Techotic

“What Scientology Paid $8 Million To Hide” is a 7,000 words article about the Cult of Scientology dodgy practices and its embarrassing, $8 million defeat to Lawrence Wollersheim was written six year ago by Tony Ortega, a reporter who used to work for New Times LA, but the weekly paper suddenly folded and his story was never published until now.

Scientology’s process of “dianetics,” developed by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard over a period beginning in the late 1940s, was supposed to rid the body of those alien creatures. But Lawrence Wollersheim, who had defected from Scientology after serving 11 years and making about $50,000 in payments, claimed that the organization’s pricey rituals instead had made him insane and drove him to the brink of suicide. He filed suit in 1980, and six years later his trial was a sensation. Still the most expensive civil trial in L.A. court history, [This was true even in 2002, post-Simpson—T.O.] it made headlines almost daily in the spring and summer of 1986 as Scientologists jammed the courtroom and protested outside of it, complaining that their religious freedoms were being trampled on. For many in the public, reports of the trial gave them their first detailed description of Scientology, which today counts such celebrities as John Travolta and Tom Cruise among its members. Travolta himself made a visit to the trial that May which was widely reported.

In the lawsuit, Wollersheim claimed that after he left Scientology in 1979 the organization retaliated by destroying his business and attempting to destroy him. In five months of testimony, Wollersheim, his psychologist, and former Scientologists described the coercion he was subjected to, sacrifices he was expected to make, and bizarre teachings he was fed, which made Hubbard’s outfit sound more like a mind control cabal out of The Manchurian Candidate than the mainstream faith it claimed to be. Scientology’s attorneys countered that Wollersheim had come to the organization with a preexisting mental condition and was a drug user. Wollersheim was seeking $25 million in damages.

The jury awarded him $30 million.

[via villagevoice]