a
great gift for her 40th birthday, but not even a thank you card.’ I quickly
organised a camera crew to travel to Allen’s home to do an interview, but he
pulled out at the last moment. His daughter must have have seen the public
relations disaster that was about to unfold. Allen wrote to me again.
Steve,
I have just had a long email from Virginia, the first communication in
22 years!
And I feel there is a chance of continued communication, so I’d
like to put a hold on the interview for now.
Sorry.
But this doesn’t mean I don’t applaud what you are doing.
The same organisation that could separate a loving father from his
daughter for 22 years could suddenly allow them to communicate again if it
meant that it helped close down the threat of negative publicity.
At every opportunity, before, during and after I covered the stories of
Scarlett Hanna and Carmen Rainer, the Church of Scientology tried to make
life difficult for me, my Executive Producer and the ABC. It was a common
tactic designed to intimidate journalists, editors and publishers to the stage
where they made a decision that these stories were simply too hard to cover.
My instincts told me it was worth the trouble. I thought that if they were
willing to carry on in this way to prevent two stories going to air, what else
did they have to hide? To his credit, John Bruce agreed and backed me to
keep going.
The more I looked, the more I found. I did further stories for Lateline and
the reaction from the Church of Scientology was repeated. They threatened to
sue me, sent complaints to the Managing Director of the ABC about me and
sent me statements that at all times denied all allegations raised by former
Scientologists. One thing, however, did change. They never again granted me
an interview with Virginia Stewart or any other Scientologist.
As I researched the topic more I was struck by the extraordinary stories
where Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, were entwined with
Australia. Hubbard had served in Brisbane in World War II and visited
Melbourne in 1959, where he declared that Australia would be the world’s
first ‘clear continent’.
Australia was the first country to have a public inquiry into Scientology
and the first place in the world where it was banned. I discovered that many
of Hubbard’s harshest policies had evolved in response to that inquiry and the
banning of Scientology in three states: Victoria, South Australia and Western
Australia. Among these harsh policies was Fair Game, which (according to
Hubbard) allowed critics to be ‘deprived of property or injured by any means
by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be
tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.’ Australia had changed Scientology
forever and that story had never fully been told.
A number of Australians also had a major impact inside Scientology.
Mike Rinder, who grew up in Adelaide in the 1960s, became its international
spokesman and head of its feared Office of Special Affairs (OSA). He later
became one of the cult’s fiercest and most influential critics.
Former Brisbane kindergarten teacher Yvonne Gillham set up
Scientology’s Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Her daughters, Terri and
Janis, were two of Hubbard’s original messengers, responsible for everything
from pulling his trousers on in the morning, to delivering abuse to
subordinates. Both rose to be senior executives in Scientology and until now
have never told their remarkable stories.
Then there are the big Australian personalities who collided with
Scientology. James Packer was recruited into the organisation when he hit
rock bottom after the One.Tel crash. Nicole Kidman had her marriage to Tom
Cruise undermined by Scientology spies and wiretaps. Rupert Murdoch was
spied on by the Scientologists after his newspapers took aim at them in
Australia in the 1960s. Julian Assange was targeted when he helped publish
one of the first anti-Scientology websites in the 1990s. Two Scientologists
exposed one of the worst cases of medical malpractice in Australian history at
Sydney’s Chelmsford Hospital. The Church of Scientology even recruited
elite rugby league players including State of Origin and Test prop Pat Jarvis.
The more I looked the more extraordinary revelations I found.
Four years later, after conducting over 200 interviews, and spending
countless days pouring over documents, files and transcripts, I finally
managed to pull the story together.
In Scientology’s foundation book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of
Mental Health, Hubbard has an introductory chapter that includes a section
titled ‘How to Read this Book’. I feel like I need a similar section in my book
because I think that as the reader there are a few things you need know about
up front.
The Church of Scientology would not put forward anyone to be
interviewed for this book.
I tried to get interviews with church officials in Australia and the US, as well
as practicing Scientologists at the centre of certain allegations – all requests
were declined.
At times I had email exchanges with Vicki Dunstan, the head of the
church in Australia, where she requested that I put all questions in writing
before she would consider interview requests. I refused to comply with this.
Former Scientologists I interviewed had not made the same request. I felt like
it gave them an opportunity to rehearse their answers and would cut out the
possibility of asking follow-up questions. I also believed they had no
intention of giving me interviews anyway and this proved to be the case. I did
manage to interview some current Scientologists but this was done without
the church’s knowledge.
After church representatives declined to do interviews, I laid out the key
allegations in writing and requested written responses. Through their lawyer,
Patrick George from Kennedys, the church accused me of being unreasonable
and asked for further details including the names of sources. When I asked if
I could publish online in full all correspondence between myself and the
church so readers could make up their own minds about who was being
unreasonable, I got another legal letter.
It said in part ‘. . . we expressly do not authorise, and indeed are
instructed not to authorise, the publication or disclosure of our letters which
were sent to you on a confidential basis. Further, publication of the
allegations with knowledge of their falsity leaves you liable to substantial
general and aggravated damages.’
Eventually I got written responses from Scientology’s lawyers to the key
allegations. This meant it was impossible to test their claims in an interview
setting. The former Scientologists I spoke to were willing to have their claims
tested and for me to follow up and further scrutinise their claims in
subsequent interviews.
It is hard to know when the Church of Scientology is telling the truth.
I have come across evidence of Scientology officials being punished when
critical stories have been published even when it’s not been their fault. With
that in mind a statement from a Scientology official has all the credibility of a
statement coming from the press office of the North Korean President Kim
Jong-un. It might be true, but there are often good reasons why it might be a
pack of lies. If the Church of Scientology is hiding something, why would an
official tell the truth if it meant being sent off to a punishment camp?
Hubbard’s internal justice system, known as ‘ethics’, punishes those who
speak out against Scientology. In fact, inside Scientology’s justice system,
many High Crimes, the worst offences of all, relate to criticising or
embarrassing Scientology in public. That means there is a powerful
