Ever Wonder - What Is Scientology?

If you ever had the question, “What is Scientology?” you can now find out through a new Scientology Video Channel.

The site contains 82 broadcast-quality videos, comprising almost 3 hours of content.

I have watched many of the videos and they provide a good overview of the basic beliefs and practices of Scientology and the many social betterment programs that the Church sponsors. The information in the videos gives Internet users the chance to get the true picture of what Scientology is and does.The Church of Scientology does tremendous work to help people including programs addressing drug abuse, illiteracy, human rights and disaster relief and you can get a good idea of these programs and their results through the videos.

One of my favorites is the music video “United” which promotes human rights in a way that can be easily understood by kids and young adults.

Anonymous Incites Hate Crimes Against Scientology

Since January 17, 2008, “Anonymous,” a group of cyber-terrorists hiding their identities behind masks and computer anonymity, has targeted the Scientology religion, its Churches, leaders and parishioners with hate speech and hate crimes.

To inform “Anonymous” members who may be unaware of the criminal acts committed by their leaders, and to prevent others from being misled by “Anonymous” propaganda, this video has been produced to provide the facts. The video reveals “Anonymous” repeated incitements to hate and violence.

The Church has not interacted with these “Anonymous” individuals nor does it desire to. However, death threats and threats to plant nitroglycerin bombs in Churches have made it necessary to take security precautions and identify members of this group responsible for these crimes.

Message to Leaders of the Anonymous Hate Machine

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the truth with the false and the false with the true.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Psychiatrist Accused of Molesting Boys

Columbus, Ohio child psychiatrist Dr. Leo D’Souza has been accused of molesting young boys who were under his “treatment.”

Underage male patients of Dr. Leo D’Souza are expected to testify this week about being inappropriately touched on the genitals by D’Souza who has denied any inappropriate touching.

Five boys filed complaints charging that D’Souza, 66, of Clifton, Ohio, abused them when they were between 12 and 19, sometimes over multiple office visits.

The State Medical Board is investigating whether D’Souza should lose his medical license for the incidents that occurred at the Cincinnati Counseling Service between 1998 and 2006.

My question is, where is the criminal investigation?

D’Souza sees about 175 to 200 patients weekly, including in private practice - a scary thought considering that he has several civil lawsuits pending.

In one suit filed in late 2006, a 19 year old man accused D’Souza of sexually molesting him starting when he was about 12 or 13 years old. The man was being treated for bipolar disorder and depression.

In another lawsuit also filed in 2006, a second 19-year-old man sued D’Souza, accusing the doctor of sexually molesting him.

A third 19-year-old man who says he was sexually molested by D’Souza in 2003 settled out of court with him for $7,500 in 2005, according to Hamilton County Probate Court records.

Again, D’Souza has not been criminally charged for some strange reason.

Don’t Be Promiscuous!

Here is a public service announcement with some useful advice taken from The Way To Happiness, a non-religious moral code written by L. Ron Hubbard.

There is a whole series of public service announcements that were created based on the precepts in The Way To Happiness.

Propaganda In Germany

Here is a good example on how the media misses the boat to create  a completely false impression in order to get sound bites or to create controversy.

The most recent tirade in Germany directed against the Church of Scientology was reported on an Associated Press article, “Germany Officials Call For Scientology Ban” which was then carried around the world.

The article omits the fact that the German Ministers of Interior conference Dec. 7 did not vote for a motion to instigate procedures to ban Scientology.

Instead, those officials recognized that there is no evidence to support such a motion. Furthermore, Federal Minister of Interior Wolfgang Schauble in an interview with German Radio, also on Dec. 7, conceded that there is no legal basis for such a procedure.

The original false report that was carried in the media originated with a story in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag (and released internationally by the Associated Press) that mischaracterizes the result of the conference and omits the fact that there was no vote on the motion.

Also omitted is the information that there have been more than 40 German court decisions acknowledging the church’s religiosity, including a decision of the Federal Administrative Court is omitted from the reporting. These court decisions have repeatedly validated the rights of the Church of Scientology to operate per Article 4 of the German Constitution, have affirmed that its services are religious, that the church has the right to disseminate its teachings, that church staff members are motivated by idealistic and spiritual purposes, and that its fundraising methods are fair and aligned to what is expected of a charitable organization.

The Church and its members have been subjected to ten years of surveillance by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution which has uncovered absolutely no wrongdoing.  Yet, because it has been made a political issue, the OPC is forced to continue to “investigate”.  False statements that the Church of Scientology somehow has anti-Constitutional aims get made from time to time for political purposes and to justify the waste of taxpayer money.

Scientology has no political aims and does not seek to displace Germany’s existing churches which are state supported and beholden to the German state.

Psychiatrist Suspended for Starting Relationship with Patient

A Shelby, North Carolina psychiatrist, accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a patient, signed a consent order indefinitely suspending her medical license.

Dr. Kerry L. Balentine was accused of having a romantic relationship with one of her patients after that patient’s wife died in September 2006.

Balentine began grief counseling the patient, the consent order said. She had previously treated him for about a year.

An invitation for coffee

According to documents from the North Carolina Medical Board, Balentine began the relationship after accepting an invitation for coffee. The order said Balentine stopped seeing the patient in her office in October 2006, “implying that he was discharged from her care but not clearly terminating their physician-patient relationship.” It also stated that Balentine provided prescriptions for medications, including controlled substances to the patient, after the relationship began and did not chart them.

Admit relationship

“Dr. Balentine admits that her relationship with (the patient) violated boundaries as well as the ethics of the psychiatric profession and the medical profession as a whole,” the document said.

According to the consent order, dated Dec. 14, Balentine’s license is indefinitely suspended, she agrees to obey all laws, rules and regulations involving medical practice, she is required to notify the board of any change in residence or practice and that she will meet with the board as requested.

If she fails to comply with the order, the board will have grounds to annul, suspend or revoke her medical license.

She had medical privileges at Cleveland Regional Medical Center and Kings Mountain Hospital.

Seems to me that this sort of conduct, which is criminal in some states, needs to be made a violation of law.  I’ve read that about 10% of all psychiatrists have sexual relations with their patients - a pretty shocking figure.  But, I suppose if you don’t know what causes these types of emotional / mental problems in the first place and the highest level of  “treatment” is to drug the patient silly, then you probably wouldn’t have any qualms about starting a sexual relationship with a patient.

Psychiatrist Should be Criminally Prosecuted for Abusing Patient

Spokane psychologist Dr. John Moulton was sued in November by a former patient alleging that he used his position to seduce a patient.

According to the complaint, Dr. John Moulton committed multiple acts of malpractice and negligence while treating a female patient.

Malpractice cited in the legal complaint against Moulton includes: seeing the patient outside of treatment sessions, buying her alcoholic beverages, consuming alcohol with her, and other boundary violations and negligent acts of both a sexual and non-sexual nature.

Among the allegations detailed in the complaint, Dr. Moulton sent emails to the patient where he admitted to her that he acted like an abusive predator: “I have acted like an abusive predator, which may be the most despicable kind of person there is.”

The alleged malpractice began after the patient, checked herself into Spokane’s Sacred Heart Medical Center in April of 2005.  The hospital assigned Moulton to be treating psychiatrist.  During this two-week hospital stay, the psychologist administered a series of nine electro-shock treatments to patient.

Following discharge from the hospital, the patient returned to her family in Alaska.  On June 1, 2005, she again traveled to Spokane and re-entered Sacred Heart for additional treatment for depression.  Again, Dr. Moulton was assigned to be her treating psychiatrist, and according to the patient’s attorney, Michael S. Kolker, who said it was during the second hospital visit that Moulton told the patient he had feelings for her.

Upon her discharge from Sacred Heart on June 12th, Moulton arranged for the patient to spend time at an in-patient facility in Lake Chelan for continuing treatment for her depression.  According to Kolker, Moulton drove the patient to the Spokane airport for the flight to Lake Chelan, and kissed her before she boarded the plane.

On June 23, 2005, the patient returned to Spokane to stay at the home of her brother for continued outpatient treatment with Moulton, whose boundary violations and acts of malpractice continued.

According to Kolker, for nearly a month while he was supposed to treat the patient for depression, Moulton saw the patient almost daily outside of therapy sessions.  He took her out to bars and restaurants, consumed alcohol with her, fondled and kissed her.

“When a psychiatrist does it to a patient, it’s not dating and it’s not a relationship. It’s a boundary violation and it is abusive,” said Kolker.

Moulton then told the that he loved her and tried to convince her that she was in love with him.  They made plans for the future.  The suit said Moulton did all of this, knowing the patient was married and the mother of three children. He also knew she was on medication and had giving her multiple sessions of electro shock therapy.

In August, the patient’s husband discovered Moulton’s malpractice and confronted him.  According to allegations in the complaint, Moulton sent the patient and her husband a number of emails in which he admitted and apologized for his misconduct.  Excerpts of some of those emails are included in the complaint.

The complaint further alleges that Moulton’s negligent conduct caused the patient exacerbated depression, pain and suffering and two suicide attempts.

Unbelievable that this has not also been prosecuted as a crime against the woman.

Psychiatrist Arrested

An Ashley County Medical Center psychiatrist Paul J. Loop with a previous record of drug arrests is now facing two new felony charges after allegedly bringing crack cocaine to work last week. Loop, who has lost his job at the Ashley County Medical Center also had his medical license suspended by the Arkansas State Medical Board. There will be a hearind in February 2008 to determine whether to revoke it. [This seems like a no-brainer to me.]

Acting on a tip off from another employee, to whom Loop told that he had used crack earlier in the day, Crossett Police Department Investigator Shelbi Hughes said she found six crack rocks, worth about $250, hidden in a Tylenol bottle in Loop’s pocket.

Police also found drug paraphernalia in Loop’s room at the nearby Levee Inn.

Loop was then arrested on felony drug possession and paraphernalia charges. He could face up to 40 years in prison and a $ 25,000 fine if convicted.

A Topeka police officer found Loop asleep in a car outside a Topeka business just before 8 a.m. on April 17. The officer arrested Loop after seeing drug paraphernalia inside the car.

German Security Officials Shoot Themselves in the Foot

 

Church of Scientology of Berlin

While Tom Cruise, a well known Scientologist, was receiving a Bambi Award in Germany for the courage he showed in overcoming intense personal attack for seeking to film Valkyrie a movie in Germany about the failed attempt assassination attempt on Hilter during WWII, members of the German government were busy once again behind the scenes concocting the latest attempt to suppress members of the Church of Scientology in Germany by false villification by claiming without any foundation or specifics that the aims of the Church are unconstitutional.No one who is familiar with German political life would believe that the trouble that Mr. Cruise ran into in Germany was anything but the result of the illegal and immoral discriminatory policy of certain German officials against members of the Church of Scientology.

Reporting on the irresponsible pronouncements of the German conference of Ministers of Interior, the press has intentionally never provided its readers with the actual aims of the Church of Scientology. The the public are instead only subjected to the false sweeping generalized lies of the witch hunting Interior Ministers. These lies can be easily disproven but they are nonethless picked up and parrotted by a German press which seems completely willing to repeat the most outrageous falsehoods from political opportunists - withough question or critical examination.

In sharp contrast to the the progressive thinking individuals who awarded Mr. Cruise for his courage, the Ministers of Interior of the various German states who have supported the 10 year surveillance and harassment of the Church of Scientology by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution without ever finding any evidence of wrongdoing are an abject display of cowardice.

There are over 40 court decisions in Germany alone, not to mention in the European Court of Human Rights, that guarantee the freedom of Scientologists to practice their religion under the constitution of Germany. That these Ministers of Interior continue to ignore and feign ignorance of these court decisions, while continuing to utter their discriminatory pronouncements and false claims that the Church has anti-constitutional aims, is a display of dangerous bureaucratic incompetence that resembles the totalitrarian system of a previous era.

Their frustration that their ten year investigation of the Church has resulted in no evidence against the Church makes one wonder what political ideology these German “security” officials would really like to create in Germany.

It is time that these misguided and shorsighted German “security” officials, lead by Wolfgang Schaeuble, wake up and smell the coffee. The Church of Scientology is thriving in Germany and plans on continuing to do its job to the best of its ability. No amount of political posturing, illegal surveillance, infiltration or propaganda in the press is going to change that.

People around the world who believe in human rights are calling on these “security” officials start behaving as good citizens and adhering to the very laws, court rulings and constitution that is their duty to uphold - just like members of the Church of Scientology do - and stop acting as though they are above the law.

In sharp contrast to the recent malicious propaganda spread by these ministers about banning the Church of Scientology in Germany, here are recent decisions concerning Scientology in other Democratic Countries:

On the 31st of October 2007, the National Court in Madrid issued a landmark decision recognizing that the National Church of Scientology of Spain should be entered in the Registry of Religious Entities as a religion.

On the 24th of September 2007, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed the Court’s unanimous decision of April 2007 affirming that the Church of Scientology is entitled to the rights and protections of religious freedom that flow to religious organizations pursuant to Article 9 of the European Human Rights Convention.

The principles enunciated in that decision upheld the religious freedom of Scientologists and their religious associations and apply throughout the forty-seven member states that have signed and ratified the European Human Rights Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, including Germany.

On the 5th of November 2007, the Church of Scientology of Portugal was officially recognized as a religious organization.

On the 3rd of December 2007, the South African Revenue Service granted the Church of Scientology the status of a Public Benefit Organization as a religious entity with full tax exemption.

In hindsight, the Church of Scientology probably has little to worry about from a political body (the conference of German Ministers of Interior of the various German states) that does not have the intelligence to realize that by their own constitutution every German has the right to believe and practice their own religion freely without being dictated to by any political ideology in power. If for no other reason than the sheer incompetence that they have displayed there is probably little reason for concern. While the Ministers of Interior seek to play God, judge and jury with regard to religion, there is little doubt that they will be embarrassed and disgraced in any fair judical forum that seeks to review any ban law that they propose.