Resolution

 

At the same time, for publicity purposes, a resolution was passed condemning "the harmful cult" and recommending that "a close watch should be maintained to prevent its spread".

Scientology was even made the whipping boy for crimes which came before the courts. For example, when a male nurse in Sydney appeared in Quarter Sessions, after pleading guilty of an offence against an eight-year-old boy, Dr. Emmanuel Fisher, a psychiatrist and member of the World Federation of Mental health, gave expert testimony in his defence. Dr. Fisher told the court that Scientology was 99 per cent responsible for the man's criminal behaviour. He had attended the cult's lectures.Thereupon, showing tender concern for an aggressive, adult pederast who had sexually assaulted a child, the magistrate - a judge Monahan - released the man on a £100 bond and said he hoped his name would not be published. It wasn't.While on the stand, Dr. Fisher was permitted to discuss two other wholly irrelevant cases in which he said he had treated two young people who had been attending lectures on Scientology."In another case, also before the Sydney Sessions, a judge Amsberg said, after receiving psychiatric reports on an estate agent he had sentenced for fraudulently converting trust funds: "It is clear that a good deal of . your mental difficulty is due to your association with people who call themselves Scientologists. It seems like an evil cloud settles on a person."Declaring that "he has my deepest sympathy", judge Amsberg then signed an order to have the defendant removed to a mental asylum where he would "receive proper psychiatric treatment".In response to pressure brought by the State Health Council and others associated with that body, in November 1968 a bill was introduced in the Parliament of Western Australia similar to the one earlier passed by the State of Victoria; prohibiting the practice and teaching of Scientology. Voting on the measure divided along party lines, with the government's majority of three insuring passage of the Act. During a lengthy debate of the Bill. H. Graham, deputy leader of the Opposition promised that "when a Labour Government is elected - whenever that might be - high on the list of priorities will be the repeal of this rotten piece of legislation".

Scientologists pointed out that Dr. A. S. Ellis, chairman of the State's Mental Health Committee, and one of the chief instigators of the Western Australian legislation, had attended the founding meetings of the World Mental Health Organization in 1948 and had served under Dr. E. Cunningham Dax for nearly ten years.Soon after the outlawing of Scientology in Western Australia, a similar Bill was introduced in the South Australian legislature. Again, voting divided along party lines, with the Opposition solidly against it. When the vote was tied, the deciding vote in favour of the Bill was cast by Tom Scott, Speaker of the House. Scott's personal physician was an outspoken critic of Scientology and a member of the South Australian Association for Mental Health, a local affiliate of the World Federation for Mental health.Opposition leader D. A. Dunstan, who had previously investigated Scientology when he was Attorney-General, told members of the House: "I must say that after a few complaints made to me about Scientology in South Australia, we investigated this matter, following the urging of the Victorian Chief Secretary. I had it drawn to my attention that there were a number of prominent citizens of standing in South Australia who could not in any way be said to be mentally unstable or unsatisfactory citizens (they were the reverse, being prominent in community organizations), who were involved in Scientology and who claimed to have derived personal benefit from it."" (Emphasis added.)In reviewing the hearings that resulted in the Anderson

Report and those which followed the same pattern in the states of Western and Southern Australia, I do not see how any unbiased observer can escape the conclusion that they were political window-dressing. In all of them the findings were preconceived and the evidence highly selective and often distorted to support the a priori assumption that Scientology is evil. Furthermore, the language of the Reports which issued from the Inquiries is clearly propagandist rather than judicial.In New Zealand, it was a different story. There for the first -and perhaps the last time - the case against Scientology was weighed in honest balances by men for whom, apparently, the truth meant more than accommodation to a politically powerful elite.This does not mean that the New Zealand Commission of Inquiry gave Scientology passing marks in all the subjects that came before them. On the contrary, much of their report is unfavourable to Scientology. But in reading through the summary of their findings, one gets the strong impression that they are based on careful examination and analysis, not upon prejudice and pre-commitment. The criticisms offered are pretty much those that any fairminded, non-Scientologist would make on the basis of the evidence presented. The Commission does not quote the Anderson Report, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, nor the "expert" opinions of psychiatrists and cow-college professors of psychology - all with an axe to grind.Instead, they addressed themselves to an impartial scrutiny of the activities, methods, and practices of the Hubbard Scientology Organization in New Zealand. At the opening of the session in Auckland, the Commission chairman stated that the hearings would not in general "extend to or include any inquiry into the 'philosophy, teachings or beliefs' of Scientology".No evidence was given in camera.

The move against Scientology in New Zealand was begun in the usual way: on June 28, 1968, a petitition bearing 716 signatures was presented to Parliament, asking that a Board of Inquiry be set up to investigate Scientology, and requesting legislative action. The petitition was referred to the Select Committee on Social Services, which, after hearing evidence, recommended that the Inquiry be held.The Commission was set up by Order in Council on February 3, 1969. Sir Guy Richardson Powles, the New Zealand Ombudsman and E. V. Dumbleton, retired newspaper editor were members of the Commission, with G. S. Orr as assisting counsel.

The Commission sat for eight days, during which they heard twenty-seven witnesses, whose testimony filled 650 pages of transcript.The Report of their conclusions and recommendations was submitted to the Governor-General of New Zealand on June 30, 1969.Throughout the Inquiry, the Commission was mainly concerned (and I believe, justifiably so) with a number of practices which Scientology lumped together under the heading of Ethics.Officially, Ethics is defined as "rationality towards the highest level of survival for the individual, the future race, the group and mankind, and the other dynamics taken collectively. Ethics are reason and the contemplation of optimum survival".That all sounds innocuous enough. The rub came in the security system which Hubbard and his followers developed to insure "optimum survival".The problem, apparently, was twofold. There was a question of the individual preclear's progress, if he came under the criticism or opposition of someone in his immediate environment who was hostile to Scientology. There was also the need to deal with persons within the organization itself, who wanted to use Scientology as a nucleus for their own personal brand of technology, altering the procedures to fit their new concepts. Scientology minister Robert H. Thomas explained the background of the first problem to me in these words:

"It was discovered a long time ago - in the early 60s that certain individuals did not respond properly to processing. They seemed not to make gains the way we expect people to do. It was discovered that they had connections to the outside, or certain kinds of problems, or difficulties in their personal lives, which had to be handled before they could give enough attention even to get into an auditing situation and derive any benefit.

"In such cases, we would issue an order to that person, saying do this or do that, or you will not be given any further auditing. We found that the person having problems was connected to people outside who were antagonistic to Scientology; were, in fact, trying to destroy Scientology. As long as the preclear was connected to or under the influence or domination of such people, they would not progress because the hostile people were a continuing source of enturbulation."

The outside troublemakers (who were more often than not, close relatives, parents, or marital partners) were known as Suppressive Persons. If a Scientologist remained in association with them he was declared to be a Potential Trouble Source (PTS).

The only effective solution to such a situation was deemed to be a formal act of "disconnection" by the PTS from the people in his life who were threatening Scientology. This took the form of a letter from the Scientologist to the Suppressive person or persons, notifying them that thereafter they would be allowed no contact with the writer. The wording and length of the letters varied but their residual import was the same. The New Zealand Commission of Inquiry quoted the following, from a Scientologist to her aunt. It is fairly typical:

"I am disconnecting from you from now on. If you try to ring me, I will not answer, I will not read any mail you send, and I refuse to have anything to do with you in any way whatsoever. All communication is cut completely."

While such abrupt and seemingly permanent ruptures in intimate human relationships were often followed by greater consternation on the part of the Suppressive Person in some cases the individual who had taken that final step stood to benefit from it. For a husband or wife who had been under the thumb of his or her domineering mate; or for the forty-year-old man still tied to his mother's apron strings, disconnection could only be a joyous emancipation.However, from a human and community-relations point of view, there are better ways of dealing with such situations, as Scientology itself eventually came to see.Scientology's Ethics division also was charged with maintaining the strict internal discipline that Hubbard felt was necessary to ensure the "optimum survival" of a worldwide organization like Scientology. A corps of Ethics officers, who combined the duties of both an intelligence service and a tribunal which heard evidence and meted out punishment to offenders, was established in every Scientology centre.

At one point in the development of this security system, the inevitable dissensions, weaknesses, and threats of egodriven reformers who wanted to "take over" Scientology and run it according to their personal views, resulted in practices that were called "harsh ethics".

Disconnection was only one of the remedies imposed. Ethics could, for example, mete out other penalties ranging in severity from personal humiliation for minor offences, to criminal charges for serious or "High Crimes" such as treason.Scientologists who became what Hubbard called a "down statistics" - i.e., a drawback to the advancement of the org. -might be required to wear a dirty grey rag on their left arms, They could "be employed at any additional work" and were subject to day and night confinement to premises.

For such misdemeanours as carelessness or neglect which resulted in expense to the org. - the offender could be confined in or barred from the premises, He was obliged to wear a handcuff on his left wrist.Another and, it seems to me, even less excusable practice was that of declaring an enemy Fair Game. Any person so designated (by an Ethics Order) could be deprived of property or injured by any means, fair or foul. He could be "tricked, sued, or lied to, or destroyed".How far Scientologists went in applying the Fair Game rule during that period of the movement's history, I do not know. Many ugly rumours and second-hand accounts of physical assaults, slander and false legal charges against those labelled Suppressive Persons have been circulated by ex-Scientologists and by Hubbard's avowed enemies. In any case, such practices can only be viewed with abhorrence by decent people; and that, indeed, is the way the Scientologists themselves, including Hubbard, seem to regard them in retrospect.Granted that Hubbard was faced with the major problem that has plagued every religion or organization based upon ritualistic procedures - that of preserving the integrity of its body of doctrine - it seems to me it could have been handled in a more Scientological way.At the same time, I have little patience with those who severely criticize Scientology for the strict discipline it imposes upon its adherents and yet find nothing blameworthy in, say, the Roman Catholic practice of excommunication, doctrine of infallibility and system of canonical law, with its own lawyers and court of first and last instance.