St Petersburg times of 29 March 2000
publicr...@scientology.org
The city's permit allows the church to shift from underground work to
above ground, where the $45-million building will rise seven stories
and a tower, 15 stories.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 29, 2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
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CLEARWATER -- After months of negotiations with the Church of
Scientology, city officials issued a permit Tuesday that allows the
church to continue construction of its massive new downtown building.
The pair of towering white cranes that loom over the project, mostly
idle since the fall, will come to life once more.
For 16 months, the building has taken shape below ground as workers
shaped a foundation and a giant basement that will serve as a dining
facility for Scientology's uniformed staff.
Now, the seven-story "Super Power" building will begin to grow skyward,
gradually taking a permanent place along downtown Clearwater's low-
slung skyline.
The crowning feature of the $45-million building will be a 15-story
tower, visible from blocks away, topped by an eight-point Scientology
cross made of bronze.
Construction is expected to be completed in two years.
The church began construction in November 1998 with a foundation
permit. But city officials did not want to issue a standard building
permit for the rest of the building until they were satisfied the
church would provide for parking.
At 384,000 square feet, the building will be the largest Scientology
has ever constructed. It also will be the largest building in downtown
Clearwater and one of the largest in Pinellas County.
The church expects the building will lead to a doubling of its 1,000-
member Clearwater staff and a sharp increase in the number of
Scientologists who visit Clearwater, from the current 2,000 a week to
as many as 5,000.
The permit was released Tuesday after Scientology provided a bank
letter guaranteeing the city up to $3.6-million, an amount that
probably will never be required.
Under the city code, those who build in downtown may either construct
the required number of parking spaces for their projects or pay the
city a fee in lieu of parking. The fee is $4,500 per space.
Although the size of the Scientology building requires 809 spaces under
the code, the church has decided to pay for 334 spaces rather than
build them. Before the permit was issued Tuesday afternoon, the church
gave the city a check for slightly more than $1.5-million.
Legally, the church could buy the remaining 475 spaces and develop no
parking at all. However, it plans a parking garage along Court Street.
Church officials said their need for parking is diminished by two
factors. Many Scientologists using the building will arrive in the
church's motor pool, which employs buses and vans. Also, the church
counted more than 1,800 nearby public parking spaces available in the
evenings when large events would be held.
The new building will feature a "grand lobby" with sculptures depicting
several concepts of Scientology; a first-floor chapel; several theaters
for training and introductory films; a museum honoring the Sea
Organization, the uniformed "fraternal order" that staffs the church;
and a museum honoring Scientology's late founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
Other features include a bookstore, a library, 15 course rooms where
Scientologists study together, and about 300 rooms for one-on-one
counseling.
The sixth floor will house an indoor running track for parishioners
undergoing the Purification Rundown, a regimen of saunas, exercise and
vitamins that Scientologists believe rids the body of toxins.
The building's stately Mediterranean Revival style will match that of
the Fort Harrison Hotel, Scientology's signature property immediately
west across S Fort Harrison Avenue.
All of the hotel's counseling rooms will be moved to the new building,
a change that will render the old Fort Harrison completely taxable for
the first time since Scientology bought it in 1975.
Also at that point, the church will open the hotel's restaurants to the
public -- another first in Clearwater.
The eight-point cross planned for the top of the new building refers to
the eight "dynamics" that Scientologists believe define each person's
life. It has no Christian reference.
According to a Scientology publication from last year: "We surveyed the
entire local area from all vantage points and determined the maximum
height of the building so as to ensure every citizen and visitor to
Clearwater could not possibly miss the view of our huge Scientology
cross or the Fort Harrison beyond."
The new structure is most frequently called the "Super Power" project,
which refers to the name of a set of yet-to-be-released
Scientology "rundowns" or processes that are said to give
Scientologists "an entirely new level of power and ability."
Church officials say that Scientologists from throughout the world will
be clamoring to get Super Power counseling, hence the projected
increase in visitors.
The building is the centerpiece of a church expansion downtown that
will cost from $60-million to $90-million.
Bob Keller, Clearwater's assistant city manager for economic
development, said the $1.5-million paid by the church must be used for
downtown parking, but the city has not settled on where.
He said the building permit was delayed as city officials and the
church negotiated the number of parking spaces and how the church would
guarantee payment.
Legally, he said, the church had no obligation to discuss parking or
provide it until the end of the project, when a certificate of
occupancy is issued. But church officials were sensitive to the city's
parking needs, including its desire to plan parking for a downtown
redevelopment plan, he said.
"The cooperation's been fabulous," Keller said. "They went above and
beyond what we had any right to require from them."
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Before you buy.
Anonymous
The LIFE & DEATH of a SCIENTOLOGIST
After 13 Years and Thousands Of Dollars, Lisa McPherson Finally Went
'Clear.'
Then She Went Insane.
By Richard Leiby - Washington Post Staff Writer
CLEARWATER, Fla.-"I am L. Ron Hubbard," the woman on the hotel room bed
announced in a robotic voice. "I created time 3 billion years ago." She
rambled on and on, every outburst dutifully scribbled down by those
assigned to watch her.
"I can't confront force . . . I need my auditor . . . I want to take a
toothbrush and brush the floor until I have a cognition."
The jargon of Scientology was instantly familiar to anyone who entered the
room in the Fort Harrison Hotel, part of an elite training center and
retreat established here by Hubbard, the science fiction writer and
self-styled religious leader. It was also obvious to her fellow
Scientologists that Lisa McPherson had cracked up.
"Out of control," one wrote.
Beginning Nov. 18, 1995, Scientology staffers -- following Hubbard's
regimen for dealing with psychotic members -- kept McPherson isolated in
that room 24 hours a day, refusing to speak to her, trying to force-feed
her, plying her with vitamins and herbal concoctions and injecting her with
sedatives, according to several accounts that are now part of court
records. She furiously resisted: She pounded the walls, tried to escape,
attacked a staffer with a potted plant. In her delirium, records say, she
defecated on herself and drank her own urine.
Within 17 days, McPherson -- who'd spent most of her adult life and tens of
thousands of dollars as a devotee of Hubbard's teachings -- would be dead.
The once-voluptuous 36-year-old -- she stood 5 feet 9 and wore a size 12
dress -- lost an estimated 40 to 50 pounds during the ordeal, dropping to
108, her bruised body pocked by insect bites and scabs.
She was never seen by a licensed physician during that time. An autopsy
attributed her death to a blood clot that developed due to "severe
dehydration" and "bed rest."
Last month, after more than two years of investigation, the state attorney
here filed two felony counts against the Scientology organization, alleging
abuse or neglect of a disabled adult and the practice of medicine without a
license. (No individuals were charged; to obtain their testimony, all
Scientology witnesses were given immunity by prosecutors.) A criminal
conviction would only bring fines of up to $15,000, but also would allow a
court to order restitution to the victim's family and payment of
law-enforcement investigation costs.
The church has pleaded not guilty. Mike Rinder, senior spokesman for
Scientology, would not respond to any questions about McPherson, but issued
a statement calling the "circumstances" of her death "unfortunate," and
contending that the church had no "intent to do any harm" to its devotee.
Church lawyers would not comment.
Meanwhile, McPherson's aunt has filed a wrongful death suit against the
church, saying McPherson suffered "extreme torture" as "a prisoner of
Scientology."
Church officials have said they were honoring McPherson's religious
preferences; Scientology vehemently denounces all forms of psychotherapy.
This weekend, to mark the anniversary of McPherson's death, Scientology
defectors and other activists picketed near the Fort Harrison Hotel. Since
its founding 45 years ago, the Church of Scientology has endured more than
its share of bad publicity, but the McPherson case puts on stark display a
side of the religion far removed from the glowing testimonials it receives
from Hollywood adherents like John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Isaac Hayes.
If, as Hubbard decreed, the ultimate aim of Scientology is its adherents'
"total freedom" and "survival," then what went wrong in the case of Lisa
McPherson?
"At last, here is a book . . . which provides the answers to the problems
of the human mind," pledged Hubbard's 1950 bestseller, "Dianetics: The
Modern Science of Mental Health." It was the cornerstone of the religion he
later founded. Once "cleared" of their troublesome brain "engrams,"
followers would be happy and healthier, have higher IQs and become "stable
mentally," Hubbard believed.
In September 1995, Lisa McPherson proudly attested to reaching the state of
"clear" at a Scientology ceremony. Within a few weeks, her mind began to
unravel. After 13 years of intensive study, she was still failing as a
Scientologist; indeed, she had become one of the worst kinds of problems --
in church lingo, a "Potential Trouble Source Type III," or what Hubbard
also called an "insane being."
Out in the real world, around non-Scientologists, McPherson was
dramatically breaking down, becoming a public embarrassment. Scientologists
weren't supposed to do that.
The Founder, a flame-haired, swashbuckling figure, died in 1986, but his
every utterance and writing is viewed by Scientologists as consecrated,
immutable scripture. Hubbard seemed to take a dim view of those who
suffered breakdowns.
"We have nothing to do with the insane whatsoever. The insane, well,
they're insane!" he once declared in a rare television interview. Little
could be done for psychotics. "Provide a relatively safe environment and
quiet and rest and no treatment of a mental nature at all," he wrote in a
1965 policy letter.
"There will always be some failures," he continued, and "sometimes [they]
can't be kept alive."
McPherson grew up in Dallas, the daughter of an insurance man and his
homemaker wife, attending Baptist churches. She had an older brother she
loved, named Steve.
When Steve was 16 he shot himself in the head in a gas station rest room.
Lisa was 14. The suicide was apparently connected to a dispute with another
teen, although the details remain vague to Lisa's aunt and closest living
relative, Dell Liebreich. But Liebreich knows one thing: "I'm sure it had a
traumatizing effect on Lisa. Her father never recovered from it. He
committed suicide 10 years later." He too used a pistol.
After high school, McPherson went to work at Southwestern Bell, where her
family says a supervisor recruited her into Scientology. A vivacious
brown-eyed blonde, fond of frosting her hair, McPherson had an early,
troubled marriage that lasted only a few years. But she did well at the
phone company, and she avidly studied Hubbard's techniques. "She was always
going to the mission, taking courses," recalls Liebreich, who signed on to
the lawsuit against Scientology after Lisa's mother, Fannie, died last
year.
The church's account of McPherson's tenure has required criminal
investigators and civil case lawyers to learn another language --
Hubbard-speak. For example, a Scientology-prepared report on McPherson says
that in "Dec. 86/Jan. 87 she had a PTS Rundown (items were Mom, Don and
Theresa). . . . This was followed by a large amount of wordclearing, False
Data Stripping and O/W write ups."
Translation: Using an E-meter, a lie detector-like device that Hubbard
invented, a counselor discovered that McPherson was a "potential trouble
source" in Scientology because of her connection to three "suppressive"
people, including her mother. In confessional rituals, a parishioner must
declare his O/Ws -- "overts and withholds" -- immoral acts that include
harmful, undisclosed transgressions against Scientology. Any
miscomprehensions about anything -- including the church and its teachings
-- are "false data" that must be stripped away.
In Hubbard's cosmology, traumas in past lifetimes, contact with alien
beings, drug use and involvement with "suppressive persons" (who include
enemies of the church) all can be impediments to a "pre-clear's" success.
They must be located and removed by "auditing."
According to the church, McPherson took her first courses in 1982, when she
was 23, and tried but failed to go "clear" in 1986. She took a staff job
and married a member of the church. In 1989, she also committed herself to
serving Scientology for a "billion years," signing up for its Sea
Organization, an elite group whose members wear nautical uniforms and
follow a militaristic command structure, working long hours for salaries of
$50 a week.
A World War II Navy lieutenant, Hubbard ran his sect for several years from
aboard a 320-foot converted cattle ferry, sailing the world before
establishing what he called the Flag Land Base at Clearwater, a placid town
of white sand beaches on the Gulf of Mexico. The Commodore, as Hubbard was
known, lived nearby briefly in the mid-1970s. He told aides he planned to
pose as a photographer in the tourist industry.
Today, about 6,000 Scientology followers and staffers live in the
Clearwater area -- many based at the campus of former hotels where
Hubbard's "religious technology" is offered at the most advanced (and
expensive) levels. Several Scientologist-operated businesses also maintain
headquarters here.
McPherson migrated to Clearwater in the early '90s after her new
Scientology employers relocated their publishing firm here. She'd divorced
again, and had left the Sea Organization. But she kept attempting to reach
"clear." Records show she was thwarted again in 1991 and 1994 because she
was a "potential trouble source" -- the E-meter sessions revealed she'd
been in contact with suppressive, anti-Scientology elements.
At first McPherson flourished as a sales rep at AMC Publishing; she made
$136,721 in 1994, according to her tax returns, spending more than $55,000
on Scientology courses and taking deductions for them. (The IRS, after
fighting hundreds of lawsuits filed by Scientology, granted the church
tax-exempt status in 1993.)
Then, turmoil. "In June 1995, Lisa caved in and actually went into a spin
(psychotic break)," says the church report. This forced a brief
recuperation at the Fort Harrison Hotel and a slowdown in her work. She was
put into "ethics handling" -- a regimen that includes writing up "overts
and withholds."
Her aunt, an old high school friend and others believe McPherson was on the
verge of quitting the church -- and that was her undisclosed crime against
Scientology.
"She was roller-coastering: up and down, up and down, high emotions and low
emotions," says Michael Pattinson, a painter and recent Scientology
defector who got to know McPherson in the months before her death. "She
wanted to do something more artistic in her life, and the group's power and
pressure were too much for her.
"She was having a very, very rough time at work keeping up with the quotas
for sales," Pattinson recalls. "She asked for my advice. I said, 'Lisa,
follow your own goals, not someone else's, or you'll end up in the soup.' "
Scientology officials say McPherson was a devoted member. And on Sept. 7,
she finally reached her cherished goal: "I'm from Texas and I'm Clear!" she
announced to a roomful of fellow members, reading from a script now in
court files. "Being Clear is more exciting than anything I've ever
experienced. I am so thrilled about life and living that I can hardly stand
it!"
McPherson's final hurdle to Clear was an incident from a past life. A
saber-toothed tiger kept attacking and eating her: "Not only did I see him,
I was in a cage with him for six months."
Auditing "handled" that problem, McPherson told her audience. But other
problems arose.
By mid-October, church records show that officials had declared her a
"liability" to Scientology, apparently after her production dropped off at
her publishing job. In Hubbard's jargon, that meant McPherson had "taken on
the color of an enemy" and could not be trusted. In a memo, she said she
was making "amends," and working seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 10:30
p.m., in part to raise money for a the church's "Winter Wonderland" holiday
event.
By November, she began to act out in bizarre ways: At a business conference
in Orlando, she insisted to strangers that they had to read L. Ron
Hubbard's "Dianetics." She interrogated a co-worker about "suppressive
people." She rousted the colleague in the middle of the night, raving about
"something going on on this planet that I didn't know about."
"When I woke up at 7 a.m. I found her still in the bathroom reading"
Hubbard's works, the woman wrote in a report to church officials. "She
looked like hell."
One year ago, on the sidewalk in front of the Fort Harrison Hotel,
Scientology critics lit candles in a memorial to McPherson. Their signs
bore her grisly autopsy photos. Their T-shirts said "Scientology Kills."
A few blocks away in a counterdemonstration, thousands of church members
staged a "civil rights" march on the Clearwater Police Department and the
local office of the St. Petersburg Times, charging that police and media
investigations of the McPherson case amounted to a hate campaign.
For many residents, the long-running McPherson case has revived unwelcome
memories of Scientology's controversial past here -- in the mid-'70s the
town's political, business and media establishment were targeted for what
Hubbard memos termed "takeover" and "control." In 1975, Hubbard moved his
sect ashore, secretly purchasing downtown properties under the guise of a
group called United Churches of Florida.
The guru's plan to create a Scientology-run city -- part of an even more
grandiose scheme for global domination -- foundered after FBI raids and
news reports exposed his goals. Prosecutors used internal church documents
to help convict Hubbard's wife and 10 other top Scientologists in a
conspiracy to infiltrate, bug and burglarize federal agencies. Hubbard was
named an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.
Scientology leaders, who say they purged the church of criminals 15 years
ago, claim it enjoys excellent relations with the city. Last month, ground
was broken for a $45 million Scientology center in the faded downtown; at
370,000 square feet, it's the largest construction project in the church's
history. Only a few bigots and "rednecks" oppose its presence here, church
officials say.
"The sun never sets on Scientology," church leader David Miscavige, quoting
Hubbard, said at the glitzy groundbreaking, which included a laser light
show. "Scientology now, tomorrow and forever."
The dueling demonstrations over the McPherson case coincided with the
opening of "Winter Wonderland," an annual holiday display erected by the
church to collect food and toys for the poor. Rocker Edgar Winter, a
Scientologist, welcomed the crowd and praised "this wonderful gift to the
community."
Bennetta Slaughter, owner of AMC Publishing and a Scientologist for nearly
20 years, spoke of the church's dedication to children. She pointed out
that a $3,400 donation by her deceased employee, Lisa McPherson, helped
make it all possible.
"She was one of my very good friends and I loved her very much," Slaughter
said later, bracing against the breeze in a Christmas sweater and red
velvet skirt. "It's a farce that they're demonstrating [against the
church]. They're desecrating her memory, not honoring her memory."
Slaughter and her company were initially named as defendants in McPherson's
aunt's suit, but were later dropped from the action. "I absolutely know
that what occurred with Lisa -- " Slaughter began. She paused. "She was not
denied anything. The things that have been said are complete
misrepresentations on the part of those who would attack the church.
They're falsehoods."
And why would people criticize her church?
"No data," she quickly replied. "Obviously there's an agenda."
"The real and inexcusable danger in Dianetics lies in its conception of the
amoral, detached, 100 percent mechanical man. This is the authoritarian
dream, a population of zombies, free to be manipulated by the great brains
of the founder, the leader of an inner manipulative clique." -- A review of
"Dianetics" in The Nation, 1950.
From the very beginning, the therapies of L. Ron Hubbard have been
denounced by medical authorities as quackery, hypnotism and brainwashing.
One of the first judicial investigations of Scientology, conducted in
Australia in the 1960s, deemed the auditing process a form of "mental
torture" and resulted in a ban on Scientology practices. "Sometimes
preclears are so distraught that they scream, develop murderous feelings,
have bouts of anger, grief . . . their sexual passions are aroused, they
act insanely, laugh hysterically . . . they become violent and try to
escape and have to be restrained," the report said.
"In Scientology parlance, when such manifestations as these occur, the
preclear is being 'restimulated'; in fact he is being debased and mentally
crippled."
(By 1982, Australia overturned its ban and recognized Scientology as a
religion. But an official commission of top legal experts recently
recommended that significant psychological harm inflicted by any religious
group, including Scientology, be made a crime.)
In 1978, a French court tried Hubbard in absentia for fraud and sentenced
him to four years' imprisonment.
In 1986, a California jury awarded $30 million to a former Sea Organization
member who said the church's advanced regimens caused him to become
psychotic and actively plan suicide. (The award, later reduced to $2.5
million, has been upheld by the Supreme Court, but the former member has
yet to collect because of exhaustive litigation by the church.)
In a 1984 decision, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge
said Scientology "is nothing in reality but a vast enterprise to extract
the maximum amount of money from its adepts by pseudo-scientific theories .
. . and to exercise a kind of blackmail against persons who do not wish to
continue with their sect. . . . The organization clearly is schizophrenic
and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its
founder."
Such conclusions strike especially close to the heart of Scientology, a
belief system whose strongest rhetoric is reserved for its criticism of
psychiatry. Hubbard said he wanted to control "absolutely the field of
mental healing on this planet in all forms." He denounced shrinks as
crackpots and butchers who killed patients' souls with electroshock therapy
and drugs.
But there may have been a deeper source of the Founder's ire. His eldest
son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., once swore an affidavit saying his father "ended
up in psychiatric hospital at the end of the war." (Hubbard Jr. is dead;
the church says the Founder never received treatment and that the son
recanted his criticism.)
In a letter written to the Veterans Administration in 1947, Hubbard senior
admitted to suicidal tendencies and asked for psychiatric help.
Denouncing doctors, Hubbard claimed his research revealed the true nature
of the mind. "All of these things are scientific facts, tested and
rechecked and tested again," he wrote in "Dianetics." But his son said the
findings -- initially published in the pulp magazine Astounding Science
Fiction -- was without scientific merit: "My father wrote his books off the
top of his head based on his imagination. There were no case studies."
"He audited me and it didn't help," says Richard de Mille, a Dianetics
believer from 1950 to 1953. "I came to understand that it was all his
imagination, just a story he was telling."
De Mille, 76, son of the famous director, says Hubbard transformed his
self-help discoveries into a religion to avoid having to prove them: "It
became a religion very suddenly and all his magical ideas jumped back into
it."
The apex of Scientology spiritual counseling is at the secret, so-called OT
Levels, which promise superhuman powers. Here, members pass through what
Hubbard described as the Wall of Fire. Parishioners -- who have already
spent thousands to go clear -- pay several thousand more to learn that
their spiritual traumas stem from an intergalactic holocaust perpetrated 75
million years ago by an alien overlord named Xenu.
During a space battle, Hubbard teaches, our spirits became infested with
evil alien spirits, called "body thetans." There could be untold numbers of
such bad thetans fomenting problems in each of our minds. Only through
rigorous auditing can they be removed -- allowing the untormented Operating
Thetan -- the OT -- to emerge.
In 1995, church financial records show, McPherson paid nearly $42,000 in
"donations" for top-level courses -- including "Wall of Fire," the "Flag OT
Executive Rundown" and "OT Preparations and Eligibility."
On Nov. 10, 1995, court records show, the devotee purchased her last
religious item from the Church of Scientology. It was a 1996 calendar
featuring L. Ron Hubbard. Price: $100.
"No one told me I was a prisoner, but I knew that I wouldn't just walk out
the door. . . . It's embedded over the years that, once you're a
Scientologist, there's nowhere to go; you just don't leave." -- Former
church staff member Lori Taverna, testifying to the Clearwater City
Commission in 1982.
After a minor traffic accident, McPherson stripped off her clothes and
walked naked down well-traveled Belleview Boulevard. She told stunned
paramedics she wasn't crazy but just wanted to get their attention: "I need
help. I need to talk to someone." She spoke in a monotone, as if
programmed, and said she didn't need a body to live.
"I'm an OT," she said. An Operating Thetan.
It was shortly after 6 p.m. on Nov. 18, 1995. McPherson had driven her '93
Jeep Cherokee into a boat being towed on a trailer. She wasn't hurt.
The paramedics took her to nearby Morton Plant Hospital. Nurses there said
she looked calm, but they noticed her fixed stare. McPherson disclosed that
her brother and father had committed suicide, but denied she wanted to kill
herself or anyone else.
By 6:50, a group of Scientologists had arrived. By the church's account,
McPherson had phoned her friend and boss, Bennetta Slaughter. (Hospital
records contain no mention of McPherson making any calls.) The
Scientologists explained that a psychiatric consultation would violate
McPherson's religion.
At 7:30, a psychiatric nurse went to McPherson's bedside, where she was
surrounded by church members. Again she spoke in that monotone, telling the
nurse, "I want to go home with my friends from the congregation."
An emergency room doctor decided, after talking by phone with a
psychiatrist, that the patient could not be involuntarily committed. "Her
friends at scientology will watch her 24 hours and be sure that she gets
the care that they want her to have and the patient wants to have," the
doctor typed in his report. But he seemed uneasy, adding: "I told her I
could not be responsible . . . I will have the patient sign out against
medical advice."
Around 8:30, she was taken to the Fort Harrison Hotel and put in Room 174.
She would not leave again until the night of Dec. 5.
Scientologists loaded McPherson's nearly lifeless body into a church van.
Instead of calling an ambulance or driving her to Morton Plant, five
minutes away, she was taken 45 minutes north to Columbia/HCA New Port
Richey Hospital.
Her watchers had decided it would be best if McPherson were treated by a
Scientology doctor -- an OT-course graduate named David Minkoff who worked
in the emergency room at the New Port Richey hospital. Minkoff had earlier
prescribed Valium for McPherson without seeing her, according to a Florida
Department of Law Enforcement affidavit. (Minkoff, initially named in the
wrongful death suit, authorized his insurers to settle with McPherson's
estate for $100,000 -- what his attorney called a "pittance in comparison
with the millions and millions they were asking for.")
McPherson never got the Valium. Staffers told investigators that they
feared any drug might interfere with her future auditing. So instead they
loaded aspirin and Benadryl into a syringe and forced it down her throat.
McPherson's "case supervisor" believed the aspirin "might assist in
blocking Lisa's formation of mental images," the prosecution affidavit
says.
Through the 17 days since her naked stroll down Belleview Boulevard,
McPherson had been attended by Janis Johnson, an unlicensed
anesthesiologist who served as the Flag base medical liaison officer, by a
dentist and by staffers with no medical training, including a 17-year-old.
One woman assigned to McPherson's room broke down, sat in a corner and
cried, records show.
The Scientologists injected McPherson with magnesium chloride and gave her
the sedative chloral hydrate -- both substances apparently endorsed by
Hubbard. By Dec. 1, she was so dehydrated that she needed two liters of
fluid, according to Johnson's notes. The medical examiner later said it
appeared that she'd gone without water for at least five days. The
watchers' records are spotty, and church logs of her final 53 hours were
lost or destroyed, according to the prosecution affidavit.
A reconstruction of events that Scientology turned over to lawyers for
McPherson's estate, as well as prosecutors' findings, describe McPherson's
final day:
By Dec. 5, she couldn't walk. She'd been lapsing in and out of
consciousness, barely moving. That morning, Johnson thought McPherson
looked "septic," as if suffering from a massive infection. Around 7 p.m.,
Johnson called Minkoff, requesting he issue a prescription for penicillin.
Minkoff says he refused and advised that the patient be taken to the
nearest hospital. But Johnson said, "Lisa was not that sick." She would
transport McPherson 24 miles to New Port Richey instead.
McPherson's breathing grew heavy and labored on the trip. She was loaded
into a wheelchair when they reached the hospital around 9:30. Minkoff said
he was shocked by her "horrific" appearance.
He pronounced her dead on arrival.
According to the charging document, "This inexcusable delay in seeking
emergency help . . . deprived Lisa of her only opportunity for survival."
A Scientology report on the incident begins this way: "Lisa McPherson, Flag
public living in Clearwater, FL., dropped her body this evening while being
taken to a hospital."
On Aug. 6, 1996, eight months after she died, the church mailed Lisa
McPherson a statement showing a credit of $3,000. Her next course, called
"OT Debug Service," was paid for and waiting.
c Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Mike O'Connor
publicr...@scientology.org wrote:
>Scientology's building heads upward
This is old news, how about some new news, how about telling us your
name, your job title, and what organization you represent? Mandatory
questions for any PR representative.
--
SCIENTOLOGY IS SECRETLY A UFO CULT
ASK THEM ABOUT XENU
Mike O'Connor <mi...@leptonicsystems.com>
<http://www.leptonicsystems.com>
Fredric L. Rice
> Scientology's building heads upward
What's amusing is that the Scientology crime syndicate has
no money to pay for the project and will be unable to pay
to have the thing completed unless they turn around the loss
of revenue from their criminal frauds.
It would kick if after Lisa McPherson's estate punishes the
felony crooks for killing LisaMcPherson, getting that 80
million dollar punishment fee, they take the Ft. Homicide
Hotel _and_ the land that the crooks wanted to put this
new building on and turn it _back_ into a high quality hotel
that actually brings tourists into the city.
It _is_ kind of amusing to watch the crooks try to bluster
their way through the massive blood loss.
--
"It doesn't give me displeasure to hear of a virgin being raped. The
lot of women is to be fornicated."-L. Ron Hubbard, "Affirmations" 1947
"A drunk driver was better than no driver at all, wasn't it?" -Hubbard
http://www.skeptictank.org/ http://www.xenu.net/ http://holysmoke.org/
Nick Andrew
>What's amusing is that the Scientology crime syndicate has
>no money to pay for the project and will be unable to pay
>to have the thing completed unless they turn around the loss
>of revenue from their criminal frauds.
Remember though that according to Hubbard's instructions on financial
"management" the organisation only pays those bills for which it has
cash available. The concept of cashflow is irrelevant to Hubbard (or
he didn't understand that ethical behaviour requires one to only
acquire goods/services after one has the ability to pay for them).
Nick.
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Shy David www.xenu.net
> Scientology's building heads upward
Scientology's membership heads downwards.
---
"Shy" David Rice. A proud supporter and defender of religious rights. Help fight
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Fredric L. Rice
>On Fri, 31 Mar 2000 18:53:09 GMT, publicr...@scientology.org
>wrote:
>For a sample of the *real* public relations of the Church of
>Scientology, specifically that of John Carmichael, President of the
>New York Org, check out http://www.gradyward.com/
This was the amazing _liar_ that tried to "dead agent" Mr. Robert
Minton when Mr. Minton was covering _accurately_ the activities of
the criminal organization on a KFI AM 740 radio show. (John and
Ken? Ken and Bob?) If I recall correctly, he tried to pass himself
off as a "reverend" as well.
>The Church of Scientology distributes lies and what they call
>grossly sexually and scatalogically indecent material. Will the
>"Rear" Admiral David Miscavige do *nothing* and thus
>endorse this direction of his "church"?
If it weren't for that and the crook's lawyers, they wouldn't
have ant OT powers at all.
--- "de omnibus dubitandum" All is to be doubted --- Descartes
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Fredric L. Rice
> On Fri, 31 Mar 2000 18:53:09 GMT, publicr...@scientology.org
> wrote:
>
> For a sample of the *real* public relations of the Church of
> Scientology, specifically that of John Carmichael, President of the
> New York Org, check out http://www.gradyward.com/
He was the one that tried to pass himself off as a "reverend"
when trying to demand that Mr. Robert Minton's exposure
on KFI AM Talk Radio was some how inaccurate; the nut
couldn't come up with any specifically and merely tried to
claim that Mr. Minton couldn't be trusted -- regardless of the
fact that everything Mr. Minton said was verified truth.