UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
LA VENDA VAN SCHAICK,
Plaintiff
CIVIL ACTION
vs. NO. 79-2491-G
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF CALIFORNIA, et al,
Defendants
1) I have personal knowledge of the following facts:
2) I was a member of the Sea Organization of Scientology from February 1971 to December 1981, during which time I held many positions and was in many locations where I directly observed L. Ron Hubbard and other Scientology executives. At no time did I ever get the impression that Mr. Hubbard or any other senior executive considered that Scientology is a religion. My own understanding, held throughout all the time I spent in Scientology, and the policy expressed to me by other Sea Org members was that Scientology operated totally as a business, and its efforts to be recognized as a "religion" were only to evade taxation and government regulations.
3) In January 1980, I was assigned to a project to collect materials about L. Ron Rubbard for the purpose of providing documentation for a biography to be written by Omar V. Garrison. During the following two years I read several thousand pages of documentation, much of it written by Mr. Hubbard himself. Never before had anyone within Scientlogy ever had all this information assembled in one place or had the opportunity to view and assimilate the whole truth about L. Ron Hubbard. From these documents and other sources I learned that Mr. Hubbard had continually misrepesented himself and had lied about his past, his accomplishments and credentials. I learned also from the documents I collected that Mr. Hubbard had lied about how and why Scientology had been established as a "religion". In a despatch he wrote in early 1980 to the people in charge of the projects he had ordered to remedy his legal problems with the IRS and various damage claim cases, he stated that the creation of Scientology as a "religion" was not his idea but had come about when the membership of Scientology in the early 1950's, unbeknownst to him, had voted to form a "church". I personally saw and read that despatch. Mr. Hubbard's statement is a lie.
In a letter to the head of Scientology in the US in early 1953, Mr. Hubbard stated:
"We don't want a clinic. We want one in operation but not in name. Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center. Think up its name, will you. And we could put in nice desks and our boys in neat blue with diplomas on the walls and
- knock psychotherapy into history and
- make enough money to shine up my operating scope and
- keep the HAS solvent. It is a problem in practical business.
"I await your reaction on the religion angle. In my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less customers with what we've got to sell. A religious charter would be necessary in Pennsylvania or NJ to make it stick. But I sure could make it stick. We're treating the present time beingness, psychotherapy treats the past and the brain. And brother, that's religion, not mental science."
I found a great deal of similar evidence in the materials I assembled before I left Scientology. Mr. Hubbard's life has been a continuing pattern, since the early 1940's, of fraudulent business practices, tax evasion, flight from creditors and those seeking recompense, and then going into hiding, outside the reach of wronged individuals and legal jurisdictions. In short, it is the life of a con man.
4) In early 1980 I was also assigned to a mission, the purpose of which was to work out legal strategies, and get them implemented, which would allow Mr. Rubbard to still control all of Scientology via his Commodore's Messenger Organization while being shielded from any lawsuits or legal involvements and responsibilities. One of the main problems which had to be resolved by this mission, and one of the arguments used in various court cases as proof that Scientology was not a religion, was the fact that Scientology was set up so that funds inured to the benefit of L. Ron Hubbard. For years Mr. Hubbard had had his legal representatives claim that he was not paid by Scientology, other than a $35,000.00 annual consultant's fee, and royalties from sales of his books. Another claim was that he did not control Scientology monies. The fact is he had absolute control of all Scientology accounts. As late as 1980 I saw a despatch from him in which he ordered that unlimited Scientology funds were approved for a project to get him a Nobel Prize. Another fact is that he received millions of Scientology dollars directly from a foreign corporation called Religious Research Foundation. Payments for auditing or courses at Flag by non-US Scientologists went into RRF accounts which Mr. Hubbard controlled absolutely and used totally for his own purposes.
5) I learned through my study of the documentation I assembled, and from more than ten years of observation of Mr. Hubbard and the Scientology movement, that Mr. Hubbard has cruelly deceived his followers to the point where they will themselves lie and attempt to deceive others about the truth cncerning him and Scientology. Scientology spokesmen and witnesses have stated that Mr. Hubbard doesn't control the organizations. The fact is he has absolute control, including financial control, and Scientologists know it. Between 1978 and 1980 I participated, along with at least 250 other Scientologists, in several massive operations to destroy or hide the evidences of Mr. Hubbard's control. Scientology spokesmen and witnesses have claimed that throughout 1980 and 1981 Mr. Hubbard could not be reached through the organization, or that organization executives did not know where he was. The fact is, the most senior executives were in continual communication with him throughout this period. Scientology spokesmen and witnesses have gone to great lengths to "prove" that Scientology is a valid religion, while knowing that it was simply a behavior therapy masquerading as a "church", and making a mockery of actual honest religious practices. In 1980, Watchdog Committee, the senior CMO body, responsible only to Mr. Hubbard and senior to every Scientology organization, ordered that every Sea Org member had to complete the Minister's Course in two weeks or they would be assigned to the RPF. The reason given was to make every Sea Org member a "minister of the church of Scientology" and so avoid the US Selective Service draft then pending. What most Scientologists, and especially Sea Org members, don't know is that Mr. Hubbard had duped them. My knowledge based on documentation and observation, is that the major reason for Mr Hubbard's calling Scientology a "religion" in addition to tax evasion, is to hide behind Constitutional guarantees for religions and so carry out his scheme of mind control to keep his followers duped. He has systematically and knowingly lied to and defrauded his followers, kept them from finding out the truth or becoming free with cruel and bizarre treatment, as for example with the RPF, and kept them economically and mentally suppressed, while he made millions of dollars from their labor.
6) I am personally aware that Mr. Hubbard's policy of Fair Game is still a practice of Scientology. Since I left the organization with my wife in December 1981, I have been declared an enemy, and I believe my life and my wife's life, are in danger.
Signed under the pains and penalties of perjury this
22 July, 1982.
GERRY ARMSTRONG